Pokémon/Useless Useful Spell: Difference between revisions

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With how competitive Pokémon has become in recent years, there are several ways for players to spec their critters to make them viable in a competitive environment. While there are many tools that each Pokémon can utilize, there are some instances where they aren't very useful. This could be the result of many factors, including but not limited to:

Having abilities that don't benefit that particular species.
Learning moves that don't compliment the Pokémon's stat spread.
Abilities that can be made redundant due to typing.
Moves and abilities that don't work for how the Pokémon is meant to function.

Examples

Abilities

The most notorious example is Frillish and Jellicent having Damp as their hidden ability. Having immunity to self-destructing moves is great and all, but as they are part Ghost-type Pokémon, Frillish and Jellicent are already immune to those moves anyway. It doesn't help that the generation they were introduced in also nerfed Explosion so it no longer halves the Defense stat, making them less useful in the first place. That said though, later generations introduced the moves "Mind Blown", and even later, "Misty Explosion", which are Fire and Fairy type moves respectively, making Damp Frillish/Jellicent slightly less useless.
FromPokémon X/Y onward, Electric-type Pokémon can no longer be paralyzed by any means, which similarly makes Stunfisk's Limber redundant.
All of Rotom's forms take on Levitate as their sole ability, including Fan Rotom; the Flying type variant that is ALREADY naturally immune to Ground-type moves.
Solid Rock is a fantastic ability that reduces damage from incoming super-effective attacks by 25%. Unfortunately, the two Pokémon that can have this ability , Rhyperior and Camerupt, not only have crippling 4x weaknesses to the mostly Special Water-type moves (Rhyperior is also doubly weak to Grass), but their Special Defense stats are either below average (75 for Camerupt), or just plain awful (55 for Rhyperior).
Aside from allowing the player to see the opponent's held items, the ability "Frisk" is not useful for anything else in competitive play.
Weavile gets two abilities: Pressure and its hidden ability, Pickpocket. The former doubles the opponent's PP usage, the latter lets it steal the opponent's held item when said opponent makes contact. However, Weavile's stat spread isn't suited for PP stalling (70/120/65/45/85/125), since it is meant to play as a Glass Cannon, thus it can't really afford to take a physical hit. The same thing applies to "Pickpocket", since Weavile's unimpressive 65 Defense means it doesn't want to take a physical attack. These two abilities are much better suited to Pokémon that can take some punishment.
Unnerve is an ability that prevents the foe from consuming Berries; however, Berries are rarely used during the campaign, making Unnerve not worth having. Even in competitive, most Pokémon with Unnerve have far more useful alternative abilities anyway.
Lightning Rod redirects Electric-type attacks, and boosts the Pokémon's Special Attack while also making the Pokémon immune to Electric-type attacks. However, out of the 20 Pokémon that can have this ability, only 6 of them have a Special Attack stat that is at least serviceable, while the other 14 do not.
Salazzle's signature ability, Corrosion, allows her to afflict Poison- and Steel-type Pokémon with poison; however, it doesn't allow Poison-type attacks to bypass Steel's Poison immunity, and like Weavile, Salazzle is not built to whittle down her opponents with Poison damage, due to being a Fragile Speedster.
At first Oblivious was rarely used, as its only function was to stave off Infatuation, a status that is incredibly rare. Soon averted when Oblivious became capable of blocking Taunt and, eventually Intimidate.
The popular Sheer Force is extremely potent, as it removes all secondary effects of moves to boost their damage by 30%. It also removes the recoil damage from Life Orb while retaining the item's damage boost. Unfortunately for one Pokémon, Toucannon, it learns very few moves to properly take advantage of Sheer Force.
Ledian can have the ability Iron Fist as its Hidden Ability, which boosts the power of punching moves by 20%. To be fair, Ledian can learn a handful of these moves (including the priority move Mach Punch). However, Ledian's atrocious base 35 Attack stat still gives it the power of a feather even with Iron Fist.
Orbeetle has the ability Swarm, which boosts its Bug-type moves when its HP drops below 33%. Unfortunately, Orbeetle only learns 4 Bug-type attacks (2 via level, 2 via TM/TR), and out of those 4 moves, only Bug Buzz is even useful because Infestation has poor base power, while U-Turn and Leech Life run off its poor base 45 Attack stat. Outside of that, its other Abilities are of extremely limited use (Frisk reveals the opponent's held items, Telepathy is only useful in double battles).
