The Power of Poison!

Pip the Puffin

NOTE: This is my first new thread, so if it's horrible, I'm sorry!

Ah, the Poison type. I think we are all aware of how horrible it is for attacking. It is only super effective against Grass, and Grass has no shortage of weaknesses. In addition to this, Steel is completely immune to Poison moves. This thread will explore both the good and the bad of the poison type.

THE GOOD - Defence
  • Many competitive battlers opt to have a Poison type on their team, simply to set up (and absorb) Toxic Spikes. Toxic Spikes is a good move, poisoning/badly poisoning all those who switch. However, it has problems with Heracross and other Guts users. It takes 1-2 turns to set up, and if the opponent sends in a Poison type of their own, then those turns have been wasted.
  • Generally, most of the powerful poison moves have a chance of poisoning the opponent. Toxic, although not a damaging move, is probably the most popular Poison type move as Toxic will slowly cause the death of a threat assuming it doesn't switch. Poison Jab and Sludge Bomb are useful not only for their acceptable base power, but for the chance of partly crippling a threat.
  • The poison type does not do too badly defensively. It is only weak to Psychic and Ground, one very rare attacking type, and one very common attacking type. To make up for this, a few defensive Pokemon like Weezing can utilise Levitate. As the poison type has so few weaknesses, several Pokemon, such as Muk, can set up rather effectively in UU.
  • Poison Pokemon generally enjoy a good reputation outside of battling, due to the evil teams, such as Galactic, using them. Arbok, Weezing and to a lesser extent Seviper, have reached fame because of this. Unfortunately, this doesn't help their battling reputation, as these three pokemon are destined to lose in the anime.
  • Poison type Pokemon are relatively common and versatile. There are Ghost/Poison Pokemon, like Gengar, Water/Poison Pokemon, like Qwilfish, Flying/Poison Pokemon, like Crobat, Ground/Poison pokemon, like Nidoqueen, Grass/Poison pokemon, like Roserade and several other combinations. Generation 1 yielded many Poison pokemon.
  • Poison Pokemon are immune to poison which is fairly helpful, albeit not substantial.
  • Poison has some great resists, such as to Fighting, a very common attacking type!
THE BAD - Offense
  • Poison type attacks are utterly useless against Steel Pokemon. The abundance of Heatran, Bronzong and Metagross definitely is not helping this type prosper. The steel type has definitely contributed greatly to Poison's downfall.
  • Gunk Shot has become available to several Pokemon, like Infernape, from the Platinum Move Tutor. Why isn't it being utilised? Gunk Shot's horrible accuracy prevents this move from seeing almost any use.
  • As said before, Poison is a horrible attacking type. It is only super effective against Grass and many Grass types are part Poison themselves, meaning the weakness is neutralised. This means it is impossible to be 4x weak to Poison.
  • Generally, most Poison pokemon have horrible stats. Nuff said.
How the poison type be improved and actually see some use?
Discuss away =)

Thanks to IamGengar for pointing out the obvious =). Much appreciated!
 
Poison as a defensive typing is just AWESOME! Fighting resisting, grass resisting, bug resisting. Most impotant is fighting resisting. Most of the time when someone think about a fighting resisting type, the first thin comes to mind is flying types, but they are usually weak to SR, therefore they cannot do as well as they can do without SR. The secong fighting resisting type is psychic, but most psychic monsters are just too weak to handle the hardcore power of fighting(except for celebi). Then, there's poison, a lot of point types has a pretty bulky stat and is not weak to SR like nidoqueen, nidoking ect. I am sure poison has some great hidden power.

A few poison pokemons who deserve a mention:
Crobat
Tentacruel
Nidoqueen
Qwilifish
the Scorpion thingy
Gengar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Roserade

There is one thing in common with them: a extremely unique typing!
 
Poison happens to be my favorite type.

What would help is a slight reconfiguration of the whole weaknesses thing.

Poison should be

Super effective against:
Grass, Bug, Water, Fighting, Normal
Not very effective against:
Steel, Poison
Inneffective against:
Nothing
Neutral to:
Everything else
Weak to:
Psychic, Ground
Resistant to:
Poison, Grass, Bug, Fighting

This would mean several things:
1: Anything with a poison move would be deadly to Ludicolo, Poliwrath, Heracross, Breloom, Parasect, Wormadam (Plant Cloak), and Bibarel.
2: Lucario, Foretress, Scizor, Wormadam (Trash Cloak), and Empoleon would take neutral damage from poison moves.

Offensively, the Poison-type did get screwed. Defensively, however, it does decently enough. Only two weaknesses, and some poison types have levitate or a flying type to overcome Ground weaknesses, and some, such as Skuntank or Drapion, are part Dark to negate the Psychic weakness.
 
Well, Dragon Attacks have only one Super-Effective hit to their name as well, and don't make much more of a dent than Poison on Steel-types.

