All Gens Most Dominant Pokemon in History II

[Jellicent]

to break it down into less subjective terms, how about OU > banned > viable/BL > not exist > UU

pretty much, though obviously how effective something is in OU is a major point of discussion. lax > tar in GSC, for example, while tar > lax in ADV and DPP. it's especially important when looking at say starmie vs zap. zap fell to UU in BW, but was it a more dominant pokemon overall in history? gar vs starm also looks interesting, since both were OU each gen, but to varying degrees of dominance each time.

those 5 also happen to be good contenders for top 5 overall, so how we rank effectiveness in OU will be a definite factor.

 

[magic9mushroom]

I'm not really a GSCer myself. I'd probably say it's less than Eggy and company, on par with Nido and friends, above Champ and others.

Something approximating that, yes (I'd say Nido's a bit better than Tar myself).

The issue was that there were a ton of people saying "zomg amazing top 5 lol" which is crap; Tyranitar just struggles to do anything in GSC besides provide Pursuit support (and it has issues even there; it can't safely Pursuit two of the four OU Pursuit targets) and Roar out non-EQ Lax.

I'm guessing you mean Wrap vs Wrapless metas here? Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, we're looking at Wrap meta since it's Smogon's current official RBY.

Not exactly. The main issue is that Gengar is heavily dependent on prediction skill; if you can consistently predict Explosions, fake out opponents into using useless attacks, and land Mega Drain on Rocks it's Starmie/Alakazam tier even in a Wrapless meta but if you suck at using it and get outpredicted it's garbage and around Jynx tier. It's also dependent on the state of the meta - ie, how many people are using Starmie/Alakazam leads, how many people are using Lapras/Cloyster/Dragonite (also Victreebel and Persian but those don't fluctuate as much), how many people are using Psychic on Starmie. It also kinda depends on what else you have on your team - for instance, Gengar and Articuno (or to some extent Dragonite) have substantial synergy beyond the capabilities of the individual Pokemon. Gengar's in general pretty hard to nail down.

 

[Jorgen]

I think most gens have a pretty much undisputable top 4-5 that should count above the rest of the plebes in OU, and equal among themselves. Otherwise, fan favorites Ttar and Lax would need to be shoved underneath Starmie, who's nominally OU in all 5 gens.

RBY: Tauros/Chansey/Snorlax/Egg - literally indisputable top 4. Zam's probably #5, but there's a huge drop-off.

GSC: Snorlax/Zapdos - This one's the exception to the 4-5 rule, because it's Snorlax's world and everyone else is just living in it. Zapdos is a pretty clear #2 though, and I don't know how I feel about Raikou at the moment (personally I'm not loving it), but right now it's the same rank as Zapdos in the viability rankings, and that's probably where it belongs. It's a pretty clear #3 either way, so even if there's a notable drop-off between it and Zapdos, there's another one between it and the rest of the cast. The rest of the mons don't really compare to these 3, although my gut wants to give Cloy special recognition because Spikes are just that good, and also Skarm/Cune because they define what entails optimal offensive play, even though optimal play makes them kinda mediocre.

ADV: Ttar/Celebi/Gengar/Suicune - Snorlax might have a case for being the 5th ranger here. Probably not though, and it's not top rank in the viability ranking thread, unlike the others.

DPP: Heatran/Starmie/Rotom-A/Ttar/Rachi - I think George posted this set in another thread with some likes (and therefore consent) from other people who actually know DPP. Also it's the top 5 in the viability thread.

BW: Toed/Ttar/Rachi/Garchomp/Keldeo - Look, I'm just going by the BW viability ranking here, I know very little of post-Lando-I (i.e., RoA-era) BW. Seems about right though.

 

[Borat]

gonna try and address everything all at once, bear with me.

pretty much, though obviously how effective something is in OU is a major point of discussion.

right, but the point is ANY ou pokemon automatically gets more imaginary points than something that was banned (e.g. gsc celebi) or something that didn't exist (rby ttar). then we move on to set the precedent that being banworthy (e.g. gsc celebi) would then earn more points than non-existent shit.

however, i think the bigger (biggest?) point of debate is whether it's better to compare across gens where they were dominant (e.g. comparing gsc snorlax with adv ttar), or sticking to gen boundaries (gsc snorlax vs gsc ttar), or a bit of both?