Some Pokémon have Abilities that are only useful while exploring the overworld, and serve no use in battle. For example, why would anyone even entertain the though of running Starmie with the ability Illuminate? An ability that only doubles the encounter rate of wild Pokémon, and nothing else.
Delibird has two main Abilities: Vital Spirit to prevent it from falling asleep, and Hustle which boosts Attack but reduces Accuracy. Its hidden ability? Insomnia, which does the exact same thing as Vital Spirit. One has to wonder why Game Freak even bothered giving Delibird a hidden ability at all. They might as well have given it Vital Spirit twice!
Merciless is the exclusive ability of Mareanie and Toxapex, which always score a critical hit if the target is poisoned. While Toxapex is built around spreading poison through Toxic, Toxic Spikes or Baneful Bunker, the issue is that Toxapex itself is a StoneWall, meaning that it's not going to hit particularly hit even with the Mecriless boost.
Galarian Weezing has Misty Surge as its hidden ability. While a fantastic ability on its own since it summons Misty Terrain to block statuses, it contradicts Weezing's playstyle as it prefers spreading statuses through Will-o-Wisp or Toxic.

Moves

One notable aspect of Normal-type is their wide variety of Special moves... except for the fact most Normal-type Pokémon tend to have low special attack to properly take advantage of it anyway. Out of them, the Porygon line and Teraspagos are one of the few exceptions that can capitalize on their wide Special movepool. Clefable and Togekiss were former examples that can utilize their special moves well, but they have since been retconned into Fairy-type in X and Y.
Most Dark-type Pokémon before Gen III couldn't use their STAB moves effectively because of Dark being a Special type at the time. Only Houndoom and Tyranitar had a decent enough Special Attack to offset this issue, but everything else was a physical attacker. Thankfully, the Physical/Special split happened in Gen IV changed all existing Dark moves into Physical moves.
A good handful of Ghost-types, like Cofagrigus and Chandelure can learn the move Dream Eater, a powerful move with base 100 power, and HP recovery. It's just too bad that those two Pokémon don't actually learn any sleep inducing moves, though.
Shedinja has access to the move Final Gambit, a sacrificial move that does damage equal to the user's remaining HP. So naturally, it makes sense that the one Pokémon that only has 1HP can learn this move.
Electrode can learn Gyro Ball, a move that does more damage the slower the user is compared to its target. But Gyro Ball is almost useless when used by Electrode considering not just its poor Attack stat (50), but Electrode is one of the fastest Pokémon in the games with its 150 base Speed. Luckily, it learns Electro Ball as well.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Vikavolt can learn Electro Ball via TR80 in Sword/Shield, which works in tandum with its amazing 145 Special Attack, but is greatly offset by its poor Speed stat of just 43, making the attack less potent.
Umbreon can have Synchronoise as an Egg move, which only damages opposing Pokémon the same type as the user. So you can just image what kind of damage this Psychic-type move can have when used by the Dark-type Umbreon...
Mew and Cryogonal are able to learn Attract, but can't do anything with it seeing as they are genderless.
Leech Life was a pathetically weak move that only had 20 base power. It was so weak that not even its healing properties could make it worth using. At least, until Gen VII where its power not only quadrupled, but it also had increased availability as a TM move!
The Elemental Punches were this to Hitmonchan prior to the Physical/Special split in Gen IV, since they all worked off the Special Attack stat, which Hitmonchan's Sp.Atk was a pathetic base 35!
Similarly, neither of Gengar's STAB moves were of much use prior to the split since both Ghost- and Poison-type moves ran off the Attack stat, which Gengar's is a pretty miserable 65, which is only half of its Special Attack of 130.
Sword/Shield introduced Body Press, a Fighting-type move that uses the user's Defense stat to deal damage instead of its Attack. While most Pokémon that can learn it have a high Defense stat, Wailord's Defense is so crap (45) that it is not worth teaching that move to it. Its pre-evolution, Wailmer, is even worse; with 25 Defense, Body Press will barely leave a scratch.
The weight-based move Heavy Slam increases in power the heavier the user is compared to its target. Flapple also gets this move, but as the lightest Pokémon to learn the move (2.2lb/1kg), but it can only get maximum power from the move against 7 Pokémon; that is less than 1% of the entire Pokédex!
