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

greentyphlosion said:
Whitney - Flaaffy sucks against Miltank, even with Thunder
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Thunder Wave is a huge contribution against Miltank because it can stop Rollout from building up and it slows her down so Stomp flinching isn't an issue. Even if Flaaffy can't beat it outright, it can cripple it enough for someone else to clean up.

greentyphlosion said:
Morty - mediocre matchup, best you can really do is paralyse his Gengar for someone else to KO but Flaaffy is too weak to sweep here
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Barring I dunno, Kadabra, what mons outright sweep Morty for free? It isn't a great matchup though, I concede that.

greentyphlosion said:
Chuck - struggles to KO Poliwrath without Thunder and gets destroyed by both Surf and Dynamicpunch, even if it's evolved by this point
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"Even if it's evolved"? Ampharos struggling to beat Poliwrath? Sorry, I just don't see it.

greentyphlosion said:
Jasmine - not a great matchup unless you have Fire Punch, in which case it's fairly even
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Fire Punch is enough to deal with the TBolt Magnemites, that's actually a lot. Sure, Steelix might be too much, but not soloing a leader doesn't mean it's bad, especially if your plan to deal with Steelix is a Water-Type like Feraligatr.


I'm not advocating for Mareep to shoot to S-Tier, but it's definitely not a bad mon. It actually deals with a lot of potentially problematic mons and it's just good at route clearing because of how good Electric+Fire is offensively.
 
Speaking of Mareep...

Man, XY Mareep definitely ain't as good as GSC Mareep.

It shows up horribly underleveled, (Thanks, Horde-Exclusive encounters.) and it gets no moves.

Got an Ampharos rn that needs to paralyze every mon it faces so Electro Ball gets a boost. Otherwise, I have to use Thundershock as the primary STAB move. At Lv. 30.
 
With my only experience being Gen7 (No Switch yet and SwSh looks hot... in flame wars), I can only contribute little, well so....

Raichu-A, Moon: Interesting spot here. We all know for the land bathed in light, Alola is infested with Dark types waiting to eat anything Psychic, which is why people hated Decidueye? here.
That's not my problem with Raichu. My problem was that, Thunderbolt TM is locked until soooooooooo far.

This is no longer a problem if you know Pikachu naturally learns it at higher level, but if you don't and played blindly, which I did in my Moon run, you're stuck with Thundershock for a very, very long time. This caused my Moon Raichu to be completely blocked by any Dark types and had its tail to be rescued by Primarina. Not even Nasty Plot saves it. On the other hand, when I held off evolving her in USun, which meant she's still Pika when I faced Totem Mimikyu, she could at least murder the frailer Dark types she outspeeds with TBolt.

:psycry: Also, when I arrived at the tree. my Moon Raichu got OHKOed by Red's Pikachu's resisted Volt Tackle. Really bad days for this little surfer which was in the Alolan merch spotlight....

I believe I also had difficult time with Arcanine and Pangoro. I forgot the details of the former, while the latter was because it couldn't really make use of its Iron Fist ability.
 
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PsychicAcademic said:
With my only experience being Gen7 (No Switch yet and SwSh looks hot... in flame wars), I can only contribute little, well so....

Raichu-A, Moon: Interesting spot here. We all know for the land bathed in light, Alola is infested with Dark types waiting to eat anything Psychic, which is why people hated Decidueye? here.
That's not my problem with Raichu. My problem was that, Thunderbolt TM is locked until soooooooooo far.

This is no longer a problem if you know Pikachu naturally learns it at higher level, but if you don't and played blindly, which I did in my Moon run, you're stuck with Thundershock for a very, very long time. This caused my Moon Raichu to be completely blocked by any Dark types and had its tail to be rescued by Primarina. Not even Nasty Plot saves it. On the other hand, when I held off evolving her in USun, which meant she's still Pika when I faced Totem Mimikyu, she could at least murder the frailer Dark types she outspeeds with TBolt.

:psycry: Also, when I arrived at the tree. my Moon Raichu got OHKOed by Red's Pikachu's resisted Volt Tackle. Really bad days for this little surfer which was in the Alolan merch spotlight....

