"Worst Pokémon Ever"

[War Incarnate]

Totally based rant of mine will focus on this pokemon:

Exploud for the following categories:

Stats and to some extent Competitive Use

Stats, and by extension, Competitive Use:
I look at this mon's stats and ask myself whenever I do so, "What the fuck does this pokemon want to be?". You would think that with such a vast offensive movepool that this would be an attacker of sorts, but 91 offenses suck, and while it's somewhat understandable given coughs in Boomburst it wouldn't have hurt to make Attack and Special attack at least like, what, 10-15 points higher, right? It also doesn't help how absolutely terrible 68 speed is for an offensive mon, so hypothetically it would be a bulky attacker of sorts. I talk mons like Glastrier, Copperajah, Melmetal, etc., and if you want to look at mons that didn't make it into Galar, you have stuff like Mega Scizor, for instance. At first glance, you look at these pokemon, and ask yourselves, "What exactly do these have over Exploud?".

Two things:

Either massive defensive stats (Glastrier, Melmetal on the physical front), a defensive typing that aids them in stomaching whatever hit is flung at them (Melmetal, Copperajah, Mega Scizor), or both (Mega Scizor and Melmetal). They may not have the best speed tiers, but they can either tank hits efficiently or provide something defensively to a team.

Snapping back to Exploud, it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING (Specs Scrappy Boomburst yadayadayada) to make up for how shitty its speed tier truly is. It lacks the bulk needed to tank hits (104/63/73 defenses), it lacks an actually worthwhile defensive typing to help it tank hits (Normal has no resistances, a weakness to a common offensive type in Fighting, and has an immunity to Ghost which means literally nothing), and just does not provide ANYTHING AT ALL defensively for a team. The fact it doesn't even have very good offenses or speed for how shitty it is defensively (due to the aforementioned issues of bad defenses + unhelpful defensive typing) is literally a whole dump truck of salt on a wound. At this point I don't even have anything left to say here, Exploud sucks.

 

[Codraroll]

Never mind Hydreigon's hands. It's the legs that ruin it for me. They're just hanging down like wet, empty socks. They're too small and too limp to provide any support for the comparatively huge torso. No feet are discernible either. Hydreigon really seems incapable of landing, but the design is also too bulky to make it believable that it flies all the time either. If it had been more skeletal, ethereal, or ghost-like, or given the "flying snake" vibe of Giratina-O, then it could have worked, but it's too "conventional" for that. Hydreigon looks like it would be spending some time on the ground, to feed or sleep, but it's impossible to picture how it would do that. It really only works in the one pose its sprite has placed it in. It's a really inflexible design.

 

[R_N]

I think the "legs" are genuinely just "tassels". I want to say Hydreigon does just land and lift off as needed and indeed cannot "stand"

There's a definite, kind of withered, puppet theme to it. The "puppet" heads, the "tassel" legs even the spindly "wings" that don't truly function.

 

[Siggu]

Never mind Hydreigon's hands. It's the legs that ruin it for me. They're just hanging down like wet, empty socks. They're too small and too limp to provide any support for the comparatively huge torso. No feet are discernible either. Hydreigon really seems incapable of landing, but the design is also too bulky to make it believable that it flies all the time either. If it had been more skeletal, ethereal, or ghost-like, or given the "flying snake" vibe of Giratina-O, then it could have worked, but it's too "conventional" for that. Hydreigon looks like it would be spending some time on the ground, to feed or sleep, but it's impossible to picture how it would do that. It really only works in the one pose its sprite has placed it in. It's a really inflexible design.

Latios and Latias kind of have that problem, too.

 

[Bakugames]

The latis do have the benefit of having a design and theme that they are constantly floating or flying and feel like they are fit to do that as much as they want, from their airplane structure to the psychic type.
(And if you for some reason take the manga and anime as canon compliant, they can just turn into a human form if they truly want to land LOL)

 

[Scorpio]

I think the "legs" are genuinely just "tassels". I want to say Hydreigon does just land and lift off as needed and indeed cannot "stand"

There's a definite, kind of withered, puppet theme to it. The "puppet" heads, the "tassel" legs even the spindly "wings" that don't truly function.

