Below is another batch of analyses/write-ups for stuff I've tested in Silver. This will be the last batch I test for a little while since I'll be fooling around with Crystal and doing other things for now. I intend to come back to this eventually though.
Since Crystal is out now and some people will probably be looking to test stuff, I might try to find time and make a comprehensive list of differences between GS and C (mostly location, evolution and move pool differences) since I think it would be helpful to know where differences exist and whether they might justify tier differences by version for some Pokemon.
Eevee (Espeon)
When testing Eevee, my main interest was how quickly an Eevee could get enough friendship to evolve. I wasn’t specifically trying to test Espeon, but it just so happened to be daytime when it evolved. At some point I’d like to try Umbreon too just to see what that could do in-game.
The first thing I did for this particular run was look up what methods could be used to increase friendship. Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be an exploit like in Yellow where you could spam Potions on a full health Pikachu to increase it (attempting to use items on it increases friendship even if it doesn’t do anything otherwise). So aside from haircuts and just playing through the game and increasing it through leveling up and challenging important trainers (challenging gym leaders increases friendship of every party member), the other options are using vitamins, which increase friendship to a similar degree as leveling up would, and using x-items (raises friendship by 1 until your Pokemon reaches 200, at which point it has no effect).
Leaving X-items alone for now, it occurred to me that I could attempt to do a similar experiment to the one I did with Game Corner coins: save money as much as possible and buy vitamins as they become affordable, and then use those on Eevee to increase its stats and friendship. So that’s exactly what I did for this run. In doing this, and with no faints and thorough exploration of optional areas to increase step count and increase friendship even more, my Eevee evolved to Espeon at level 34/just before Pryce, which actually suits Espeon because it’s early enough for Psybeam but late enough so that Eevee learns Bite for coverage. That sounds good and it kind of is, but the drawback is that it requires a lot of money investment which may make things difficult if you want to by lots of TMs from the Game Corner or even the Dept. Store.
This will still force Eevee to stay unevolved for quite a while. Whilst I don’t think that Eevee is completely awful, it does have limited usefulness in match-ups especially since you’ll probably be playing carefully with it lest it be unexpectedly KOed by a random crit and have its friendship dropped. So that’s a drawback to Eevee/Espeon, although it gets points for being given to you at a high level. It should go without saying that Espeon itself is great, hitting hard and fast with Psybeam and later Psychic, and having some use in important match-ups, not to mention trivialising much of Team Rocket. But I think leaving it in C-tier is probably fine as is because it takes too long to get going and doesn’t get very long to utilise its true potential in playthrough.
Now as far as X-items go, I would be curious to see how useful those might be for raising friendship. X-items aren’t as effective as friendship boosters but they are much cheaper than vitamins and it wouldn’t be extremely difficult to by a ton of them in Goldenrod City and send Eevee in against some underleveled wild Pokemon like Magikarp to spam them. Assuming the X-item has to have an effect on stats to increase friendship, you could potential increase friendship by 24 from when Eevee starts with 0 boosts (6 for each of the 4 stat increasing items; X Accuracy/Dire Hit/Guard Spec don’t increase friendship in this gen apparently). After hitting the maximum, you could switch out and back in again to wipe the boosts and then start boosting again. It sounds tedious but at least the lack of level grind required offsets it.
It would cost 10500 Pokedollars to get 6 of each of the 4 battle items – since X Speed and X Special are slightly cheaper, it would be more cost effective to only use those instead of X Defend and X Attack. I don’t think you’d be able to get enough to evolve it right away (and that might not be ideal anyway because of move pool issues) but it would certainly get Eevee on its way and would be a good supplement for friendship boosts from levelling up, vitamins found in the field, and haircuts. Maybe if I try Umbreon I can look into how viable it is.
Gastly (with trade)
Gastly has serious move pool issues initially. It only has Lick to do damage - it doesn’t hit very hard and its PP will be drained quickly. Night Shade and Shadow Ball are decent upgrades but it would be until to becomes Gengar that it will take off.
Among Gastly best attributes early-game is its defensive typing. Gastly often beats things automatically simply because it resists/is immune to the opponents moves. Gastly can beat things, but it can’t beat things very quickly early on and that is its main problem.
