Submission > Psychic. But that's irrelevant because Night Shade > Mega Drain > all The best topic would've been: GGFan. Discuss Sorry GGFan i couldn't resist...
Ideally disables 2 mons sleeping (fastest sleeper) and exploding. Night Shade, T-bolt, CRay, Giga Drain and Psychic ar good options for the other 2 moves Night shade so it can do something vs egg, giga drain may be useful if you need hitting hard rhydon/golem, t-bolt is gengar's best special attack, psychic is good if you want to hit other gengars and can cause special falls, and cray just to annoy. Night Shade + T-bolt are usually the best 2 attacks
Giga drain... someone is trolling... jk But I really don't think Psychic is worth using over NS/MD. If given the choice to cover either Exeggutor or Golem/Rhydon instead of Gengar, both of which take no damage from Thunderbolt and can 2HKO or OHKO Gengar back, I'll definitely go for it. And Body Slam / Night Shade / Hypnosis / Explosion seems like an interesting set. My point behind this set is that Starmie and Lapras never switch into Gengar anyway. Well, at least not until you show all your moves... But Gengar is a pokemon that relies on "surprise" for the most part, so why not? And paras are huge. However, its common targets doesn't generally care much about para, and most Body Slams will have to occur on the switch-in to avoid being Koed back. But does Gengar actually force anything out other than... Lapras/Starmie? Seems like a gimmick set overall, because as much as Thunderbolt isn't completely necessary, Body Slam is three times not really that useful. Discuss.
wtf is that This subforum it's not gen 4 rby, it's gen 1 rby. The RBY, GSC and ADV subforums are misplaced but their description clearly says what they are for... But this is definitely not as funny/epic as metang@ anyway.
Crystal_ shaming some poor rube into deleting. Anyhoo, Bslam just isn't worth it. Gengar needs to be able to scare aquatics, lest it be totally useless as an attacker, not to mention that no Tbolt means no going for the crit against Slowbro. What's Gengar possibly paralyzing with Blsam that otherwise wouldn't be para'd? Seems like all you'd nail would be Alakazam and Exeggutor, and those are likely to be hit by para from other sources, meaning Gengar would be better off Night Shading for damage or Exploding for... more damage.
Well just look at it this way. It isn't tbolt what scares waters out, it is gengar itslef. I agree though, it's just not worth it.
Hypnosis, Explosion, and Thunderbolt are immutable. I think some people probably use Gengar without Hypnosis, but I don't see the point because inflicting sleep is his forte. Thunderbolt gives him some coverage, and it's also his strongest weapon against Tauros. If I were to use Gengar, I would use either Mega Drain or Submission as the fourth move. Psychic is about as good as Mega Drain, however (they're both used to hit a specific Pokemon), so it's really a matter of preference. Oh, I guess Night Shade is ok for chipping away at paralyzed Exeggutor, but I'd rather have the additional coverage.
Gengar walls pretty much every wrapper and certain tanklax sets. If you run gengar, there's always a chance it'll wall something on the other team.
Gar is good for drawing EQs for Exeggutor/Articuno/Dragonite/Zapdos. Tbolt is nice because it makes it the only bona-fide Lapras counter, threatens Slowbro, and gives it something to stop Starmie blithely switching in (though for the love of god don't switch Gengar into an unknown Starmie), Night Shade gives the most reliable damage, Mega Drain allows you to not be a free switch for Rocks and thus maybe actually get to Explode before dying. Psychic is funny if your opponent has a Victreebel or their own Gengar. Hypnosis makes it a decent anti-Jynx lead.
Just want to point out that good players will often read the gengar chain-switch to EQ immunity. I've caught out every single player who has tried that on me, except WaterWizard, but that's because I told him it was a scrubby strategy beforehand, so I wasn't sure if he was mind-gaming me or not. Also, I want to retract my comment that gengar walls wrap teams. It doesn't really, mostly because the free switch invites offensive pressure onto its team. I used to think that you had to run either gengar or a rock for dragonite (the idea being that rocks were inferior counters, but were better otherwise) but now rocks are clearly superior for me, especially against gengar teams. Psychic is better in wrap because of victreebel and other gengars. It's also his best attacks against the physical normals. Mega drain is ok in wrap for rocks, but no one will ever switch a rock in to gengar predictably unless it's through wrap.