I believe I also had difficult time with Arcanine and Pangoro. I forgot the details of the former, while the latter was because it couldn't really make use of its Iron Fist ability.
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Was it possible to settle for Discharge at level 34? (As in level Pikachu to learn Discharge and then evo it) I mean it's still a problem, but would this have helped your case?
 
CoolMan6001 said:
Was it possible to settle for Discharge at level 34? (As in level Pikachu to learn Discharge and then evo it) I mean it's still a problem, but would this have helped your case?
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I must've evolved it earlier than that. Stone Evo natural moveset often really stinks, it somehow made Flareon look good (at least it still learns things by Lvl up after the stone).

At least it is a good lesson to remember when getting Pikachu on next games. Although I recall X Raichu also struggled, falling in mid game....
 
One of the big ones that sticks out to me during my X run was TYRANTRUM. It looked so cool and was on track to being one of my favorites of the gen, but it just proved to be such a dead weight on my team. It might be partly because I happened to get one with terrible IVs, which usually wouldn't matter for an in-game team but it just kept getting out-sped and KO'd so much that I once I got a Goomy and started leveling that up, Tyrantrum just never made it back into rotation. (Just to stress how bad tyrantrum performed, I had a Klefki on my team and it was great.)

In gen 7 I wasn't so much disappointed with any particular Pokemon as I was the methods to get them. Once it was revealed that Decidueye was ghost I decided to try and do a mono-ghost run, but then it just proved to be too annoying to get some of them. Datamines revealed Gengar was in SOS battles but it was so rare that I never got one (didn't want to try and arrange a trade online for a Haunter). Similarly, we knew Honedge could be obtained from island scan, but we didn't know at the time it was locked to day. Honedge was only one Tuesday or something, and by the time the first Tuesday after release had rolled around I'd already given up on mono-ghost and just beat the game with alolan muk and wishiwashi on the team as "scary looking" mons. (I did do a mono-ghost run of ultra sun, though, and that may be my favorite playthrough of the series).

Similar issues with availability come up in gen 8, and the biggest offender in my opinion is dreepy/drakloak. What was the point of making dreepy so pathetic if the only place you could get it before you had access to Drakloak was as a rare raid in the corner of the wild area? (I threw so many wishing stars into that den trying to get a dreepy before we understood that each den had two possible raid pools :blobsad:). Snom in the wild also comes too late in the game for a pretty weak mon, and after I saw it was a friendship evolution at night I just didn't even bother trying to put it into team rotation.
 
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This bitch, right here

You first see Miltank in the 3rd Gym of GSC. You fight your way through some cute normal-types until you reach the ace of Whitney's team. Out comes this slice of beef. Stomp hurts and can Flinch. Attract can stop your likely male starter from doing anything. It can heal itself with Milk Drink and then the dreaded rollout. Which just hits you harder and harder every time eventually knocking you out. You can try to burn it with Ember, wall it with Bayleaf or catch an Abra just to trade it for a fighting type near-by as a last ditch hope. This Miltank is a beast. So you want one.

Well just after the 4th gym you can finally find it as a 5% encounter at level 15. Which is low even for the trainers in that area. It just never got up to speed for me. Never did the damage of Whitney's and could never just rollout through someone else's team.
 
Treecko from RSE. I am in the middle of testing this thing as my experiences with it are old. Like several years. Now I remember why I don't remember much.

To begin with, until Strength (which you should not use) and by extension Dig (Which you should ALSO not use), you have nothing over 40 BP. Let that sink in. Bullet Seed is really the only thing over that and that is RNG dependent. At 29 you get Leaf Blade. Woo. 105 after Stab. Woo. It still sucks. For reference, I did some Calcs against Norman. Did you know that Dig is above a 10HKO? Leaf Blade is almost a 4HKO? Its 3HKO if you got Overgrow active and a Miracle Seed on.

Now I am not done with my test. Only just past Norman. But even then, it could not beat Roxanne easily. If you really want a good grass type, go get a Shroomish who is just two routes over and in the woods.

