How GOOD was Slowbro ACTUALLY? - History of Slowbro in Competitive Pokemon (Gens 1-6)

this week we've got one of those other Pokemon whose names I love for becoming normal to us even though they're the most ridiculous thing ever seriously slow bro don't get me wrong I love it but they just put slow and grow together I mean I guess it's more creative than slowpoke which is actually just a word man I love early generation Pokemon naming anyway Slowbro boasts one of the weirdest evolution methods in Pokemon it can only evolve via a shelter biting its tail in the lore anyways though in the game it just evolved regularly at level 37 but hey come to think of it why doesn't this form of a shell to have its own playable for well I guess maybe we'll get to that apparently if shelter gets thrown off slow roll turns back in the slowpoke a tactic we won't be covering in this video so how good was slow roll with its tail still adorned let's find out so what's logos big stick and Gen 1 well it forgets stuff yeah slow rolls biggest boon and Gen 1 was amnesia since special was a composite stat in the first generation amnesia was one of if not the best boosting stat in the game boosting special by two stages entirely slow growth special set itself was actually just okay clocking in at base eighty but it had a cool base 95 HP and 110 defense meaning after one and mizu boost it wasn't taking that much damage from anything even electric-type moves didn't do that much unless of course they credit which would cut through the booths well that's great defenses but lackluster speed Thunder wave let's slow bro spread status among the opponent's team even to normal types that couldn't be paralyzed by body slamming if Slowbro was left unchecked it became a slow unstoppable force a glacier crashing through your team at plus 6 it could to hit ko chancy and three hit ko Lapras and eggs egg eater 1 amnesia led it to hit ko tauros if he didn't get critted the enemy team had no choice but to watch a pink staring monster run them over surf was actually slow bros only a tacky move and the last slot was dedicated to rest for some form of recovery it was an instant but once set up not that many hits were going to get through slow roll anyways so rest wasn't that bad without setup its defenses were just so high that even the best physical attackers and overuse had a hard time with it toros needed a crit on body slam or hyper beam the to hit ko an executory explosion only did 60% all of this may make Slowbro sound and stoppable and once it got set up it was pretty fearsome but his weaknesses wasn't how predictable it was lorry slow bros health wally was asleep and then trying to hit it with a crit from something like torah suppression was a safe way to deal with it remember that in Gen 1 crits were determined by speed and so certain Pokemon could hunt for crits much easier victreebel and venusaur had almost guaranteed critical hit razor leaves and could stop slow roll that way but had to watch out for thunder wave or the rare psychic light screen variants of chancy and star Mead also wold slow roll completely able to recover its damage reliably and slowly whittle it down but those versions pretty much only existed for slow growth remember that light screen was just a self buff in Gen 1 there are so many things that can possibly beat slow grow fast electric types Toros and ninja Snorlax or another slow rule but there weren't that many hard counters but rock types could attempt to switch in and three hit ko with their high-powered earthquakes while slow bro was asleep but that wasn't guaranteed either the general method for dealing with sore ball was to attack it whenever possible it was such a dangerous Pokemon if it set up and it easily made its way to overuse in the smoky meta Gen 2 had some small but important changes come slow bros away while it was still completely oblivious to most attacks I mean look at that face it also benefited from a 20-point increase of special attack after the special split unfortunately for slow bro amnesia was no longer the broken tool at once had been so memories I've been boosting 2+6 were well I mean maybe they were gone considering has so much amnesia as such and now packed dual stabs in surf and psychic while the rest of its set stayed the same well slow bro actually had a better move folded suicune his biggest competitor for bulky water types and lack the one thing justifying using a bulky water in Gen 2 roar which could remove pesky curse user boosts in an instant slow roll was still a tank and a half but the real problem was that it didn't really fit the meta the three most popular Pokemon and overuse were the omnipotent Snorlax and Zapdos and raikou raikou and Zapdos just rained holy thunder and destroyed Slowbro for obvious reasons while Snorlax just saw an opportunity to set up itself again this is why phasing is important the meta simply wasn't kind to slow roll who still had most of its assets aside from losing amnesia and so fell to under use in the smokey meta and a disappointing D tier in Nintendo cub GN to which and that's a pretty hard fall to be honest but in Gentry Slowbro is still tanking stuff true to its name Slowbro hadn't really caught up to the wave of the future yet and so it's stuck to the waves of the past namely thunder wave and surf thunder wave was occasionally switched out for combline which lets soul bro at least pack half of the power did with amnesia and gen1 which was useful to potentially take out dragon types like Salomon's and flag on with ice be it even occasionally leaned into the attacking aspects of its physical nature running a sub punch or curse set but that was if you really wanted to run a physical slow bro which you probably did it and in keeping with its commitment to the past slow bro was starting to get outpaced by its newer counterparts Swampert didn't take sand damage Milan took had Marvel skill just in case of status and so we could could stall with pressure which along with its better base stats meant is strictly outclassed slow bro in a rest sleep talk calm mindset maybe if sweet who never existed it would be crow bro and not crow that went down in history as one of the most annoying sets ever not to mention all of the special tanks who ate it up Snorlax Blissey and suicune itself slow growth still performed admirably as its niche but that niche was getting smaller all the time it was still strong enough to get banned and underused which ended it up in borderline but by the time Gen 3 came around Slovo was gonna have to make some changes fast Gen 4 brought one of these changes and what a change it was slack off which was originally reserved only for the slacking line was now available to slow bros whoa reliable recovery was something slow bro was sorely missing earlier on but with slack off it could fulfill its role as either a physical or mix wall quite well it's high defense let it work exceptionally well against dragon dancers and other physical attackers with the exception of Tyranitar whose crunch put Slowbro in a bad way slow broke could take hits and then dish out crippling status in the form of thunder waiver toxic or if it had a super effective move to send its opponent's way just do that which it frequently did utilizing a mix of surf ice cream and hidden power electric for wide coverage it absolutely destroyed Machamp able to resist this dynamic punch without fear of confusion because of own temple and avoid paybacks boosted damage due to its own low speed well while slow growth took neutral hits very well it didn't handle super effective ones quite as hard early and with the Afro mentioned Tyranitar running amok with sizzler as two of the most powerful Pokemon in the game it unfortunately had a large amount of super effective moves to worry about sizzler and