This actually makes sense in a twisted, meta way - Hydreigon is at least partially based off Ghidorah, and toku kaiju films and shows, especially during the Showa era, often used puppets to depict flying beasties.

 

[The Mind Electric]

Never mind Hydreigon's hands. It's the legs that ruin it for me. They're just hanging down like wet, empty socks. They're too small and too limp to provide any support for the comparatively huge torso. No feet are discernible either. Hydreigon really seems incapable of landing, but the design is also too bulky to make it believable that it flies all the time either. If it had been more skeletal, ethereal, or ghost-like, or given the "flying snake" vibe of Giratina-O, then it could have worked, but it's too "conventional" for that. Hydreigon looks like it would be spending some time on the ground, to feed or sleep, but it's impossible to picture how it would do that. It really only works in the one pose its sprite has placed it in. It's a really inflexible design.

My first thought is that it rests on its stomach when it needs to, and just hovers slightly above the ground when it feeds.

 

[PokemonCrusader]

Basculin aka Mean Seaking

Takes up a valuable slot for no good reason at all except that Unova needed a generic fish.

 

[Yourwelcomethanku]

Do people even remember this exists? I would be unsurprised if people did not know this Pokémon also has a female form

its not useful except for completing your pokedex

 

[The Mind Electric]

Basculin aka Mean Seaking

Takes up a valuable slot for no good reason at all except that Unova needed a generic fish.

It may be solidly underwhelming in most respects, but damn if it ain't the most convenient thing when I need a Waterfall user late-game.

 

[Yung Dramps]

These next 2 nominations are gonna be a bit odd at first. They're not my most hated Pokemon ever, but...

These two Pokemon are my least favorites from their respective generations, and at a glance they seem to have little in common other than tending to be physical attackers. In a vacuum, they're perfectly acceptable, even quite cool in terms of physical and competitive design (well maybe not the former for Conkeldurr, but still).

So, what's the problem here? Well, notice how I said that they're perfectly acceptable in a vacuum. Thing is, they can't be looked at that way, because both of these Pokemon are among the single worst examples of completely and utterly failing to differentiate from pre-existing creatures in an interesting way, being among the most naked examples of powercreep in the process.

For starters, Salamence is a pretty brazen Dragonite expy, intentional or not. It's another pseudo-legendary Dragon/Flying type with only 10 more Special Attack, nearly the same HP, SpD and Speed swapped and a whopping 1 point difference in physical Attack. The fun part is that not only did Salamence pretty much outclass Dragonite in competitive play up to Gen 5, but it did so while being so much less interesting. Instead of a cute friendly dragon delivery boy, Salamence is just the single most generic idea of a "cool" dragon possible. It also has a way less varied movepool with Flamethrower and Earthquake still remaining its only usable coverage options. And yet, thanks to Intimidate, it basically rendered my baby chubby dragon obsolete until Gen 5 gave it Multiscale.

As bad as that is, it pales in comparison to how hard Machamp got fucked by the introduction of Conkeldurr. Even Salamence made more of an earnest attempt to differentiate from Dragonite without outclassing it, something Conk didn't even try as it quite literally is simply Machamp but with more optimized stats and a straightly upgraded movepool (Drain Punch and Mach Punch namely). Unlike Dragonite, Machamp was also never given the help to catch up, and if anything as of Gen 8 the divide is now worse as Conkeldurr got Close Combat, shutting out one of the few things the OG Gen 1 fighting had over it. A lot of Gen 5 designs are basically just Gen 1 remixes which is why I'm so mixed on its Pokedex overall, but at least most of those actually remix the original design concepts (e.g. Swoobat is literally nothing like Golbat/Crobat other than being Flying-type early cave bat mons).

With the number of Pokemon inching ever closer to the quadruple digit milestone, it's of course completely unreasonable to expect every single one of them to be S Rank monsters in every relevant competitive format. What is important is to give every Pokemon a unique in-battle role that allows them to be an interesting addition to a team, if not the most viable. My namesake and favorite Pokemon of all time has so far not managed to stick anywhere above RU in its competitive history, but what it does do is wield a wholly unique type combination and leverage the most interesting design aspects of both of its component types to create a Pokemon with simply no direct equal in terms of appearance and combat function. Salamence and Conkeldurr are the antithesis of this philosophy, opting to scrub out their predecessors rather than offering a truly fresh take on their original concepts.

