So a few of you saw my post in the Vermillion tour thread following my loss to Marcoasd, but for those who haven't, the tl;dr is that I'm extremely frustrated by the fact that the tier that I've devoted so much time to mastering has evolved to become incessant Reflect stallwars and I think overall RBY's in an extremely toxic state atm. What follows are my thoughts on Reflect and what players can do to combat it.
What makes Reflect so good?
Reflect is an interesting issue in that neither Chansey nor Snorlax create issues without it, but it's not even particularly good on most other pokemon. I'll ignore Zam since although it can theoretically be broken due to winning or trading practically every non-Bro matchup in a 1v1 setting, we all know it's not currently an issue. Anyone who knows anything about RBY will be able to tell you that Chansey and Snorlax's inability to be paralysed is the driving force behind them spamming Reflect, as they become extremely difficult for Lax, and to a lesser extent Tauros and GolDon, to break. There's two things I want to note here- Lax is the biggest force driving this trend, as Reflect offers maximum benefits here (by contrast Tauros' speed and crit rate make setting up Reflect slightly more risky, especially for Chansey, while GolDon outspeed Lax and hit harder than the Normals with STAB EQ). Also, although Reflect shuts down physical attackers, it's difficult for special attackers to step up because they all get walled to some extent by Chansey.
Reflect Chansey is broken as fuck. If one gets in and sets up Reflect your options are basically limited to either stalling it out or accumulating numerous stat boost or special drops. To consistently stall out Reflect Chansey you basically need a Rest pokemon, which is incredibly exploitable, especially if it's anything besides Lax. Meanwhile accumulating stat changes requires multiple turns, allowing Chansey ample time to paralyse and chip your pokemon down, limiting its potential and often forcing a Rest.
ReflectLax does have a weakness in that strong special attackers can always threaten it. The trouble is that none of them come in easily due to lack of recovery and the damage and paralysis chance of Body Slam, while Chansey is always there to snuff their attacks. Furthermore, similar troubles do not exist for Lax, as with para support it can comfortably set up on a number of pokemon.
Fight cancer with cancer
Freeze
Freezes are one of the tools that teams can use to combat Reflect spam, as Ice Beam Reflect users are rare so this threat is not usually reciprocated and the whole point of Reflect Normals is that they're hard to paralyse. Unfortunately, one of the main reasons they're rare is because playing for the freeze is generally an inferior strategy. It depends on your opponent not being paralysed, which means you're restricting all of your non-freeze channels of offensive output by not spreading para. It's an unreliable strategy, obviously. And it also demands that you play in an extremely passive manner- the best candidate for landing a freeze, BoltBeam Chansey, is an invitation for Lax to switch in and start pounding your team, while most other Ice attackers are restricted to a hit and run style of play. Overall I don't think playing for a freeze is a particularly good strategy and that wouldn't change unless possibly freeze clause was removed
PP Stall
As with Freeze, this is mostly useful as a response to Chansey. It also benefits immensely from the opposing Chansey being unparalysed. You can try stalling Chansey out with one or more Recover users, but they sacrifice a lot of their utility in absorbing paralysis as a result. Alternatively, a Rest mon such as Lax works here, but Rest is of course exploitable.
If you're looking for a solution to Reflect stallwars, these strategies are not that, as they're just stall with a slightly different angle to them. It's also worth pointing out that these strategies should be implemented with a view to beating paralysed Chansey, even though they work better without paralysis. Spreading paralysis simply increases your options and if your opponent is committed to keeping Chansey free of para the threat of para will be enough to force Chansey out, which is honestly half the battle in dealing with this shit.
Playing with stats
Boosting (Amnesia)
Boosting a pokemon's stats is the most obvious solution for dealing with Reflect. There's a lot of boosters out there and all of them are complete rubbish here except for two of them- Lax and Bro. Bro's ability to muscle through Reflect users shouldn't need explaining. Lax's position is... interesting. With Blizzard it gains an advantage against ReflectLax, but it needs luck to break through Chansey, which is a risky bet when Blizz only has 8 PP. On the other hand, Rest means it should be able to stall Chansey out. It functions best when it's forcing Chansey out into Lax. Honestly, people need to use AmnesiaLax more, it's one of the few options I'll discuss here that I actually think is good, primarily because of that aforementioned use case.
The issue I have in this case is that setting up on either pokemon allows them plenty of opportunity to paralyse and/or wear you down, potentially forcing a Rest. Either way, your supposed counter to Reflect fails to generate any sort of momentum.
Spec drops
Firstly, if your pokemon is not Zam or Starmie (or Bro, but that's in the above category), it has no business trying to break through Chansey with Psychic, because Chansey will always win. As for Zam and Star, they are able to stall Chansey and eventually force it out with Spec drops. Though this will force a switch, it's not really very threatening, as it's rare that a Chansey will fail to find an opening to switch out. After that point it comes in, heals and sets up far too easily for this to be any more than a band-aid solution. Note that I haven't even gone into what this will cost you- at the very least your Zam/Star is getting paralysed, and thus losing a lot of its utility, far more than what Chansey loses if it gets paralysed. In Zam's case it becomes a lot weaker to physical attackers, while Star is more difficult to generate momentum against, but it's just sooooo much more ineffective when paralysed, on top of which it's a lot less effective against Chansey.