Some would say that most Pokemon don't have Dragon attacks unless they're a) STAB or b) Ubers but then again, most Poison pokemon don't use their STAB anyway. Weezing may Sludge Bomb from time to time, but mostly it packs Flamethrower or Thunderbolt as its single attack. Drapion often opts for Night Slash, Earthquake and Ice Fang over its own aptly named Cross Poison.

A very good poison-type would be one with Poison/Dark typing, the Levitate ability and good stats. Anything not named Rampardos or Pinsir would be unable to make a sufficient dent. Unless it had lacklustre base stats, of course.
 
Epidemic said:
Well, Poison as an offensive typing isn't very good, nor as defensive. You are weak to the two most common physical and special types in the game, but absorbing Toxic Spikes is nice.

The only offensive type that it resists is Fighting...
Click to expand...

I hope you are aware that pokemon such as Nidoqueen have the ability to counter Lucario and Heracross, 2 of the most deadly pokemon in the OU metagame, and pokemon like Tentacruel have the ability to stop Special Attacks from things like Heatran, as a Earth Power fails to OHKO Tentacruel, and can handle MixApe and such things.

The only reason I use them is for the abosrbing of Toxic Spikes, like Rosarade, being able to absorb and set up Toxic Spikes. Tentacruel can Rapid Spin while being able to handle some stuff, and absorb toxic spikes, which is a pretty good help in some teams.
 
1234gjy said:
Poison as a defensive typing is just AWESOME! Fighting resisting, grass resisting, bug resisting. Most impotant is fighting resisting. Most of the time when someone think about a fighting resisting type, the first thin comes to mind is flying types, but they are usually weak to SR, therefore they cannot do as well as they can do without SR. The secong fighting resisting type is psychic, but most psychic monsters are just too weak to handle the hardcore power of fighting(except for celebi). Then, there's poison, a lot of point types has a pretty bulky stat and is not weak to SR like nidoqueen, nidoking ect. I am sure poison has some great hidden power.

A few poison pokemons who deserve a mention:
Crobat
Tentacruel
Nidoqueen
Qwilifish
the Scorpion thingy
Gengar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Roserade

There is one thing in common with them: a extremely unique typing!
Click to expand...

Gengar's poison type is just another roadblock. It can't absorb Toxic Spikes due to Levitate. It already is immune to Fighting type due to Ghost type. It already resist Bug moves due to Ghost type and it is a sweeper, so it can care about Toxic a lot less than the walls and tanks. However, it was made a prone target to its counterpart Alakazam, especially in the earlier generations because Dark type wasn't available until 2nd gen. and during the first generation, Gengar was the only Pokemon (apart from Gastly and Haunter and a few weakling Bug moves with like 20 BP) that can hit a STAB-Super Effective move against Alakazam or Mewtwo, but both were able to outrun it and kill with Super Effective Psychic due to the poison type.

Psychic is used a lot from the evercommon Azelfs, and the last time I checked, Earthquake is the most commonly used move, ever.
 
Psychic is far from common as an attacking type.

IMO Poison should be super effective against both Grass and Fighting.

Fighting Pokemon obviously couldn't fight as well as they could with Poison. As course, this gives Breloom 2 ultra effectives - Flying and Poison.
 
poison should have been supereffective against water.
and i afree, gengars poison typing sucks.
 
Why should Poison be super-effective against Water?
Water washes away the Poison!

Seeing as Poison has so few things going for it already, Poison attacks should be "not very effective" against Steels, but Steels can't be poisoned.
 
Pip the Puffin said:
Why should Poison be super-effective against Water?
Water washes away the Poison!

Seeing as Poison has so few things going for it already, Poison attacks should be "not very effective" against Steels, but Steels can't be poisoned.
Click to expand...

on the other hand, poison pollutes water.
 
I suppose Poison pollutes it, never though of that.

Psychic is used on few Pokemon, other than say Azelf. It is generally only used as STAB. It is an inferior attacking type.

The best attacking types are Fighting, Ice, Dragon, Water and, best of all, Ground.

Fighting and Ground are super effective against the most types with Ice coming at a close second.
Water and Dragon aren't resisted by much (Empoleon). Water is better defensively though.
 
Epidemic said:
Well, Poison as an offensive typing isn't very good, nor as defensive. You are weak to the two most common physical and special types in the game, but absorbing Toxic Spikes is nice.

The only offensive type that it resists is Fighting...
Click to expand...
Huh?

Ground is extremely common, but Psychic is not.

Aside from Alakazam, Azelf, Espeon, Mesprit, what else always carries Psychic?

Bronzong and Metagross rarely use their Psychic STAB. Cresselia and Uxie sometimes use eletric/ice instead of STAB as well.
 
1059860 said:
and during the first generation, Gengar was the only Pokemon (apart from Gastly and Haunter) that can hit a STAB-Super Effective move against Alakazam or Mewtwo, but both were able to outrun it and kill with Super Effective Psychic due to the poison type.
Click to expand...
Beedril had Twinneedle...

