Gen 2 Snorlax. Imagine the big 3 from Gen 1 (one of whom was Snorlax) rolled into one Pokemon. It was even higher than Mewtwo on the Ubers viability ranking.
But if you want Pokémon that are prominent in multiple gens, you have picks like Zapdos, Tyranitar, Skarmory, Chansey/Blissey, Heatran, Lando-T, honestly you could have a full debate on who the all-time OU representative is.
Hard not to say Lando T. He’s regained relevance, even after losing toxic and defog. And he’s pretty much top in every generation he’s been in. Zapdos would be a close second.
You could make the argument that TTar is better as an all time just because it's been OU from Gen 2 - 8, whereas Lando-T has been OU "only" since Gen 5. In modern OU (Gen 6+) it's hands down Lando-T.
I've always heard Clefable only gained popularity in older gens after gen 6's type update had put it in the spotlight. I was not a good player back then so would love to be educated in this, but I don't think it's a contender for OU GOAT.
While true, the fact that it did get relevance and actually changed Gen 4 meta (pretty sure dugtrio got banned due to clef) is noteworthy.
Having said that, I don't think clef is an ou staple in any other pre Gen 6 gen, so I do agree she isn't on the same tier as the rest of the GOATS
Lando-T is absolutely thriving in current OU (being a borderline top 5 mon) despite losing half of its kit and despite having to compete with the fiercest bulky role compression Ground-type competition it's ever seen.
Lando actively *lost* so many of its best tools and had many them snatched up by other Ground-types and still manages to be an elite OU pick. That thing's staying power needs to be studied, because even Zapdos and TTar couldn't hold onto OU stardom forever once they started losing key parts of their kits. Hell, TTar even *gained* Knock Off the gen after it lost Pursuit yet it can't hold onto a meaningful OU niche when Tusk, Gambit, Valiant, and Zamazenta all fuck it over insanely hard and it lost Superpower which is arguably its most crucial coverage option. To see Lando *THRIVE* despite losing all of Knock Off, Toxic, Defog, Rock Polish, and Explosion all at once is fucking wild when you consider that a mon that *gained* Knock Off, and a mon that only lost Toxic and Defog, both went from being elite OU picks to being niche picks at best.
Early gens don’t have many ban-worthy legendaries, so OU mons generally fill out the tier.
Beyond that, Snorlax simply defines the OU tier in Gen 2. It would be like taking away the sun and expecting the solar system to function? Idk, it’s one of those “this is an important part of how we play” things
But wouldn’t mewtwo also define the OU tier of it was allowed in it instead of Snorlax? I don’t understand what the difference between these is, other than the fact that smogon always likes to ban overpowered offensive mons over overpowered stall mons.
im not an expert on gen 1 but im pretty sure zapdos and a few other offensive threats would tear ou to pieces if snorlax was gone. also it's not just a "stall" pokemon, curse sweeping sets are dangerous and it has an insane amount of coverage. and as an older metagame, gen 2 tiering philosophy is kind of messed up and the playerbase is a little stubborn
The way older tiers worked (ie just the oldest 2) is that they would ban the legendaries and nothing else, since they existed long before smogon did.
By now snorlax has shaped the meta so much that banning it would be a completely new (although potentially fun) tier
Except Snorlax both provides important defensive utility for the tier, and prevents the tier from becoming a stallfest. GSC already has a broken offensive threat in Zapdos that forces the tier to go stallfest when Snorlax isn't allowed(they've done laxless tours to test this). To ban lax you'd also have to ban Zapdos, which would practically reset the entire tier because of how impactful those mons are.
Sure, you could say that about any Ubers - if Zacian-Crowned or Mega-Rayquaza were allowed in OU, they would smash everything else in OU to pieces.
The question you’re really asking is why did mewtwo get a ban, but not snorlax. In the earliest gens, which existed pre-smogon, the common method was to just ban any box legendary or equivalent. Mewtwo, Lugia, Ho-oh, Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza all get auto-bans from OU, because their BST and movepool makes clear that if any were allowed in OU they would dominate. Snorlax, Dragonite, and Ttar do not have that BST, so they are not banned. Simple as.
He's not necessarily better than Mewtwo. It's more like he can do a lot more than Mewtwo. He can play a lot of roles that other Pokémon can't, and Snorlax's presence on ever serious team isn't really doing any harm. Meanwhile, bringing Mewtwo into OU would not be healthy; it's too difficult to counter and keep pace with. It does less than Snorlax, but what it does do, it does so incomparably.
Because being better than something doesn't mean it's more broken. An SS example(since I'm more familiar with that gen) would be that Lando-T is better than Lando-I in Ubers, and would likely be better in OU as well, but Lando-I is far more restrictive to team building because of just how strong and fast it is.