ATTACK!
Special attackers
One of Snorlax's more obvious weaknesses is that its special bulk is merely decent in the face of the potent special attacks that get thrown around in RBY. So, logically, powerful special attackers make pretty decent responses to ReflectLax. However, as I alluded to above, coming in on Lax can be extremely costly due to its good damage and paralysis chance, while the existence of Chansey limits the kind of reward that players can expect to receive for taking this kind of risk. So if you're looking to use special attackers, you should consider how they're able to threaten Chansey. In my opinion there are only two decent pokemon (excluding Amnesia) that take on Lax and threaten Chansey sufficiently to be effective in this role- Zapdos and Cloyster. Zapdos is pretty obvious, having decent bulk and a potent dual STAB to take on Normal types. Cloyster is able to threaten Lax with its great bulk and STAB Blizzard, while Clamp, although not super threatening to Chansey, enables you to keep the opponent on the back foot. Also considered for this list was Lapras (parafusion is too unreliable) and Moltres (bad).
That covers dealing damage, but what about switching in? The obvious thing is that you want to switch in on anything besides Body Slam, even EQ is more palatable by an enormous margin. Normal resistors aren't the solution since they don't really threaten ReflectLax. Fortunately there's one attack that can solve this conundrum- Counter. Obviously there's the potential for surprise KOs, but even revealing it and forcing the opponent to fire off EQs is enough for it to achieve its function- getting relatively clean switches into ReflectLax checks. An important point to consider is which pokemon will run Counter (usually Lax or Chansey), and you then need to consider how to force the opponent to play Lax in the matchup you want.
Conclusion
Are there potential metagame developments that could serve to mitigate the impact of Reflect? In my opinion, yes. Counter is promising, Amnesia is promising, especially on Lax. Greater consciousness of Reflect when teambuilding could help. Will it make Reflect go away? Probably not. Half the reason it's so good is that it's difficult to exploit. I've whipped together a couple teams built around the ideas I've mentioned and I really felt like I was bending over backwards to try and "counter" Reflect, to such an extent that I think clearly indicates its brokenness. Frankly, it's unclear whether or not it will actually work, and with the small risk and massive reward to running Reflect, it could well be that it's simply easier to run Reflect yourself and try to beat the opponent at their own game (assuming they're running Reflect).
What are your thoughts on potentially ending the dominance of Reflect?
What makes Reflect so good?
Reflect is an interesting issue in that neither Chansey nor Snorlax create issues without it, but it's not even particularly good on most other pokemon. I'll ignore Zam since although it can theoretically be broken due to winning or trading practically every non-Bro matchup in a 1v1 setting, we all know it's not currently an issue. Anyone who knows anything about RBY will be able to tell you that Chansey and Snorlax's inability to be paralysed is the driving force behind them spamming Reflect, as they become extremely difficult for Lax, and to a lesser extent Tauros and GolDon, to break. There's two things I want to note here- Lax is the biggest force driving this trend, as Reflect offers maximum benefits here (by contrast Tauros' speed and crit rate make setting up Reflect slightly more risky, especially for Chansey, while GolDon outspeed Lax and hit harder than the Normals with STAB EQ). Also, although Reflect shuts down physical attackers, it's difficult for special attackers to step up because they all get walled to some extent by Chansey.
Reflect Chansey is broken as fuck. If one gets in and sets up Reflect your options are basically limited to either stalling it out or accumulating numerous stat boost or special drops. To consistently stall out Reflect Chansey you basically need a Rest pokemon, which is incredibly exploitable, especially if it's anything besides Lax. Meanwhile accumulating stat changes requires multiple turns, allowing Chansey ample time to paralyse and chip your pokemon down, limiting its potential and often forcing a Rest.
ReflectLax does have a weakness in that strong special attackers can always threaten it. The trouble is that none of them come in easily due to lack of recovery and the damage and paralysis chance of Body Slam, while Chansey is always there to snuff their attacks. Furthermore, similar troubles do not exist for Lax, as with para support it can comfortably set up on a number of pokemon.
Fight cancer with cancer
Freeze
Freezes are one of the tools that teams can use to combat Reflect spam, as Ice Beam Reflect users are rare so this threat is not usually reciprocated and the whole point of Reflect Normals is that they're hard to paralyse. Unfortunately, one of the main reasons they're rare is because playing for the freeze is generally an inferior strategy. It depends on your opponent not being paralysed, which means you're restricting all of your non-freeze channels of offensive output by not spreading para. It's an unreliable strategy, obviously. And it also demands that you play in an extremely passive manner- the best candidate for landing a freeze, BoltBeam Chansey, is an invitation for Lax to switch in and start pounding your team, while most other Ice attackers are restricted to a hit and run style of play. Overall I don't think playing for a freeze is a particularly good strategy and that wouldn't change unless possibly freeze clause was removed
PP Stall
As with Freeze, this is mostly useful as a response to Chansey. It also benefits immensely from the opposing Chansey being unparalysed. You can try stalling Chansey out with one or more Recover users, but they sacrifice a lot of their utility in absorbing paralysis as a result. Alternatively, a Rest mon such as Lax works here, but Rest is of course exploitable.
