The Gen 3 OU Iceberg Explained [Part 1]

gen 3 competitive singles has a history stretching back 20 years full of incredible stories metagame developments controversies and law gen 3ou remains one of the most popular old generations of competitive Pokémon to this day and we are still seeing frequent Innovations in high level tournament play I put together this gen 30u Iceberg with the help of the community let's explore the depths of one of Pokémon's most legendary formats together from the common knowledge at the top to the obscurity down below and don't for get to subscribe to the channel to prevent my arch nemesis ion mulus from releasing his own video titled the drink we Iceberg explained if a mere cup outperforms me on YouTube my sense of Pride will take a significant hit thank you first entry on the iceberg is tar number one tar is a short hand for Tyranitar who is largely considered to be the best Pokémon in gen 30u Tyranitar's defining trait is its ability sand stream which creates permanent Sandstorm on the field as soon as Tyranitar switches in this seems like it might be restrictive Sandstorm chip damage means that leftovers healing is completely nullified on a vast majority of Pokémon in the format with how easy it is to create Sandstorm on the field and no other weather effects to really stop it wouldn't this be a huge problem actually the opposite is true the biggest impact Sandstorm has on the metag game is that it punishes defensive gameplay the Pokémon that suffer the most from having their leftovers healing slashed are storyy Pokémon like Blissey suun Snorlax celby and melodic if not for sandstream these Pokémon would probably be at the absolute Forefront of the metag game and they're already very good the metag game therefore skews to many defensive Pokémon that are immune to Sandstorm and the majority of these Pokémon don't have access to powerful healing moves like recover to stick around for massive amounts of time permanent Sandstorm defines the pace and identity of gen 3ou in a very positive way but of course there's more to Tyranitar than just setting sand on the field Tyranitar is a potent threat on its own merits Tyranitar has an enormous 134 base attack great defensive stats access to Dragon Dance making it a formidable offensive sweeper and a vast move pool with Myriad physical special attacking options and even utility Tyranitar is extremely versatile and malleable it can change its role completely from Team to team there are standard sets that you see commonly like Dragon Dance Tyranitar but even those sets have huge amounts of variation possible Dragon Dance Tyranitar can run options like counter to catch a medeor mesh Metagross off God Focus punch to Chunk rock resist switchins Ice Beam to punish fly on HP grass to punish SW but I've even seen hyperbeam on Dragon Dance Tyranitar this is a Pokémon that is endlessly customizable you can make up your own Tyranitar set tweak the EVS however you want panti at its most versatile in gen 3 than any other gen and I can't think of a better number one Pokémon in any other format despite all of this Pokémon's amazing advantages it is not overwhelming it's very easy to manage Tyranitar Tyranitar is times 4 weakness to fighting and extremely low speed tier as well make it very targetable Tyranitar as the mascot of this format really encapsulates everything that I love about it up next is TSS which is an acronym that stands for toxic spikes sand this is the name of a team archetype in gen 30u that is quite self-explanatory these teams center around creating spikes on the field to apply pressure to the enemy as they switch in creating permanent Sandstorm on the field to cut that important leftovers healing from targets like Liss and Snorlax and toxic as well to punish many of the flying types and levitating Pokémon that aren't affected by and also just stack up that residual damage further on various targets TSS teams can operate at many different Paces some are more defensive aiming to make the game go longer and Stack Up residual damage over a longer period of time but some are more aggressive and the way they take advantage of spikes is by forcing switches with offensive threats like Aerodactyl and Gengar TSS is basically the central strategy of gen 30u a lot of teams try to counter it or Tech against it in certain ways but TSS teams have remained relevant and Central from the early days up until now the big five refers to a combination of five Pokémon that are commonly seen together and form a fantastic synergistic core these five Pokémon are Tyranitar scarm Blissey swampit and Gengar speaking of TSS this is the most classic TSS game plan there is you have toxic spikes and Sands and these five Pokémon provide you with pretty much everything you need scam Bliss is a classic combo that you see in many generations but in gen 3 it's particularly effective scammer is the physical wall blisse is the special wall guards you against the common Dragon Dance Tyranitar Dragon Dance salt Metagross Aerodactyl swamp it covers so many different threats and Gengar not only blocks the enemy from using rapid spin thanks to its ghost typing helping you maintain your spikes on the field it's also a form of offense it's a special attacker that can force switches on its own has so much possible utility move set variety and the sixth Pokémon on this teams can be a lot of different things depending on what you want Aerodactyl is a great one Aerodactyl and tyrany work really well together offensively you can go Zapdos a fundamentally very solid Pokémon stamy is another common Choice Moltres while it may seem like a very cookie cutter strategy to use the big five all five of these Pokémon have extremely malleable and versatile sets Tyranitar and Gengar especially but even something like Blissey that seems really one-dimensional just a special wall is actually a very versatile Pokémon you can choose multiple different coverage options on Blissey special attacking options to cover the meta game different choices for status moves different utility something like wish if you want go in a more bulky Direction calm mind blissy if you want to use it as a wind condition swamp it is really versatile too you can run the standard set which is hydropump earthquake protect Ice Beam that covers a lot of bases but you can go in