 

[Siggu]

Instead of a cute friendly dragon delivery boy, Salamence is just the single most generic idea of a "cool" dragon possible.

That is still cute, especially after you see its Pokédex height and that might make you imagine it being WAY smaller than intended, where depending on which measure you take, it's an average-sized dragon that cannot match an adult human's height when grounded... or it can basically be an asian water monitor with wings.

(It's probably the distance between its head and the ground in its default pose, but until there's official confirmation you're not stopping me from thinking you can put a Salamence in a regular-size table and still have room left)

 

[Sirya]

For starters, Salamence is a pretty brazen Dragonite expy, intentional or not. It's another pseudo-legendary Dragon/Flying type with only 10 more Special Attack, nearly the same HP, SpD and Speed swapped and a whopping 1 point difference in physical Attack. The fun part is that not only did Salamence pretty much outclass Dragonite in competitive play up to Gen 5, but it did so while being so much less interesting. Instead of a cute friendly dragon delivery boy, Salamence is just the single most generic idea of a "cool" dragon possible. It also has a way less varied movepool with Flamethrower and Earthquake still remaining its only usable coverage options. And yet, thanks to Intimidate, it basically rendered my baby chubby dragon obsolete until Gen 5 gave it Multiscale.

Dragonite post Gen I (I'll concede Gen II too) is trash. At first you see it in the anime, you know, the giant nite, with those death inducing bright eyes and you are like "omg this mon is nuts". Then in the games post gen 2 is barney the dinosaur, with that mongo-smile that makes it look like it's lost its brains.

Not only that, but it's horrible from a desing standpoint. First you have Dratini, a cool, even adorable, small snake covered in blue scales. Then you have Dragonair, with a more serene yet intimidating face, an even more elegant and gracile body, more pearls and motiffs of feathers. And then, SUDDENLY, it changes from that to a bipedal clown with a funny, huge-hungry face and a layer of yellow painting throwed upon. Why? Why? At least in I Gen it has the face of a dragon, it looked like it could smash your face just by staring and you, but they did not preserve that either...

Now look at Salamence. He succeeds where Dragonite falls. Since Bagon, it dreams with soaring the skies. So, it mutes into a Shelgon. Then, he keeps believing in the american dream, no matter what others think about its purpose in life, and evolves again into a classical, medieval dragon. Salamence even has shelgon white shell covering its stomatch, as if it had opened upon evolving, while Dragonite retains nothing relevant from its pre evolutions, it doesn't even respect the concept of its prior forms. But they even tell you with Bagon that it wants nothing more than to be able to fly, so at the end, their evolutions are also a story about achieving your goals.

Now look at their abilities. Salamence has INTIMIDATE. There's nothing more to add. Salamence is a fkn dragon, its made to intimidate prey. It eats kids while laughing at their families, then eats the families too. The attack of its enemies, or their will to fight should I say, decreases 1 level when Salamence enters the battlefield. Imagine being so mean that your very pressence diminishes the attack of your enemies by making them tremble in fear and cosmic terror. Now for its other ability, MOXIE. I'll be honest, I don't know what moxie means in english, but in spanish its translated as AUTOESTIMA. Autoestima is self-steem. There are few things more important in life than to have self-steem. You have to believe in yourself as Salamence keep believing in itself since it was a Bagon until it reached its dream. It's both an actual useful ability and one that makes sense with the Pokémon background.

What does Dragonite have instead? Multiscale. How is multiscale called in spanish? Compensación. Do you know what compensación is? Well, it's fairly similar in english: compensation. What should I add? Compensation. It's so garbo, that it needs the game mechanics to compensate its actual lack of power, or AUTOESTIMA in itself, to "take less damage". Now look at how both of Salamence abilities are focused on the offensive, both intimidate and moxie are abilities that make Salamence the predator and its objective the prey, but Dragonite is the one on the defensive side since the very begining, "compensating" those hits while spamming roost like a monguer and wearing lefties and other non-dragon related items.

