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Post by WaterWizard on Sept 9, 2011 13:54:47 GMT -8
Aggression/Defense is not directly correlated with Good/Bad; don't worry. However, playing defensive takes a lot of perfect prediction, good team building, and good luck. The longer you stall, the more chances for freezes/crits. That's the nature of RBY. Leftovers, Heal Bell, Natural Cure, and more solid walls really make it easy to be defensive in future generations.
Props to those, like Garrin, who do it well in RBY.
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Post by davidchansey on Sept 9, 2011 14:45:51 GMT -8
I guess I'll start being more aggressive when I learn more about the uses of different pokemon, and building a team with a specific gameplan in mind. Right now my only gameplan is pretty much stall then sweep.
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Post by spies on Sept 9, 2011 15:46:14 GMT -8
I guess I'll start being more aggressive when I learn more about the uses of different pokemon, and building a team with a specific gameplan in mind. Right now my only gameplan is pretty much stall then sweep. I don't know if you can "stall then sweep" in rby, you have to be one step ahead since turn 1 Aggression/Defense is not directly correlated with Good/Bad; don't worry. What do you define as being defensive, I have teams with Starmie, Alakazam and Chansey and never cease being aggressive, playing defensive just makes you worse in my opinion... However, playing defensive takes a lot of perfect prediction, good team building, and good luck. What prediction do you need? Go to Chansey, go to Rhydon, go to Exeggutor, try to paralyze... playing defensive just makes you prone to "good prediction" (aggressive players), not going to get anywhere like that.
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Post by garrinred on Sept 9, 2011 16:53:38 GMT -8
Hey Spies. I posted something in response to one of your comments.
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Post by jorgen on Sept 9, 2011 17:21:56 GMT -8
People still aren't on the same page as far as what constitutes "defensive" versus "offensive" play, so I figured I might as well describe it the way I see it:
Defense in other generations generally involves a lot more switching and, thus, a lot more chances to capitalize. In RBY, it's planting a reflect abuser and stalwartly refusing to die. This kind of play can be vulnerable to bad luck since you don't really have a way to take initiative, but it's actually really effective in this Snorlax-driven offensive meta, where Lax is basically forced to sacrifice itself to get rid of anything that tries to stall it. You can't really capitalize off of RBY stall, either; the good stallers don't give the things with high crit rates the turns they need to hit their crits, and thus aren't forced out like walls in other generations are.
There's three main stallers in RBY:
Reflect Alakazam: The most common, and probably the easiest to break with its paltry HP. However, it has high damage output and switch-forcing ability with Psychic, and in a straight-up head-to-head against other stallers (assuming standard, non-SToss sets), it wins more often than it loses.
Reflect Chansey: Harder to break than Alakazam, it's best when it eats para. It's not going to be hitting hard, forcing switches, nailing crits and special falls like Reflect Zam, but it does spam Ice Beam for the freeze (which it can quite frequently get). Ice Beam keeps popular, powerful exploders like Golem and Exeggutor at bay better than Alakazam's Psychic does (and Chansey actually takes Eggy's explosion rather well, only ~50% behind Reflect), which basically forces Snorlax to explode on it in order to mitigate the potential damage done by Chansey.
Reflect + Amnesia Snorlax: Will usually lose to another Reflect staller due to physically-based attack, need to rest for recovery (thereby eliminating paralysis and making it vulnerable to freeze/sleep), and low crit rate, but is by far the hardest to straight-up break. You basically need to counter its stall with another Reflect stall, going for a Psychic CH or an IB freeze, since even Snorlax SD only does around 40% to it with Reflect up. Or, you could run Counter to bounce back its Body Slams to kill it.
I guess Reflect Slowbro counts too, though Slowbro's actually pretty easy to stop if it's trying to stall since there's a lot of things that can afford to just sit in front of it and go for the crit Tbolt. I see it more as an anti-staller than as a staller in its own right. Reflect Hypno could also stall pretty well, but I think it'd rather go for status.
