OU RBY OU Discussion Thread

[NotVeryCake]

Yeah we seem to disagree quite heavily on this matter. To me it seems like OHKO moves have better counterplay against them than any other move in the game. I do not understand either one of the speed arguments, why isn't switching to a faster pokemon for full immunity not a form of counterplay? It's a free switch. And how is paralysis quartering speed a one-sided factor, when both players can do it? You can paralyze the OHKO move user.

Running more damaging sets in general like dipping into the old 4 attacking move Snorlax (even with Surf if Rhydon really is such a concern?) sometimes instead of the more passive Reflect/Rest sets or even dropping Snorlax/Chansey occassionally for faster and higher damage pokemons would leave your team stronger against any OHKO using pokemon. Or just running the Substitute, but I seriously doubt that it would come to a point where that would have to become a thing.

I can't see how Rhydon could become so ubiquitous when the pokemon has so many strong counters, and I can't see how Gengar and Flying pokemon being immune to Drill/Fissure is the main counter play with all the other stuff. And I can't imagine the meta where teams with OHKO moves take over, what pokemon&moves are you dropping and running to achieve that?

Rhydon can just run Substitute Fissure Earthquake Body Slam and it literally has no counters aside from Exeggutor. Dugtrios only counterplay ia Zapdos now as it outspeeds everything, both of these Pokèmon are also immune to Thunder Wave

 

[Sabelette]

I think that’s enough on this, we really shouldn’t have to relitigate why OHKO moves are banned so often. Let’s get back to talking about OU as it currently stands.

 

[AtlasFlame18]

I don't play RBY outside of randbats tours so my opinion should be taken with tiniest grain of salt but shouldn't tradebacks be tested simply on principle that they weren't given a fair chance? It'd be one thing if they were blatantly uncompetitive and was deemed as such but to my knowledge tradebacks were not banned for that reason. I think for the sake of fairness and principle tradebacks should be tested and the community should decide from that.

 

[gastlies]

There was some effort to test tradebacks a few months ago for reasons similar to what you said but nothing really came out of it.

Generally the main argument against tradebacks is that RBY OU is currently a stable and enjoyable meta; the tier is fine as is so there's no real effort to make any huge tiering changes. If it ain't broke don't fix it basically

 

[AtlasFlame18]

There was some effort to test tradebacks a few months ago for reasons similar to what you said but nothing really came out of it.

Generally the main argument against tradebacks is that RBY OU is currently a stable and enjoyable meta; the tier is fine as is so there's no real effort to make any huge tiering changes. If it ain't broke don't fix it basically

I do agree that of the meta is balanced it shouldn't be shaken up but I also feel that metagames should reach that point after all aspects are given a fair shot and from that perspective there's no point in not at least testing tradebacks.

 

[AtlasFlame18]

While I probably would like tradebacks legalized, it's extremely hard to tell people we should test something after nearly 23 years of not allowing it when causes massive meta shakeups. You're technically right, but unfortunately people over 20 years ago decided to not give it a fair shot and now we lose a lot of metagame development and years of getting comfortable with common lines by legalizing it to the point that it will unlikely even be considered anything other than a niche side metagame. Lots of people probably rationally think tradebacks should be legal, but feel very conflicted with the idea that a meta that they have been playing for years could completely change and the meta knowledge they had before is thrown out the window. Those feelings aren't irrational, we lose decades of tangible meta development even if we should probably allow the moves. Would've been a lot easier if it was just accepted on GSC's release but here we are.

I agree wholeheartedly that these feelings are not irrational. 20 years of metagame development is a lot of time spent invested into something. It just sucks because the metagame could potentially be even better and we missed out on that opportunity due to misguided decisions made by people who don't play anymore. I'll still huff the copium for it just like I did for the old gen lower tiers having their tiers unlocked.

