[GSC] Snorlax

Discussion in 'Past Gens Discussion' started by Fegelein, Nov 3, 2012.

  1. Fegelein

    Fegelein The Mechanic

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    Fegelein
    I just think this thing is far too powerful for OU. Skarmory is the only true counter and if it gets 2 Curses up, baring crits, it's good game. Not to mention apart from Aerodactyl and Skarmory, it has perfect coverage with Body Slam and EQ. Machamp can damage it a lot, but it still won't KO it if it has Curses up. What are your opinions of Snorlax in 2nd Gen?
     
  2. Crystal_

    Crystal_ Active Member

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    If you are using a stall team, curselax is never a problem. Skarmory and Miltank wall EQ variants, while Miltank/ttar/rhydon and maybe ghosts work for fb/ft variants. Skarmory can easily take a +2 double-edge, wake up from rest, and whirlwind Snorlax away.
    If you lack the defensive weapons to hardwall (curse)lax, you should play it aggressively. Threaten it with powerful hits, with the possible threat of explosion, with sleep etc. Even Thunder Zapdos can generally force Snorlax to rest for instance. Having a normal resisting phazer to fall back on if necessary is never a bad thing either. Just don't play Curselax passively if your team can't afford to.

    While, Snorlax is clearly better than any of the other OUs, it stayed OU in the past because the common criteria to ban pokemon in the past was whether the pokemon was legendary or not, as opposed to the current criteria, which consists on that if something is better than the rest it gets banned right away. But Snorlax, despite it's clear dominance, offers a lot of good things to the meta, and it's been argued that a meta with Snorlax is better than a meta without it. It's normal that if you are new to GSC, you are annoyed with Snorlax being OU at first, because of how bans work right now compared to the gsc era and because there's nothing as powerful as gen 2 snorlax in the newer gens. But there's no point to ban Snorlax now, and everyone who has played GSC to a decent level agrees that Snorlax should stay OU.

    Someone will explain this better than me soon.

    EDIT: This is good stuff if you'd like to know a bit more about Snorlax's impact on the meta and/or how to deal with it
     
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2012
  3. Jørgen

    Jørgen Sniper

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    Snorlax is OP topic #102948328047 let's comment on it for the 2357809127928th time.

    Snorlax can be handled reasonably easily if you know what you're doing. Especially CurseLax. I mean it's still a monster, but any good GSC team should be able to take it on. You need to run at least 2 things for it to handle all of its sets (e.g., Skarm + Ttar), or if you're only going to run one thing for it just run a bunch of offense (Explosions, etc.) to make sure it never really gets a chance to stop walling and start setting up.

    The thing about Snorlax is it makes offense possible. Nothing has the simultaneous offensive presence and defensive abilities of Lax. Take away Lax, and offense in GSC goes away. Stalls no longer need 2+ things to cover Lax and can run redundant defenses for other scary things like Vaporeon and Nidoking, whereas offensive teams lose their glue that allows them to last. These things in combination mean that offense just flies off the map. Hope you like PP stalls, because you're getting way more of those in a non-Lax meta.

    That being said Lax would definitely be banned with today's tiering criteria. That decision wouldn't really make GSC any better, though, and more bans would likely need to happen to make GSC better, which would render it unrecognizable as GSC OU.

    I wouldn't mind playing a GSC tour without Lax, though, to see if my intuitions are right and to try to metagame without the admitted teambuilding crutch that Snorlax is in GSC. But for now, GSC without Lax should be gimmick at most. Banning it from ladder or making it Uber in PO's official GSC tier list or something would be dumb.
     
  4. two sides of one coin

    two sides of one coin sick of all her shit

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    Agreeing with Jorgen on this, CurseLax is a dick to handle when it gets up Curses but sadly you just have to stop it doing so.
     
  5. Eternal Pokémon Master

    Eternal Pokémon Master Banned

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    Hmph. What's wrong? Are the people of the Pokémon Online community so pathetic that they must resort to such foolish reasoning in order to justify keeping their beloved Sleeping Pokémon allowed in spite of the fact that it is clearly more powerful than four of the five banned Pokémon? Don't make me laugh, insignificant creatures!
     
  6. Meteor64

    Meteor64 TM1337 Falcon Punch

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    lol wat
     
  7. Jørgen

    Jørgen Sniper

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    Beyond the goofiness of that post, there is a bit of truth to it. I sometimes feel like I defend Snorlax in GSC OU because that's just the way it's always been. That being said, that's actually probably a legitimate reason not to get crazy and ban Snorlax even though it's obviously the best mon. GSC has shaped over years and years around Snorlax's existence, so it's kind of too late to change it and still have people accept the lax-free metagame as "actual" GSC OU. It's one thing to ban Sleep Trap and unban HP Legends, both of which were shaky rulings that varied from place to place over the years and which ultimately didn't do that much to change the metagame, but it's another entirely to ban the single most influential Pokemon in the game after 10+ years of being abused to hell and still perfectly legal, even if it really is somehow ban-worthy by objective power criteria.

    This isn't to say I don't stand by what I said in my previous post, though (it's also said by Borat in Crystal's link, albeit even more verbosely). GSC probably does get even more stall-centric without Snorlax there to pump things up. However, Snorlax is also really unpredictable, which is really kind of horseshit given that even if you know exactly what's coming from it, it's still difficult to deal with. There's definite good and bad elements Snorlax brings to the table, although at the end of the day, Snorlax probably does more good than bad for GSC. But again, this is looking at it from the perspective of a metagame that has already been massively warped specifically to deal with Snorlax. I mean, come on, Growl is the standard on Miltank? You gotta admit, even if you're a Snorlax apologist, that's kind of kooky.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2012
  8. borat

    borat Member

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    I want to see recoverless celebi in the metagame. That is all.
     
  9. M Dragon

    M Dragon Active Member

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    I dislike the idea of X pokemon is OU with/without Y move but uber otherwise.

    Maybe a good idea for a fun tourney though