unsure when ill play this tier again so gonna post
its no secret that most of my help during this tournament came directly from Samu77 who already made his post above so im not going to retread on the admittedly similar opinions i have and ill instead dedicate the bulk of my post to talk about substitute + disable gengar, because it felt good in testing and the one tour game i got to use it in:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7letsgoou-889797
Gengar vs mew in lead is very mindgamey:
-shadow ball into psychic means mew is forced out and likely not getting rocks or switching into anything, so mew is either being preserved so the fast mega/dug/jolt gets a free hit on something else, or the mew player is giving up rocks, unless they have a backup rocker. in my opinion, this is a favored situation for the gengar player and i dont expect it to happen a lot, unless the mew predicts a turn 1 taunt and goes for the kill right away
-what i expect to happen most will be that the mew player will click rocks turn 1 and that the gengar player will open with substitute to take advantage of rocks click, and once the substitute is broken with an attack, gengar can click disable. many of the rocker mew sets fit one attack that will break gengar's substitute, and any other attack is likely u-turn, which fails to break substitute and leaves gengar open to land a free hit. if disable connects, the gengar player truly can just do whatever. you can just spam shadow ball and their options to go to are fairly limited:
Gengar Shadow Ball vs. Mega Aerodactyl: 60-72 (38.7 - 46.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO (100.00% chance to 3HKO after accuracy)
Gengar Shadow Ball vs. Beedrill: 67-81 (47.8 - 57.8%) -- 92.6% chance to 2HKO (92.60% chance to 2HKO after accuracy)
Gengar Shadow Ball vs. Melmetal: 81-96 (38.5 - 45.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO (100.00% chance to 3HKO after accuracy)
Gengar Shadow Ball vs. Dugtrio-Alola: 76-91 (69 - 82.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO (100.00% chance to 2HKO after accuracy)
Gengar Shadow Ball vs. Zapdos: 63-75 (38.1 - 45.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO (100.00% chance to 3HKO after accuracy)
(you're ideally running a +speed nature since gengar is not outspeeding fastest mew otherwise)
Disable matters because instead of the threat of killing mew, not getting rocks and gengar being revenge killed after killing mew, this move + substitute threatens the possibility that gengar will kill mew and remain behind a substitute right after, often forcing an opener where the low hp mew is being preserved instead of sacked after setting rocks, forcing one free turn of damage on something else. if you're a real asshole you can even opt to hypnosis on the switch, it's a 60% chance to land but you know the switch is coming so you might as well go for it once in a while
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7letsgoou-2484240433-idelon15dtwwljm07wrc91bdluua95spw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7letsgoou-2485282405-a4lsgdj5sa0vgfc36b31hh45qegiqd9pw
Zapdos is potentially a decent switchin to gengar for this situation ,but keep in mind zapdos also tends to have a single move to damage it, same as mew, so disable leads to another substitute or just disabling roost and forcing damage to stick
https://pokepast.es/63ebebacf0256aa4
here's the paste i used in tour. i like mega beedrill more than mega aero overall but can't risk getting counterlead by bee and aero without insurance. my own aero helps with the beedrill problem so uh just pray they're an honest player that wont lead mega aero into you if you use gengar lead : )
additional miscellaneous thoughts:
-yeah zapdos gives up so much vs both grounds, what does it matter that you switch into eq? you're slower, can get flinched by rock slide, which can stall out your own reflect turns, you will get revenged easily by both megas after some chip + rocks, jolteon makes progress vs mew more consistently too, why was this ranked #3? i think it's viable but definitely not better than either mega, jolteon, or the grounds. i see the utility for doing zapdos -> melmetal pivoting and i think drill peck makes this better into venusaur than jolteon by a lot, but that's all
-i dropped zapdos in many games for venusaur and it makes the matchup vs vap don a lot nicer instead of playing a mirror , didnt miss it for melmetal much
second shoutout to Samu77 for playing sooo many practice games with me, this tier feels a bit like too little cooks situation so im glad i was able to find something to make gengar lead more consistent. would also like to thank my friend Sabelette for drafting me despite my middling results in lgpe overall prior, i wish id played cleaner overall cause i lucked like half of my sets, promise ill be more locked in for next! and we won!!!
also hearty shoutout to juoean , who was my first help when i first got into tier, hope you hear about our win soon!
