Pokémon Diamond, Pearl & Platinum In-game Tier List Discussion

The Razor Claw comes much earlier in Platinum; a hidden item in Cyrus' Galactic HQ room right after you beat him. You've still got to tow around Sneasel for a bit, but it's not horrifically weak and it's only got the ice route, the ice gym and the Galactic HQ grunts to go through. Nowhere near as bad as it is in DP and certainly not enough to push it down to C IMO. It done me fine.
 
Ah, but you make the mistake of assuming Sneasel is unusable. This isn't a Magikarp or even a Kirlia situation we're talking about here; Sneasel can easily hold its own until the Razor Claw -- especially when a large part of Galactic HQ is made up of grunts with the likes of Zubat and Glameow. All it -really- has a problem with until evolution are the bosses and some of the tougher Ace Trainers prior to Snowpoint. Give it a couple decently-powered TMs and it does just fine.

And even then, the last quarter of the game is still a pretty heavy quarter. Saturn, Mt. Coronet, the final fight with Cyrus, Giratina, Volkner and all the routes surrounding him, Victory Road, the Elite 4 and Cynthia -- all of which Weavile does decently to excellently against. C-tier is ranking it far too low for its performance; it's really not as bad as Ponyta, Meditite or Leafeon.

...

wait, why is Leafeon as high as C-tier? It evolves early but it doesn't get any decent physical grass-moves aside from Razor Leaf; and while a couple TMs might serve it fine it's not on the level of Golem or Magnezone at all. It's not even like its stats, typing or ability are outstanding.
 
Availability is a factor, but I feel you're massively overstating it. If it was that important, Palkia and Azelf wouldn't be as ranked as high as they were. If anything, Weavile's availability is the reason it's B and not A.
 
Availability in DPPt isn't as mega important if the mon is viable enough to make up for it, because Gen 4 in particular is VERY backloaded on a lot of important battles. Aside from the usual Gym Battles, you have 5 Galactics fights (Celestic Cyrus in Pt), plus maybe 3 rival battles before Snowpoint (I'll consider this since it's where Sneasel comes in), and then you have 2 Cyrus Battles, Saturn, Jupiter/Mars all at once for HQ/Spear Pillar, one more Rival Battle, Volkner, and the Elite Four. Sneasel still in the context of the game comes before half of the Galactic battles, the strongest Rival fight, and the Elite Four, where he puts in significant work against Bertha, Lucian, even some of Aaron, and half of Cynthia (Pt swapping Gastrodon for Togekiss), and it's Weavile after just 2 of those (or even just after Cyrus if you have a Rare Candy to use with the Claw) in. Only real investment beyond that would be Move Tutor for Ice Punch, maybe a Heart Scale for Night Slash if you don't want to use TM's. Sneasel comes late in terms of the progression when we think in terms of the Gyms, but in terms of important battles it's closer to the halfway point, with 12 battles after only two of which (the Gym battles) it's likely to lag on.
 
sumwun said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I think about availability.
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I feel like you are oversimplifying availability and its impact by trying to average usability/availability and damage output (or whatever it is you are trying to say about 1/4 usability + OHKO everything = 1/2 usability + 1/2 OHKOs). This is another example of actual experience with a poke helping tremendously, rather than trying to force them into arbitrary formulas
 
The only time where this kind of mathamatical formulation is valuable is when you're going for (TA) Speedrun where everything is as perfect as possible for IN-GAME time. The point of this ranking is to work out the most efficient way for a player to clear the game, a combination of lowest effort and lowest real time. This is why experience with the runs are important to ranking the mons, because this thread is about how efficient a playthrough is in real time, which is easier assessed by usage of the mon than just seeing what its performance looks like on paper considering there are a lot more factors at work. You can't reduce it to static rules you'd plug into a formula because then what constitutes a base case for that? I cited the Sneasel case as seemingly late appearance actually leaving it with a lot of time to pull its weight.