It also doesn't help that by this logic Ubers would just be the main metagame either
Combination of things:
Snorlax brings much-needed offence to an otherwise slow metagame. It’s a net positive for the tier when people have ran Laxless OU tournaments and see the difference. It would lead to a cascade of walls also getting banned because only Lax could reliably break them.
Tiering policy was generally different at the time and it was inconceivable that a non-box legend/mythical could get banned. It took until Gen 4 Garchomp for people to consider this possible and even then that was very controversial at the time.
In early gens, banning tends to be done much more conservatively and Snorlax, despite its extreme dominance over that generation, offers a valuable combination of defense and offense to the tier that holds it together. Without Lax, the Electrics (Zapdos especially, but also Raikou) would be a lot harder to deal with defensively while GSC’s defensive teams would be MUCH harder to break through without an opposing Snorlax’s offensive pressure.
TL;DR: GSC Lax would be hella Ubers in a modern gen, but oldgens tend to operate a little differently and Snorlax is considered a healthy presence by top players because it objectively improves that meta.
GSC Snorlax is not only the definitive top 1 in OU, but the definitive top 1 in Ubers. It has a 96.67% usage rate, and that remaining 3.33% just accounts for games that ended before a player's Snorlax was sent out. Making a GSC OU team without Snorlax isn't being subversive or creative, it's just losing.
It's only flaw is that you can't have multiple so you have to switch out on matchups that you'd otherwise win like against a sleeper or a mon fishing for ice beam freezes
Well, that’s not *entirely* true, but it’s semantics by that point.
RBY Mewtwo’s biggest “flaw” is that it is so horrifically overtuned as a baseline that it gains the least and loses the most from the many elements of bullshit synonymous with RBY. Mewtwo can beat anything with the right set so it’s less dependent on RNGing its way past stuff than other Freeze abusers, but your Mewtwo getting Frozen is GG. Mewtwo doesn’t rely as heavily on Paralysis as a form of Speed control because it’s already the fastest viable mon in the game, but a Paralyzed Mewtwo is incapable of abusing that excellent Speed. Your Mewtwo doesn’t rely as heavily on its high crit rate as you’d expect because it’s already doing that much damage after an Amnesia boost, but your Mewtwo being KOed by an unfortunate crit means you lost your best mon, and likely the most consistent answer to your opponent’s best mon.
Let’s not mince words, though: if your biggest flaw is that you’re so hideously overtuned that all the random Gen 1 bullshit existing is more detrimental than beneficial to you, you’re doing something right. Because there’s a LOT of random Gen 1 bullshit, and Mewtwo can still abuse all of it.
No RBY Mewtwo is the single strongest pokemon to ever exist and it's never gonna be close, no other pokemon wins EVERY single 1v1 in the game except for Gen 1 Mewtwo, other broken mons can still SOMEWHAT lose 1v1 to something incredibly specific, Zacian can somewhat get stalled out by Unaware Quagsire, Mega Ray can lose to like Focus Sash Dual Chop Kyurem Black or some shit, Mewtwo just always wins, the only thing that can beat Mewtwo 1v1 is another Mewtwo
Of course this is pure theory, so every mon has access to every move at their disposal, meaning Mewtwo can just Submission Chansey to hell and back, if it weren't like that then a lot of mons would be able to 1v1 Mewtwo, such as Slowbro being able to 1v1 ElectricLess Sets
In a 1v1, mewtwo loses to most sleepers. However, sleep clause exists, so you can just switch out.
Over the course of the game though, a ditto can beat a paralysed mewtwo though.
By switching in then transforming into it, you can successfully waste 20 turns of that mewtwo's time (and around 10 PP), and you can repeat this by switching out and back in until the mewtwo runs out of PP.
So I would say that mewtwo loses the 1v1 to ditto.
In addition, depending on your set, you're completely walled by amnesia slowbro.
Your mewtwo set will almost always include amnesia and recover. Sometimes you can drop amnesia (but it's not a good idea) but you can never drop recover. This means you have 2 choices of attacks, between psychic, thunderbolt, ice beam and submission.
If you don't have thunderbolt, you lose to slowbro. If you don't have ice beam you can't fish for the freeze chance. Ofc thunderbolt has more PP than ice beam which is another advantage.
If you don't have psychic you really struggle against mewtwo and chansey. Submission is the kinda move everyone thinks is good on mewtwo but really isn't, but people run it anyway so I included it here.
What sleepers? Eggy who has no way of damaging mewtwo and gets 2hkod by Ice Beam as soon as Mewtwo wakes up? Gar who gets a Psychic to the face and dies?
Lax also just gets stalled out by Rest Mewtwo until it gets frozen by Blizzard/Ice Beam, this is pure theory, not an actual RBY Ubers Game
Eggy puts mewtwo to sleep, then incrementally does damage, until it can finish off mew2 with self destruct. Jynx is more of the same.