Going back to Salazzle, she is easily one of the faster Pokémon to come out of Sun & Moon with her 117 base speed, and combined with a Sp.Atk of 111, she is primed as a special sweeper. However, Salazzle's special movepool is extremely shallow, with most of her special moves confined to her Poison/Fire STAB combination, giving Salazzle very limited options as far as coverage is concerned. She does learn a few strong Physical moves, but they aren't all that useful running off of a subpar Attack stat of 64. As previously mentioned, she can't even stall effectively because of her weak defenses.

Back to Pokémon

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 # Having abilities that don't benefit that particular species.
 # Learning moves that don't compliment the Pokémon's stat spread.
-# A shallow movepool that cannot take advantage of a Pokémon's typing, stat spread, or ability.
 # Abilities that can be made redundant due to typing.
 # Moves and abilities that don't work for how the Pokémon is meant to function.
@@ Line 14: / Line 13: @@
 * The most notorious example is Frillish and Jellicent having '''Damp''' as their hidden ability. Having immunity to self-destructing moves is great and all, but as they are part Ghost-type Pokémon, Frillish and Jellicent are already immune to those moves anyway. It doesn't help that the generation they were introduced in also nerfed Explosion so it no longer halves the Defense stat, making them less useful in the first place. That said though, later generations introduced the moves "Mind Blown", and even later, "Misty Explosion", which are Fire and Fairy type moves respectively, making Damp Frillish/Jellicent slightly less useless.
-** As of ''Pokémon X/Y,'' Electric-type Pokémon can no longer be paralysed by any means, which similarly makes Stunfisk's '''Limber''' redundant.
+* From''Pokémon X/Y'' onward, Electric-type Pokémon can no longer be paralyzed by any means, which similarly makes Stunfisk's '''Limber''' redundant.
-** All of Rotom's forms take on '''Levitate''' as their sole ability, including Fan Rotom; the '''Flying type''' variant that is naturally immune to Ground-type moves anyway!
+* All of Rotom's forms take on '''Levitate''' as their sole ability, including Fan Rotom; the '''Flying type''' variant that is ALREADY naturally immune to Ground-type moves.
 * '''Solid Rock''' is a fantastic ability that reduces damage from incoming super-effective attacks by 25%. Unfortunately, the two Pokémon that can have this ability , Rhyperior and Camerupt, not only have crippling 4x weaknesses to the ''mostly Special'' Water-type moves (Rhyperior is also doubly weak to Grass), but their Special Defense stats are either below average (75 for Camerupt), or just plain awful (55 for Rhyperior).
 * Aside from allowing the player to see the opponent's held items, the ability "Frisk" is not useful for anything else in competitive play.
 * Weavile gets two abilities: '''Pressure''' and its hidden ability, '''Pickpocket'''. The former doubles the opponent's PP usage, the latter lets it steal the opponent's held item when said opponent makes contact. However, Weavile's stat spread isn't suited for PP stalling (70/120/65/45/85/125), since it is meant to play as a [[Glass Cannon]], thus it can't really afford to take a physical hit. The same thing applies to "Pickpocket", since Weavile's unimpressive 65 Defense means it doesn't want to take a physical attack. These two abilities are much better suited to Pokémon that can take some punishment.
-*'''Unnerve''' is an ability that prevents the foe from consuming Berries; however, Berries are rarely used during the campaign, making Unnerve not worth having, but even in the competitive scene, not many players use Berries, unless it's a pinch berry (like a Salac Berry for instance). Plus, most Pokémon with Unnerve have far more useful alternative abilities anyway.
+* '''Unnerve''' is an ability that prevents the foe from consuming Berries; however, Berries are rarely used during the campaign, making Unnerve not worth having. Even in competitive, most Pokémon with Unnerve have far more useful alternative abilities anyway.
-* '''Lightning Rod''' draws in Electric-type attacks, and boosts the Pokémon's Special Attack while also making the Pokémon immune to Electric-type attacks. However, out of the 20 Pokémon that can have this ability, only 6 of them have a Special Attack stat that is at least serviceable, while the other 14 do not.
+* '''Lightning Rod''' redirects Electric-type attacks, and boosts the Pokémon's Special Attack while also making the Pokémon immune to Electric-type attacks. However, out of the 20 Pokémon that can have this ability, only 6 of them have a Special Attack stat that is at least serviceable, while the other 14 do not.