 

[Amaranth]

i think another big factor for me is that there seems to be no tangible interest in playing RBY with tradebacks. a bunch of people say "wouldn't it be nice to play tradebacks". an extremely tiny number of people actually play tradebacks.

if it was an actual side community, with their own efforts, their own meta development, the argument would be a lot stronger. but turning a format that hundreds of people know and love, into a format basically nobody knows and loves, is kinda just not it, regardless of the ideals behind it

 

[Jhonx~]

Im not a RBY mainer or good enough at this tier but I have played it enough to know how to move and dont suck trying, I looked before R1 RBY Cup some teams from time ago to play agaisnt Amaranth and found Gengar is actually the best lead on the actual metagame so recreated sets of Hayburner 3 Sleep 3 Booms, dont remember if he created this but sharing my aproach.

https://pokepast.es/3967d7a4b6ccae3f my aproach recreating sets, this team preview has been posted before thats why I post this team.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1ou-705746 Replay of the RBY Cup agaisnt Amaranth, I got kinda lucky tho, I think this team is very good because if a noob with no RBY knowledge managed to face a rly strong player as Amaranth, its mainly because the team is well built and dont require too much skill to be piloted, after all 3 sleep 3 boom always going to be workable and broken

 

[Party B0y]

Fly/Dig glitch makes things literally unkillable, and the Paralysis needed to trigger it isn't exactly uncommon. I shouldn't have to explain why something like an invincible Dragonite or Moltres could be a major problem. Making Aero marginally less worthless isn't a good trade.

Absolutely agreed, but that's not the route that we have to take. The Freeze clause / Sleep clause route exists and has been debated in the past, in other words not including the glitch in the implementation. But as I said, out of these three groups of moves, it's the one that I think has the best reasoning for being banned.

You don't even need a clause, just force players to click dig/fly a second time if they're paralysed until the move completes...

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

Tradebacks is like opening Pandora's box, who the heck knows what could result.

That said, RBY shakeups seem to happen outside of this website, so maybe if another community was really big into it it could have blowback.

 

[Sevi 7]

Tradebacks is like opening Pandora's box, who the heck knows what could result.

That said, RBY shakeups seem to happen outside of this website, so maybe if another community was really big into it it could have blowback.

Since you said you were just getting back into things in another post, I thought I’d let you know that over the last 6 years or so, pretty much every meta from tradebacks to monotype to Nintendo Cup 1997 has been played and explored. There was an explosion of interest in non-OU tiers back in like ‘17 or ‘18, and RBY, by far, played and explored the most.There are even sets for other metagames in the smogdex.
There’s still a few obscure tiers that never really got explored in that time that I’d like to see (LV 5 Tradeback LC, Mewbers, Pure/Balanced Hackmons w/o Cleric clause, etc), but if you get interested in different RBY tiers there’s a lot of options to explore.

 

[Sevi 7]

Im not a RBY mainer or good enough at this tier but I have played it enough to know how to move and dont suck trying, I looked before R1 RBY Cup some teams from time ago to play agaisnt Amaranth and found Gengar is actually the best lead on the actual metagame so recreated sets of Hayburner 3 Sleep 3 Booms, dont remember if he created this but sharing my aproach.

https://pokepast.es/3967d7a4b6ccae3f my aproach recreating sets, this team preview has been posted before thats why I post this team.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1ou-705746 Replay of the RBY Cup agaisnt Amaranth, I got kinda lucky tho, I think this team is very good because if a noob with no RBY knowledge managed to face a rly strong player as Amaranth, its mainly because the team is well built and dont require too much skill to be piloted, after all 3 sleep 3 boom always going to be workable and broken

I’m curious on your thoughts as to why you’re replacing Chansey with a passive mon like Hypno on an offense team. Usually the Gar, Egg, Lax core is supported by either a 4th Boomer or something that can hit hard like Articuno. I feel something even like Chansey or Slowbro would be better in that slot tbh.

But maybe I’m missing something. I’m always down for more Hypno though, so it’d be cool to see a fresh pair of eyes have a new take on it.