with the rby gengar argument, i don't think wrap is the only factor. i think there's two very distinct sides, one who thinks gengar is great for explosion absorbing and having the fastest sleep in the game, worth a spot on every team along with goldon for a ~top 5 rby slot. and there's the other side that thinks gengar is meh even in wrap heavy metas, and barely squeaks by ou altogether, and see it's weakness to eq/psychic, two of the most popular coverage moves in the game, a severe disadvantage. i'm part of the latter group. i'm not saying i'm right, but i am saying i'm definitely not wrong. walling persian is hardly an argument.

gsc ttar, mixtar more specifically, shits on explosion teams. mixtar is lackluster against every other lineup. i think it can "safely" pursuit gengar for all intents and purposes. dpunch gengar is not legit, and will never be legit.

in any case, i'm down to chalk down ttar for #1.

edit: i think gen 1 gengar is very comparable to gen 2 starmie for what its worth -- two severely overrated pokemon for the better half of their time, a misconception so deeply rooted in each generation that it still lingers to this day. ironically, i think gen 1 starmie and gen 2 gengar is also pretty god damn similar. two flexible fuckers with incredible offensive "potential", that sometimes also falls flat on their face not accomplishing jack shit solely due to matchups. great pokemon though. so whichever one is better 3-5 gets my vote, as they're dead even first two gens.

 

[BKC]

I think Zapdos is top 5 in ADV but if not him it's definitely Snorlax. DPP one is accurate. BW is Jirachi/Keldeo/Garchomp/Politoed/Rotom-W

 

[Isa]

i think there's two very distinct sides, one who thinks gengar is great for explosion absorbing and having the fastest sleep in the game, worth a spot on every team along with goldon for a ~top 5 rby slot.

this group went out of existence a few years ago. you keep making references to it but it's a goner.

 

[Mr.E]

RBY: Tauros/Chansey/Snorlax/Egg - literally indisputable top 4. Zam's probably #5, but there's a huge drop-off.

I dispute based on the grounds that Zam is probably better than both Chansey and Snorlax. Not that it matters as far as the topic is concerned, because Zam is pretty niche in GSC and falls off a cliff after that.

 

[MoxieInfinite]

...except its pretty nice in bw i guess, seen it a bunch on sandstall/balance where i think its pretty great. But not enough to slot it a top 10 spot anyway.

 

[Isa]

zam is absolutely not top 4 in rby. probably #5 - still not close to top 4.

top 4 in rby is exactly what jorgen said (i disagree on internal ordering but eh) and it is literally indisputable.

 

[magic9mushroom]

with the rby gengar argument, i don't think wrap is the only factor. i think there's two very distinct sides, one who thinks gengar is great for explosion absorbing and having the fastest sleep in the game, worth a spot on every team along with goldon for a ~top 5 rby slot. and there's the other side that thinks gengar is meh even in wrap heavy metas, and barely squeaks by ou altogether, and see it's weakness to eq/psychic, two of the most popular coverage moves in the game, a severe disadvantage. i'm part of the latter group. i'm not saying i'm right, but i am saying i'm definitely not wrong. walling persian is hardly an argument.

edit: i think gen 1 gengar is very comparable to gen 2 starmie for what its worth -- two severely overrated pokemon for the better half of their time, a misconception so deeply rooted in each generation that it still lingers to this day.

"Barely squeaks by OU"? No. No way. "Barely squeaking by OU" is the "shit four" of Articuno/Jolteon/Persian/Victreebel. Gengar's definitely above those (in some respects it's literally a better version of Jolteon), and it's probably above Jynx (Jynx is more of a suicide lead than Gengar is, and their worth as leads can't really be compared due to RPS loop). Whether it's better than the other "meh" OUs (Cloy, Nite, Zap, maybe even Pras and GolDon) is largely a matter of skill with Gar. Definitely not as good as Mie/Zam let alone the top 4 though.

zam is absolutely not top 4 in rby. probably #5 - still not close to top 4.

top 4 in rby is exactly what jorgen said (i disagree on internal ordering but eh) and it is literally indisputable.

Well, it's clearly not "literally indisputable", since he's disputing it right there.

I dispute based on the grounds that Zam is probably better than both Chansey and Snorlax. Not that it matters as far as the topic is concerned, because Zam is pretty niche in GSC and falls off a cliff after that.

Chansey can take STAB special attacks and non-STAB physical attacks; Zam can't. Also, both need to be paralysed to wall Ice-equipped opponents in the long run; Chansey is less easily exploited with double-switches than a paralysed Zam and gets more non-Recover moves off, as Zam needs to maintain 81%+ to avoid the guaranteed Tauros Hyper Beam OHKO while Chansey only needs 63%. As such Zam's rather unwieldy whereas Chansey has more room to manoeuvre.