 * Salazzle's signature ability, '''Corrosion''', allows her to afflict Poison- and Steel-type Pokémon with poison; however, it doesn't allow Poison-type attacks to bypass Steel's Poison immunity, and like Weavile, Salazzle is not built to whittle down her opponents with Poison damage, due to being a [[Fragile Speedster]].
+* At first '''Oblivious''' was rarely used, as its only function was to stave off Infatuation, a status that is incredibly rare. Soon averted when Oblivious became capable of blocking Taunt and, eventually Intimidate.
-* Some abilities can even invoke this trope; any kind of stat alteration can become this when the opposing Pokémon has this little ability called '''Unaware''', which will ignore all negative stat changes it suffers, as well as the opponent's stat boosts.
+* The popular '''Sheer Force''' is extremely potent, as it removes all secondary effects of moves to boost their damage by 30%. It also removes the recoil damage from Life Orb while retaining the item's damage boost. Unfortunately for one Pokémon, Toucannon, it learns very few moves to properly take advantage of '''Sheer Force'''.
-** Likewise, Poison, Burn, Entry Hazards, Weather, Abilities, Items, or any other indirect damage will become an afterthought if used against a Pokémon that has the ability '''Magic Guard''', which only allows direct attacks to damage it.
+* Ledian can have the ability '''Iron Fist''' as its Hidden Ability, which boosts the power of punching moves by 20%. To be fair, Ledian can learn a handful of these moves (including the priority move Mach Punch). However, Ledian's atrocious base 35 Attack stat still gives it the power of a feather even with Iron Fist.
-**'''Intimidate''' is a popular ability that weakens the opponent's Attack upon entering the field, but is made useless by Abilities that prevent stat drops like Hyper Cutter, White Smoke, and Clear Body. As of ''Sword/Shield'', Intimidate is useless against users of Inner Focus, Own Tempo, Scrappy, and Oblivious.
+* Orbeetle has the ability '''Swarm''', which boosts its Bug-type moves when its HP drops below 33%. Unfortunately, Orbeetle only learns 4 Bug-type attacks (2 via level, 2 via TM/TR), and out of those 4 moves, only Bug Buzz is even useful because Infestation has poor base power, while U-Turn and Leech Life run off its poor base 45 Attack stat. Outside of that, its other Abilities are of extremely limited use (Frisk reveals the opponent's held items, Telepathy is only useful in double battles).
-* Like the other Ultra Beasts, Xurkitree has the ability '''Beast Boost''', which ups the Pokémon's most proficient stat when it KO's an opponent. However, not only is Xurkitree so geared towards Special Attack that it is impossible for '''Beast Boost''' to boost any other stat regardless of whatever min/maxing the player does, but it also gets Tail Glow, which can maximise Xurkitree's Sp.Atk in just two turns. Crosses over into [[Crippling Overspecialization]] territory.
+* Some Pokémon have Abilities that are only useful while exploring the overworld, and serve no use in battle. For example, why would anyone even entertain the though of running Starmie with the ability '''Illuminate'''? An ability that only doubles the encounter rate of wild Pokémon, and nothing else.
-*At first '''Oblivious''' was rarely used, as its only function was to stave off Infatuation, a status that is incredibly rare. Soon averted when Oblivious became capable of blocking Taunt and, eventually Intimidate.
+* Delibird has two main Abilities: Vital Spirit to prevent it from falling asleep, and Hustle which boosts Attack but reduces Accuracy. Its hidden ability? '''Insomnia, which does the exact same thing as Vital Spirit.''' One has to wonder why Game Freak even bothered giving Delibird a hidden ability at all. They might as well have given it Vital Spirit twice!
-* The popular '''Sheer Force''' is extremely potent, as it removes all secondary effects of moves to boost their damage by 30%. It also removes the recoil damage from Life Orb while retaining the item's damage boost. Unfortunately for one Pokémon, Toucannon, it learns very few moves to properly take advantage of '''Sheer Force''', and the moves that do have drawbacks:
+* '''Merciless''' is the exclusive ability of Mareanie and Toxapex, which always score a critical hit if the target is poisoned. While Toxapex is built around spreading poison through Toxic, Toxic Spikes or Baneful Bunker, the issue is that Toxapex itself is a [[StoneWall]], meaning that it's not going to hit particularly hit even with the Mecriless boost.
-** Rock Smash and Flame Charge have low base power (40 and 50 respectively).
+* Galarian Weezing has '''Misty Surge''' as its hidden ability. While a fantastic ability on its own since it summons Misty Terrain to block statuses, it contradicts Weezing's playstyle as it prefers spreading statuses through Will-o-Wisp or Toxic.
