RBY OU Viability Rankings

Aren't you just describing pokemon though? Every move set and pokemon has a trade off. If Tauros is running fireblast for example, that means he isn't running earthquake or blizzard right? That means either my gengar is having a really great time, or my zapdos is having a really great time. If you do things to make my cloyster weak to your team, you're making other pokes on my team stronger. Obviously Cloyster isn't going to cover everything, that's why you have 5 other pokemon slots. This is my problem with viability rankings in general, we don't really talk about the specifics of the team the pokemon is on.

 

Clamp. Now, granted, this does depend on team setup, because Clamping Starmie and going to Chansey isn't particularly amazing, but going to Jolt can be quite effective.

Lapras is not a wall for Cloy. I ran the numbers a while back and Cloy vs. Lapras 1v1 is about 50:50. If you're trying to PP-stall Clamp, it's obviously useful, but just parking it in front of Cloy isn't a very good solution.

 

What does fb tauros do, I’m not really an rbyer

 

From what I understand, it is there to inflict burn to lower the attack of your opponent's pokemon, such as the opposing tauros.

 

Fire Blast has 30% burn rate in RBY. That said, I guess that FB Tauros can do stuff like:

1) Burn the enemy Tauros on a ditto. Burning a Tauros will permanently drop its attack, since nobody uses Rest on Tauros (which is the only effective way to get rid BRN/PAR/PSN status on RBY - opponent using Haze is another way, but nobody uses Haze in RBY).

Since Tauros is the best physical sweeper of the meta, a burned Tauros is a worse Tauros. However, it does not means that BRN Tauros is useless: it can still paralyze foes with Body Slam and rely on critical hits to deal heavy damage, as CH always ignores status changes (including Burn's ATK drop).

I'm not playing, but probably this one is the greatest reason to ever consider using Fire Blast on Tauros.

2) FB Tauros can also burn another pokémon that enjoys using physical moves. Rhydon, Snorlax without Rest and Golem are pokémon that hates burns, specially because they are slow pokémon, and slow pokémon means a lower critical hit rate.

However, if you are against Golem/Rhydon, you'll prefer to use Blizzard and just kill them with it. So, you're probably not gonna burn GolDon with Fire Blast, unless the enemy switches to one of them against Tauros (which is usually a very poor move).

Burn will also bother Zapdos, as it reduces Drill Peck's damage and makes it less threatning against Exeggutor and Reflectless Chansey.

3) Burning a Restless partial-trap user is a way to deny their utility, as they will take BRN damage on every turn they attack. So, if the foe switch-ins Restless Cloyster, Victreebel or Dragonite against a Tauros, they might get burned and reduce their usefulness.

4) Burning's damage helps fellow partial-trappers to sweep. Since burn damage happens every turn, moves like Wrap and Clamp are going to be more effective (Wrap damage + BRN damage every turn). So, if you happen to burn a Starmie and is successful at using Agility on your Dragonite in another turn, you'll kill Starmie much faster than without a burn. A Dragonite can kill a burned Gengar with Wrap, despite the fact that Wrap itself won't deal any damage.

This strategy is more effective when you burn slower pokémon, such as Chansey, Rhydon/Golem, Exeggutor and Snorlax, as you don't rely on Agility to make it work. Cloyster and Victreebel does not have Agility on their movepool, so, they won't enjoy any benefit if you launch a burn on Starmie (however, that will help a lot to deplete Chansey's life).

5) Burning a ReflectLax will force it to use Rest eventually. You can use a burned or Resting Snorlax as a setup bait to AgiliWrap Dragonite (Body Slam's para is the greatest risk you'll take here if Snorlax doesn't switch on the turn he gets burned).

Or, you can use that Rest turn as a free turn to do anything you want.

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I really think that 1) is the reason why they are using FB Tauros, and maybe 4). For the last case, BRN+Wrap combo was strong enough to change Onix's status from "complete garbage" to "hey, it can do something!", using Toxic/Bind/Explosion/EQ or Rock Slide; in this case, the strategy used PSN+Wrap, but the effect is roughly the same as BRN+Wrap. Usually, Starmie is the pokémon that you DO NOT want to burn, but with Moltres, the combo Agility + Fire Spin + Burn may turn over the table and make Starmie faint against the fire bird (so, a Moltres player actually wants a burned Starmie).