Tyranitar made Slowbro regret its own psychic typing and it had to be paired up with something that shored up that weakness such as Lucario slow roll was generally outclassed by Vaporeon and suicune has a bulky water type because of their solo typing and if you tried to make your slow bro set similar to Vaporeon and so we couldn't it's usually better to just use Vaporeon it's weaker you could try to use choice packs to take advantage of its good coverage but there's a problem that is pretty apparent it was too slow it's at least bulky but it's always gonna take the first hit almost every time unless trick comes up and because of all this it fell to under use but it was its ability to be a physical tank that let it appear and overuse occasionally because even though it didn't handle some threats well its ability to deal with other physical attackers was still admirable generation 5 gave Slowbro even more recovery ability in the form of regenerator as a stream world ability allowing it to heal itself every time it switches out Pokemon that excel and against fighting types did fairly well in generation 5 and Slowbro was no exception unless we're talking about Breloom whose seed bomb caused it a fair share of problems but had to be afraid of psychic upon switching in as always slow grows bulk and crippling powers led it perform well against physical pokemon especially physical dragon types who it could attempt to put on ice another big Gen 5 meta advantage for Slowbro was all the rain going around which boosted its power and let it function well in defense of rain course the new move scold helped Slowbro fulfill its role as an annoying water type more than an offensive powerhouse and choice pecs and life war both made appearances as well the life orb said taking advantage of trick room which did less floor will become that offensive powerhouse unfortunately for a bro Celebi chancy Blissey and gastro Don all hard countered in the laddies amoonguss star me Rotom W and Jellison also did well and it still had its fair share of gripes about fast electric types slow bro had an interesting place in underused where it handled a large portion of the meta game very well but had just as many problems with the other side of the usage list perhaps his biggest problem was that Jellison was also just better than it it had better defenses will-o'-wisp and was completely immune to fighting types and since lobe role was played more as a tank than an attacker anyways all those things were more important than slow bros coverage and attacking stats slow bro staid and underused but it still made its occasional trips to overuse every now and then slow pros been banking on being slow for five generations and in VGC gen-5 it finally got a chance to show that off trick room is far easier to pull off at VGC and Slowbro could set up trick room benefit from it and then go to town its ability to shrug off most physical hits meant it could reliably get its own trick room up and what's called in its arsenal now any physical attacker had to be worried it was so bulky that it wasn't even to hit Kayla by toxic crook and hitmontop sucker punches unless they had a dark gym tanking one of the best priority moves to break through trick room and with regenerator on inside slow broke could always pivot and even if you were running whether with a baba saw or politoed on its team Slowbro had his choice of spamming either blizzard or surf for quite respectable damage however seeing as I couldn't find any notable tournament places for it I imagine it did have competition from Chris Elia who's another trick room setter who has legendary stats that let it take more hits and has access to a lot more support moves Chris alia also benefited from a solo psychic typing which freed it from the electric and grass type weaknesses slowed Rohan but it seems slow roll was still quite a decent choice if you were looking to run trick room in Gen 6 the meta shifted once again and Slowbro now found itself in a great position to take out some of the top threats and overuse with firefighting and ground-types ruling over you such as talonflame mega Charizard X Keldeo and Landers T floor Bros coverage and resistances meant it could return to overuse as a great wall its regular form had good mattress versus those pokémon and Gliscor Dragonite mega Altaria Garchomp and girdles but still struggled against fast special attackers who could hit it for super effective damage and stalkers who could stop either combine or thunder wave call mine was run more frequently as slowpoke could actually fight back with some boosts remember how I said we'd eventually talk about that alternative shelter form yeah well mega slow roll is the closest thing we're gonna get to it with shelter now taking up the majority of poor slow girls body mega slow brawl has an absolutely insane base 180 defense making it one of the physically bulkiest pokemon in the game and it's 130 special attack as nothing to scoff at either but what it couldn't do as well we'll switch out mega slow girl lost the incredible sustain of a generator for shell armor critical hit negation which is nice and that it prevents combine setup from being cut short but is it nearly as good overall it also loses leftovers recovery as Omega and is still just as vulnerable to special attackers exactly is vulnerable actually with identical special defense and HP so normal slope megha slow roll is far better late game since it gets set up and sweep through and some variants even rent iron defense for overkill or I guess overprotect both versions didn't like status so they paired well with status absorbers like Gliscor affable and chancy and both versions also had a long list of counters like most grass and electric types stall breakers were taught special attacking dragon types who could resist scald but slow roll actually has great coverage so it could always surprise the opponent and ended up in overuse because of how well it did against a large portion of the metagame and as for Gen 6 VGC I looked all over but I could not find any notable uses of Slowbro or mega Slowbro I did find traces of it on articles from players who fought against teams with slow roll on them in early VGC 2015 but none of them are detailed about what happened to it and with Pokemon like egg assassin hydreigon running around who both have super effective special attacks that can vaporize it and the fact that better Megas who can run in shirk room like mega Mawile exists I imagine slow roll was not used that much unfortunately and that's it so how good was slow Pro actually slow bro was pretty good it was at one time the best user of the best at boosting move in Gen 1 in amnesia well besides Mewtwo anyway and since then it's had its ups and downs but it's always pretty usable the slowest pokémon around hasn't changed much but great stats good coverage and anisha's lauralee filled for six generations has all paid off whenever slow growth does get a big chance it shows like slack off regenerator or its omega even when it was an underused it still had showings and overuse it just wasn't that popular so yeah slow roll has always been pretty good I guess sometimes slow and steady really does win the race huh unless we're talking about gen 7 but you know things could change thanks for watching everyone of course if you liked the video and you want to see more be sure to subscribe to false white gaming for more weekly Pokemon content and of course comment I want video you want next also thank you so much to our patrons for continued support of our videos and an extra shout out to our graphic artist amante douglas for creating our new logo you can follow him on these platforms here and you can follow the rest of my crew on these platforms here and that's all I got see you next time everyone you

