how's that any different with egg? what does egg sleep if opposing egg/zam/chansey/starmie/the usual are paralyzed? nothing. you use explosion. that's why you don't throw out paralysis all willie nillie before the sleep. also, i never said egg sucked. i said egg's not the preached #1 pokemon in rby. because he isn't. and will never be in any metagame ever. i never said zam sucked either. i think zam's a strong case for top 5. as in #5, because he's not top 4. reflect zam is strong as fucking shit. i did say gengar sucks though. because he does. he becomes wildly mediocre at best in a wrap-heavy meta.
Egg could always use that Hyper Beam, or at least Explosion button. Egg is 4th in my opinion, in a very solid way for the number of things it counters. Zam hates paralysis a lot more than Exeggutor, Chansey and maybe Snorlax, and can be stalled by a lot of things (A rank instead of S, 5th due to versatility, but not sure). Gengar is a way more gimmicky Exeggutor, for the way it can't take paralysis (so yeah, I agree).
being raised on 2k10 myself and now heading it, you can be reassured that the idea that gengar is top 5 has been sent to the cemetery. with that said it is my belief that exeggutor is number #1 or #2, a minor step ahead of snorlax and essentially tying tauros. the defensive glue that exeggutor provides (all teams without one get shredded by rhydon, the only pokémon that can switch in for periods of time other than egg is starmie) is fantastically underrated. its offensive capabilities are usually reduced to sleep, psychic and boom - but it's fine doing that. exeggutor isn't great because of its offensive power, it's great because of its defensive ones. lapras, exeggutor and snorlax can soak so many threats in desperate times, and that's really underrated aspects of all three of those. this list is meant to reflect the opinion of the (educated) community though and if the community believes that exeggutor is 4th or 3rd i will make relevant changes.
i really don't think egg's even in the same sentence as snorlax. honestly, snorlax is probably more threatening than tauros in a lot of games due to prevalence of paralysis. snorlax can't pull off miracles of chain ch-ing shit to death, but he's no doubt one of the most consistent performers in the game. hyper beam is flat out close to ohko on zam/chansey. self destruct ohkos tauros and pretty much anything else. snorlax is easily at least 2 for 1 in most games, egg is 1 for 1 in most games. walling gengar/rhydon is cool, but that doesn't nearly make up for the fact that snorlax shits on everything. you can't really talk up walling some mid-low ou pokemon, sort of like how walling zapdos isn't the reason why golem's so good. it's a nice supporting detail, but it's hardly the driving force of exeggutor. if it is, it's a pretty weak argument. part of why rhydon/golem isn't shitting all over the rby meta is the fact that they themselves have issues switching in. the gsc marowak effect if you will. egg's well rounded, you can make a strong case that it's as good/better than something like chansey, who also happens to be pretty consistent and be the backbone of many teams. but the fact of the matter is snorlax, like tauros, flat out wins games. egg doesn't do that. it's not a mater of whether or not egg's a good pokemon, he is, but he's no snorlax. snorlax forces switches, forces you to LOSE pokemon. egg forces you into minor inconveniences ("aww man, now my zam's slow the rest of the game"). people always talk about how chanseys love to take paralysis, well you know what fucking loves paralyzed chanseys? mother fucking snorlax. paralyzed zams? snorlax. a fresh lategame snorlax is a tauros on roids. shits so fucking scary. egg does what again in comparison? resists psychic, does pretty well against golem or at least forces him to explode. walls gengar, but we already agreed gengar's ass. mostly you get mirror matchups against zam, starmie, egg, and chansey in the majority of games. egg's got a case for #3, but #1/#2 is secured by two raging normal types. in fact, snorlax probably makes a strong case for #1 overall. don't even bring in the pleb that is the egg, both of them. this is territory for grownup pokemon.
