Lower Tiers RBY PU Hub

[Sabelette]

VR, post RBYPL retrospective at the bottom cause I did much of the building

Fringe is unranked, rest are ranked

So first off, I would like to say that:
1. This tier is super underdeveloped to the point that any nonmainer can come in and sweep all the mainers, we are all ass and need to get better
2. All of my takes are very temporary and will evolve, but hey, NU is about to VR so this tier won't even exist as is in like a month and a half
3. Nicole is the GOAT and is correct that Graveler is cracked and if I was real I'd put it 2-3 and Fearow like 9 but I'm a coward
4. Cutoffs don't matter but to me either between B/C or like, right after Vileplume is probably the cutoff, not sure enough if I want Vileplume in its own tier so I lumped those together

Explanations

1. Arcanine - this is obvious, the only Pokemon there is no reason to ever drop. 1v1s most things, speed tier + 30% burn lets it cheat matchups it normally loses, Agility lets it turn a winning 1v1 into a winning 1v1 + 40% on another mon even when paralyzed, bulky enough to sort of switch in sometimes, back Arcanine is absurdly threatening and always trades well into any team ever.

2. Staryu - flawed but incredibly good mon, most of its weaknesses get patched up by its teammates, it has good coverage, 1v1ing Nidoqueen consistently is a very good trait. People need to get out of the Surf Bolt Wave Recover paradigm and be more willing to run 3 attacks or Surf Psy or something, Thunderbolt is super non essential and so is permawalling Seaking, depending on your team structure; trying to keep Staryu at 100% and unparalyzed is a big ask over the course of a game and checking Seaking should be done more proactively. The frailty sucks but back Arc/Grav/Seaking go a long way to help and people also need to stop preserving it regardless of structure, it can make good progress then get KOed and still win games just fine.

3. Nidoqueen - might be putting this too high but two things stick out to me. The first is that "progress maker that forces predictions to not just lose to it" is really good, and the second is that it's the only legitimate Graveler switch-in that keeps momentum and doesn't take obscene damage if you can get in on Rock Slide. It's also unfortunately one of the better leads at the moment, but I still think Nidoqueen lead is pretty fraudulent and we would eventually optimize away from gambling this hard. Has a lot of nice little tech options, Substitute, Surf on lead to not instalose to turn 1 burn, Fire Blast for Pinsir, Counter is kind of stupid but has some niche uses, etc.

4. Graveler - Gravelgod. Spamming this throughout RBYPL was super correct, incredible mon that obviously walls Fearow but also the sheer damage it does, the ease of getting Substitute up, and Explosion make this so good. Nothing can really afford to take a non-resisted hit into this, and if you see it you almost may as well sack your Fearow immediately, except that if it beats Fearow with Sub up you lose anyway. Turns every turn into a 50/50 or worse once it's in on Fearow. Counter is koolaid and a bad move to run, Quake Slide Boom Sub are all mandatory and do more than enough. Even if the opponent doesn't bring Fearow, revenge killing a paralyzed mon then booming or something lets it do more than enough. I'm really interested to see how Fearow/Arc/Gastly probably leaving the tier affect it.

5. Seaking - I do not subscribe to the "Seaking sucks, walled by Staryu" koolaid, preserving Staryu that long means giving up momentum/damage multiple times. Pairs well with Graveler because then you don't need Blizzard necessarily, plus Graveler hitting Fearow one time followed by Boom/one EQ hit on Staryu is enough to ensure it can't check Seaking later. This structure has a Vileplume problem but Plume hasn't picked up quite enough yet for that to be an issue + there are ways to shore that up like Gastly/Abra. Anyway, great mon, Agility sweeper with no real walls is nice, Double-Edge makes Staryu very suspect as a check.

6. Fearow - STAB Hyper Beam and 100 Speed means this is never going to be a bad mon, but holy shit the momentum you lose on Graveler is so bad that you just can't bring this every game. We were all so wrong. One idea in my mind lately has been using Substitute over Agility to force Rock Slide from Graveler to guarantee pivots to Nidoqueen and blunt its momentum, but I didn't get to try it out, alas.

7. Porygon - Broken ass mon that is entirely limited by 4MSS. Running Psychic/Agi/Twave/Recover every time is Abra/Drowzee fodder, dropping Agility and Twave both have big costs, but you probably want Double-Edge and even Thunderbolt sometimes (Tbolt is more of a back Twaveless sweeper type of idea to me to limit crit chances from foes). Probably one of the mons with the most left to explore, but I think this will end up being an NU threat anyway. If not, we need to test out back sweeper Porygon more and some more lead sets that bait in and beat Psychic-types. I can imagine Hyper Beam having a niche as a bait move in a future meta but probably not in this one.

8. Abra - Gravelgod's rise has completely shifted my opinion of this mon, preys on Pory/Staryu/Gastly, does painful damage to everything else, has an exit strategy now thanks to Graveler and back Arcanine, only issue this thing really has is opposing Drowzee and even then youre probably going 1 for 1. Also has some interesting techs with Substitute, Counter, I thought about Reflect but it feels unreasonably tricky to set up. Still super frail but the implied Graveler in back means you have to revenge this with either a Fire-type or something slower, and launching Hbeam into it only to hit Graveler is pretty devastating too.

9. Gastly - I hate this mon so much. Hypnosis coinflips ruin games whether they hit or miss, but the inconsistency stops it from being higher for me when several mons OHKO it and Fearow crit OHKOes it. Psy Star is also a big nerf to this mon with a solid chance of beating it outright. Fraudulent as a Seaking/Staryu check, hard switching this into either is a desperation move and not something people should be doing happily. More Abra and Porygon and Magmar also aren't good for it, IMO.

10. Pinsir - Another underrated mon that benefits heavily from the back Arc + Graveler paradigm. Trades with absolutely anything, decent Speed, Swords Dance prevents Porygon from sitting on things, Seismic Toss lets it hit Graveler and Gastly for significant damage. It has plenty of ways in and the offensive checks to it aren't happy to come in; Slash on Arcanine does enough that you can go to your own back Arc without much worry after. Right about here on my VR is where things start getting more specialized and need specific team structures to operate, though I'm sure we'll find more ideas.

11. Machamp - Similar logic to Pinsir, I'm actually not sure which to rank higher but I think I value Pinsir's speed and consistent damage a bit more, whereas Machamp has to do a little predicting or get some 30%s to maximize its value. Still, solid mon, good damage output, as with most fully evolved mons it can flat out beat Staryu or force it out in precarious spots and a Fearow weakness isn't damning in this metagame, though being vulnerable to burn sucks ass. Beating basically any Nidoqueen set is a plus but generally losing to Seaking is a minus. Submission might unfortunately be worth bringing on this again.

12. Rapidash - Not terrible, but more back Arc, more Pory, and more Graveler all don't bode well, nor does less Fearow. Inconsistent mon that has high highs and low lows, but not being Gastly-weak is a plus and if the Psychics keep seeing use that helps Dash for sure. Hard to say where this truly belongs, but I'm sure there's more to explore; I think the structures it's been tried on just feel redundant for it.

13. Magmar - Probably a bit worse than Dash overall, but the sheer variety of useful moves it gets are so nice. Smokescreen/Cray as anti-setup stuff is so annoying, Psychic gives it consistency against a lot of targets, Counter is a little bit meme but still has its moments, main issue is awful bulk + slower than all the Fires and Fearow. May be nicer if Pinsir picks up more.

14. Vileplume - The ultimate SurfBolt Star + Grav or Blizzless Seaking + Grav (or both) punish, blunted a bit by increased PsyStar. Hard to stop this getting sleep because it actually has some bulk, but it's also hard for this to get more than a sleep off. Still, another mon that benefits from Fearow getting knocked down a peg and a nice thing to keep in your scout so people don't get too comfy running Grav + Dedge Seaking all the time.

15. Dragonair - Another inconsistent mon with a lot of options, and another punish for SurfBolt and Blizzless Seaking. AgiliWrap is annoying and stupid and inevitably will be banned. I had an old team that used Agility + Twave to force paralysis on Gastly to remove it for back Seaking + Scyther and I think at the time that was pretty cutting-edge, but that's definitely not quite so good in the age of the Gravelgod. Another mon that could be explored more, probably gets worse the more Pinsir/Machamp/Abra show up but who knows, with that movepool I'm sure we find something new.

16. Drowzee - Too slow and frail to be as good as it promises, pick Abra for the speed on most teams. Role compressing Hypnosis + Twave is nice but if you take a Twave on entry to Porygon or miss a Hypnosis it immediately makes Drowzee so much worse, anyway. Probably has a structure or two where it's nice but overall I'm a skeptic.

17. Sandslash - The general shift toward Graveler and Porygon and Abra is so good for Sandslash. Still unproven, I built with it a fair but but we never ended up using it in part because I wanted to keep things straightforward for lax during RBYPL. I think Sandslash requires a lot of skill to use right and other mons just don't need to be used so flawlessly to win games, but eventually we'll figure this mon out more.

18. Scyther - Gravelgod makes this way more niche than it used to be, not sure it's PU at the moment but I'm not trying to be too hasty. Still clearly has a niche.

19. Magneton - Same issue as Scyther but even less upside. I might play it into specific scouts, but there's very little reason you ever have to risk getting matchupped like this.

The rest: Poliwag's always gonna have some small niche as a fast sleeper, but it does basically nothing else. Arbok can do stupid shit with Glare Wrap but ultimately lots of things stop it here compared to ZU. Slowpoke/Omanyte are just too slow to do stuff here since they can't do Gravelgod levels of damage or actually wall things, but they aren't auto-loss brings. "Fringe" is just stuff I've toyed around with or theorycrafted but those are very very not ranked, lol, what they do should be obvious but that doesn't mean I think they're any good.

RBYPL stuff
There were basically two phases to RBYPL for my team, the first with Wanted at the helm and we built stuff that I would say was very basic and a bit stuck in the past (that's on me) and the second with lax piloting as we went full Graveler + Seaking Fearowless and just sent it every game. I'll pick out a few of the teams I liked and toss them here with some notes.

lax vs nicole, week 4
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-802704
https://pokepast.es/71ed7cf71d41d10d

Start of the Fearowless Grav train, which, ironically, nicole put me onto after a conversation we had in DMs. I was still on a little bit of cope with running Gastly Seaking Staryu all at once with SurfBolt Star, in retrospect I'd probably go 3 attacks with Psychic over Recover. We hit an opposing lead Pory and kinda got goobed as expected, one of many reasons I later started building more with Abra.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-802714?p2
https://pokepast.es/5268a7cbabeb2d32

Lead pory is just stupidly good if you hit a no Psychic-types matchup, and knowing nicole tends to favor strong, consistent mons over scouting and bringing inconsistent stuff, we figured this would go well. We definitely got good luck but again, lead Pory into no Psychic-type is just a disgusting matchup.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-802722
https://pokepast.es/20aeb455efbab19c

As mentioned in my VR, Plume is kind of sick into Blizzless Seaking + Graveler, so I thought it might land well into her brings and it ended up doing a ton here. Scyther in back was unexpected but as seen, Seaking ate, and our Plume let us force nicole to sack Seaking and Fearow and also revenge kill with Staryu, which made the endgame much less playable for her.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-802731?p2
https://pokepast.es/42d81443c2f12949

Machamp was kind of a flub here because you have to play predictions with it over and over, Plume worked out decently again, but ultimately we haxed, oh well.

We reused the above ideas a lot for the rest of the tour, though we also mixed in Surf + Psychic Staryu, Fearow, Abra, so I'll post a few more teams below:

https://pokepast.es/9ee8924a2c7dff35

Simple idea, we ran zero Fearow and 100% Grav so we figured nobody would bring Grav into us and we could have our fast murderbird in for free rather than rely on something as finicky as Gastly.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-807682?p2
https://pokepast.es/8734a2e2ed0882e7

One of the teams I think did a lot with the Graveler structure, we ran this into Gangsta Spongebob in Week 7. Abra completely clapped Porygon and Staryu, Graveler got insane value, and Pinsir easily mopped up. I think there's a lot of variants on this idea that can work that make mons like Pinsir, Machamp, Abra work well.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-807700?p2
https://pokepast.es/211b137379ca69d8

The other one I wanna highlight from that set, similar idea to above but Machamp. We definitely got lucky with the early freeze but this game really shows what a fully-evolved mon like Machamp can do to break through Staryu and still get more damage after just off sheer bulk, and why SurfBolt 100% use just isn't it.