Your Azelf simplification is another example of this fallacy, because a mon that wins 1/2 the battles for 1/2 the game sounds like it pulls more weight on paper than Azelf's 1/4 all contributing performance if you assume all battles are equal, but it leaves out other factors: Azelf does most of this with minimal effort invested by the player, and the later game battles are logically harder on the whole, so clearing those battles is more valuable than clearing half of those and half of the mid game battles. Earlier you list Ponyta, Meditite, and Leafeon as helpful for early game and lagging lategame. These are ranked low because that lategame performance means they start to lag when the game gets harder, and thus have to either be replaced or leave you dealing with a less effective run. At that point, I would be better off taking the slightly harder early game of something like Pt Gible, where it's weaker but compensated by the lower curve, then the time and EXP I invested in it pays off when Garchomp picks up.

One trait of an efficient mon is that for the most part it should either maintain or increase in viability as the game goes on, so that the resources you put into it pay off by making the later game easier. Even if they come late, mons like Palkia and Azelf start good and stay good for the rest of the game once you get them, so you lose nothing besides the time to catch them and then just invest in them for what's left, whereas something that falls off will clear, say, the first 6 Gyms easily, and then those 6 Gyms worth of EXP don't change the fact that it's struggling on the remaining part of the game despite all the EXP you invested. It's the same reason FE players prefer to not use the Jaegan (crutch pre-promote, high start and little to no growth): they make the early game faster and easier, but once they lag behind the rest of your units have to pick up the slack and the resources sunk into the Jaegan are effectively wasted.
 
sumwun said:
I thought about this for a while, and I came up with a question that may be very stupid and have an extremely obvious answer. If cost is such a big deal, then why are evolution families like Chimchar, Starly, and Abra S tier? Each of them probably takes up 1/3 of the experience from the whole game and don't end up outperforming later-available Pokemon like Weavile, Azelf, Porygon-Z, or the box art legendary.
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Dude you aren't thinking things through. The reason is that they start performing just as well as those mons super early and can thus sweep the entire game.
 
sumwun said:
Stuff like Ponyta and Machop (yes trade) can also "sweep the entire game" to some extent, but are tiered much, much lower presumably because of the experience cost, while stuff like Azelf and the box art legendaries are tiered only a bit lower despite the fact that they obviously don't sweep the entire game. Why is that?
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Every Pokemon is going to take EXP, by nature of having to battle something, so it's only a cost in the sense of taking some from another that could theoretically fight the same opponent. It's not a resource you consciously invest outside of having to grind (which usually is a sign of lower efficiency mons if anything), it's just "Chimchar gets a lot of EXP because he wins a lot of battles very easily". It's just a logical train of thought that a Pokemon that performs well early and never lets up will continue to see usage. Weavile and such come later than Chimchar or Abra, so even if they are as good or even better, Chimchar and co. have had more time to clear out battles that are required to get to that point. "Cost" involves giving up something, implying it is something you would have otherwise.

Here's the thing. There's no point where Chimchar and Starly lag, besides Roark maybe. They start good and stay really good the entire time. They are a much better investment for that EXP because they start good and only go up, whereas the examples you list take some work and babying/investment before they start to perform effectively. You're missing the point of this being about RETURN on investment. I think most people who have played the game through recently will agree that Infernape is equal to or better than Rapidash once both hit the same level, but Infernape is putting in work as Chimchar and Monferno in the process of reaching that point, while Ponyta is underwhelming at best in the time it takes you to train it after being obtained. Starly is like the epitome of an efficient Pokemon. It's available from the first route, gets good moves and coverage quickly to put in work, has a consistently helpful ability, and takes no effort or opportunity cost to add to your team.

The legendaries, as I noted, are tiered lower because they aren't around for as much of the game, but they perform comparably well to the earlier A-Rank mons at NO cost to the team's effectiveness. S-Rank Pokemon (in comparing investment and timespan) are "take little, give tons for their time", A-Ranks are "take some, give lots", B-Ranks are "take some, give some" to me. As a guy who used Ponyta, I spent most of my playthrough of Platinum wishing I had just picked Infernape, because multiple times I had to stop and grind for it to keep up in places where I distinctly remember Chimchar was pulling his weight and probably someone else's.