Dragonite is an offense to dragons in the Pokémon world.

 

[The Mind Electric]

Dragonite post Gen I (I'll concede Gen II too) is trash. At first you see it in the anime, you know, the giant nite, with those death inducing bright eyes and you are like "omg this mon is nuts". Then in the games post gen 2 is barney the dinosaur, with that mongo-smile that makes it look like it's lost its brains.

Not only that, but it's horrible from a desing standpoint. First you have Dratini, a cool, even adorable, small snake covered in blue scales. Then you have Dragonair, with a more serene yet intimidating face, an even more elegant and gracile body, more pearls and motiffs of feathers. And then, SUDDENLY, it changes from that to a bipedal clown with a funny, huge-hungry face and a layer of yellow painting throwed upon. Why? Why? At least in I Gen it has the face of a dragon, it looked like it could smash your face just by staring and you, but they did not preserve that either...

Now look at Salamence. He succeeds where Dragonite falls. Since Bagon, it dreams with soaring the skies. So, it mutes into a Shelgon. Then, he keeps believing in the american dream, no matter what others think about its purpose in life, and evolves again into a classical, medieval dragon. Salamence even has shelgon white shell covering its stomatch, as if it had opened upon evolving, while Dragonite retains nothing relevant from its pre evolutions, it doesn't even respect the concept of its prior forms. But they even tell you with Bagon that it wants nothing more than to be able to fly, so at the end, their evolutions are also a story about achieving your goals.

Now look at their abilities. Salamence has INTIMIDATE. There's nothing more to add. Salamence is a fkn dragon, its made to intimidate prey. It eats kids while laughing at their families, then eats the families too. The attack of its enemies, or their will to fight should I say, decreases 1 level when Salamence enters the battlefield. Imagine being so mean that your very pressence diminishes the attack of your enemies by making them tremble in fear and cosmic terror. Now for its other ability, MOXIE. I'll be honest, I don't know what moxie means in english, but in spanish its translated as AUTOESTIMA. Autoestima is self-steem. There are few things more important in life than to have self-steem. You have to believe in yourself as Salamence keep believing in itself since it was a Bagon until it reached its dream. It's both an actual useful ability and one that makes sense with the Pokémon background.

What does Dragonite have instead? Multiscale. How is multiscale called in spanish? Compensación. Do you know what compensación is? Well, it's fairly similar in english: compensation. What should I add? Compensation. It's so garbo, that it needs the game mechanics to compensate its actual lack of power, or AUTOESTIMA in itself, to "take less damage". Now look at how both of Salamence abilities are focused on the offensive, both intimidate and moxie are abilities that make Salamence the predator and its objective the prey, but Dragonite is the one on the defensive side since the very begining, "compensating" those hits while spamming roost like a monguer and wearing lefties and other non-dragon related items.

Dragonite is an offense to dragons in the Pokémon world.

This is one of my favorite shitposts on this entire website.

While I'm here, I might as well nominate a Pokémon myself.

Has anyone ever actually tried to use this thing? Its Speed is okay and it has great Special Defense for some reason, but all of its other stats are complete ass. Its attacks are basically slapping your opponent with a piece of wet tissue paper, it has low enough HP that any super-effective attack will almost certainly take it out in one blow, and its Defense allows anything with a half-decent physical attack to absolutely shred it. It can't even make good use of its Special Defense, the one good stat it has, because of how many weaknesses it has and how vulnerable it is to physical damage from literally anything.

So, it sucks ass in battle, but that's kind of expected with early-game Bug types. The thing that makes it one of the worst ever for me is the design. It's obviously based on a ladybug, but they didn't do anything cool or unique with that. It has gloved hands, so what? Every other early-route Bug is either cooler or cuter.

Ledian has nothing to make it worth using. It's not even a meme like Luvdisc because of how forgettable it is.

 

[Siggu]

This is one of my favorite shitposts on this entire website.

While I'm here, I might as well nominate a Pokémon myself.