a more defensive Direction with Swampman go surf toxic refresh making it really sturdy investing way more in bulk offensive swamped with Focus punch to punish lissy and nolax in Pokemon like that you can go Endeavor swamp it which runs CAC Berry and aims to trade down with the Enemy as much as it can this combo of five Pokémon can operate operate at many different Paces suit many different play Styles and that's why I recommend big five teams for beginners because you have the framework you have the five Pokémon there but you can tweak them however you want and using big five teams is a great way to figure out what your own preferred play style is it's also a common misconception that big five teams are easy to use and if you use them you'll get easy wins it's not really true because the big five are the most targeted Pokémon in the entire metagame entire strategies exist around specifically countering the big five so if anything you have a huge Target on your back the enemy knows your exact game plan they can probably piece together your entire team very quickly but I think it's a good way to learn the game to play with a team style that everyone knows what it does you're not hiding any gimmicks or cheesing your way to Victory you're winning through fundamentals and good decision making up next is spin blockers spin blockers are ghost types that aim to block the enemy from using rapid spin the most commonly seen spin Blocker in the game is Gengar it's the best Ghost type in gen 3 it has fantastic stats and extremely versatile move pull and can be used in many different ways but some alternative spin blockers you do see see sometimes are M dous probably the second most popular DUS glops who is used on some stall teams and there's also some Fringe ones like Benet my personal favorite who is rare Ghost type physical attacker and Sab ey has even been experimented with which I discussed in a video as of now the concept of spin blocking is as simple as switching a ghost type in and blocking rapid spin but as we get further down the iceberg we'll discuss the concept of spin blocking in a more abstract sense so stay tuned for that up next no physical special split and this is a gen 3 mechanic that turns a lot of people away from the metagame prior to the Gen 4 games a move being physical or special was determined purely by what type it was fire type attacks for example are always special attacks fighting type attacks are always physical attacks even Fire Punch is a special attack in gen 3 this turns a lot of people away because it seems more restrictive something like Gengar can't use Shadow Ball for stab because ghost is always a physical time and the physical special split system from Gen 4 onwards is a lot more intuitive and easy to understand of course I punch should be a physical attack that makes sense but I think that the lack of physical special split in gen 3 makes it stand out mechanically and there are a lot of options that exist in gen 3 that don't in later game Pokemon like Alakazam and genga have ice punch and Fire Punch for coverage special coverage hidden power can be physical meaning something like salamance can use hidden power flying as a stab option doesn't have a good flying stab option other than that besides aerial Ace very bad move hidden power bug is a common coverage option you see very frequently a lot of Pokémon in gen 3 don't even use stab moves at all and there's some of the best Pokémon in the metag game like Gengar doesn't need stab at all to be a potent special threat there are plenty of metag games where the physical special split does exist and it has its own benefits but it has its drawbacks too it's a different mechanical system and I think it's a bit shortsighted to judge gen3 so strongly for not having it when in fact it introduces a lot of new options it allows people to be creative in unique ways and it allows sets to exist that wouldn't exist in any other metag game I also think the physical special split had its downsides in terms of Leaning Pokémon sets more more towards their stab options and perfect coverage because there were more coverage options that suited the Pokémon's primary offensive attacking type and sometimes that can lead to less move set creativity and diversity up next are rock resists Rock resists are very important in gen 30u and considered mandatory on most teams because of the presence of Pokemon like Tyranitar and Aerodactyl who can be very overpowering with stab rockslide and when people say rock resist they usually don't mean something like meta Cham or Magneton that technically resists Rock but can't quite check Tyranitar and Aerodactyl they're referring to Solid Rock resists that give you a great defensive backbone like swamp it Metagross or Flygon the majority of competitive teams will have some sort of rock resist on them there are some rare teams that don't need Solid Rock resists usually very aggressive teams that control the pace of the game so much that Pokémon like Tyranitar and Aerodactyl barely even get a chance to enter the field or you have some way to bait them or some other creative way to eliminate them that's advanced level stuff but you do see it one example would be HP fighting Aerodactyl hidden power fighting allows you to one hit Tyranitar and outspeed them after they Dragon Dance So that can be your answer to Dragon Dance Tyranitar instead of something like swamp one more aggressive team but for the most part you want some sort of solid rock resist on your team to handle not only the rock types but various common threats the final entry on the top level of the iceberg is magnet mag Magneton is a staple of gen 3 for its ability to trap and eliminate scam and to do so it needs to hold the item magnet which boosts your electric type damage by 10% scam usually runs special defense EVS in gen 3 and with magnet you maximize your chances to kois eliminating scarm is a Cornerstone of many common archetypes in Gen 3 scarm is a Pokemon that can handle a bunch of different threats at once so the ability to trap and eliminate it enables all of those threats Magneton is the central Pokémon behind the physical offense archetype which has the simple game plan of eliminating scarm who is their primary physical wall and then overwhelming the enemy with multiple physical threats like salamance