Pokemon that disappointed you in-game despite looking good initially?

R_N said:
Jigglypuff is slightly easier to find than Clefairy so the intent was probably from a gameplay perspective of "here is the worse but slightly more common pokemon you can instantly evolve for a """"major"""""" power boost and spam tms with until it fals off and use someone else"
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Problem is that Clefairy can also instantly evolve with a Moon Stone, and can benefit TM spam far better so that "intent" just falls flat right real hard. After all, the more common one doesn't have to be the best option, but when you made it so it is bad in too many ways possible to the point you really lean to the rarer one, that's just not helping the case.

I found too many early route Pokémon, even a few rare ones, to end up not worth investment for right after early-game. It should be viable to at least mid-game. Raticate surprisingly can still do decently does to Super Fang, but almost everything else either falls right after the first two Gyms or isn't even seriously viable to begin with.

The easiness of the games' main story does have a perk of making it possible to beat it with any Pokémon, but the weakest links had to be overleveled or go for cheese to make it work.
 
Samtendo09 said:
Problem is that Clefairy can also instantly evolve with a Moon Stone, and can benefit TM spam far better so that "intent" just falls flat right real hard. After all, the more common one doesn't have to be the best option, but when you made it so it is bad in too many ways possible to the point you really lean to the rarer one, that's just not helping the case.
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worth mentioning that Clefairy has to be grinded up a bit to get Sing before evolving, whilst Jigglypuff already has it and thus can evolve immediately.

Doesn't prevent Jigglypuff from being outclassed, but disregard that, and Jigglypuff is ok for in-game use. Its stats fall off end-game, but its HP allows it to spam Seismic Toss as a compensation there.
 
Samtendo09 said:
Problem is that Clefairy can also instantly evolve with a Moon Stone, and can benefit TM spam far better so that "intent" just falls flat right real hard. After all, the more common one doesn't have to be the best option, but when you made it so it is bad in too many ways possible to the point you really lean to the rarer one, that's just not helping the case.

I found too many early route Pokémon, even a few rare ones, to end up not worth investment for right after early-game. It should be viable to at least mid-game. Raticate surprisingly can still do decently does to Super Fang, but almost everything else either falls right after the first two Gyms or isn't even seriously viable to begin with.

The easiness of the games' main story does have a perk of making it possible to beat it with any Pokémon, but the weakest links had to be overleveled or go for cheese to make it work.
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What I meant to emphasize here was it is slightly rarer (caps out at 6% in the bottom of mt moon) compared to Jigglypuff (10% in the grass, still rare but not TOO rare, especialyl when clefairy's rates are about 4% otherwise), not that you can't also instantly evolve it. It is the slightly more common counterpart and thus the worse version

also you dont have to deal with cave encounters, i suppose.

This kind of design sense is fraught with issues (lets remember our conversation earlier about Fearow vs Pidgeot vs Dodrio), and they're inconsistent on if they even do it, but I dunno I look at where they're located, how similar they are, their encounter rates and it just clicks into place for me.
 
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I don't know if anyone mentioned how bad Gligar is before it got it's evolution. I honestly didn't expect much about Gligar.
In Gold and Crystal you get it pretty late where you have an established team and defensive Pokemon aren't fun, for me at least, to use. But I can't believe it was incapable to learn Earthquake in any shape or form without Pokemon Stadium 2.
But when it is really disappointing with Gligar is in Pokemon XD where you can catch it. Gligar is not a shadow Pokemon so you can't expect any great Egg Moves or TM moves in it's disposal.
I checked his movepool for Gen 3, not a single STAB move to be gained. You are using Poison Sting, Quick Attack and Faint. Some really useless moves.
But what about TMs? Earthquake you get very late midgame before you can fight the third Admin of the evil Team.
Sludge Bomb, Toxic and Steel Wing are Post Game Moves, Aerial Ace requires you to grind through Area 9 of Mt. Battle and Rock Tomb need Area 5. Those aren't even that good.
Tutor Wise you can teach it Mimic... but very rarely I have seen any use on any Pokemon I taught that move too to make up for the awful coverage.
I have never considered teaching it Iron Tail or Double Edge. Double Edge I want to teach my competitive team, so I look what Pokemon would benefit from it while Iron Tail is just awful especially when you don't get STAB on it.

Gligar isn't even a strong Pokemon, but I hoped a bit more considering you get it pretty early. I can't believe it can't even learn Brick Break, but that wouldn't change much if I am honest.

But at least it's good competitively.
 
You know I want to go back to Pidgeot being so disappointing, especially in gen 1, again. Because I noted before that it was designed to grow with you and just kind of failed at standing out due to move pool and stat distribution but I really want to underline how much they dropped the ball on this by point out ...

