Pokémon that exceeded your expectations in-game despite looking bad initially?

[mertyville]

In my latest run of Pokemon Diamond, I traded some Pokemon again for viarity. These are the Pokemon that impressed me.

I traded over a male Ralts with the male evolution stone. After it became Kirlia, I evolved it immediately to Gallade and taught it the 50 base power rock move I forgot the name off. Just with Slash + the rock move, it did wonders. It special defense was so insane early game, attacks bounced off on it. Once it learned Sword Dance at lv25, I am pretty sure I swept every thing until the 6th gym. At some point I kinda neglegted it from gaining experience because I had way to many team members to try out that it didn't live up to its full potential. It learned Psychocut at lv28 which is insane. I didn't even really need it to sweep the fighting gym since I could set up on any Fighting Type trainer and Sword Dance to +4 or 6 and sweep with just slash. Psychocut made things just faster. Then I just taught it the TM Drain Punch to give it the needed fighting coverage.
Hard to say how good it would be if I let it catch up with the battle for Team Galactic in Spiral Tower. With Close Combat I think it would do fine for the rest of the game but not so sure about the Elite 4.

I traded over a Ralts with Synchronize Timid Nature just for softresetting Dialga, Heatran and through Void Glitch Darkrai and Shaymin. I ended up grinding it to a point that only with Psychic, Calm Mind and Magical Leaf swept in many fights especially the elite 4.
It seems to be usually the case when I trade Synchronize Pokemon and use them Abra and Rals are good candidates. Natu fell off quickly. Maybe I use Espeon or Umbreon next tho I don't have hopes for Umbreon because its a defensive Pokemon and its offense are laughable.

For HM purposes I traded a Teddiursa lv20. I let if gain EXP through Exp Share so it can learn Rock Climb. This thing had already 80 base attack and did as well as it did in XD Gale of Darkness with just Strenght and Rock Smash. It fell off quickly due to me not grinding to much and limited coverage but as an HM slave it allowed me to swap with a lot of team members and focus exp on Pokemon that matter. In that way it did what it needed to.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

In my latest run of Pokemon Diamond, I traded some Pokemon again for viarity. These are the Pokemon that impressed me.

I traded over a male Ralts with the male evolution stone. After it became Kirlia, I evolved it immediately to Gallade and taught it the 50 base power rock move I forgot the name off. Just with Slash + the rock move, it did wonders. It special defense was so insane early game, attacks bounced off on it. Once it learned Sword Dance at lv25, I am pretty sure I swept every thing until the 6th gym. At some point I kinda neglegted it from gaining experience because I had way to many team members to try out that it didn't live up to its full potential. It learned Psychocut at lv28 which is insane. I didn't even really need it to sweep the fighting gym since I could set up on any Fighting Type trainer and Sword Dance to +4 or 6 and sweep with just slash. Psychocut made things just faster. Then I just taught it the TM Drain Punch to give it the needed fighting coverage.
Hard to say how good it would be if I let it catch up with the battle for Team Galactic in Spiral Tower. With Close Combat I think it would do fine for the rest of the game but not so sure about the Elite 4.

Gallade is a BLAST to use in Sinnoh. Especially if you get to evolve it early.

Psycho Cut/Night Slash/Fighting STAB off that attack means that more often than not, you don't even need Swords Dance. Crit fishing is also viable and it's just a really cool mon.

Y'all can't imagine how happy I was when I heard that it gained Sharpness in SV.

I strongly recommend using it whenever possible, it's a really fun mon.

 

[mertyville]

Gallade is a BLAST to use in Sinnoh. Especially if you get to evolve it early.

Psycho Cut/Night Slash/Fighting STAB off that attack means that more often than not, you don't even need Swords Dance. Crit fishing is also viable and it's just a really cool mon.

Y'all can't imagine how happy I was when I heard that it gained Sharpness in SV.

I strongly recommend using it whenever possible, it's a really fun mon.

I feel generally these around 125 base attack around 80 base speed fighting types are fantastic for ingame when you get them early.
Be it Sawk, Heracross, Passimian, Flamigo or in this case Gallade.

 

[mertyville]

I made another quick run of Pokemon Diamond. This time not that many pokemon used and most my team was just the Ralts line again. I had breed like a bunch of Ralts and ev trained them to see which has a good hidden power or the most ideal stats for competitve Gen 4. No need to explain how good Gardevoir is because every moveset I used was pretty good.

Nidoran male line I used again as HM slaves. It got rivalty again which is annoying since certain match ups would lower its attack. But it did notably better than Nidoqueen. Even with opponents 10 levels higher it did decently well. Cut, Strength, Thunder -> Rock Climb and Rock Smash were the final moves.

Quadsire I used a few times as Waterfall and Surf user. I did not teach it any notable moves that could improve its performance, yet, it soaked up hits well and allowed defeating a lot of problematic Pokemon easily

A Pokemon I was looking forward to use this run was Shaymin but at the end I could not find a spot for it on the team. The only offensive means to attack was Magical Leaf anyways so I doubt it would have done much.

