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Post by jorgen on Oct 19, 2013 16:48:25 GMT -8
This has been my mantra in RBY for a little while now, and it's because I had gone through a rut where I'd hold off on spreading paralysis for so long in order to keep everything open for an Eggy sleep that I'd end up falling way behind. Plus, Eggy can easily be lucked out of its precious sleep, especially when paralyzed. So, as of late, I had opted instead to just paralyze everything I could with Lead Alakazam or something and go from there. I had previously liked Stun Spore Egg for allowing me to get the Sleep and catch up in the paralysis game, but I think I might start using something like Lutra's Egg Bomb set with my new approach.
Gengar and Jynx are nice, but outside of leading they're actually not all that fantastic (and even when leading, they're pretty unreliable), which is why I have shied away from using them lately.
Now, my approach is a bit extreme, but I guess what I want to hear are other approaches to the early-game status war. When do you think it appropriate to hold out for sleep or give up on it? What strategies do you end up using in your leads?
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Post by magic9mushroom on Oct 19, 2013 18:01:40 GMT -8
When do you think it appropriate to hold out for sleep or give up on it? What strategies do you end up using in your leads? I give up on sleep and start throwing para in two circumstances: 1) My sleeper (Eggy) is dead or not capable of surviving another hit. 2) My opponent has an Ice-type out against something which can paralyse it. Obviously this is immediately the case if my opponent leads Jynx, but I've also seen cases where an opponent loses their own sleeper to Starmie trying to get a sleep and follows up with Lapras to stop me from immediately landing my own. That said, in the case of Jynx I'll usually try to kill it in a hurry with a Rock Slide or Hyper Beam to clear the way for sleep and refrain from spreading more para until then. |
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Dre
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Post by Dre on Oct 19, 2013 22:23:28 GMT -8
You can design viable teams around para-spamming. For example it's good on wrap team or teams with 2+ physical threats that are hard to switch into.
Just in general though, paralysing something before sleeping is fine if that pokemon can't switch into your sleeper.
You could even just put a sleep on a concealed pokemon to try and sleep tauros or something after paralysing and crippling everything else.
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Post by magic9mushroom on Oct 19, 2013 22:46:04 GMT -8
You can design viable teams around para-spamming. For example it's good on wrap team or teams with 2+ physical threats that are hard to switch into. Just in general though, paralysing something before sleeping is fine if that pokemon can't switch into your sleeper. You could even just put a sleep on a concealed pokemon to try and sleep tauros or something after paralysing and crippling everything else. Everything with Hypnosis accuracy or better is known as a sleeper. Sing Chansey and Lapras have issues with 4MSS and that accuracy's kinda terrible. |
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Post by cheese on Oct 20, 2013 1:01:18 GMT -8
I've done this before a few times and I usually find that you can keep your Eggy alive for longer you have an opportunity at the end to sleep a pokemon they've kept hidden up until that point.
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 20, 2013 1:11:30 GMT -8
I've won many games with my slow paralysis-inducing team of Zam/Egg/Chansey/Tauros/Rhydon/Snorlax. Wearing down Exeggutor with paralysis and Seismic Toss initially means that it can't switch in on Rhydon more than once, and Snorlax BSlam+HBeam KOs it, so a lot of other stuff gets hit by Body Slams from those two, meaning mucho paralysis.
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Post by marcoasd on Oct 21, 2013 10:26:49 GMT -8
IMHO the status war at the beginning is always tough, so using different things could help.
We all can see that sleep leads are weak, and I see a lot of anti leads- leading one sleeper teams (you can imagine who the sleeper is, lol)
Singing chansey and lapras are unreliable, but we're underlooking venusaur/victrebeel. Egg has its own troubles because it can't attack heavily on the physical side,but threatening sleep/sword dance/stun spore or slam and razor leaf (that is also good against setup pokes) makes everything different.
