Strategy & Metagame Remembering our Roots Part 2: Where are They Now? (RBY)

[Syberia]

Title is subject to change if I have a sudden flash of creativity. Though these are rare.

Given the reception of my last article, I'd like to continue the trend - where I previously looked at the impact Pokemon had on their own generation, this time I will be looking at how the giants of each generation have changed over the years. Some have been able to keep up with generational changes, a few have switched roles, some have gotten better, some have seen a steady decline from what they once were, and others have gone from hero to zero in the blink of an eye, though I don't recall seeing much previously written on this subject, especially for the Pokemon that dropped off the radar.

What I propose is to take the top 10 or so Pokemon from each generation (I would do this over multiple issues, devoting one to each generation), briefly go over what they did in their respective generation, and how they have gotten better or worse in subsequent gens.

Since the pool of OU Pokemon in RBY is so small, I found it easy to pick out a top 10 list:

Alakazam
Tauros
Exeggutor
Starmie
Jynx
Golem
Rhydon
Persian
Slowbro
Zapdos

(I was considering Chansey and Snorlax, but I feel these Pokemon really rose to fame in the GSC era so I'll be doing them there). I decided against Gengar because I did it last article as something that has been good in every generation. I will make a brief mention of this, though, as I feel it deserves to be here.

For Alakazam and Tauros, I will probably also be a bit brief with their current-gen summary, as they were featured last time, but I did not go into anything past RBY with either of them, so I still have material.

Just one thing, though - can anyone point me to usage lists for GSC - BW so that I could easily determine the top used Pokemon?

 

[Oglemi]

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/spl-5-weekly-usage-statistics.3497684/

best accurate usage lists for GSC through BW at a high competitive level, otherwise

http://www.smogon.com/forums/forums/pokémetrics.114/

The Pokemetrics forum has the usage stats for most of DPP

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/the-ou-viability-ranking-thread.3473637/

The Viability Ranking gives a good idea of what the top 10 Pokemon for BW were, and you can use Antar's usage stats as well which can be found in the BW OU forum I believe

 

[Syberia]

Gracias

 

[Syberia]

Since there has been no further activity in this thread, and I'm still a little new to this, was your post meant to confer approval, or simply to answer my question?

 

[Flora]

Will you be putting Pokemon into a theoretical NU tier? Or are you going to avoid talking about tiers and just say "not very good in standard" or something? Title says "where are they now" so I'm assuming you do want to put them in a place.

Sorry about the inactivity; we've all been pretty inactive. :( Anyway, I'm most likely going to approve this after your response. :)

 

[Jellicent]

I think this might overlap a lot with this article that I did last year. Granted, this would be for XY rather than BW, but these Pokemon didn't really change much this generation.

If this is approved, I would definitely include Chansey; RBY was by far its best generation. GSC was pretty awful to Chansey, between the Special split and Blissey's introduction. Snorlax I can understand holding off on until GSC, since it's /the/ Pokemon of the gen, but it's still top 3 in RBY, so it's worth considering. That was part of the problem I found when making a follow-up: certain Pokemon make top 10 lists in several generations (Snorlax, Tyranitar, Gengar, Starmie, Jirachi, Suicune, Exeggutor, Zapdos, etc.), which would make for a pretty repetitive series.

I worked around that by doing the best "new" Pokemon of GSC. I could definitely see something similar working for ADV (Jirachi, Salamence, Metagross, etc.) and DPP (Heatran, Rotom-A, Lucario, etc.) as well. I always love seeing past gens stuff, so I'd be happy to bounce other ideas off ya or help you out if needed~

 

[Syberia]

Jellicent, I was going to lump Chansey/Blissey into one Pokemon, but I see your point. Replace Jynx with Chansey on my list, I'll mention that it evolved in Gen 2 and go from there. What I had in mind was to "introduce" each Pokemon in the generation they got their start, then in the midst of that same article, go over how they changed over each subsequent generation. (of course, if they sucked in every next generation, there wouldn't be a lot to say) Pretty much what I did with Gengar and Tyranitar in my last article, and the reason they most likely wouldn't be included in this series. That way, if say Chansey has already been done in my Gen 1 article, covering all that happened to it (and its evolution, which I wouldn't see a reason to categorize separately) I would skip it for GSC, and choose the top 10 going down the usage list that had not appeared in a previous article. This is how I would avoid repetition.

However, your RBY article touches on most things I planned to cover, so if you'd prefer, I can simply begin with GSC, and link to your article as the reason I'm not covering RBY.

I feel like I may not be explaining myself thoroughly enough, but at the same time I'm not quite sure what to clarify, so if you have any further questions, please ask.

 

[Jellicent]

That works, Syberia

If you end up starting with GSC, I'd save Blissey for ADV. Calm Mind actually allowed her to have some sort of offensive presence, which is huge. She also gained Wish, which is a nice perk. The metagame in general was just much kinder to her than GSC, where she couldn't do much besides status and supporting while walling, or DPP and beyond, where she simply couldn't keep up, had to deal with the power creep, physical Pursuit, more common Trick and Taunt, and became synonymous with setup bait.

Anyway, I'd recommend checking out the viability rankings in Ruins of Alph when making your top 10s rather than straight usage stats, since usage alone isn't always the best indication of how good something is in a particular metagame. Whatever you end up doing, I can dig it. I'm not Smog staff, so I can't approve or anything; just weighing in cuz it's a topic I like~

 

[Flora]

Thanks a lot for commenting, Jelli!

I also don't think my question was very clear, sorry. If there are any theoretical NU Pokemon in the list, are you going to put them in a theoretical NU tier? (Technically, NU doesn't exist so that's why I'm curious.) But, I guess it was a bad question to begin with since you're probably talking about a Pokemon's performance in a generation's OU. My bad for misreading and misunderstanding.

This is approved either way!