-** Flash Cannon and Heat Wave run off Toucannon's sub-par Special Attack.
-** Sky Attack requires two turns in order to use (ironically, the only move that Toucannon can get both a '''Sheer Force''' boost and STAB from).
-** Steel Wing and Gunk Shot are not very accurate moves, with Gunk Shot being the worse off of the two.
-*Ledian can have the ability '''Iron Fist''' as its Hidden Ability, which boosts the power of punching moves by 20%. To be fair, Ledian can learn a handful of these moves (including the priority move Mach Punch). To be unfair however, even with Iron Fist, [[Weak but Skilled|Ledian's atrocious base 35 Attack stat]] still gives it the power of a feather.
-*Talonflame can have the priority granting '''Gale Wings''', which is useful for getting the jump on opponents when using Flying-type moves. However, not only is Talonflame pretty fast anyway with its base 126 Speed stat, but the ability was nerfed in ''Sun/Moon'' so that it only works at full HP. And with the prominence of Stealth Rock in competitive play, it probably won't stay at full health for long.
-*Orbeetle has the ability '''Swarm''', which boosts its Bug-type moves when its HP drops below 33%. Unfortunately, Orbeetle only learns 4 Bug-type attacks (2 via level, 2 via TM/TR), and out of those 4 moves, only Bug Buzz is even useful because Infestation has poor base power, while U-Turn and Leech Life run off its poor base 45 Attack stat. Outside of that, its other Abilities are of extremely limited use (Frisk reveals the opponent's held items, Telepathy is only useful in double battles).
-*Some Pokémon have Abilities that are only useful while exploring the overworld, and serve no use in battle. For example, why would anyone even entertain the though of running Starmie with the ability '''Illuminate'''? An ability that only doubles the encounter rate of wild Pokémon, and nothing else!
-*Speaking of Starmie, it has access to the Dream World exclusive '''Analytic''', which increases attack damage by 30% if the opposing Pokémon moves first. Seems useful, except Starmie is one of the faster Pokémon in the games (115), and in the UU tier of competitive play, Starmie is rarely outsped, making the Ability unviable.
-*Delibird has two main Abilities: Vital Spirit to prevent it from falling asleep, and Hustle which boosts Attack but reduces Accuracy. Its hidden ability? '''Insomnia, which does the exact same thing as Vital Spirit.''' One has to wonder why Game Freak even bothered giving Delibird a hidden ability at all. They might as well have given it Vital Spirit twice!
 === Moves ===
+* One notable aspect of Normal-type is their wide variety of Special moves... except for the fact most Normal-type Pokémon tend to have low special attack to properly take advantage of it anyway. Out of them, the Porygon line and Teraspagos are one of the few exceptions that can capitalize on their wide Special movepool. Clefable and Togekiss were former examples that can utilize their special moves well, but they have since been [[retcon]]ned into Fairy-type in ''X and Y''.
+* Most Dark-type Pokémon before Gen III couldn't use their STAB moves effectively because of Dark being a Special type at the time. Only Houndoom and Tyranitar had a decent enough Special Attack to offset this issue, but everything else was a physical attacker. Thankfully, the Physical/Special split happened in Gen IV changed all existing Dark moves into Physical moves.
 * A good handful of Ghost-types, like Cofagrigus and Chandelure can learn the move '''Dream Eater''', a powerful move with base 100 power, and HP recovery. It's just too bad that those two Pokémon don't actually learn any sleep inducing moves, though.
+* Shedinja has access to the move '''Final Gambit''', a sacrificial move that does damage equal to the user's remaining HP. So naturally, it [[Sarcasm Mode|makes sense that the '''''one''''' Pokémon that only has '''''1HP''''' can learn this move]].
-* '''Rapid Spin''' was once a pathetically weak move with only 20 base power and freed the user from trapping moves like Wrap and Bind (which themselves saw less use in later games), as well as clearing Leech Seed and Spikes, neither of were all that common back then. Gradually, it became much more useful when Stealth Rock and Toxic Spikes were introduced, and Spikes became more common.
+* Electrode can learn '''Gyro Ball''', a move that does more damage the slower the user is compared to its target. But '''Gyro Ball''' is almost useless when used by Electrode considering not just its poor Attack stat (50), but Electrode is one of the fastest Pokémon in the games with its 150 base Speed. Luckily, it learns '''Electro Ball''' as well.