Snorlax has far more offensive utility and even probably more defensive utility than Zam, thanks to hitting on the physical side and having Selfdestruct. And TankLax basically IS ReflectZam except it's better. No clue what you're on about here.

 

[Borat]

"Barely squeaking by OU" is the "shit four" of Articuno/Jolteon/Persian/Victreebel.

time to fix the god damn tiers if those are ou. gengar is undisputedly shittier than goldon, thats the whole argument.

edit: http://www.smogon.com/dex/rb/tags/ou

they aren't so... let me re-emphasize: gengar barely squeaks by rby ou as one of its most situational options, with two clearly superior alternatives. it's literally gsc starmie.

i disagree on internal ordering but eh

i dont think his post is meant to be ordered. ordering is sort of the whole point of this thread.

 

[magic9mushroom]

gengar barely squeaks by rby ou as one of its most situational options, with two clearly superior alternatives.

Didn't you yourself point out recently that everything besides Zapdos and Jolteon potentially 2HKOs or OHKOs Rhydon and Golem, and that they're slow as fuck?

Also, taking ~30% from booms sucks, and they're threatened about as much by all the Exploders.

 

[Borat]

Didn't you yourself point out recently that everything besides Zapdos and Jolteon potentially 2HKOs or OHKOs Rhydon and Golem, and that they're slow as fuck?

that wasn't me. in any case, the opposite of that is true also. rhydon/golem deals insane amounts of damage to all special attackers bar egg. 3hko vs lax/tauros, which is pretty much the same as the hardest hitting special attackers. what about gengar? isn't that gengar's number 1 complaint? that it's wholly mediocre offensively (and by mediocre, that's euphemism for sucks major cockballs). even his explosion blows asshole. defensively, it's pretty meh too all things considered. if you don't factor in absorbing explosions which clearly it does better than everything, it does what else defensively? take se attacks from everything in the game [besides chansey] basically.

gengar's shit. comparing it to the likes of jolteon and victreebel doesn't exactly help its case. if anything, that really shows where it stands in the bigger picture of things. granted, gengar IS better than those two, so fucking what?

 

[Jorgen]

This is getting kind of off-topic, but one underrated thing about Gengar is that it helps back up Chansey against Lapras.

Back on-topic, Gengar is rightfully OU for RBY in these rankings if we're still going by that objective metric. It's not doing the heavy lifting for a team the way the big 4 are (or even some "normal" OUs like Lapras and Alakazam), but the sum of the little niches and situations where it's immensely useful is pretty substantial.

 

[magic9mushroom]

gengar's shit.

This needs its own thread.

 

[Borat]

This is getting kind of off-topic, but one underrated thing about Gengar is that it helps back up Chansey against Lapras.

Back on-topic, Gengar is rightfully OU for RBY in these rankings if we're still going by that objective metric. It's not doing the heavy lifting for a team the way the big 4 are (or even some "normal" OUs like Lapras and Alakazam), but the sum of the little niches and situations where it's immensely useful is pretty substantial.

rightfully ou of course, but how is he on the grander scheme of things? i propose a methods of going about determining some sort of objectivity: one giant "viability" ranking, where each pokemon can have up to 5 different entries for each of its gens. then we determine some sort of scoring system for each tier, either flat or variable, then just total it up. e.g.

S. GSC snorlax

A. RBY Tauros, RBY snorlax, Adv Ttar

B. GSC Zapdos, RBY Chansey, etc

alternatively, we can give these tiers different names and have each person chime in on which poke/gen combination belongs where. going back to jellicent's original suggestion, but adding more tiers.

1. GSC Snorlax tier
2. dominating OU tier (hopefully just 1 per gen, maybe 2. this is the best of the best from each gen)
3. 2ndary but still dominating OU (should be still S ranks on most versatility lists. whatever remains from jorgen's top 4 lists basically)
4. versatile OU stuff, ubiquitous pokemon (unquestionably A ranks should fall here)
5. pretty good but starting to get nichey stuff. but still unquestionably OU pokemon (lower parts of A, but mostly B rank essentially)
6. mostly metagame dependent stuff; situational at this point (hopefully we're still in B rank)
7. banned pokemon
8. non-existent
9. non-ou (although i think if you don't show up on any of the viability lists, it should count against you)

obviously it's going to be more saturated as we go down the rankings, but ideally we weed out shit pretty heavily in the first 4 ranks to figure out who's who. we want to reward a pokemon for being DOMINANT, instead of giving everyone "ehh he was there" points. so something like snorlax/ttar would benefit from this particular emphasis.

alternatively, you can reward consistency by making less tiers. e.g. dominant -> ou -> not-ou, and something like starmie/gengar/zapdos would benefit more here.

basically, do we care more about MVPs or all-star team appearances?