Metagross Tyranitar Etc Magneton can also enable more defensive strategies by eliminating their means of creating spikes you have a massive advantage in the hazard War some teams go more defensive with cayle as a teammate to Rapid spin after eliminating scam permanently removing their Spike Magneton has a bit more utility beyond that you can punish enemies like Choice band Metagross if they lock into meteor mesh they can't click anything else and they're completely trapped so you can quickly two- hit them with Thunderbolt that could be very useful Magneton can also eliminate forus who kind of has a similar role to scarm on some alternative spikes teams sometimes you can eliminate Gerra too if you have the support of leech seed celby you can go Magneton and run substitute on the Magneton to do that classic subseed strategy defensive Gerra sets with toxic and Fire Punch can sometimes be 1 V1 by Magneton 2 overall magnet Magneton is a staple of the meta game and one of the best anti meta strategies we've reached level two of the iceberg folks and the first entry is zap dug another fairly self-explanatory one this is the combination of the Pokémon zapto at Doug Trio but why are they used together because they have a very good offensive Synergy and this combo is the Cornerstone of an archetype called special offense similar to physical offense the primary goal of this team style is to eliminate Blissey the most common special wall in the game and then overwhelm the enemy with multiple special threats the most reliable way to eliminate Blissey is with a bulky Doug Trio set running special defense EV so that it can live a modest blissy ice beam and two hit KO it with either beat up or earthquake Zapdos benefits greatly from eliminating Blissey for obvious reasons it's probably the best special attacker in the entire format with its greatest counter eliminated completely it can run rampant but another reason that zaptos and dog synergized so well on these special offense teams is because of Zapdos having access to Baton Pass Baton Pass is used simply to Pivot U-turn didn't exist yet Vault switch didn't exist yet so a simple Batten pass was the best way to Pivot pivoting with Batten pass is different to Simply switching directly because you can see whether the enemy switched or not first and react accordingly switches are the first thing to happen in a turn and moves happen next so with the informational Advantage you have you can respond perfectly and a great interaction that commonly happens is that Blissey switches in against zaptos and you Baton Pass cleanly to Doug Trio eliminating Blissey reliably zaptos very commonly invites in Blissey cuz it's a special wall so this combo is pretty much an archetype defining idea special offense is one of the most primary archetypes you see and you probably notice at this point that if a gen 3 team is not using spikes as its main form of offensive pressure it's probably using some sort of Trapper like Magneton or Doug Trio to enable a different kind of game plan up next sleep talk reset this is a mechanical quirk in gen 3 that a lot of people aren't aware of I'm sure many of you know that when you use the move rest you fully heal yourself but you inflict sleep upon yourself but that sleep only lasts for two turns unlike directly inflicted sleep you're probably aware of how sleep talk works it randomly selects moved you have to use while you're sleeping however in gen 3 when you use sleep talk and then you switch out of your sleeping Pokémon and back in it resets the Sleep counter back to zero unlike in later gens where if you sleep talk switch out back in your sleep counter ticked down by one so you have one more sleep turn remaining this is a mechanic that comes up quite a lot and it's kind of a way to punish sleep talk users I suppose the mechanic was probably not intentional it's some sort of glitch but I kind of like it it prevents sleep talk spam from being too powerful and sometimes a sleep talk Pokémon like zap or suun might rather not click sleep talk so that they can switch out and have their sleep counter tick down it adds more layers of decision- making sometimes you want to just burn a sleep turn instead of clicking sleep talk speaking of sleep talk the next entry on the iceberg is crocon this set is named after the player cromat who invented the set and was a player back in the net battle days that's a very simple set it's a suun set that uses Calm Mind rest sleep talk and surf this set is very powerful in gen 3 because suun is a water type and water types are only weak to electric and grass both of which are special attacking types so if you caral mind up to a certain point your s is basically not scared of anything and it can snowball out of control and start well sweeping everything even surfing while it's sleeping thanks to sleep talk boosting itself up further this is a classic new Billa set I like to call it because if you let this thing get multiple free turns and you're not prepared for it you allow it to snowball you're going to lose very quickly as it said you have to be aware of you have to respond to it quickly and not let it get out of hand and something's just never age folks this set was a monster back in the early 2000s metag game and to this day it is a staple you see this set all the time it's great on Magneton teams actually because Scar's raw is no longer a concern for suun after scarm is eliminated this is one of the rare special attackers that can 1 V one Blissey because it just boosts up to the point where Blissey can't handle it anymore and uh it's immune to status because of rest there are ways to manage this set though it's pretty one-dimensional it's only attacking type is water so if you want a hard counter this you can run a water absorb Pokémon bulky zapto sets with raw are very good against it as well as miscellaneous Pokémon with raw and celby with leech seed or Parish song also shuts it down and prevents it from sweeping Pokemon like zaptos Gengar and starmy can also directly offensively threaten cocon up next we have Superman which is a bit of a funny name for a Pokémon archetype in gen 3 with a simple game plan as well much like Superman your goal is to take to the skies and Fly Above the spikes flying types and Pokémon with levitate are completely immune to spikes chip damage and