RBY OU Jynx in RBY 1U

In this thread, I will be taking a look at Jynx in RBY 1U, its recent performances in the tier, some notable Jynx builds, and teambuilding with Jynx in general.

I'm taking a look at Jynx because it is the one mon that has consistently, whenever I checked an usage spreadsheet, been below 50% winrate. I recently confirmed my impression by checking all the recent data I could find:
Early 2017 - SPL 8 - 58 games (24.07%) with a 43.10% winrate
Mid 2017 - RBY Cup III (top 16) - 9 games (14.06%) with a 44.44% winrate
Late 2017 - RBY 1U WC #4 - 61 games (18.60%) with a 45.08% winrate
Early 2018 - SPL 9 - 26 games (10.24%) with a 38.46% winrate
Mid 2018 - WCoP 13 - 10 games (8.47%) with a 40.00% winrate
Late 2018 - RBY Invitational - 22 games (12.94%) with a 40.91% winrate (tournament ongoing)
That's more than enough games to brush it off as 'just variance'. Metagame currents have shifted a fair lot in the last two years even, but playing Jynx has consistently brought more losses than wins. So then, why does she keep showing up so often?

Let's look at what Jynx does first and foremost - most players should already know all of this, but she's the second fastest sleeper in the game after Gengar (and tied with Haunter) which naturally makes her a very appealing candidate as a lead. Not many things are faster than Jynx, and the ones that are tend to not really be able to punish her too strongly before being put to sleep. Gengar is obviously the lone exception, as he can outspeed and take the free sleep, but against everything else, Jynx technically has good match ups, right? I mean, she gets a massive turn 1 advantage against any slow leads, and still achieves her goal of putting a lead to sleep even if she has to eat a Thunder Wave against the most common faster ones. She's even a fine sleep blocker against Exeggutor when paralyzed, so other than the uncommon Gengar, it would seem like all her match ups are somewhere in the decent to really good spectrum. Sure, she can't stay in to click Blizzard against a Starmie, but she still achieves what she's meant to achieve in that match up - get a sleep turn 1, be a functional sleep blocker for the rest of the game. So why does she fail so much?

Well, if she achieves what we want her to achieve, and that's still not good enough - that has to mean that we're either misguided in thinking that what we want her to achieve is good, or that she doesn't achieve what we want her to achieve as much as we think. So then, let's break down Jynx's main duties more closely:
1) Land an easy Lovely Kiss.
2) Answer the opponent's Exeggutor, preventing him from sleeping one of your more valuable members.
That's it. You're not going to use Jynx to check anything else defensively or to break through anything offensively. So... we have two goals here, and we have to ask two questions for each one of them: is Jynx actually good at doing this? and is doing this actually advantageous?
For the first goal, Jynx is certainly very good at doing it. Other than the Gengar match up and instances of atrocious bad luck, she will nearly always land her Lovely Kiss. But is this actually such a huge advantage? That's something that is more up for debate, in my opinion. Obviously, the sooner you land your sleep, the sooner you get to shut down some of your opponent's options; but you should also keep in mind that running Jynx over other more competent options is also a limit to your own options as a Jynx player. She's certainly not competent at defending attacks due to lack of recovery and extreme vulnerability to physical attacks, and her attacking options are also not that good when you're nearly guaranteed to face bulky Psychics with recovery and a Chansey every game. So, is restricting your opponent's options early on at the price of having to run a worse pokémon a tradeoff that's worth taking? Data would suggest not really.
For the second goal, well yes, neutralizing what is often the only sleeper on the opposing team is on paper absolutely excellent. Doing this is absolutely advantageous. The issue is that Jynx is just not that good or reliable at stopping Exeggutor. Double-Edge chunks her for an easy 3HKO and she's in Hyper Beam range after a mere 35% residual damage (45% to guarantee the range). When you combine this with the fact that Jynx can't really use the opportunity of the free Eggy switch out to do too much either, since she's hard walled by Mie/Zam and especially Chansey, you get... a half decent sleep block against teams that only have Exeggutor as their sleeper. That's it. That's all she has going for her, other than the Lovely Kiss.