 

[Jorgen]

Oh, see that has a lot more subjective sub-divisions than the original system of (Top 4/5)>OU>Banned>BL>Nonexistent>UU. I don't think I like subdividing OU further than that, although I guess if there really is a consensus #1 in a given tier, that Pokemon can be put on a pedastal.

I'm not really a big fan of comparing dominance of same-tiered Pokemon across generations the way Snorlax in S and Tauros in A implies unless there's an objective measure of it. At least you have tier placements as a basis for within-meta dominance comparisons. I mean, it might work if there were some index that takes that Pokemon's usage in each tier and normalizes by the L2-norm of the rest of the OU Pokemons' usage (to weight by centralization of, say, RBY w.r.t. DPP). If we wanted a similar objective measure for the top X of a tier (or other subdividsions, which currently have only subjective justification), we could use this and look for within-tier elbows.

 

[Longfellow]

Well, if we're gonna go with dominant > OU > Banned > BL > Non-existent > UU, it's trivial to make at least a preliminary ranking. I drafted this up based on the Smogon tiers (and I know that especially for BL they don't exactly fit what we're talking about, but I'm sure we can hash that out later) and on Jorgen's list above of the top Pokémon in each gen. I counted Jolteon as BL in gen 1 and Raikou as dominant in gen 2.

If being dominant is worth three times as much as just being OU, and all other states being worth close to zero, we get:

10: Tyranitar (3 dominant, 1 OU, 1 non-existent)

~8: Snorlax (1 super-dominant, 1 dominant, 2 OU, 1 unused)

7: Jirachi (2 dominant, 1 OU, 2 non-existent)
Gengar/Starmie (1 dominant, 4 OU)

6: Zapdos (1 dominant, 3 OU, 1 unused)

5: Celebi (1 dominant, 2 OU, 1 banned, 1 non-existent)
Suicune (1 dominant, 2 OU, 1 non-existent, 1 unused)

4: Heatran/Rotom-A (1 dominant, 1 OU, 3 non-existent)
Raikou (1 dominant, 1 OU, 1 BL, 1 unused, 1 non-existent)
Exeggutor (1 dominant, 1 OU, 1 BL, 2 unused)
Jolteon (4 OU, 1 BL)
Blissey/Forretress/Skarmory (4 OU, 1 non-existent)
Cloyster (4 OU, 1 unused)

3: Chansey (1 dominant, 3 BL, 1 unused)
Garchomp (1 dominant, 1 banned, 3 non-existent)
Keldeo (1 dominant, 4 non-existent)
Politoed (1 dominant, 3 unused, 1 non-existent)
Tauros (1 dominant, 1 BL, 3 unused)
Dragonite (3 OU, 2 BL)
Metagross (3 OU, 2 non-existent)
Gyarados/Vaporeon (3 OU, 2 unused)

This is pretty close to what was being suggested already.

I like the idea of further dividing OU into Pokémon that actually do something in the tier (even if they aren't dominant) versus those who were just there. I think part of what feels "dominant" about a Pokémon across generations is that it imposes itself. To that end, I feel that the difference between, say, gen 1 Starmie and gen 1 Persian is bigger than the difference between gen 1 Persian and gen 1 Gyarados, even though the first two are OU and Gyarados is UU.

 

[Borat]

I'm not really a big fan of comparing dominance of same-tiered Pokemon across generations the way Snorlax in S and Tauros in A implies unless there's an objective measure of it.

there is, hopefully. a tier list once compiled can easily translate into a scoring system.

i don't think there's access to any form of reliable usage stats for the first 3 gens though. it's all up to your head now professor x. although for the most part, there's a definite best 1-2 in each gen, with a slight drop off to 3-4-5, before moving on to the rest of ou. there's a pretty distinct two step power creep.

i'm fine with less tiers, but i do think dominance should be rewarded heavier, perhaps not as drastic as the 3-1-0 approach longfellow's using, but similar. on a 10 point system: 10 the best, 7 dominant, 5 for ou, 3 banned, 1 BL, 0 for non-existent, -whatever for UU. i think a pokemon should be punished for not making at least BL in this case.