what better way to punish spikes than just to run a bunch of Pokémon immune to them Superman exists as a response to the central concept of Spike stacking commonly seen Pokémon on these teams are Skarmory Flygon as a rock resist with levitate immune to spikes Zapdos is also a staple you commonly see Moltres there are many different ways to go with a Superman team you can go aggressive and run something like Aerodactyl and Gengar try to spin block the enemy act as a TSS team yourself but one that isn't worried about enemy spikes or you can go in a stolly direction going completely all in on Spike and Pokémon can leave you very vulnerable it's not common that all six Pokémon are immune to spikes but rather just about four or five often the one exception will be some sort of defensive Pokémon that helps you in bad matchups when you're running a core of scarm Flygon zaptos you can get very destroyed by offensive water types like offensively oriented suun sets or stamy or offensive Swamper sets Blissey helps you out a lot in those matchup and generally is very useful as a special wall and can provide utility like aroma therapy wish I quite like Articuno Superman teams actually it's more of a fringe option but it helps out enormously against offensive water types especially because it's neutral to ice which is common coverage and its Spike immune itself has access to heal Bell M dous has been a popular recent example as a spin blocker wheezing is a good one Mantine you sometimes see that's quite rare but I've seen it before I would say Superman teams are a bit inconsistent at least in my opinion and a bit hard to use because of their inherent defensive flaws and exploitable weaknesses but in the rat matchup they can really punish common spikes teams they're a staple in tournament play used to punish people that rely too heavily on the standard scaryy Blissey game plans and I'm sure this is another archetype that'll probably exist forever in gen 3 and some form and there's a lot more to be done in Superman teams there's a lot more optimization to be had different Pokémon to experiment with up next two turn taunt taunt is a move introduced in 3 that prevents the enemy from using any non-attacking moves and this will become a stable utility move from then on but in gen 3 Taun only lasts for two turns including the turn you use it Taun Pokemon in gen 3 often have to keep using the move repeatedly and because of that there's mind games that arise common taunt Target like Blissey can simply attack instead against an enemy like Gengar and win the 1 V one as a result the fact that taunt has to keep being reapply it actually introduces this element of counterplay to it that is kind of interesting and unique to gen 3 that extra turn of being taunted in later gens is very significant yet another minor mechanical difference that sets gen 3 apart a little bit final entry of level two is another unique gen 3 mechanic KO end turn in gen 3 if your Pokémon faints the enemy is actually unable to act at all this is a very significant mechanic and a way to disrupt the enemy and deny them free turns to boost up or heal and it comes up very often explosion is a staple of gen 3 not only because of its enormous power effectively reaching 500 when you factor in the defense drop the fact that it completely denies the enemy from taking their turn is also enormous this is the most common way this mechanic comes up you will see Gengar explode against Blissey for example pivot into Doug Trier for a trap since Blissey is unable to take a turn they're unable to heal back up even something like smeagle with a very weak explosion will still explode against a Tyranitar sometimes just to prevent them from using Dragon Dance Gengar can do the same against Tyranitar so can cloer another way to deny the enemy's turn is by sacking your Pokémon to spike sometimes it can be advantageous to keep a Pokémon within range of fainting to spikes purely to disrupt the enemy on one turn and enable some sort of chain reaction to win the game because when you sacrifice your Pokémon to spikes you switch out which is the first action that happens in a turn and then they can't act at all cuz your Pokémon fainted that is the most reliable way sometimes to disrupt the enemy some other ways to activate this mechanic are with double edge which can recoil yourself and deny the enemy from taking a turn momento which is a pretty rarely seen move but it does come up sometimes I personally really love this mechanic I think it enhances the format greatly it creates these really cool interactions exciting uh ways to enable your offensive plan and keep up momentum and it enhances decision- making you can bring guys into low range purely to sacrifice them and enable this mechanic sometimes a weak explosion with Gengar sacrificing your entire Gengar is worth it just for the momentum of denying their turn and getting a pivot in like that's a really awesome decision to to make do I sacrifice my entire Gengar for some Tempo the way they reworked this mechanic in later Jens where you can act if the enemy gets fainted isn't bad necessarily but I do like this unique mechanic in gen 3 I think it adds to the format we are now on level three and the first entry is jwac this is a dreaded combo of two Pokémon ninjas and Marowak Marowak is kind of an interesting Pokémon in gen 3 it's extremely slow but it has the exclusive item thick Club this is an amazing item the double marowak's attack stat so Marowak is one of the strongest attackers in all of gen 3 but it has the issue of being a bit too slow to pose much of a threat but that's when ninjas comes in ninjas is a Absolute Pest with access to the ability speed boost which raises its speed stat by one every turn ninjas can use Baton Pass to pass on these speed boost to a teammate and one of the best recipients for Speed boosts in the game is Marowak sometimes simply passing two speed boosts to Marowak and then clicking swords dance ends the game on the spot Marowak is an extremely powerful attacker and when it's able to outrun everything and it's boosted up on top of its amazing coverage options it has stab earthquake bone merang which you can use to break substitutes rock slide or hidden power Rock if you prefer to be more accurate and even double edge alongside rock head to be completely