Golem's results lately I think proves otherwise that they are NOT "roughly equal". In major tournaments over the past couple years, Rhydon has held a reliable 50% winrate while Golem has consistently had very poor performances in line with low ranks like Persian. This seems to indicate that until something changes, Golem is not in a good place at all in the modern RBY metagame.Good job on this. I have a couple of things I want to call out:
1) Golem is ranked way too low it. It should be roughly equal to Rhydon at A- / B+ tier. I think people prefer using Rhydon lately due to more ppl using team comps where you have more para support but Golem is better in team comps where there is more sleepers and less para support. I think by nature they are roughly equal. I even like Golem better, explosion makes it way more versatile.
2) Vic is ranked way too high. It should be C tier. I love victreebel it's great as a surprise weapon but it has too many flaws compared to all the lower tier OUs. People over estimate wrap, because you have to use it multiple times it's going to miss on switches. You have to be real lucky for it not to miss. Victreebell doesn't have the speed to followup when it misses on a switch and your opponent is faster than you. On top of that vic is weak to ice and psychic the most common special attacks among the OUs AND it cant take physical attacks very well not even earthquake.
Hey Enigami,Golem's results lately I think proves otherwise that they are NOT "roughly equal". In major tournaments over the past couple years, Rhydon has held a reliable 50% winrate while Golem has consistently had very poor performances in line with low ranks like Persian. This seems to indicate that until something changes, Golem is not in a good place at all in the modern RBY metagame.
Victreebel absolutely does not belong in C (or D in your ranks). Victreebel is not a "surprise weapon", it's been a common threat in RBY Tournaments for quite some time yet still has performed quite strongly, so "surprise" is not any more of a factor than Zapdos, Jynx or any other Pokemon, it's good even with players expecting it to show up. You don't seem to understand Wrap if you think its only use is to sweep, you can use Wrap to switch out yourself to a superior matchup, or pressure your opponent to bring in a Pokemon that is not paralyzed, and thus probably vulnerable to taking sleep or paralysis itself. It can be a huge issue against "S4 + Lead + 6th" teams if the 6th is slow, especially if the lead took paralysis. That would leave only Tauros being capable of switching in on Wrap, at which point Tauros is putting itself at huge risk of taking status. Victreebel's got weaknesses to Ice and Psychic, sure, but the more paralysis gets spread, the more these weaknesses become a non-issue. It does have a huge issue with barely contributing defensively, but it's offensive pressure has proven itself to more than make up for its flaws.
I disagree with your rankings, but they're your personal rankings so I'll agree to disagree. If you're not aware though, Nidoqueen > Nidoking. Same Special stat, speed is only relevant vs. Dragonite (who can survive Blizzard and set up on Nidoking anyway), Attack stat doesn't change # of hits to KO with Earthquake, but the bulk matters in 4 key places: Nidoqueen can survive 2 rounds against Tauros (no other Ground-type can do this), 2 Earthquakes from Snorlax, has a much higher chance of surviving 2 Ice Beams from Chansey, and has a chance of surviving 4 Drill Pecks from Zapdos. That's 3 S-Ranks and an A-Rank that Nidoqueen performs better than Nidoking against with little drawback. Not really important because Nidos are F ranked either way, but it bugs me that everyone automatically assumes Nidoking is better when the math doesn't line up. Shame that Lovely Kiss is Tradebacks-only though, Nidos would atleast be decent gimmicks.
no one responded to this yet so i'll copy/paste the post i made on this point a year and a half ago on pokemonperfectHey Enigami,
Thanks for the feedback.
On Golem vs Ryhdon, I am aware of that the current meta has shifted towards Ryhdon. I've observed this trend as well. I'm just not sure WHY? I'm not sure if it is really because players have found something about Golem that allows it's weaknesses to be exploited OR if it is Rhydon is simply more popular now due to better synergies with the current team comps in vogue. My own personal thought is Golem is just not as popular now due to Rhydon synergizing better with starmie in the lead position which is meta currently. But nothing has really changed about these two pokes themselves, Golem is fundamentally the same as its always been.