This seems simple enough, then. Play me. You don't bring Egg, I don't bring the Normal of your choice. Best of five. Also, please start using capital letters. It looks very disdainful to not bother.
i think the provided criteria is a bit biased in terms of overall potential don't you think? it's like me saying "you dont get to use golem/rhydon", doesn't that artificially boost an otherwise mediocre zapdos/jolteon to unrealistic heights? so is golem/rhydon top 4 now? fact of the matter is, all rby teams do/should use both snorlax and egg. they both shape the meta, perhaps egg even moreso. the existence of egg keeps shit like golem, gengar, whatever in check. but on the flipside, snorlax is a pokemon that takes advantage of the meta, and lets egg do metashaping. kinda like how skarm shapes gsc meta, but is overall an inferior pokemon to shit like zapdos, and makes less impact on games than egg/gengar/cloy. but if you're FORCED to play without skarm, you'd be at a severe handicap vs being forced to play without raikou or something no? that doesn't make skarm better, it just makes skarm a necessary part of the game to keep things in check. like egg in rby. like chansey in rby. eliminating it altogether is a poor basis of argument. hope this makes sense. i'd love to partake in a more telling experiment if you can think of one. and calm your damn tits dude. i've used more than my share of capital letters already. i'm not too familiar with rby community, but who are you again even?
yeah lol everyone oughta calm down a bit, I do like some of what borat's saying, the skarm in GSC example is kinda clearer, but at the same time I'll leave the arguing to the best of yo; a small anecdote actually is about when I was sorta starting out in RBY and Isa was saying that one of my flaws sorta was always looking for the gimmicky and different option. Nowadays in pokemon perfect inters tournaments I see stuff like machamp being used against me; it was a threat but at the same time it is quite gimmicky and I think that gimmicks should be tested to find out what's powerful and whatnot, but I think the waters of RBY are pretty well tested; I remember smogon's philosophy is about teaching the players the standard so that they can use it and then essentially develop the new standard, understanding how the current one works. I think with RBY we're just at saturation point where the gimmicks are generally accepted as inferior, the best movesets are more or less understood, all our energy should now be focussed on arguing about viability (which isn't totally key in all honesty), providing teambuilding to the limit, exploring similar builds to the standard, seeing how they differ, if they make it better or worse, and in what situations, and then slowly gaining an idea perhaps of what the really best RBY teams look like; the other aspect is the mathematical one. Stuff like m9m's markov chains on chansey vs lapras are fantastic. There's certainly an outlook to adapt the way these programs function, and learning how to apply them in game is another important aspect. Not sure what my point was, there's been quite a few perhaps, but yeah, eschew gimmicks for the most part (but be aware of how they work etc.).. focus on improvement on teambuilding, mathematizing situations, and hell I wonder if maybe we could even as a community produce a chess-like discussion of the beginning game - the mathematics helps a lot with the end game, and the beginning game is well understood, discussing the ways to gain an advantage, alongside the probably, what's the best plays, risk vs reward, even possibly a game-theoretical approach to early-game decision making, accounting for teambuilding differences. Now that would be exciting, go get excited, stop bitchin. Could someone even explain what the point of having this viability list is? Arguing over minute differences is apples and oranges, they should mostly be for newer players beginning to understand what works in the Metagame, we can't really compare the advantages and disadvantages of every pokemon vs every pokemon in this list in a meaningful manner, it's not a productive way of understanding the pokemon, maybe if we had a lax vs tauros thread (as in discussing how to use them, when to use them, risks and benefits, etc.) or which influences the Metagame more, chansey, eggy, or snorlax? These examples would be much more useful and generate healthier and more productive and forward-moving discussion. The community needs to focus less on the exact order of pokemon in the viability ranking list (lax and tauros at the top, zappy, rocks, zam in the middle,persian, jolteon, kingler at the bottom, more or less good to go) and discuss better things. Sorry for ranting and not having a clue what I'm talking about and making this post really difficult to address and changing purpose halfway through but yeah this thread isn't all that important for you guys to worry about all these little things over, if we feel something is in totally the wrong section then yeah that merits a discussion like dre.'s queries about dnite, but all in all it's pretty good and does the job of helping newbies if they can somehow find it.