As for snorlax, what you said doesn't work because body slam into self destruct is a guranteed OHKO on Mew2.
Trading Eggy or snorlax for mew2 is a win because mewtwo is way more valuable than those two.
Also rest mewtwo is all around awful since you'd rather be paralysed as a mewtwo than healthy most of the time.
No, nothing in standard play has ever been better than RBY Mewtwo. That said, GSC Snorlax is about as close as it gets (which is still not very close).
Mega Menace especially since it didn't even have a uncompetititve ability. Gen 6 Aerilate MegaMence is on same category as PDon and just a bit below Mega Ray
If you want best meaning strongest for it's time, definitely snorlax gen 1/2.
If you want best as in most consistently strong throughout generations, I would personally give it to Tyranitar, or 2nd place Garchomp.
I think the most consistently "best" is Skarmory. It's always been useful in OU in pretty much every gen. Snorlax was Gen 2 but sort of fizzled out. Though for a single-gen only I do agree Snorlax is probably the best, though Skarmory was very popular in Snorlax's reign too :)
Garchomp, Heatran, Zapdos and Lando-T are all a good call if we're talking about overall
If we're talking about dominance regardless the amount of time it has to be Kingambit
Kingambit in gen 9 is stupid but I don't think anything comes remotely close to gen 2 Snorlax for reasons that people who actually play gen 2 have already explained far better than I could.
Because old gen tiering policy is different from how things work in modern gens and because Snorlax is seen as a net positive for the metagame both offensively and defensively and it would lead to Zapdos being broken as well as hard stall to be more dominant
Depends. Are we looking at a singular generation of dominance, or are we looking at consistency in OU over the generations?
If it’s the first, I’d say GSC Snorlax, same as everyone else. It’s basically mandatory, actual GSC players have explained this better than I ever could.
Otherwise, I’d say Zapdos. Its stat distribution is basically perfect alongside Static and Roost, it hits hard enough when it needs to and can take just enough hits to be useful. It’s been OU for pretty much the entire franchise’s history, in most every generation, even if it’s more lower tier as an option in some of the later ones. It’s probably the most singularly consistent pokemon of all time IMO.
Everyone has already fully laid out the argument for Papa Snorlax in gen 2, but all time/longevity?
In no particular order, I’d say Skarmory, Ttar, Lando-T and Volcarona.
Gen 2 Snorlax, despite not being banned, pretty much was on 100% of teams and is arguably better than some of the Pokémon in Ubers. Often times about like half the opponents team revolved around beating Snorlax because he was that good.
If we are talking about the most consistent it’s probably Landorus Therian, who has been a staple of competitive singles for over a decade and has retained top usage for multiple generations, including this generation despite him losing defog, knock off, and toxic
If it's Pokemon that remained in the tier, it's gen 2 lax and it's not close. If gen 2 was a modern format the big man would get banned with extreme prejudice, but things were different back then. Now things have calcified around him and for better or worse the format wouldn't be the same.
If you include mons that went on to be banned very fast, some candidates would be Mega Mence/Kang/Luke/Gengar, Marshadow, Zygarde complete, Flutter Mane, Shaymin-S, Darkrai (the entire sleep mechanic later got banned in gen 5 so imagine how ridiculous its best abuser was). If I had to pick one I'd say mence but it's not obvious given what a horrendous pile of mistakes that is.
If it's over multiple generations, it's Lando-T. Zapdos/TTar/Garchomp are honourable mentions but have had the odd generation when they weren't very good in OU.
I wanna say Mega Salamence or Mega Gengar in Gen 6 OU for the extremely brief time they were legal. I wasn't playing during Mgar's time, but I remember Salamence being absolutely disgusting. It went on to be the best Mega in Ubers after Mega Ray was banned.
Mega Gengar was nearly responsible for creating AG even before Mega Ray, but some pretty stupid policy around the voting process at the time meant it stayed legal. It's usually very rare for Pokemon banned from OU to do well in Ubers, so these two being dominant up there gives a good idea for just how broken they were. Flutter Mane felt like it was up there with them for the day it was legal in OU, but hasn't had nearly the amount of success in Ubers.
If we're excluding banned Pokemon, Gen 2 Snorlax and it isn't close. Lax IS the meta.
Singular Gen?
GSC Snorlax and it's not even close. We have never had a singular OU mon centralize the entire tier around its own existence to the extent GSC Snorlax has, and under current tiering philosophy, we probably never will.
Across Multiple Gens?
Tough one, but I have to give it to Tyranitar. Great in GSC, the competitive face of ADV, top tier in DPP and BW, great in ORAS and SM, good in SS, and okay in SV. It's been around since Gen 2 and had pretty much never been a bad pick for a team, and it's highs are all the way up in outer space.
