RBY 4U (Under3U) Viability Rankings

Just a thought: seems weird to me that Marowak probably should be in D. Anyone tested it much though yet?

 

No psychic / ground weakness over Nidoqueen [so beats nidoking 1v1, and better abra matchup], can take nidoking's attacks better than duggy [eq 3hkos u], and again that lack of ground weakness in comparison to graveler. And stuff still doesn't love switching into its EQ, although it's easier than nidoking's of course.

So basically, the nidoking / abra MUs

fire blast acc --> nido vs wak is a gamble

 

Conceding it should be E; it's not dreadful or ineffective but its niche and viability is small, kinda like Pidgeot.

Now I have some proposals!

S -> A
Really. I think that whilst it acts as a great overall check to the metagame, it isn't too hard to break or to abuse; a crit can be the end for it, being paralyzed makes it very abusable / easy to break, it just doesn't fulfill as important of a niche as Venomoth or do its job anywhere near as well as Nidoking, I genuinely feel like Slowpoke is often the better and more dangerous mon. I feel like it should be on nearly every team, but I also say something similar about Slowpoke, and Blastoise / Omastar.

C -> B
There's such a small difference between it and Rapidash, I think that it's largely a matter of personal preference. They shouldn't be in separate ranks.

B -> A
As splashable as blastoise. Whilst you need another water check or two alongside, it's not hard to fit Porygon / Slowpoke and maybe a Staryu alongside, the extra power particularly on Hydro Pump is nice, and I don't see it as any less than blastoise. I pretty much auto-add Blastoise / Omastar to a teak but which I choose to go with comes down to a number of actors.

-

I also think D / E might want some re-evaluation.

 

Well Enigami already made the changes but I can still give an opinion:

I agree on Arcanine, I don't think one Fire is better than the other. I don't rly know about Omastar I never play it but I could see why you'd want it to A.

I disagree about Porygon, it has its weaknesses, true, but on the other hand it's the only recover user, it always costs a lot of ressources to take down (sometimes you have to use king and the opp can hit switch out), but the main thing I have in mind is that you need to paralyse it to kill it, and your own Porygon is your best tool, otherwise bar prediction you have to take paralysis on a mon that rly doesn't like it just to para the Porygon. BUT if Omastar is considered A (Hpump 2HKOs Pory) meaning it's common then I can see why you'd want to drop pory to A. These two changes make sense when done at the same time

I'm gonna suggest Nidoqueen to B, I don't have time to elaborate but it's rly a level above staryu and scyther imo, it's not that hard to fit in onto a team and it can be ridiculously annoying to beat endgame.

No opinions on E, and when I quickly look at D I think everything has its spot (I don't know what Dragonair does, never played with/against it) except Magneton maybe ? It's true that it could drop. Muk might need more testing too.

 

Wtf you never play Omastar? It's sooo good man u gotta try it. Srsly how come you never use it? I thought everyone did. It's on literally half of my serious teams [no D ranks].

I feel like it's kinda big Nidoking bait tho, it's not hard to bait twave / tbolt, psychic chips (which is welcome) but it is always forced to switch out crippled in a 1v1 if it stays in after tbolting/twaving/recovering into a nidoking, unless it stays in and crits psychic [note: not a drop. a psychic after a drop leaves nidoking alive. The trade can be worthwhile tho]. You just use it to sort of keep some special attackers in check [venomoth, abra, blastoise, fires] which is largely stuff slowpoke can do too [slowpoke doesn't have recover tho ofc, but it does check omastar unlike porygon]. Furthermore, whilst it's easier to break when paralyzed, and not too hard to bait into paralyzing, that's not even really nesscary, as I said that you can just use it to let in nidoking. It can almost trade, which means that just forcing it into a situation where it's in range of 2 EQs before you switch in then just using Porygon puts you in a bad spot, especially if the nidoking user has a nidoqueen in the back too. Just to me, in practice is doesn't really do much, and it has real downsides as well as upsides. It doesn't always feel like S material to me, or at least I feel like if we're not moving Porygon to A, we should move Slowpoke to S because it fairly consistently does more damage.