Channel: False Swipe Gaming

Views: 1,073,666

Keywords: Pokemon, Pokemon Go, Slowbro, Slowking, Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Black, White, Pokemon X, Pokemon Y, Pokemon Sun & Moon, Competitive Pokemon, Smogon, VGC

Id: KUBPbbuz3c0

Length: 13min 23sec (803 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 22 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/chelsita]

Venusaur's eyes creep me tf ouuuut

[u/MagikarpFilet]

I really liked this video, he went straight to the info. I was skeptical about the 13 min length but it flew by because he kept to the points and didn't go on any tangents

[u/The-Angel-Of-Death]

I wonder how many non competitive players see these and thought some of these good Pokemon were actually terrible

[u/TheZett]

Are we talking about regular Slowbro or „Funbro“?

[u/Panda_Kabob]

Good to see this guy have exposure here. He makes solid videos and does the stuff we want to see. Direct and to the point while still having some character. I hope many of you check out his other videos.

[u/Spi_Vey]

These videos are the bees knees I love them!

Also he's a melee player and references smash a lot which I like

[u/TeHNeutral]

I thought slowbro was pretty God tier but guess not aha

[u/[deleted]]

I'm surprised Slowking wasn't included. Aren't their stats nearly identical?

[u/[deleted]]

It was a delicacy! Oh, wait...