RBY OU Snorlax [Done]

No offense DA, but in my honest opinion we should not include stuff like Seismic Toss in a Snorlax analysis, not even in other options, it is just ridiculous. (same goes for Substitute on Chansey, the way I understood it, you even state in the Chansey analysis that in practice it is not worth it, so why the hell even mention it?). If our analysis are featuring such options, we might as well just list moves they learn,cause, hey, they are options, right?
We should keep the analysis to what is actually useful, Seismic Toss or Solar Beam on Snorlax or Substitute on Chansey are not...

 

Stoss could definitely be removed from this tbh.

I actually think it's a viable and in some circumstances even good set, but I wanted it to be clear that most of the time it's not what you should be using. j2dahop got a couple of wins with it versus mister tim in MT32 R1 (I gave him a team I built with the set) so I'll defend it as an actual viable set but with the understanding that it is a gimmickier option for Chansey than most of what else is listed.

Part of the point of OO is describing stuff that fills some sort of a niche but currently is not in favour, and explaining why those moves aren't considered as viable. I think it's better just to be critical of specific cases of OO mentions where you think that it's so far out that it doesn't even deserve a mention.

In particular this analysis is quite old and is one I felt like I didn't necessarily do the best of jobs on / that I was the best person to write it so I'm probably more open to criticisms on this anyway

 

Sub Chansey isn't a terrible choice if you know your opponent loves the freeze war. In my case with Tim, it forced his Chansey out and allowed me to freeze Snorlax on the switch. Afterward, I found out why boom has more than 1 pp. Effectively, sub Chansey wound up being a two for one which took out lax and his eggy

 

This is the snorlax thread though, but I'd like to point out something

Sub IS a terrible choice, like you forced chansey out and you said it worked because you froze snorlax but it's not sub that froze lax lol it's ice beam, if you had ibeamed the chans it would've froze it too, what's strong here is ice beam, not sub. If your opponent loves freeze war and sees you've subbed he just twaves and goes to something else, or just goes to anything that isn't weak to tbolt/twave anymore since you've dropped one of these move so you now gave more options to your opponent by playing sub (while not giving yourself more, but by reducing them because you lost very good all around move)

Here you just got lucky regardless of sub, it's a terrible move because it doesn't improve any match-up, i was going to make the list but i realised how obvious it should be. Just don't drop a good move for sub lol

It's what I don't like with OOs in analyses, it doesn't point out enough how much opportunity cost you lose. Just because fblast sbeam lax can work and put work in that 1 out of 136 battle against that terrible ladder player who made mistakes against your otherwise standard as fuck good team, doesn't mean it's good in any way, and just because something wins doesn't mean it's good either especially if it needs luck to do so. In this case this snorlax set makes no sense, because amneblizz is far better. Please don't point out the 2 or 3 super specific scenarios in which it's better because it's 2 or 3 out of 200, because i bet you i could find a counter strategy that exploits this bad set in the said scenario anyway, and because you lose SOOOO much on not playing an actual good set

"but I've been able to win some games with it against competent players and if Seismic Toss on Lax of all things can be OO mentioned, then this can too."

wrong process, the truth is none of these moves should even be considered because they're absolute garbage and you should stick with what is strong

 

sub chansey is kinda legit lol at least enough for end of OO, I think it's a decent set and I would be confident using it in a tournament, at least vs certain opponents

and can we point out specifically moves that don't make sense in OO on a case by case rather than the process

good point about the opportunity cost but again something you should comment on analysis by analysis, obviously opportunity cost is the biggest argument against a lot of things but that should be spelt out

with sub chansey the opportunity cost is not being able to hurt a lot of pokemon (like lapras, starmie, etc) in return for being as strong as possible in the chansey vs chansey freeze war. Obviously, this trade isn't a great one which is why it's only an OO mention, but there are real upsides to it as well as real downsides because of the opportunity cost. It can also be used to force paralysis on snorlax / sometimes other pokemon, since if you force out chansey then that means you can spread paralysis versus other targets.

And I mean I actually explicitly mentioned opportunity cost in this analysis's OO and seismic toss is like the only thing that really needs to be removed, everything else is arguable here

the fire blast shit isn't even mentioned in the analysis and it's a shitty gimmick enigami and I were trying out ???

tl;dr: sub chansey has merit, I'll remove stoss lax from the analysis, opportunity cost is an important point, and you over-reacted a bit

 

Harden/Reflect + Amnesia Lax doesn't have to use Body Slam. There are other damaging moves that work, like Ice Beam.