Overall, I don't have any motivation to try to make huge meta revelations for this tier right before NU VRs and completely shakes it up, and I stuck to a couple specific structures when building for the back half of the tour, but I do think I learned some interesting things building and watching games in the latter half of RBYPL and some of it will carry over to the new meta - thanks Wanted in 49 States, nicole7735, and lax for each making me learn some stuff whether through building/discussions or watching you play your matches. The big takeaway I have is that one-time momentum stoppers that do significant damage are just so stupidly lethal and we need to respect them more across tiers, this absolutely influenced how I built in UU and NU as well. See you all after NU VR.

 

[NotVeryCake]

Explanation

April❤️

 

[Maris Bonibell]

Ive just started not playing PU for RBYPL . Time for a VR and zero thoughts. Getting these out kinda quick before i sleep, so ill likely will skip over nothing and write about what i dont care about the most.
Everything i put on this vr i would not bring, and have not brought to a tournament game(zero weeks does not count).

explanation for most of the vr, i guess

It is very likely some of this will not be obsolete rather soon when wrap remains unbanned, but given arcanine and fearow were both kept in PU you never know what the community will decide on right? good luck

also thank you Maris Bonibell for giving me no shot at playing a version of this tier that is still rather unoptimized by locking out of the tier during signup.

 

[Wanted in 49 States]

Thoughts and Prayers

S Rank mon. Should be on every team.​

1. Arcanine
Best mon in the tier. No reason to drop it ever, really. Lead Arc is neutral in most games (it plays itself) and in the slightly disadvantaged, a burn or crit puts the opponent so far behind since its easy to revenge a low health queen or machamp but not an Arc. I've already posted about how a ton of teams crumble to back Arcanine, too.

A rank mons. Consistently good to bring.​

2. Staryu
Does everything you want it to. Revenging queen, often is the only switchin on a team for Gravel, farms momentum from Seaking, has twave to stop Pory from getting out of hand, and worse case it trades with itself or Gastly or Arc. Psychic seems to be the wave right now, a lot of other meta changes allow former meme mons Vileplume and Machamp to be used, and Psychic is a much better click vs Porygon than Surf is.

3 and 4. Fearow and Graveler
Fearow is an S tier mon behind Arcanine if you don't face Graveler, it has dangerously high KO ranges, its faster than anything you care about, and it frequently crits its way through mons and robs games. Still, the Graveler matchup is so bad, you can't sack it into Graveler since then it gets a substitute to boom anything (unless you click Hypnosis), but also preserving it is so costly to the rest of your team since nothing wants to take an earthquake. Even if you preserve it you often end up in lopsided Graveler vs Fearow endgames, and another point in favor of Graveler is that it is so easy to pilot. You frankly lose so much momentum with your Fearow that it is very much worth it just to have Fearowless teams in your scout. Fearow doesn't really use Agility that much so you can drop it for stuff like Substitute or Mirror Move, but the best 4th on Fearow would probably be a cyanide pill to ko youself instantly and end the turn so your fearow doesnt allow their grav to get a substitute. On Graveler's lasts, I think only Substitute + Boom, Counter and Body Slam are ~fine but the former two are just sooooo good.

5. Seaking
Seaking is the honesty mon. If your team can't handle it, Seaking will win and there is basically nothing that you can do. As such, pretty much every viable team is packed with Staryu and some other Seaking hate just to stop it, which really blunts its effectiveness. I think the biggest reason why I don't really like spamming Seaking is that it really can't be used midgame, Staryu gains momentum from it, and if the opponent is feeling risky they can also use Gastly to gain momentum, too, so it sits on your team until the endgame by necesity. Seaking teams often build around this and it feels that you have a princess on your team that cant exit the ball until the conditions are met so you basically never get to use Seaking's defensive profile unless setting up. Still, unlike all the other mons like Fearow and Porygon and Machmap or whatever I feel Seaking is the mon that can overcome bad mus if you just play better.

6 - 9. Gastly Abra, Nidoqueen, Porygon
Barring the Fearow/Graveler area this is probably where I'm the most fickle about. Gastly has definitely seen some better days, Graveler teams that drop Fearow have all the team slots to pack Gastly switchins like Abra or Magmar, and is also a lot more reliant on hitting Hypnosis than before (ie if you switch into Seaking Surf you 100% need to click Hypnosis since the opp can switch out and theyve made more progress than you tbolting into arc or fearow). Still, in a tier where Seaking hits most of the meta for super effective damage forcing it out once with momentum is still acceptable. Abra is the new wave right now, replace Gastly with Abra and youll usually come out with a functional team. Better speed tier to revenge Staryu and Gastly and Nidoqueen, only meh into back Arc and its still very playable, and also packs another twave on the team so you don't give up your Seaking check turn 2 vs pory. Nidoqueen is alright. It stops Fearow, but not as well as Graveler does. It has a speed tier, but it only really matters for Seaking. Graveler is bad into back Porygon, but it's not like Nidoqueen is good either. To put it simply the meta has warped itself around using mons that are good into Nidoqueen so there really isn't much for it to do except trading with Fearow or Arcanine (graveler can do one of those). Look at the mons I have in A: Staryu beats it, Abra beats it, Seaking beats it, Pory beats it, Gastly is favored, and Nidoqueen can't switch into Graveler. Best it does is trade with Fearow and maybe backArc. Lastly, Porygon. Its floor is trading twaves with Staryu which opens up your Seaking a lot but I feel it struggles to do much apart from that. Sometimes it goes godmode if the opponent mishandles it or you get lucky, but a lot of the times it just dies from an unlucky string of fps after doing the bare minimum, and also if you spam it your life will be rife with Drowzees.

B rank mons. I'd only really run them into favorable scouts. Shackled by occasional really bad mus / only fitting on 1 team / general inconsistency.​

10. Machamp
Okay-ish lead in a metagame where being an OK lead already means its already in the top half of PU. Furthermore, every Fearowless build I've seen gets completely dumpstered by this mon in the back, and it kinda smooths over gravel teams weakness of not being to good into Fearowless. Awkward to fit in the back unless you drop Fearow yourself but definitely worth bringing into Graveler spam.

11. Magmar
Pretty much exists only on Graveler teams that want to lead Arcanine. Slightly better suited for the role (will get into more with Rapidash) with Psychic, having a button to click vs Seaking, marginally better Special Bulk, and access to / ability to bluff Counter, which is handy when your Graveler goes on a tear and KOs two mons but you still need some thing that doesn't insta-lose to Fearow. Has rather even mus too.

12. Vileplume
Gastly is not really a 100% usage mon anymore, and a bunch of other shifts in the meta has helped it a lot, especially with the downturn in Fearow. Plume is a great Graveler switchin, same with Staryu and other niche sets like Dedge Seaking, Magneton, and Machamp. The Graveler mu is one of the best things with this mon so I think it's actually worth it to run Mega Drain and drop Swords Dance, no one is really preserving their 40% paralyzed Arc anymore. Worth bringing into the newer Graveler teams but still struggles into the classic Grav + Fearow + Gastly teams of yesterday.

13. Magneton
Very hard to fit. Used to slot seamlessly onto Seaking teams replacing Seaking but in the year of Graveler this trick absolutely doesn't cut it anymore. Most people used to sac their 20% Queen after dealing with Fearow but Graveler definitely has value as a boom after it deals with Fearow, and also your opponent is extremely invested in keeping Graveler alive until you lose your Fearow, which means you kinda have to sac an entire mon just to activate Magneton. It burns a hole in your pocket for the majority of the game cause grounds get a free substitute from it. Still, its very good into the standard big 6 stuff, though that title means a lot less now since big 6 isn't as common and there are a lot more options that body big 6.

14. Rapidash
The teams it fits on has seen better days. Really good on double back fire into Seaking-less teams with Gastly and lead Arcanine, AKA ancient teams from pubd. Doesn't fit on Graveler at all really since Graveler just makes so much more progress vs Fearow, why would you send out Rapidash to click Fire Blast into Arcanine when you can click EQ with Graveler and chunk 50% from whatever mon. Did some experimentation a while back with using Graveler as more of a boom button and using Rapidash as your "real" Fearow check but Rapidash isn't good on that either since its too precious to ever risk (it has to switch out of like everything if the opp preserves Fearow). It still ~fine though, it doesn't really suffer from bad mus as much as Vileplume and Magneton but simultaneously no one's scout in RBYPL is what I'd call Rapidash good into. And even though it has more even mu spreads you still have to contend with the fact that Rapidash has ludicrously low floors due to accuracy.

15. Dragonair
Exists on Seaking / Agility spam stuff. However, Porygon is usually better at that since it usually forces paralysis on Staryu and not Gastly, which is usually better, and running both ends in defensively flimsy teams. It's probably the 5th best lead since you can get really good lines with it (Gastly usually tries to stop it, but if it misses Hypno/gets fp'd you can wrap to queen and the opponent is in a world of hurt) but also is so inconsistent that literally no one has brought it to RBYPL (you can also just get bslam para'd t1 and die).

C rank mons. Functional mons that have moments to shine but don't really fit on teams or in the meta.​

16. Sandslash
Switches into Graveler and Gastly. Still just hard to fit, because it doesn't make the most out of its defensive profile and stacks weaknesses that you'd want a different ground for (when i click rock slide into fearow and they switch out to Seaking or Staryu and take nothing). Taking a Seaking team and replacing it with Sandslash gives you a completely different team that pilots in a bizarre manner, and those teams are "usable" at the bare minimum. I know there is potential for this mon in some team comp or style but I haven't seen it.

17. Pinsir
This is the mon I think I'm underrating the most here, but like the back Arc mu is so bad. It also hates Fearow for obvious reasons and Gastly (clicking Stoss on a stayin is so bad, and the opp can go to another mon on stoss if they have Gastly out). 85 speed just doesn't really cut it, especially since it switches into basically nothing because everyone is greeding Fire Blast on queen and bluffing substitute. At least with Machamp you don't have a weakness to Graveler rock slide (you take 50%) and can switch into Staryu once cause you don't mind paralysis. IG it has real moves to run apart from Slash and Seismic Toss, SD allows you to beat Pory, Hbeam gets better rolls, Bind for cheese, Substitute is underrated cause people like switching out of Pinsir, and I've run Body Slam before since I had Screech Magneton and didn't fear Porygon. I've said it before, but show me a Pinsir team and it would probably be better without Pinsir.

18. Drowzee
Exists to farm Porygon but is so ass into everything else, and also you don't need a dedicated "fuck pory" mon cause you can just run Abra, which doesn't have as high a peak (singular) and just is generally better into the metagame cause it will also do something vs Star/Gastly/Queen. If you don't land the mu with Drowzee the best youre gonna get out of it is paralyzing Staryu (I've seen too many sets lost because people clicked Hypnosis once into Staryu). Abysmal valleys both in terms of mus and consistency with one really high peak.

19. Scyther
All the anti-Fearow developments have hurt this guy, really no reason to run him on any team. It's good into stuff without Graveler and like Dedge Seaking, but the Graveler mu is so 100-0 that you can't just say "outplay lol." Like Seaking has "bad" mus but all of them you can outplay and win, with Scyther you are at the whims of matchup. On a good day Scyther trades with Gastly or revenges a Staryu since genuine sweeps are so rare. Even when the stars align Scyther has Rapidash-tier luck where one miss or crit while setting up or low roll or crit after setting up spells disaster. It's like a fastmon that can't crit, Slash certainly isn't and Scyther would be better off if its Hyper Beam never crit so it can get better rolls.

D. Can do stuff but they don't really have peaks or "good mus", they only have bad mus and okay mus.​

20. Arbok
Agility Spam has already gotten a lot more niche and on that structure Arbok allows you to exchange a mon that can win if you play well enough for a mon that can win no matter how bad you play as long as you get lucky enough.