So we're looking at a pokémon with very low capabilities, both offensively and defensively, with access to a fast Lovely Kiss and ability to be a decent sleep blocker against Exeggutor, and the unreliable off chance of a freeze on Chansey. I'm fully convinced that it's just not very good; all of that said, some builds do make it work. I'll bring up a few Jynx builds, starting from mine, and try to explain the thought process behind them.

The Idiot Ninja - Jynx + Reflect Slowbro

Spoiler: Export to Text

Jynx
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
IVs: 2 Atk
- Psychic
- Lovely Kiss
- Rest
- Blizzard

Tauros
- Body Slam
- Hyper Beam
- Earthquake
- Blizzard

Snorlax
- Body Slam
- Self-Destruct
- Reflect
- Rest

Exeggutor
- Psychic
- Sleep Powder
- Explosion
- Stun Spore

Chansey
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
IVs: 2 Atk
- Seismic Toss
- Soft-Boiled
- Thunder Wave
- Reflect

Slowbro
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
IVs: 2 Atk
- Amnesia
- Surf
- Rest
- Reflect

I built this team around the beginning of SPL9 and used it with good results since. I actually started concept work on this build from Slowbro; it's an incredibly stupid mon that could absolutely steamroll the reflectlax-heavy meta at the time and function as a proper cleaner thanks to its Reflect set. The only thing stopping a +6 Special / Reflect Up Slowbro, other than uncommon and atrocious match ups (read: Victreebel), is a Sleep Powder. So then... remove the Sleep Powder threat by means of activating sleep clause, and we're all good, right? Jynx was my way of doing that. She would get an early LK off, which was nice, but more importantly she would be able to Rest off the Thunder Waves and switch in on Exeggutors to absorb a Sleep Powder later. With that trade done, Slowbro was pretty much ready to go. The rest of the team is pretty much just big 4 for paralysis spreading on the few targets where Slowbro needs the eventual fullpar to really break through, and having decent ways to deal with Zapdos (Self-Destruct Lax, trading Tauros for Zapdos).
I made another build featuring a Hypnosis/Rest Hypno instead of Jynx and a Rhydon over Exeggutor - it's not quite Jynx, but it follows the same idea of getting your sleep off and then foddering the sleeper whenever it's convenient. Not really sure which version I prefer, and I really should try mixing the two up (running Rhydon over Eggy with the Jynx build, or running Eggy over Rhydon with the Hypno build) to see what happens, but they've both been quite good in their own right. I will say that the original plan of foddering Jynx very rarely actually pans out (and Hypno has a much better success rate if we're speaking strictly about the getting foddered part of things), but it works anyway... Obviously, with a team built around abusing Exeggutor's tendencies, facing anything that isn't Exeggutor (especially Victreebel) is going to be a bit of a struggle, but I've found these builds to have quite the good match ups against the standard twave lead + big4 + lap/zap/rhy type of builds.

Nails - Various Eggyless Jynx Builds

During SPL9 I've had the pleasure of teaming up with Nails, one of the biggest Jynx fanatics out there, and he was a huge fan of dropping Exeggutor on Jynx builds - and I think he's onto something. Lovely Kiss is the only thing you can always safely assume Jynx will pull off, and as long as that doesn't go terribly wrong (Gengar match up or other disasters of the yellow magic sort), you don't really need another sleeper. Playing the game in such a way that you threaten resleeping in case the opponent decides to sacrifice his sleep fodder is nice and all, but it's also not really necessary. Sleep one, twave the rest, you'll be fine most of the time. Replacing Exeggutor with Starmie would, at the cost of a slightly tougher Rhydon match up, provide him with a much safer option and a much needed Psychic with reliable recovery that Jynx teams so often feel the lack of. He's shown me pretty much the full spectrum of options to go with this baseline of Jynx+Mie+Chans+Lax+Tauros, but I believe his favorites are Rhydon and Jolteon to ease off the Zapdos match ups. Of course, readding Exeggutor in this last slot is technically also an option - and one that brings us back to the more common Jynx+Big4+Mie structure. Either way, Eggyless Jynx is another take on Jynx builds, and one that is strongly focused on Jynx's specific strengths, patching up her weaknesses via use of Starmie and freeing up the Exeggutor slot for something potentially more useful.