However, that's a very high risk strategy, since partial-trap moves are not accurate (Wrap has the highest accuracy among them, with 85%). And if you take things like Starmie and Agility setup turns into account, the risk is even higher.

Fire Blast itself is risky if your foe has a Frozen pokémon, as a pokémon on RBY will only thaw by using Haze against it, or attacking it with a Fire-type move that has a chance of burning the foe (Fire Spin won't thaw a pokémon).

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EDIT: Most of these strategies has great flaws, and they are the reason why FB is not used on Tauros. Tauros uses its standart moves most of the time (Body Slam/Hyper Beam/Earthquake/Blizzard), as it has a great coverage against most pokémon in RBY OU. Drop one of these moves for Fire Blast is risky as well, and the reward may not be so great.

 

Fire Blast has 30% burn chance in RBY (really more like 25% after you take into account misses). Using it against opposing Tauros really isn't the smartest idea since Tauros can crit through the burn and Blizzard has a freeze chance if you really want to play the odds, but who am I to tell people not to do stupid things?

Also hits Egg and Victreebel, although Blizzard is better at it because it's more accurate and also hits Zapdos/Dragonite/Rhydon/Golem.

FB is slightly better against Cloyster than Body Slam, but if you really want to beat Cloy with Tauros you should use an Electric move (for a 3HKO or inaccurate 2HKO rather than an inaccurate 4HKO).

 

Yeah I’m not sure where fire blast would ever be the best option. Cloyster is the only one I can think of but you might as well take thunderbolt if you’re picking a move just for that. Fire blast also risks burning stuff like stsrmie so it seems like lots of unnecessary risk for extrememly situationalgain.

 

wtf FB Tauros is still niche imo. Whether it's EQ or Blizz that you give up, that's really valuable coverage you're forgoing, while FB's only use is in the Tauros ditto (in every other situation you're better off using an actual attack), and even there its net advantage is marginal- although the burn chance is significant a miss is even more devastating and unlucky rolls can mean you fail to 3HKO the opposing Tauros (this is rare though)

Troller, a few of your points I disagree with. First is that Explosion vs Lap and Star is NOT something to be dismissed. Star requires less than 20% damage to be KO'd by it, which is very feasible chip damage, and something Cloy can get itself- Blizzard+Explosion is guaranteed to KO Star. As for Lap, there's obviously the stuff M9M worked on in terms of the matchup actually being roughly 50-50, which is itself notable, but it also indicates that Cloy can generate the KO itself... but it often doesn't really need to because Lap being slowish means it's very easy to revenge after an Explosion.

That said, I'm not disputing Star as an overall issue, while even with M9M's work regarding Lap, although it's significant I nonetheless have reservations about its practical relevance, so Lap is overall a fair point to bring up. I also don't buy that Jolt as a partner to Cloy is a strong argument- the pairing is really good itself, but fitting it onto a team will be a big issue

I don't think Rest Waters require GolDon/Jolt as a teammate. First is that it's obviously far from guaranteed that you'll encounter Zap, even if it is very common, and also many 5th slots will reveal themselves earlier than Zap will, so this would make Cloy clear to Rest within a reasonable timeframe. Even then its not unworkable, as it is possible to play around it.

Lastly I disagree that HBLax is a huge problem for Cloy. The biggest issue I have is that even with HB, Lax can only 4HKO Cloy, while it becomes a 5HKO if Lax just spams BSlam (technically a 4HKO is possible, but it requires all 4 attacks to be max rolls). This means that realistically Lax is only Rest looping Cloy, while Lax's dependence on HB for the 4HKO means that Cloy can often afford to take a risk with an attack before Resting again.