Has anyone ever actually tried to use this thing? Its Speed is okay and it has great Special Defense for some reason, but all of its other stats are complete ass. Its attacks are basically slapping your opponent with a piece of wet tissue paper, it has low enough HP that any super-effective attack will almost certainly take it out in one blow, and its Defense allows anything with a half-decent physical attack to absolutely shred it. It can't even make good use of its Special Defense, the one good stat it has, because of how many weaknesses it has and how vulnerable it is to physical damage from literally anything.

So, it sucks ass in battle, but that's kind of expected with early-game Bug types. The thing that makes it one of the worst ever for me is the design. It's obviously based on a ladybug, but they didn't do anything cool or unique with that. It has gloved hands, so what? Every other early-route Bug is either cooler or cuter.

Ledian has nothing to make it worth using. It's not even a meme like Luvdisc because of how forgettable it is.

Let's give Iron Fist and a lot of punching moves to the Pokémon with Base 35 Attack.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

[The Mind Electric]

Let's give Iron Fist and a lot of punching moves to the Pokémon with Base 35 Attack.

What could possibly go wrong?

The only punch moves it gets by level up are Mach Punch and Comet Punch. If you want anything else, you need to breed or tutor for it, which is such a waste of time and resources on a Pokémon like Ledian that I'll be floored if anyone ever bothered.

 

[Pikachu315111]

Let's give Iron Fist and a lot of punching moves to the Pokémon with Base 35 Attack.

What could possibly go wrong?

It's Moon Dex entry lampshades this: "In battle, it throws punches with all four arms. The power of each individual blow is piddly, so it aims to win by quantity rather than quality."

 

[Scorpio]

While I'm here, I might as well nominate a Pokémon myself.

Has anyone ever actually tried to use this thing? Its Speed is okay and it has great Special Defense for some reason, but all of its other stats are complete ass. Its attacks are basically slapping your opponent with a piece of wet tissue paper, it has low enough HP that any super-effective attack will almost certainly take it out in one blow, and its Defense allows anything with a half-decent physical attack to absolutely shred it. It can't even make good use of its Special Defense, the one good stat it has, because of how many weaknesses it has and how vulnerable it is to physical damage from literally anything.

So, it sucks ass in battle, but that's kind of expected with early-game Bug types. The thing that makes it one of the worst ever for me is the design. It's obviously based on a ladybug, but they didn't do anything cool or unique with that. It has gloved hands, so what? Every other early-route Bug is either cooler or cuter.

Ledian has nothing to make it worth using. It's not even a meme like Luvdisc because of how forgettable it is.

Ledian is just sad, yeah. Though, now that Heavy-Duty Boots are a thing, I can potentially see it being usable as a Specially defensive utility pivot:


name: SpD Utility Pivot
move 1: Defog
move 2: U-Turn
move 3: Roost
move 4: Knock Off
item: Heavy-Duty Boots
ability: Early Bird
nature: Calm
evs: 252 HP/ 4 Def / 252 SpD

Throw it in against a Special attacker that doesn’t roflstomp you, do whatever else you need it to do (clear hazards, heal, cripple the opponent with Knock Off), get out. Other Pokémon probably do it better... but it’s something.

(This, of course, is barring GF showing mercy and giving it a much-needed overhaul)

 

[Sirya]

It's Moon Dex entry lampshades this: "In battle, it throws punches with all four arms. The power of each individual blow is piddly, so it aims to win by quantity rather than quality."

It has modern boxers mentality, to win by score.

 

[Ironmage]

I enjoyed using ledian in my Moon mono-bug run. I used it as a support lead with screens/u-turn/air slash. If nothing else, it helped with my SD ariados setting up.

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

Has anyone ever actually tried to use this thing?

I have used Ledian twice. I know that it sucks, but it is still my favorite Johto Pokémon. However, I haven't tried it during the main game. Both times I used it were during the post-game. I first used it on my post-game team in Diamond, and then on my mid-game team in Ultra Moon. On both of these games, I used it as a special attacker, the reason being that it has higher Sp.att than Attack. I really don't see the appeal with Iron Fist when it has a base Attack of 35. It also gets some decent special attacking moves, the ones I used on my sets were Bug Buzz, Focus Blast, Giga Drain, Air Slash and Swift.