Of its move options early-game, I actually found Curse to be one of its most useful options. It isn’t suited for routes but it’s a terrific win condition in some match-ups and I used it on Bugsy’s Scyther and Morty’s Gengar successfully (Gengar in particular is susceptible to Curse with switch stalling because it likes to Hypnosis things that aren’t sleeping and Dream Eater things that are). It also kind of worked on Miltank, but this is riskier because Miltank can out-speed Gastly and start using Rollout (Curse doesn’t inflict damage if the Pokemon KOes you so Miltank can potential skip Curse damage during Rollout’s most damaging turns).
Once you get Gengar you can teach it the elemental punches and start destroying things. It isn’t quite as good as Alakazam but it’s still very strong in its own right, reliably KOing stuff on routes and having many targets in important match-ups across the entire game. It just takes some time to get there. I think A tier is too high and would like to see that drop down to at least B tier.
Obviously Gastly is much worse if it can’t trade, since Haunter inexplicably lacks the elemental punches. I’ll probably test it eventually – most likely it’ll end up as a Rain Dance + Thunder attacker with Shadow Ball and eventually Psychic since that seems to be the best way to use it after the initially Gastly slog.
Jynx
Of all of the post-7 badges Pokemon found east of Mahogany Town, Jynx is probably the pick of the bunch. It has great power and speed, good STAB options right away, and it is not especially difficult to grind up because the Tangela and Weepinbel on Route 44 are easily OHKOed by Jynx and provide around 500 exp each – with animations on, expect about 20-25 minutes of grinding at most.
Jynx is a bit one-dimensional at first. The problem is that while it has Ice Punch for Ice STAB, it doesn’t have anything else it can use well until the Psychic TM is obtained. Otherwise, all it gets is Hidden Power and some physical moves. Despite this, Jynx has a lot to contribute: mono-Ice coverage is still very good on its own, covering Clair and Lance’s Dragons and hitting several Elite 4 Pokemon for super-effective damage, and it is an excellent route sweeper.
Slowpoke
I tested this a bit like Goldeen: I used an early-route Slowpoke initially but replaced it with an evolved form later.
The biggest issue I had with Slowpoke early on is the initial grind since it was difficult to find a good grinding spot for it and it starts off a bit under-levelled. It does have access to Swift as a more power alternative to Tackle though which helps a bit. Slowpoke is also not a strong Pokemon by any means, it’s very slow, and it doesn’t evolve until the late 30s assuming trading isn’t possible (otherwise it can evolve to Slowking after Morty is defeated – don’t forget to grab Strength from Olivine too).
Slowpoke at least has a wide move pool, and Water Gun at level 15 and Confusion at level 20 provides it with good STABs earlier on. I also found some use for Curse in some match-ups since it’s pretty easy to set up on, say, Bugsy’s Metapod to being a sweep. Otherwise I found it to be a bit too weak to bother with.
The better alternative is to wait until Strength and Surf can be obtained. That is when the evolved forms of Slowpoke become available at the bottom of Slowpoke Well. Wild Slowbro can be found by Surfing and if trading is possible, you can just catch a wild Slowpoke (far more common than Slowbro), grab the King’s Rock from the Scientist in the same area, and do the trade. The differences between Slowbro and Slowking are minor and either way, the Pokemon you catch should be around the same level as your current team (i.e. little grinding needed) and you can give it strong moves like Surf, Ice Punch, Shadow Ball and Strength immediately. Earthquake, Psychic and even Fire Blast are options later on. Both Slowthings hit reasonably hard and have overall good match-ups throughout the game. Low Speed is really the only flaw.
I consider the Slowpoke line to be yet another viable mid-game Water-type and would probably lump it in with Lapras and co.
Snubbull
This thing is awesome. I actually can’t believe how little attention it has received in this thread. I guess people, including myself, care more about Tauros and Rattata and so this slipped under the radar.
In GS, Snubbull arrives at the same time as Tauros and Miltank. Using the DST trick, it is easy to obtain, and it comes at level 16 and is in the fast exp. group, which is far better than the level 13/slow exp. group combo that Tauros and Miltank have and allows it to grind much more quickly. It also evolves at level 23 into a Pokemon with more Attack and Special Attack than Tauros/Miltank, along with a wide move pool that includes Normal STAB, Bite for initial coverage against Ghosts in Ecruteak (another perk over the bull and the cow), elemental punches, Shadow Ball and even Sludge Bomb, although it sadly misses out on Earthquake and Surf.
Granbull is mostly let down by terrible Speed, but otherwise it is a terrific Normal type. I wouldn’t mind seeing this go up to at least B tier to be honest. And I can only imagine how much better it is in Crystal, where it arrives earlier and is no longer a swarm Pokemon.