Zapdos doesn't break top 4 without GolDon around IMO. Maybe Zam/Starmie tier. It's not quite fast enough and it has serious issues with Chansey and ReflectZam, and Blizzard is a bitch. Only teams that really need a Rock specifically for Zapdos are those with 3 baits (dual aquatic + Egg). 2 you can still cope with it, and 1 it's no big deal. Jolteon's not "win game if used vs. non-Rock team" either. You need a pretty comprehensive weakness for a Pokemon to do that reliably (no Chansey or Zam vs. Starmie, no Psychic-type or no Chansey and one Psychic-type vs. Reflect Zam, no fast Thunderbolts and less than 2 Explosions vs. Slowbro, no Psychics and no Tauros or Persian vs. Reflect Chansey, no Normal resists and no Ice types AND not enough para vs. Dragonite), and there's still a fairly short list of things that have the capability to do that full sweep. Raikou's usage is lower than Skarm's, so it's not like it's impossible to play without Skarm. If I understand correctly, then, you're saying that you're scared I'd bring a counterteam to your guaranteed lack of Egg and you think a non-Egg team is easier to counterteam than a non-Chansey or non-Snorlax or non-Tauros team. I was actually just thinking of using my standard team (which doesn't have Tauros on it) and subbing out Snorlax for Tauros if you said "Snorlax". But whatever. I don't really think it's that easy to counterteam lack of Egg, though; it's not like it's the only Ground counter in existence (waters, Tauros itself, and you could always splash Surf on Lax/Drain on Gar/whatever). And there certainly are ways to counterteam lack of Chansey (LAPRAS, also to some extent Starmie), and lack of Tauros (Rest Jynx - and Rest anything tbh - non-Twave Reflect Chansey, etc). Literally the only sensible way to rank Pokemon, though, is "how good is a team with them compared to a team without them". So if a team without Egg sucks more than a team without Lax (in general, not specifically vs. a counterteam), when compared to a team which has both, then Egg is better. I find it disrespectful that you don't consider me worthy of the effort to capitalise your sentences. I am magic9mushroom. I am magic9mushroom here, I am magic9mushroom on Smogon, I am magic9mushroom on 2K10, and I am magic9mushroom on Pokemon Perfect. What more am I to say?
i haven't capitalized anything for like 4 years, not specifically just towards you. if you take offense in it, i apologize. my punctuation's starting to give way too. i'm a dota 2 player. and not precisely. going back to the skarm thing, certain shit in gsc is hardchecked by skarm to the point of non-existence. if you can secure a metagame without skarm (i.e. skarm to ubers), i guarantee you're going to see a bigger change in the metagame than banning something like zapdos, despite the fact that zapdos is clearly the better mon (or at least i hope it's clear). therefore, using an argument based on the premise that whoever's absence makes a bigger splash on the meta is not exactly a definitive solution. in fact, i'll go ahead and concede that egg definitely has a bigget metagame shaping impact than snorlax. snorlax is more easily replaceable than exeggutor, but that doesn't at all prove egg is the better mon (see zapdos vs skarmory). i guess the argument i used against isa was the fact that egg, despite all things, will rarely win a game. he's a consistent performer on a team, much like chansey; offensively, he's pretty mediocre, with explosion being the only real way of killing anything. defensively, he's pretty good with eq/psychic resist combined with pretty good stats, and can anchor some teams. sleep is a good utility move (read: standard on every egg), but having sleepers on rby teams isn't exactly unheard of. all in all, egg brings a lot to the table, and because of that he's going to be a consistent performer game in and game out. again, sort of like chansey. even in a worst case matchup, egg isn't going to be useless because he just does so much it's impossible for him to be rendered useless. think of this as a his impact floor. now in an ideal matchup, whatever that may be, what does egg do in this scenario? mostly the same shit. maybe in an ideal world, he doesn't sleep egg/starmie/zam/chansey and sleeps something useful. psychic still isn't killing anything ever, stun spore is still stunpore, maybe you para one of those 4, probably subsequently exploding on it. you can wall a gengar/golem because your enemy is just that stupid to run both. in other words, even in a dream scenario, egg is still sort of the same egg. compare this with snorlax, who in his own right is a lot more specialized pokemon. amnesialax/whatever gimmick shit aside, he's meant to do damage. he's a slower, harder hitting tauros. minus the crits, but you gain the single hardest hitting move in the game in return. snorlax is probably the definition of a pokemon that wins games, along with tauros. defensively, he's alright too, 523 hp makes up for shitty defensive stats. a late game snorlax is easily one of the scariest things in rby, and you won't be all too butthurt if and when he does get paralyzed by a stray bodyslam or something. snorlax is one of the best at capitalizing