However, I am open minded about this. I would love to understand why players are preferring Rhydon more now. I think this topic is worth explored deeper.
golem is a deeply flawed pokemon. its gameplans aren't strategically coherent. it brings two notable strengths to the table which are in direct conflict with each other (you don't know if you need to keep it alive to fight the electric until after you boom). each goal individually can be better accomplished by other pokemon who are more consistent and/or have more useful stat distributions.me said:golem sucks because you put the rock on the team to beat the zap but you want to wallbreak with your boom relatively early to give yourself time to capitalize on the broken wall, and you don't get to accomplish both goals in the same game with your golem.
rhydon is amazing because it 2hkoes paraed chansey with eq so you force damage somewhere onto their team; snorlax can't switch in, eggy can't heal, every flying mon loses to it anyway/you can call it with either of your other attacks anyways, bull takes a million. the matchup vs reflect chansey is whatever, i'd much rather face a boltbeam twave chansey with my rhydon than reflect stoss because paraed reflect chans's odds of 1v1ing are way better, and you can opt out of the fight after you, say, broke one sub and healed. sub sorta really sucks on don. not that anything else is better of course.
i'd also rather have my rock check slowbro by 3hkoing it instead of "hope they don't switch out of my boom xd" both since golem gets outplayed soooo easily and having an alive rock after checking slowbro > having a dead rock after checking slowbro.
Rhydon Earthquake vs. Slowbro: 122-144 (31 - 36.6%) -- 69.4% chance to 3HKO
Golem Earthquake vs. Slowbro: 109-129 (27.7 - 32.8%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
Rhydon Earthquake vs. Chansey: 354-417 (50.3 - 59.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Golem Earthquake vs. Chansey: 314-370 (44.6 - 52.6%) -- 22.7% chance to 2HKO
Even if you pair Golem with Slowbro ? I mean, Eggy is one of the best and most common Bro stops in late game rn, might be worth to boom Eggy if you're using it right ?On Golem, one important thing to recognise that a lot of people miss is that you should pretty much never explode against Eggy.
Your opponents Eggy only wants to sleep something, protect you from your opponents Ground, and kill something else (usually with explosion). Exploding Golem against Eggy pretty much guarantees Eggy will accomplish all three.
So if you are gonna use Golem, then you need some other plan for how and when you will explode. There's a lot of possibilities for how you could do that, but if it includes exploding against Eggy, then its probably a bad plan.
Sorry, I didn't make that point as clear as I could've. The unrevealed mon in the back may or may not be a Zapdos when your opportunity to boom comes up far too often. With no phazing, there isn't any way to actually see which mons are in the back unless your opponent shows you, and that bit of information is vital to knowing how you're supposed to play your Golem in any given game.If your argument is that it can't both Boom and Wall in the same game, that sounds to me like an argument in favor of Golem because you can Boom in the games you don't need it to Wall. If the opponent doesn't have an Electric, Boom is theoretically better than Rhydon. (Rhydon is still arguably better due to the power difference -- I've been on this train since Day 1 -- but Golem certainly has a leg to stand on at least.) If the opponent has one, Golem is slightly worse, because it has less power to punish the opponent switching out of the matchup, but ultimately still does the job. I'm personally not convinced that early exploding is particularly great, though. Golem also unequivocably wins the Golem vs Rhydon matchup, which is hardly something to scoff at in a metagame that spans a whole dozen mons roughly.
It's also true that many pokes have contradictory roles. Gengar can't explode and then catch rival explosions, Zam can't realistically spread paralysis, take sleep and sweep. Probably he can only do 1. I guess the difference is that only Golem has a near identical pokemon to compare to.If your argument is that it can't both Boom and Wall in the same game, that sounds to me like an argument in favor of Golem because you can Boom in the games you don't need it to Wall. If the opponent doesn't have an Electric, Boom is theoretically better than Rhydon.
If the main purpose of carrying either Rock/Ground is to counter Zapdos (and to a lesser extent Jolteon), then you keep it hidden until the opponent reveals their last. Booming Golem opportunistically isn't so different from playing Rhydon aggressively and risking it getting worn down tanking hits. If you're concerned about their last being an Electric, just don't do it. You don't explode Golem anymore than you run Rhydon into Chansey all day and risk eating Ice Beams. It's not like Explosion is bad in the lategame. If you're ahead, nothing secures a lead better. If you're neutral or behind, if you're up against something unstatused, blowing up your Golem is significantly better than firing off an EQ with Rhydon before being 2HKOed anyway.Sorry, I didn't make that point as clear as I could've. The unrevealed mon in the back may or may not be a Zapdos when your opportunity to boom comes up far too often. With no phazing, there isn't any way to actually see which mons are in the back unless your opponent shows you, and that bit of information is vital to knowing how you're supposed to play your Golem in any given game.