I'd say those two pokès are the forgotten part of the metagame
EDIT*:I was assuming those pokès are not viable leads
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Post by magic9mushroom on Oct 21, 2013 12:51:10 GMT -8
IMHO the status war at the beginning is always tough, so using different things could help. We all can see that sleep leads are weak, and I see a lot of anti leads- leading one sleeper teams (you can imagine who the sleeper is, lol) Singing chansey and lapras are unreliable, but we're underlooking venusaur/victrebeel. Egg has its own troubles because it can't attack heavily on the physical side,but threatening sleep/sword dance/stun spore or slam and razor leaf (that is also good against setup pokes) makes everything different. I'd say those two pokès are the forgotten part of the metagame EDIT*:I was assuming those pokès are not viable leads Victreebel > Venusaur in OU. The only thing Venusaur outspeeds that Victreebel doesn't is Cloyster, which isn't common, and Victreebel's higher Attack stat helps greatly with posing a threat with Swords Dance (after Swords Dance, Victreebel can sometimes OHKO Chansey and will always OHKO Alakazam with Hyper Beam - Venusaur never OHKOs Chansey and only usually OHKOs Zam). Victreebel's Swords Dance is also less predictable than Venusaur's because Venusaur only has one viable set while Victreebel has two (both have the Sleep/Swords Dance set, but Victreebel can also run a Stun Spore/Wrap set). That said, they aren't great as early-game sleepers, because they can't switch into any lead besides (non-Psychic) Gengar and thus you need mindgames to be able to get them in to sleep something. Victreebel lead does pose a very serious danger against an Egg lead, but Egg lead is uncommon. |
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Dre
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Post by Dre on Oct 21, 2013 16:53:47 GMT -8
Yeah bell is way better than saur. In non-wrap the gap isn't as big, but saur's speed advantage means less because the only things it mattered on were cloyster and nite, who aren't common in non-wrap anyway. The only significant thing I can think of that saur has over bel is that saur isn't 2HKOd by tauros' blizz-hbeam combo.
I also like doing what Isa said, leading with stosszam to try and troll eggies and make it hard for them to switch into rhydon too often.
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Post by magic9mushroom on Oct 21, 2013 22:59:28 GMT -8
Yeah bell is way better than saur. In non-wrap the gap isn't as big, but saur's speed advantage means less because the only things it mattered on were cloyster and nite, who aren't common in non-wrap anyway. The only significant thing I can think of that saur has over bel is that saur isn't 2HKOd by tauros' blizz-hbeam combo. IIRC Saur can be and Bel can fail to be. It's just a matter of probabilities. (Also, Venusaur's speed-tie with Dragonite is mostly irrelevant - unlike Victreebel, Venusaur doesn't learn Stun Spore, so it's just Agility-bait.) |
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Post by marcoasd on Oct 22, 2013 8:48:15 GMT -8
@magicmushroom: I agree that belll is better
Venusaur has also a speedtie with dnite if wrap is allowed.
The important thing, in general, is that you can boom egg on stoss zam (the one that gives more troubles).
You play your antilead. If you face a sleeper you outspeed it and take the sleep.
If you face another antilead you go to egg, then if you have an egg ditto you are the one who can throw in a sleep powder (you have a backup sleeper)
With starmie your worst situation is when you face stoss zam, and then you boom.
If you take a team without starmie, just like isa's team (zam egg chansey snorlax rhydon tauros) booming on zam is painful for them.
Also, zam is what really keeps bell down. If you put the other things (ex rhydon with snorlax's surf) in HB+dance range you can easily sweep
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Post by marcoasd on Oct 22, 2013 9:05:29 GMT -8
In conclusion a team with zam starmie egg bell and... snorlax and chansey? can at very least come to a situation where you boom egg on his zam and you are the one spreading twaves with zam.
Also a hypno sleep bait with twave meditate bslam and rest can work with egg and bell.
You twave things till they sleep you. They won't switch easily in chansey and egg (fearing hypnosis), and they won't trade twaves with starmie, so your main concern is zam (and you send out egg...)
Lategame hypno can wake up on paralized specialists and setup.
This plan can be an epic fail, but I think it could be worth a test.
