My post is focused on availability because availability is the reason why Zubat sits in C while Pidgey is in B.
Again, I never questioned that Zubat has worse availability than Pidgey, it obviously has. The difference is just that I don't think this justifies a tier downgrade, as again, Pidgeotto evolves much later (see next point)
It's true Pidgeotto evolves late (esp by Johto standards), but you also have to remember that the progression and level curve in these games are weird as hell; Pidgeotto's power is sufficient for most of the game until it evolves, and the only major battles Pidgeot misses out on compared to Crobat is Chuck, Jasmine, and maybe Pryce depending on your levels. Neither Pidgeotto or Crobat have any business taking on Pryce and (especially) Jasmine, and if you first head west after Morty, both of them will probably be relying on Return vs Chuck since Wing Attack comes late for both of them (don't use Gust on Pidgeotto here; it's weaker than neutral Return). Crobat's Fighting resistance does give it the edge here at least, but that's still only one major battle that Crobat fares better in compared to Pidgeotto prior to evolution.
According to your own words, that would be 3 gym leaders where you have a fully evolved Pokemon with better stats at your disposal. That's roughly 20-25% percent of the main game (estimated). Why should we downplay this? And even if it's only Chuck that Crobat fares better against than Pidgeotto out of the 3 Gym Leaders, it would still be an argument in favor of Crobat because 1 out of 3 is better than 0 out of 3.
As for Morty, you won't even have Golbat yet if you go for the Friend Ball route,
Except when we are playing Crystal, where Golbat is available in Mt Mortar before Morty. Therefore, one could consider looking at GS Golbat and C Golbat separately, though I don't think C Golbat will make a groundbreaking difference against Morty. Sure, it knows Bite, but you still get it at Lv 15 max when Morty's Pokemon are ~Lv.21.
It may can handle the grunt Gastly and Haunter, but Golbat won't be able to handle Gengar.
Yes, but if a Pokemon can handle 3 out of 4 Pokemon, it's not an argument against it in my opinion. Your point probably was that Pidgeotto does better here. Ok.
The main takeaway I get when reading this post is that you are cherry picking "strengths" and "weaknesses" (many of which are not as important as you are making them out to be, by the way) and assigning "scores" to them to make it seem like it is an undeniable fact that Pidgey and Zubat should be in the same tier.
The thread lists 5 criteria (not one) to determine which Pokemon should be in which tier: Availability, Typing, Stats, Movepool, Major Battles. I'm not cherry picking strengths and weaknesses, I compare all of these aspects. You know what cherry picking is? Choosing one of those aspects and value it above the other 4. And assigning scores is completely reasonable, because whenever you compare 2 things for which is better, you create a score, be it in your head or on paper. That's literally the only way to do it: On which side outweigh the pros the cons and vice versa. You do it as well, only that you came to a different conclusion as you value availability more than I do and therefore see it as a bigger pro for Pidgey and a bigger con for Zubat.
in practice you'll find that Pidgeotto will be faster than the vast majority of opponents in-game because of level advantage and the Speed boost from the Plain badge,
Is that an assumption or a fact? I for one couldn't make that claim because of 2 reasons: First of all, I don't have the teams of all NPCs between Ecruteak City and Cianwood City in my mind, and secondly, "level advantage" is a highly variable parameter. If you play with 3 Pokemon, sure, your Pidgeotto might be overleveled and outspeed things anyway. But if you play with 6 Pokemon, that's not necessarily the case. I play with 6 Pokemon, never exchanged a team member for another and battled every available NPC so far, and I'm just a tad below the average level of Clair's Pokemon. I also don't remember any point in the game where I was clearly overleveled.
if you're going to compare Pokemon in this way to justify tiering positions, I would suggest avoiding direct comparisons of stat values, etc.
No I won't. "Availability,
Typing, Stats, Movepool, Major Battles" are tiering criteria. In fact, I would be doing it wrong by definiton of the OP if I didn't compare the 2 in stat values and movepool.
It is true that Crobat has higher stats than Pidgeotto, but if Pidgeotto is able to outspeeding and KOing around the same number of opponents in practice regardless of these stat differences, then you can hardly use a comparison of base stat totals to claim that Crobat has some sort of massive advantage over the Pidgey family.
First of all yes, but do we know for a fact that Pidgeotto is able to outspeed and KO anything Crobat outspeeds and OHKOs? This of course depends on amount of Pokemon on your team and how you level your Pokemon in the first place, so depending on your playstyle, it could often be a lucky guess whether you are faster, whereas Crobat will most definitely be faster even if it is a bit underleveled. Furthermore, I never said that Crobat has a massive advantage of the Pidgey family. What I say is that Pidgey and Zubat both have advantages and disadvantages, but that overall, their performance both justifies a place in the B tier.
This also makes sense when we look at the current history of the thread. Zubat was tested early on and the consensus was B exactly because early Crobat is good. And we all agreed on that for many pages. So what changed? Did someone start another playthrough with Zubat/Golbat and suddenly noticed that it's significantly worse than B tier? No. What happened is that someone compared Zubat with Pidgey, and that Pidgey should be in B tier instead of C tier because it's basically an inferior Spearow, which is a compliment as Spearow is a badass. BUT: That didn't suddenly make Zubat a worse Pokemon. It only made Pidgey a better Pokemon than we previously assumed, which also makes sense because Pidgey wasn't nearly as often mentioned as Zubat in the thread until recently. But instead of doing the logical thing and elevating Pidgey to B only, Zubat got tiered down to C for virtually no reason except "Hey, Pidgey is now B and better than Zubat (which I still disagree with for the plethora of reasons I brought up), therefore Zubat should also go down one rank". Or rather, the chain of events from page 17 onwards was:
- Hiddenfreezer: Hey Pidgey is C while Zubat is B but Pidgey is actually really good, look at the comparison! -> Zubat gets moved to C as a consequence
- IronBullet: Hey, Pidgey is C but it's basically a weaker Spearow, which is A. Shouldn't Pidgey be B then? -> Pidgey gets moved to B
This proves one thing beyond a doubt: OP actually WANTED to put Zubat in the same tier as Pidgey because they are equally good. But he then was forced to put Pidgey in B tier because the argument that it is an inferior Spearow is solid, so yes, Pidgey belongs into the B tier! The logical fallacy was committed in step one, when instead of downgrading Zubat, Pidgey should have been upgraded to B in the first place. If IronBullet would have mentioned that Pidgey belongs to B tier BEFORE Hiddenfreezer pointed out that Pidgey shouldn't be below Zubat, Zubat would still be in B tier! Let's go through it:
- Ironbullet: Hey, Pidgey is C but it's basically a weaker Spearow, which is A. Shouldn't Pidgey be B then? -> Pidgey gets moved to B
- Hiddenfreezer: Hey Pidgey is B while Zubat is also B. Not actually a fan of the latter, but my main criticism "BUT why is Pidgey than the C-Rank while Crobat is B?" doesn't apply anymore. Good.
Zubat is only C because of an unfortunate course of events, not because the arguments actually speak in favor of downgrading it.
I also think it's pointless for me to continue this discussion, as the given likes indicate to me that people decided to go with one side and no matter how many counterpoints I bring up, no matter how often I mention that it's not just about availability but about 4 other criteria, it would only further enforce people to oppose my position, because by now it's not anymore about whether Zubat is B tier but about proving me wrong no matter what.