Anyway, I honestly think Cloy is better than most pokemon in B (not Jolt though lol), but I don't think it actually belongs in B. These rankings need an overhaul. B=>C, A-=>B. This has been long overdue, and we're going to be constantly getting posts along the lines of "wtf Golem should be in C" and "Cloy is better than most of B" until we actually do something about it. It seems there are a myriad of issues with the distinction between C and B, as almost every pokemon in those ranks has been brought up at some point, enough to say that they should be merged. Meanwhile, having A- and A+ is inaccurate, as it does not reflect that there really is a very significant gap between the mons currently in A- and A+. Also +/- is just unnecessary.

At this point if this doesn't get resolved we should just make this change anyway. If people have a problem with that and they don't say anything, that's on them (please say something now though). These problems aren't going away and they're only making this VR thread more inaccurate and less authoritative as long as we do nothing to address these issues.

 

Agrees with Ortheore. Please please update this thread, Enigami.
Just do it the way you please. If it is not perfect, people can argue about it after the changes to make some minor adjustments.

I like Ortheore's concept of dropping stuff from A to B (cause atm almost all the stuff is concetrated in S and A rank. B is still a good rank, and this should be reflected, by containing good Pokemon.
We can even argue based on the fresh SPL stats (people love to do this, as long as it aligns with their opinions [for example Zapdos being great, not so much if Zapdos suffered, they like to forget]). For convenience:

+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokemon | Use | Usage % | Win % |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1 | Snorlax | 225 | 98.68% | 50.22% |
| 1 | Chansey | 225 | 98.68% | 49.78% |
| 3 | Tauros | 218 | 95.61% | 48.17% |
| 4 | Exeggutor | 174 | 76.32% | 45.98% |
| 5 | Starmie | 155 | 67.98% | 52.26% |
| 6 | Alakazam | 97 | 42.54% | 52.58% |
| 7 | Rhydon | 67 | 29.39% | 52.24% |
| 8 | Zapdos | 45 | 19.74% | 35.56% |
| 9 | Jynx | 33 | 14.47% | 51.52% |
| 10 | Cloyster | 20 | 8.77% | 50.00% |
| 11 | Lapras | 19 | 8.33% | 26.32% |
| 12 | Victreebel | 17 | 7.46% | 52.94% |
| 13 | Jolteon | 15 | 6.58% | 66.67% |
| 14 | Gengar | 13 | 5.70% | 46.15% |
| 15 | Slowbro | 8 | 3.51% | 50.00% |
| 16 | Golem | 6 | 2.63% | 50.00% |
| 17 | Articuno | 3 | 1.32% | 100.00% |
| 18 | Moltres | 1 | 0.44% | 100.00% |
| 18 | Kingler | 1 | 0.44% | 100.00% |
| 18 | Omastar | 1 | 0.44% | 0.00% |
| 18 | Dragonite | 1 | 0.44% | 0.00% |
| 18 | Persian | 1 | 0.44% | 0.00% |
| 18 | Charizard | 1 | 0.44% | 0.00% |

We see a decline in Exeggutor. I was long opposed to dropping it to "S-", but if we want to open that can, I'd be fine with it by now. Meanwhile Starmie exploded and Alakazam is strong as ever. Rhydon is absolutely great. If people drop Exeggutor they are left with a free slot. Often it becomes even easier to fit Rhydon on those teams then. (Which explains his high usage and Zapdos win rate). To cut it short (without lenghthy explanation), here's what I'd implement as an update. (Just do something along those lines. Again: If people have a problem with it, we can still adjust those concerns afterwards, main thing is that something gets done!) Tried to rank withing ranks as well.

S
Tauros
Snorlax
Chansey
Exeggutor

A
Starmie
Alakazam

B
Rhydon
Zapdos
Lapras
Cloyster
Slowbro

C
Jynx
Victreebel
Gengar
Jolteon
Golem

D
Dragonite
Articuno
Moltres
Persian

[B gets kinda crowded, but well, Starmie is just so much better. Almost would have dumped Alakzam down to B as well, but we cannot make Starmie the lonely A, and dropping Eggy to A is too harsh. Thought about bumping Rhydon to A since it is currently the best of the bunch in B imo. People might not agree with me on that, but I'd fight the fight for Rhydon.]