 

[magic9mushroom]

i don't think there's access to any form of reliable usage stats for the first 3 gens though. it's all up to your head now professor x.

http://stats.pokemon-online.eu/

 

[Borat]

i don't think there's access to any form of reliable usage stats for the first 3 gens though. i hardly think usage rates dictated by current "pool" of players are indicative of some actual stable/elite metagame.

 

[Jorgen]

From a first glance, the top 20 or so for a given month of PO usage stats for RBY or GSC tends to look about right, even if the ordering is off from month to month. Older gens tend to stagnate, so you should be able to pool across months to weed out the noise. I think those usage stats are close enough to what "elite" players would use to make the data usable (at least in terms of the Pokemon, can't say much for the set frequencies).

If the problem is that it doesn't assess what usage was like when these were the main gens, it seems from this thread and our hatred of all things currently banned that the contemporary metagame for each generation is given a fuckton more weight than any past iterations thereof. Still, it is a problem, because history should be accounted for in some manner.

Now that I've mulled over it a bit, I guess I don't have a huge problem with adding one more subdivision to OU to account for stuff like the Starmie-Persian divide that Longfellow pointed out.

I agree that being UU should be penalized. Otherwise the metric is biased too much toward merely existing. Granted, that bias is inevitable, but I'd rather it be subtle and indicative of a lack of data on newer Pokemon, rather than an actual point in favor of older, mediocre Pokemon. If that makes sense. -1 seems an appropriate deduction, enough to cancel out receiving the BL participation award in another gen. That being said, whatever penalty we impose probably shouldn't matter too much for the Pokemon we ultimately select. They should all be getting more than enough points from simply being OU and Super-OU across multiple generations, and being UU in another generation oughtn't count enough against a Pokemon to substantially take away from those achievements.

 

[Borat]

the whole point of some referenceable usage rate statistic would be an objective look at frequency though. the top 20 whatever are all somewhat accurate with its order somewhat questionable, but this wouldn't be any different than a really shitty "viability list". if usage rates can't be trusted for its numbers as a whole, then we can't use it as some citeable objective source. the thing with evidence is you either accept it as a whole, or dismiss it. it would seem silly to say "well the snorlax and zapdos rates look good, but the ttar is totally off so let's just dismiss that." we either take it as-is and use that as a credible source (which i am heavily against), or we dismiss it as evidence altogether. just pointing out that it's silly to make such claims as "usage rates dictate starmie is used just as frequently as slowbro", since these stats aren't credible to any degree imo.

i agree history should be accounted for. extracurricular points perhaps? similar to "other skillsets" on CVs, it should give back a couple points to gsc starmie, blissey, and celebi perhaps? i think celebi should have some OU gsc points tbh.

as for the actual scoring system, that's just a rough draft. i don't think any of the numbers are finalized at all beside max-10 nonexistent-0.

 

[Longfellow]

Now that I've mulled over it a bit, I guess I don't have a huge problem with adding one more subdivision to OU to account for stuff like the Starmie-Persian divide that Longfellow pointed out.

Another approach could be to continue to do top > OU > BL > UU and make the cutoffs for OU and BL stricter. Something more like top > upper-end OU > lower-end OU > not OU. OU on its own feels a bit too wide to address Pokémon that shaped the meta, rather than Pokémon that just lived in it.

Borat's point system seems fine to me. 10 points for GSC Snorlax, 7ish for being dominant, 5ish for being an important threat, 1 for merely existing in OU (RBY Persian status), 0 or -1 for being BL or lower. Maybe 3ish points for something like RBY Jynx?

I'm also down with giving extra points for historical influence. That sort of goes with shaping the meta (and yeah, it feels weird to not recognize GSC Celebi or DPP Salamence at all).

 

[latinoheat]

Surely if a mon was that good in OU that it ended up being banished to ubers (after a stay in OU), it should factor as a defining OU pokemon, not just thrown alongside the likes of something that didn't even exist in a gen.

Looking at BW Mence and DP Garchomp for instance that got like one mention each.

Both the Dragons have as much of a case as Heatran and Rotom for the outskirts of a top 10. Chomp I would have over all three actually.

I have seen it in a few lists but Skarmory isn't getting enough love, been pretty great in every gen its been in and never really had a drop off.