Jynx + Big4 + (Anything)

Jynx+Big4+Last builds are by far the most common, but one that really stands out to me is the Reflect Alakazam one that Bedschibaer likes a fair lot. In some ways it's similar to my Slowbro build, as it tries to focus all the resources for a final lategame sweep by one mon in particular, but Alakazam and Slowbro clearly have some differences - Alakazam has much nicer match ups against Victreebel and Zapdos and isn't as vulnerable to being slept since his recovery doesn't clear paralysis, but it needs teammates (or PP stall) to break through Chansey and other Psychics, so you end up having different dynamics. One thing that both teams certainly share is crucially getting rid of the enemy lead through that key turn 1 Lovely Kiss. Unfortunately, just like my "I'll fodder Jynx to sleep powder every game what could go wrong" plans, this doesn't really end up happening too often... I've been scrolling through replays and Jynx/Zam isn't that successful. Probably because it's harder to put yourself in the right conditions for things to work out. I honestly suspect this Jynx+Big4+Anything team structure is responsible for the low winrate - it's by far the most common after all, so its winrate is responsible for a large part of Jynx's overall winrate. I'm not saying you should stop using these builds, buuuuut... the winrate is what it is. I think this goes back to my original point about Jynx's early sleep just not being worth the price of running such a bad mon.


In Conclusion
I've always felt Jynx was a bit crap, and we probably have enough data to back that feeling up by now. Have any other theories on why her winrate is so poor? Share them! Have any other Jynx builds you want to discuss? Share them as well! I know of a certain Gengar lead, Jynx backup build that shows up every now and then... Either way, let's get some discussion going \o/

 

Nice read overall. I think you pretty much say it all by claiming that what Jynx does is not that great after all. And the way RBY works, is you need something to sponge broken Chansey, which is where Jynx fails and why people (rightfully) use Alakazam and Starmie.

Eggyless Jynx teams can definitely work. It's kinda like leading Eggy... you have more room for actual synergy in the rest of the team. (the oprion to run Starmie and Rhydon together for example).

Just to add to your conclusion, you touch it there slightly. But teams like Gengar/Eggy, hell even Snorlax-lead with a Jynx in the back can actually be nasty to deal with. Disregarding Snorlax and Gengar here for a second, Eggy gets a sleep and is pretty happy to explode, no matter if it actually hits the Chansey or if they hit the sleeping lead. In the first case you slept Starmie/Zam and got rid of their Chansey (or heavily damaged their Eggy, maybe Lapras). This is not a win yet, but it is a good trade. In the second scenario, you get to bring out your Jynx and sleep something because it is faster than anything they normally would bring in. (If they really bring in Tauros then the game is kinda decided that turn, if they crit/you miss, you probably lose, if you sleep their bull, it is looking shit for them). In any case, you're playing 5v5 and they need to sac a Mon to sleep that they did not wanna sac plus have to switch into Jynx after (so you probably will sleep an Eggy or Lax, yay). I just used this as a Jynx use, but if you wanna go that route, I prefer Victreebel. It does not get 2HKOed by Tauros Body Slam plus gets to Wrap out savely, while outspeeding the same 1U stuff, very cool!

In any case, dealing with Jynx becomes much much easier if it is paralyzed. In that case it rarely makes much problems unless it freezes your Chansey. That brings me to another use of Jynx, which is very underexplored: switching Jynx out t1 vs their Zam. There is no saver Twave so get your Chansey paralyzed and block sleep. You can play the game normally and at some point the opportunity might come to get your Jynx in (on a chansey recover or whatever) and threaten sleep. Zam is not the blocker it is vs Eggy (sure, it's always mindgames to an extent, but it's the same with DE Eggy). There is still stuff to explore... is the main message (espeecially to people that claim the game is boring or whatever, because it's always the same, that is on them because there are multiple ways to play a team and to build one, not just the standard way...)

 

Jynx is good at giving you a nut start with a sleep and a freeze on Chansey. Depending on which the last pokemon is (out of a virtual opposing 4 member team), Zapdos and Lapras (and many others, just like unstatused Chansey) can be extremely painful to deal with.
Even there, Jynx is a bad status absorber... all in all, with some work the game can go back to a 4v4: a sleeping pokemon each and a sacrificial lamb each (a frozen pokemon blocking FC and a crippled Jynx).

