Preservation of content Serebii deleted
Nov 18, 2014 22:14:48 GMT -8
Post by magic9mushroom on Nov 18, 2014 22:14:48 GMT -8
This is a lot of words I put a lot of effort into, and Serebii deleted it and my account on grounds of thread necromancy. I happened to submit the post to WordCounter.net to check just how many words it was, and as such I have been able to salvage it.
The thread I was responding to was titled "My take on Withdraw Slowbro".
With no further ado:
The thread I was responding to was titled "My take on Withdraw Slowbro".
With no further ado:
Before anybody says "thread necromancy", note my username, post count and join date. I claim right of reply. Then again, not like I care since I'm probably not sticking around.
My Starmie doesn't have Tbolt, so the rationale isn't to use it against Slowbro (as you've noted, Withdraw Slowbro renders opposing TobyBro a non-threat). It's more about being a more aggressive lead that forces riskier plays. Put yourself in your opponent's shoes for a second; suppose they're leading Gengar against your Alakazam. Gengar certainly has to switch out, but they can switch directly to Exeggutor and still immediately threaten sleep. Or if they're leading Jynx against your Alakazam, after Lovely Kiss lands they can safely stay in and throw Blizzard since it hits Alakazam neutrally and threatens to KO it before it can wake up. Now replace that lead Alakazam with a lead Starmie. If they led Gengar, now they're in significantly more of a bind; if they stay in, the odds still aren't in their favour to win, but if they switch out to Exeggutor they also risk massive damage (if Psychic procs a Special fall, the follow-up Blizzard will deal ~60% to Exeggutor, and there's also the risk of crits - crit Psychic + crit Blizzard can actually KO - or of an effective OHKO via freeze). As such, they're usually forced out to Chansey, which itself can be exploited (double-switch to Egg), OR are tempted into staying in with Gengar (and likely getting KOed) because of the lack of other good options. Likewise, a Jynx that successfully sleeps Starmie is unlikely to KO it before Starmie wakes up, and as such is forced to switch out itself rather than stay in and throw STAB Blizzards; this neuters a lot of the control Jynx otherwise exerts over the opening (which is the whole point of running Jynx).
There's also a couple of other minor perks to running Starmie. The first is the ability to switch into Tauros and Thunder Wave it even if critslammed (Alakazam is OHKOed ~1/3 of the time) or paraslammed (Body Slam + Hyper Beam almost always fails to KO Starmie, whereas it's guaranteed to KO Alakazam), as long as it doesn't get critparaslammed. Withdraw Slowbro can then set up in Tauros' face, whereas it's walking on eggshells trying to do that when Tauros is unstatused. The second is that most opponents will be willing to trade paralysis between their Alakazam and your Starmie, whereas fewer will be willing to take the paralysis trade between opposing Alakazams. Getting paralysis on Seismic Toss Alakazam is very important for a Slowbro which does not itself have Thunder Wave. Particularly if you're running Psychic, but even if you're running Surf you still can't switch Slowbro into an unparalysed Alakazam's Seismic Toss and get much of anywhere without burning almost all your Rest PP.
The other useful KOs Blizzard potentially gets are the OHKO on Dragonite and the 2HKO on Victreebel. Also worth noting that Slowbro is slower than Chansey, so paralysing opposing Chansey means Slowbro can double-switch on it (whereas if Chansey is unparalysed, Slowbro will take a very painful Thunderbolt before it can get Amnesia up).
Well, I'm not so sure. The reason I stuck Rhydon on my team was because I had three Pokemon weak to Zapdos' STABs (Starmie, Exeggutor, and Slowbro). With only two, a Rock isn't as mandatory, so (particularly if you're running Reflect on Alakazam) you could actually run Tauros here.
The idea with Golem is that you keep it around until you've fully scouted their team. If they do have Zapdos, you continue keeping it around. If they don't (or you manage to kill Zapdos), then you can Explode. I've actually switched out Rhydon for Golem on my version of this team (after I posted that RMT); I feel like it already has a win condition, so Rhydon's late-game sweeper niche isn't as valuable.