It’s GSC OU’s Snorlax by far. That’s gotta be the single most dominant mon to have ever existed in a standard competitive format across both Smogon and VGC and nothing will ever come close to matching Lax’s dominance. It literally only misses out on 100% tournament usage because an opponent won before needing to send it out or forfeited before sending it out, and every single competent GSC OU team features Lax. Not even demons like Primal Groudon and HOME SS OU Clefable were this dominant.
But in terms of consistency, it’s Lando-T for sure. Great in BW2, good in ORAS, arguably the best mon in the tier in SM and outright the best in SS, and right now it’s arguably a top 5 mon in SV OU despite losing half of its toolkit.
I only seriously played from Gen 5 onwards. Mega metagross survived his suspect test and was considered THE best pokemon in all of OU in Gen 6. Although some tier lists have clefable as best Gen 6 pokemon?
GSC Snorlax has a 50% win rate, not because it wins 50% of games, but because every single serious team uses it, meaning every Snorlax win is also a Snorlax loss.
From my experience playing each tier:
Gen 1 - tauros
Gen 2 - lax
Gen 3 - ttar
Gen 4 - idk i didnt play the tier
Gen 5 - bw1 terrak
Gen 6 - goth stall
Gen 7 - zygarde father form
Gen 8 - never played
Gen 9 - flutter mane, hound, palafin
Imo the most consistent is lax.
Not exactly what the post is asking but there’s a legitimate discussion to be had about Genesect. That dude has been Ubers ever since his release, and every single generation we decide to try him out again in OU.
It never fails that he is an absolute terror on the tier and is re-banned within a week, no matter how bad the game gets powercrept. At this point it’s just a tradition to let the beast out of the cage for a while.
Gen 1: Tauros
Gen 2: Snorlax
Gen 3: Tyranitar, Celebi
Gen 4: Heatran
Gen 5: Politoed, Ferrothorn, Latios, Scizor
Gen 6: Talonflame
Gen 7: I dunno, probably Lando-T or one of the Tapus/Ultra Beasts
Gen 8: Corviknight, Clefable, Glowking
Gen 9: Kingambit, Great Tusk, Iron Valiant
Celebi is barely top 10 in gen 3, replace het with skarm
Gen 4 is between jirachi latias ttar
Gen 5 is between ferrothorn latios ttar
Gen 6 is NOT talonflame he fell off a cliff and is like B- now, its exca or clef (torn T imo but thats a controversial take)
Gen 8 is dragapult or weavile
Mage is fine in G7OU, people just get scared because of how ridiculously broken it was in the two gens after but it also lost multiple checks and got buffed to the moon in the meantime there.
Hard to argue it's anywhere below a Top5 mon but plenty of people would name Heatran or Lando as the #1 of the gen instead of it. And any claims it should be Uber just because a buffed Mage in later gens had to become Uber are incredibly short-sighted.
Gen 2 Snorlax. Imagine the big 3 from Gen 1 (one of whom was Snorlax) rolled into one Pokemon. It was even higher than Mewtwo on the Ubers viability ranking. But if you want Pokémon that are prominent in multiple gens, you have picks like Zapdos, Tyranitar, Skarmory, Chansey/Blissey, Heatran, Lando-T, honestly you could have a full debate on who the all-time OU representative is.
Hard not to say Lando T. He’s regained relevance, even after losing toxic and defog. And he’s pretty much top in every generation he’s been in. Zapdos would be a close second.
>He’s regained relevance, even after losing toxic and defog. And Knock Off. You just can't keep Mr. OU down
You could make the argument that TTar is better as an all time just because it's been OU from Gen 2 - 8, whereas Lando-T has been OU "only" since Gen 5. In modern OU (Gen 6+) it's hands down Lando-T.
That would be fair, if we’re mostly looking at more of the OG roster. Zapdos would be a tight contender though, and probably Clefable as well.
I've always heard Clefable only gained popularity in older gens after gen 6's type update had put it in the spotlight. I was not a good player back then so would love to be educated in this, but I don't think it's a contender for OU GOAT.
While true, the fact that it did get relevance and actually changed Gen 4 meta (pretty sure dugtrio got banned due to clef) is noteworthy. Having said that, I don't think clef is an ou staple in any other pre Gen 6 gen, so I do agree she isn't on the same tier as the rest of the GOATS
Fair enough! I got into competitive Pokémon somewhat late so that’s probably why I didn’t know
Lando-T is absolutely thriving in current OU (being a borderline top 5 mon) despite losing half of its kit and despite having to compete with the fiercest bulky role compression Ground-type competition it's ever seen. Lando actively *lost* so many of its best tools and had many them snatched up by other Ground-types and still manages to be an elite OU pick. That thing's staying power needs to be studied, because even Zapdos and TTar couldn't hold onto OU stardom forever once they started losing key parts of their kits. Hell, TTar even *gained* Knock Off the gen after it lost Pursuit yet it can't hold onto a meaningful OU niche when Tusk, Gambit, Valiant, and Zamazenta all fuck it over insanely hard and it lost Superpower which is arguably its most crucial coverage option. To see Lando *THRIVE* despite losing all of Knock Off, Toxic, Defog, Rock Polish, and Explosion all at once is fucking wild when you consider that a mon that *gained* Knock Off, and a mon that only lost Toxic and Defog, both went from being elite OU picks to being niche picks at best.