And that there is what defense ("stall") in RBY looks like. Sitting your ass down, setting up Reflect, and forcing your opponent to: A) play the stall game with you; B) use extreme, aggressive measures (Explosion) in order to break your stall; or C) use Slowbro to ruin your day (though Slowbro is prone to CH Psychics and IB freezes, so it's actually a lot less reliable at this than you'd think). RBY stall is actually pretty effective, and a pain to go up against, especially if you're relying on Snorlax to generate a lot of your offense and you aren't particularly well-equipped to play the stalling game yourself.
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Post by spies on Sept 9, 2011 17:27:35 GMT -8
Hey Spies. I posted something in response to one of your comments. you're bad
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Isa
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FOREVER SECOND
Posts: 1,479
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Post by Isa on Sept 10, 2011 1:45:09 GMT -8
Very good comment Jorgen. Ice pokes with Rest beats Reflect Chansey every time though, so you don't need to blow up on her with Lax. Even if you don't pack Rest, a regular Lapras will essentially make Reflect Chansey worthless. Even using all of your Ice Beams you won't deal enough damage to kill her. In the end Chansey has to switch out.
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Post by jorgen on Sept 10, 2011 5:29:30 GMT -8
Not necessarily. Neither Lapras nor Reflect Chansey can really do anything to each other. The standard Lapras should get PP stalled by Reflect Chansey, though Lapras has plenty of time to hope for timely crits, fps, and other general mayhem, limited only by the number of Body Slams/Hyper Beams it has.
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Post by garrinred on Sept 10, 2011 12:01:12 GMT -8
I agree with Jorgen.
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Post by davidchansey on Sept 10, 2011 13:15:16 GMT -8
I agree with Garrin.
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Isa
Member
FOREVER SECOND
Posts: 1,479
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Post by Isa on Sept 11, 2011 5:40:04 GMT -8
Chansey values her PP much more than Lapras does though. Lapras only needs a few PP of each move, she'll hardly get to use all during normal circumstances. Chansey needs to save a lot of PP's to remain useful later on. In fact, as soon as Chansey has wasted her 16 Ice Beams, all she can do is to paralyze an opponent, despite having three moveslots remaining. Reflect Zam suffers the same fate, but hits hard with STAB and frequent CH's and spec drops, making him slightly more suited for the stalling.
If Chansey starts spamming Reflect to waste PP, switch to Alakazam and then go back to Lapras. You'll save PP while wasting Chansey's. If you believe Chansey will switch out in anticipation of the Lapras switch...act on it (TWave an incoming Zapdos or something).
Finally, Lapras can use Rest to stall as needed.
...and also, I'd use Jynx in most cases either way due to playstyle preference but also spec drops with Psychic.
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Post by jorgen on Sept 11, 2011 8:57:39 GMT -8
Yeah, Lapras definitely has the upper hand in that matchup, but it's not a slam dunk just because Chansey doesn't have Tbolt. Note that if they figure you're playing the switcheroo, they can predict the switches to Zam, paralyze it, and go to Snorlax. It's a riskier play on the Chansey user's part than it is the Lapras user's, but again, Lapras v. Tbolt-less Chansey is in Lapras's favor. Not to mention that some luck can let Lapras straight-up beat Reflect Chansey (Crit Hyper Beam does ~80%).
But the finer points of the stallers are boring, because imo, stalling is boring. What exactly defines "aggressive," anyway? Personally, I feel what might make my style "aggressive" is the willingness to toss out explosions early and often. I honestly shouldn't be catching the stuff I do with Egg's explosion as consistently as I have been, but then again, normal resistors are rarer than they ought to be 'round about these parts.
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Post by Crystal_ on Sept 11, 2011 11:08:50 GMT -8
Um. vs Reflect Chansey it isn't only exploding with Snorlax or stall-freeze-switch-stalling forever.
Rest Snorlax beats it around 67%. Lax CHs around 6% (CH is +80%, so in the next turn you win); Chansey freezes around 10%. Slam does around 21-22% to chansey iirc so i get that, factoring in Chansey fp-ing 25% (snorlax can't be para for freezing), chansey is only beaming at around 40% of the times. This means that the 10% chance of freeze per turn becomes 4%.
