That thing all surfing pokemon turn into
Jul 24, 2011 7:31:02 GMT -8
Post by jorgen on Jul 24, 2011 7:31:02 GMT -8
All right, this isn't an off-the-wall option, but I've seen people dismiss Lapras as "usable, but mediocre" all to often. It's not. It's legit, and pretty versatile in RBY terms.
Lapras isn't really that much like Starmie, because it can actually threaten the common special walls out there. No, Lapras is a little more like a special Snorlax, in that it's kinda slow, relatively versatile, takes hits like a man, and can dish out the pain to just about everything on a typical RBY team. And unlike Snorlax, it's got type resists to work with, immunity to freezing, and hits a speed tier that beats Exeggutor. Of course, it can't trade and isn't quite as versatile as everyone's favorite fatty, but the fact remains that Lapras can absorb a lot of hits while instantly threatening most of a given team.
The main source of Lapras's power is obviously its nasty STAB Blizzard. Unless it's Chansey, Alakazam (kinda), or a water and/or ice type, a given Pokemon is reeling from that hit. Thunderbolt is the coverage move of choice, making the aforementioned waters more wary of switching in. Lapras loses to Starmie more often than not in a straight-up 1-v-1, but a para'd Starmie or a Starmie that's hit by Tbolt on the switch will lose that advantage.
Now, with STAB Blizzard and Thunderbolt helping Lapras take care of most things, there's still a couple of mons that give it issues. Namely, things with huge special defense and a recovery move, like Chansey and, to a very limited extent, Alakazam. The generally-accepted standard Lapras (Blizzard/Tbolt/Body Slam/Confuse Ray) allows it a shot at beating Chansey (and a better one at beating Zam) via heal-blocking parafusion hax. You can already 3-shot Zam with Blizzard, so taking away the healing of Zam pretty much ruins whatever "kind of a wall" label it might have had against Lapras. Meanwhile, parafusion doesn't exactly make it easy against Chansey, whom you 5HKO with Body Slam without crits, but it does give you a pretty decent shot at beating it.
To be more analytical, after you use Cray, the overall odds of immoblizing a Chansey in 4HKO range (at most ~80%, not unlikely by any means, especially if you've been going at it for a while) for long enough to kill it is, very roughly, 13%. The probability tree I used for this is here. Paren'd numbers are number of slams left to KO, red boxes mean "reset" due to softboiled, yellow ones are "wins." And regular numbers are % chance of something happening (they're approximate, if you couldn't tell). 12/88 are crit/no crit rates, all the other ~50%-ers are chances of immobilization/no immobilization. I'm assuming an unparalyzed Lapras here; if it is para'd, odds obviously go down quite a bit. No 256-ing is accounted for, either, because really, what difference would it really make in the overall odds?
While 13% doesn't seem too great at first, remember that that is only for one cycle of confusion. If Lapras is up against Chansey, odds are it's going to be using Softboiled every chance it gets (or so I assumed). If it fails to Softboiled, instead opting to go for the Bolt or Twave, your odds shoot up, as now Chansey is in 3- or 2-HKO range with that high chance of being totally immobilized. And if it does just keep Softboiled'ing, there's nothing really to force Lapras out, which means you can easily get 2, 3, even 4 cycle attempts in on Chansey. 13% easily becomes 30-40% for a given Chansey vs. Lapras standoff, which isn't bad odds at all.
While it gives it the best shot at beating Chansey, Cray isn't the only 4th available to Lapras. Hyper Beam can KO Chansey at ~40%, requiring fewer immobilization turns and no turn wasted on using Cray at the cost of added immobilization likelihood from Cray. Assuming you only use Hyper Beam when Chansey is ~40%, this is mathed out to make the 4HKO odds against a para'd chansey at ~80% to be about 8% per cycle. (Tree here). Also, in desperation, a crit averages a KO on Chansey at over 80% (which you actually have better odds of doing [12%] than going for a single 8% slam-slam-beam cycle if Chansey is at 74%. If at 80%, the odds are a little bit in slam-slam-beam's favor). Hyper beam still gives worse results overall against Chansey than Cray does, so Cray is still strongly recommended. However, the ability to luck Chansey in a pinch might make Hyper Beam a situational replacement for the 4th.
Sing is another option, although its iffy accuracy and the fact that it can be blocked if Chansey is para'd make it an iffy option for beating Chansey. Regardless, Sing is always a surprise, meaning that, if used early, you can basically insta-win against an unsuspecting Chansey. Assuming Sing connects, of course.
Rest is an option if you don't care that Chansey walls you. However, the main point of Lapras is that it hits hard specially while having a good shot at beating Chansey, so whatever. Lapras already eats a ton of hits, though, so if you can dispatch of Chansey through other means, a Resting Lapras can be agony for your opponent. But then again, if you're not aiming to beat the special walls, mightn't you rather just go with Starmie?
So, there you have it. Lapras is likely the most dangerous special attacker in the game, not so much because it's so much better from the special side than the others, but because it has a good shot at beating its main wall (Chansey) without having to try and freeze it. With repeated parafusion cycles, crit Hyper Beams, and Sing, Lapras can straight-up play the odds against Chansey, straight-up luck Chansey, or use the element of surprise to take the #1 special wall out of the game. Other things, like Hypno, Zam, and Gengar, might also give it a little trouble, but Lapras can still hit them pretty hard, making non-Chansey Lapras checks pretty unreliable.
EDIT: Well, poop. In my haste to get this off of notepad, I realized I had overlooked a very important detail: namely, that Cray takes an extra turn. Crazy, right? Well, factoring in that extra turn, Cray's odds of beating the 80% Chansey become ~8%. Factor in paralysis and it's not looking so good for a parafusion cycle after all. Meanwhile, Hbeam's odds are roughly the same for the same situation, but it takes fewer turns (and thus, isn't as compromised if Lapras itself is paralyzed). Plus, Hbeam has the opportunity to instantly kill a low-health Chansey (or a pretty high-health one with a crit.) Hbeam's and Cray's odds even appear to diverge in Hbeam's favor as Chansey's health gets lower: an 80% Chansey switching in on Slam (thus having it start at 60%) gives ~19% for a Cray cycle (COUNTING the extra turn you use to set up confusion!), and 23% for a slam-beam cycle. Thus, in retrospect, Hyper Beam appears to give Lapras more flexibility in either beating or finishing off Chansey while sacrificing only a little bit of your ability to beat, like, a 100% Chansey that switches in at the same as Lapras comes in to make for a straight-up 1-v-1. And the latter you shouldn't really be trying to do anyway.
Thus, I retract my statement about Confuse Ray being recommended over Hyper Beam. Hyper Beam should definitely be used over Confuse Ray.