Definitely a level above Staryu, idk about Scyther tho. No-one uses Scyther enough, I still don't really have a good sense of how useful it is in battle tho. That being said I think it's not entirely out of place to have Nidoqueen in B, but I want a bit more testing of it and Scyther.

Dragonair: powerful wrap based stuff, it was fairly effective from before looking at it. Should test it more
Electrode: Hard to decide: is it dong or just D? Its utility depends also on how popular Nidoqueen is.
Machamp: Does it ever really help you win games? It feels to me like running it is usually just giving yourself less chance towin for little reason.
Ninetales / Poliwag: Fine
Muk: Needs more testing too
Weepinbell: I've never used it but I guess it could be kinda useful. D does sem fair, I should probably build with it some time.
Magneton: E seems fair to me.
I feel like Wak could go F -> E and I feel like we need to decide what out of E/F is just a weak choice and what's a total gimmick.

Also I don't really feel like the lead ranks hould be there / are all that accurate. Leads are very rock/paper/scissors anyway, and this is fires > [abra / venomoth] > waters > fires, with abra > venomoth, and then less relevant is Poliwag, whilst ninetales is the same as fires but a bit less effective for various reasons. Also of note is arcanine vs rapidash and omastar vs blastoise MU and the fact Oma 2HKOs Porygon. But there's already the leads thread which covers it in greater detail.

 

I think there's a legitimate case for Seadra to bemoved t D but I think Lusch should make the cas since he has the most experience with it.

 

Yes. it has a rather good matchup vs Nidoking thanks to the speed tie and 2HKOing without a crit while never being 2HKOed in return without a crit and waters are never really bad since electrics are basically nonexistent. It struggles against slowpoke but so does Omastar and that is A rank, D rank is definitely fine.

btw, I never get alerted when u tag me in a post DA, which is weird since I do get alerted when Ortheore tags me (for example in the lower tier tours threads)

 

[btw eni feel free to swap muk and weezing after that analysis]

and yea supporting Seadra to D.

I think its main downside is that it is almost entirely outclassed by Blastoise et al. but it can and should be run alongside but it leads to somewhat limited and fairly non-standard teambuilding.

 

weezing to E, muk to F, both are dong, read skype logs~
can repost discussionhere if requested but it boils down to the fact that you can usually get better use out of other stuff in that slot.

 

Wonder if maybe Seadra should be C rank.

 

Drowzee is at the very least D rank. I've been playing it over Slowpoke in a lot of standard builds with TW/Rest/Psychic/SToss and it's just good. It switches in on all non-DoubleEdge Porygons and forces them out with powerful Psychics / threat of paralysis, it walls Slowpoke for a decent bit (psychic deals 28.7-34 at +4 and 38.6-45.5 at +6) and forces him to Rest which you can then punish with threat of sleep or a well-timed Nidoking switch, it takes jack shit from non-DoubleEdge Venomoth and retaliates hard, it's a decent Staryu check (Psy has a 5.8% chance of 2HKO even though Staryu does chunk with Pump pretty hard if it's running that), it can come in on Abra and paralyze for you to abuse with a well-timed switchback, and it just has a really easy time in general coming in on stuff and spreading paralysis. It mostly plays like Slowpoke but trades the Amnesia cleanup potential and a decent amount of physical bulk for a significant improvement in immediate power, but a lack of Electric weakness makes it an effective Porygon switchin and that is a very significant upside, although it does lose Water and Fire resists so you do have to account for that in teambuilding and that does keep the Drowz from being too great.