 

[Jhonx~]

I’m curious on your thoughts as to why you’re replacing Chansey with a passive mon like Hypno on an offense team. Usually the Gar, Egg, Lax core is supported by either a 4th Boomer or something that can hit hard like Articuno. I feel something even like Chansey or Slowbro would be better in that slot tbh.

But maybe I’m missing something. I’m always down for more Hypno though, so it’d be cool to see a fresh pair of eyes have a new take on it.

they do totally different roles, Hypno here puts to sleep and spread paralysis which Chansey can do too, but Hypno acts more offensively as well fishing spdef drops with Psychic and soft Zam check too, main idea of this team is spread sleep and twaves with boom spam to break fast and end cleaning with Persian/Tauros, Chansey might give more longevity defensively but makes the team lose its huge offensive pressure, offensive oriented teams most of the times are frail defensively but they protect theirselves breaking fast enabling sweeps or clean the path for your wincons

 

[Hipmonlee]

I’m curious on your thoughts as to why you’re replacing Chansey with a passive mon like Hypno on an offense team. Usually the Gar, Egg, Lax core is supported by either a 4th Boomer or something that can hit hard like Articuno. I feel something even like Chansey or Slowbro would be better in that slot tbh.

But maybe I’m missing something. I’m always down for more Hypno though, so it’d be cool to see a fresh pair of eyes have a new take on it.

More generally, Hypno with Gengar lead is nice if you intend to explode the Gengar against enemy Jynx. You get to send out Hypno and know youre either gonna outspeed an enemy sleeper, or it will be Gengar, and you get the opportunity to potentially Twave then Psychic it. Or, in this case, just psychic it, cause if you twave they'll probably switch it out, and it will hang around being a nuisance for Persian.

You can do this with Jynx too, but Hypno's twave can be pretty valuable.

 

[Billybobman]

I'm not sure if it's worth bringing it up here, but I wanted to try anyways. I figured it would be better put here than the RMT forums, just b/c the only changes are to movesets.
I took a look at one of the old sample teams with double birds.

My main issue with it is that I feel it focuses on dealing with the physical Normals over ,, and . Part of the niches of and are that they handle the physical normals pretty well. The team has other weaknesses, like not having a safe switch-in for resetting Psychic drops. If the opposing team has a Rock/Ground type, it makes it much harder to paralyze something, though you do have the benefit of attempting to go for freezes. It also has a weakness to I believe.

I've made a modified version with changes to Snorlax's, Chansey's, and Tauros's movesets below:

Double Bird Changes reasoning

has bolt beam, to pin down for a Self-destruct, and to maybe trick
I'd rather have T-Wave to combat . Though, Counter should not be completely dismissed.
attempts to lure in and uses Thunderbolt over Earthquake, it plays the role of a mid game wall breaker

Tauros very much misses EQ vs Gengar. Even though the team can afford to lose early, and use it as a wallbreaker, I feel like it still very much misses Hyper Beam if you swap it out, and I think a non-Hyper Beam set only works on high Elo players who often play around Hyper Beam. You can probably still make modifications like opting to use All out Attacking Lax, which gives EQ for dealing with /. Psychic on seems like a reasonable modification to help with opposing .

I very much like the idea of double birds, so I wanted to share this. I've no idea what the current cores are. I've noticed that the original team was removed from the sample teams. Do you feel that such a team can still work? I don't know if these changes are obvious choices or not, but I wanted to make this post just in case someone wants a different version of double birds.

 

[dawnbuster]

I think it's rather silly that people see no issue with most teams running Tauros virtually unchallenged.

 

[Bohrier]

I think it's rather silly that people see no issue with most teams running Tauros virtually unchallenged.

Yeah tbh, cuz most people(including myself) using this useless Pokemon tauros are stupid. According to my friend Tarvold, Tauros is a B tier Pokemon.

It's a niche bring all things considered

 

[Sceptross]

Tauros is very hard to drop, but sometimes you can justify replacing it with Omastar.

Personally, in my competitive career, I've used either Tauros or Omastar 100% of the time, can't really go without one of them.

 

[NotVeryCake]

I think I found Sceptross' tierlist...