immune to that recoil damage having a strong neutral hit this strategy is the Cornerstone of many speed pass game plans and it's a bit cheesy as well unprepared teams will lose almost immediately to this the J quack team style is what I would describe as a matchup fish in some matchups this will just win on the spot and in others it will completely flounder and fail to get off the ground and do much of anything ninjas is an extremely one-dimensional Pokémon you know what it's going to do as soon as you see it and if you're aware of that it's very easy to stop simple raw will completely ruin this game plan most of the time or just attacking ninj repeatedly denying it from getting a substitute up and then responding to the Marowak once it comes in Mar work usually can't one hit KO common Pokémon it needs the swords dance or belly drum boost so you can respond to it most of the time if you react quickly up next YOLO scam this is a gimmicky scam reset that you've probably heard of Frieza I made a video about this one as we established earlier Magneton is scarry's greatest rival it can trap scarm preventing it from switching and eliminate it with a super effective magnet boosted Thunderbolt but what if Skyy said yolo and used hidden power ground and speed investment to outrun Magneton and KO it with super effective ground damage that's what YOLO scum is with full attack and full speed investment scarm can outrun and KO Magneton outright funnily enough Magneton and scarm have the exact same speed stat but because Magneton commonly runs hidden power fire to trap forus and eliminate it that requires minus one Speed IV so Magneton with its most standard sets will be one speeed slower than a max speed scarm while this set sounds alluring and it sounds like a really cool way to get the jump on Magneton it's actually quite bad in my opinion even though you can eliminate Magneton and catch it by surprise with this you have to invest fully in attack and speed to do so and that means you can't invest in HP and special defense which are extremely important YOLO scarm will faint extremely quickly to a lot of things that it could completely withstand with its more standard set hidden power ground is also a total waste of a move slot that you could use in something more important like protect or drill Peck or taunt and if you don't face a MAG Anon you're just an incredibly useless scarm so in that way it's a matchup fish it's generally considered more optimal by top players to just accept Magneton traps when they happen scaryy will usually make one layer of spikes as Magneton enters faint and then bring something in which can recover momentum a little bit this is a fairly neutral position to be in you did lose your skarmy but now you have your offensive threat in you're applying pressure and you have one Spike on the field you're not in a terrible spot at all it's pretty neutral in fact there are some situations where loose scum can be good but most of the time it's a gimmick a pretty hilarious development and whoever came up with the initial idea is kind of a Madman congratulations but not the most consistent strategy in the world the next entry in level three is three numbers 12.5 16.67 25 and these three numbers are the amount of damage that each subsequent layer of spikes will deal one layer of spikes deals 12.5% two layers deals 16.67 three layers deals 25 what's so significant about this well you'll notice that the difference between zero and one layer of spikes is 12.5 which is the most significant jump in damage but the difference between one layer of spikes and two layer of spikes is only 4.17% damage so basically the second layer of spikes is not as worth making as the first layer the third layer is a bit more worth it providing you with 8.33% extra damage but the second layer provides the least amount of extra damage it's very important to know these numbers and understand them cuz it changes how you will play with spikes committing to multiple spikes not only has diminishing returns but it can be punished by one rapid spin if you spend three turns making spikes and the enemy spends one turn rapid spinning them away they're getting way more Tempo they erased your three turns of work in one turn if you only established one Spike and they rapid spend away that Spike the amount of tempo is neutral that's why it's often a common practice to just throw out one layer of spikes in the other game cuz that's a significant increase in pressure but it it can't be punished as much by overcommitment some teams can afford to spend the three layer of spikes and lose their Pokémon in the process because they are more all in on the game plan of spin block often smeargle or cler spikes teams are very aggressive they aim to just Spam spikes and go all in with their threats and win quickly these are hyper offense spikes team but the more standard TSS teams should probably just throw out one Spike at a time yes you can spin block with genga on those teams too but that can open up risks cladal and starmy are both able to chip down and eliminate Gengar luring it in the more spikes you commit to the the more Allin you are on spin blocking which can be flimsy but if the enemy rapid spins away your single Spike it's not a huge loss is it and you can always come back in and make one more if you're going to take gen 3 seriously remember these Spike damage numbers they're very important up next is Sandstorm order this is another important mechanic in gen 3 this is actually an example where the Gen 3ou played on Pokémon Showdown is slightly modified from the cartridge on the cartridge there is actually a coin flip at the start of the game to determine who gets hit by Sandstorm chip damage and other effects first so that is determined by a complete 50/50 most players really disliked this mechanic and so it was altered modifying the cartridge is something that rarely happens it's usually reserved for emergency situations and most players pushed for this they wanted it to happen so improve the experience of the format so gen 30u was altered and now Sandstorm is determined by the speed stat whichever Pokémon has a higher speed stat will be hit by the sandstorm first which is in line with how it works in later games in the series you can use this mechanic to deter determine whether you are faster than