In all honesty, Toxic Zapdos isn't that much of a gimmick. The main reason Toxic is so shunned in RBY is the possibility of poisoning Starmie, and it would be a very brave Starmie that switched into Zapdos. The only real issue then is if you poison Reflect Alakazam (non-Reflect Alakazam isn't as much of a problem, since poison damage can chip it into OHKO range from STAB Hyper Beams, or into 2HKO range from Zapdos' own Drill Peck, and as such it still helps somewhat).
Against TobyBro (the set originally designed for Ubers, with Surf and Thunder Wave) this is pretty much correct. Psychic/Thunder Wave Slowbro (which I don't recommend, as it loses head-on to Rhydon, but which I've nonetheless seen) does have a small chance to brute-force through it with Special falls and full paralysis before running out of PP.
Legitimate point, but there's a couple of cases where it's actually more likely to run out if it runs Surf. Will discuss later.
And now we get to where I think you might not be thinking things through enough. More attacking PP doesn't help as much as more non-attacking PP in the Slowbro ditto. This is because all serious Slowbro sets have Rest, which will use 1 PP over 3 turns if you've taken damage. As such, if you start using attacking PP first, even by 4 or 5 turns, Rest's PP-saving effect will magnify that into a very large PP deficit. So, both players will be spamming Withdraw and Amnesia while they can, and not just because they're less valuable PP. If you start using damaging PP earlier, you lose. Even if you're running Surf and they're running Psychic. That already makes it pretty much even. And then there's a certain dirty trick. The player with the Psychic Slowbro can actually switch it out and back in without danger of losing, assuming the opposing Surf Slowbro has previously been paralysed, because +6 Surf can't 3HKO a +2 Slowbro by any means; this saves 2 PP each time, which adds up. The only way to discourage the use of this trick is to throw out Surfs randomly, hoping to catch and KO the Pokemon relieving Slowbro... which is Catch-22, because as we've already seen using attacking PP early gives the opponent free Rest turns and lets them win the PP-stall that way. However, the Surf Slowbro cannot use this trick against the Psychic Slowbro, because Psychic's Special falls mean that +6 Psychics can break the Surf Slowbro when it comes back in.
An unparalysed Alakazam is pretty hard for Psychic/Withdraw Slowbro to break directly, I'll certainly grant that. Of course, an unparalysed Seismic Toss Alakazam is a pain for Surf/Withdraw Slowbro as well. And if you do actually find yourself with a Psychic/Withdraw Slowbro against unparalysed Reflect Alakazam, you can just try to stall it out of Recover by spamming Withdraw and Amnesia. Alakazam needs three Psychic crits in a row to KO Slowbro; even with its vaunted 23.4% crit rate, that's very hard to do before running out of PP.
The upshot of all this is: if you're running non-Twave Slowbro, paralyse Alakazam somehow. Beyond that, it doesn't really matter unless Alakazam is running Kinesis (which is a lot harder to work around with Psychic than with Surf).
The big beef I have with Surf/Withdraw Slowbro is its issues with Starmie and Chansey. Psychic/Withdraw Slowbro doesn't have a very good chance of beating an unparalysed Thunderbolt Starmie, but it at least has a chance - and it wins (clutch freezes aside) against a Starmie not carrying Thunderbolt (surprisingly common). Surf/Withdraw Slowbro is hard-walled, and can be safely frozen or Thunderbolted into oblivion. Chansey's not quite as big an issue thanks to more often being paralysed and Softboiled having low PP, but even then Surf/Withdraw Slowbro absolutely has to burn most of that vaunted 24 PP to defeat an unparalysed Chansey (whereas Psychic/Withdraw Slowbro can break it much faster), and (if Chansey has both Thunderbolt and Thunder Wave, as it usually does) is going to take so many Thunderbolts before running Chansey out of Softboiled that getting critted to death - by Chansey, of all things - becomes a very serious risk (you'll on average take 6 Thunderbolts, plus at least one while you're still getting to +6; that's a 51% chance that it'll crit and kill you before you can beat it).