Explosion is absolutely immutable, I agree. Gar without Hypnosis is okay (unless you're leading Gar in which case you should 100% be using Hypnosis). It's hardly reliable and you're running Egg anyway (I think I'm the only person who ever uses non-sleep Egg, and not running it at all is rare as hen's teeth) so there's a decent chance you'll already have slept something before Gar comes out. Thunderbolt isn't all that great against Tauros, it's only usually a 4HKO. Crits are nice, but when Tauros has a guaranteed 2HKO on you and the exact same crit rate you'd really rather be Exploding or maybe trying for a sleep, not poking it with Tbolt or Night Shade. Night Shade's damage is pretty competitive with Thunderbolt's against neutral targets. Thunderbolt's real use is for the Waters. Submission is a bad move. Night Shade's doing more damage to the Rocks than Submission does, its Thunderbolt is doing almost as much to Lax and more to Tauros, and using Submission on Chansey has horrific recoil. Sure, it's a 3HKO. But Gengar is 5HKOed by the recoil, and Submission's inaccurate to boot, so the odds are still heavily against you (because Chansey has Thunder Wave and Softboiled) and Gengar will be heavily damaged even if you win. Mega Drain makes Gengar's Explosion safer. Psychic makes opponents' Gengars' Explosions less safe, but not by THAT much. Night Shade 4HKOs opposing Gar, Psychic 3HKOs, so if you switch Psychic Gar into opposing NS Gar they still have a decent (22%) chance of beating you. Still an okay move because of its broken secondary effect, but when half of OU has STAB on it Gengar's Psychic seems pretty weak by comparison. EDIT: Forgot to mention that Psychic's actually Gengar's best option to hit Tauros and Snorlax. In terms of average time to KO it's Psychic > Thunderbolt > Night Shade > Submission for Tauros and Psychic > Thunderbolt > Submission > Night Shade for Snorlax. As I said, though, it's not the biggest issue for Gengar; Night Shade's perfect coverage in a single move is great.
Do you even know what a necro is? It was still on the front page and I posted four whole fucking paragraphs of new opinion (the longest post in the entire thread). The meta's still the same, the discussion's still the same. Do you have anything to contribute or did you just poke your head in to whine?
Anyway since this has been bumped I might as well say something. For me personally, Gengar's options are limited to Boom/Hypnosis/Tbolt/MDrain/NShade. I've never even considered using Submission on Gengar, but yeah it'd be a bad option as m9m explained. Psychic is viable I guess but it's still really bad because there's literally one common threat it's hitting (Gengar) and even then it's not that much better than Shade. I've actually grown really fond of dropping Tbolt on Gengar lately and running MDrain/NShade. I find that I seldom save my Gar for anything, so once it's slept something I'm then looking to have it boom on something else (usually an Egg). Mega drain's utility here is obvious in deterring GolDon, but Night Shade is fantastic for Eggs since after NS, explosion will leave Egg at a low enough HP that it's Tauros fodder, as opposed to being 40%ish at which point it still has enough bulk potentially to live a hit, sleep something and then go boom. When I use Gengar the outcome I hope for is to sleep their lead, and then NS+boom the Egg switch-in. Being able to lure and demolish Egg like that is honestly my favourite thing about Gengar. It's just a shame Starm and Zam leads are so popular. Tbolt is best imo if you're not planning on booming early game, because it doesn't help your explosion at all, but it does give you that utility against opposing aquatics, and I'm guessing it would help against some of the niche threats that Gengar walls as well (idk). While I'm at it, I feel like mentioning that Gengar is a poor choice of lead if you're running something like Persian. I gotta go though, so I might come back to this later
