Post by goldensandslash on Oct 14, 2022 6:59:00 GMT
Pokémon come in many shapes and sizes.
There are plenty of species. As of Gen 8, there are 905 different Pokémon.
But one stands above the rest... a Pokémon so powerful that it honestly should have never been made.
No, I'm not talking about Mewtwo, Kyogre, Groudon, Zacian, Rayquaza, or any of those Uber legendaries. Those are overpowered on purpose. They are legendaries explicitly designed to allow the player to curb-stomp any foe. They're also hard to catch, and often come towards the end of the game where there's not much left to do.
But one Pokémon does not fall into this category. There is one Pokémon that is able to be obtained relatively easily and just makes the entire game into a joke, arguably even more than the legendaries do.
Go ahead and take a guess as to which Pokémon this is. While you're doing that, I'll list some honorable mentions. These are very overpowered, but still don't hold a candle to the actual Pokémon that I'm going to be talking about today.
Gyarados is our first nominee. It can be obtained very easily by fishing literally anywhere, in almost every game. It has high stats, good typing, a good movepool (Gen 4+), a Mega Evolution (Gen 6-7), etc. It is very powerful and can trivialize most of the game for any game that you use it in.
Swampert is another good candidate. It's available as a starter, so you literally get it for free. As a Water/Ground Pokémon, it only has one weakness: Grass. But the region that it's found in is Hoenn. In Hoenn, there is no Grass-type Gym, Elite Four member, or Champion. So no boss fight will have anything that can hit it super-effectively.
Snorlax is really good. It has high offense and defense. Additionally, because it's usually found as a stationary encounter, you don't have to worry about possibly not finding one. It's always available to you if you want it. The Special Defense on it is among the best in the game.
Magnemite in Gen 5 and Gen 7 is stupidly-good, since you get it VERY early in the game. Any Flying-type that you encounter, which are aplenty in the early-game, is absolutely destroyed by Magnemite's high stats. Its Steel-typing also means it resists nearly everything, and this is ESPECIALLY the case in the early-game, where Steel's weaknesses aren't too prevalent among the common Pokémon you face.
Geodude is similar to Magnemite. Not only is it obtained early, but it is this way in almost every game that it is in. And not only does it do good against Flying-types, but Normal-types and Bug-types too. That's almost everything that you face in the early game, so you can coast right along through the early game with a Geodude.
Any Dragon-type that can learn Dragon Dance (Dragonite, Kingdra, Altaria, Haxorus) in Gen 3-5 can honestly solo the entirety of the Elite Four and Champion on its own. Dragon Dance is a stupidly-good move, buffing both Attack and Speed, enabling you to easily sweep once you set up enough of them. And being Dragon-types, the only type that resists them is Steel. In Gen 6+, the addition of the Fairy-type makes this a bit worse, but it's still a viable option if you have enough coverage moves.
But there's one nonlegendary Pokémon that is far above that. Have you figured it out yet?
This is your last chance before I give away the answer.
3...
2...
1...
Okay. Don't say I didn't warn you.
The best Pokémon to use in any playthrough of any Pokémon game, by a significant margin, is... Blissey.
Let's start with the obvious. Blissey is good enough to see competitive play in every generation from Gen 2 onwards, and the only reason it doesn't see play in Gen 1 is because it didn't exist in Gen 1. And it's not hard to see why, look at its stats.
HP: 255
ATK: 10
DEF: 10
SPA: 75
SPD: 135
SPE: 55
That HP stat is through the roof, maxing out at 714 if you have Level 100, max EVs, and max IVs. Having a really high Special Defense also helps.
But there are clear weaknesses there. Its Defense is absolute trash, and its Attack and Special Attack basically say that you're not attacking with it, ever. And sure enough, your opponents can exploit these weaknesses. Any human who takes even a quick cursory look at Blissey sees how to beat it.
And that's the problem.
Any HUMAN who takes a look at Blissey sees how to beat it. When you're playing a Pokémon game's single-player campaign, your opponents aren't human, they are CPUs. And they can't deal with Blissey AT ALL.