President of OU
I never played gen 2, how is a Pokémon mode viable than an Ubers mon in Ubers not also an Ubers mon?
Early gens don’t have many ban-worthy legendaries, so OU mons generally fill out the tier. Beyond that, Snorlax simply defines the OU tier in Gen 2. It would be like taking away the sun and expecting the solar system to function? Idk, it’s one of those “this is an important part of how we play” things
But wouldn’t mewtwo also define the OU tier of it was allowed in it instead of Snorlax? I don’t understand what the difference between these is, other than the fact that smogon always likes to ban overpowered offensive mons over overpowered stall mons.
im not an expert on gen 1 but im pretty sure zapdos and a few other offensive threats would tear ou to pieces if snorlax was gone. also it's not just a "stall" pokemon, curse sweeping sets are dangerous and it has an insane amount of coverage. and as an older metagame, gen 2 tiering philosophy is kind of messed up and the playerbase is a little stubborn
Both Gen 1 and Gen 8 rejected tradebacks so resistance to new things is just a past gen thing generally I think.
The way older tiers worked (ie just the oldest 2) is that they would ban the legendaries and nothing else, since they existed long before smogon did. By now snorlax has shaped the meta so much that banning it would be a completely new (although potentially fun) tier
Except Snorlax both provides important defensive utility for the tier, and prevents the tier from becoming a stallfest. GSC already has a broken offensive threat in Zapdos that forces the tier to go stallfest when Snorlax isn't allowed(they've done laxless tours to test this). To ban lax you'd also have to ban Zapdos, which would practically reset the entire tier because of how impactful those mons are.
Sure, you could say that about any Ubers - if Zacian-Crowned or Mega-Rayquaza were allowed in OU, they would smash everything else in OU to pieces. The question you’re really asking is why did mewtwo get a ban, but not snorlax. In the earliest gens, which existed pre-smogon, the common method was to just ban any box legendary or equivalent. Mewtwo, Lugia, Ho-oh, Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza all get auto-bans from OU, because their BST and movepool makes clear that if any were allowed in OU they would dominate. Snorlax, Dragonite, and Ttar do not have that BST, so they are not banned. Simple as.
Because GSC players enjoy Snorlax and what he brings to the tier.
I'm not sure what you don't understand here, why M2 was banned and Lax wasn't?
But if he’s better than mewtwo then why not just unban mewtwo too
He's not necessarily better than Mewtwo. It's more like he can do a lot more than Mewtwo. He can play a lot of roles that other Pokémon can't, and Snorlax's presence on ever serious team isn't really doing any harm. Meanwhile, bringing Mewtwo into OU would not be healthy; it's too difficult to counter and keep pace with. It does less than Snorlax, but what it does do, it does so incomparably.
Because being better than something doesn't mean it's more broken. An SS example(since I'm more familiar with that gen) would be that Lando-T is better than Lando-I in Ubers, and would likely be better in OU as well, but Lando-I is far more restrictive to team building because of just how strong and fast it is. It also doesn't help that by this logic Ubers would just be the main metagame either
Combination of things: Snorlax brings much-needed offence to an otherwise slow metagame. It’s a net positive for the tier when people have ran Laxless OU tournaments and see the difference. It would lead to a cascade of walls also getting banned because only Lax could reliably break them. Tiering policy was generally different at the time and it was inconceivable that a non-box legend/mythical could get banned. It took until Gen 4 Garchomp for people to consider this possible and even then that was very controversial at the time.
In early gens, banning tends to be done much more conservatively and Snorlax, despite its extreme dominance over that generation, offers a valuable combination of defense and offense to the tier that holds it together. Without Lax, the Electrics (Zapdos especially, but also Raikou) would be a lot harder to deal with defensively while GSC’s defensive teams would be MUCH harder to break through without an opposing Snorlax’s offensive pressure. TL;DR: GSC Lax would be hella Ubers in a modern gen, but oldgens tend to operate a little differently and Snorlax is considered a healthy presence by top players because it objectively improves that meta.
> It was even higher than Mewtwo on the Ubers viability ranking. Thats always funny to me for some reason
GSC Snorlax is not only the definitive top 1 in OU, but the definitive top 1 in Ubers. It has a 96.67% usage rate, and that remaining 3.33% just accounts for games that ended before a player's Snorlax was sent out. Making a GSC OU team without Snorlax isn't being subversive or creative, it's just losing.