Ice Beam and Surf on Lax kinda suck because Blizzard gets the 2HKO on GolDon (and OHKO at +2) while Ice Beam doesn't (and Surf doesn't get the OHKO unboosted). The exception is if you're monoattacking, because then Blizzard's PP is likely to run out. Even on Rest Lax, if you're running Body Slam as well (and not running Reflect) you're unlikely to run out of Blizzards before Lax gets KOed.

The Amnesia + Selfdestruct surprise set I've most often seen and used has Normal + Ice attacks in the other two slots. In No Solo Para Los Australianos I used that set (with Mega Kick). Speaking of MK, it's almost as likely to get the 2HKO on Starmie after accuracy as Body Slam + Hyper Beam (IIRC I KOed a Starmie that way in said match).

Also, that "m9mbro" thing is still hilarious.

 

Put Blizzard ahead of Ice Beam in the slashes on AmneLax.

 

While it is walled by Gengar I've used and seen the BodySlam/Reflect/Rest/Self-Destruct variant. Uber tank that can still pick off any threat.

 

That's mentioned in the details under ReflectLax

 

It feels weird to reference the meta so much, since normally RBY moves at such a glacial pace that trends aren't really a thing, but non-Rest Lax is by far the worst form of Lax imo atm, so maybe rearrange the sets? The fact that simply loses to both Reflect Normals is really bad

Also regarding AmnesiaLax, maybe mention that +2 Blizz 3HKOs Lax, which IB fails to do.

 

Is non rest lax really the worst of the 3 right now?

I'm fine w/ swapping non rest lax w reflect lax but I'm surprised at the notion that amnelax is better than it too.

I'll mention that 3hko

 

Amnesia lax is the worst Lax (still good but we are comparing), as he is the only Lax set who doesn't switch on Body Slam (both of Tauros and Snorlax) when you need it, he can't Reflect or Boom, to recover some momentum back which is something super valuable. Also the Reflectless+Rest combo makes it Tauros food pretty much especially if he comes when you have 0 sleep burned.

 

A lot of the things I'm about to drop are coming out altogether...

I think that ReflectLax has many things going its way, but if you can't deal with Reflect Chansey that's not due to PhysLax alone: use a Reflect Chansey of your own! And maybe just try to figure some way out for games where you just trade Snorlax for Chansey.

Amnesialax is the worse version of Snorlax for the reasons Troller just wrote; on the other hand it's the thing that's supposed to beat ReflectLax, even though there are plays around it.
I'm curious to see how things will change and enstablish in the long run.

 

The thing I dislike about relying on your own Reflect Chansey is that you're not necessarily generating an advantage. If you're both paralysed you just kinda sit there doing nothing, waiting for the opponent to get bored. If your opp is paralysed and you aren't, then you lose the stall war. Basically your own Reflect Chansey is a shaky countermeasure to opposing Chansey.

 

Yeah, it obviously isn't the ultimate answer, but there's more with that. You can switch between it and Starmie if that's your lead, or the whole thing could be a lot more simple: they might be happy TWaving you as soon as possible because unpara'd Reflect Chansey can be such an annoiance later in the game and they aren't Ice Beam.
Well, the main point is still that trading Snorlax for Reflect Chansey while having your own unstatused Reflect Chansey and Lapras/Zapdos/Starmie in the back should look good for you.

Actually, I understand that having to deal with para'd Alakazam without Snorlax can be awkward, but you're using Tauros or exploding Exeggutor (if you have Lapras) at worst.

 

Reword that. Having Hbeam in that slot makes it much more difficult to scout for Counter. IB over EQ deals less damage, which is a minor inconvenience. And aside from being walled by Gengar, this is literally the only downside IB has over EQ. We have seen IB become the default choice over the last few months, and the analysis should reflect that.
Also remove all these ridiculous names. No one ever says "ItaLax", "PiexLax" (sorry DA) or "GSCLax". Those are Boom Restlax, Hbeam Restlax and Tanklax.
On another note, should we really put Rest Cloyster, a gimmicky and borderline unviable set/mon, in the first sentence of the "Checks and Counters" section? Maybe it's the only real counter, but then we should rather put an emphasis on the fact that there are no hard counters (like for almost everything in RBY) and focus on the way viable mons can counterplay it. Push that first sentence somewhere at the end.

 

I reorganised and rewrote a few things.

 

I say "GSCLax" because that's the set's name. I never say "TankLax."