If you're looking for a solution to Reflect stallwars, these strategies are not that, as they're just stall with a slightly different angle to them. It's also worth pointing out that these strategies should be implemented with a view to beating paralysed Chansey, even though they work better without paralysis. Spreading paralysis simply increases your options and if your opponent is committed to keeping Chansey free of para the threat of para will be enough to force Chansey out, which is honestly half the battle in dealing with this shit.
Playing with stats
Boosting (Amnesia)
Boosting a pokemon's stats is the most obvious solution for dealing with Reflect. There's a lot of boosters out there and all of them are complete rubbish here except for two of them- Lax and Bro. Bro's ability to muscle through Reflect users shouldn't need explaining. Lax's position is... interesting. With Blizzard it gains an advantage against ReflectLax, but it needs luck to break through Chansey, which is a risky bet when Blizz only has 8 PP. On the other hand, Rest means it should be able to stall Chansey out. It functions best when it's forcing Chansey out into Lax. Honestly, people need to use AmnesiaLax more, it's one of the few options I'll discuss here that I actually think is good, primarily because of that aforementioned use case.
The issue I have in this case is that setting up on either pokemon allows them plenty of opportunity to paralyse and/or wear you down, potentially forcing a Rest. Either way, your supposed counter to Reflect fails to generate any sort of momentum.
Spec drops
Firstly, if your pokemon is not Zam or Starmie (or Bro, but that's in the above category), it has no business trying to break through Chansey with Psychic, because Chansey will always win. As for Zam and Star, they are able to stall Chansey and eventually force it out with Spec drops. Though this will force a switch, it's not really very threatening, as it's rare that a Chansey will fail to find an opening to switch out. After that point it comes in, heals and sets up far too easily for this to be any more than a band-aid solution. Note that I haven't even gone into what this will cost you- at the very least your Zam/Star is getting paralysed, and thus losing a lot of its utility, far more than what Chansey loses if it gets paralysed. In Zam's case it becomes a lot weaker to physical attackers, while Star is more difficult to generate momentum against, but it's just sooooo much more ineffective when paralysed, on top of which it's a lot less effective against Chansey.
ATTACK!
Special attackers
One of Snorlax's more obvious weaknesses is that its special bulk is merely decent in the face of the potent special attacks that get thrown around in RBY. So, logically, powerful special attackers make pretty decent responses to ReflectLax. However, as I alluded to above, coming in on Lax can be extremely costly due to its good damage and paralysis chance, while the existence of Chansey limits the kind of reward that players can expect to receive for taking this kind of risk. So if you're looking to use special attackers, you should consider how they're able to threaten Chansey. In my opinion there are only two decent pokemon (excluding Amnesia) that take on Lax and threaten Chansey sufficiently to be effective in this role- Zapdos and Cloyster. Zapdos is pretty obvious, having decent bulk and a potent dual STAB to take on Normal types. Cloyster is able to threaten Lax with its great bulk and STAB Blizzard, while Clamp, although not super threatening to Chansey, enables you to keep the opponent on the back foot. Also considered for this list was Lapras (parafusion is too unreliable) and Moltres (bad).
That covers dealing damage, but what about switching in? The obvious thing is that you want to switch in on anything besides Body Slam, even EQ is more palatable by an enormous margin. Normal resistors aren't the solution since they don't really threaten ReflectLax. Fortunately there's one attack that can solve this conundrum- Counter. Obviously there's the potential for surprise KOs, but even revealing it and forcing the opponent to fire off EQs is enough for it to achieve its function- getting relatively clean switches into ReflectLax checks. An important point to consider is which pokemon will run Counter (usually Lax or Chansey), and you then need to consider how to force the opponent to play Lax in the matchup you want.
Conclusion
Are there potential metagame developments that could serve to mitigate the impact of Reflect? In my opinion, yes. Counter is promising, Amnesia is promising, especially on Lax. Greater consciousness of Reflect when teambuilding could help. Will it make Reflect go away? Probably not. Half the reason it's so good is that it's difficult to exploit. I've whipped together a couple teams built around the ideas I've mentioned and I really felt like I was bending over backwards to try and "counter" Reflect, to such an extent that I think clearly indicates its brokenness. Frankly, it's unclear whether or not it will actually work, and with the small risk and massive reward to running Reflect, it could well be that it's simply easier to run Reflect yourself and try to beat the opponent at their own game (assuming they're running Reflect).
What are your thoughts on potentially ending the dominance of Reflect?