I am currently suffering and crying that this starter that I picked was one of many wrong choices made in this file.
 
Volt-Ikazuchi said:
Speaking of Mareep...

Man, XY Mareep definitely ain't as good as GSC Mareep.

It shows up horribly underleveled, (Thanks, Horde-Exclusive encounters.) and it gets no moves.

Got an Ampharos rn that needs to paralyze every mon it faces so Electro Ball gets a boost. Otherwise, I have to use Thundershock as the primary STAB move. At Lv. 30.
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Electro ball is stronger than Thundershock no matter what speed you have.
 
The Good
BW2 Lucario. So I followed the official guide for Gym 1, which advised me to raise Riolu to level 15 and get Force Palm, which as it turned out OHKOed both of Cheren's Pokemon. I then let the rest of my team catch up, put it back in ready for Gym 2 and it evolved early.
Lucario is nothing short of a beast. Obviously insane offenses earlygame, but also takes earlygame attacks like a champ. Immune to sandstorm and poison. And he doesn't need to have supereffective moves to just carve up standard trainers. I ended up giving him Leftovers because that's how well he was just brushing off everything. What a god. He would fall off lategame if it wasn't for that insane movepool...
XY Farfetched
You want a sign of how easy XY was? In the earlygame there's a trade for this monstrosity. My brother took it, and only went and used it for the rest of the game. Since it was a traded Pokemon, it gained EXP at a faster rate. Which, thanks to the reworked EXP Share meant it was 10+ levels above the rest of the party. And therefore at least 20 levels above everything it was fighting. It unironically hit Level 100 while he was fighting the Elite Four (level 60s). Just. What. A. Beast.
DP Infernape
We all know Gen 4 Infernape was a beast. But 9 year old me did not. He just liked the Fire type starter, and didn't have any concept of training up other Pokemon. So my Infernape, aided by a supply of sacs and Revives, pretty much soloed my first Pokemon game. The only other mons that did any real work were my Crobat that I'd caught at a high level and made into my Flyer, and Dialga, who chipped in some stuff using only the 4 moves I caught it with. I got stuck on Bertha for a while (I thought Close Combat as bad, so had to go back and learn it again...), but once I made it through that... Yikes. Many Roserade and Lucario were slaughtered.
The Bad
The entire Pikachu line in literally any game
I don't actually dislike Pikachu for its popularity. I don't dislike it for now competitively useless it is. I hate it because it is garbage in game. In any game where you have the misfortune of adding this rodent to your team, you will be left with a midspeed frail thing that only beats things it is Super Effective against. Which is two types. And god forbid you have to catch it as Pichu. That thing has to be carried so hard it loses to anything that isn't Water/Flying. And even then it might be outsped and OHKOed. Then finally, when that trauma is over and you finally expend a precious Thunderstone... It still has the exact same issues. Totally reliant on TMs for coverage. Midspeed not outstanding. Frail. Doesn't hit hard enough. Next.
DP Luxray
As much as I love this thing's design (who doesn't love Shinx), it gets a physical movepool with Spark (better than Thunder Fang as it is same power with more accuracy and secondary chance) and Crunch as its best moves. I got lucky and mine had +SpA so I was able to teach it Thunder to actually hurt things with. But yeah, this thing is unfortunately terrible. Especially if you're stuck with Rivalry rather than Intimidate. Oh and despite it being on the second route, it sucks in the first two Gyms yay.
BW2 Zorua/Zoroark
Yeah, this thing is kinda bad unless you go hunting TMs, whereupon it becomes bearable in the lategame. Because when you get it, for coverage it's one of the dozens of mons at this point who learn Dig and it gets Incinerate by TM. That's it. Hope Foul Play works because not only is this thing frail AF, it hits like a wet paper bag too. Oh and Illusion is just a gimmick 90% of the time. Best of luck.
The Ugly Ducklings
XY Amaura
Ok XY was an easy game, but this was nothing less than a joy to use. Refrigerate was so much fun to play with, and it gives you access to decent moves not called Ice Beam. What did kinda spoil Amaura though, was its evo condition. Iirc, you have to level it up to or above level 40 at night. It was so obscure for me that every other mon in my party was fully evolved. I tried everything from stones to levelling it up in the rain, until finally I found it out by a last-resort Google search. Then it was back to UNBRIDLED JOY of a decent Ice-type.
DP Drapion
I picked up this thing specifically because I loved CritDra, only to discover to my disappointment that guess what, Scope Lens is postgame, Cross Poison is learnt at Level 58 and Night Slash is an Egg move until BW2. However, to my pleasant suprise, Drapion turned out to be a beast anyway. It has great defensive capabilites, comes with elemental fangs, and Dark is a lean, mean attacking type with Crunch. Plus Sniper Pin Missile Skorupi was hilariously RNG-heavy to the point that it could just occasionally wipe something off the face of the map it really shouldn't have lol.
 