its no secret that most of my help during this tournament came directly from Samu77 who already made his post above so im not going to retread on the admittedly similar opinions i have and ill instead dedicate the bulk of my post to talk about substitute + disable gengar, because it felt good in testing and the one tour game i got to use it in:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7letsgoou-889797
Gengar vs mew in lead is very mindgamey:
-shadow ball into psychic means mew is forced out and likely not getting rocks or switching into anything, so mew is either being preserved so the fast mega/dug/jolt gets a free hit on something else, or the mew player is giving up rocks, unless they have a backup rocker. in my opinion, this is a favored situation for the gengar player and i dont expect it to happen a lot, unless the mew predicts a turn 1 taunt and goes for the kill right away
-what i expect to happen most will be that the mew player will click rocks turn 1 and that the gengar player will open with substitute to take advantage of rocks click, and once the substitute is broken with an attack, gengar can click disable. many of the rocker mew sets fit one attack that will break gengar's substitute, and any other attack is likely u-turn, which fails to break substitute and leaves gengar open to land a free hit. if disable connects, the gengar player truly can just do whatever. you can just spam shadow ball and their options to go to are fairly limited:
Gengar Shadow Ball vs. Mega Aerodactyl: 60-72 (38.7 - 46.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO (100.00% chance to 3HKO after accuracy)
Gengar Shadow Ball vs. Beedrill: 67-81 (47.8 - 57.8%) -- 92.6% chance to 2HKO (92.60% chance to 2HKO after accuracy)
Gengar Shadow Ball vs. Melmetal: 81-96 (38.5 - 45.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO (100.00% chance to 3HKO after accuracy)
Gengar Shadow Ball vs. Dugtrio-Alola: 76-91 (69 - 82.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO (100.00% chance to 2HKO after accuracy)
Gengar Shadow Ball vs. Zapdos: 63-75 (38.1 - 45.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO (100.00% chance to 3HKO after accuracy)
(you're ideally running a +speed nature since gengar is not outspeeding fastest mew otherwise)
Disable matters because instead of the threat of killing mew, not getting rocks and gengar being revenge killed after killing mew, this move + substitute threatens the possibility that gengar will kill mew and remain behind a substitute right after, often forcing an opener where the low hp mew is being preserved instead of sacked after setting rocks, forcing one free turn of damage on something else. if you're a real asshole you can even opt to hypnosis on the switch, it's a 60% chance to land but you know the switch is coming so you might as well go for it once in a while
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7letsgoou-2484240433-idelon15dtwwljm07wrc91bdluua95spw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7letsgoou-2485282405-a4lsgdj5sa0vgfc36b31hh45qegiqd9pw
Zapdos is potentially a decent switchin to gengar for this situation ,but keep in mind zapdos also tends to have a single move to damage it, same as mew, so disable leads to another substitute or just disabling roost and forcing damage to stick
https://pokepast.es/63ebebacf0256aa4
here's the paste i used in tour. i like mega beedrill more than mega aero overall but can't risk getting counterlead by bee and aero without insurance. my own aero helps with the beedrill problem so uh just pray they're an honest player that wont lead mega aero into you if you use gengar lead : )
additional miscellaneous thoughts:
-yeah zapdos gives up so much vs both grounds, what does it matter that you switch into eq? you're slower, can get flinched by rock slide, which can stall out your own reflect turns, you will get revenged easily by both megas after some chip + rocks, jolteon makes progress vs mew more consistently too, why was this ranked #3? i think it's viable but definitely not better than either mega, jolteon, or the grounds. i see the utility for doing zapdos -> melmetal pivoting and i think drill peck makes this better into venusaur than jolteon by a lot, but that's all
-i dropped zapdos in many games for venusaur and it makes the matchup vs vap don a lot nicer instead of playing a mirror , didnt miss it for melmetal much
second shoutout to Samu77 for playing sooo many practice games with me, this tier feels a bit like too little cooks situation so im glad i was able to find something to make gengar lead more consistent. would also like to thank my friend Sabelette for drafting me despite my middling results in lgpe overall prior, i wish id played cleaner overall cause i lucked like half of my sets, promise ill be more locked in for next! and we won!!!
also hearty shoutout to juoean , who was my first help when i first got into tier, hope you hear about our win soon!