RBY OU What is the best Poison Type in RBY OU/1U?

I think people are pretty high on Victreebel these days, maybe placing it above Gengar. I'm just interested in whether people think it's actually the best Poison-type in RBY OU now?

 

In my opinion Vic is the best poison type in RBY OU.
Gengar is the second best competitive posion type and besides them there are no really competitive Pokemon.
Arbok is outclassed by other wrappers, Venusaur is outclassed by Vic since it doesn't have Wrap, Muk is trash and my beloved Venomoth doesn't have any good stab move, although it has at least the merit of being the fastest sleep powder user of the tier.
The 2 Nido have some merits, but i don't think they need to be considered usable in OU: we need to distinguish what is really strong, from what is instead just fun to use.

Something really interesting is that the best poison type of the tier is walled by all the other poison type.

 

I agree with Enigami: the gap between #2 and #3 is too big. Some poison type are fun, but not good enough for the tier.
Probably the best one, leaving aside the first two, is indeed Venu, but there aren't many good reasons to play him instead of Vic.
How many players would choose Venu instead of Vic when taking the team to use?

Ps: i've used both Butterfree and Venomoth and i agree with you when you say they are both trash. Butterfree's ground immunity is "good" but don't forget that it makes it weak to electric/ice moves too, which are everywhere. Also, Venomoth outspeeds Cloyster, Victrebell and Venusaur, instead Butterfree goes in speed tie with the first 2 and it's slower than the third one.
It's not easy to decide which one sucks the most, but I would personally use Venomoth (in fact I used it at r1 of mt53 and for some reasons it made me won the game xD).

 

I think you could plausibly argue that Venu is better than Bel purely as an SDer- the bulk I think is more important than Bel's attack, since it allows Venu to fare better against Normals and Don, whereas Bel's attack power mostly matters against Zam and Jolt. Also there's the speed difference, which is more relevant than ever. Tbh last time I was building a team I strongly considered Venu because I was considering adding a Grass attacker and also wanted stronger Don coverage. Of course, Venu's advantage as an SDer is slim, and Bel brings soooo much more to the table in other regards that it easily overshadows Venu.

Anyway, I haven't actually used Bel lately, but I can totally buy into Bel being better than Gar- Gar's all but disappeared as a lead and it's a somewhat niche option in the 5th slot, so overall it doesn't have a huge role. As for Venu I think it's easily 3rd place. The only knock against it is that it's outclassed, but were it not for that it would easily be a usable pokemon in its own right. I don't think any of the other Poison types can claim that, I consider them all totally unviable. That said, I could be sleeping on Tenta, my experience with it is limited. At they very least its offensive potential is strong- comparing it to Cuno really highlights this, but idk its poor defensive utility prob holds it back. So Bel, Gar and Venu are the only Poison types I consider viable, Tenta could maybe be added to that list, but all the others I don't think are worth using.

 

Bel's attack power also gives it a better chance of ohkoing chansey at +2 iirc

 

Venusaur can't, by rather a large margin (it has a pretty good chance to fail to OHKO Zam with +2 Hyper Beam, and can't 2HKO Chansey with +2 Body Slam). Victreebel has 17.9%.

 

yeah I forgot the exact details, point is vic's extra attack matters

 

You guys said pretty much it all; other than that, Victreebel is far better than Gengar because it can sweep while Gengar can't.
Rhydon being popular lately helped a lot too: not only Razor Leaf OHKOs, Gengar has a bad time against it (and that's also after you succeded in taking Chansey out and paralysing Starmie) and on the other hand Bel pales when it's facing Zapdos while Gengar can somewhat fight it.
Can Venusaur sweep? That's hard, it definitely doesn't come with the same ease of having Wrap and I think it justifies Gengar>Venusaur because Gengar still has a respectable role of blanking booms and walling awkward movesets of Lax/Tauros. I think Gar vs Venusaur is actually a close call and that's all Poison-Type has to say in RBY OU.
Tentacruel has some decent raw power, but no access to status - at least it speed ties Zapdos but Blizzard + +2HB should be only 50%ish to KO; in my little experience, Tauros hurts A LOT.

1. Victreebel 2. Gengar 3. Venusaur 4. Tentacruel 5. Haunter (theoretically)

 

Gengar is obviously better than Victreebel. Victreebel is non-existent in the ladder, while Gengar is unpopular at the very least.

Lead Gengar's usefulness isn't limited to it's lead matchups and it will always be a solid option for many different team comps no matter how common Alakazam and Starmie leads are. Immunity to Explosions and Wrap, walling most EQ-less Snorlax sets, free switches into Body Slams and Hyper Beams, and easy double switches into EQ resistant/immune teammates. The ability to outright demolish a long list of less common pokemon, for example Victreebel, Cloyster, Persian and like half of the random UU pokemon your enemy might try. Gengar might not sweep entire teams alone, but with it's great utility, general unpredictability and Explosion even non-lead Gengar has been rising in popularity in the past years.

 

Nidoking In Game, Vic & Gar in Meta.

 

Never really used it myself. I suppose it's good as a generalist, but it's not really much of a specialist and needing the EQ TM to get STAB isn't great. Venusaur and Victreebel are pretty strong contenders since they learn Sleep Powder (for captures) and Razor Leaf is crazily powerful.

 

Depends on what kind of in-game you're looking at (speedrun? something that more resembles how an average player plays?) but the Nidoran line is considered better than the 'saurs due to a far superior early phase—Horn Attack at a low level (instead of Tackle), final phase at level 16, better attack typing (many if not most trainer Pokémon resist Grass), and much better coverage with TMs. It gets closer/less clear if you're just looking at mid- or endgame. I'm partial to Tentacruel as best endgame poison-type (water pokes are pretty much always good in-game and Tentacruel's stat line is as good as it gets)

 

Well, I mean, the elephant in the room here is that Pokemon R/B is so easy that you can do whatever you want and still win.

I will say that having a sleeper is pretty darned important to the "catch 'em all" goal, though. Saurs and Bels aren't the earliest sleepers available (earliest is obviously Butterfree), but they're pretty good through the midgame (endgame less so, as like the vast majority of sleepers they get torn apart by the legends' STAB moves).

What I was also getting at is that with limited TM availability Nidorans are a rather major opportunity cost. I mean, so are most of the OUs, but at least there's a point to spending them on those.

 

Venusaur does not even get Sleep Powder in the earlier stages of the game. It leans it at level 55 which is pretty damn late for in-game purposes (even if hypothetically you keep it as Bulbasaur to learn it earlier, it'll still only learn it at lv 41). Oddish (lv 19) and Bellsprout (lv 18) and Butterfree (lv 17) are the ones you should be talking about in that regard, which leaves Bellsprout and Oddish if we only talk Poison types. But the problem there is that Bellsprout is a million times better even in-game than Oddish (Vine Whip+Gowth early on vs Absorb, Razor Leaf vs Petal Dance later, and that's not even talking about Wrap) and it is only available on Blue.
About TMs, I wanna mention that even with Razor Leaf and in-game being easy, Venusaur/Ivysaur desperately needs the Body Slam TM to succeed because Grass is just such a poor offensive type and stuff that resist it like Poison or Flying types are pretty common in the games.