RBY OU Viability Rankings

Implementing the suggested changes.

I'll work on individual descriptions.

What does gyara do? :x

 

U should write that gengar is the fastest leading sleeper, coz it's main role in many of teams. Also it's will be useful to say that each Pokemon is good answer to another like victreebell is good check vs slowbro teams, which usually use golems/rhydon and slowbro in one team

 

some good points will update

it's just meant 2 be a quick summary so a llot of the extra detail can be found in a mon's analysis intro.

bel>bro is important tho

 

hmm most of the relevant ranks look good, good stuff.

Normally I'd object to Persian being in D not C, but it makes sense.

In terms of E (warning, theorymon incoming), Drio seems a cut above all the rest, especially with Raticate floating around in D (maybe change Rat's description to wallbreaker as well, since that's what Super Fang does and SFang is literally its only niche).
m9m recently mentioned Kabutops as something to consider for OU. I personally have never thought about it, but it makes sense for similar rationale to listing Omastar.
When I was learning RBY and spending a lot of time looking through RBY2K10 threads I noticed that they argued Muk>Weezing on the grounds that Acid Armor + Mega Drain allows it to beat GolDon, so if you really wanna mention one of them probably Muk is the one to go with.
Poliwrath has enough things going for it to warrant a mention in E

 

I'd put Raticate and Raichu in E, As soon as you've paralysed Raticate it may as well be dead, an anything faster than it with recover renders it's Super Fang a stalling tactic and Raichu's niche over the other 2 electrics is even less relevant now.

Dodrio and Clefable I would move to D. Gyarados is a suprisingly effective hit and run mon, you could probably make a case for it scraping D rank, but it's getting deprived of it's main switch in opportunities right now with Goldon falling in to disrepute.

I have never even heard of Weezing or Omastar in a competitive OU setting, Hitmonlee seems out of place too. Poliwrath and Golduck have amnesia, with the former having sleep and counter shenanigans at it's disposal aswell, and Tentacruel can swords dance, it depends how far down the rabbit hole you want to go, I would probably trim E down a bit.

 

I've heard of use of Weezing but not Muk although both are clearly pretty poor.

Apart from gyara and the fire and fighting types I know of top players using all the E rank mons with some degree of success. Would anyone consider usin poli/duck or are there always directly better options?

 

should raticate move down/anything like clefable move up?

I personally think we should have some discussion of Cloyster, Lapras, and Rhydon. I feel the former is possibly under-ranked and the latter 2 possibly over-ranked but I'm interested to hear opinions on these

 

I definitely think Dodrio>Rat, but like I said I've not got much experience with either

I definitely don't think Don and Lap are overrated.

Lap's midgame presence is really second to none, it pressures literally everything in the game and therefore generates a ton of free turns. That combined with the fact that it's a physical check mean it's really easy slotting this on a team.

Don is still good. Obviously it gets hurt by the metagame shifts more than Golem does. But it still preys upon paralysed, physically weak pokemon by smacking something really hard, and the support it requires is still the same, just a little harder to pull off because players aren't letting their blobs get paralysed all willy-nilly now. Basically I'm saying that yes it got worse and now Golem's boom gives it the clear edge, but its switch-in opportunities are still the same, it's still a potent attacker and it's not worse by so big a margin that it deserves to be ranked alongside stuff like Bel.

Cloy I'm fine with leaving in C. Explosion is literally all it has over Lapras- sure Clamp gives you free turns, but it's not as though Lapras can't create free turns effectively itself. I always feel underwhelmed when using Cloy- it comes in, takes a powerful hit (better than anything else can sure, but it's still getting worn down), it fires off a Blizzard or something as Chansey/Starmie/Lapras comes in, they take it easily it Clamps you out into something else. I guess when you consider this over a couple of cycles and the fact that Cloy can run HBeam and hence can threaten a KO while Lap has to drop CRay or BSlam in order to do the same, then Cloy is perhaps just as effective, maybe a little more so, at working around Chansey, but it's very much debatable. So this debatable point is then weighed up against the fact that Lapras and Starmie totally defecate on Cloyster, while neither enjoys switching into tbolt/paraslam.

You'll notice I don't really talk much about Golem/Cloy's explosions. Tbh I don't readily blow up my pokemon unless I am using Gengar- I value consistent mid-game contributions more than I value the high risk/reward of booming. That might be why I dislike Cloy and like Don. Then again, not using their boom effectively is probably a hole in my game *shrugs*

 

I'd definitely like to hear some opinions on this, haha you do make it clear that it's a part of how you play that affects how you value them.