21. Omanyte
Theoretically better with Gastly's usage slipping but doesn't do its role well enough, Fearow breaks through very often and I've seen a paralyzed Staryu or Porygon sit on Omanyte many times. I've had some success running this mon in friendlies and I think the best advice is to see this mon not as a dual Fearow/Arc switchin but solely as a back Arcanine switchin (switching t1 is fake). Omanyte has okay mus into back Arcanine and isn't worth the slot vs anything else.

22. Slowpoke
It's an alternative to Recoverless Staryu (already niche) that loses all its speed. Personally I like Amnesia on this mon for the +2 SpD to 1v1 queen cause thats what usually switches in. It trades like okay and occasionally goes god mode (gets 2 mons paralyzed). Has the same issues as Oma but with less upside and less or a defined role, but it trades well enough and the fact that it doesn't have a defined role is kinda good cause if your opponent brings a slowpoke you have no idea what set its going to run because this mon is very underexplored (3 attacks twave? amnesia twave? amnesia rest? earthquake to hit gastly? rest reflect amnesia? (< - yes ive lost to this before when it solod my arc and seaking))

F rank mons. Really don't see a use for any of them and they ordered by how much you scuttle your wr when using them (That's why sleepers are high here)​

Spoiler

Primeape is complete crap though. It misses every KO range and you need to predict with super effective moves to get those ranges to begin with, how about use Pinsir and hit every KO range by not predicting with Slash. It's outclassed by Pinsir and you cannot convince me that Pinsir + Primeape is a real team structure. IG there is some Thunder niche it has (yes, not thunderbolt cause it still does less than Pinsir slash and you need it to hit the 2HKO on Fearow).

 

[Gangsta Spongebob]

I would consider B-/C the cutoff

Big thanks to the Pampu Primapes for drafting me, and especially big thanks to Maris Bonibell and gastlies for being great support while I played the tier. I guess it's no surprise that me and Gastlies's top 6 Pokemon are the same LOL.

My Thoughts (Long)

S Rank:

Arcanine is just statistically better than all the children it beats up here. Speed-wise it outspeeds everything common except Fearow and the much rarer Rapidash and Scyther. This also gives it a very good crit rate. Bulk-wise it's nearly impossible to 2HKO without a strong Surf or Earthquake, and notably it survives Fearow's Double-Edge into Hyper Beam. Finally, offensively it 3HKOes basically every foe neutral to Fire Blast, and Body Slam and Hyper Beam make the few foes that resist Fire wary of checking it. And this is to say nothing about Fire Blast and Body Slam's chance to spread burn or paralysis, which could ruin otherwise decent checks.

Its plethora of excellent traits make Arcanine a Pokemon that either beats everything or at least has decent odds to. Seaking is the only common Pokemon I believe is largely immune to being haxxed by Arcanine, because while it hates being paralyzed or burned, neither status majorly impacts its ability to take on Arcanine. However, Staryu walling Seaking makes it very exploitable, especially early-game. Seaking just can't switch into Arcanine and then get forced out numerous times while Hyper Beam KOes it at around 40-48% HP. Seaking is fundamentally a late-game Pokemon, and while Arcanine still pretty broken there too, it really thrives in the early- to mid-game.

I'd argue Porygon is the best reliable and common answer, since it can paralyze Arcanine and slowly whittle it down while PP stalling Fire Blast with Recover. The main issue is that Porygon can't switch into Arcanine and risk a critical hit Fire Blast and Poryon itself not that hard to switch into if you're fine with your switch-in taking paralysis. The Psychic-types notably eat Porygon lacking Double-Edge alive, and while paralysis spreaders like Staryu can't beat it one-on-one, they can trade paralysis to enable a teammate like Nidoqueen to break through it. Usually Porygon isn't strong enough to force Arcanine to stay in most of the time in the way, for example, Nidoqueen often forces Fearow to stay in and take it on. Nidoqueen is the next reliable common answer, but we've all seen how many times Arcanine has crit or burned through Nidoqueen, to the point where Surf is probably lead Nidoqueen's best 4th move, though Nidoqueen will still lose if Arcanine burns or crits it with its first Fire Blast. The last notable answer I feel is reasonably consistent is Magmar, which can use Counter shenanigans, and while these do work they are very prediction-reliant to say the least.

Basically every other Pokemon whose type should give them an advantage against Arcanine just fall to its power or status. Staryu is KOed by Body Slam into Hyper Beam. Graveler under no circumstance wants to take Fire Blast and risk a burn, since it's main job is countering Fearow and Arcanine can easily beat a burned Graveler by reapplying burn's Attack drop with Agility. Dragonair has a hard time doing its Wrap shenanigans while paralyzed and gets worn down very quickly when doing them while burned. Omanyte is easily Arcanine's hardest counter, but the opposing team would have no shortage to checks to Omanyte in the early- to mid-game, making it really exploitable.

The result of this is that the best way to take on Arcanine is your own, which leads to a mess of critical hits and paraslams that should hopefully lead to the winner being at low HP and paralyzed, but we've seen plenty of games where an Arcanine War led to an unparalyzed Arcanine with decent health, which is an enormous lead. A paralyzed Arcanine with Agility up is also a huge issue, though at least it is significantly less threatening if it's forced out, if the player even bothers keeping it alive.

Arcanine beating almost everything makes it the best lead in PU, but it's just as effective in the back. It just does basically everything you'd want an offensive progress-maker to do, and its bad mus can easily be shored up by teammates. I believe Arcanine is undroppable unless you're like 100% sure your opponent is bringing Omanyte, in which case it'd still be good with proper support. Arcanine is just so insane, it's hilarious that we once all thought Arcanine was ZUBL-worthy, to say nothing about it surviving its ban vote. Unfortunately that ship has sailed, but at least we'll soon get shifts from NU, which will hopefully either move Arcanine there or at least give us a tier better equipped to deal with the dog.

A Rank:

Through its variety of excellent traits, Staryu is one of those Pokemon that just inherently makes its team better by having it. Do you want a Thunder Wave user that's both decently fast and scares out every Ground-type? Do you want a consistent check to Nidoqueen and Graveler? Do you want a counter to one of PU's most dangerous sweepers, Seaking? Staryu #2 is a hot take, but it just does so much for its team. Staryu's coverage is quite excellent, making it have few hard counters. Despite what Sabel said in her post, I actually did have a few teams without the standard SurfBolt + Recover + TWave set, but unfortunately I don't think I ever got to use Staryu's coverage in my RBYPL games. While I'll get into why Staryu's coverage doesn't make it this terrifying wallbreaker, it can surprise players that think they've got Staryu walled. Staryu also loves the rise of Graveler, with it not having to fear Fearow revenge killing it as much with it around.

Staryu's main flaw is that its stats, outside of its good Speed, are pretty mediocre to awful. Literally every single one of Arcanine's stats are higher. With the exception of Seaking, every other viable Pokemon in PU can paralyze and/or 2HKO Staryu, making it pretty easy to KO or cripple and thus be unable to check a late-game Seaking. Fearow and Arcanine are especially good revenge killers for Staryu, with Fearow's Hyper Beam notably doing over 80%.

Staryu's offensive power is also really middling if it can't hit its target with a super effective Surf. While it usually can paralyze and badly damage the Psychic-types, it's usually a worthwhile trade for them in return for enabling Seaking. Staryu's coverage can also have disappointing power. Even if it runs something like Psychic for Gastly and Vileplume, neither are 2HKOed by it excluding crits or Special drops. Vileplume is an especially awful mu for Staryu, with even Blizzard failing to 2HKO it.

All this being said, it is essential to note that many of these checks find much of their viability in dealing with Staryu. Not all of it, (the Psychics I'd argue find more merits dealing with Porygon, and Vileplume's Graveler mu is a big deal) but their use is a testament to how excellent Staryu is. The dynamic between Staryu and Seaking is my favorite element of PU right now. Players need to balance Staryu's excellent mid-game traits while also keeping it healthy enough to deal with Seaking later on. The Seaking player needs to find some way to get rid of Staryu, which isn't too difficult given its low bulk. To be fair, much of the time this ends with a Staryu war, with the winner ending up paralyzed and weakened, but at least this doesn't have the sheer swingyness of Arcanine wars. Staryu is excellent, and should be used on the vast majority of teams. I find it droppable on a tiny number of teams that have other sources of Seaking answers and paralysis spreading, but those are few and far between.

Similar to Staryu, Nidoqueen is one of these Pokemon that just makes teams better by having it. Nidoqueen's high bulk, excellent coverage, and workable enough Speed make it a great tank that can trade blows with much of metagame while also dissuading its targets from switching out thanks to its offensive prowess. Nidoqueen is the tier's best Fearow answer besides Graveler and is often what keeps Gravless teams together against Fearow. Nidoqueen is also one of PU's better answers to Arcanine, while it also has a similar matchup to Rapidash and a positive one against Graveler. To make it even scarier, Nidoqueen among the tier's best abusers of paralysis, with its power and coverage making it adept at removing virtually any Pokemon reliant on its Speed. It also notably helps it against Porygon, with it usually not able to spam Recover enough to beat Nidoqueen with the threat of full paralysis, while Nidoqueen's own immunity to paralysis lets it avoid the negative effects of this RNG.

Nidoqueen just has three notable flaws. Firstly, Porygon is very much favored to win against it one-on-one, especially if it has Agility. Porygon is hardly an insurmountable threat, but Nidoqueen usually needs paralysis support to make a lasting impact against it. Secondly, its Speed is very middling, letting foes like Arcanine, Fearow, and Gastly have at least once chance for RNG to save them. Finally, Nidoqueen's typing leaves a lot of be desired. Weaknesses to Water, Ground, and Psychic give the opposing team no shortage of Pokemon that can threaten it, such as Staryu, Porygon, and Machamp. Even Abra is favored to beat Nidoqueen one-on-one, despite it having to take an Earthquake to do so. Seaking is likely the worst example of this flaw, with Nidoqueen giving its team another Water weakness against a terrifying sweeper.

Regardless, Nidoqueen's general consistency against some of the metagame's top threats and ability to pose a reliable threat against everything else make it an excellent Pokemon and one that basically carries the Gravless style. Nidoqueen is a good lead, but this niche is largely the result of Arcanine being such a problem. Nidoqueen is far from undroppable however, primarily since teams that use Graveler often don't want the giant Seaking weakness and have already Fearow handled.

Nidoqueen hasn't changed much over the years, with its role and moveset largely remaining the same. Surf on the lead is great tech against lead Arcanine, and these days I'd say Substitute tends to not be that useful on a game-to-game basis, making Fire Blast the slightly more preferred choice to nail the rare Pinsir. Nidoqueen's slight dip from the #1 and mandatory status it had over a year ago can largely be chalked up to people realizing Arcanine is absolutely insane, while a weakness to Seaking has revealed itself to be a bigger issue than originally realized.

Fearow was honestly the hardest Pokemon for me to rank here. While making this vr I moved it to as high as #2 and as low as #7. Combined with its immense power, what sets Fearow apart from other offensive threats is its excellent Speed; it outspeeds Arcanine, so only the relatively uncommon Rapidash and Scyther outspeed it, usually making Fearow the fastest Pokemon in any given game. If Graveler didn't exist Fearow would at minimum be #2, and I would make a case for it being #1 since it's just that much of an offensive powerhouse.

That being said, the existence of Graveler throws a wrench in Fearow's sweeping. Unlike Omanyte, Graveler is a Pokemon you absolutely don't want to provide free entry for. With Fearow being unable to even break through Graveler's Substitutes without a critical hit, it's forced out while a teammate now must take a brutally powerful attack. To be fair, Graveler isn't able to wall Fearow forever, with Double-Edge and critical hits being able to wear down Graveler shockingly quickly, to say nothing about chip Graveler takes setting up Substitute or mispredicting the switch. Regardless, Graveler can generally switch into Fearow at least 3 times, which can sometimes turn Fearow into an outright liability.