If I'm being completely honest I feel like Drowzee is a solid B-tier personally, but I do realize that's very much excessive for the time being and movements above D have to be discussed further, after more testing with the Drowz as well. For now though, absolutely do move it out of F-rank. There's just no way this guy is worse than junk like Butterfree when it consistently switches freely on Venomoth and Porygon and either gets a TW off or threatens STAB Psychic from 90 Special, that alone is enough to carve him a great niche - plus it does some other stuff. It's a weird middle ground between Slowpoke and Abra, and both of these are great mons, soo...

EDIT: Guess I should add on what I think is Drowzee's main drawback compared to these two: interactions with Nidoking. Slowpoke just deals well enough against it to the point where Nidoking can't ever think about switching in if not on exactly the turn Poke clicks rest, and Abra outspeeds and threatens as well, but if Nidoking switches in on Drowzee's TWave, that is definitely an issue and you do need some back up answer for these situations - and answers to Nidoking aren't exactly easy to come by. Still, Nidoking has to risk the Psychic when switching in, and still Drowzee can often trade its life to chunk Nido for 60-70 even when things go badly, but it's still much worse at dealing with it than the other two so I guess that should be brought up when talking about the Drowz.

 

I think it could go to C for now, below the line. It seems that good to me. But D is definitely a good starting point, Ninja is right it doesn't belong in F. I have the scars to prove it xD

 

I've been playing Drowzee a bunch during wchamp, it was definitely an overlooked mon, but I don't think it's B rank at all. In fact I consider it C and I'd move it there, not higher. (btw i used twave/psychic/toss/hypnosis, i wouldn't go with rest as its a call to get nidoking'd, and hypnosis makes it a good back up sleeper with moth lead, tangela is v good but can be offensively unsatisfying at times)

I don't think it's consistent enough for B (we're talking about a rank where you got the fire types), it gets paralysed easily by porygon/slowpoke and then you just dance around the psychics. It lets slowpoke set up which you don’t want (you can go to nido on the poke rest but well doesn’t make the match-up good). Most of the thing it switches into have either thunder wave or stun spore which makes it hard for it to express itself (and it makes it easy to pressure, you have so many tools). The bulk over abra and hypnosis are nice, but the ability abra has to directly threaten most of the thing it faces makes it better, and that crit rate in a tier like 4U makes a huge difference at times where you have to switch into psychics.

I think comparing it to other C ranks is interesting : scyther, staryu and nidoqueen are all perfectly good pokemon but they’re inconsistent and have trouble doing things by themselves, they need support, cleaning up, para spread, whatever it is, whereas B rank mons and above are always going to do smth. Staryu is too frail sometimes, scyther doesn’t have good set up opportunities other than sleeping mons and loses to nidoking most of the time, nidoqueen hardly allows you to make good comebacks and when you’re not in the leading position with it you wish you had a water type instead.

I think the level of drowzee’s flaws go along with the other C mons : consistency problems. I think it’s really good against teams who don’t have porygon + a psychic type (which shouldn’t be common), but it has a hard time against the most standard teams. I’d definitely use it over all of D ranks.

C rank. Probs at the bottom of it

(on a diff note i think slowpoke can be rly ridiculous at times and the only way i’ve found to not get bothered too much by it is by overprepping and having the most hostile possible teams. i wouldn't change anything else in the ranks btw)

 

What? Drowzee doesn't let Poke set up at all, unless you FP an abnormal amount of times. You force the Rest with Seismic Toss, and then you can just Seismic Toss again on the Rest turn. Poke dies to SToss + x2 EQ from Nidoking, so if he rest (faster than you bc Amnesia speed drops) it eats a Toss, you switch to Nido on the sleep turn, EQ on the wake turn, and EQ again threatens a clean KO. With average paralysis luck I'd say Drowzee is pretty fucking great at luring Slowpokes out and baiting them into death in fact.

I agree with all your points about inconsistency, but if there's one thing Drowzee's consistent at, is the way it lures out Pokes because nothing else likes to take Psychics usually. As consistent as yellow magic allows you to be anyway.