RBY Ubers / 1P Viability Rankings

Surely some stuff like Rhydon / Golem might deserve a spot in B too though. When we have new frontiers on here for this meta we can have more experiments with these Pokémon and others.

 

Soo I had some games today, time to dump my thoughts

I used Lapras and it was overall kinda shitty. I used Rest/Ref/Blizz/Tbolt. It's a good check to physical attackers, but struggles against anything specially oriented, particularly M2. I mean, M2 doesn't like the threat of a Blizz freeze, but if it gets in there's no way you're going fishing for that while it sets up. C imo

Used Zam, it didn't do shit beyond paralysing Tauros due to luck. I think overall it's about what I expected, limited but still able to lead. C imo.

Zap's nice against most of the OUs, but it doesn't do shit against the ubers, meaning it can be a bit of a liability. Deserves to drop imo

Wrap is actually pretty decent if you're looking to spread paralysis. Like it's a good option for whittling down paralysed ubers if you can get it in for free (big if tho), while it also beats Bro. B worthy imo

 

Zap I think is that high for creating a psuedo Rock/Paper/Scissors system: Zap beats the Tanky OUs(Chance, Egg and Bro.) the Tanky OUs ar the only things that hang on par with the Ubers and can even potentiially beat them based on movepool. Ubers trash Zappy. Also having Agility in a tier where stat boosting is more common is probably a plus for the Instinct Bird too.

 

Lapras needs moves like CRay and Sing in case you want to use it. I think I'd use CRay+Rest, not that it would be any better than C, it's just not cut for Ubers.

Zapdos uses TWave against Ubers and does it reliably, that is something you need a dedicated team to take advantage of. It makes Hyper Beam Snorlax a lot better.

About Wrappers, I think you're talking about Victreebel more than Dragonite: I'm a bit surprised that Dnite can't even take an Ice Beam from Mewtwo. Exeggutor doesn't really take advantage of paralysis on Mews, Victreebel is a sleeper that does.

 

I think the letters need to move down a little. Yes, I know it's incredibly centralised, but the recent relettering just sounds silly. S is already a "breaks the scale"; inflation like this just makes me look askance at the whole list.

 

uh, I think S rank is fine in the other VR threads, like a pokemon doesn't have to be broken to still dominate the meta. That's what S rank ought to be; dominant, not just really good. Hypno in 2U is a good example of this.

In this instance its usage doesn't conform to that, Mew and M2 are the dominant ones, Chansey Lax and Bro are merely very good (and Zap doesn't even belong in that group). So yeah, probably change this thread but not the others

edit: regarding Zap, firstly, it isn't really a Chansey answer, since Chansey has a lot of tools to cripple Zap and it all becomes super RNG dependent. Secondly, requiring a dedicated team is if anything an argument against it being that rank, and Zap mandates a very specific aggressive style of play. Lastly, paralysing ubers is hardly noteworthy when it accomplishes nothing beyond that, and more to the point, it's not all that unique as for many players getting their Mewtwo paralysed is seen as an advantage, making landing para not all that difficult.

 

It should be listed under Tauros that it's also a lead

 

To be honest with you, I see a bigger gap between Snorlax and the rest of S rather than between Slowbro, Zapdos, Chansey, Exeggutor in any order.
How can you dislike Zapdos in a metagame where it does so well vs 4/6 of the standard team (Chansey, Snorlax, Slowbro, Exeggutor) and causes paralysis to the other 2/6 consistently? (and as Lutra said, Mew needs Zapdos paralyzed or a paraslam happening).
Notice that this game is really about switches, and in case Zapdos TWaves Mews, an unparalyzed Snorlax is not going to get paralyzed back by those.

Snorlax vs Reflect Mew isn't comfortable, but: 1) Reflect Mew is walled by Gengar, and it's not using Explosion
2) you should have a Mew of your own and a Mewtwo (+2 Mewtwo Ice Beam vs. Mew: 187-220 (46.4 - 54.5%)-- 60.3% chance to 2HKO)
3) for this reason (point 1, not using Explosion), one of the best ways to deal with Mew is paralysing it and force it out with Explosion (or Slowbro in case you have one, Zapdos could be fine too) - Snorlax can exploit paralysis to sweep like Tauros does late in the game.

 

I wouldn't say Zap does "well" vs Lax and Chansey, with Lax's power and bulk meaning it often trades with Zap, while Zap needs hax to beat Chansey, while getting 3hko'd in return. And as I said, paralysis isn't necessarily a good thing, given that it gives M2 such a massive advantage in the ditto. I'd argue that it should be avoided in most scenarios for that reason.

I also disagree with Lax>other 1Us, I'd much rather have Bro on my team, but it's still close overall which is why they're ranked together I guess

 

Slowbro can't take Mewtwo, while Snorlax takes everything one on one leaving alone Reflect variants.
What Slowbro does greatly is the Mew matchup, and that's why I could use Zapdos and Slowbro on the same team.

Zapdos isn't meant to go one on one against a fresh Chansey (it can beat it and generate some kind of 2X1 in the big picture, I mean take it out and cripple something else); trading with Snorlax is a great trait.

If you're talking about some Selfdestruct-less set, I agree that Snorlax is not better than the rest of OUs (it's great vs PhysLax in case it hase Reflect, or dangerous overall in case it has Amnesia+Ice), but that's not the way Snorlax performs better in Ubers.
At the end of the day most of our cosiderations depend on builds we use, but we're at a point where Selfdestruct Mewtwo is a real thing...

 

I don't see how Bro doesn't take M2 and Lax does, given that M2 lacking Tbolt simply lose to Bro (or trade?), while Lax can only die against M2 in a best case scenario. The worst case is obviously that you mispredict and throw away your Lax.

I'm still not seeing much reason to use Zap. You say that it's great against 4 of the top 1u pokemon but Chansey and Lax both neutralise it. When it comes to paralysing ubers, it's a question of whether your strategy is offensive or defensive. If you're playing defensively you never ever want to paralyse opposing ubers. If you're playing offensively then you want to pack multiple explosions (while also including some measure to not get 6-0'd by Barrier M2), which Zap doesn't help at all with- for a team that hinges on constantly pressuring the ubers, Zap really drops the ball a bit too much on that front. Also paralysing ubers is far from a distinctive characteristic, given that pretty much all defensive strategies hinge on it

Also the thing with the lettering never got sorted and I made a bunch of other noms that never received much comment

 

Victreebel is an easy B imo. It can have some difficulty switching in, but it is awesome against Bro, and Wrap is also really excellent in this metagame as an alternate means of punishing stuff that gets paralysed