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 22, 2013 13:28:25 GMT -8
Very rarely do I recommend booming Exeggutor on lead Alakazam. You will get punished heavily if your opponent carries Rhydon/Golem. Starmie is probably the second best check to those two (well, apart from Tangela, but within OU limits), but unless it runs Surf, Body Slam will break it eventually. You're rarely end up in a situation where you know your opponent is not running Starmie, your Exeggutor is still alive and the opposing SToss Zam is alive and poses somewhat of a threat (sleeping Zam is not somewhat of a threat).
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Post by magic9mushroom on Oct 22, 2013 17:20:05 GMT -8
Very rarely do I recommend booming Exeggutor on lead Alakazam. You will get punished heavily if your opponent carries Rhydon/Golem. If you have Bel as marcoasd recommends, it's not as big a deal. Bel's nowhere near as good as Egg against those two, but it's hardly bad either. |
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Post by jorgen on Oct 22, 2013 20:00:51 GMT -8
I just wouldn't boom Egg on Zam early on because it can be useful in other capacities, and not just by walling the Rocks. It also matches up pretty well against Normals and can spread paralysis or draw their napper in so your Snorlax or whatever has an opportunity to do some work. Exploding on Zam (who you should be Sleeping anyway) just seems a waste.
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 22, 2013 22:46:45 GMT -8
Jorgen, while true, you can play around those weaknesses with proper team building. Add Lapras or similar bulky mons and you can manage. The Rock weakness is in my mind the most glaring issue.
Victreebel is not a good sponge at all as it carries a very poor defense and a neutrality to Earthquake. Lapras is better for this purpose, its main attack OHKOs Rhydon, just like Razor Leaf.
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Dre
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Post by Dre on Oct 23, 2013 1:08:40 GMT -8
Trading your eggy for zam is a bad trade in my opinion, although it depends on your team comp.
Macroasd- That team is too special heavy for a paralysis team in my opinion. The main reason why people have always paralysed stuff to begin with was to so that they could rock them with physical attacks. Assuming no wrap, I'd say you'd need rhydon-lax-tauros, and possibly another physical threat. You'd need to get rid of their eggy though, maybe try entice them to trade for our chansey or something.
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Post by magic9mushroom on Oct 23, 2013 3:57:30 GMT -8
Lapras is better for this purpose, its main attack OHKOs Rhydon, just like Razor Leaf. Lapras's Blizzard has a significant chance of not OHKOing Rhydon, actually, and it's 2HKOed by Rhydon more often than Bel is (and can be 2HKOed by Golem, which Bel cannot without a crit). |
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 23, 2013 5:15:56 GMT -8
I wouldn't call 20~% too significant. The chance is there. but it's not very big. (Though I've always thought Blizzard dealt 99% minimum and not 97%, so I'll take that hit)
Rock Slide is a 2HKO, but that is if you use it and end up hitting Lapras and not something else. One of the advantages of using Lapras over Victreebel for these purposes is that you can force out more Rock Slides, which gives you more leeway to use other mons (Chansey can come in on Rock Slide most of the time but never on Earthquake, for example, and paralyzed Surf Starmie can always come in on Rock Slide).
I overestimated Lapras bulk compared to Victreebel, but given that Lapras is an overall better Pokémon than Victreebel, I'd rather have Lapras on the team than Victreebel. Victreebel is not outperforming Lapras by such a huge margin that it'd merit usage in my mind.