The AI is programmed to know weaknesses, yes. But it looks at the type chart first and foremost. If you were to use a Swampert, sure, the AI spots its weakness to Grass and will usually use a Grass-type move if available. But Blissey's weaknesses aren't so apparent.
Blissey is NOT weak to Fighting-type moves, like the AI thinks it is. It's actually weak to PHYSICAL moves.
If your opponent has a Blissey, a Normal-type using STAB Return will do more damage than if that same Pokémon used Focus Blast instead. Because Blissey's physical defense is significantly weaker than its special defense. Focus Blast barely makes a dent into Blissey, because its Special Defense and HP are just THAT high.
Kyogre using Water Spout at maximum power while in rain with STAB is not enough to get Blissey's HP down to HALF, assuming both Pokémon are the same level. And this is from one of the best Special Attackers in the game. It only deals damage equal to about one-third of Blissey's HP bar. And if you're fighting an enemy trainer with a Kyogre in-game (we're gonna assume this is a ROM hack, obviously no trainer in the unhacked games has a Kyogre), then this is what the AI will try to do: it'll hit Blissey with its strongest moves, even if those are special-based moves.
So, okay. It's clear that if the AI is using any special moves, then your Blissey is invincible. The AI will simply never win. But... okay. This makes Blissey one of the best Pokémon in the game, but it's on par with the other stuff I talked about. It isn't any higher than that... yet.
After all, what good does it do to just have a massive special wall? You need to be able to attack in order to win, and Blissey's offensive stats are garbage.
And that would be a totally valid criticism... until you look at Blissey's movepool. Ice Beam, Shadow Ball, Psychic, Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, Charge Beam...
This is amazing coverage from decently-good special attacks. Obviously they won't hurt too much coming from Blissey... but there is one more thing that you overlooked. Do you notice what all those moves that I just listed have in common? Besides being special-based damage-dealing moves?
Each one has a chance of doing something after use. Psychic has a 10% chance of dropping the enemy's Special Defense. Charge Beam has a 70% chance of boosting the user's Special Attack. And so on. Except this ISN'T the case for Blissey.
Blissey gets Serene Grace as an ability, which doubles the chances of secondary effects occurring. Thunder does not paralyze 30% of the time, but 60% of the time. Charge Beam will ALWAYS raise Blissey's Special Attack.
So Blissey is able to just spam Charge Beam to max out its Special Attack, and thus cure its own "low offensive stats" problem. Or it can use Thunder to paralyze an opponent more than half the time, severely crippling whatever the opponent was planning on doing.
Of course, Serene Grace isn't Blissey's ONLY ability. You might get a Blissey with a different ability instead, and be too lazy to go find one with Serene Grace. Except... you know what Blissey's other ability is? Natural Cure. This cures Blissey's status ailment upon switching out.
Which... of course, is Blissey's OTHER main weakness. Just use Toxic on it and it'll die. In single-player, of course, you use an Antidote immediately and the problem is gone. Items are honestly so powerful (especially X items) that a lot of players refuse to use items in battle against the enemy trainers in a single-player playthrough these days. It's honestly harder to find someone who does play with items than someone who doesn't. So maybe you're one of these people and you have reason to fear a Toxic from the opponent hitting your Blissey. Well, with Natural Cure... not anymore!
On top of that, Blissey has Softboiled, which heals 50% of its health upon use. You know how items are overpowered? Yeah, Blissey gives you free healing without items. And 50% of a Blissey's HP is a very large number.
So let's recap. If you have a Blissey on your team, then when you get into a fight, here's what you do. First, you list off your opponent's Pokémon. If there are any that have no physical attacks, cross them off cause you can deal with them. Then you realize that you can cross off the physical attackers too, unless they're super-effective. I'm not kidding.
In competitive play, you can see a Protean Greninja using Gunk Shot on a Blissey and it is only a OHKO about 6% of the time, and that's if Blissey has ZERO Defense EVs. If it has even as few as 4 Defense EVs, then an OHKO is impossible without a critical hit. Why? Because Blissey's HP is just THAT high.
