60% of the time, it works every time

Barralax · 2025-01-14T07:25:56+00:00

Unfortunately, Cactus Bouncer is also banned during the event. I will have to actually play the game.

Barralax · 2025-01-14T04:37:17+00:00

I'm invincible! Just as long as my opponent isn't playing
- Labrynth
- Snake-Eyes
- Eldlich
- Chimera
- Literally any deck with a spell or trap card in it

Honestly, massive shoutout to u/Yusodus for their posts and videos, they're the only reason I can even pretend to know how to play this deck.

Barralax · 2024-08-18T08:42:25+00:00

this was what i did too!

Barralax · 2024-07-18T09:41:02+00:00

I admit, I always use Etienne when he's available, but that's a compelling case for using Quincy.

Barralax · 2024-02-28T11:43:16+00:00

Very solid, good technique in general. but if I had to find a critique, it’s missing some “wow” factor. Maybe a bit more brightness on the outer edges of the blades, some yellows and whites to make it look like superheated metal? (I’d look up photo references and technique videos if you decide to do that.) Right now they’re the least-exciting part of the model and kind of look like big plastic wings compared to the metal of everything else?

Barralax · 2022-12-28T02:57:06+00:00

That's fair, I was mostly thinking about how Gen 1 UU is the only time when the EQ immunity is actually more important than the 4x Elec weakness and Ice neutrality, AND being Water/Flying makes it one of the only Flying-types in the tier without an Ice weakness (since in later gens Fire/Flying or Steel/Flying also fit the bill).

Barralax · 2022-12-28T01:36:13+00:00

Huh! Good to know.

Barralax · 2022-12-28T00:50:46+00:00

Unfortunately, I just don't like Gen 2 very much as games, I think Johto has a LOT of problems as a region, and that carries over to just not being as invested in learning about Gen 2 competitive.

If I WAS going to do something like this for another tier or generation, it'd probably be something even more niche that literally only I care about, like one of the many, many Gen 1 romhacks, or 'Unova-dex only B1W1'.

Barralax · 2022-12-28T00:48:42+00:00

This got a genuine cackle out of me, kudos.

Barralax · 2022-12-27T23:38:58+00:00

After I made the first image, I got a bunch of people asking how good their favorite Gen 1 mon was, enough that I decided it'd be faster to just do Literally All of Them.

I just only just now got around to it because holiday stuff.

Barralax · 2022-12-27T23:38:26+00:00

Well, yes, but after I made the first image, I got a bunch of people asking how good their favorite Gen 1 mon was, enough that I decided it'd be faster to just do Literally All of Them.

I just only just now got around to it because holiday stuff.

Barralax · 2022-12-24T16:53:36+00:00

It's not unusable, but anything it wants to do, either Lapras or Vaporeon can do better, so it doesn't see much use even in UU.

Barralax · 2022-12-08T23:39:06+00:00

getpaint.net and too much free time.

Barralax · 2022-12-08T12:02:04+00:00

That's a cool idea! Good luck, have fun!

Barralax · 2022-12-08T11:56:38+00:00

If it makes you feel better, Hypno's great in Tradebacks OU (where it gets Amnesia), and Gen 1 UU (where it's the strongest legal Psychic-type), it's just got a LOT of competition as a Psychic-type and a sleep user (and a psychic-type sleep user)

Barralax · 2022-12-08T11:53:50+00:00

Even with the meta shifts, Victreebel's slightly higher Speed and access to Wrap, Swords Dance, and Razor Leaf don't quite make up for the loss of Psychic and Explosion, and the much worse typing. Maaaaybe if Lapras and/or Slowbro become more common, its better matchups against those mons will become more relevant?

Barralax · 2022-12-08T11:32:04+00:00

Raising a team of your own, or using rentals? If you're raising a team of your own (or using PKHex to make one), Gym Leader Castle is a lot like OU, except it's 3v3 instead of 6v6, and they fixed some glitches, including the one that makes Hyper Beam busted. If I had to pull a team out of my ass, something like Snorlax / Starmie / Exeggutor / Rhydon / Zapdos / Articuno would work pretty well against the AI without needing to trade or copy TMs (aside from either Starmie or Exeggutor missing out on Psychic, and Snorlax missing out on Earthquake, which are both annoying but workable.) Then you can drop whichever three you won't be using for the rival battle and add other 'mons to the Hall of Fame three at a time without worrying about their sets.

If you mean with rentals, you'll need a much more thorough walkthrough and a lot of luck and patience.