Crabominable is easily the worst case of this I've ever run into. On that same team was Komala, who was disappointing in its own right, but that was more due to my team comp than anything else. Crabominable meanwhile is awful for its own, unique reasons, mainly that in base SM it takes fucking forever to evolve, so if you say, caught a Crabrawler on the first island and wanted to use it the entire game, you'd have to ferry around a weak, slow first form Pokemon for 90% of the game, and one that falls off incredibly quickly by the 2nd island at that.

That alone is bad enough, but even when it finally evolves, what you end up with is a powerful, but extremely slow Ice/Fighting type that actively eats shit to every single E4 member so even when you do evolve it, it doesn't get any better.

It's a damn shame too because Yeti Crabs are really cool animals and I've always wanted one as a Pokemon, and having one evolve from a boxing crab was even cooler in concept. But it just falls apart completely in execution and results in something that's damn near worthless in-game

....Honestly, half my Sun team consisted of disappointments, as Komala and Decidueye were also quite disappointing, with the last one being especially painful given how much I love the line design-wise. At least Lycanroc-Midday was okay and both Musdale and Muk were GOAT-tier mons through and through.
 
NuttyRabbit said:
At least Lycanroc-Midday was okay and both Musdale and Muk were GOAT-tier mons through and through.
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Yeah, Alolan Muk is nuts. It's like I mentioned above with Drapion, but it gets a decent movepool. Access to Minimise is just dirty, and it's one of the few mons that reliably solo the Ghost Trial. 10/10 would sludge again.
EDIT: A few mons I forgot.
Good: BW Darumaka
If you take a moment before the Bug Gym to step out onto Route 4, you'll get this thing as a reward. And. It. Kicks. Butt. Wipes the Bug Gym out totally, gets Dig to nail the Electric Gym's Zebstrika, useful if you can give it a Rock move in the Flying Gym, obviously solos the Ice Gym, even puts in work throughout the Elite Four and fights against N and his dad on account of how silly hard its Flare Blitizs hit. It's even more terrifying in BW2's midgame (now solos the Bug Gym, hits 2/3 Electric mons with Dig, wipes out Skyla's new Skamory...).
Bad: SM Wishiwashi
For a pretty epic Totem, this thing totally sucks once you add it to your team. Uselessly low speed makes you slower than Gravelers, terrible HP completely undermines its defenses, and you're left panicking the moment something resists Water.
Very Ugly: DP Bibarel
Shoutouts to this thing for a. Being on literally every route and b. Making DP's mass of HM requirements not seem an issue at all. Just don't actually send it into battle and it'll do you proud.
 
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theotherguytm said:
Very Ugly: DP Bibarel
Shoutouts to this thing for a. Being on literally every route and b. Making DP's mass of HM requirements not seem an issue at all. Just don't actually send it into battle and it'll do you proud.
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I think Bibarel is S-tier in the DPPt tier lists for that reason. It's so amazingly convenient that its merits in battle aren't important in the slightest.
 
Codraroll said:
I think Bibarel is S-tier in the DPPt tier lists for that reason. It's so amazingly convenient that its merits in battle aren't important in the slightest.
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If you can get a Moody Bibarel does it make it better in battle?

EDIT: D'oh! Forgot Moody was Gen V. :facepalm:

... Maybe when the Sinnoh remakes come around...
 