It's hard to understate how high Blissey's HP is. It's so strong that it honestly doesn't need to worry about ANYTHING from a computer-controlled opponent. So far, I've only talked about the offensive Pokémon, but what if your opponent is using a defensive Pokémon? Well... that's not a problem either.
Blissey is so good defensively that it will be better at being defensive than whatever the opponent is using. You'll win the stall war there. Ot you can just whittle them down with Charge Beam, Psychic, and/or Shadow Ball to make your attacks do more damage and punch through those defenses.
So we've eliminated pretty much every offensive and defensive Pokémon from your opponents' teams throughout the entire game. There's not really much left beyond that. And what little there is? Even if you hypothetically can't find a way to deal with it using Blissey, you've got five other slots on your team that can be dedicated solely to deal with the few Pokémon that Blissey can't.
What Pokémon would you use to do that? Well, let's take a look.
Looking at the type chart, you can use Blissey against pretty much everything. Your opponent has a Water-type? An Electric-type? Blissey is the answer. After all, almost every single Pokémon of those types is a special attacker. Let's look at which types are good at physical attacking. Normal, Flying, Poison, Fighting.
Well, Fighting is a non-issue. Every game offers an abundance of Flying-types for the player to use, so... we're good there. And as for Normal, Flying, and Poison... all you need is a good Rock-type like Roggenrola or Geodude, and you've got that covered too.
In competitive play, the best Pokémon to pair with Blissey is Skarmory. It has 140 base Defense and has Steel/Flying typing. This means that it can take any physical hit almost as well as Blissey can take a special hit. If you can assemble both pieces of the combo in an in-game team, you've just broken the game wide open.
And honestly, Blissey breaks the game plenty enough on its own, especially if you build the rest of your team around it, using things like Skarmory.
Blissey is such a strong Pokémon that if you get a chance to get a Happiny/Chansey/Blissey on your in-game team, then you either take it and you've already won the game; or you pass it up because you think it's ban-worthy.
Yeah, multiplayer competitive play often bans Pokémon when they get to be too good. But, honestly, I think single-player needs to start doing this too.
We need to ban Blissey from single-player.
It's just that good.
There are plenty of species. As of Gen 8, there are 905 different Pokémon.
But one stands above the rest... a Pokémon so powerful that it honestly should have never been made.
No, I'm not talking about Mewtwo, Kyogre, Groudon, Zacian, Rayquaza, or any of those Uber legendaries. Those are overpowered on purpose. They are legendaries explicitly designed to allow the player to curb-stomp any foe. They're also hard to catch, and often come towards the end of the game where there's not much left to do.
But one Pokémon does not fall into this category. There is one Pokémon that is able to be obtained relatively easily and just makes the entire game into a joke, arguably even more than the legendaries do.
Go ahead and take a guess as to which Pokémon this is. While you're doing that, I'll list some honorable mentions. These are very overpowered, but still don't hold a candle to the actual Pokémon that I'm going to be talking about today.
Gyarados is our first nominee. It can be obtained very easily by fishing literally anywhere, in almost every game. It has high stats, good typing, a good movepool (Gen 4+), a Mega Evolution (Gen 6-7), etc. It is very powerful and can trivialize most of the game for any game that you use it in.
Swampert is another good candidate. It's available as a starter, so you literally get it for free. As a Water/Ground Pokémon, it only has one weakness: Grass. But the region that it's found in is Hoenn. In Hoenn, there is no Grass-type Gym, Elite Four member, or Champion. So no boss fight will have anything that can hit it super-effectively.
Snorlax is really good. It has high offense and defense. Additionally, because it's usually found as a stationary encounter, you don't have to worry about possibly not finding one. It's always available to you if you want it. The Special Defense on it is among the best in the game.
Magnemite in Gen 5 and Gen 7 is stupidly-good, since you get it VERY early in the game. Any Flying-type that you encounter, which are aplenty in the early-game, is absolutely destroyed by Magnemite's high stats. Its Steel-typing also means it resists nearly everything, and this is ESPECIALLY the case in the early-game, where Steel's weaknesses aren't too prevalent among the common Pokémon you face.