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Post by marcoasd on Oct 23, 2013 5:56:54 GMT -8
Obviously I do not recommend this team and strategy for an important match, I'm just trying to figure out a way to outplay a zam lead... meanwhile I'd say zam lead is the safest bet, and i use egg as the only sleeper. Bell over lapras would be for two reasons: 1-it's a reliable sleeper and 2-it sweeps physically later. I wanted to focus that if you kill zam they may be out of a sleep bait: send out bell and they have to take the sleep. Then i'd use reflect zam/starmie snorlax with surf for rhydon (an egg with two stoss on his head is higly candidate to die in any case!), but i ask: what's your sleep bait then? I suppose your snorlax... I'm pretty fine with that: basically i've traded egg for zam and the first sleep on snorlax- after that i take the sleep and go to chansey. If they send out starmie things are a bit more complicated. If you want to use a second sleeper, it would be a non-lead gengar, and it would be really sad exploding egg on zam to bring in gengar (bell at least has some value later) Lapras and chansey can sing but have better moves, and i don't see a lot of options. Dre: I agree that the team attacks mainly on the special side, but throwin in bell is the only thing if you don't want to consider gar and jynx (and with all those anti-leads around, they're bad...), and i hope to paralize things and go for swords dance to make bell sweep like a tauros. You may say I'm crazy, but I think that tauros needs a similar kind of support and I don't feel that confident with it... I also kill tauros with zapdos quite often when i use the bird. |
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 23, 2013 6:24:29 GMT -8
Zam lead is generally not something you need to counter. You can't really stop it from doing it's thing, which is throwing out paralysis or inflicting pain with Seismic Toss. Your best bet is to accept it and move on.
Zam is a great sleep absorber, which means many teams won't run another dedicated sleep absorber, that much is true. However, if you want to blow up Zam at once, I'd rather use Gengar lead. It's risky in the sense that Alakazam dies only 57% of the time (Psychic CHs along with not always OHKOing), but it saves you Exeggutor.
You're right though that many teams won't have a brilliant answer to a backup sleeper - but many also do. Starmie will almost always have a move to punish Victreebel (Surf/TBolt/TWave is uncommon but it exists), so you're being outsped and will take a beating. Non-lead Gengars seem to be uncommon in this metagame, but they exist and will also punish Vic for existing. Exeggutor would not appreciate to take sleep before throwing out a Sleep Powder itself, but if it can be done, then Exeggutor works OK as an absorber due to its overall good bulk, many resistances and especially Explosion.
I do not recommend absorbing sleep with Snorlax. Very many teams have limited physical offense. If you let Snorlax get slept, you might easily end up relying solely on Tauros to muscle through the special walls. Some teams might run Zapdos, but then there's Golem, which will desperately try to avoid taking any kind of damage - and if you only have specialists alive that's not too hard to manage for most teams. Golem and Rhydon are too slow and fragile to reliably get past specialists on their own - they can help out, but Snorlax should ideally work in tandem with them as it is much more reliable. Golem and Rhydon can't switch in safely on most things, making it hard to cause any physical power.
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Dre
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Post by Dre on Oct 23, 2013 6:25:36 GMT -8
Isa- I don't want to start this again, but I'd say that lapras is only better than victreebel in non-wrap. With wrap it's not so clear.
Macroasd- Thing is bel is only a 'reliable' sleeper if wrap is legal and wrap-switches in, because it can't switch into anything otherwise. If wrap is legal though, it'd much better to run bel as a support with double powder and razor leaf. Swords dance sweepers don't really work in OU because they're too frail. The only boosters that really work are slowbro and snorlax due to their bulk, which not only means they can take some hits to set up, but also that they don't get owned by paralysis.
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Post by marcoasd on Oct 23, 2013 7:12:37 GMT -8
So eggy's troubles are still not resolved, and zam (or at least starmie) should be the most common lead.