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NuttyRabbit said:
On that same team was Komala, who was disappointing in its own right, but that was more due to my team comp than anything else.
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Komala has one tiny niche in USUM, but I've never used it much. It's not obvious at first glance though.

So you know how Comatose makes it always "asleep" right? Well, first you give it Sleep Talk via TM (accessible through Route 6, you have to find an entrance to Paniola Town, IIRC not hard to find at all) and then Last Resort for 12 BP from the Move Tutor Big Wave Beach on Melemele Island. Then go to the Move Deleter in Hau'oli City Pokemon Center and delete all your moves save for Sleep Talk and Last Resort. When you use Sleep Talk, you will always select Last Resort. You will have to delete moves periodically as it learns them though.

Congratulations! You have a 140 BP (210 after STAB) move you can use all the time off 115 base Attack via Sleep Talk. Still only 10 BP, but hey, it's better than Komala's meh movepool normally, and you can use Last Resort 5 more times just by clicking Last Resort after you click Sleep Talk first in battle.

Also why did they give Komala 75 Special Attack when Hidden Power was its only Special move in Generation 7? Always bothered me.

Also, Darumaka is so nutty that I consider it up there with Abra in terms of "most broken in-game mon of all time." Me and Ryota once made a graduate thesis-level essay on why, it's crazy.
 
DrumstickGaming said:
So you know how Comatose makes it always "asleep" right? Well, first you give it Sleep Talk via TM (accessible through Route 6, you have to find an entrance to Paniola Town, IIRC not hard to find at all) and then Last Resort for 12 BP from the Move Tutor Big Wave Beach on Melemele Island. Then go to the Move Deleter in Hau'oli City Pokemon Center and delete all your moves save for Sleep Talk and Last Resort. When you use Sleep Talk, you will always select Last Resort. You will have to delete moves periodically as it learns them though.
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You could just teach Work Up instead of Sleep Talk, unless you really want to preserve PP and attack turn one, that's an option for sure

Also, I believe I've already talked about it in the thread earlier (I am surprised this got revived), but since it's been mentioned, I never got the hype around Alolan Grimer. I am talking mostly from an USUM perspective, but Grimer has to rely a lot on Minimize to do well in most fights and Ultra Necrozma is shockingly bad matchup unless you spam Roto Boosts (you are 2HKOed by Smart Strike, if my memory is correct). My experience with it is contrary to the "omg it's incredibly broken" belief.

And I agree that Lucario in BW2 is underrated. People constantly think that its movepool is bad, when that's not true. Force Palm + Return, from experience, held up just fine till it learned Close Combat. Hell, Riolu doesn't even need Force Palm for Cheren. I noticed that if you Quick Attack his Pokemon turn one, they will go for Tackle and thus you can kill them with Counter. I don't think Oran Berry is even necessary, but you can use that, if needed. The only disadvantage of Riolu, per experience, is literally finding it (and some odd matchups like Clay, though it can still contribute there by killing something like Krokorok, and Marshal, but it has tons of great matchups, most notably Iris and Ghetsis).
 
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Quite a few Pokemon have disappointed me. However, most of them were bad for similar reasons. They usually have pretty high attacking stats, decentish bulk but not that many resistances, and are very slow. My memory of my last S/M and US/UM playthough is kinda hazy though, so there might be some things I'm not remembering correctly

Exeggutor (S/M): I was so hyped for this mon when it was revealed, but found its in-game performance to be disappointing. It came late, didn't come with a good Grass-type STAB move, and it was surprisingly weak. Dragon Hammer was only 3HKOing the opposing trainers at best, while they outspeed and normally 1 or 2 shot it in return. I ended up having to bench it because I was juggling a good 7 - 10 mons around on my team and Exeggutor wasn't carrying its weight. Maybe it does better against the Elite 4, but I wouldn't know.