Fearow has a few other bad mus too. Nidoqueen has been used as a Fearow check since day 1. While it does lose to a crit, it serves as a consistent revenge killer to Fearow on Gravless teams. Rapidash can outspeed and 2HKO Fearow after Double-Edge recoil, while Scyther can also outspeed Fearow and use it as setup fodder, OHKOing it with a +2 Hyper Beam with RNG or the slightest chip. Regardless, Fearow remains excellent, it's just that the rise of Graveler really does it no favors, resulting in a Fearowless playstyle being quite viable in my opinion, though it is a large mu fish. Beyond hoping your opponent brings Graveler into it, you pray they don't bring Machamp nor that you'll need Fearow's Speed to revenge kill something like an unparalyzed Arcanine.

These couple months have really been the rise of Graveler. I had foolishly believed it was at risk at dropping to ZU a long time ago, something I could not have been more wrong on. Graveler usage has been on the booming ever since, largely due to its excellence at countering Fearow. Once on the field, your opponent is in a terrible spot. Staryu obliterates Graveler with Surf, but it having to take an Earthquake leaves it heavily weakened, with it now in KO range of most of the tier's strong attackers. Staryu can use Recover while Graveler switches out, but that kills the opposing team's momentum and lets the Graveler user bring in their Staryu check for free. Seaking has the bulk to survive two Earthquakes, but switching into Graveler deprives it of one of its best traits, its bulk, and Seaking can be walled by Staryu anyways.

That leaves Graveler's really bad matchups. Porygon isn't 2HKOed by Earthquake and thus can wall Graveler outside of Explosion, which doesn't even always OHKO it from full. Porygon is manageable with teammates, with notably the Psychic-types notably being great partners for Graveler. Graveler's worst matchup is easily Vileplume, which is only 3HKOed by Earthquake while it can spread status to Graveler's teammates, turning it into a liability. Machamp is another awful matchup, 2HKOing Graveler with Earthquake while Graveler's own can only 3HKO.

However, the main reason why I didn't rank Graveler higher is because it has shaky to outright losing mus to most high tier Pokemon, which is why I largely talked about Graveler in the context of its check switching into it. Graveler is very much reliant on Fearow giving it opportunities to attack, which can be can be exploited by good plays or even opponent outright bringing a Fearowless team. This all being said, Graveler turns one of PU's best Pokemon into fodder while being almost unwallable, something that can excuse some bad mus. Graveler's rise massively alters the viability of numerous Pokemon PU, and I believe we are very much in the era of Graveler in this metagame.

Seaking is THE cleaner for PU. A Water typing that obliterates Arcanine, Nidoqueen, and Graveler, very good bulk that makes it deceptively hard to KO, and Agility combine to make Seaking a late-game terror. With the rise of Graveler and even double Ground teams being hardly uncommon, Seaking has no shortage of teams to sweep.

That being said, Seaking has real flaws that prevent it from having the same plug and play factor as something like Arcanine and Staryu. Being walled by Staryu is just so bad, it kills most uses Seaking could have in the early- and mid-game. Removing Staryu isn't too hard, but it requires team support, often forcing a teammate like one's own Staryu to get paralyzed or KOed outright. Seaking could get lucky with a Hyper Beam crit or Blizzard freeze, but if you're aiming for those you've probably already lost the game. If you let your endgame be too predictable, your opponent preserving Staryu can often lead to disaster.

I seriously debated the order between Fearow, Graveler, and Seaking. Both Fearow and Seaking have similarities, being scary offensive threats with a notable wall. Seaking does have the ability to rarely break through its wall and a better typing, but Fearow won out in my eyes because of its better Speed making it an instant threat and Graveler is ultimately less common than Staryu, who is added to teams for more reasons than just countering one Pokemon. Fearow's crit rate is also silly. Regardless, Seaking is excellent, and I can see it rising even further as time progresses.

Porygon is PU's one true wall in my opinion, capable of using its just good enough bulk and 32 PP Recover to outlast otherwise terrifying threats such as Nidoqueen and Arcanine. They could get lucky (I swear Nidoqueen has a 50% crit rate when it faces this thing) but in general Porygon is a decent check to them when it doesn't have to switch in, making it one of PU's better leads but also solid in the back. Porygon also walls Graveler, excluding Explosion, but enabling Fearow in exchange for a Porygon is a worthwhile trade. Once it faces a foe that can't break through it, it can spread paralysis and slowly chip away at its target's health. Porygon is also immune to paraslam, if Omanyte wasn't suffering enough.

Porygon's main issue is that it just can't outlast its foe while paralyzed, with something like Nidoqueen generally able to take it out before it can chip Nidoqueen to death or PP stall Earthquake. Granted, forcing paralysis on something like Staryu is a very fair trade, but it does provide teams a pretty easy way to out of Porygon. Porygon's other big issue is that it has severe 4MSS. It needs Recover and generally wants Thunder Wave, but after that it wants Psychic to hit Gastly and better take on the general metagame, Agility to reduce the danger of crits, and Double-Edge to not be walled by the Psychics. Mono-Psychic Porygon is walled by Abra and Drowzee, and are still troublesome mu for any Porygon.

I mean, thank god we have these options, or Porygon would be damn near unkillable. However, this does make a theoretically busted Pokemon quite manageable in the game, even if it does require an annoying amount of RNG to take out if you didn't bring specific counters to specific options.

Gastly is the Pokemon I have the hardest time gathering my thoughts on. On one hand, it has solid Speed, great Special and coverage, and the broken ass Hypnosis. On the other hand, it has atrocious physical bulk and weaknesses, its lack of STAB makes it do mediocre amounts of damage to targets like Arcanine, and it often has to rely on the broken ass Hypnosis. An immunity to Normal is awesome but most Pokemon carry another STAB move that steamrolls Gastly. Gastly is OHKOed by most of the tier's Earthquakes, even if it outspeeds all of its users, and has an atrocious matchup against the Psychic-types.

I've honestly found Gastly mostly being "fine" in a lot of roles. Gastly biggest claim to fame is being a decent Seaking check, winning one-on-one, but its Thunderbolt generally 3HKOing gives Seaking a lot of leeway since it can 3HKO Gastly back with Surf. Staryu will always outclass it in this role. Gastly does generally beat Staryu one-on-one excluding very bad luck, but Gastly being outsped makes it inevitably paralyzed and thus easy pickings for something like Nidoqueen. Gastly also has a good mu against Porygon, but once again it hates being paralyed and crumbles to Psychic variants unless it lands Hypnosis. Gastly walls Dragonair, but I've been seeing it less and less lately and Gastly will get paralyzed by it anyways. Finally, there's Hypnosis itself, which gives Gastly a 60% OHKO move against the entire metagame. It's broken as hell, but it missing usually leads to Gastly getting KOed due to its frailty. Hypnosis is one of these moves you only click against a foe that gives you multiple turns or a hail mary to turn around an otherwise losing game, because it's just too unreliable.

Do you see what I mean here? Gastly has a lot of good things, but also a lot of bad things and competition in its roles. I generally have seen it used as a backup Seaking check that can do other things if needed, but I've been finding it more and more droppable lately. The rise of Graveler does it no favors either; Graveler beats Gastly one-on-one without Hypnosis, and Graveler making the Psychics better is terrible for it. Gastly will never fall off to ZU or anything, but I don't think it can stand up with the likes of Staryu anymore.

B Rank:

Machamp would easily be A tier if Fearow didn't exist, with its high bulk and insane Attack giving it a positive mu against basically everything else above it. Earthquake 2HKOes Arcanine and Nidoqueen, while the former can only 3HKO Machamp with Fire Blast, and the latter 4HKO with Earthquake. Staryu is 2HKOed by Earthquake and very vulnerable to paraslam. The otherwise unkillable Porygon is obliterated by Fighting-type STAB. Graveler is 2HKOed by Earthquake. Machamp is basically a slower, bulkier, Nidoqueen with nothing close to a wall. Machamp has so many great mus, but this all comes crashing down with Fearow.

Fearow freely switches into Earthquake and 2HKOes Machamp with Drill Peck, with Machamp only able to 2HKO it back with Hyper Beam or Rock Slide. Fearow single-handedly knocks Machamp like 5 places down the vr because it's just such a bad Pokemon to have such a bad mu against. As a result, the rise of Graveler is a godsend to Machamp.

Graveler turning Fearow in fodder makes Machamp way more viable, turning what would've been a borderline ZU Pokemon into a behemoth. Otherwise, Machamp's low Speed makes it easy to revenge kill, but this fits into its role as a more extreme Nidoqueen; without factoring in Fearow, Machamp is an excellent tank that can reliably eliminate foes like Arcanine and Porygon. Gravless Machamp can work in my opinion, but it's a massive risk and plays to your opponent using Fearow recklessly. Lead Machamp is surprisingly functional from my experience, with it having positive mus against Nidoqueen, Arcanine, and Porygon, but players need to always watch out for Fearow. Regardless, Graveler and Machamp have amazing synergy, and the uptick in Fearowless plays into Machamp's hands perfectly.

Another Pokemon that's besties with Graveler, Abra loves not being obliterated by Fearow. In return, Abra provides support against the its nemeses Porygon and Staryu, notably stonewalling mono-Psychic Porygon. Abra can easily defeat these foes one-on-one, barring Double-Edge Porygon, but even just paralyzing these Pokemon is a massive upside to Graveler and Abra's team as a whole. While Gastly is in something of decline, Abra dominating it is also nothing to scoff at. Abra also weirdly has a decent mu against Nidoqueen. Outspeeding and 2HKOing it, Nidoqueen can very rarely OHKO Abra back, giving Abra an advantage.

Abra's main flaw is that it's a complete and utter black hole of defensive utility. Having the broken ass Psychic typing means little when your bulk is comparable to that of a dorito. The fact that most of the tier's Hyper Beams OHKO Abra do offer some interesting plays with Graveler, but they mostly mean Abra is utterly helpless against much of the metagame. Additionally, Abra doing its job usually leads to it being paralyzed, making essentially trade in these mus. Regardless, Abra is shockingly decent.

Another massive fan of Graveler's rise. Vileplume is among the best Graveler counters, only being 3HKOed by Earthquake while outspeeding and being able to OHKO it with Mega Drain. Giving Graveler a taste of its own medicine, now it becomes a liability to its team as Vileplume has the perfect opportunity to start spreading status. Vileplume also has a great matchup against Staryu, walling SurfBolt variants, rarely being 3HKOed by Psychic, and not even being 2HKOed by Blizzard. Vileplume is even great against Blizzless Seaking. And once it has put a foe to sleep, it forces mindgames between Swords Dance and Stun Spore.

As excellent as these matchups are, Vileplume has some absolutely terrible ones as well. Gastly stonewalls Vileplume even if it hates being paralyzed. Arcanine and other Fire-types also hate paralysis but they 2HKO Vileplume with Fire Blast while usually being able to stomach its unboosted attacks. Fearow also has the bulk to tank Vileplume's unboosted attacks and can 2HKO it with Drill Peck.

Vileplume also has 4MSS, which is hilarious because all of its attacking moves are ineffective. It needs Sleep Powder, but wants Stun Spore for reliable paralysis, Mega Drain to hit Graveler, and Swords Dance + a physical move to do damage against basically anything not weak to Grass. Mega Drain can be dropped, but if Graveler catches this the tables then turn and Vileplume is forced out if sleep clause is active. Swords Dance variants of Vileplume also very rarely sweep due to Vileplume's mediocre Attack and bad Speed. It can drop Swords Dance, but this just makes it even more passive. Body Slam could compress Stun Spore's paralysis and Hyper Beam's damage, but from my experience this is an unreliable midground that doesn't properly fulfill the roles of either move. Vileplume is a very polarizing Pokemon, but the rise of Graveler does, like Abra and Machamp, give it a solid place in this tier.

I generally think of Porygon as the most annoying PU Pokemon until I remember this exists. Dragonair generally uses Thunder Wave and/or Agility to wear down targets with Wrap, before finishing off its target. Surf is a workable finisher, obliterating Graveler and hitting common Pokemon for decent damage.