off kills, capitalizing off sleep turns, capitalizing off double switches. there's no real "safe" switch into snorlax, much like tauros (because cloyster sucks dick). he's immediate offensive, and pretty damn threatening at that. nothing goes toe to toe with a snorlax, and while speed is nice, it's not his defining characteristic, so he's just that much of a threat earlier. you know who likes taking paralysis? chansey and zam. you know who shits on paralyzed chanseys and zams? snorlax. snorlax is in most cases at least a 2 for 1 with the explosion factor. however, you might have the odd game where snorlax gets a crit psychic on the switch, missing hyper beam then just dying. could happen, not often, but maybe. happens to tauros too sometimes. snorlax is a pokemon whose lows are a bit lower than egg, i'll give you that, but his highs are just that much higher and that's what makes him better. a gsc comparison: a gsc snorlax's lows are actually pretty low depending on matchup. a monolax is going to have a hell of a time getting through gengar/steelix. on the other hand, a zapdos is something that'll give you showing every game because he does a bit of everything. good typing, flying, sleep talks, hits hard and at least neutral on everything, walls threats, gets past annoying shit like miltank, but it's very rarely just going to win the game. a gsc snorlax though, has MUCH more upside. that's why he's empirically better, because that massive upside outweighs the consistency in this case. consistency is definitely a good thing, that's why egg DOES belong in every team. but snorlax is sort of just... better. because he wins games. like tauros. if you want to argue egg is better because he's more of a necessity, then you're arguing for egg belonging in the #1 spot. snorlax and tauros are more or less, one and the same. they both are game winning pokes with pretty shitty downsides sometimes, but significant upsides. edit: on second thought, a pretty good analogy would be gsc hera. sleep talker, good typing defensively, average coverage with megahorn/stoss, 180 base power off 348 is no joke by any means. he's all in all pretty consistent game in and game out, but he'll never have that breakout game where he just shits on everything. that's not what heracross is, or is expected to do. egg in rby won't do that either, he'll never flat out win the game for you. he's just the definition of consistency, maybe along with chansey and shit make up the backbone of rby. but all of this doesn't necessarily amount to a better pokemon. sometimes sacrificing a bit of consistency for a bit more oomph is better. specialization has never been a bad thing. all the best teams in gsc/rby are a combination of consistency (zam, zapdos, miltank, chansey, egg, cloyster) + wildcards (drumlax, nidoking, marowak, golem, vaporeon). you need both.
I was going to write out a massive spaghetti post, but Borat and I talked this out over PO chat; we agree on almost everything that happens, but weight it differently. :V Thing is that in RBY (but not in GSC) you don't necessarily have to have wildcards to win, because stuff doesn't generically survive as much. For instance vs. the standard you can freeze their Chansey, sleep their Zam, and then just park SToss Reflect Chansey - the most boring thing ever - in front of the rest of their team and generically win like half the time. The one notable fact I uncovered while rooting around is this: Exeggutor's usage exceeds that of every other sleeper in RBY combined.
Raichu to D and Venusaur kicked off the list IMO. Venusaur's got basically zilch advantage over Victreebel in OU; they're weak to both Blizzard and Psychic so the lower Defense is almost irrelevant, and the speed both a) doesn't change anything vs. anything relevant (Cloy's the only case where it might matter), b) doesn't even give a better crit rate since crits weaken Swords-Dance-boosted attacks and they both already have maxed-out crit rates on Razor Leaf. On the other hand, Victreebel does significantly more damage with a Swords Dance set (Venusaur just doesn't do enough damage even at +2) and has a whole extra set worth of versatility. If you are using Venusaur, you don't know RBY or you are deliberately using a subpar mon; in 100% of cases where a team contains Venusaur it would be a better team by using Victreebel instead (not to mention that Victreebel's pretty bad to begin with), and using them both on the same team is completely retarded and not akin to running Tauros + Persian or Tauros + Kangaskhan (both of those do actually have relevant movepool advantages, too). As such, it has literally zero viability and should not be on a viability ranking list. Raichu otoh does have a tiny niche. Walled to kingdom come by Chansey and Zam and underwhelming in general, but it does get SToss for Egg and Surf on an Electric is just fantastic. It's probably the worst of the Ds, but it does at least probably deserve a mention since it can be annoying for dual-aquatic teams (which usually rely on a Rock to stop Electrics wrecking their shit) and it is unique in that it can hit Waters AND Rocks and doesn't lose anyway to the most common Water the way Bel does.