an enemy Pokémon or not which can help influence your decision- making if you know you're faster or slower and it helps you deduce what set they might be based on certain amounts of speed investment they have another Quirk of Sandstorm order in Gen 3 is that Sandstorm chip damage happens before leftovers healing this means that if a Pokémon is left at 6.25% or lower while Sandstorm is active they will faint because Sandstorm chip damage will happen before their leftovers healing does it's very important to be aware of this so that you can determine whether your Pokémon will live a certain hit or whether you can KO certain enemy Pokémon up next we have beat up which is a move in gen 30u and you might be wondering why a simple dark type attack is on an iceberg what's so special about beat up well in gen 3 beat up is a bizarre move with many different inner workings even though this move is listed as a dark type attack which would imply that it is a special attack cuz all dark type attacks in gen 3 are special beat up kind of defies that it is not a dark type attack it is in fact a typeless attack it is a typeless physical attack that defies the normal rules of damage calculation most damaging moves will take into account all of your own stats including EVS Natures that apply extra stats and so will the enemies but beat up is different rather than just your own Pokémon attacking your entire team will attack the enemy with one small typeless physical hit the only stats used in the calculation for the physical hits are base stats extra stats applied through EVS IVs and Natures are not taken into account at all and if one of your allies is status inflicted or fainted they will not take part in the beat up attack beat up in Gen 3 is basically used as a way to hit Blissey really hard Blissey has an extremely bad defense stat and will usually invest all of its bonus stats in defense to make up for that as much as it can but beat up ignores all of those extra stats it completely ignores EVS natures and IVs it will attack blissy based purely on its defense stat so it will do enormous damage even if the Pokemon using it doesn't have any attack investment it can still two hit KO or Blissey beat up is most commonly used on Doug Trio to eliminate Blissey because it requires no offensive stats or investment from Doug Trio to be able to to hit Koo some other common Pokemon that use beat up to pressure Blissey include Charizard and Houndoom Charizard can lower in Blissey thanks to its special attacks and then hit with a surprise beat up for enormous unexpected damage and Houndoom can do the very same while this move is bizarre and hard to understand you can't even probably calculate this on the Pokemon shirt uncalculated cuz it's too complex to implement there is a custom beat up calculator but I don't really bother using that ever basically if you have a healthy team beat up will two hit Blissey that's kind of all you need to know and despite all this complexity it's a good thing to have in the metag game blissy is Central is everywhere and it's nice to have a way to directly pun punish blissy the final entry on layer three of the iceberg is silent quick claw quick Claw is an item you're probably familiar with it has a 20% chance to cause the Pokémon to move first in their priority bracket this is a Pokémon commonly used by cheers to get that lucky proc and move first and get a surprise KO on something in later generations when quick claw activates it broadcasts it to the enemy this reveals to you that the reason they moved first is because of quick claw and reveals that their item is quick claw in gen 3 however quick claw does not have that activation message your Pokémon will just move first without any explanation and this is kind of insane this can cause a lot of confusion a lot of people are not aware of this and when a camerupt randomly goes first and koos their Jolteon they will question reality and think that the enemy is cheating they will think that something has gone terribly wrong even me when quick claw activates it takes me a second to realize that it did ah quick claw right in some situations this can also Bluff speed investment maybe you're slower than the enemy but they don't know that you move first thanks to Quick claw and they think you're faster that influences their decision- making and actually the entire time you were just a Lucker who got a quick claw proc at the perfect moment I consider this to be one of the negatives of gen 3 I think announcing that you have a quick claw was a positive change this just serves to cause confusion and in general I don't really like the quick claw item I don't think it adds much value to The Meta game it's purely RNG fishing but that's only my opinion we have reached level four of the iceberg and the first entry is Houdini what is Houdini this is a nickname for Choice band Metagross lead specifically when they click explosion turn one aiming to eliminate an incoming scaryy because a choice band metros explosion actually one hit Ko's the standard scammer set it can also take out important switchins like swampit melodic or suun which can enable your teammates this set is one of the most common laws in all of gen 30u it is a nice way to just get rid of scy immediately it can be an alternative plan to Magneton teams instead of Magneton you run this or maybe you run both it's excellent on spikeless offense teams which you see occasionally for its ability to lure in important ralles and eliminate them but why is it called Houdini where did the nickname come from there used to be a player on the ladder I'm not sure who it was but they would always lead with a Metagross nicknamed Houdini and they would always explode every time without fail and it worked out pretty well they got pretty high ranks with this simple strategy I'm not sure who this person was it might be someone who's still around I don't know but Houdini was plaguing the ladder for a time and people matched against this fell so often that the nickname for Choice ban Metagross lead aiming to explode on turn one became Houdini in honor of this gamer I think it was nicknamed Houdini because it makes the scarm disappear very apt nickname up next zard Loom this is a combination of Charizard and Brum and is a fantastic offensive core on spikeless offense teams not only