-** Completely averted in Gen VIII when Rapid Spin not only retained its hazard clearing effects, but it now functions as a Normal-type Flame Charge, now rocking 50 base power, and a +1 speed boost when used.
+* On the opposite end of the spectrum, Vikavolt can learn '''Electro Ball''' via TR80 in ''Sword/Shield'', which works in tandum with its amazing 145 Special Attack, but is greatly offset by its poor Speed stat of just 43, making the attack less potent.
-* Shedinja has access to the move '''Final Gambit''', a sacrificial move that does damage equal to the user's remaining HP. So naturally, it [[Sarcasm Mode|makes sense that the '''''one''''' Pokémon that only has '''''1HP''''' can learn this move]]...
-*Of course, '''Splash''' is the single most useless move in the entire series. It did get some use in ''Sun/Moon'' as a massive Attack booster when used with Normalium Z (boosting Attack by 3 stages!), but otherwise, it did absolutely nothing and was a waste of a move slot.
-*Electrode can learn '''Gyro Ball''', a move that does more damage the slower the user is compared to its target. But '''Gyro Ball''' is almost useless when used by Electrode considering not just its poor Attack stat (50), but Electrode is one of the fastest Pokémon in the games with its 150 base Speed. Luckily, it learns '''Electro Ball''' as well.
-** On the opposite end of the spectrum, Vikavolt can learn '''Electro Ball''' via TR80 in ''Sword/Shield'', which works in tandum with its amazing 145 Special Attack, but is greatly offset by its poor Speed stat of just 43, making the attack less potent.
-* The resident [[Stone Wall]] of ''Sun/Moon'', Toxapex, has a signature move in the form of '''Baneful Bunker''', a protection move that poisons a foe that tries to make direct contact. However, the move is very prediction focused and has a chance to fail if used in succession, so this Pokémon is better off using the more reliable '''Toxic''' to inflict poison.
-* '''One Hit Knockout moves''' [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|instantly knock out the opposing Pokémon]]. However, because these attacks have an accuracy stat that depends on the level difference between the two Pokémon (to be specific, 30 plus [User's Level - Foe's Level]), and the fact that the level is always set to either Level 50 or Level 100 in competitive play, these attacks usually get passed up for other moves because they are that unreliable.
 * Umbreon can have '''Synchronoise''' as an Egg move, which only damages opposing Pokémon the same type as the user. So you can just image what kind of [[Won't Work On Me|damage]] this ''Psychic-type'' move can have when used by the ''Dark-type'' Umbreon...
-* Cryogonal is able to learn '''Attract''', but can't do anything with it seeing as it is a genderless Pokémon.
+* Mew and Cryogonal are able to learn '''Attract''', but can't do anything with it seeing as they are genderless.
 * '''Leech Life''' was a pathetically weak move that only had 20 base power. It was so weak that not even its healing properties could make it worth using. [[Averted Trope|At least]], until Gen VII where its power not only ''quadrupled'', but it also had increased availability as a TM move!
 * The '''Elemental Punches''' were this to Hitmonchan prior to the Physical/Special split in Gen IV, since they all worked off the Special Attack stat, which Hitmonchan's Sp.Atk was a pathetic base 35!
 * Similarly, neither of Gengar's STAB moves were of much use prior to the split since both '''Ghost- and Poison-type moves''' ran off the Attack stat, which Gengar's is a pretty miserable 65, which is only half of its Special Attack of 130.
+*''Sword/Shield'' introduced Body Press, a Fighting-type move that uses the user's Defense stat to deal damage instead of its Attack. While most Pokémon that can learn it have a high Defense stat, Wailord's Defense is so crap (45) that it is not worth teaching that move to it. Its pre-evolution, Wailmer, is even worse; with 25 Defense, Body Press will barely leave a scratch.
-*Most Dark-type Pokémon before Gen III couldn't use their STAB moves effectively because of Dark being a Special type at the time. Only Houndoom had a decent enough Special Attack to offset this issue, but everything else was a physical attacker. Thankfully, the Physical/Special split happened in Gen IV changed all existing Dark moves into Physical moves.
+* The weight-based move Heavy Slam increases in power the heavier the user is compared to its target. Flapple also gets this move, but as the lightest Pokémon to learn the move '''(2.2lb/1kg)''', but it can only get maximum power from the move against 7 Pokémon; '''''that is less than 1% of the entire Pokédex!'''''