Dragonair's biggest issue is its vulnerability to status. A resistance to Water and Fire sounds great until you realize Dragonair can't set up against Staryu without risking paralysis, nor Arcanine without the threaten of paraslam or a Fire Blast burn. Dragonair can wall SurfBolt Staryu, but the threat of paralysis makes it lose out in this role to Pokemon that are more versatile or aren't as badly hurt by paralysis. Dragonair's Ice weakness is also really bad, badly hurting its matchups against Nidoqueen and Blizzard Seaking. Finally, while it hates paralysis, Gastly walls Dragonair; Gastly will still be immobilized by Wrap, but it does no damage and thus puts a stop to Dragonair's shenanigans.

Dragonair is fine, maybe better than ever with Gastly falling off. That being said, it's not spectacular either, so it isn't that common or plug and play, which is probably for the best given how annoying it is to face.

Remember when we all thought Arcanine was bad because Rapidash and Omanyte were here? You can never use Rapidash without Arcanine, which is fine since Rapidash's retains most of Arcanine's power, even better Speed, and Fire Spin, but I've found it really hard to fit. Firstly, the extra Seaking weakness is really bad. Secondly, Rapidash just isn't a good lead, and if you want a back Fire, just like, use back Arc, since running another lead would make you less weak to Seaking and Arcanine is better in the back anyways. Rapidash has a better Fearow mu, but Gravspam has got that covered. Rapidash is definitely decent, but it just isn't fucked up and evil like Arcanine is or has a really amazing matchup into something important like Graveler does.

Pinsir is fine, which is way more than I was expecting. With Fearow blocked by Graveler, and Arcanine often trading with itself, Pinsir can easily get a chance to shine slashing through common threats like Seaking and Staryu. It can even OHKO Porygon with a +2 Hyper Beam, being among the few Pokemon that can OHKO it. Despite its wack movepool, Pinsir is favored to win one-on-one against Gastly with Seismic Toss, excluding Hypnosis, which also lets it threaten Graveler to the point where it has to choose between taking on Pinsir or staying healthy to do its job at ruining Fearow's day.

Pinsir isn't that good however, since being obliterated by Arcanine isn't fun, nor is a bad mu into Fearow. Nidoqueen can also very easily run Fire Blast since Substitute is pretty droppable, giving Pinsir another bad mu. Pinsir is pretty decent as a wallbreaker that can lay on major pain in the right circumstance, and I believe is just alright enough to remain PU.

C Rank:

Drowzee just misses the cutoff in my opinion. It faces major competiton from Abra, with Abra's better Speed and power contrasting with Drowzee's actual physical bulk and Hypnosis. However, Drowzee's physical bulk is still pretty crap, and Hypnosis is a really risky move on a Pokemon so slow, though it does dissuade basically every foe from switching out. Drowzee is fine and has real use cases, pairing nicely with Graveler like Abra does, but I believe most teams will get more use out of Abra, though I can see a rise in Double-Edge Porygon massively helping Drowzee.

Magmar is weird. It has the best movepool out of all the Fire-types, notably with Psychic being great coverage, Counter to punish Arcanine, and Smokescreen and Confuse Ray to be annoying. It for sure has a niche, but it adds another Seaking weakness and relies on RNG and prediction too much for my liking. Like Drowzee I find it very close to the cutoff though.

Yeah Scyther is not eating well with Graveler rising. While Scyther's Slash does slightly more damage than Fearow's Double-Edge, Fearow's Hyper Beam and chance to do a million damage with its crits make it basically always the better choice. Meanwhile, using them both just makes a third of your team get walled by a very common Pokemon. Scyther is just super hard to justify in the current meta.

Sandslash is really cool. A brutally powerful Earthquake paired with a great Graveler and good Fearow mu make it quite scary, especially with paralysis support. That being said, its low Speed, Special, and Ground typing leave it vulnerable to the plethora of special attackers in PU, notably Seaking. I can see Sandslash being a proper PU Pokemon in this meta, it's just that people have barely experimented with it, including myself, so I can't justify putting it any higher.

D Rank:

Omanyte walls Arcanine, but is too reliant on double switches when half the tier dominates Omanyte. Omanyte isn't stonewalled by anything, except Porygon—Staryu and Seaking hate paraslam, Gastly is 3HKOed by Surf, Vileplume is 3HKOed by Blizzard—but Omanyte just needs to go through so many hoops to start seriously punishing Arcanine. Porygon also stonewalls Omanyte, barring a Blizzard freeze. Double switches exist, but you can't justify an entire Pokemon's viability off of it. Omanyte might be C-rank worthy, with it absolutely having more results than Sandslash, but it is just so hard to both fit and use despite its godlike Arcanine matchup.

This placement might surprise some, since I myself have used Magneton in RBYPL. However, with the rise of Graveler, it's just so hard to effectively use Magneton. You basically need to pray for your opponent to not use Graveler and sacrifice their Nidoqueen early on. That is just too much mu fishing for my liking. I might be too harsh on Magneton right now, since once the Grounds are removed it goes crazy, especially against teams reliant on Seaking to sweep, but I just couldn't see myself bringing it to a serious game as RBYPL went on.

Arbok does ZU shenanigans in a way more powercrept environment. It's probably usable, but the sheer amount of paralysis spam and faster Pokemon make Arbok's life so hard.

Poliwag clicks Hypnosis and prays, but even if it lands it has to deal with Arcanine and Fearow being faster than it. Being the fastest sleeper probably does count for something, as does a great Water typing.

Thunder Wave and serviceable bulk can't fix atrocious Speed and a reliance on setting up in such a fast-paced meta. Slowpoke's plethoa of excellent tools can do something, but it just doesn't do enough fast enough in my opinion.

 

[BeatsBlack]

Cool to see Abra and Machamp on the rise, my goats.
If Arc, Fearow, and Gastly go -- or even just two of them, then I can see Primeape pulling up to the meta as well. Remains to be seen. Drowzee sucks.

 

[Vitoran]

First of all, I wanted to make an RBY PL retrospective in this post as it's been a wild ride for me but i'd rather do that in a separate post if I ever do it. I want to take proper time to self-reflect, analyze the weeks and also maybe gather some data about all 86 games played.So onto VRs!! Cutoff is C and bellow, If it's not here then i didn't even bother to practice with it. Looking at other posts maybe i'm being too lenient with what stays in the tier but hey I genuinely believe these mons have utility in the tier and also it's my first time so be gentle.

General Metagame Vibes

A bit of background to set the foundation of how i perceive the meta:

This isn't actually my first year playing rby tiers, I was a RoA mod in 16-17 under the name of Barbows and rby ou was my main/best tier back then. That's not to say i was good at it, i was barely decent but i really enjoyed the risk management/high rng aspect of it, which was also my main draw to playing rands both back then and today, just a tad above being shit at building.

I'm a math nerd so i REALLY love it when i have to calc out an endgame factoring misses, crit and para chances and, as i came to realize, also mapping out relevant 1v1 scenarios during prep (say fearow v queen 1v1 or champ v arc lead). And that's what kind of drew me to PU when YBW asked if i was down to play that instead of rands which is what i was expecting to play.

I did a quick skim through this thread, saw it had some uncharted territory potential (in contrast to OU which seems like every player knows several optimal lines by instinct/experience) AND that it had one my favorite pokemons in Nidoqueen as not only viable but almost a staple. (newsflash: i love the entire nidoran line) I just had to take the opportunity! I could not believe 2 months later i'd have won my team the entire tour with her.

The whole push and pull of when to play aggressive making reads, when to gamble and when to play safe is really crucial for any mons metagame, thats not news. It's also not any news that this format has a lot more gambling and mirror matches than any other rby format, well guess that sucks huh? eh not really, thats where we have the chance of doing more math during our game than we're used to elsewhere and playing to maximize your odds!! this isn't really a secret, it's just the extra spice that made this format fun for me and that i feel like it's kinda just brushed aside cause rng has this tendence of been seen as some dirty thing.

it's just a part of the mechanics you have to consider when deciding what play to make. every play you make you have to try and maximize the
expected value of that one turn and weigh that over the game state. this is why i'm a huge fan of stuff like 4th move body slam on graveler.

Using an example to also make a point about a set choice

you've won the arc mirror, your opponent goes fearow to revenge, you go to your graveler as one does. what is graveler's almost sole reason of existence in the tier? walling fearow. now here am i going to try and make a read? if i go eq they can stay in and chip me, if i go rock slide they can go surf queen, am i going to take 25% self chip in sub just postpone making this call? i am adamant about not taking chip when the mon you want to wall crits roughly 1 out of every 5 moves and can take you down from 49% hp. de+sub+another de when you want to come in next time gets you into crit hbeam range why am i maximizing my opponent's odds of beating my fearow answer? no, the best option is to have body slam, graveler is not there to maximize its damage, any damage it manages to dish out is already very welcome add on top of it an 30% chance for para support and you have the perfect midground move for your graveler EVERY game. sub has its uses late game when para is more spread or key answers are taken away and you know more of your opponent's team, but body slam has use EVERY game, i want to maximize MY odds of winning. best of all would be if this picked up for some reason and people started going gastly on grav you could always just revert to the "also pretty safe, but less team supportive than 30% para odds" eq, but thankfully it didnt.

if you start actually sitting your ass down to calculate the odds of any given scenario you start questioning some parts of your instincts that maybe weren't as true as you thought they were. this is also why i have seaking so high in the vr. it's main point is to sweep so you get to click so many more moves than other mons, where staryu and gastly want to click a status move or recover, queen usually is traded for something so it clicks less moves and the rest doesnt quite have the speed or bulk for it. in a format where mons crit so much and defensive counterplay is small you really want to maximize the "bullshit out of a bad situation" potential of your mons.

Example from my literal first gen1 pu tour game

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-794615?p2
the endgame from turn 19 onwards looks like utter bullshit at first glance. seaking crits gastly that would've hypnosis'd?? doesnt get para'd on arc slam???

but then you calculate and your odds are not that bad. honestly i made the gastly play turn 19 expecting graveler to sub there so i could fish for a hypnosis but on turn 15 i took an entire minute to calculate what were seaking reverse sweeping odds in case it would come to that and they weren't so bad (then on turn 19 i redid my math just to be sure if i didnt miss anything) so worst case scenario if i just lose my gastly things aren't looking too bad

for seaking to sweep it NEEDS agi and grav is not booming there cause then fearow is freed up to bullshit ITS way through the game, so i just take that and staryu staying in as a sac as a given (grav could come in but then you're taking chip and also getting freed up to get surf'd anyways) from then on to win you need to:

-hit hbeam

one of
[- crit gastly
- dont crit gastly but dodge hypnosis
- dont crit gastly, get hit by hypnosis and wake up turn 1 while not getting crit yourself (can get away with getting crit if you crit arc afterwards, but that just improves my odds slightly and honestly didnt calc that cause it would be too much time for too little gain)]


for a clean sweep you want
- crit arc OR dont get para'd

but it's not too relevant as you can still win while para'd and again, i didnt want to waste that much time in game nor do i want to do it here lmao but feel free to actually map the entire endgame odds, mapping probability trees in mons is a really fun exercise!

that gives you

68/512+(1-68/512)*0,4+(1-68/512)*0,6*1/6*(1-80/512)

68/512[crit gastly]+(1-68/512)[dont crit gastly]*0,4[dodge hyp]+(1-68/512)[dont crit gastly]*0,6[get hit by hyp]*1/7[wake up turn 1, maybe this is 25%, dont recall if it got implemented or not]*(1-80/512)[dont get crit on wake up]

which nets you 48,81% to win so almost a 50/50 which is already great but most insanely to me and my gut feeling is 54,24% to beat gastly after hitting hbeam WHICH MEANS YOU'RE FAVORED IN THAT 1V1!!! INSANE ISN'T IT??? I FUCKING LOVE MATH

if you want to factor in defeating arc without being para'd it's X*68/512+X*(1-68/512)*0,7 where X are the odds we just calculated, it's roughly 42,98% BUT as stated above you can still win while para'd so a lot of that 12% diff can be made back to where its basically a 50/50 after ko'ing staryu.

so when you go back to turn 19 you can either go for your gut feeling of what they will do or try to assign odds to wanted clicking eq or sub and proceed to apply the odds to what lines you just calculated for each branch. that said i rarely assign odds to reads and back then i went by gut feeling knowing at worse i had a coinflip to win.