is this a commonly seen core on on that team style it is also a reference to a specific team that used these two Pokémon that was a landmark in recent team building before this team came along both Charizard and Brum were considered Uub ranked they were not in OU but this team proved how good they were and caus them to eventually be re-evaluated and become U ranked this was a team built by the player Undisputed and bkc has a great video outlining the advantages of the team and why it was such a paradigm shift Brum works well on SP offense teams because of Spore by incapacitating an enemy and basically soft koing it and then following that up with a powerful Focus punch you are starting the game off with a huge amount of early momentum this is a great way to make progress on a team without the typical standard progress making tools of spikes or Trappers Charizard is a Pokemon that can take advantage of the free turns enabled by sleep very effectively with a free entry point Charizard can begin posing a threat and tearing through the enemy's defensive Charizard is one of the most self-sufficient offensive threats in gen 30u because of its fire grass coverage and access to both beat up and focus punch as mixed attacking options substitute Focus punch Charizard is a common choice and that can significantly punish Blissey and Tyranitar beat up is preferred on teams that want to directly threaten Blissey without needing to substitute the next entry is yet another series of three numbers 168 164 176 what could this mean this refers to a popular Gengar EV spread this is an insane looking EV spread with 168 Health 164 special defense 176 in speed and a hasty nature this set has a lot of specific interactions it enables with a hasty nature you are able to put bold Blissey into range of Doug truers earthquake using explosion the HP and special defense allow you to survive Tyranitar's Pursuit including Sandstorm damage it allows you to out speed base 100 timid Pokémon like zaptos and salamance thanks to the speed investment it also allows you to just survive a starmy psychic from Full stamy psychic will deal a maximum of 99.6% you live on one and you can explode to trade with stari maintaining your spikes permanently I think this EV spread is an example of how optimized gen 3 can be in this lower power level World intricate EV spreads like this that can enable specific interactions feel so much more impactful and important arriving at this particular EV spread took years of metagame development and this EV spread is kind of famous on Smogon for having an absurd amount of variable options you usually go to Smogon for standard sets that have one or two interchangeable options but look at this the amount of options on this set is unbelievable and the set description is an essay look at this Gengar is in my opinion the most complex Pokémon in gen 30u the amount of different options it has the way you can EV it depending on the team are infinite even these standard tried andrue EV spreads that took years to arrive at but are commonly used have insane amounts of move set variety but you can also tweak the EVS by yourself depending on the team depending on the speed Benchmark you need to hit and bulk benchmarks which there are many of to consider this EV spread is just a perfect example of how intricate this stuff can get in gen 3 up next Mr mime ban Believe It or Not Mr mime is actually banned from competitive play in gen 3 you thanks to its ability soundproof which makes it immune to Raw the primary source of phasing and anti- boost sweepers in gen 30u Mr M was the Cornerstone of a strategy where you could create infinite Baton Pass change that could not really be interacted with or counted these teams got so optimized that they were topping ladder consistently and running rampant in tournaments and the counterplay to them was limited Whirlwind could be used to phase out Mr M but the amount of Pokemon with Whirlwind is insanely limited scarm is the most common one and then there's har armor that's about it these teams would often play around this by using Magneton to eliminate scarm eliminating the main Whirlwind user of the format so the ability soundproof was banned from competitive play in gen 3u phasing is kind of a fundamental mechanic that we need to prevent these boost sweeping strategies from getting out of control and soundproof had this gamebreaking potential to completely stop that and since soundproof is Mr mim's only ability option Mr mime is therefore banned and no they are not going to mod the game so that Mr mime can run no ability because that's a massive can of worms an unprecedented action that's never been done before just to enable a largely irrelevant Pokémon very much not worth doing up next counter glitch this is a cool one counter is a move with negative priority meaning it will almost always move last after taking physical damage counter will deal the exact amount that you took time two to the enemy this is one of my favorite Pokémon moves I love it I think it's a great way to punish certain interactions you can get really clutch moments with counter whenever this happens in a tournament it's really awesome but something people don't know is that you can actually counter hidden power in gen 3 even though it's a special attack this is because of a weird quirk in the programming hidden power starts out as a normal type move and then changes based on your Pokémon's IVs into different types but because in its base State it's a normal type move counter considers it to be a physical attack even if it's a special attack it's a glitch so because of that you can actually use counter against hidden power grass or hidden power fire and it'll work even though you're using it against a special attack one cool application of this is with swampit you can run a specially defensive swamp it with counter bait an enemy Zapdos or cament to use HP grass and get a surprise KO another one of my favorite applications of this is with scam you can run counter scam and when celby uses hidden power fire against you you hit them with with a surprise counter and ruin their life I know it's a glitch I know it's a bit unintuitive it doesn't really make much sense but I still like this I like the interactions it can create and it's a cool team building option something you can pull