The Question of the Day is a way to facilitate community discussion to help members ponder the unanswered questions of the world that are somehow relating to the hobby. Questions are many times open ended and up to interpretation. Feel free to post your thoughts in as much or as little detail as you’d like.
Helpful Considerations may or may not help some people focus their answer, these are blurred to not bother those who have their own ideas.
Volcarona was useless in the gen V VGC tournament. Waste of a spot… might not have been 100% its fault but it will forever be seen as garbage by me because of this.
None, although I will say that Forretress almost fits as an answer. Is it an ADV OU staple? Sure. Have I used it with great success? Undoubtedly.
But it has so (Gengar) many (Gengar) weak (Gengar) spots (Gengar,) games revolve around sneaking in pursuit-tar on 4D predictions and 50/50’s while pussyfooting around HP fire Magneton and praying that you survive the roll. Unless you have the perfect matchup you’re constantly on the backfoot, scrambling to preserve every last hit point, dreading whatever the opponent has to abuse your 4 moveslot syndrome. You do no damage, you threaten nothing, spinning is an exercise in futility, Skarmory one ups you even in situations where you’re supposed to have the advantage, as does a bunch of attackers that you resist. It’s just hard to be Forretress.
Being able to catch a Nidoran at the start of the game and then being able to evolve Nidorino super early into Nidoking feels like a cheat code however, it’s a letdown.
This was the first one that came to mind for me as well. I stumbled across speed run videos on YouTube and was blown away that you could have a stage 3 Pokemon before the second gym. I incorporated Nidoking into my next play through and he was very lackluster in the later part of the game.
Espeon/Umbreon. I replayed silver version a couple years back and wanted Espeon on my team. The whole friendship and night/day evolution mechanic was a complete pia. The damn Evee didn’t evolve until after a beat the elite 4 and overall was a waste of a slot.
Steelix is genuinely one of my favourite Pokemon, but it generally sucks in any team comp even on a regular playthrough. It’s so excruciatingly slow and it’s incredibly high defense is completely meaningless because of it’s low special defense and terrible offensive capabilities.