I will post the next two paragraphs outside of this spoiler just so it gets more attention but it was initially written here so i'm gonna have it doubled idc

the calc above really shows what a terrible move hypnosis really is. if you want to get actual value out of it (that is, you sleep a mon that doesnt insta wake up) you need a sleep roll of 6/7 (or 3/4) which when accuracy is factored makes it so you're only getting value 51,42% (or 45%) of the time. that is not to say never to run hypnosis, sometimes just the threat of the opponent not being able to insta wake is enoguh to make them play worse and if you high roll it you can get HUGE gains.

HOWEVER I actually honestly think this is NOT a healthy interaction for the metagame, as much as maximizing the odds is fun i think there's a huge difference of odds that play out over several turns vs odds that play out instantly, it messes up with the player agency and is counterproductive to skill expression. I dont care about precedence or any of that stuff, honestly metagame quality goes above all else so I would personally like to see hypnosis/sing banned from the tier. Basically any high variance that plays out over several turns type of interaction is a no for me and that involves APT as well.

Hopefully after this wall of text the general idea of actually calculating your odds in any given tier, but ESPECIALLY rby rands/pu (maybe LTs in general? idk might pick them up a few months from now to see how it feels) has been seered into your mind, be not afraid of math for it is your tool to use and your friend when your instintct tells you the line you want to go for is shit.

That is how i think this meta is best played: getting the most ammount of damaging moves off so as to maximize the odds of getting crits/secondary effects but ALWAYS with the math to back it up when possible. this is one of the formats where math adds a ton of relevant info to your positioning during the game.

About Hypnosis

This was written in the Vibes Section but i thought it warranted it's own section.

Hypnosis is a terrible fucking move. if you want to get actual value out of it (that is, you sleep a mon that doesnt insta wake up) you need a sleep roll of 6/7 (or 3/4, i didnt bother to check if we implemented link battle sleep mechanics) which when accuracy is factored makes it so you're only getting value 51,42% (or 45%) of the time. that is not to say never to run hypnosis, sometimes just the threat of the opponent not being able to insta wake is enoguh to make them play worse and if you high roll it you can get HUGE gains.

HOWEVER I actually honestly think this is NOT a healthy interaction for the metagame, as much as maximizing the odds and gambling your way out of a bad situation is fun i think there's a huge difference of odds that play out over several turns vs odds that play out instantly, it messes up with the player agency and is counterproductive to skill expression. I dont care about precedence or any of that stuff, honestly metagame quality goes above all else so I would personally like to see hypnosis/sing banned from the tier.

There is an aspect of skill involved in knowing when to go for it or not and how to play around it if that's your opponent's best option, i'm not denying that, i just find that is an unhealthy interaction at the end of the day.

Basically any high variance move/strat that plays out over several turns is a no for me simply for being able to take a huge chunk of skill out of the equation and making both players just sit and wait for what rng strand we're gonna get. that involves APT (but not PT) as well if my input is of any value over that discussion.

VR Ramblings

S Rank

You're hurting your chances if you're not using these

Arcanine - The good boy. He should be in every team, we could maybe get away without using him if we really tried? dont think anyone did or was successful with it, i surely wasnt. too bad he mostly gets traded out of the lead spot, also too bad it's the best lead spot anyways. queen beats him on lead but queen is much better used in the back imo. generally the opportunity cost of back queen is higher than the opportunity gain of back arc. that said if you can get a back arc structure going this guy can wreak havoc. He shines with both of its 30%'s (ok fire blast is effectively 25,5% shut up we're in glazing mode keep up) ready to cripple the opponent's mons at any point and it's also the second most critting common mon in the tier after fearow, the crit machine. Speaking of which

Fearow - This piece of shit has the meta wrapped around his finger, if arcanine is the solid reliable good boy, this is the messy friend that you can't really rely on a lot but that you just can't stop yourself from inviting him to your parties cause you know when he pops off he pops the fuck off and it's a great time for you and your friends. He crits a lot. So much he can break through his dedicated counter in graveler much more frequently than we'd like. i both love using him and hate how centralizing this guy has been. he definitely should go from the tier for the tier's good

A Rank

Can go unused for good reasons

Seaking - The second in command when it comes to sweeping after fearow but what he lacks in speed (and thus required opportunity cost in wasting one turn just to agility to properly position for a sweep) he makes up for coverage. while graveler can switch into fearow quite comfortably most of if not the entire match, nothing really wants to take a crit from the king. staryu? dead. queen/arc/fearow? dead. gastly? did you not read the example in the metagame vibes? smh my head. guess vileplume and porygon are decent but realistically and optimally seaking is played in the lategame after evertyhing is chipped and your best answer is your own seaking and that's either coming in after a sac then you both just pray or just taking free chip and thus making it easier for your seaking to sweep. just a monster really doesnt make it to S rank cause you can make do well enough without him if you so wish.

Staryu - The most reliable seaking answer, the second notable speed tier after the S Ranks so you know that's critting a lot and a nasty status spreader. Deals well enough with the S ranks given enough luck or prior support in the form of damage or a para. Deals swiftly with the rest of its fellow A rankers. Main form of guaranteed para support in the tier or any status really. It's shortcoming is it's frailty+4MSS and thank god for that. For every staryu set you choose there's something you're giving up on. The classic is surf/bolt/rec/twave but that's easily walled by the underappreciated vileplume. if you want to deal with that match-up you're gonna have to play your gastly much differently than what you're used to which might not be a luxury you can afford sometimes. if you want to change a move to better handle vileplume you're gonna give up something big: recovery, twave, handling seaking or being an actual water type lmao are you REALLY not using surf when theres a fire type and two ground types in the top 6? Good mon to show meta understanding if you do make the choice for the tradeoff of any of these moves cause its better for a particular team. Feels very balanced for all of it's assets and flaws.

Nidoqueen - Just one of my favorite pokemons so you know i'm biased af. She just has it all, has bulk for all of your needs, has damage for all of your plans, has coverage for every taste, has surprise options for every sneak attack. Trades well with fearow, winning most interactions, trades well with arc winning most interactions. Doesnt beat gastly/staryu reliably but also doesnt have zero chance of beating them either by dodging hypnosis or just critting staryu while not being crit (which happens roughly 1/8 of the time, did you know that? honestly thought it was much lower before i calc'd). can run surf for graveler, fire blast for pinsir (lol?) sub for para fishing and even counter if you want to catch a fearow hyper beam and still have a mon that can trade a hit afterwards. just a jack of all trades and a master of most of them and the mon i won rby pl with.

Graveler - this man is the one that HATES that one messy friend you keep calling to your parties and antagonizes him every time they interact. aside from that he's pretty chill and honestly you like seeing that messy friend antagonized from time to time since he deserves to be kept in check a bit. just does what its meant to do very well which is wall fearow while not giving up momentum doing so (why are you crying omanyte?). I've already rambled about not clicking sub with it and how body slam is the best 4th move for it before but if you haven't read it here's a TLDR: sub is auto 25% which goes against your main purpose in the game, want a safe click for after you just switched into fearow? be brave and call a read or go for the god of midgrounds in the form of bslam, para support is good and damage is not negligible even tho it's almost half of eq. can do some other stuff well after fearow is taken care of but most notably BEFORE fearow is taken care of in the form of tanking arcanine mirror hyper beam for a safer arc ko (not a huge fan of that move myself as hbeam can miss leaving you open for 25,5% fblast burn, if you get crit it becomes quite relevant chip taken, but those outcomes are relatively rare and it's good and valid if you want to keep your arc safe for later)

B+ Rank

Have good, solid use in a team with little support

Gastly - The gambling ghost, this piece of shit can be the least and most valuable mon in the entire game and it's all up to hitting that darned move. Walls some niche stuff like pinsir but most notably comes in early game on a lot of stuff (<20% arc hbeam, can trade with/sleep staryu if you're feeling lucky, comes in omanyte and maybe seaking too). Also good for the eventual dnair wrap and scyther (who?). solid speed tier so you know you're getting plenty of crits and psychic drops double the time of crits. Best last move is boom, the ability to end the turn is crucial in several scenarions, it's such a versatile move i really cant give up its opportunity cost over running sub. sub is best used for when you sleep something and want safety to not make a read, or just trying to fish for paras. it's a solid use case but it's one that mostly seeks to capitalize on an advantage and has little option of turning a game around realistically speaking. meanwhile boom's insane utility in ending the turn and netting you good chip (maybe a ko even? hello abra?) has use cases for both pressing an advantage or getting a crucial safe chip+pivot into a mon that can save you games.

Vileplume - Best sleeper in the format no questions asked. Walls the objectively best staryu set. Can still para mons reliably after sleeping something, can be one of the safest switch ins to graveler if you're running mega drain (or havent slept something yet) AND can set up with sd hbeam if gastly/grav is not around? thats a solid mon right there. hates the existence of the S ranks unfortunately, but its use cases make up for it super well.

Porygod - This digital duck is a crit magnet. It's best approach to a lot of scenarios (queen/arc) is to just spam recover which feels terrible to do, but great when it works and it does work most of the time! Great lead option if you're tired of arc/queen and can mess up unprepared teams from the front or from the back. Notably deals with big 6 incredibly well as they lack a psychic resistance and none of them want to be para'd and those who can afford to easily get psychic drop'd meanwhile you make up for your own para with agi and both ground types dont really wanna tank your psychic either. that said it can feel very underwhelming when rng doesnt go your way, 16 pp is too little for how much you want to click psychic and abra/drowzee just shut you down. the options of sharpen or blizz/bolt are subpar and i wouldnt recommend but can make for a nice surprise option;

B Rank

Have use cases but require some work/tradeoff from the team

Pinsir - Just a menace. it fucking ties in speed with staryu! so you know that thing is not unlikely to pull off a game saving crit off a neutral hbeam. has a guaranteed crit in slash and a game ending option in swords dance if all of its counterplay is crippled/done with. its problem is precisely that is has plenty of counterplay in the S ranks, gastly and even graveler (tho i'd argue you dont want to take stoss damage with grav and gastly really doesnt enjoy switching into a predicted stoss, remember how hypnosis is bad against faster mons???). best played aggressively and with the teammates that compliment this style. dont try to compensate with defensive safety in staryu, go for seaking, do not substitute your fearow for pinsir's slot as both can pave the way for the other to sweep. in a meta where arcanine is traded off in the lead and fearow wants to be healthy to trade hits with something better pinsir can really shine more than most people think. remember how nidoqueen can ko staryu 1/8 of the time in a 1v1? yeah similar odds for pinsir vs fearow.

Machamp - Insanely good lead option and works similarly to pinsir (or queen too if you think about it) in the back in the sense that it's a relatively bulky body that can tank hits and trade with stuff. Not without its shortcomings, it's crippled by a lot, outsped by most things and really needs aggressive play to make better use out of it. Honestly interesting to see how solved machamp lead lines are getting with the fearow into double switch play as it's just a fun game of rock paper and scissors to play.

Abra - Great speed tier and special stat. Simply the best psychic clicker in the format. It can punch holes in unprepared teams revenging a ton of stuff and spreading para. pairs incredibly well with grav, who handles its main nemesis in fearow. its just too frail and gets revenged super easy even with support which is underwhelming at times. overall just less solid of a hole puncher than pinsir imo. outside of revenging has a good niche in switching into boomless gastly after hypnosis is expended/boom gastly that has taken some chip/staryu surf/porygon which makes it pretty useable most of the time. going grav is barely an opportunity cost as far a support goes.

Sandslash - now let me tell you in the land of gravelers this mon was quite the find. its just the best defensive switch into graveler while simultaneously packing an even stronger punch than graveler. can tank fearow better than queen as well and its not negligible if you do the math. literally the strongest eq clicker in the tier with the option of sd! now i know i went sd/sub in the one game i brought it but thats cause i had two para support mons in staryu and vileplume, so fishing for paras with sub was a viable option to have as that would likely be a scenario in the game. i dont think sd/sub is worth it otherwise cause slash is a solid midground click on fearow if you want to cover for queen/champ coming in on your rock slide and i'd rather always have the wallbreaking option in sd.

