RSE Lotad/Seedot
Let's start with Lotad. Catch it around Lv3. Movepool is Astonish and Growl. This immediately presents a problem: what can it fight in the early game? Most of the early mons resist it (Poochyena) or are immune (Zigzagoon, Whismur) to it. You pretty much need to fight it against the bugs (Wurmple and Nincada). New Problem: You're weak to their STAB (Poison Sting and Leech Life). And they actually do more damage than you because they have higher attack stats and STAB, so just FU. Fortunately, the Bullet Seed TM redeems this problem, but you're left with a 20-50 BP STAB move.
And you're going to be stuck with Bullet Seed for a while. You pick up Absorb at Lv7, which is weaker than Bullet Seed. Then Lotad learns its next STAB at LEVEL 43 for Mega Drain! So yeah, you're not doing that. So you take the evolution into Lombre without delay, get a minor stat boost (still only slightly stronger than your first stage starter - 340 BST). And new problem: Lombre doesn't learn a STAB until Hydro Pump at LEVEL 49! So yeah, that sucks.
Essentially, the midgame here boils down to carrying around Bullet Seed for the majority of the game as your BEST STAB attack until you pick up Giga Drain around Mt Pyre. And you never get to use your Water STAB until you pick up Surf. Like wtf? You're in the late game now and it's finally getting STAB?!
And basically, from Brawly onwards, you're carrying around this 340 BST Pokemon. How long are you carrying it around for? Well, until you get Dive. Your only sources of Water Stones are the Abandoned Ship and Blue Shards (wild Clamperl). Both require Dive to access the stone/shard. So you're carrying this thing around. You want to know what has a similar BST to this deadweight Lombre? Spoink (330), Aron (330), Tentacool (335), Cacnea (335), Koffing (340) and Rhyhorn (345). And you want to know the best part about all of these: Most of them have already evolved! But no, Lombre requires that you lug it around from, basically, Roxanne to Tate/Liza with its awful BST just so you can finally use Ludicolo.
And how's Ludicolo? Well, actually not bad. Still has an awful movepool, but Surf/Giga Drain is the best you're going to get anyways so might as well roll with it.
"But I played Ruby so I got Seedot!" I don't think you have anything to get excited about! Swap out Astonish for Bide and NEVER get an offensive stab move in your first form. You know things are going to get WILD when you need to rely on the Bullet Seed TM to even DEAL DAMAGE! And you're going to be relying on Nature Power too, and, at this point of the game, it's mostly Swift (indoors) and Stun Spore (Grass), with the occasional Shadow Ball (Cave).
So let's evolve this nut and see what happens. Well, you finally get Dark-STAB... at Level 31, and it's Faint Attack (which is okay I guess). That's still basically going to require you to go to Norman/Winona with Bullet Seed as your only STAB. Thankfully, you get access to Shiftry right around when you get Faint Attack, as the Leaf Stone is on Route 119 and only needs Surf. After that, you basically get a Pokemon now. But, like Ludicolo, Shiftry is going to need that Giga Drain TM if you want it to finally ditch Bullet Seed.
Ruby players get basically an equivalent end result between Shiftry and Ludicolo, but Ruby players basically get it 10 levels earlier. But, Seedot fans are also so lucky that Bullet Seed is a TM... I don't want to imagine using it without it.
Also, as a personal one, Glaceon in ANY game.
I know people like to rag on Flareon as the worst Eeveelution, but Glaceon's existance pretty much saves Flareon from this unfortunate award.
In-game, you get it so late:
- Platinum: Right before Snowpoint
- BW2: POSTGAME YOU MFERS (still salty about this from my first BW2 run!)
- Sun/Moon: VICTORY ROAD LOL (also salty about this)
- USUM: Okay at least now it's at Tapu Village
- SwSh: Circhester (so Gym 6)
Like holy shit, it just seems like they hate this Pokemon because GF hates Ice types. It is the embodiment of 'slow, bulky Ice type' with 100 Def and 95 SDef. And you go all the way with 130 SpA and... 65 Speed. And the bulk is good until... 65 HP. It feels like they just did a 'dartboard toss' to decide the stats, because its stats prevent it from doing either thing it seems designed to do (take hits or deal damage).
I don't even really know how you'd fix it. You can't swap the Def and Spe to make it fast because then it's just 'Ice type Espeon'. You pretty much need to take it back to the drawing board to decide what the hell it's going to do.
I'm also really salty here because it's my second favorite Pokemon so it just hurts seeing it so useless.