 

[Billybobman]

Not sure if this conversation is serious or not.
But, I'm on the side that is incredibly hard to drop.
Even if you don't have room for it as a back 5 mon, it can still be your lead, and do things if it doesn't become sleep fodder.

is droppable when you have Rock/Ground types like that can check/provide a pivot against opposing . A mon like checks and counters which is quite nifty. I think lax is a requirement on triple Psychic teams though. But if your team has options to pivot against or wall lax, why run your own when it will just get walled itself? Though I am a big fan of bolt beam lax for getting rid of . Some people use as a lead which is odd to me (b/c it's slow, not having a chance to do something vs , , and ).

is droppable when you have enough walling on the special side, though, also has the potential to scare off or even wall and . I tend to find stronger than Lax, I don't know for sure if that is true, b/c one of its weaknesses is that it can allow other mons to heal up, but I have hard time droping it.

With , you lose out on a speedy and very powerful Hyper Beam + hard to switch into Body Slam, in a meta with Physically weak mons. If opposing mons are at half health and paralyzed, and you have a healthy odds are you will win. can play the roles of a lead, a revenge killer, a mid game wall breaker, and a sweeper. It's hard not to find room for it.

i mean same with snorlax and still chansey (theres only a handful of people who drop chansey more than 5% of the time).
since you implied you see an issue, what do you think the issue is?

I suppose the issue is that it can make players feel that they are required to run without looking at other possibilities. I mean, if you are holding off a mon to use until the end game, / vs > vs , because the birds are more likely to survive from full health. I would like to see what sort of teams can really not use , and be optimal for it. I am pretty sure that stall is bad, I could see wrap teams not using it. I could maybe see , , or one of the birds maybe replacing it.

sounds like an intriguing replacement, not sure if I'm being baited, but I do like the mon. It can do over 50% damage to with a single Pump, while not being 2Hkoed by EQ, it can come in on Hyper Beams, and free up . I'm assuming that is the replacement sweeper?

Sometimes, I wonder if it's not a good idea to say that the Normals are required on teams, because that narrows what people think are options, but I don't want to give the idea to new players that running random stuff will work.

Main Questions
I guess one question I have is, which really is the most replaceable Normal? And: How do we know if a team is more optimal without it?
Is really replaceable? What would a team without it look like?
---------------------
But I do have another question: Are triple Psychic teams really the most consistent teams? I have trouble running them, and it feels like everyone is prepared against them. Yes, I run Bide a lot, because it amuses me, and I'm trying to figure out if it works or not,... it does force out opposing Lax. But, I don't see that having a large impact on my success using triple Psychic teams, as the most important attacking move on Reflect sets, imo, is Body Slam. And I'd rather use a move that out damages Ice Beam Lax than go into a freeze war with opposing Lax. I've had some trouble with the old Reflect+EQ Lax sample team too.

 

[Ortheore]

Tbh when I saw that post I thought Dawnbuster was trying to imply that tiering action should be taken, not that Tauros was overrated. Either way I disagree lol.

Regarding dropping Normals, I don't think any of them are required in the most literal sense- teams can technically work without them. But I think you shouldn't really be dropping Tauros or Snorlax ever, and even if you think Chansey can be dropped (I do), it should easily have over 95% usage across your teams. Dropping Normals is generally just making your team substantially worse, with the benefit of dropping them pretty much always being massively outweighed by what you're missing out on.

Tauros isn't just a great sweeper, it's literally the only consistent revenge killer in the game- everything else that might try to fill the role has relatively common outs, but nothing switches into Tauros safely. In a similar vein, if you get Tauros into play safely, you can be confident that your next turn will make progress

Snorlax is by far the most versatile pokemon in the game. Sure Don and other Rock/Grounds can try to imitate it, but their numerous weaknesses and much more one dimensional nature mean they don't come close to making up the difference in utility. I used to think Don can sub in for Lax (especially if paired with Bro), but over the years I've concluded that Lax brings way too much to the table for this to be the case- generic bulk, a STAB that's both powerful and capable of para and so many different options