It is very very different though. A Golem at 0% tells the opponent "hey mate I have no rock-type anymore, you can start setting up the board so that Zapdos clicks agility and wins". A Rhydon at 45% can still win the 1v1 with a full HP Zapdos.Booming Golem opportunistically isn't so different from playing Rhydon aggressively and risking it getting worn down tanking hits. If you're concerned about their last being an Electric, just don't do it. You don't explode Golem anymore than you run Rhydon into Chansey all day and risk eating Ice Beams.
That's just nonsense though. Golem can still come in on Thunder Waves, Thunderbolts, Hyper Beams and Explosions and still does good damage to anything (just not as good as Rhydon). If you have Golem out and your opponent has their Eggy KO'd, what can they safely switch in? Naff all.Golem vs Zapdos is a 5v5 game because the opponent doesn't want to send Zapdos since it's walled, but you don't want to send Golem either, because it's fucking garbage and you can't even explode it. Instead, in Rhydon vs Zapdos, your Rock-type is actually able to do progress while still forcing the Zapdos player to only use 5 mons.
This is the important part. Exeggutors don't just magically snap out of existance. They're fairly common and generally very alive in the midgame. Also there isn't much that Golem can threaten in a 1v1, you list electric and normal-type moves as if they're a long list of stuff, but really that just means boltbeam chansey or tb starmie, which can both absolutely murder Golem (and usually aren't clicking tbolt very often in the first place), and Snorlax, which laughs at Golem very hard with Reflect. Making Golem come in safely is tough work - you need to force recovery from stuff like zam, chansey, snorlax without a reflect, -and- predict that recovery correctly. It's just not worth the effort when the reward is minor Eggy chip. Meanwhile Rhydon's chip is so much more substantial so when he gets a chance to attack it actually matters.That's just nonsense though. Golem can still come in on Thunder Waves, Thunderbolts, Hyper Beams and Explosions and still does good damage to anything (just not as good as Rhydon). If you have Golem out and your opponent has their Eggy KO'd, what can they safely switch in? Naff all.
Sure, Rhydon would be slightly better, but acting like Golem doesn't have mid-game uses is just wrong.
"Inspiring" is one thing, but we're staring at 10 Golem uses against 123 Rhydon uses in the last two SPLs. Either every top player is clueless, or they've figured something outIt's tough to be totally reliant on stats when judging viability because stats are dependent on what people feel about viability in the first place. It would be one thing if the data were clearly telling us that Rhydon is worse (because that would be going against prevailing opinion), but if the data agrees with most of the community that Rhydon is better that's not necessarily inspiring. We would already expect the players who know what they're doing to pick Rhydon (and for people who are out of the loop to pick Golem more often). I mean I don't think that completely undermines the data or anything but I don't think I would be putting enormous stock into it either.
Yeah, this is probably the one scenario where I would consider Eggy as a target, but also consider an alternative like just waiting for Eggy to explode on something else (ideally your Golem). Patience is a virtue.Even if you pair Golem with Slowbro ? I mean, Eggy is one of the best and most common Bro stops in late game rn, might be worth to boom Eggy if you're using it right ?
That's a fair point, but it does happen.This is the important part. Exeggutors don't just magically snap out of existance.
You know what's nonsense? Claiming that Golem is anywhere close to Rhydon.
And years before that, Golem was more popular. Did it take everyone else 20 years to catch up to me?"Inspiring" is one thing, but we're staring at 10 Golem uses against 123 Rhydon uses in the last two SPLs. Either every top player is clueless, or they've figured something out
Before paraslam discoveries Golem was the better mon because the meta as a whole was substantially different. Don't forget that this is a tier so stupidly centralized that even Porygon manages to see play just because he counters Snorlax, and stuff like Victreebel that isn't very good in UU but is considerably more viable in OU due to how it matches up to the environment. The slightest tweaks in how the big boys interact have a whole bunch of side effects for the viability of the small boys. 2019 RBY has existed for a very short time, you wouldn't see people 'discover' Victreebel and Cloyster and Rest Jolteon and all the kind of innovation that we've seen over the last couple years if the same game had been here for 20 yearsAnd years before that, Golem was more popular. Did it take everyone else 20 years to catch up to me?