I feel more and more like you should do another playthrough. A lot of the discussion derives from experience, and several of the things you bring up tend to be second nature when a playthrough you've done is on the mind.
 
I did. I also spent a lot of the game missing Infernape's Fighting STAB (Mach Punch happens at 14 on Evolution, which with some admittedly heavy leveling means you could even use it for Roark if you wanted), and generally easier access to moves that weren't Fire (like Thunderpunch for Crasher Wake so that even there Monferno does work). Rapidash's movepool is kind of pathetic in terms of coverage , and the fact that it's a one stage Level 40 evolution means you have a much longer time with the underwhelming Ponyta, compared to 3 stages incrementally increasing to keep a steady pace. There's also a noticeable power drop, as Monferno/Infernape's movepool is generally high power, and its stats are higher at those stages than Ponyta/Rapidash on every relevant front (both offenses and speed), which nets it OHKO's much easier to keep the pace going. Top that off with Chimchar coming before Eternia Forest and Gym, which are basically free EXP to anything with a SE STAB (point to Starly there too), which nets it not just a level advantage on the early Ponyta (17 in Pt at the highest), but EV's and a chance to plow through some very relevant fights (Gardenia's mons are decently bulky, or fast and powerful in Roserade's case as a final stage).

I'm not gonna dwell on it too long, because it was more an example towards my greater point: Playing the game through a couple times makes it VERY apparent what the differences in performance tend to feel like. You just start to immediately notice "trading off X for Y is definitely making this run easier/harder".
 
I'm sorry, but this really can't be said enough -- play the game. By trying to assign arbitrary formulas and rules like "a Pokémon is worth investment if it never stops pulling its own weight" or that formula you came up with for availability vs. usefulness, you miss the importance of experience so much. Like Pika Pal has said, these are all very simple principles that can only be learned and understood by using these Pokémon and playing the game. That's all there is to it.
 
Small nitpick: for some reason in DP's A-tier, you've got Cranidos listed as 'Cranidos (Diamond only)', even though you don't have version exclusivity mentioned for others like Shieldon, Dialga, Misdreavus etc.
 
I say Cranidos should not be A. Its speed and defense means it is constantly taking high damage, possibly getting KOed. You will be spending quite a bit more potion on it.
 
I haven't used Rampardos myself so I won't comment directly on its placement, but 'best physical attack in the game' in and of itself is not a good argument, even when coupled with 'solid offensive typing'. If the Pokémon is frail and slow, that will work against it, no matter how many opponents it might be able to OHKO.
 
sumwun said:
Cranidos can more easily sweep NPCs if the player uses X speeds. X speeds are only P350 each, so using one per major battle isn't very expensive.
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Except X Speed doesn't fix its matchups in some major battles. You're useless versus Maylene since Meditite takes neutral from any of Cranidos's usual moves, Machoke is rather bulky, etc. Crasher Wake has Gyarados and Quagsire which are kind of a huge headache outside of a rare instance where Gyarados Swaggers Turn 1 and you don't hurt yourself in your confusion, and even then there's still Quagsire to bypass. I guess you could rely on Lum Berry to nullify the confusion, pray you flinch through Quagsire? Fantina is one you definitely will go places since Drifblim has shit for anything, Steelix is an annoying throttle vs Byron because you're likely taking at least some damage from Bronzor even after using Dig and Steelix is definitely bulky enough to live one. Meanwhile, Gyro Ball is going to do a decent chunk (also X Speed won't help you in this fight regardless). I can at least toss Candace and Volker as possibilities, but they're kind of rough.

Nevermind that Crandios is also plagued with Erratic for an experience gain. For those wondering how it works, Erratic means that a Pokemon requires much more experience earlier on, and then it will occasionally mix it up a bit. There are definitely specific points where Erratic Experience is faster than even Fast Experience, but in some cases it also can be compared to Slow experience gain.