Venu's a questionable replacement for an already mediocre Pokemon (SD Victreebel), but its better Defense is pretty substantial and matters more than you'd think. Being guaranteed to avoid being 2HKOed by Snorlax Slam-Hbeam is a thing. So is not being 2HKOed by Rhydon EQ. So is not being in guaranteed Tauros Hyper Beam OHKO range following a Golem EQ, and being substantially less likely to be KOed by that same Hyper Beam after taking a Chansey IB. There's probably more, because Venusaur's Defense really is a lot better than Victreebel's. The extra speed is pretty worthless though, the best you get is outspeeding Kingler and Cloyster.
Rhydon's EQ is only a 65% chance to 2HKO Victreebel. Their damage ranges do always overlap, if not by much. But ehhhh when their special bulk is identical and they have two gaping special weaknesses I question how important those KOs really are. They're both still 2HKOed by Blizzard and STAB Psychic from specials, as well as Drill Peck from Zapdos. Neither's switching into Rhydon anyway unless you're really desperate (and if they double on it, it doesn't matter because Razor Leaf reduces it to rubble anyway), and Tauros is more scared of Bel than of Saur because of the potential Stun Spore (also, if you do SD on the switch, it's helpful that Bel RLeaf + +2 HBeam is assured the KO, and +4 HBeam usually KOs, while Saur doesn't assure the former (~85%) and can't do the latter). A more common foe for both is Exeggutor; Victreebel's +4 Hyper Beam is a 2/3 OHKO while Venusaur's will never do so. Chansey's almost always 2HKOed by +2 Body Slam and 18% OHKOed by +2 Hyper Beam from Vic, while Venusaur falls short (and short by a LOT, too; a single hit from another Chansey or Starmie will almost assure Victreebel's +2 Hyper Beam OHKO while it's still impossible for Venusaur). And Victreebel's more likely to trip up an opponent, since Venusaur has 1 set and Victreebel has 2. Vic is likely to lure paralysed shit because an opponent wants to lock it into Wrap before sending out their real counter; these are NOT what you want to be sending into SD Vic.
It seems my use of the past tense here was overly optimistic. :( Still on Smogon and not 2K10, though.
This could afford to be updated now that we have new mechanics. As the overall opinion seemed to be Snorlax > Exeggutor I made that change. However, is it still relevant? Is Snorlax as good as it once was? Is Chansey top 3 now? How bad has Rhydon become? What about The Rise of Ice? (yes i just went there) Discuss away and don't be afraid to reiterate old points made in the thread.
Tauros is now absolutely #1. I used to dispute that, but with this change it's pretty clear. I'm not understanding The Rise of Ice/Rhydon sucking, though this may have something to do with me not playing recently. Explain?