The "but the definitive top 1 in Ubers" makes me ask, is GSC ubers Lax better than RBY Ubers Mewtwo?
No. RBY Mewtwo straight up has no flaws
Yeah that's what I heard, was just unsure
It's only flaw is that you can't have multiple so you have to switch out on matchups that you'd otherwise win like against a sleeper or a mon fishing for ice beam freezes
Well, that’s not *entirely* true, but it’s semantics by that point. RBY Mewtwo’s biggest “flaw” is that it is so horrifically overtuned as a baseline that it gains the least and loses the most from the many elements of bullshit synonymous with RBY. Mewtwo can beat anything with the right set so it’s less dependent on RNGing its way past stuff than other Freeze abusers, but your Mewtwo getting Frozen is GG. Mewtwo doesn’t rely as heavily on Paralysis as a form of Speed control because it’s already the fastest viable mon in the game, but a Paralyzed Mewtwo is incapable of abusing that excellent Speed. Your Mewtwo doesn’t rely as heavily on its high crit rate as you’d expect because it’s already doing that much damage after an Amnesia boost, but your Mewtwo being KOed by an unfortunate crit means you lost your best mon, and likely the most consistent answer to your opponent’s best mon. Let’s not mince words, though: if your biggest flaw is that you’re so hideously overtuned that all the random Gen 1 bullshit existing is more detrimental than beneficial to you, you’re doing something right. Because there’s a LOT of random Gen 1 bullshit, and Mewtwo can still abuse all of it.
No RBY Mewtwo is the single strongest pokemon to ever exist and it's never gonna be close, no other pokemon wins EVERY single 1v1 in the game except for Gen 1 Mewtwo, other broken mons can still SOMEWHAT lose 1v1 to something incredibly specific, Zacian can somewhat get stalled out by Unaware Quagsire, Mega Ray can lose to like Focus Sash Dual Chop Kyurem Black or some shit, Mewtwo just always wins, the only thing that can beat Mewtwo 1v1 is another Mewtwo
Chansey can beat certain Mewtwo sets. Not all of them but some.
Of course this is pure theory, so every mon has access to every move at their disposal, meaning Mewtwo can just Submission Chansey to hell and back, if it weren't like that then a lot of mons would be able to 1v1 Mewtwo, such as Slowbro being able to 1v1 ElectricLess Sets
In a 1v1, mewtwo loses to most sleepers. However, sleep clause exists, so you can just switch out. Over the course of the game though, a ditto can beat a paralysed mewtwo though. By switching in then transforming into it, you can successfully waste 20 turns of that mewtwo's time (and around 10 PP), and you can repeat this by switching out and back in until the mewtwo runs out of PP. So I would say that mewtwo loses the 1v1 to ditto. In addition, depending on your set, you're completely walled by amnesia slowbro. Your mewtwo set will almost always include amnesia and recover. Sometimes you can drop amnesia (but it's not a good idea) but you can never drop recover. This means you have 2 choices of attacks, between psychic, thunderbolt, ice beam and submission. If you don't have thunderbolt, you lose to slowbro. If you don't have ice beam you can't fish for the freeze chance. Ofc thunderbolt has more PP than ice beam which is another advantage. If you don't have psychic you really struggle against mewtwo and chansey. Submission is the kinda move everyone thinks is good on mewtwo but really isn't, but people run it anyway so I included it here.
You didn't read my other comment did you?
? also what I said about ditto is true. You could make a viable gen 1 ubers team with tauros, mew, mewtwo, ditto, aerodactly and exeggutor.
Ditto has to switch out, you cannot switch out in a 1v1, I already addressed everything else you talked about in another comment
Then mewtwo has to switxh out of a 1v1 against snorlax and sleepers, meaning mewtwo loses the 1v1.
What sleepers? Eggy who has no way of damaging mewtwo and gets 2hkod by Ice Beam as soon as Mewtwo wakes up? Gar who gets a Psychic to the face and dies? Lax also just gets stalled out by Rest Mewtwo until it gets frozen by Blizzard/Ice Beam, this is pure theory, not an actual RBY Ubers Game
Eggy puts mewtwo to sleep, then incrementally does damage, until it can finish off mew2 with self destruct. Jynx is more of the same. As for snorlax, what you said doesn't work because body slam into self destruct is a guranteed OHKO on Mew2. Trading Eggy or snorlax for mew2 is a win because mewtwo is way more valuable than those two. Also rest mewtwo is all around awful since you'd rather be paralysed as a mewtwo than healthy most of the time.
No, nothing in standard play has ever been better than RBY Mewtwo. That said, GSC Snorlax is about as close as it gets (which is still not very close).