In total about a third of the dex is part of a three stage line, but in terms of a level up evolution method it breaks down to just these:

The 3 starter lines: Obviously designed to grow through your journey (middle stage around the early mid game, final stage around the late mid game to last you the rest of the way), the reliable ones with good stats and decent movepools (for their time).

The 2 bug lines: Designed to grow really fast (7, then 10), then fall off a cliff for you to replace with other things (wow those tiny bad movepools and subpar stats)

The Dratini line: the quasi-secret "super" pokemon. Takes forever to level up (slower group) and even longer to reach its final stage (30, 55), its basically hte magikarp concept but in a different direction complete with getting an absolute beast of a Pokemon out of it.

And then there's Pidgey. Pidgey is the only 3 stage pokemon in gen 1 who doesnt fall into a special category and who evolves by level up. By design it really is meant to be a quasi-starter, the only other pokemon who shares this design sense, something you get early on and then grows with you in tandem with the starters throughout the game so it's always useful and they just let it down...
 
R_N said:
You know I want to go back to Pidgeot being so disappointing, especially in gen 1, again. Because I noted before that it was designed to grow with you and just kind of failed at standing out due to move pool and stat distribution but I really want to underline how much they dropped the ball on this by point out ...

In total about a third of the dex is part of a three stage line, but in terms of a level up evolution method it breaks down to just these:

The 3 starter lines: Obviously designed to grow through your journey (middle stage around the early mid game, final stage around the late mid game to last you the rest of the way), the reliable ones with good stats and decent movepools (for their time).

The 2 bug lines: Designed to grow really fast (7, then 10), then fall off a cliff for you to replace with other things (wow those tiny bad movepools and subpar stats)

The Dratini line: the quasi-secret "super" pokemon. Takes forever to level up (slower group) and even longer to reach its final stage (30, 55), its basically hte magikarp concept but in a different direction complete with getting an absolute beast of a Pokemon out of it.

And then there's Pidgey. Pidgey is the only 3 stage pokemon in gen 1 who doesnt fall into a special category and who evolves by level up. By design it really is meant to be a quasi-starter, the only other pokemon who shares this design sense, something you get early on and then grows with you in tandem with the starters throughout the game so it's always useful and they just let it down...
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Pidgeot really got nothing on Fearow until it reaches its final form and even then, it's bulk over power.

Fearow dunks on Pidgeotto and it can't even do nothing about it because by the time it evolves into Pidgeot, Fearow is on the verge of getting Drill Peck while Pidgeot is gonna be stuck with Fly.

And unlike Dodrio, Pidgey and Spearow are close to each other in Kanto and Johto. That's at least 4 gens of Spearow punking Pidgey in the in-game tier lists like this:

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There's a meme to be made of Fearow mocking Pidgeot for still not learning Drill Peck, while Pidgeot just stares back like "wtf do i need drill peck for i have brave bird now" but I can't think of a format.
 
Plague von Karma said:
:rb/wigglytuff:
What was the point with Wigglytuff?
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It serves an important cultural niche.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">When Pokemon introduced the Fairy type (gayest of all types) Clefable was retconned from Normal to Fairy, while Wigglytuff became Normal/Fairy-type, thus only half Fairy<br><br>Wigglytuff is therefore the original, and definitive, bisexual Pokemon<br><br>Thank you for reading my dissertation <a href="https://t.co/TOGAJAuIAw">pic.twitter.com/TOGAJAuIAw</a></p>&mdash; Lady Frenetic ⛲♣ (Stephen) (@SirTerenceBoot) <a href="
https://twitter.com/x/status/1306624703247847424
">September 17, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


Wow, I really can't embed to save my life.
 
Sonikku A said:
....and then it still never got Brave Bird, nor got the mega
Then you have Dodrio trump both for many gens
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Keyword being "In-Game".

Check Spearow sitting on S-Tier in GSC and Doduo being so late that it doesn't matter how much better it is.

Come to think of it, did Pidgeot ever get to use its mega in-game?

DrPumpkinz said:
There's a meme to be made of Fearow mocking Pidgeot for still not learning Drill Peck, while Pidgeot just stares back like "wtf do i need drill peck for i have brave bird now" but I can't think of a format.
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I gotchu fam.