There's also the issues with Dragonite and Victreebel. Any Slowbro is prone to getting Belled while it's asleep, but carrying absolutely zilch that bothers Victreebel (ie, Psychic or Thunder Wave) means it switches in for free even if Slowbro is awake. You do not want Victreebel repeatedly switching in for free; it's far too dangerous for that (the main reason it's not a big threat normally is precisely because nothing lets it in for free). Dragonite has much greater difficulty actually killing Slowbro, particularly if it's got a Withdraw or two up, but it resists Surf (while being neutral to Psychic) and as such you run a significantly greater risk of it setting up on Slowbro, successfully killing it, and running rampant through your team.
Anyway, enough walls of text. Hope I've shed some light on some of the less frequently-considered aspects of Slowbro's use and maybe a little of RBY OU in general. Decent team, in any case, and kudos for using Withdraw Slowbro. m9m out.
m9m runs a Starmie here, which is a perfectly valid option. I prefer Alakazam since I find it to be a bit better of a sleep absorber and special tank in general. It also switches into Gengar and the occasional Victreebel more easily, both of which give Slowbro a lot of trouble (especially since I'm running Surf > Psychic). I might prefer Starmie if I had Slowbro problems, but since my own Slowbro easily PP stalls other Slowbros, I'm pretty free to stick with Alakazam.
My Starmie doesn't have Tbolt, so the rationale isn't to use it against Slowbro (as you've noted, Withdraw Slowbro renders opposing TobyBro a non-threat). It's more about being a more aggressive lead that forces riskier plays. Put yourself in your opponent's shoes for a second; suppose they're leading Gengar against your Alakazam. Gengar certainly has to switch out, but they can switch directly to Exeggutor and still immediately threaten sleep. Or if they're leading Jynx against your Alakazam, after Lovely Kiss lands they can safely stay in and throw Blizzard since it hits Alakazam neutrally and threatens to KO it before it can wake up. Now replace that lead Alakazam with a lead Starmie. If they led Gengar, now they're in significantly more of a bind; if they stay in, the odds still aren't in their favour to win, but if they switch out to Exeggutor they also risk massive damage (if Psychic procs a Special fall, the follow-up Blizzard will deal ~60% to Exeggutor, and there's also the risk of crits - crit Psychic + crit Blizzard can actually KO - or of an effective OHKO via freeze). As such, they're usually forced out to Chansey, which itself can be exploited (double-switch to Egg), OR are tempted into staying in with Gengar (and likely getting KOed) because of the lack of other good options. Likewise, a Jynx that successfully sleeps Starmie is unlikely to KO it before Starmie wakes up, and as such is forced to switch out itself rather than stay in and throw STAB Blizzards; this neuters a lot of the control Jynx otherwise exerts over the opening (which is the whole point of running Jynx).
There's also a couple of other minor perks to running Starmie. The first is the ability to switch into Tauros and Thunder Wave it even if critslammed (Alakazam is OHKOed ~1/3 of the time) or paraslammed (Body Slam + Hyper Beam almost always fails to KO Starmie, whereas it's guaranteed to KO Alakazam), as long as it doesn't get critparaslammed. Withdraw Slowbro can then set up in Tauros' face, whereas it's walking on eggshells trying to do that when Tauros is unstatused. The second is that most opponents will be willing to trade paralysis between their Alakazam and your Starmie, whereas fewer will be willing to take the paralysis trade between opposing Alakazams. Getting paralysis on Seismic Toss Alakazam is very important for a Slowbro which does not itself have Thunder Wave. Particularly if you're running Psychic, but even if you're running Surf you still can't switch Slowbro into an unparalysed Alakazam's Seismic Toss and get much of anywhere without burning almost all your Rest PP.