I'm basing this a lot on my experience in SPL, but the overall trend is that Starmie, Jynx and Lapras has had very high usage and good win rates. http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/spl-6-weekly-usage-statistics.3527172/ As you can see there, Starmie has almost twice as high usage as Alakazam over the course of roughly a hundred games. Rhydon and Golem have low usage and abysmal win rates because of how weak they are to Ice moves. As such they are not used. This has in turn led to a huge win rate spike for Zapdos, but not necessarily a spike in usage. The reason for this, in my mind, is as follows: Paralysis is more difficult to spread than previously. Chansey is now likely to enter on Snorlax and either set up Reflect, Counter or just Thunder Wave on a predicted Body Slam and then stall for FPs. As a result, physical pressure is more difficult to apply unless you forcefully remove Chansey through exploding on it with Snorlax. This results in other ways of trying to get past Chansey, namely freezing it with a specialist. More games have been decided through freezes post-Crystal discoveries than prior to it, I'd say. Raish Chansey (Reflect TWave SToss SBoiled) has been very popular in SPL as well and the easiest way to get past that is to freeze it with an Ice type mon (preferably Lapras) using Blizzard or Ice Beam. Rhydon falling has a few reasons, but the short side of the story is that everything that it ran on has been troubling for it. With Body Slam no longer paralyzing Chansey and some Chansey players also avoiding to soak Thunder Waves so that they can stall Snorlax, Rhydon is likely to be slower than Chansey and thus doesn't win that match up. Because Ice types are more common, Rhydon has a harder time to come in on something. Using Body Slam on the switch has become less appealing as well because it cannot paralyze Snorlax, Chansey or (big one) Tauros. Tauros now comes in on Rhydon regardless of what move it uses and wins. On that note - Rhydon is now even worse at sponging Hyper Beams from Tauros since you lose the 1v1 guaranteed without a critical hit Earthquake. Golem can still get off a guaranteed Explosion which is turning out to be a bigger deal than dealing more damage to everything with the STAB attacks is. The metagame has shifted from a somewhat steady focus on paralysis spreading vs. freeze-attempts to a metagame where freeze attempts are very common and more often successful than earlier. Thunder Wave users have also been rising in usage though (see: Starmie) as paralyzing Chansey is no longer as easy as it used to be. tl;dr - ice is nice. ground types arent rocking.
So: (Chansey doesn't die to physicals anymore -> Solution 1: freeze Chansey -> Solution 2: bait Chansey with TWave Starmie so it starts dying to physicals again -> Both solutions involve stuff which GolDon don't want to tangle with) + (Tauros laughs at BSlam now -> GolDon get more rekt by it) -> GolDon suck now Is that essentially what you're getting at?
Yeah that's the gist of it. Chansey is now so good that it makes a case for being #2 behind Tauros imo.
Chans #2 sounds reasonable. Early game = beating Chans Late game = beating Tauros more or less I agree with Isa's points about the Ices.
To m9m, it's not that "Goldon" sucks now (although Rock/Ground is less appealing, yes ... I've definitely been feeling that pain as Tauroses are absolutely switching into Golem/Rhydon a ton these days), but I think the bigger thing is that Rhydon took a bigger hit than Golem did. Rock/Ground types took the same hit with the paralysis problem, but Golem can still explode, and exploding is still as awesome as it used to be. Before, Goldon were always paired together as roughly equal depending on the trade you wanted to make: stronger physical attack from Rhydon vs Explosion + speed win in the Golem vs Rhydon 1v1 for Golem were roughly equivalent depending on your preference/team/playstyle. Now, even though both Golem and Rhydon are worse, maybe Golem's benefits outweigh Rhydon's more unequivocally. Are they in different ranks [EDIT: I originally said "tiers" but I just used the wrong word]? Or do they both drop out of A rank and into B? Eh, I think it's too early to make that call. But I do think Golem > Rhydon now, so I think those guys need to be swapped around (right now Rhydon is ranked higher than Golem), and I think time will tell if the difference is pronounced enough to warrant an even further split.
Well, I was already of the opinion that Golem is generally better than Rhydon, and by a significant margin (my last list put Golem in B+ and Rhydon in B, with Cloyster, Slowbro and Lapras in-between them). Explosion gives Golem a solid and unconditional role; you have to work to give Rhydon a role via paralysis, and even then there's no guarantee it will actually do better than Golem could thanks to the overlapping damage ranges (so essentially you need some reason to even think about using Rhydon, and even then it's never clearly superior). And of course STAB Earthquake is more useful backing Explosion (because all the Normal resists get rekt by it) than it is just on its own merits for dealing damage (Normal STAB is superior, in general; Earthquake's spammable 100 BP with no secondary just doesn't stack up against Body Slam's spammable 85 BP with a good secondary and Hyper Beam's terrifying 150 BP). Earthquake needs to be hitting SE at least some of the time to be worth it, and aside from Jolteon it only does that against the Rocks themselves and Gengar - which will never come in on Rhydon, but may on Golem to attempt to soak Explosion. This does make it a little more blatant, though.