Swinub
Another late-game Ice-type, but this one isn’t too good. Move pool is a problem for it, since it initially has only Normal moves available for powerful physical options (it can’t even learn Dig), and with no Ice Punch either, it only has the shaky Blizzard as a general-purpose KO move. Its damage output is otherwise mediocre. It also grinds slower when compared to something like Jynx because it can’t KO Tangela/Weepinbel as reliably.
Swinub’s initial role is similar to Jynx’s: Spam Ice moves against the many Ice-weak oponnents that appear late-Johto. It isn’t very good at performing this role though – even Delibird has more Special Attack and Speed than Piloswine and especially Swinub. Piloswine has to risk Blizzard to OHKO Clair’s Dragonair for instance (and those will like have the Speed advantage too).
It improves once it gets Earthquake, but that’s very late. Ultimately, I consider Swinub to be a subpar choice in a playthrough because it arrives rather late in Johto, and unlike Jynx or Lugia/Ho-oh, its Johto performance during the brief time it’s available is underwhelming.
Tentacool
A good alternative to Lapras and other Mid-game Waters that has STAB Sludge Bomb to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack. As I’ve alluded to previously, you should NEVER attempt to use a Tentacool fished up early-game with the Old Rod and should instead wait until you can Surf in the field. By then evolved Tentacruel can be added to a team with little to no grinding and can be given Surf right away. STAB Sludge Bomb makes it similar in function to Qwilfish – I prefer Tentacruel just because I prefer a more powerful Surf to a more powerful Sludge Bomb, but both are good.
Vulpix
Vulpix is basically Silver’s equivalent to Growlithe in terms of function: it’s an early/mid-Johto Fire-type with some physical moves for coverage. Unfortunately, Vulpix really got the short end of the stick when it comes to stat distribution. Vulpix’s offensive stats are pretty bad and being a stone evolution Pokemon in GS with stats like those can never be good.
Vulpix does have one neat tool in its arsenal that distinguishes it from other Fire-types: STAB Flamethrower at level 31! Vulpix’s Flamethrower is actually stronger than a Flame Wheel from Quilava, and that would give Vulpix temporary status has the holder of the second strongest STAB Fire-type move in GS, at least until Quilava evolves and gets Fire Punch (there’s no getting past Magmar either way). Suddenly, Vulpix becomes a better counter to Jasmine than Quilava and Growlithe. Early access to Flamethrower also makes things much simpler when it comes time to evolve it in Kanto. Whereas Growlithe might need to wait even longer to evolve (assuming it hasn’t reached level 50 for Flamethrower by the time the Fire Stone is obtained), there is absolutely no reason to not evolve Vulpix in the same scenario.
As neat as early Flamethrower sounds, it’s important to keep in mind that even level 31 is quite far away from Vulpix’s starting level. Until then, Vulpix is extremely underwhelming, doing only modest damage with Ember, Headbutt and Dig. So no, Vulpix is not a good Pokemon in GS by any means. In terms of ranking, I think placing it alongside Growlithe, wherever that ends up, is reasonable. Growlithe clearly has the edge initially, but early Flamethrower arguably gives Vulpix the advantage later on given that Fire coverage is the main reason why these Pokemon might be used on a team in the first place.
Weedle
Meh. It’s not the worst Pokemon in the world. Its stats aren’t high but they are at least well distributed, and it gets some useful moves, like early Swift and STAB Sludge Bomb. It also has one of the better Bug-type moves in Twineedle at level 20. At the very least, it is a half-decent partner for Totodile because it easily dispatches of Grass-type (although this can also be said for a lot of early-route Bug- and Flying-types).
But in the end, it isn’t really that powerful overall, especially later in Johto. It has overall poor match-ups and it is especially bad at dealing with opposing Poison-types which is never a great thing in GS. As usual, getting a Weedle up to Beedrill is a nuisance, although there is always the option of catching one in the Bug-catching contest.
I don't really agree with dropping Abra (No Trade). Yeah Alakazam is objectively better than Kadabra, but the end result of using either is effectively the same -- they both dominate the game. Alakazam just has some marginally better performance in neutral match-ups.
Almost a month late, but I just wanted to say that I agree with this. I don't necessarily care if traded and untraded Abra has separate entries as long as that rule is applied to all trade evo Pokemon, but even untraded Kadabra is superior to everything in A-tier and deserves to rank above them.