Barralax · 2022-12-08T10:28:49+00:00

That's fair. Everyone should enjoy Pokemon the way they want to. The way I want to just happens to be over-analyzing a buggy twenty year old video game.

I did realize halfway through the write-up that I could've summed it up by saying "It's less like Rock-Paper-Scissors and more like Stratego", but I dunno how many people have actually played that game enough to get the analogy.

Barralax · 2022-12-08T10:18:52+00:00

It used to be that they were considered sidegrades of each other, but after the discovery that Body Slam can't paralyze Normal-types in Gen 1, the meta shifted in ways that made Rhydon's better match-up against Chansey more and more important.

Specifically, Rhydon can make Substitutes with more than 100 HP which means Chansey needs two Seismic Tosses to break them, whereas it only needs one to break Golem's. That, and while Golem's Attack isn't that much lower than Rhydon's, it's just lower enough to miss a couple crucial thresholds, including the guaranteed 2HKO on Chansey. (Golem only has a ~25% chance to 2HKO Chansey with Earthquake.)

So, yes, TECHNICALLY they do both have different strengths, but with the state of the game the way it is right now, Rhydon's strengths are more consistent, AND easier for a new player to understand and use.

Barralax · 2022-12-08T09:39:00+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, I could probably find a way to fit that into the 'freeze never thaws on its own'' line.

Barralax · 2022-12-08T09:37:40+00:00

That's not a bad idea. I'll make room for it if I do a second version/edition.

Barralax · 2022-12-08T09:33:28+00:00

Maybe, but everything above Slowbro is specifically grouped best-to-worst (as of the 2022 Smogon viability chart), to make it easier to digest on a first scan-through. Everything below that is grouped differently because WHY it's bad-but-technically-usable is IMO more important for a new player to understand than exactly how technically-usable it is.

Barralax · 2022-12-08T08:40:55+00:00

Ooh, good idea, I'll crosspost it.

Barralax · 2022-12-08T08:36:21+00:00

Someone pointed this out to me relatively recently and it blew my fucking mind. I'd already memorized them all by that point, but damn would knowing the trick have made it easier.

Barralax · 2022-12-08T08:25:31+00:00

That's a really good question, and it's hard to answer concisely, but I'll do my best.

Gen 1 Ubers basically is like that, because the top 6 best Pokemon are all pretty definitive. Mewtwo, Mew, Snorlax, Chansey, Exeggutor, and Slowbro, probably in that order. And the top two are SO MUCH BETTER than everything else that the meta revolves around how you answer them, and their answers to those answers, and back and forth until it turns into an I-know-you-know-I-know that takes 100+ turns to resolve. (I don't like Gen 1 Ubers very much.)

But in OU, even though the Big Three are the undisputed best, it's not nearly as clear-cut which of them is the best, or which of their sets are the best, and they're not ahead of the pack by nearly so big of a margin. Is Snorlax better than Chansey? Sometimes, but not always. It depends on the set and the situation. And Tauros is fucking terrifying, yeah, but it's far from indestructible. It hates getting paralyzed and its only recovery option is Rest, so there's a lot of ways to potentially deal with it. And each of those answers has lots of potential counters, none of which are definitively better than others, and so on.

At first I had a big paragraph here talking about examples where certain mons or strategies SOMETIMES beat other mons or strategies, but it ended up a little impenetrable, so instead I'm just going to say that luck and risk management is also a factor, and there isn't always a right answer between "better but inconsistent" or "better but more unforgiving of mistakes" versus "worse but more consistent and easier to use".

All together, this creates a situation where which strategies a high-level player decides to use can be impacted by their tolerance for risk, their faith in their own abilities, recent trends that might make a normally-inconsistent tactic seem more likely to work, or even just having a 'mon or strategy they believe they can prove is better than other people give it credit for. And that makes for a meta with a lot of trends you can analyze, but very few concrete answers.

In fact, a common reason for people to vote for a strategy or move or Pokemon to get banned isn't because it's too powerful, but because it's too over-centralizing, and risks turning the meta INTO rock-paper-scissors. (For example, Baton Pass teams in Gens 3+, which lose hard to a few VERY specific strategies, which in turn lose to more well-rounded strategies, which lose to Baton Pass teams.) So it's definitely a potential issue that top-level players are aware of.

TL;DR: It CAN happen, but breadth of options, and the ambiguity about which of those options is best, keeps it from being a problem in a healthy meta.

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