-*In an odd case were a useful move '''became''' useless, Jynx was able to make excellent use of the move Ice Punch in the first few generations thanks to Ice being a Special type combined with its 115 Sp.Atk. From ''Diamond/Pearl'' onward though, Ice Punch is no longer useful for Jynx since it is now a Physical move, and her Physical Attack stat of 50 is vastly inferior.
+* Going back to Salazzle, she is easily one of the faster Pokémon to come out of ''Sun & Moon'' with her 117 base speed, and combined with a Sp.Atk of 111, she is primed as a special sweeper. However, Salazzle's special movepool is extremely shallow, with most of her special moves confined to her Poison/Fire STAB combination, giving Salazzle very limited options as far as coverage is concerned. She does learn a few strong Physical moves, but they aren't all that useful running off of a subpar Attack stat of 64. As previously mentioned, she can't even stall effectively because of her weak defenses.
-*''Sword/Shield'' introduced a new Fighting-type move known as Body Press, which uses the user's Defense stat to deal damage instead of its Attack. While most Pokémon that can learn it have a high Defense stat, Wailord's Defense is so crap (45) that it is not worth teaching that move to it. Its pre-evolution, Wailmer, is even worse; with 25 Defense, Body Press will barely leave a scratch.
-*The weight-based move Heavy Slam increases in power the heavier the user is compared to its target. Flapple also gets this move, but as the lightest Pokémon to learn the move '''(2.2lb/1kg)''', but it can only get maximum power from the move against 7 Pokémon; '''''that is less than 1% of the entire Pokédex!'''''
-*Going back to Salazzle, she is easily one of the faster Pokémon to come out of ''Sun & Moon'' with her 117 base speed, and combined with a Sp.Atk of 111, she is primed as a special sweeper. However, Salazzle's special movepool is extremely shallow, with most of her special moves confined to her Poison/Fire STAB combination, giving Salazzle very limited options as far as coverage is concerned. She does learn a few strong Physical moves, but they aren't all that useful running off of a subpar Attack stat of 64. As previously mentioned, she can't even stall effectively because of her weak defenses.
-=== Stat Spreads ===
-Each Pokémon has a stat spread that gives it a certain play style in battle, but sometimes they have move pools that do not benefit said spread.
-* Flareon has a base '''Attack of 130''', but it has such a shallow movepool that the 3 physical Fire-type attacks it gets STAB from either have low base power, or have terrible recoil damage. Poor Flareon really did come off the worst of the Eeveelutions after the Special split in ''Gold/Silver;'' to elaborate, Vaporeon and Jolteon's Special stat of 110 became their Sp.Atk while getting 95 in Sp.Def; Flareon however was nerfed on the Special side, since its Special stat became its Sp.Def and it received 95 Sp.Atk instead''.'' Even worse is that Flareon gets hardly any coverage moves to take full advantage of its impressive Attack.
-* Any Pokémon that can learn Reflect and/or Light Screen while also having poor defensive stats. Alakazam for example can learn Reflect to boost its Defense stat, but that's not saying a whole lot when you realise that its '''HP and Defense are very low''' (55 and 45, respectively).
-* Shuckle's incredible defenses of 230 each are majorly mitigated by its extremely poor '''HP stat of 20'''. Similarly, while its atrocious base speed of 5 benefits the move Gyro Ball, the damage it will do is almost non-existent thanks to its abysmal '''10 Attack'''.
-* The majority of Ice-type moves are special moves, which are useful to Pokémon like Glaceon, but to others like Alolan Sandshrew, who has '''the lowest Sp.Atk of any Pokémon''', Ice Beam, Blizzard, Frost Breath, and Icy Wind will hit with the power of a gentle summer's breeze.
-* Shedinja can learn Substitute, but it will always fail due to only having '''1HP'''.
-**Also, Shedinja's Defense and Sp.Def stats have no use in battle, once again, due to being a literal [[One-Hit Wonder|One Hit Wonder]].
-* Guzzlord is essentially an Inversion of Shuckle, in which it has a massive HP stat of 223, but that is greatly offset by having terrible defenses of 53 apiece. Its low 43 base speed makes it very hard to get a hit in without having its HP shaved off in large chunks. Same thing applies to Regidrago with its 200 HP and 50 Defense and Sp.Def, though it does have an average Speed stat of 80, so it can at least get some mileage as far as dealing damage goes.
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