And the only damaging Ghost attack was the pathetic Lick. Night Shade doesn't count since it's typeless.
 
Bogmire said:
I thought there was a glitch in R/B that made it so psychics were immune to lick.
Click to expand...
The type chart was different in RBY.

Psychic was actually IMMUNE to Ghost (not that it made much of a difference).

Poison was also super-effective on bug (giving parasect an uber weak to poison).

Bug was super-effective on poison, as opposed to not very effective. All the grass/poisons were uber weak to bug.

Ice was also neutral on fire instead of not very effective, so Ice Beam was super effective on Moltres/Charizard.

I believe that's all.
 
Bogmire said:
I thought there was a glitch in R/B that made it so psychics were immune to lick.
Click to expand...
That was no glitch. In RBY, Psychic was unaffected by ghost moves, other than Confuse Ray and Night Shade. This just left Lick.

Also, my reasoning behind the other types I want Poison to be super-effective against:
Grass; Already weak to poison, why mess with it?
Bug; That's how it was in R/B/Y.
Water; Poison pollutes water
Fighting; boxers, professional wrestlers, they can be poisoned.
Normal; Your average human being or common rodent can't really resist poison.
 
You can't make Poison too strong! =)

Interesting tidbit: The funnel-web spider's venom is only life-threatening to primates. This means that Poison's effect would be different on every Normal type (Ambipom would take much more damage than, say, Dunsparce). For this reason, I think we should leave Normal out of this.

Poison should be Super Effective against Bug, Fighting and Grass, that's all. That's a good amount of weaknesses to make Poison valuable. Seeing as Poison is still quite good defensively, don't go overboard offensively.
 
or instead of giving it more types to hit SE, they could remove its ground weakness to make it more of a defensive type. I never understood how ground>poison is supposed to work.
 
Maybe the dust created by earthquakes contaminates the poison?
Why is Ground super effective against Poison? Hmm...

Poison has enough resists anyway, Fighting being the main one. How does that work? Does the fighter not want to get poisoned? They are so healthy!
 
Pip the Puffin said:
Maybe the dust created by earthquakes contaminates the poison?
Why is Ground super effective against Poison? Hmm...

Poison has enough resists anyway, Fighting being the main one. How does that work? Does the fighter not want to get poisoned? They are so healthy!
Click to expand...

I never said it would resist ground, it would be neutral.
 
Ugh, I originally didn't post in this thread due to how dumb it was, I assumed it would just kinda go away, but if people are seriously responding, I'll say this:

Poison is a worthless offensive type, it is the WORST offensive type, bar none. It only hits for SE on Grass types, which have several much more easily exploitable weaknesses anyways.

Poison is also a mediocre defensive type. The only two truly significant resists it provides are bug and fighting. Ground weak means that with a few exceptions (pretty much Nidoqueen and Tentacruel) non levitating/flying poison types can't serve in a defensive role. There are a handful of useful poison types, but in general they serve as specialized walls, meant to stop a specific threat.

The most commonly used poison type is Gengar, and frankly he's not really effected much by it, the only real benefit he gleans from his dual type is an x4 bug resist. Grass is generally an inferior offensive type, only really hitting one pokemon in OU hard.
 
As a defensive typing, poison by itself is pretty mediocre. The awful weakness to ground is adequately compensated by fighting (and megahorn) resistance because few fighting Pokemon run earthquake now. Weakness to psychic and resistances to poison and grass are less relevant. Immunity to toxic and the ability to absorb toxic spikes ultimately nudges the verdict above the average type.

However, as a secondary type, poison is quite useful. You would not need to rely on poison STAB offensively for a start. But it is defensively where the advantages lie. Other than the aforementioned benefits; the Nidos gain resistance to the common fighting/rock combination and grass/flying/bug Pokemon lose the ground weakness, but keep the fighting resist.
 
Kietharr said:
Ugh, I originally didn't post in this thread due to how dumb it was, I assumed it would just kinda go away, but if people are seriously responding, I'll say this:

Poison is a worthless offensive type, it is the WORST offensive type, bar none. It only hits for SE on Grass types, which have several much more easily exploitable weaknesses anyways.

Poison is also a mediocre defensive type. The only two truly significant resists it provides are bug and fighting. Ground weak means that with a few exceptions (pretty much Nidoqueen and Tentacruel) non levitating/flying poison types can't serve in a defensive role. There are a handful of useful poison types, but in general they serve as specialized walls, meant to stop a specific threat.

The most commonly used poison type is Gengar, and frankly he's not really effected much by it, the only real benefit he gleans from his dual type is an x4 bug resist. Grass is generally an inferior offensive type, only really hitting one pokemon in OU hard.
Click to expand...

Isn't Normal worse of an attacking type than Poison? Normal does not hit SE on anything, is resisted by Rock/Steel and has no affect on Ghosts?

Poison has its resists but at least it can hit SE on some grass types such as Skymin, although I never defend Poison as an offensive type.
 
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