Like m9m, I'm running Blizzard > Ice Beam since I'd honestly rather paralyze opposing Chanseys than go for the freeze gamble. That sounds weird, but a paralyzed Chansey can be beaten much more easily by Slowbro than an unstatused Chansey if I can get a well timed full paralysis. Frozen Chansey is even easier to beat, but freezing Chansey isn't something to rely on, especially if it means risking a freeze on my own Chansey. Paralyzing it is just a much more reliable way of making it easier for Slowbro to beat. Besides, the extra 26% more power from Blizzard is pretty much always going to be useful. For instance, it guarantees the 3HKO against Zapdos and Exeggutor and usually 3HKOs Tauros, none of which Ice Beam can do.
The other useful KOs Blizzard potentially gets are the OHKO on Dragonite and the 2HKO on Victreebel. Also worth noting that Slowbro is slower than Chansey, so paralysing opposing Chansey means Slowbro can double-switch on it (whereas if Chansey is unparalysed, Slowbro will take a very painful Thunderbolt before it can get Amnesia up).
In my opinion, every team that carries a Slowbro of any kind needs to have one of the Rocks. Zapdos (and Jolteon, for that matter) is pretty scary for Slowbro since it has a powerful STAB Thunderbolt and a fairly high critical hit ratio to bypass Amnesia. The Rocks are the best answer to Zapdos out there.
Well, I'm not so sure. The reason I stuck Rhydon on my team was because I had three Pokemon weak to Zapdos' STABs (Starmie, Exeggutor, and Slowbro). With only two, a Rock isn't as mandatory, so (particularly if you're running Reflect on Alakazam) you could actually run Tauros here.
I prefer Rhydon due to its greater power and bulk, but Golem is usable. However, the main perk of Golem is the ability to blow up on things, which you'd want to avoid anyway if you're relying on your Rock for Zapdos. Still, blowing up on Starmie is great against non-Zapdos teams.
The idea with Golem is that you keep it around until you've fully scouted their team. If they do have Zapdos, you continue keeping it around. If they don't (or you manage to kill Zapdos), then you can Explode. I've actually switched out Rhydon for Golem on my version of this team (after I posted that RMT); I feel like it already has a win condition, so Rhydon's late-game sweeper niche isn't as valuable.
It also helps against random gimmicky Toxic Zapdos, which actually has a shot at beating Rhydon if the opponent predicts switches well and gets lucky with crits. Besides, a sleeping Rhydon walls Zapdos just as hard as an awake one.
In all honesty, Toxic Zapdos isn't that much of a gimmick. The main reason Toxic is so shunned in RBY is the possibility of poisoning Starmie, and it would be a very brave Starmie that switched into Zapdos. The only real issue then is if you poison Reflect Alakazam (non-Reflect Alakazam isn't as much of a problem, since poison damage can chip it into OHKO range from STAB Hyper Beams, or into 2HKO range from Zapdos' own Drill Peck, and as such it still helps somewhat).
This is Withdraw Slowbro, one of the most unique and fun sets that I've ever used in RBY OU. As I mentioned before, Withdraw has two big perks: it lets Slowbro tank physical hits even more easily, and it lets me PP stall opposing Slowbros and win 1-on-1 against the standard Tobybro 100% of the time.
Against TobyBro (the set originally designed for Ubers, with Surf and Thunder Wave) this is pretty much correct. Psychic/Thunder Wave Slowbro (which I don't recommend, as it loses head-on to Rhydon, but which I've nonetheless seen) does have a small chance to brute-force through it with Special falls and full paralysis before running out of PP.
I've chosen to run Surf > Psychic for a couple of reasons. The biggest one is the extra PP, which helps not only prevents Slowbro from running out of STAB PP when trying to sweep (this has happened once with Psychic),
Legitimate point, but there's a couple of cases where it's actually more likely to run out if it runs Surf. Will discuss later.
but it also lets Slowbro win the PP war against opposing Withdraw Slowbros that run Psychic (this has also happened, lol).