 

Rhydon in A is too much, as much as i love it, the defensive flaws are abyssal. And i'm gonna say more, Jynx+Water on Rhydon is as much a "free win" as Rhydon on Zapdos really. It's been a while since i started saying that Zam is not Starm material and should drop at the very least to A- if not B+. Zapdos i won't stop arguing is the strongest filler and deserves to be over Zam and the others fillers easily, it's just so overwhelming and powerful, that even teams without Rhydon started trying Jolteon to avoid complete extermination.

 

So thinking in terms of conveying useful information I think the logical place to break AB is after Rhydon and Zapdos.

In that way it basically says "You probably need to have at least one team using each >= A pokemon". I mean unless you really know what you are doing, but in that case you shouldnt really care about anyone elses tierlist.

Then B works out as "These pokemon are great, but if you dont like them you could just never ever use them and youll be fine".

Then I agree with squashing B and C together. I mean does anyone really care if Slowbro is better overall than Jynx? Would you be doing anyone trying to learn the game a disservice by advocating either position?

Also not sure if I have mentioned this in this thread yet, but Tauros should be in a tier by itself. Tauros is the one pokemon that you just never drop if you are actually trying to do everything you can to win. Anything else can go, but if you arent using Tauros, you have either made a mistake or a conscious decision to handicap yourself.

 

I agree with this. Playing gen 1 extensively lately has led me to disregard the whole big 4 idea. At most you can make an argument for a big 2 in my opinion (tauros and chansey) but even then chansey is debatable. The only poke not debatable is tauros. I will disagree however that the only reason you wouldn't use tauros is for handicap or a mistake. A creative team that throws your opponent off is a huge advantage. I've made plenty of teams without tauros that have have performed well. And you can make the case that I was handicapping myself and would have won just as well with tauros, but I believe that bringing the unexpected is an advantage that throws your opponents game plan off and puts them out of their comfort zone. So not bringing tauros is actually a legitimate tactic in my mind.

 

Thanks Enigami for implementing changes, sorry if I was a bit forceful in how I expressed it, I was getting frustrated lol

Roostur, no-one's saying that you have to bring all members of the big 4 when they describe it as such. It's more that these pokemon just happen to be on 90% of serious teams, not that they're required.

I disagree with splitting after Don/Zap. The whole reasoning of "you need at least one team with all of these threats" doesn't reflect their viability. Whether or not you're susceptible to counterteaming has no bearing on an individual pokemon's merits.

Also I agree that Tauros is the only truly indispensible member of the big 4, as I don't believe there's any replacement that can justify the loss of value, and I would rather scrap a team than exclude Tauros. However, I don't think that there's an entire rank of difference between the other members of the big 4 and Tauros, just because Lax, Chans, and to a lesser extent Egg, are themselves not that far off must-pick status.

 

Can someone give me a summary of aerodactyl? He looks interesting on paper. Where does he fail and what are his strengths?

 

Aerodactyl (Pokémon)/Generation I learnset - Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia

- 3 STAB moves; two are charge-turn moves and the third is 35 BP
- Coverage consists of Normal moves and Fire Blast
- Only major statuses available are Poison via Toxic and Burn via Fire Blast
- Only minor statuses available are Confusion via Supersonic (55% accuracy) and Flinch via Bite (only 10% in RBY)
- Only setup of note is Reflect/Rest
- Weak to Ice (and Electric, but that's less of an issue).

 

Why is rest/reflect a notable set up? What does it accomplish?

 

Reflect/Rest is just generically a decent setup in RBY. Reflect protects you while you Rest (and lasts until switch-out in RBY). Snorlax sometimes uses it, Alakazam and Chansey often run Reflect/Recover and Reflect/Softboiled respectively, and there are a few Waters and pseudo-Waters that can use it (e.g. Slowbro, Articuno). It's generally worthy of note on most things that get Reflect, although most of the OU Pokemon have wide movepools and thus better things to do.

It's not really a great fit for Aerodactyl due to the gaping special weaknesses, but it does wall Lax that don't run a special move and Aerodactyl's movepool is pretty barren so it's not the worst idea imaginable.

 

I’m looking at his move pool and stats and from the looks of it, it seems as if he is just meant to use his high speed and attack to spam hyper beam, sky attack, or double edge. That awful special is so unfortunate.