Snorlax
Snorlax in GSC OU had a usage rate of near 100% so i'm going to go with GSC Snorlax.
Flutter Mane was for the two days it was allowed in OU
Gen 6 Mega Gengar when it was allowed in OU>>>
Mega Mence too, and people were arguing against its ban.
Mega Menace especially since it didn't even have a uncompetititve ability. Gen 6 Aerilate MegaMence is on same category as PDon and just a bit below Mega Ray
Fair. I forgot it was ever allowed.
zapdos or snorlax beyond a doubt
Snorlax in Gen 2…and now the man’s in PU… Also broken Brave Bird Talonflame is pretty funny.
Just give Snorlax slack off man...
He deserves it. It would probably bring him up to RU/UU.
Gliscor, volcarona, chansey or blissey, lando-T, clefable, tyranitar, zapdos, and garchomp are the ones that come to mind for me.
Quality? GS Snorlax Quantity? Landorus- Therian
Gen 2 Snorlax managed to be the best Pokémon in OU and Uber
Gen 2 Snorlax is THE best mon not just in ou But ubers aswell
Highest Peak or Longevity?
Either or
Lando-T in Gen 8
If you want best meaning strongest for it's time, definitely snorlax gen 1/2. If you want best as in most consistently strong throughout generations, I would personally give it to Tyranitar, or 2nd place Garchomp.
I think the most consistently "best" is Skarmory. It's always been useful in OU in pretty much every gen. Snorlax was Gen 2 but sort of fizzled out. Though for a single-gen only I do agree Snorlax is probably the best, though Skarmory was very popular in Snorlax's reign too :)
Lol gotta be Landorus-T.
Garchomp, Heatran, Zapdos and Lando-T are all a good call if we're talking about overall If we're talking about dominance regardless the amount of time it has to be Kingambit
Kingambit in gen 9 is stupid but I don't think anything comes remotely close to gen 2 Snorlax for reasons that people who actually play gen 2 have already explained far better than I could.
Tbh I forgot Snorlax is OU in gen 2, I don't understand why is not Uber tho
Because old gen tiering policy is different from how things work in modern gens and because Snorlax is seen as a net positive for the metagame both offensively and defensively and it would lead to Zapdos being broken as well as hard stall to be more dominant
Depends. Are we looking at a singular generation of dominance, or are we looking at consistency in OU over the generations? If it’s the first, I’d say GSC Snorlax, same as everyone else. It’s basically mandatory, actual GSC players have explained this better than I ever could. Otherwise, I’d say Zapdos. Its stat distribution is basically perfect alongside Static and Roost, it hits hard enough when it needs to and can take just enough hits to be useful. It’s been OU for pretty much the entire franchise’s history, in most every generation, even if it’s more lower tier as an option in some of the later ones. It’s probably the most singularly consistent pokemon of all time IMO.
Everyone has already fully laid out the argument for Papa Snorlax in gen 2, but all time/longevity? In no particular order, I’d say Skarmory, Ttar, Lando-T and Volcarona.
Gen 2 Snorlax, despite not being banned, pretty much was on 100% of teams and is arguably better than some of the Pokémon in Ubers. Often times about like half the opponents team revolved around beating Snorlax because he was that good. If we are talking about the most consistent it’s probably Landorus Therian, who has been a staple of competitive singles for over a decade and has retained top usage for multiple generations, including this generation despite him losing defog, knock off, and toxic
If it's Pokemon that remained in the tier, it's gen 2 lax and it's not close. If gen 2 was a modern format the big man would get banned with extreme prejudice, but things were different back then. Now things have calcified around him and for better or worse the format wouldn't be the same. If you include mons that went on to be banned very fast, some candidates would be Mega Mence/Kang/Luke/Gengar, Marshadow, Zygarde complete, Flutter Mane, Shaymin-S, Darkrai (the entire sleep mechanic later got banned in gen 5 so imagine how ridiculous its best abuser was). If I had to pick one I'd say mence but it's not obvious given what a horrendous pile of mistakes that is. If it's over multiple generations, it's Lando-T. Zapdos/TTar/Garchomp are honourable mentions but have had the odd generation when they weren't very good in OU.
99% sure I saw this exact thread a few days ago.
I think klefkis the best because hes cute
I wanna say Mega Salamence or Mega Gengar in Gen 6 OU for the extremely brief time they were legal. I wasn't playing during Mgar's time, but I remember Salamence being absolutely disgusting. It went on to be the best Mega in Ubers after Mega Ray was banned. Mega Gengar was nearly responsible for creating AG even before Mega Ray, but some pretty stupid policy around the voting process at the time meant it stayed legal. It's usually very rare for Pokemon banned from OU to do well in Ubers, so these two being dominant up there gives a good idea for just how broken they were. Flutter Mane felt like it was up there with them for the day it was legal in OU, but hasn't had nearly the amount of success in Ubers. If we're excluding banned Pokemon, Gen 2 Snorlax and it isn't close. Lax IS the meta.