Historically it's been used as an ice spammer thanks to the fact that it takes neutral damage from Chansey's TBolt.
Well, nowdays BeamBolt is kinda rare (Stoss is unaffected by specdrops and hits hard), Snorlax won't take permanent damage (Rest) and sleeping Starmie can stay in, so the Jynx player is not even that willing to spam ice - sometimes going Tauros is the move for them.
Add that Starmie can carry TBolt and Exeggutor often has DE: everything that could go wrong for Jynx, did.
Consider that Starmie can spam Blizzard even better than Jynx against SToss Chansey: still, nobody does - the go to play is TWave, and then a mix of Psychic/Snorlax.
If you want to spam ice with Jynx, you know you have to make some good predictions and be ready to quell a lot of physical attacks; if it goes through a Rest loop and switches into Sleep Powder, chances are that it achieved its purpose of trading sleep and getting those 3 or so shots to get a freeze at the price of tanking a Body Slam or two.

The fact that most players with a high win rate don't like to use Jynx doesn't help its win rate either...
Still, 2 years of failures should be enough to take that OU honorary citizenship away from it - unstatused Kadabra can switch in and at very worst Jynx's speed is lower than Tentacruel so you guys are going to have fun Wrapping it!

 

Shut the fuck up and enjoy your ban. Your only achievement.

 

EB0LA is solid at RBY lol his opinion is worth listening to (EB0LA man that being said the attitude in ur post isn't gonna persuade anyone but I guess u know that so stop stirring )

 

Jynx has an unassailable place in OU. If Jynx lead goes completely out of fashion then the following things happen in order:

1. Gengar lead drops even further than it already has, because Jolt is now the only thing that doesn't shit on it.
2. With both fast lead sleepers out of the way, Exeggutor and Chansey leads become viable and gain popularity due to freeing up a team slot.
3. Jynx lead resurges as a hard counter to Egg leads and okay counter to Chansey leads.

It's self-correcting. Maybe using Jynx in a meta where people don't lead Egg/Chansey is dumb, but that's only the state of the meta because of Jynx.

 

3) Egg has issues as a lead, you don't want it TWaved because unstatused Egg forces Restlax out threatening Sleep Powder and nothing else is that efficient. Chansey has 4MSS if you're using Sing, leading with Reflect Chansey is an option too: at this point we have little data about Egg and Chansey lead, let alone Reflect Chansey lead.
In the next months or whatever we'll find out, but I don't think players shy away from using Egg and Chansey as leads due to Jynx.

2) Yeah, it should be happening... at least in testing.

1) I'd say no: Gengar lead can't stay in against Jolteon because para'd Gengar is awful. Gengar's usage is extremely low already due to Alakazam and especially Starmie; if you want to use it against certain Snorlax variants, using it as a hidden non-lead pokemon might be better.
The fact is that Gengar lead could still work (Chansey into Starmie's TWave or Egg into Zam, then sleep or trade), but nobody feels like using it because your turn 1 plays become explotabile if you make the same play too often (Chansey on TWave or Egg predicting Starmie/Zam to switch out to Egg, with both options being okaish against Psychic - notice how Starmie being popular makes it harder for Gengar because going Exeggutor on Starmie's Psychic is a lot worse than switching into Zam).

 

Ebola is as solid as a castle made off crackers, on the top of that what you call opinion really just looks like a bunch of trashtalking+some obvious yet wrong screamings. Have fun blocking frz with the pokemon which uses Rest half of his life and makes Tauros demolish their teammates on the other half.

And luckily he was changed, glad we didn't see him before...

The discussion was pretty good before his retarded behavior and the circlejerk, can you all resume the good part? Thank you

 

Dude... no. I get your general point, but if you take Exeggutor out and add Jynx, your team will crumble to Rhydon really easily and be much more exposed to Tauros/Snorlax too. Operating that change in any standard team is suicide. I don't care about your tones because I'm not one to bother with that type of thing, but I seriously think this suggestion is madness

Alternatively, with Eggy/Chansey leads becoming viable, Gengar resurges in viability and Jynx remains in the dumpster where it belongs. It's not necessarily self-correcting in a way that includes Jynx. It would be self-correcting if at any point there was a meta where Jynx was good, but that's not been a thing for two years now. Jynx just spent two years alternating between bad on paper, terrible in practice, and good on paper, still bad in practice. If the meta keeps self-correcting to bring her back in but she still has bad winrate... that self-correction should stop happening.