Geodude is similar to Magnemite. Not only is it obtained early, but it is this way in almost every game that it is in. And not only does it do good against Flying-types, but Normal-types and Bug-types too. That's almost everything that you face in the early game, so you can coast right along through the early game with a Geodude.
Any Dragon-type that can learn Dragon Dance (Dragonite, Kingdra, Altaria, Haxorus) in Gen 3-5 can honestly solo the entirety of the Elite Four and Champion on its own. Dragon Dance is a stupidly-good move, buffing both Attack and Speed, enabling you to easily sweep once you set up enough of them. And being Dragon-types, the only type that resists them is Steel. In Gen 6+, the addition of the Fairy-type makes this a bit worse, but it's still a viable option if you have enough coverage moves.
But there's one nonlegendary Pokémon that is far above that. Have you figured it out yet?
This is your last chance before I give away the answer.
3...
2...
1...
Okay. Don't say I didn't warn you.
The best Pokémon to use in any playthrough of any Pokémon game, by a significant margin, is... Blissey.
Let's start with the obvious. Blissey is good enough to see competitive play in every generation from Gen 2 onwards, and the only reason it doesn't see play in Gen 1 is because it didn't exist in Gen 1. And it's not hard to see why, look at its stats.
HP: 255
ATK: 10
DEF: 10
SPA: 75
SPD: 135
SPE: 55
That HP stat is through the roof, maxing out at 714 if you have Level 100, max EVs, and max IVs. Having a really high Special Defense also helps.
But there are clear weaknesses there. Its Defense is absolute trash, and its Attack and Special Attack basically say that you're not attacking with it, ever. And sure enough, your opponents can exploit these weaknesses. Any human who takes even a quick cursory look at Blissey sees how to beat it.
And that's the problem.
Any HUMAN who takes a look at Blissey sees how to beat it. When you're playing a Pokémon game's single-player campaign, your opponents aren't human, they are CPUs. And they can't deal with Blissey AT ALL.
The AI is programmed to know weaknesses, yes. But it looks at the type chart first and foremost. If you were to use a Swampert, sure, the AI spots its weakness to Grass and will usually use a Grass-type move if available. But Blissey's weaknesses aren't so apparent.
Blissey is NOT weak to Fighting-type moves, like the AI thinks it is. It's actually weak to PHYSICAL moves.
If your opponent has a Blissey, a Normal-type using STAB Return will do more damage than if that same Pokémon used Focus Blast instead. Because Blissey's physical defense is significantly weaker than its special defense. Focus Blast barely makes a dent into Blissey, because its Special Defense and HP are just THAT high.
Kyogre using Water Spout at maximum power while in rain with STAB is not enough to get Blissey's HP down to HALF, assuming both Pokémon are the same level. And this is from one of the best Special Attackers in the game. It only deals damage equal to about one-third of Blissey's HP bar. And if you're fighting an enemy trainer with a Kyogre in-game (we're gonna assume this is a ROM hack, obviously no trainer in the unhacked games has a Kyogre), then this is what the AI will try to do: it'll hit Blissey with its strongest moves, even if those are special-based moves.
So, okay. It's clear that if the AI is using any special moves, then your Blissey is invincible. The AI will simply never win. But... okay. This makes Blissey one of the best Pokémon in the game, but it's on par with the other stuff I talked about. It isn't any higher than that... yet.
After all, what good does it do to just have a massive special wall? You need to be able to attack in order to win, and Blissey's offensive stats are garbage.
And that would be a totally valid criticism... until you look at Blissey's movepool. Ice Beam, Shadow Ball, Psychic, Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, Charge Beam...
This is amazing coverage from decently-good special attacks. Obviously they won't hurt too much coming from Blissey... but there is one more thing that you overlooked. Do you notice what all those moves that I just listed have in common? Besides being special-based damage-dealing moves?
Each one has a chance of doing something after use. Psychic has a 10% chance of dropping the enemy's Special Defense. Charge Beam has a 70% chance of boosting the user's Special Attack. And so on. Except this ISN'T the case for Blissey.