4psvho.jpg
 
1 mon that i used in my recent platinum playthrough was lickitung (modified the game to get it as my starter). it honestly looked pretty good, you could play around with lick + stomp paraflinch, and its stats were solid all around.

anyway, first of all i just wanted to note that lickitung starts with only lick as an attacking move. this is exactly as painful as it sounds. just wanted to get that out of the way

the first 4 gyms in sinnoh actually destroy lickitung which kind of sucks. roserade has grass knot which has 80 base power against you, and at best you can land a lick or two against mismagius. you can beat a lot of random trainers with stomp though.

then you get to the later game and it still just feels super underwhelming. even with high power return and decent bulk, it feels like you just get outsped and 2hkod by everything without the ability to ohko them back. i think by far the biggest contributor to this is lickitung's pure normal typing, giving it next to no resists and not even hitting anything super effectively. the bulk looks good on the surface but in practice is barely not good enough, it would benefit hugely from investing in one category of defense like snorlax.

one of the moves i really missed was explosion. i think it says a lot that what i really wanted out of this pokemon was the ability to get a 1 for 1 trade.

do not use platinum lickitung, it isnt cool
 
I always thought Drapion looked and would perform awesomely. I can't speak for its performance in DPPt because it came pretty late in the game as a Skorupi from the Great Marsh to my knowledge. And as a kid, I didn't have time for that. So I picked one up in a Black 2 playthrough and It was one of the most underwhelming mons I've ever used. Probably because it does not lend itself at all well to the remainder of the game when you pick it up. At that point, I believe all you have left in terms of gym leaders is Drayden and Marlon where it really can't put much of a dent in either of their teams thanks to a mediocre 90 base attack stat. Whilst not bad per say, it's rarely going to be ohkoing anything outside of super effective hits. Yes it can do some work against Shauntel and Caitlin, but the Unovan elite four are renowned for their coverage options and, again, Drapion's attack stat leaves much to be desired. I think Unova in general just gives Drapion a really hard time so I'd like to see if my opinion would change if I used one in DPPt,

Echoing what others have said on here, just before BWs release, Zebstrika immediately jumped out at me as a cool mon. But, as I'm sure anyone who's ever used one will know, it's plagued by being a physical electric type. You have to make do with spark from level 25 as a Blitzle up until 47 as a Zebstrika which is just not really adequate coming off of base 100 attack. 100 base attack is not to be laughed at by any means, but let's just say you're not ohkoing anything outside of super effective hits. At level 47, Zebstrika does get wild charge which is a huge upgrade. However, you'll most likely be at the gates of the Pokemon League by that stage and let's just say Zebstrika is not going to be doing a whole lot there anyway. Not to mention it's defenses leave much to be desired so even if you do find yourself in a position to get off a super effective attack you'll more often than not just miss out on the ko and be koed in return, which is a real shame because Zebstrika has one of the best designs out there imo,
 
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Skorupi’s woes can be chalked up to a terrible movepool. To my memory it gets Crunch at level 49 and Cross Poison at level 57 until generation 6. And good luck finding the Poison Jab TM in generation 4, as it’s way off the beaten path (Surf on Route 209 near the twins I think).

But yeah, it’s a shame. Drapion is one of my favorite mons but it’s just so hard to use. XY is like the only game you can use one but even there...it’s XY lol.
 
DrumstickGaming said:
Skorupi’s woes can be chalked up to a terrible movepool. To my memory it gets Crunch at level 49 and Cross Poison at level 57 until generation 6. And good luck finding the Poison Jab TM in generation 4, as it’s way off the beaten path (Surf on Route 209 near the twins I think).

But yeah, it’s a shame. Drapion is one of my favorite mons but it’s just so hard to use. XY is like the only game you can use one but even there...it’s XY lol.
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Yeah, it is indeed a pity, a favorite of mine as well. Another victim of too much too late both in terms of evolving late and only getting good moves at stupidly high levels for in game purposes. This is why I think the games should utilise the full range of levels up to 100 for in game usage, but that's another discussion.
 
DrumstickGaming said:
And good luck finding the Poison Jab TM in generation 4, as it’s way off the beaten path (Surf on Route 209 near the twins I think).
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Actually, it's Route 212. (Between Pastoria and Hearthome. That Marsh Route) Right in the middle of it, there's an item ball taunting you but you can only get to it with Surf.

Pretty easy to notice and remember.

DrumstickGaming said:
But yeah, it’s a shame. Drapion is one of my favorite mons but it’s just so hard to use. XY is like the only game you can use one but even there...it’s XY lol.
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Isle of Armor actually has underleveled Drapions that you can catch either before or after the first Gym iirc.

Always been curious about that mon, but never really remembered to look up where to find Skorupi. I'll probably try it out later. (If I don't forget about it again, that is.)
 
Volt-Ikazuchi said:
Actually, it's Route 212. (Between Pastoria and Hearthome. That Marsh Route) Right in the middle of it, there's an item ball taunting you but you can only get to it with Surf.

Pretty easy to notice and remember.
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Oh, right! I was thinking of the Giga Drain TM. Thanks for correcting me.

I almost always take the Veilstone to Pastoria path myself.
 
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