I think Rhy's only saving grace atm is as a sweeper, but now I am happy to say, Golem is better than Rhydon - for Rhydon you need your team to really need the added offense and to be fairly good at crippling its answers. Golem is more splashable as it does more roles better - the only place where it suffers versus Rhydon is a dedicated sweeper (the extra bulk is hard to nicely quantify in a battle situation), whilst the other roles (HB absorb - Golem now incredibly much better, boom absorber maybe slightly Rhydon, emergency check to base 30 spe set up abusers - Golem edges it) curious question is could Rhy drop to BL? I feel its nearly as niche as jolt, arti, kingler, etc. how would it dropping to BL be possible - how do we decide it's BL?
it's not dropping to BL lol rhydon also has superior bulk to golem. run calcs and see for yourself. and yeah my point is that especially rhydon has taken a big hit now. golem as well, but rhydon had it even worse.
It appears that Pie is quite aware of this. He said that the only graspable advantage of Rhydon was as a dedicated sweeper, because the bulk is hard to quantify.
I wish I could quantify it though since it does make a difference for me in most matches ~_~ clearly tho Golem is much more splashable, and should be ranked above
Changes: Moved Chansey to #2 Moved Rhydon and Golem from bottom of A to bottom of B (very drastic shift but I think it is warranted - feel free to argue with me) Moved Starmie above Alakazam Moved Golem above Rhydon Added Tangela to bottom of D rank after a discussion with McMeghan on IRC. Tangela is available for Wrap teams as a tankier but less offensive version of Victreebel, filling in potential holes that Rhydon and Golem can exploit. Considering moving Dragonite down as ice moves and mons are so common now it's a bit ridiculous. Thoughts?
I think time will tell where Golem and Rhydon end up - the metagame needs to stabilize a bit. My gut tells me with the "rise of ice" (I like that) and the fall of Golem/Rhydon, electrics like Zapdos and Jolteon will find whole new opportunities to exploit the general electric weakness of most Ice Pokémon and no longer fear Goldon on a team. You noticed this yourself, Isa - you mentioned Zapdos can win big now, but it hasn't spiked in usage yet because people aren't taking advantage of it YET ... but once that happens - and it's inevitable - Golem and Rhydon will just come back to stop the electrics and the balancing act continues. Empirically, I can't argue with you right now, Isa, but I think the Ground-Water/Ice-Electric trio are going to spend a bit of time stabilizing and then we'll see where it shakes out.
Chansey to #2 I can agree with. Starmie above Alakazam I can agree with. Golem above Rhydon I can agree with. (The last two I agreed with anyway :V) Dragonite does seem a bit out of place. I still think Lapras shouldn't be a tier above Cloyster and Slowbro. Starmie's clearly the best Water; then you have the other three in debatable order. Note also that Bro was essentially the sole beneficiary of the paralysis compounding bug discovered along with the Body Slam thing, significantly soothing its infamous problem with Speed; Lapras, on the other hand, hasn't directly gained anything and has in fact suffered a minor nerf since it usually uses Body Slam. Egg should be above Lax IMO. Lax losing the 1v1 with Chansey now is pretty big since it was previously Chansey's best counter. I think we should consider splitting Golem and Rhydon (Rhydon might deserve bottom-of-B, but Golem?). D rank is fucked up; why is garbage like Tangela and Venusaur getting a place there but not stuff like Raichu or Kabutops with some actual niche?
I've used Tangela in OU before, I can vouch that it's total ass. Its bulk looks sexy and Bind seems nice, but while it's good at tanking hits from GolDon, it accomplishes approximately nothing- it's got dual powder and then nothing else since all of its attacks are so weak as to make newborn kittens look ferocious by comparison.