Chansey is the only one of the 3 normals I'd consider dropping due to its lacking offensive potential, but it's sooooo good defensively that this is almost never justified

Billybobman is RefLax something that sticks out to you when you run your own Lax? Just wondering because although RefLax is good, you shouldn't be forced to run jank like Bide to beat it (I'd be very surprised if that's at all usable), and Lax isn't the kind of thing that "will just get walled"

Tbh I think playing around RefLax and Lax in general is interesting enough to be its own topic, just because of all of its options and how much potential it has

 

[NotVeryCake]

Reflect Snorlax can be beaten in many ways, such as playing well-jkjk. Though seriously, ReflectLax can be broken through by switching in a strong special attacker as it rests (Starmie, Exeggutor, Alakazam, etc etc), and forcing it out. You can force Refect Snorlax to Rest by using something such as your own Reflect Snorlax, Tauros, and Cloyster, though ofcourse there are many more ways I'm simply not mentioning.

 

[第二十五夜]

It's really unfortunate that I even have to make this post, but I think its very evident that things have been going in a nasty direction for a while. the spam of the same three teams is bringing the metagame towards an unhealthy direction and this had me, and many others, realize if change doesn't happen now, it never will.

A few months ago, RBY PL IV mostly saw the Washed Wartortles spam three teams in the relatively inexperienced OU slots to some success, with a 13k 4xOU bo3 core being 7-9 and an overall 10-11 record in the OU slot. In the span of the months following RBY PL, these same three teams would end up being among the most used teams in RBY Rising Stars. People may argue that these are far and away the best teams so why not spam them, but the reason not to is that you become predictable and people can beat you. In the span of two to three months, this should be enough time to develop answers to a perceived meta team. While there was a small glimpse of this happening, this quickly faded away and the same teams have continued to be spammed. The spammed teams can be pointed to a particular set in rby invitational, where these only showed up in a bo5. While this didn't initially lead to these teams being among the most used teams in the tournaments following it, it does shed a light on the state of RBY OU being locked into zapdos vs rhydon. RBY Invitational saw the rise of zapdos winrate, with an overall winrate being 60+% which is very good for zapdos. This can be pointed to high usage of eq reflax because of high gengar usage in the tours leading up to RBY Invitational. The high usage of eq reflax incentivizes zapdos usage since eq reflax is less effective at making immediate progress. In addition, eq lax also disincentivizes rhydon usage. With zapdos having the highest winrate since last RBY Invitational, players have played zapdos and rhydon teams to stop the zapdos spam. When analyzing the same three teams, you will notice that these teams answer themselves, which makes for a cyclical nature. Being locked into the same matchup and the same three teams for a few months in a row has halted the progression of the metagame, which is concerning.

To go from this year's RBY Invitational meta arguably being the best RBY has been to the current metagame of being locked into the same teams and same matchups, the response to this should be figuring out what beats these teams. When building teams in RBY, you will notice most teams will be able to beat either zapdos or rhydon, but the tough part comes from building teams that beat both. When this question is unanswered, I fear the spam will continue for longer than it should be happening.

To my fellow RBY OU players, if you care enough about the direction of RBY OU, I urge you to test and solve for more answers to this metagame, and deal with it as soon as possible.

Addendums

Sorry for the name drops, they’re used to make show egregious examples. This is not about said users, but about the double standards that have occured.

s/o reyscarface, haha react if you get the reference; if not, do whatever the fuck you want to

 

[Kaz]

Et ouais frérot, un jeu stratégique à haut niveau c'est pas toujours fun en fait. Tu retrouveras toujours les mêmes ouvertures aux échecs à haut niveau: pas d'excuses, ce qui compte c'est pas les forces en présence mais comment tu les utilise relatif au contexte. Déjà les bases, ensuite on développe en partant de ça. Oui on joue encore avec notre caca et y'a encore beaucoup à apprendre

 

[Sabelette]

That seems hilariously dramatic, things will change like they always have