Decidueye (USUM): As a Dartrix, this mon actually was pretty decent. I remember it doing okay against Totem Araquanid and Lurantis on Akala. However, its performance took a dip when it evolved into Decidueye. Trainers were using stronger mons with more EVs, so Decidueye's damage, speed, and bulk all seemed lackluster. More opponents were using Dark-type moves too. What would normally happen is that it would get outsped, 1-2HKOed by the opponent's super effective move, and barely dealing around half in return with Spirit Shackle. At the very least, it had Sucker Punch, letting it sneak a few revenge kills here an there. It also is probably better if you are using Z-Crystals, which I elected not to for more challenge.

Hatterene: One of the cooler new Pokemon sword and shield introduced. Sadly, its too slow in-game and doesn't have enough resistances. It was the mon that struggled the most getting anything done for most of my playthrough, which sucks since it was the mon I was looking forward the most to using. It also came later than all my other party members (which I caught in the wild area) so that was lame too.

Starmie: People were hyping this up in the in-game teams discussion thread, so I thought it would be broken. However, it ended up being more underwhelming that I thought it would. Sweeping the early-game barely matters when even my Zigzagoon 2HKOes everything and its power always seemed lackluster in the latter half of the game. It was still a decent mon since it had 2 decently powerful STABs and Recover, and was very fast, but Cinderace, Bellossom, and even Magnemite were more consistently good during my playthrough.
 
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Literally everyone you get in Colo besides Espeon, Ironically Plusle, and if you're lucky to get it the first time, Quilava
Everyone else is either a trash Gen 2 mon, has an absurd purification rate so they're move locked, or has garbage movesets due to the lack of tutors and good TMs
In fact it's baffling Plusle, despite being level 13 when you get it, can actually be useful if you use Exp share and grind at the 100 trainer Trials once. Then it's the best SP attacker along with Espeon for the last bit of main game, or Post Game

FriendlyCrusader said:
Lucario for this gens OU. Never did work out well for me, and I scraped the team I built it with. Thought since Clef was the big new thing, that it would put in some work. Never did.
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Belly Drum Offensive Clef though rocks

MOD EDIT: Please don't double post - CRoll
 
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DPP Glaceon, simply because who wants to wait until the 7th gym for an ice type eeveelution when the whole route up to Snowpoint is full of ice types as well, and the ones that you’ll encounter on the way to Snowpoint perform better throughout the story than Glaceon.

Mon looks sick though to be fair
 
Johto is filled with some of my favourite Pokemon designs, but holy crap the stats were designed by a drunkard or something. They're always either lopsided, way too low, or broken. Never any middle-ground.

:gs/dunsparce:
I have an undying love for Dunsparce and every time I see its stats I get so upset lol. It was designed purely to be some trophy Pokemon, given the tsuchinoko connotations. It has an amazing movepool (including Glare) but it's so ungodly underpowered stat-wise that it'll never live a turn to use it. Its only strategy is to use Glare, Headbutt with Serene Grace, and pray. Maybe get a Coil(!) inbetween.

:gs/magcargo:
Magcargo is also a Pokemon I find really cool design-wise: it's a magma snail! According to the ever-accurate Pokedex, inside that shell sleeps the power to decimate all life. However, the stats say quite the contrary: it can't even end the life of a baby Pokemon in my personal opinion. No HP to make use of its decent defenses, mediocre offensive stats and no speed to speak of. Not to mention it has more common weaknesses than I have allergies, which is a feat in and of itself. Hell, it didn't even get Solar Beam, a move commonplace among Fire-types, until what, Gen 4 I think? I think it should have been the one to get Drought instead of Torkoal if only to make it less awful. Besides, that would make Water less of a devastating weakness!

:gs/ariados:
Ariados is also absolutely sick and the pinnacle of Bug-type design, until you get to the stats. Godlike movepool that only improves with passing generations, but the stats are that of an NFE. 400 BST, and that's after it was buffed during GS's development, and a SpD buff in Gen 7. I wish I was joking. Hell, GF had the nerve to take away Spider Web as its signature move in Gen 5, and then they gave it Toxic Thread in Gen 7 which is only debatably a good option. Normal Poison and only a single Speed drop? May as well use Toxic or String Shot at that point...please just evolve this thing, it needs help.
 
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