To be honest I don't have much of an opinion about what goes into D rank or not. I'll add Raichu and Kabutops. The new speed drop mechanics aren't in place yet on PS nor PO - when that time rolls around I'm expecting to see more/stronger Slowbro and tanky Snorlax variants. However, we're not there yet. I agree with having Egg above Lax but I want some other opinion (or at least, nobody opposing) until I implement it. Lapras has in my experience not suffered that much. While Body Slam is no longer appealing, it gets replaced by Hyper Beam. Different approach, but not necessarily much worse - just gotta play differently. On the other hand, Lapras seems to score a freeze or KO in every other game these days, as Chansey is now easier to freeze (per extension - it's not paralyzed as often), and an Ice type is really handy. Slowbro for some reason just doesn't do a lot - Starmie is on the rise, as is Lapras, Zapdos is roughly as common as before while Golem and Rhydon are both down in usage. Thunderbolt on Chansey is also better in the current metagame, I believe. I have hardly seen Cloyster and when I have, it hasn't accomplished much. Starmie being more common hurts it just as much as it hurts Slowbro.
I'm not saying Lapras has actually gone down, but I just don't like it in general, it seems way too reliant on double-switches. I've always been of the opinion that Slowbro and Cloyster are at least as good, but I guess more Starmie screws them over more than it screws over Lapras (though it's not like Lapras has an easy time of it either; Starmie's its #2 counter after Chansey). Also yeah I don't think Tangela belongs on the list at all; its inability to actually hurt anything not named Rhydon or Golem is crippling (I mean I guess it can go Growth/Drain but I've never seen that actually pulled off and it means dropping a powder or Bind). I mean shit even Jolteon has a good chance to beat it by just TWaving and then shooting at it until it dies with its resisted STAB (though Growth would help there I guess). Venusaur too since it really belongs two ranks below Vic. Raichu and Kabutops are at least kinda unique (an Electric that can kill GolDon and a Persian with less speed but a Gengar-like resistance set and Swords Dance instead of Screech).
What are people's thoughts on Cloyster? I've been thinking about it, and it just doesn't stack up against the other stuff residing in B imo- it has serious trouble getting through its checks, and in terms of offense there's not much it does that Lap doesn't do better- there's explosion and clamp, however clamp is less than reliable and isn't that much better than the offensive pressure Lap provides, they both generate a lot of free turns. So yeah I think it should drop to C
Clamp is Surf with a 75% flinch rate, and Cloyster's reasonably fast. Cloyster vs. Lapras is actually a relatively-even matchup thanks to the power of Clamp. Lapras' extra offensive pressure compared to Cloyster is Thunderbolt and Body Slam. Not exactly earth-shaking. Starmie is a much bigger problem for Cloy than for Tbolt Lapras, and Lapras has a slightly better chance against Slowbro, but that's pretty much as far as it goes.
I'd say Sing is a massive tool of pressure since it destroys the premier counter that Lapras has (Chansey). That is earth-shaking - you got one of the most powerful special attacks in the game, but also a tool to make the most powerful special wall nullified for a very long time.
Sing's good if you can hit Chansey with it, sure. But of course you only get the one sleep, so you are paying for it by not sleeping something else... and that something else is quite often a Starmie or Alakazam. Not sure how that stacks up vs. Explosion.
hmm tbh I don't think so. The obvious thing to take advantage of the stat drop mechanics are Bro and AmnesiaLax, but I don't feel like it's made them surge in usefulness the way I theorymonned. AmnesiaLax still suffers from a combination of bulk and power that isn't quite good enough, while Bro has a tough time against the profusion of waters and electrics. One change that we discussed over on pokemon perfect was raising Zap to A rank. Water types are everywhere, while Zap's excellent stats make it a formidable threat lategame- overall bulk and massive power. Combine that with GolDon being uncommon and it's just really great atm. It's crazy how GolDon have gone from being a ubiquitous threat pre-Crystal mechanics, to being a niche threat that can't just be slapped onto any team without heavy paralysis support. Not saying they should drop or anything, they fit B rank well imo, just reflecting on how things have changed lol
Rocks can still be considered B, but electrics are way better now, and Jolteon deserves more than C. It walls Zapdos, while Zapdos is more of a team player if a rock is around. Taking neutral damage from Chansey is cool, and CH rate is scary. I'd put them on the same level: A- rank, as having to double switch winning the mindgame if a rock is around makes them not "A ranked" as Starmie, Alakazam, Lapras. Starmie looks great now, 5th pick-no argument imo.