 

[Hugin]

Dottler. Orbeetle too, but Dottler was the real standout. An early-game bug that only has 4 moves and doesn't evolve until level 30 seems like a nightmare, but dual screens at level 10 combined with a SAtk-lowering move is incredible against the Dynamax bosses in SwSh. It's surprisingly bulky as well. Upon evolution, it's moveset becomes incredible and Orbeetle is FAST. Too bad it has only been available in one game so far, I want to try it against everyone.

 

[Punchshroom]

Venomoth has all the makings of a terrible in-game Pokemon. Its base form is really weak and doesn't have an early evolution level to make up for it, its level-up movepool is unremarkable, and it's usually outclassed by earlier available options. This was the sentiment I held for Venomoth for a loooong time, and it largely holds true still: there isn't really much reason to pick up Venomoth in the Kanto games when it's strictly available on the post-Snorlax routes, and in Johto, the dearth of experience means that you'd be stuck with Venonat for a not insignificant amount of time, not to mention Butterfree is right there from the start and actually impactful.

However, a couple of things changed between GS and HGSS when concerning Johto Venomoth. HGSS's improved level-up movepool means that Venonat is more able to actually keep pace with the route trainers it's fighting, such as being able to learn Psybeam earlier to combat Rocket Grunts better instead of being stuck with Confusion even long after evolving into Venomoth. HGSS Venomoth is also able to learn actual STAB moves by level, a trait shared by virtually every single Johto Bug-type in the transition from GS to HGSS (even Pineco benefitted), and of course Venomoth greatly appreciates the physical/special split meaning it's not hitting like a wet noodle like GS Venomoth.

GS Venomoth primarily suffers from having virtually no good prospects outside of just spamming unSTAB Psychic-type moves and powders, a niche already occupied by Butterfree but more efficiently. However, turns out Choice Specs + Tinted Lens + STAB Sludge Bomb/Signal Beam accompanied by Psychic coverage actually gives HGSS Venomoth some late-game value not achievable by any other powder user in the entire region. Of course, Venomoth is nowhere near the best user of Choice Specs or even the Sludge Bomb TM in Johto, but this is the first and likely only time where in-game Venomoth had not only not disappointed me, but actually felt almost alright to use. The Venonat phase is still pretty cheeks though, but I have experienced far worse with the other iterations of Venomoth.

 

[Just A Seaking]

This was the sentiment I held for Venomoth for a loooong time, and it largely holds true still: there isn't really much reason to pick up Venomoth in the Kanto games when it's strictly available on the post-Snorlax routes,

I've never actually used Venomoth in any of the Johto games before, but I have had a good experience using it in Yellow, where it's much earlier than in any other iteration of Kanto: a 10% chance on Route 24/25.

It's not a terribly exciting Pokemon in Yellow, but it is functional. It's basically just Butterfree that joins a bit later and starts weaker than a Butterfree you've trained by that point, but with a notably higher endgame ceiling: sure, you're waiting until level 43 for Sleep Powder and level 50 for Psychic, but Butterfree doesn't get Psychic by level-up at all, and the BST advantage is notable. Of course there's variance from IVs to account for, but generally I find that Venomoth, with 10 more Sp. Atk and 20 more Spd, gets 1HKO and 2HKOs that Butterfree accomplishes as 2HKOs and 3HKOs. They're super similar otherwise - like they literally have the exact same TM learnset, and only Mega Drain is a charming novelty at best - but Venomoth being stronger means it fares much better going into mid-late game segments like Koga, Silph Co. and Agatha. You also don't have to deal with the Caterpie/Metapod part of its lifecycle, which I always find very tedious. Not as much fun to talk about as HGSS Venomoth, perhaps, but it's a nice little novelty of Yellow all the same.

Yellow Venomoth doesn't exactly fit the criteria of this thread: my expectations were that it'd be "Butterfree, but better" and it was, well, Butterfree but better - but hey, we're on the subject anyways.

 

[leafsaber47]

I honestly wasn't even thinking of Magnezone when playing Sun. Yet it was a major player in my team. Honestly it's been almost a decade since I played that game so I don't know how the Magnemite line did there but I wasn't really wanting to use it at first.

 

[Castersvarog]

Dottler. Orbeetle too, but Dottler was the real standout. An early-game bug that only has 4 moves and doesn't evolve until level 30 seems like a nightmare, but dual screens at level 10 combined with a SAtk-lowering move is incredible against the Dynamax bosses in SwSh. It's surprisingly bulky as well. Upon evolution, it's moveset becomes incredible and Orbeetle is FAST. Too bad it has only been available in one game so far, I want to try it against everyone.

Dottler and Orbettle were my mvps in SWSH, it's surprisingly great ingame despite the rocky start. Even claiming a place on my final team