Drowzee - kind of a worse version of abra and gastly combined. it tries to bring the assets of both to the table but fails to provide them as well as the other options do to the point you'd rather be running them instead. it walls pory and is a solid switch in for gastly after it's used its hypnosis (so you're preparing to play from behind? kinda sucks) or staryu so you can try and click hypnosis through para just to get 3hko'd by two regular surfs and a crit (42% chance for at least one crit in 3 staryu surfs) so then you try to twave and click psychic instead but then why arent you running abra? idk either. Only have it at B+ cause of the sheer stupidity of high variance hypnosis so you do in fact sometimes actually get the value of abra and gastly combined.

B- Rank

It's getting niche

Dragonair - such a pain the ass to play against and even worse to play with. it can slowly chip away unprepared teams or literally just miss twice and do nothing. such an unreliable mon with a high variance in its performance. hard to setup without getting para'd and suffers from 4MSS quite like staryu/pory as it has use cases for agi/wrap/twave/surf/hyper beam/blizzard/tbolt. the likelihood you'll get good value out of this mon is too low for my taste but when you do get good value it feels incredibly oppressive. in my experience is better played as a midgame hole puncher than a lategame sweeper

Honestly a tossup between mag above or bellow these next two but i went for the one up on fearow speed tier over being op if grounds are out of the picture

Scyther - The only thing in the tier faster than fearow. you'd think its hbeam at +2 can ohko it but instead its a measly 34,65% after accuracy. that said, can work as a great late game cleaner if fearow has self chipped or is just out of the picutre. speaking of out of the picture gastly also needs to be dead. that is pretty common but still something to keep in mind as you CANNOT handle the gambling ghost. you realistically will never get to +6 so you safely ohko it meanwhile one crit or tbolt para (25% chance overall!!!) ends your carreer. when all chips fall into place tho, scyther can be an amazing cleaner. slash doesnt hit too badly if you dont have time to setup just yet, you crit pretty frequently if you need a hail mary neutral hbeam crit and the option of going all in on the bad gastly mu (the best choice for it imo) and going agi over wing attack so you can more confidently sd in the face of possible paralysis is what's keeping this mon afloat.

Rapidash - Fire type scyther. has partial trapping that doesnt need agi to make good use out of it but sadly will miss even more frequently than wrap. its a worse partial trapping user than dnair imo, worse fire type than arcanine due to worse or equal offensive stats and worse bulk that is not compensate by speed most of the time since arc outspeeds most of the tier just the same. its also a worse cleaner than scyther as it lacks a setup killer option so you really just need a ton of chip or get lucky enough with fire spins. still being able to revenge fearow and just having the option of partial trapping the entire tier without wasting a turn on agi is good enough for this mon to have its uses.

Magneton - Insane mon if there weren't this many prominent ground types in the tier and can be a sleeper unbreakable mon in the back if properly played. Very notably outspeeds seaking (so it crits just a tad more than it too!) and has the highest special in the format. spreads para an damage like crazy when it's free to do so and does nothing if there's any ground type still alive in the opposing team. struggles so badly for options on providing value if that's the case. there's rumors that a certain team featuring this mon and the most prominent graveler answer in the format has solved PU but you didnt hear it from me.

Omanyte - Poor guy cant do its job well enough. wants to wall arc but doesnt really want to switch in on turn 1 bslam. too little people run back arc for omanyte to have any other use and even then what are you doing afterwards? several answers exist(staryu, seaking, gastly) and you dont hit nearly hard or cripple then with status often enough to provide value. is so slow you lose 1v1 vs queen as a water type. maybe you want hydro for the 2hko chance on gastly? but then you're risking missing, maybe you can forgo rest and go surf/hpump? but then you dont wall as well as you'd like. if you dont go blsam you really got nothing for staryu/seaking aside from clicking blizzard and praying. this mon really can barely tank fearow as crit hbeam easily does over 50% to it, what little bulk is has worse than graveler really hurt its viability. at the end of the day still a solid role compression in fearow/arc answering if thats what your team needs but has seen better days

This is the Cutoff imo, mons here have uses but aren't good enough

C Rank

The bad and the ugly

Magmar - although it my new favorite mascot, its just so bad here, counter for lead arc is a fun gimmick, so are confuse ray or psychic but its stats are just too bad for it to actually make use of those assets. everything it has going on over arcanine is 5 extra special which are not felt when the rest is just so bellow. the speedtier is fine i guess? but why are you running the slowest fire type? you dont know and i dont know either

Poliwag - putting this little guy here just cause i'm undefeated in practice games with it and i find that hilarious. just another reason why hypnosis should be banned. its got a solid speed tier, basically only outsped by arc and fearow (tied with abra but when is that scenario happening?) tried it as a lead that kind of maybe sorta but really doesnt beat every other lead option in arc/queen/king/champ/pory cause you always just click hypnosis turn 1 then AT BEST amnesia turn 2 only for you to NEVER get an ohko on fearow and always realistically get ohko'd in return by 2 drill pecks. doesnt really hold out to any other mon that is not a ground type either, maybe a particularly unlucky staryu?

aaaand thats it, if there's anything i didnt mention here then i didnt even use it in practice games.

Hope you enjoyed the read, i find the community was very welcoming to me and i'm open to discuss anything i mentioned here as i really like the format and can't wait to see how it develops in the future!

 

[PKMN Master™]

I am not here to go in depth in my explanation considering it has been discussed prior.

In short, The names and grades, (and order of Pocket Monsters in those said grades) reflect how I feel this meta works.

 

[DiannieRatson]

Time for a post for my vr submission too and some of my thoughts about the rby pu metagame. I had some quick explanation about each mons.

Thoughts

Arcanine - Best lead in the tier, arguably. The way I see this is that it can beat common leads with Fire Blast burn or crit. Also a nice back mon to have so I get why people are torn between where to place arcanine. Back arcanine tends to have its checks already worn down when it comes in, esp opposing arcanine lead. It can also be a fearow check at late which I think I remember seeing a game like that this rbypl where Nidoqueen is down early, was a champ lead comp iirc.

Fearow - Yes there’s grav. But I think Fearow is still favored since it can dictate what happens next. Expecting a grav in? Then you can double into something like vileplume for early sleep then or the waters. Even if you let grav in, imo nidoqueen is fine even if it takes an earthquake. I also feel the teams I used without fearow is having a hard time to revenge. This is actually crucial when like gastly is the one in front in common arc vs nido lines where gastly comes in after arc is KOed.

Nidoqueen - speaking of queen, this mon is also a fearow check. Being faster than graveler and like seaking is nice too. It also makes progress because of its 3atks. Earthquake vs arcanine, blizzard versus grounds, thunderbolt for fearow and the waters. Substitute in front of para’d mons. Surf is also nice in like lead to avoid the burn weakening eq scenario plus sure hit grav.

Gastly - I still have gastly high because of hypnosis. Yes staryu could twave it further reducing the 60-40 odds but it getting a sleep is still tough to deal with. A sleeping target plus damaging the next mon in is nice contribution already. It can also check vileplume though there’s stun spore. Having successfully slept a mon is really huge imo. And even if it don’t get sleep, it could get chip to the likes of seaking (I tend to use gastly as seaking check before but it takes still like 30% so I tend to just sac in front of seaking then get this mon in)

Staryu - Faster than nidoqueen and gastly, checks seaking (ehem), surfbolt been a fodder of vileplume that’s why I start to be low on this mon but I still appreciate its speed tier, being a water that could also punish grav, having recover and twave, and a customizable atk set with some ppl using psychic to hit vileplume and gastly.

Seaking - Seaking mirrors, vileplume could also use this as fodder, staryu, gastly is also faster, but on the other side, it could win vs fearow and arcanine endgame. I tend to seaking too vs grav.

Graveler - This mon stops fearow from making progress, but I’m also torn in letting queen in. Although I recognize that this rewards skilled players as there are a lot of mind games that could happen with grav around.

Porygon - Because of this mon, I decided to have machamp, drowzee, my own pory, and/or abra every game. I tried to study some lines though and I think porygon loses and there's crit odds to consider too when it faces its good checks.

Drowzee - a pory check + sleep in one slot. Yes it hates getting twaved too and I tend to misplay this mon but ye hypnosis plus twave is as scary as vileplume double powder but checking pory is a plus for me so I have dz over vileplume.

Machamp - beats arcanine and nidoqueen leads, but theres a fearow line so oftenly paired with grav. And also theres abra lead to consider so have own abra or dz at the back too.

Vileplume - Time will tell if I will have vileplume higher again or not. I already mentioned double powder and the need to react coz of sd if you don’t have gastly. But even if you have gastly, you need to sac one to get it in freely and gastly needs to ohko vileplume too or else theres stun powder. Big 6 is still fine vs plume though and maybe coz of grav, it helps plume rise up again. Staryu will at least twave this mon.

Abra - maybe this is a better option than dz but I still value sleep high. I tried this in fearowless comp but it just makes me appreciate more fearow coz like arcanine still wins vs abra.

Magneton - grounds are on every team so it's tough but since I used the mind games argument with fearow and grav, I apply it here too. Queen lead teams without grav back needs to be wary of this mon. There are also some lines where you could use fearow to bait queen out and chip it out.

Rapidash - Faster than fearow helps this mon. I tried Rapidash plus magneton to try to mitigate double water comps but like magneton being walled aside from slotting issue is tough. I would have definitely used this mon in like indiv tours but teamtour is really such a diff setting since you need to consider both team scouts.

Pinsir - I don’t think I faced pinsir during this rbypl but I also wondered around the idea of pinsir grav but still it’s not like pinsir really wants to challenge queen coz not everyone uses sub and still has fire blast.

Magmar - I know it’s weird that I think of the risky hypnosis highly but not the mindgames Magmar could do with its counter lead to arcanine that might lead to some lines that I think favors magmar since it also kinda means back arcanine. There is a risky seaking line though that I think I see nicole used with a double to gastly which is tough to deal with too.

Dragonair - I also don’t remember facing this mon but I know how annoying wrap is especially with there’s also common thunder wave users in this tier.

Scyther - another victim of grav….and gastly sorta. Even though it’s faster, the fearow checks are already slower anyway so I didn’t really use this mon but this is another that I would use for indiv tours.

Omanyte - This is another mon that I would love to use. This would need to rely on doubles since it’s kinda passive on its own but could definitely help change momentum. I am thinking something along the lines of seaking again.

Sandslash - I haven’t explored this mon tbh and after seeing it used against me, maybe this is really onto something. Drill peck doesn’t break sub. Can be surrounded with para support. Can sd and even without sd, eq is annoying already. Faster than grav too and…….porygon! This might be a mon that I would also explore in the upcoming indiv tours.

That’s it for my vr post for now.

And I also actually planned to do some commentaries on some of my games to further elaborate my thoughts in the metagame too since I really like line exploring.

RBYPL III Week 6 Vs lax

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-806976

Game 1, Machamp vs queen lead

Lax went to fearow which is a fine play every time. I went to my own queen and luckily, I hit blizz while dodging hbeam so I won that mu with queen left at 47% hp. HP% is important to determine which mon should revenge. Arc deals 35-41% with fblast, Gastly deals 40-48% with psychic, and seaking is slower so staryu was prob the best option here. Turn 6, I went eq first to scout for staryu scout since it could be the 3atk no recover set. When recover was revealed, I went with bslam to fish for para but got crit instead so my machamp survived. Although I wasn’t really in a winning position though since a para’d machamp means it’s a fodder now to mons like gastly who can sub. Turn 12, machamp para proc but gastly is just at its 2%. Again, hp% is important. Machamp survived a psychic so sub was broken before machamp fainted. I went fearow since arc fblast has lower odds to hit. Lax went to queen and managed to crit blizz while I only managed to deal a dedge leaving queen with still 72%. I went staryu that needed to tank a tbolt leaving mine with just 41%. Lax revenged by hbeaming it with arc so at turn 19, I have to decide to go either arc or seaking. I decided to go for seaking as I don’t want arc mirror. Arc goes down leaving seaking with 30% as lax revealed last mon as seaking. Lax clicked agility and my hbeam crit leaving it at 16%.