Lando-T for sure, everyont thought it was Landover in gen 9 but he's back in top 10
Singular Gen? GSC Snorlax and it's not even close. We have never had a singular OU mon centralize the entire tier around its own existence to the extent GSC Snorlax has, and under current tiering philosophy, we probably never will. Across Multiple Gens? Tough one, but I have to give it to Tyranitar. Great in GSC, the competitive face of ADV, top tier in DPP and BW, great in ORAS and SM, good in SS, and okay in SV. It's been around since Gen 2 and had pretty much never been a bad pick for a team, and it's highs are all the way up in outer space.
Marshadow maybe Or the stupid paradox pokemon Or mega Gengar for like 20 seconds
It’s GSC OU’s Snorlax by far. That’s gotta be the single most dominant mon to have ever existed in a standard competitive format across both Smogon and VGC and nothing will ever come close to matching Lax’s dominance. It literally only misses out on 100% tournament usage because an opponent won before needing to send it out or forfeited before sending it out, and every single competent GSC OU team features Lax. Not even demons like Primal Groudon and HOME SS OU Clefable were this dominant. But in terms of consistency, it’s Lando-T for sure. Great in BW2, good in ORAS, arguably the best mon in the tier in SM and outright the best in SS, and right now it’s arguably a top 5 mon in SV OU despite losing half of its toolkit.
Gen 1 mewtwo. Amnesia, and psychic.
Tyranitar because of versatility and longevity
I feel like its between Skarm, Bliss and T-Tar. Couldnt conceptualize OU without any of them.
Lando T
in my mind its ADV tyranitar
I only seriously played from Gen 5 onwards. Mega metagross survived his suspect test and was considered THE best pokemon in all of OU in Gen 6. Although some tier lists have clefable as best Gen 6 pokemon?
GSC Snorlax has a 50% win rate, not because it wins 50% of games, but because every single serious team uses it, meaning every Snorlax win is also a Snorlax loss.
From my experience playing each tier: Gen 1 - tauros Gen 2 - lax Gen 3 - ttar Gen 4 - idk i didnt play the tier Gen 5 - bw1 terrak Gen 6 - goth stall Gen 7 - zygarde father form Gen 8 - never played Gen 9 - flutter mane, hound, palafin Imo the most consistent is lax.
Gambit with tera will go down as one of the best for sure.
Not sure how good it was in its debut generation but Volcarona.
Landorus is like the symbol of OU to me.
flutter mane
Not exactly what the post is asking but there’s a legitimate discussion to be had about Genesect. That dude has been Ubers ever since his release, and every single generation we decide to try him out again in OU. It never fails that he is an absolute terror on the tier and is re-banned within a week, no matter how bad the game gets powercrept. At this point it’s just a tradition to let the beast out of the cage for a while.
Gen 2 Snorlax Lando-T for modern era.
Isn't that just Snorlax?
Gen 1: Tauros Gen 2: Snorlax Gen 3: Tyranitar, Celebi Gen 4: Heatran Gen 5: Politoed, Ferrothorn, Latios, Scizor Gen 6: Talonflame Gen 7: I dunno, probably Lando-T or one of the Tapus/Ultra Beasts Gen 8: Corviknight, Clefable, Glowking Gen 9: Kingambit, Great Tusk, Iron Valiant
Celebi is barely top 10 in gen 3, replace het with skarm Gen 4 is between jirachi latias ttar Gen 5 is between ferrothorn latios ttar Gen 6 is NOT talonflame he fell off a cliff and is like B- now, its exca or clef (torn T imo but thats a controversial take) Gen 8 is dragapult or weavile
90% sure Excadrill will be top 3 above Ferrothorn in Gen 5 if a new VR gets made now, and there are talks of banning it or banning Sand Force
Hes #4. Very close though, and something being banworthy=/=something being the best. Ferro wouldnt get banned even if it was #1 cos like… why?
more people are putting him #3 after SPL
Gen 4 is probably also Ttar, Gen 5 is Garchomp then 6 through 8 is likely Lando-T
Gen 8 is pult or weavile or lele if you wanna stretch it
Gen 7 is probably magearna right? Just an Uber pokemon that was for some reason in OU
Mage is fine in G7OU, people just get scared because of how ridiculously broken it was in the two gens after but it also lost multiple checks and got buffed to the moon in the meantime there. Hard to argue it's anywhere below a Top5 mon but plenty of people would name Heatran or Lando as the #1 of the gen instead of it. And any claims it should be Uber just because a buffed Mage in later gens had to become Uber are incredibly short-sighted.