I have no real memories from how it worked in Diamond, but I can at least not remember that it was downright bad there. But in Ultra Moon, I remember that it was quite bad. I got a little disappointed by it despite having quite low expectations on it. The most notable situation was when I used it during an E4 rematch and got to face Gladion as the challenger, with Ledian as my lead. The first thing that happened in that battle was that my Ledian got outsped and defeated by an Acrobatics from Gladion's Crobat, which was not fun to see. However, I think I just used Ledian incorrectly. I guess it is better off as a semi-fast dual screens supporter/pivot, like the set Ironmage posted.

 

[Ernesto]

What I always liked about Ledian when I was a kid is that it looked like a superhero, more precisely Kamen Rider.

Speaking about Pokémon that were totally outclassed by something introduced in later generations, can we talk about this fellow?

Ever since its introduction it's always faced a lot of competition from Lapras, only having over it slightly higher Speed and Encore in Gen II, but at least it had a faster leveling Experience group for in-game meaning it kept that niche. However, when Gen III started the trend of reimagining previous concepts, GF basically decided to give the goofy dugong a middle finger.

Not only does Walrein have all around better stats, Encore by level up as opposed to breeding and an arguably better Experience group (Medium Slow levels faster than Medium Fast until the 50s), it also has the freaking same abilities! Thick Fat? Walrein is even fatter. Ice Body? Has anyone ever heard of "Stallgong"? Yea, me neither.
At least Machamp keeps having No Guard D-Punch shenanigans over Conk, Dewgong has basically nothing. Heck, even something like Golduck or the previously discussed Seaking have some unique aspects to them in their abilities (Cloud Nine and Lightning Rod, respectively), whereas Gong seems to have been forgotten.

It's sad because I think it's pretty good in the first gens but they seriously must've disliked it to leave it in the cold like that.

 

[The Mind Electric]

What I always liked about Ledian when I was a kid is that it looked like a superhero, more precisely Kamen Rider.

Speaking about Pokémon that were totally outclassed by something introduced in later generations, can we talk about this fellow?

Ever since its introduction it's always faced a lot of competition from Lapras, only having over it slightly higher Speed and Encore in Gen II, but at least it had a faster leveling Experience group for in-game meaning it kept that niche. However, when Gen III started the trend of reimagining previous concepts, GF basically decided to give the goofy dugong a middle finger.

Not only does Walrein have all around better stats, Encore by level up as opposed to breeding and an arguably better Experience group (Medium Slow levels faster than Medium Fast until the 50s), it also has the freaking same abilities! Thick Fat? Walrein is even fatter. Ice Body? Has anyone ever heard of "Stallgong"? Yea, me neither.
At least Machamp keeps having No Guard D-Punch shenanigans over Conk, Dewgong has basically nothing. Heck, even something like Golduck or the previously discussed Seaking have some unique aspects to them in their abilities (Cloud Nine and Lightning Rod, respectively), whereas Gong seems to have been forgotten.

It's sad because I think it's pretty good in the first gens but they seriously must've disliked it to leave it in the cold like that.

Honestly, I don't think I could ever bring myself to agree with this simply because of Dewgong's design. I know it's very simple, but it's just so adorable, I can't speak ill of it.

 

[CTNC]

Competitively speaking, it sucks to be Cherubi. It was outclassed as a Chlorophyll Sun Sweeper in Little Cup by everything else (except Sunkern) in Gen 4, had a small niche in Gen 5 because of learning both Growth and Weather Ball even though Bellsprout also learns both and is better overall, had to switch to a different niche of Healing Wish in Gen 6 because its old one wasn't good enough without Sleep Powder too, and the Smogondex even says not to use Cherubi on any serious team in Gen 7. In Gen 8, no one uses it. Ever. That's not because its bad, its because of its new claim to Little Cup fame, being banned because its only ability, Chlorophyll, is banned.


I'm not nominating Cherubi's evolution because of a quirk that redeams it for being just interesting enough to not deserve nomination. Casually speaking, (if there's such a thing on Smogon :P) it's easy to say Cherrim, doesn't belong in this thread because its Sunshine form is cute, but its locked behind Harsh Sunlight which almost always forces it to stay as its "just a flower bud" Overcast form. I never think of the Sunshine form because I never see it. You wouldn't even find out it has a Sunshine form from the games unless you used one yourself, (and used Torkoal too or bothered with using any Status Moves) used Sunny Day or a Pokemon with Drought against it, or had a rematch against Gardina or Milo (and even then, only if you don't KO everything that knows Sunny Day before they use it) because their two Cherrim are the only two, trainer's or wild, you can face that know it.