out of the back pocket and uh catch someone off guard with I always love stuff like that another little unique Quirk that sets gen 3 apart up next LAX slander what does this mean LAX is a shorthand for Snorlax and some people make some slanderous claims about Snorlax it's that simple a lot of the Snorlax slander is spearheaded by the player bkc who has made a couple videos insisting that gen 3 Snorlax is no good it is a bad and overrated Pokémon I think in the old metag game Snorlax was much more prevalent and considered top tier as the metag game has gone on as things have gotten more optimized Snorlax people realized it requires a lot of support to make it work and maybe it's not quite the metag game staple that we once thought it was but personally I think that the Snorlax slander is quite overblown the reason for snorlax's shortcomings are simply that it has a bad match up against a lot of the most common Pokémon in the game Snorlax is horrendous against scarm Metagross Gengar punishes Snorlax and most significantly of all Snorlax is naturally very bad against the most common strategy TSS Sandstorm Cuts snorlax's leftovers healing significantly reducing its longevity and spikes also punish Snorlax massively Snorlax is incredibly Limited in its healing its only option for healing move is rest which compared to Blissey who has soft boiled their natural cure to heal status is much less self-sufficient and more exploitable snow likees being naturally weak to some of the most Central ideas in The Meta game makes it suffer significantly but the thing about Snorlax is that in a vacuum Snorlax might be the best Pokémon in the game it's just all these outside factors keeping it down but if you build around Snorlax if you have Magneton to eliminate scarm some sort of weather clear somewhere to eliminate standand rapid spin to get rid of those pesky spikes there is no Pokémon more worth building around than than Snorlax because when Snorlax is in its prime environment and it gets to curse up and rest up and become invincible it's one of the best win conditions in the game despite all of these supposed shortcomings of Snorlax you see Snorlax in pretty much every big tournament I'm sure every high level player has some kind of Snorlax team in the back pocket and Snorlax also significantly punishes strategies that don't use those Central ideas of spikes and sand Snorlax has a fantastic matchup against special offense because SN is not scared of Doug Trio it's a special wall that can one hit Doug Trio and shrug off those earthquakes or beat up easily Snorlax is excellent against spikeless offense strategies it's great against miscellaneous random stuff that is nonstandard despite all the slander that Snorlax receives this is a Pokemon that you have to respect and have some sort of plan against or it will destroy you I think that Pokemon can be good in different ways something like Blissey is a great Pokémon because it is self-sufficient and it improves your matchups widely on its own Snorlax can't quite do that but Snorlax is a Pokemon that benefits way more than basically anything else in the entire format from the appropriate support even bkc himself used Snorlax against me despite his slanderous words and he won with it he destroyed me with it even if snorlax's place in the metag game is less prestigious than it once was this is going to be a staple win condition of gen 3ou forever in my opinion so leave Snorlax alone have some respect and for the final entry of tier four of the Iceberg we have Yama OU Yama is a short hand for harama a Pokémon that is currently ranked in ubl that many players believe should rise up to U gen 3 comes from a time where usage-based tearing never existed so the tearing in gen 3 OU is based on perceived power level from the community so unlike other old gens you do occasionally see Pokémon rise up to ow you based on their prevalence and success something like Charizard Moltres Brum former Uub Pokémon that rose up some have also dropped redj dropped from OU to ubl suited Raichu and poron 2 former popular Staples that as time went on became less prevalent many players believe that harama is the next one that deserves that coveted OU title harama is one of the best and most consistent fighting types in the format it has so many advantages it is one of the most solid Tyranitar answers in the game it is extremely bulky with an enormous HP stats it is one of the few Pokémon in gen 3 with access to knockoff which is very significant this is a very scarce option in gen 3 and harama can use it very effectively to punish scarm denying chip healing on it targets like clol important enemies that rely on leftovers and on top of this defensive Merit it also has a huge amount of offensive fire power its attack is very impressive it has the ability guts meaning it not only gets powered up when it's statused it also is not afraid of burn unlike most other physical attackers which really helps out against Gengar who often relies on willowwisp to subdue physical attackers harama has excellent breaking power with stab Focus punch it can punish switchins in a way that no other fighting type can thanks to knockoff salamance can come in and check the fighting type attacks but it will be at the cost of losing its leftovers for the entirety of the game meaning it's now vulnerable to Sandstorm chip harama has been rising in popularity more and more over the years it is seen very commonly in tournaments and I agree with the sentiment that it deserves that OU spot at this point it is proven to be a consistent presence in high level play for quite a while now and that does it for the first four layers of the Gen 30u Iceberg I'm going to split this up into two parts because this video is already getting quite lengthy and we're only halfway through what do you think of the iceberg so far this is my first time making something like this so if you have any critiques let me know my main goal with this is just to inform you about some quirks about gen 3 metagame developments and fun stories so I hope I've achieved that so far and stay tuned for part two everybody thank you [Music] oh

Channel: Jimothy Cool

Views: 80,528

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Id: 8dh4MSEt6aY

Length: 46min 15sec (2775 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2024