Now time to explore lines. In gastly vs machamp, gastly needs to be in 75% since fearow’s drill peck deals 58-64%. I’m bad at calc’ing chances so I’ll leave it at that since I was about to compare it with the crit blizz. Gastly at 75% means I would have gone staryu to click twave. It’s complicated for me to calc from this line to end and compare it with what if blizz didn’t crit. Too many hax to consider so maybe I’ll move back to the hbeam miss at the start. There’s a 30% chance for it to ohko queen. If it ohko, I prolly went with arc then get revenged by seaking and base on HP% again, I would revenge with staryu or fearow. Emphasis on fearow since lax’ would be left with just arc gastly and staryu while I also have my own staryu and seaking.

So what could be a takeaway here? This might be a weird take but the metagame looks close to being solved if games would be this linear without switching. An example is the fearow vs nidoqueen. Maybe arc could come in, revenged queen, and preserving fearow HP since fearow can change things in endgame especially when it decides to crit sweep and no queen/grav left.

I will analyze other games but I’m still busy irl atm so either I might not already be motivated at the time I would have free time or ill do another post with those game analysis with my commentaries as I did in like gsc pu games in pubd.

That’s all for now. I kinda rushed this xD since there's a deadline for vr submission.

 

[Vitoran]

Hello it's me again and this time i bring RBY PL stats:

I compiled (by hand, so take anything here with a grain of salt as it's open to human error) all 86 RBY PL games, gathering info on lead choices, which player won the lead and with what and general team structures.

This is not meant to be a thorough analysis or anything, just giving a general number to see if any preassumptions we might have show on up on these numbers so although some numbers might be off by +-1 I'm gonna show here numbers that arent affected by that and the ones who might be affected by definitions (what constitutes team structure A over team structure B? And can i consider a lead won if one of the mons switched out before being knocked out?) will be explained in more detail so anyone reading can make their own conclusions.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<LEADS>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

From all 86 games, i could only really say 55 had a player win the lead (tho up to 11 are debatable) out of which 39 went on to win their games, making it so the lead-to-win percentage is 70%. that is pretty heavily correlated.

A lot of the leads that couldn't be called as won were porygon or machamp leads where the opposing player switched to their respective answer and both players went on from that, some of the time porygon would go on to do such massive damage that i'd count that as the lead won even tho there were 2 v 4 mons revealed and one of the 4 was down while some of the rest crippled but most of the time that didn't happen and i didnt want to be nitpicking what would constitute porygon winning the lead or not (more on pory and champ leads later in the team structure section).

We had a total of 21 arc mirrors, out of which 8 to 19 can be called lead wins. before i get into the 11 that are up to debate, i wanna special mention the remaining 2 arc mirrors where diannie switches gastly into bslam and proceeds from there:

Week 2 Game 1 [W] Diannie vs Nicole [L]. Graveler>Queen Big 5 vs Big 6
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-797935

Week 3 Game 2 [L] Diannie vs Vitoran [W]. Graveler>Queen Big 5 vs Vileplume > Gastly Big5
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-799850

Interesting to note that both times she did that she was using the same team

If you would only call an arc mirror won if both players played it perfectly, 1v1'd and didn't switch (basically the actual cointoss) then you might want to read the spoilers bellow to see if you would not consider the scenarios i did, if you trust my judgement and/or dont care about nitpicking and/or are just not interested enough then ignore those

I care about discussing what would constitute an arc mirror

5 wins here

Mirrors that didnt go full 1v1, I would call all of those an arc mirror win would you?

Situation 1

arc 56% vs para'd arc 34%
para'd arc switches out to queen
quen trades down to 40% with arc

Week 4 Game 2 [W] GS vs Vitoran [L]
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-802398

Situation 2

para'd arc 56% vs para'd arc 34%
34% arc switches out to grav predicting a hbeam but arc gets fp'd (i believe i did click hbeam there even tho slam is the best play imo)
arc fblats burning grav and getting chiped to 24%
arc switches out and game continues

Week 4 Game 5 [L] GS vs Vitoran [W]
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-802405

Situation 3

arc 33% vs arc 58%
33% arc switches out to grav predicting a hbeam but gets slam para'd
arc switches out and game continues

Week 8 Game 1 [L] Wanted vs Vitoran [W]
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-808354

Situation 4

arc switches out to grav predicting a hbeam and tanks it
grav kos arc and game continues

Week 2 Game 2 [W] Nicole vs Diannie [L]
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-797941
Week 8 Game 3 [L] Wanted vs Vitoran [W]
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-808366

6 Wins here

Mirrors that went full 1v1, but arguably had a misplay, I would also call all of those an arc mirror win would you?

Arc goes for Hbeam when it probably shouldn't

38% arc v 55% arc
38% arc goes for hbeam not wanting to risk other arc hitting range even tho it's unlikely

Week 2 Game 4 [L] Beats vs Vitoran [W]
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-797480?p2

para'd 59% arc vs 61% arc/both used agi but 61% used a turn after
para'd arc goes for hbeam, doesnt get the crit and tanks 3 body slams

Week 3 Game 3 [L] Diannie vs Vitoran [W]
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-799854

para'd arc mirror 35% vs 40% (one has basically guaranteed hbeam range while other has basically unhittable range)
35% arc goes for hbeam, doesnt hit range, gets killed

Week 3 Game 3 [L] Nicole vs GS [W]
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-800271

para'd arc 59% vs para'd arc 40%
59% arc clicks hbeam on agi, doesnt crit or hit range and gets killed

Week 7 Game 2 [L] Diannie vs Vitoran [W]
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-807382

para'd arc 35% vs para'd arc 41%
35% arc clicks hbeam on agi, doesnt crit and gets killed

Week 7 Game 5 [W] Diannie vs Vitoran [L]
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1pu-807389

Arc hard predicts grav switch and gets punished

56% arc vs para'd arc 33%
56% arc reads grav switch and clicks fire blast, proceeds to be para'd and loses tie afterwards

Week 6 Game 4 [L] Shane vs GS [W]
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen1pu-2245417197-fko3d8cy1w778e5l0enoeyt3sr7n08jpw

out of all 19 arc mirror winners, 15 would go on to win the game meaning 78,9% and making the lead arc mirror really a HUGE decider in game result. With that in mind here's the table for players with games won and which of those were mirrors:

​

(if this table looks bad after posting i'll edit with a screenshot i guess EDIT: It did LOL is there a better way to paste excel tables on smogon)

Sooooooo yeah.... i won a fuckton of arc mirrors lmaooooo even if you dont consider any of the 11 debatable arc mirror wins in the spoilers above that involve me winning the mirror that's still 5 wins, more than anyone else in the tour, two of those remaining 5 i got a gen1 miss in my favor just crazy luck really, cant sugar coat it.

One last thing about Queen leads before we head onto the team structure topic:

We had a total of 15 Queen vs Arc leads out of which 2 were reflect arcs that went 1/1 and the remaining were regular arc sets that went 9/4 for a total of 10 queen lead wins vs arc representing 66%. How well does that lead win percentage that correlate to game win percentage? The leads queen won also won the game 70% of the time meanwhile the leads arc won also won the game 80% of the time. Considering its a small sample size, it's hard to say that is actually any different, since just one game for each side could invert those percentages, however it's still a small indicator of lead queen being a bigger oppotunity cost than lead arc.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<TEAMS>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I also compiled what teams were brought for each game in each series. tho i think the data gets too spread out to reach some more detailed conclusions it's still enough to make some cool associations.

First of all we had 40 teams that weren't totally revealed, also 40 teams that didnt show a sleep user and the teams that weren't fully revealed and didnt show a sleeper totalled 15. The only players to forfeit before all mons were revealed were Nicole and BeatsBlack doing so a combined total of 6 times.

The unrevealed teams i just guessed what the last were depending on how the team looked, who the player was and how they played (e.g. 1 unrevealed mon while the opponent showed a fearow means it's definitely not a graveler team). From then i grouped the 53 different teams into 17 archetypes of which i condensed even more into 5: Big 6 (no matter what lead), Graveler, Porygon, Gravler+Porygon (separating the overlap just so it's easier to visualize) and Other.

Out of the 17 archetypes:

Big 6 (regardless of lead) performed a worse than expected winning 45,5% of the games. Meanwhile graveler teams won a total of 62,1% games with a better showing for graveler+big5 that won 71,4% of the games! some other archetypes such as champ lead +grav or pory (lead or not) + graveler had higher than 80% winrate but too little games to call these numbers reliable. also try not to go too overboard with the graveler innovation as champ+graveler+psychic(abra or drowzee) teams only won 25%.

Another interesting statistic is that teams that didnt fit a specific archetype really underperformed winning only 27% of games (7 out of 26) with the biggest experimentalist being BeatsBlack who brought a total of 31% of rby pl's unallocated teams followed by me with 23%. if you adjust this to the ammount of games each player played, 44% of Beat's teams were Other while 19% of mine and Lax's teams also were. The only player with positive winrate in this archetype was Lax with 2 wins out of 3 games.

Other notable player+team combos:
- I brought 36% of the tour's Big 6 which corresponds to 39% of all my teams and 50% of my total wins (won with the archetype 83%!) i'm really just a basic guy.
- Nicole brought 30% of the tours's Double Grounds which corresponds to 37% of all her teams and 60% of her total wins (won with the archetype 86% of the time!)
- GS and Diannie were the biggest pory lead enthusiasts totalling 33% and 28% of the tour's pory lead usage and 21% and 16% of their respective total brings however when you look at win percentage, GS won 100% of their pory lead teams meanwhile Diannie won only 20%.

Ok but lets condense these archetypes even more so we can maybe draw some conclusions:

we now have:
Big 6 (no matter what lead)
Graveler (double groud, champ lead, abra/drowzee, etc)
Pory (lead or back)
PoryGrav (just to isolate the overlap)
Other (everything else like Champ without back grav, Gastly+Drowzee, Mag/Scyther/Pinsir/Radpidash, Abra without Grav, plume>gastly+Big5, etc)

Note that the "Other" here has gotten bigger and is not 1 to 1 to the other in the previous section

I looooooove tables

- Big 6 faced itself 4 times
- Both pory and grav teams do well vs big6
- Pory AND Grav teams however went simply undefeated vs the format's standard archetype

Now i can condense the team archetype per player data:

Individual usage per archetype (line percentages sum to 100%)

Tour usage per archetype (column percentages sum to 100%)

Archetype Individual win percentage

Archetype Individual win percentage over player's total wins (line percentages sum to 100%)

- Both pory and grav teams win more standard big 6, but pory+grav is surprisingly undefeated!

- Wanted was the only other player to have a positive Big 6 wr

- I was the worst pory user while Wanted was the worst graveler user

- Nicole is the best graveler(not counting bee who played 4 games) AND best Porygon user followed closely on both fronts by GS

Hope this was an interesting read! If you want to know any specific stat just dm me and i'll see if i can find/calc it.

That will likely be all for me for this thread for a while, i'll keep a look in the metagame as it develops and maybe pick up on other LTs! See ya

 

[Wanted in 49 States]

The PU Viability Rankings are updated!
Thank you to the people who submitted (gastlies, Sabelette, NotVeryCake, Vitoran, nicole7735, DiannieRatson, Wanted in 49 States, Gangsta Spongebob, BeatsBlack, Maris Bonibell)!

You can consult the data HERE

RBY PU 2024 Viability Rankings:
S:
A:
B1:
B2:
B3:
~PU/ZU Cutoff~
C:
D:
E:

Data

Dissimilarity Matrix

Dendrogram

Change in Rank

Change in Rank, Sorted

Ranking Plot

Voting Similarity

This means that Magmar, Dragonair, Drowzee, Scyther, and Omanyte are now ZU. Abra is now PU.

 

[gastlies]

 

[Theycallmephil]

Noooo Sands didn't rise</3
Besides that tho I adore this VR it's pretty accurate to how I feel aswell
(Butterfree>marowak is funny asf..)