And now we get to where I think you might not be thinking things through enough. More attacking PP doesn't help as much as more non-attacking PP in the Slowbro ditto. This is because all serious Slowbro sets have Rest, which will use 1 PP over 3 turns if you've taken damage. As such, if you start using attacking PP first, even by 4 or 5 turns, Rest's PP-saving effect will magnify that into a very large PP deficit. So, both players will be spamming Withdraw and Amnesia while they can, and not just because they're less valuable PP. If you start using damaging PP earlier, you lose. Even if you're running Surf and they're running Psychic. That already makes it pretty much even. And then there's a certain dirty trick. The player with the Psychic Slowbro can actually switch it out and back in without danger of losing, assuming the opposing Surf Slowbro has previously been paralysed, because +6 Surf can't 3HKO a +2 Slowbro by any means; this saves 2 PP each time, which adds up. The only way to discourage the use of this trick is to throw out Surfs randomly, hoping to catch and KO the Pokemon relieving Slowbro... which is Catch-22, because as we've already seen using attacking PP early gives the opponent free Rest turns and lets them win the PP-stall that way. However, the Surf Slowbro cannot use this trick against the Psychic Slowbro, because Psychic's Special falls mean that +6 Psychics can break the Surf Slowbro when it comes back in.
Surf also helps against Alakazam, who is easily 2HKOed by Surf at +4 but would force me to burn a lot of Psychic PP to beat it even at +6 (and I still need a Special drop to 2HKO).
An unparalysed Alakazam is pretty hard for Psychic/Withdraw Slowbro to break directly, I'll certainly grant that. Of course, an unparalysed Seismic Toss Alakazam is a pain for Surf/Withdraw Slowbro as well. And if you do actually find yourself with a Psychic/Withdraw Slowbro against unparalysed Reflect Alakazam, you can just try to stall it out of Recover by spamming Withdraw and Amnesia. Alakazam needs three Psychic crits in a row to KO Slowbro; even with its vaunted 23.4% crit rate, that's very hard to do before running out of PP.
The upshot of all this is: if you're running non-Twave Slowbro, paralyse Alakazam somehow. Beyond that, it doesn't really matter unless Alakazam is running Kinesis (which is a lot harder to work around with Psychic than with Surf).
The big beef I have with Surf/Withdraw Slowbro is its issues with Starmie and Chansey. Psychic/Withdraw Slowbro doesn't have a very good chance of beating an unparalysed Thunderbolt Starmie, but it at least has a chance - and it wins (clutch freezes aside) against a Starmie not carrying Thunderbolt (surprisingly common). Surf/Withdraw Slowbro is hard-walled, and can be safely frozen or Thunderbolted into oblivion. Chansey's not quite as big an issue thanks to more often being paralysed and Softboiled having low PP, but even then Surf/Withdraw Slowbro absolutely has to burn most of that vaunted 24 PP to defeat an unparalysed Chansey (whereas Psychic/Withdraw Slowbro can break it much faster), and (if Chansey has both Thunderbolt and Thunder Wave, as it usually does) is going to take so many Thunderbolts before running Chansey out of Softboiled that getting critted to death - by Chansey, of all things - becomes a very serious risk (you'll on average take 6 Thunderbolts, plus at least one while you're still getting to +6; that's a 51% chance that it'll crit and kill you before you can beat it).
There's also the issues with Dragonite and Victreebel. Any Slowbro is prone to getting Belled while it's asleep, but carrying absolutely zilch that bothers Victreebel (ie, Psychic or Thunder Wave) means it switches in for free even if Slowbro is awake. You do not want Victreebel repeatedly switching in for free; it's far too dangerous for that (the main reason it's not a big threat normally is precisely because nothing lets it in for free). Dragonite has much greater difficulty actually killing Slowbro, particularly if it's got a Withdraw or two up, but it resists Surf (while being neutral to Psychic) and as such you run a significantly greater risk of it setting up on Slowbro, successfully killing it, and running rampant through your team.
Anyway, enough walls of text. Hope I've shed some light on some of the less frequently-considered aspects of Slowbro's use and maybe a little of RBY OU in general. Decent team, in any case, and kudos for using Withdraw Slowbro. m9m out.