I'm obviously speaking in absolute terms when the matter is more complex, because Jynx is not that bad and a 45% winrate might only be a few environment tweaks away from a 50% one. But my point is that those environment tweaks need to happen around the Jynx teams because we have consistent evidence of Jynx, Big 4, Last being a build that loses more games than it wins.

 

I'm not surprised a thread like this exists, I think it has been for 9 months or so that the Jynx usage amongst top players has been dropping quite heavily.

When I started playing and tried a bit every available mon, I remember not liking Jynx that much mainly because of Jynx dittos, then when the games were about threatening and blocking sleep, I mostly disliked it because it doesn't have an instant recovery move, which as Troller said is just too much of an exploitable flaw

To add something that wasn't said, I personally play Jynx maybe one or two games a year on average and lead Starmie/Alakazam 99% of the time. On the last couple of tournaments I played, I realized that the good players who wanted to try and exploit my lead usage preferred to use Egg lead rather than Jynx lead, even though I use more Starmie than Alakazam, which is saying to what extent people would rather avoid using Jynx. Fwiw when I'm aware that my opponent might lead Egg against me I still prefer using Starmie because I think the upsides of having Jynx vs Egg don't compensate the downsides of having Jynx vs any other lead.

One thing I will always dislike about it on top of its non ability to properly block sleep is the fact that clicking Blizzard through para is a 93.25% chance of doing nothing that turn and thus not improving your position. I think it's also a factor of players not using it, because if you look at the changes in RBY play trends, you notice that we went from Chansey freeze wars to "Twave it go lax", and that we're going to "Starmie lead over Zam" to avoid Zam dittos: you want to have more options, more control over what to do, and make as few automatic plays as possible where you and your opponent are just waiting to see who gets the better end of the RNG and play from there

Besides, Starmie lead helps you against Restlax, Tauros, Rhydon, while Alakazam helps you against Zapdos, and both of them can be really helpful against the Reflectblob, while Jynx helps you against nothing to be honest, not having an instant recovery move is too much. I suppose strategies like keeping Jynx lead fresh and going Chansey against Starmie/Zam with the plan of getting it in later to sleep something without getting paralysed could be explored ? Idk

Btw for those who are interested my take on non-lead Jynx was this: Untitled PokePaste
I think I built this to have something funny prepared for Egg leaders, then it's just ReflectLax and Slowbro for Normals and Rhydon, and BeamboltBlob for Starmie... Fresh Jynx should help against Zapdos

 

So what is being said is that you guys prefer bulkier leads which tank physical mons over flimsier mons such as zam and jynx. In the current state of "rby chess" this may be true, although with some creativity, the flimsier mons can work out well too, and even better, if everyone only plays the "standard".

N didn't see your set you posted Peasounay, but I built the exact same set, bar ib over eq on lax & used it with success vs. Nails in RBY Global.

 

No one is debating that creative builds/gameplans can and will shit on the standard. Literally in the main post I have a team I built, using Jynx, to shit on the standard, which I've used with success against the best players around. You're missing the point.

The point is about (1) consistency and long-term results, because one off surprises and creativity can and do work here and there, but they do not amount to the usage Jynx gets; and (2) effectiveness of the gimmick, because we've made plenty of arguments for how Jynx is also uneffective offensively, but you have blissfully ignored those.

Also, Alakazam is possibly the worst example you could make to illustrate your point. He's fantastic in the standard meta. He's one of very few things to win the lead war against everyone's favorite safe mon Starmie. When Exeggutors and Snorlaxes start showing up in the lead position, Alakazam becomes shit. If you think Alakazam is flimsy you haven't bothered trying the various Kinglers out there, which automatically makes you poorly qualified to discuss creativity.


I feel bad that I have to go against you when everyone's already out on a witch hunt against you, but you're spouting nonsense right now.