The redeeming quirk is being one of two Pokemon (the other being Castform) that soft locks the game if sent into Gen 4's Acid Rain glitch by constantly switching between forms because of there being Sun and Non-Sun Weathers at the same time. (I hope they bring back Acid Rain for BDSP :P)


TL;DR Cherubi sucks in Little Cup and was unlucky enough to be banned by something else getting banned and I'm barely not nominating Cherrim for the only form most people see unless they use it or see it outside the game because it can soft lock Gen 4 games with the Acid Rain glitch.

 

[DreamPrince]

What I always liked about Ledian when I was a kid is that it looked like a superhero, more precisely Kamen Rider.

Speaking about Pokémon that were totally outclassed by something introduced in later generations, can we talk about this fellow?

Ever since its introduction it's always faced a lot of competition from Lapras, only having over it slightly higher Speed and Encore in Gen II, but at least it had a faster leveling Experience group for in-game meaning it kept that niche. However, when Gen III started the trend of reimagining previous concepts, GF basically decided to give the goofy dugong a middle finger.

Not only does Walrein have all around better stats, Encore by level up as opposed to breeding and an arguably better Experience group (Medium Slow levels faster than Medium Fast until the 50s), it also has the freaking same abilities! Thick Fat? Walrein is even fatter. Ice Body? Has anyone ever heard of "Stallgong"? Yea, me neither.
At least Machamp keeps having No Guard D-Punch shenanigans over Conk, Dewgong has basically nothing. Heck, even something like Golduck or the previously discussed Seaking have some unique aspects to them in their abilities (Cloud Nine and Lightning Rod, respectively), whereas Gong seems to have been forgotten.

It's sad because I think it's pretty good in the first gens but they seriously must've disliked it to leave it in the cold like that.

Actually, Dewgong did have a very, very tiny niche in VGC 15 and 18 as a Perish Trapper alongside the likes of Mega Gengar and Gothitelle. It had a unique combination of Perish Song and Fake Out, something only Jynx had, but Jynx was far too frail to take advantage of those traits. Here's a sample team.

Speaking of the worst Pokémon ever, I'd like to nominate Boltund. I honestly forget this Pokémon exists. Stat wise, its only stat over 100 is Speed, but there's faster Electric types like Jolteon, Tapu Koko, and Regieleki so its not that impressive. It has the Strong Jaw and Competitive abilities, but Boltund's move pool is so shallow that it cannot even take good advantage of it. It only has Thunder Fang and Fire Fang for Strong Jaw, while it only has STAB for any special attacks. My biggest issue though, is that Boltund doesn't have a lot of personality compared to other "Dog" Pokemon. Granbull pretends to be a bully with its mean face, but is actually a coward, Houndoom is an evil satan dog whose horns resemble the devil, has howls that are so eerie that that people mistook it for the Grim Reaper as well as spitting Fire that can cause a burn whose pain will never go away, Stoutland is wise dog who rescues people from Pokemon and has a long, shaggy coat that looks like a beard to reference that, and Furfrou is the only Pokemon that can groomed to have a style to match its trainer preference. Boltund can run... Uh, 50 miles. That's impressive, but Tornadus can fly at 200 MPH, Arcanine can run 2,600 miles in a Day, and Galarian Zapdos can run over 180 MPH in the mountains. So it's really not that impressive. And lastly, I don't really find Yamper that cute. I think its kind of too much like an actual puppy for my liking, though that might just stem from the fact that I don't like dogs in real life that much. I find Snubbull and Growlithe a lot cuter, simply because the former I take pity on because the former is actually a nice Pokémon but doesn't have many friends due to it looks which I can sympathize, and Growlithe acts like a young child : It's a loyal kid who loves to play but is fiercely detective and understanding when someone it loves is threatened, which reminds me of my younger cousin.