Blissey gets Serene Grace as an ability, which doubles the chances of secondary effects occurring. Thunder does not paralyze 30% of the time, but 60% of the time. Charge Beam will ALWAYS raise Blissey's Special Attack.
So Blissey is able to just spam Charge Beam to max out its Special Attack, and thus cure its own "low offensive stats" problem. Or it can use Thunder to paralyze an opponent more than half the time, severely crippling whatever the opponent was planning on doing.
Of course, Serene Grace isn't Blissey's ONLY ability. You might get a Blissey with a different ability instead, and be too lazy to go find one with Serene Grace. Except... you know what Blissey's other ability is? Natural Cure. This cures Blissey's status ailment upon switching out.
Which... of course, is Blissey's OTHER main weakness. Just use Toxic on it and it'll die. In single-player, of course, you use an Antidote immediately and the problem is gone. Items are honestly so powerful (especially X items) that a lot of players refuse to use items in battle against the enemy trainers in a single-player playthrough these days. It's honestly harder to find someone who does play with items than someone who doesn't. So maybe you're one of these people and you have reason to fear a Toxic from the opponent hitting your Blissey. Well, with Natural Cure... not anymore!
On top of that, Blissey has Softboiled, which heals 50% of its health upon use. You know how items are overpowered? Yeah, Blissey gives you free healing without items. And 50% of a Blissey's HP is a very large number.
So let's recap. If you have a Blissey on your team, then when you get into a fight, here's what you do. First, you list off your opponent's Pokémon. If there are any that have no physical attacks, cross them off cause you can deal with them. Then you realize that you can cross off the physical attackers too, unless they're super-effective. I'm not kidding.
In competitive play, you can see a Protean Greninja using Gunk Shot on a Blissey and it is only a OHKO about 6% of the time, and that's if Blissey has ZERO Defense EVs. If it has even as few as 4 Defense EVs, then an OHKO is impossible without a critical hit. Why? Because Blissey's HP is just THAT high.
It's hard to understate how high Blissey's HP is. It's so strong that it honestly doesn't need to worry about ANYTHING from a computer-controlled opponent. So far, I've only talked about the offensive Pokémon, but what if your opponent is using a defensive Pokémon? Well... that's not a problem either.
Blissey is so good defensively that it will be better at being defensive than whatever the opponent is using. You'll win the stall war there. Ot you can just whittle them down with Charge Beam, Psychic, and/or Shadow Ball to make your attacks do more damage and punch through those defenses.
So we've eliminated pretty much every offensive and defensive Pokémon from your opponents' teams throughout the entire game. There's not really much left beyond that. And what little there is? Even if you hypothetically can't find a way to deal with it using Blissey, you've got five other slots on your team that can be dedicated solely to deal with the few Pokémon that Blissey can't.
What Pokémon would you use to do that? Well, let's take a look.
Looking at the type chart, you can use Blissey against pretty much everything. Your opponent has a Water-type? An Electric-type? Blissey is the answer. After all, almost every single Pokémon of those types is a special attacker. Let's look at which types are good at physical attacking. Normal, Flying, Poison, Fighting.
Well, Fighting is a non-issue. Every game offers an abundance of Flying-types for the player to use, so... we're good there. And as for Normal, Flying, and Poison... all you need is a good Rock-type like Roggenrola or Geodude, and you've got that covered too.
In competitive play, the best Pokémon to pair with Blissey is Skarmory. It has 140 base Defense and has Steel/Flying typing. This means that it can take any physical hit almost as well as Blissey can take a special hit. If you can assemble both pieces of the combo in an in-game team, you've just broken the game wide open.
And honestly, Blissey breaks the game plenty enough on its own, especially if you build the rest of your team around it, using things like Skarmory.
Blissey is such a strong Pokémon that if you get a chance to get a Happiny/Chansey/Blissey on your in-game team, then you either take it and you've already won the game; or you pass it up because you think it's ban-worthy.
Yeah, multiplayer competitive play often bans Pokémon when they get to be too good. But, honestly, I think single-player needs to start doing this too.
We need to ban Blissey from single-player.
It's just that good.