Tauros has 6 turns on average to CH Chansey, assuming Chansey is para and reflect up. 1 as chansey twaves, 4 as chansey 4hkoes and 1 as chansey softboiled. That's +75%.
Persian.
Not to mention without Tbolt Slowbro sets up into you and Lapras/bro/cloy can get free turns to wake up after rest. And going without Twave is a very important loss for general supportive and defensive aspects.
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Post by jorgen on Sept 11, 2011 15:50:00 GMT -8
You can't deny that Reflect Chansey kinda screws up a lot of standards. Snorlax generally doesn't want to limit itself with Rest, especially since many teams just don't give it the chance to wake up (Reflect/Amnesia Snorlax notwithstanding). So if Chansey is forcing it to run rest and at most 1 of SD/Hyper Beam/Counter/whatever instead of the preferred 2, then Reflect Chansey has still done work in the "limiting Snorlax" department.
Tauros gets 6 tries to break it, but that's a last resort. If you're forcing Tauros to eat Twave just to scare out Chansey with the threat of a crit, Chansey has done its job of limiting Tauros.
Persian is terrible and so should you. If you're using Persian, then Chansey has done its job.
Even things like Slowbro/Jynx/Lapras, while awesome, could definitely be swapped out for things that are just as deserving, if not a tiny bit more deserving, of that slot (Golem, Gengar, Starmie come to mind).
Reflect Chansey can be beaten. There's many ways to deal with it. But if you want to dedicate yourself to a more surefire way of beating it, you're limiting your options elsewhere in your team. While you may beat it in the match itself, Reflect Chansey still did its job in the teambuilding phase by having you consider otherwise-mediocre pokes, sets, and strats just to give you a better way of dealing with it.
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Post by t3h Icy on Sept 11, 2011 16:19:27 GMT -8
I defined defensive play more on the boldness of making your choices. Defensive is more low risk, low reward, but you can definitely have a defensive team and play aggro with it. It's just kind of hard to do that effectively since RBY is an offensive game. playing defensive in RBY is just dumb imo so the players near the bottom are the worse ones :x This is generally true.
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Post by Crystal_ on Sept 12, 2011 10:04:46 GMT -8
Snorlax is waking up against Chansey, so most teams DO give you the chance to wake up. Just run reflect, so that the things that force you out while resting aren't the threatening ones (i.e Starm/zam/lapras/eggy), and come into Chansey forever. Reflect/rest Snorlax isn't a limited Snorlax. It doesn't explode but sweeps better without having to explode. Rest Snorlax advantage over the SD kind isn't merely vs Reflect Chansey. It's vs every Chansey.
Lapras is better than Starmie/Golem/Gengar. At least as good as Starm/Golem. Slowbro is better than Gengar.
Persian is good. Me too. Persian doesn't necessarily have to be used over Tauros if that's what you think. Alakazam/Snorlax/Tauros/Lapras/Chansey/Persian.
As for Tauros vs Chansey, Tauros has a +30% chance of CHing on average before chansey is able to twave. And if Chansey is switching out after the twave, there is also to consider that something is probably (75%) taking a slam in the switch. But what's more important: Reflect has disappeared, and now Tauros has the opportunity to switch-in as Chansey comes in with prediction or even a fp, being able to slam before chansey reflects.
Anyway, the ideal reply for the reflect chansey scenario would be using a para'd zam with reflect, if you have that, to force chansey out with psychic, opening up the possibility of get your Tauros/Rhydon/golem before chansey reflects, if you can predict the switch or Chansey fps. However, there is always the risk of Snorlax/Rock coming into zam before it reflects though.
I don't want to mean that Tauros should always be the way to go vs reflect chansey, but a solid offensive option especially if you lack the aforementioned zam. I also want to point out that not paralyzing the opposing chansey is dumb, because although you get the upper hand in a hypotetical freeze war, Snorlax/Rock/Tauros/Persian/etc will be switching into your para'd chansey forever, and youll be pretty fucked up.
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