Gengar and Victreebel (Vic forces Tbolt/Drain Gar to boom since Razor Leaf outpaces Thunderbolt). It's also probably better than Thunderbolt at slugging it out with (particularly Blizzard) Dragonite. Night Shade hits all of them though. Night Shade hits everything. Yup, it's what allows Gar to beat the Waters, ie Starmie (unless Psychic obv), Slowbro, Lapras, Cloyster and Articuno (technically not a Water but it might as well be one). Cloyster in particular really hates Tbolt Gar. The niche threats it walls are Persian (against which it's great) and Victreebel (against which it's useless). I guess there's also Clefable (NS is more reliable since Tbolt doesn't assure 4HKO) and Gyarados/Kingler (loldestroyed). Might help, since I'm puzzled by this statement. :P
Yeah my thoughts behind Gengar being a poor lead choice for a Persian team is that it has a poor match-up with 3 out of the 4 common leads. Starm and Zam are obvious and they do a good job putting you on the back foot, but the Gengar ditto I feel is a lose-lose situation. Either you get slept or you sleep their Gengar and once slept, it tends to stick around until late-game when you're trying to clean up with Persian, which allows it a good chance to wake up and stop your sweep. Then again, iirc Tbolt is about a 6HKO? Against a sleeping Gengar that might not be that bad now that I think about it, but it's still a major obstacle, especially if the opponent is in a position where exploding works in their favour. Baiting the opponent into sacrificing their Gengar (which is the obvious play) is rather difficult imo especially since that's unlikely to happen unless the opponent feels unthreatened by a potential sleep. Maybe you could try revealing your Persian mid-game and double switching into Tauros for some BSlam/EQ mindgames, but bringing Persian in midgame can obviously be tough. That's just been my experience of playing with those kinds of teams anyway, maybe you could prove me wrong since now that I'm expressing it, I'm not entirely sure if I'm strongly justified in this position.
year old thread is like ancient??? so i thought it was weird to just post in it??? ok? i guess i was just whining???????????? gengar has hypnosis which is pretty annoy
Gengar losing to Starmie/Alakazam --> bad teammate with Persian = huge leap in logic and I don't agree with it offtopic but if i were to theorymon about what the ideal lead partner to gengar would be, i'd look for the following qualities: forces status onto starmie/alakazam, esp. alakazam forces dead/sleeping gengar or at the very least damaged gengar (minimum 59%, which is the minimum amount of damage TBolt*3 from persian deals) both of the above are equally important for persian but it's not as important if the lead is the one doing it, and id argue it is easier to paralyze zam than it is to kill gengar, and easier to kill gengar than it is to paralyze starmie starmie comes the closest to dealing with all of this if you run a lead moveset of Recover/TWave/Blizz/Psychic, para's opposing starmies and zams, deals with gengar. second candidate would be jynx, then gengar, then zam (starmies rarely trade para with zam) and lastly egg because egg lead sux
You're totally misrepresenting what I was saying when I said Gengar was a poor choice of lead for a Persian team, js. It sounds like you've completely ignored my point about the ditto and in any case, Starm/Zam leads just generally impact on Gengar's usefulness as a lead (This isn't specific to Persian teams obviously). Otherwise I fully agree with your post.
your post made no sense though because you didnt explain why losing the lead game would be directly related to persian. and even if gengar loses vs. zam and starmie, i still disagree with that being a reason for gengar being a poor lead choice when teamed with persian - use egg as backup sleeper, sleep zam comfortably, one bullet point achieved. can do the same vs. starmie if youre a bit more willing to take a risk as well. and your points regarding opposing gengars were universal - "either this always happens or that always happens". i dont see how the lead makes any difference in your statements. either gengar runs scared and sticks around the entire match or gets slept and avoids dying the entire match, according to your statements.
Switching Egg into Starmie is a terrible idea. Crit Psychic + crit Blizzard can KO, never mind the risk that it'll Blizzard on the switch, that it'll freeze you, or that you'll miss Sleep Powder.