Is it possible to start with chansey out and start spamming ice beams? That could lead to a snorlax switch into a paralized chansey with brutal mindgames hyper beam/rhydon switchin or bodyslam/counter or earthquake/egg switchin, while you steal the chance to freeze something
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Post by magic9mushroom on Oct 23, 2013 15:41:10 GMT -8
I overestimated Lapras bulk compared to Victreebel, but given that Lapras is an overall better Pokémon than Victreebel, I'd rather have Lapras on the team than Victreebel. Lapras is overall better than Victreebel (thanks mostly to Victreebel's awful typing giving it the bulk of a pinhead), but Victreebel's harder to wall if it has Swords Dance. Lapras has some issues with Starmie and Gengar and a whole pile of issues with Chansey (yes, parafusion exists, but the statistical advantage still rests with Thunderbolt Chansey no matter what Lapras runs). Chansey is never switching into a fresh Victreebel, fearing Swords Dance, and Starmie's very hesitant to do so thanks to Razor Leaf. Gengar laughs at Bel's attacks, but it needs Night Shade or Psychic to actually defeat Victreebel without resorting to Explosion - Victreebel's Razor Leaf usually outpaces Gengar's Thunderbolt for the KO. Articuno/Zapdos are effective, but rare, and along with Tauros they don't like Stun Spore. Zam works, but only if it has Reflect and isn't paralysed as Victreebel's +2 Hyper Beam is a guaranteed OHKO. Victreebel's not great, mostly because it switches into sweet fuck-all, but its offensive potential is just fantastic. So eggy's troubles are still not resolved, and zam (or at least starmie) should be the most common lead. Is it possible to start with chansey out and start spamming ice beams? That could lead to a snorlax switch into a paralized chansey with brutal mindgames hyper beam/rhydon switchin or bodyslam/counter or earthquake/egg switchin, while you steal the chance to freeze something If you lead Chansey, Egg is probably coming in first turn, so I'd recommend running Sing to catch it as it does so. Sing's accuracy, though, is notoriously bad. |
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Post by posthuman on Oct 23, 2013 18:06:10 GMT -8
I remember a few years ago when leads were all over the place--at first EVERYONE used Gengar. When Gengar started falling out of favor with Zam leads, Jynx and Starmie leads gained popularity. Some Eggy's were thrown in there too, hoping for a Zam lead (not a good idea). Now I mostly see Zam leads, which have really changed the idea that you need to sleep something to win. I see no problem with paralyzing everything before you get a chance to sleep with Eggy--it often works nicely.
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Post by jorgen on Oct 25, 2013 19:54:37 GMT -8
Yeah there's a thread buried in the archives about leads, and I think that was actually at the tail end of the "the best counter to lead Gengar is your own Gengar" phase, because people were taking the idea of Alakazam counter-leads and Jynxes/Eggies seriously. But the discussion was still primarily of the flavor "yeah, Gengar's pretty much the best".
Really, when I was first learning about RBY, pretty much everywhere talked about the importance of a fast sleep. With practice, though, combined with my increasing conservatism in my play as I understand how to play safe and still have options when it comes to taking the offensive, I've realized that lead Gengar runs too high a risk of not working for me to be comfortable with him. I've considered using him not as a lead, but that still requires you to be ballsy about surprise Explosion absorptions. Plus, with Gengar, he's often a crutch that allows you to run less Speed on your team (thereby allowing you to more easily use Slowbro/Lapras over Alakazam/Starmie), so when push comes to shove, he ends up your lead by default.
Also who the hell is leading Chansey? If you want to spam freezing moves to start off the game, lead Jynx. Also you don't capitalize off Snorlax switching into Chansey, it works the other way. Keep in mind he can run Surf/Reflect to ruin your Rhydon strategy.
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Post by magic9mushroom on Oct 25, 2013 20:36:19 GMT -8
Also you don't capitalize off Snorlax switching into Chansey, it works the other way. Well, if you've got Counter, you can. Yeah, the only (commonly used) Snorlax that really loses to Rhydon is Body Slam/Hyper Beam/Earthquake/Selfdestruct Lax, and even that beats Rhydon if Rhydon switches into a paraslam or Earthquake. Fishlax 2HKOs, Reflectlax Rest-loops and beats it with EQ, and Amnesialax OHKOs with +2 Blizzard. Even Body Slam Tanklax stands a pretty good chance of killing non-Rest Rhydon. |
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Dre
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Post by Dre on Oct 26, 2013 6:07:10 GMT -8
For me the sleep war has become about sleep trades rather than sleeping first, or sleeping before I para. Basically, trying to ensure that I had a better sleep absorber slept than they did.
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Post by cheese on Oct 26, 2013 10:12:41 GMT -8
Surely the only way to get a better sleep absorber than your opponent is to use a surprise sleeper like Chansey or Lapras?
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 26, 2013 10:40:35 GMT -8
It's not the only way but it is by far the easiest. Lutra slept my Snorlax with Exeggutor in a very important game recently because my Jynx had ~30% HP, enough to kill it with Egg Bomb.
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