I had Raish feeling Kingler was as good as Rhydon currently so I'm sure there's potential for someone to call it over-rated. I'll see if I can get him to comment on the rankings I think the rhydon thing might well be quite prejudiced from our experience of paraslam metagame. I don't actually see much of a reason to describe it as anything other than a late game sweeper with the exception of it also walling zapdos and eating explosion (both of which Golem can do good enough) - the value of explosion in a defensive sense (sounds a bit peculiar lmao) makes golem much better at absorbing hyper beams and not being as bit a bait for tauros, or as worried about being walled by exeggutor. I think the defensive niche is the only thing that separates it from any other niche late-game sweeper, so I guess it sort of compresses that, but then again a lot of mons like kingler for example have an easier time actualyl sweeping (e.g. with kingler you don't need to spread as much paralysis and its speed tier helps it a lot)

 

In my mind it's always been competing with Golem and Snorlax for a spot on a team, something that can come in on paralysed special walls and smack something- either hitting said wall really hard, or wearing down opposing physical checks. I've never really viewed it as a late-game sweeper, more as a para'd Chansey response and supporter for an eventual Tauros sweep (I guess you'd call it a wallbreaker? Doesn't seem quite the right term for it).

 

I think I can agree but I often run Rhydon alongside snorlax - I only really use it to pressure chansey when it's out of nesecity - if you take an ice beam you find it harder to absorb hyper beams/explosions, and tauros blizzard KOs without a critical hit/freeze needed. Bringing it in early's only really useful for trying to chip exeggutor - when you bring it in early you have to be conscious of how it's bound to switch out again very soon - so many pokemon can do it, exeggutor, starmie, lapras, even tauros. If it does KO something and then tauros is brought in you have a lot of issues, so you either have to save it for post-tauros and to absorb explosions (if you can), and maybe to wall electrics (pretty risky though especially since it's such an obvious lure, a double to tauros can be deadly), or you carry it alongside things that can switch into tauros a couple of times during the match [slowbro, rest stun egg, lapras, starmie, probably some other stuff] - i.e. you can't fit it on a more offensively oriented team without playing in the first way. A team packing just starmie lead, stun spore egg, and a rhydon is probably better off with golem in most circumstances since it has such an issue with the lack of defense offered by a team like that.

 

I think Slowbro and Zapdos could be moved to a rank between A and B (say A-), ad they are way more dangerous than the other B ranked. Dnite and Cloyster can be moved to B, Kangaskhan and Kingler to C.

 

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said that they compete since they are viable alongside each other (but if I'm running both Lax and a Rock I actually prefer Golem anyways but that's w/e). I think chipping away at Egg is a pretty worthwhile goal in and of itself. It's pretty easy to avoid coming in on Chansey's Ice Beam imo, since if the worst comes to worst you can simply park something in front of it and bash away at it until the Softboiled becomes obvious (Zam, parafusion Lap, your own Chansey). I personally think that a Tauros vs. Rhydon matchup isn't that bad (relatively speaking, since this is Tauros we're talking about here) since it's unlikely to be using its Normal STAB which means it's a hell of a lot easier to switch into. Obviously there're prediction mindgames involved but it's overall not too bad.

Basically I view it chipping away at its switchins (or fishing for para if it's facing Starm) to be worth the risk associated with letting Egg/Starm/Lap in. Chansey generally neutralises Egg/Starm well enough, Lap is a bit more tricky but at the same time it gets worn down a lot faster than the other 2. I think it's clear we both play Rhydon quite differently though so idk.

Re Marco: I wouldn't argue with Zapdos moving up, it seriously kicks ass. Slowbro I just find too inconsistent though- it has games where it'll demolish/cripple half a team, but for every one of those there's a fair few where it just doesn't accomplish all that much.

Dnite moving up I think is fair, and I've already said my bit on Cloy. While I don't have a strong opinion on whether Khan/King move up, I don't feel comfortable putting them a whole rank above Persian, who is an equally effective lategame cleaner and a kickass revenge-killer against non-Gengar teams, especially because it revenges Tauros, which is just such a good trait in the wake of Crystal's mechanics.

 

Actually, Persian might be the underrated one, and could be moved up as well. It was considered to be one of the original top 16 OU, and as you said it's now better than it was before. Still, suffering 2HKOs from everything is bad, and Kangaskhan can take a lot more on the physical side, learns Counter and can't be walled.
If Tauros was banned, we would've used it on almost every team.
I see the point about Kingler, that can be inconsistent.

Slowbro is really valuable as a team player with Thunder Wave: it will rarely sweep, but if you don't risk it against Thunderbolts, it will paralyze one or two things (paralyze Starmie and run) and/or will eventually draw an explosion. And that is a process where the Slowbro user is in a good position: boom can be predicted, blowing up Exeggutor or Snorlax could have bad side effects....

 

I'd like to hear some reasoning/more support before I make these. I'm okay with the idea of splitting a rank into two so long as this is done for every rank other than possibly S. Otherwise it looks non-sensical.

points about rhydon forcing a non-normal move is interesting and valid. Agreement on the comment about chipping switches too. I could possibly go with the move of persian not sure though ;-;

I think with zapdos whilst we feel it kicks ass I think we should probably wait out another couple of months to see how much equilibrium returns to zapdos/rocks dynamic, but some logical discussion of the case of why we feel zapdos is so good would be welcomed.

Should Lickitung be E rank then?

I'll get to adding further lower ranks till every FE Pokemon is included as I might as well, but gimme a bit of time ;D

no more real comment to add on marco's post but more discussion please :] I need to get raish to post here lol

 

Some commentary of Raish's on the rankings, offer your thoughts?