Example, to hit Rampardos you would need 37,800 experience from Level 1 to 30. Obviously, this isn't accounting for that Cranidos doesn't come at Level 1, but we'll get to that at a moment. For comparison:

Fast - 21,600
Medium Fast - 27,000
Medium Slow - 21,760
Slow - 33,750

For another reference on the experience difference in 10 levels between Pokemon of these:

Erratic - 37,800 - 12,800 = 25,000
Fast - 21,600 - 6,400 = 15,200
Medium Fast - 27,000 - 8,000 = 19,000
Medium Slow = 21,760 - 5,460 = 16,300
Slow - 33,750 - 10,000 = 23,750

(Also thank you GMars for helping me double check the calcs) because somehow I fucked up subtraction on Medium Fast and nearly had a heart attack.

He also had me double check Medium Slow. Believe it or not, due to how the formula works the results are actually accurate.

For reference of work on both sides:

GMars - https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=6/5*30^3-15*30^2+100*30-140

Myself -
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(Yes, I legit hand wrote it)

That's kind of awful when we rag on Pokemon in the Slow experience category and then... look at Cranidos. <_<;
 
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Cranidos and Rampardos have middling speed stats, which means it'll be getting hit most of the time (both in regular and major battles). This means that you'll likely be healing them frequently throughout your adventure. Rampardos is more likely to put in work with Rock Polish. I gave it Rock Slide & Dig and it's been doing well. In addition, the HP stat has been useful against fast, frail sweepers (Cyrus' Weavile for example). I will concede that raising Cranidos can be a pain. He does pretty well versus Team Galactic, which is nice. I'd say his major battles he does well in are versus Byron (with Dig), Candice if you set up on Sneasel with Rock Polish, and Volkner (again with Dig). In theory he can sweep Cyrus if you Rock Polish sweep him, but Houndoom and Gyarados can cause issues with potential Burn/Paralysis in the former case and Intimidate in the latter. Due to TM reliance (especially Dig), the likelihood of needing to heal frequently after most battles, needing to set up in battle to do well, and an overall average battle prowess, I would put Cranidos in C tier for Platinum.

Edit: I haven't taken on the E4 yet, but I can see him doing okay versus Aaron (Scizor, Double Team Yanmega, Heracross and Drapion can pose problems) and Flint (just watch out for Burn setting up a sweep and Infernape's Mach Punch & speed).
 
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sumwun said:
Yes, I agree that it's very hard to get Cranidos to reach level 30. The game doesn't end there, though. The thing about the erratic growth rate is that leveling up gradually gets easier. To get to level 60 (which is a better estimate for when the game really ends), Cranidos needs 181600 points, while a medium fast Pokemon obtained at level 20 would need 208000. Because of this, I see Cranidos as an evolution family that starts slow but has its high point during the Elite Four battles, kind of like Gible in Pt. If Cranidos isn't good enough for A because of the required experience investment, then maybe Gible should move down as well.
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Before I go on the Gible entry, I'd like to talk about the experience situation. It's true at higher levels it becomes a little easier to raise Crandios / Rampardos in terms purely of experience; however, there is a major problem in that Cranidos wants to reach its evolution as soon as possible to obtain the maximum value out of its Attack and an improvement on its bulk (lesser extent Zen Headbutt for opposing Fighting-types). The thing is many of these Pokemon, even in Medium Slow, have advantages over Erratic for quite a while.

Let's take an example speaking strictly in terms of raw experience gaining from one level to another. We did the Level 20-30 example, but how about from Level 20-40? If we calculate the total amount of experience needed:

Erratic - 68,526
Fast - 48,736
Medium Fast - 60,921
Medium Slow - 55,990
Slow - 76,151
Fluctuating - 66,237

And then going from 20-50:

Erratic - 118,524
Fast - 99,720
Medium Fast - 124,651
Medium Slow - 119,666
Slow - 155,813
Fluctuating - 145,782

Finally 20-60:

Erratic - 189,213
Fast - 175,184
Medium Fast - 218,981
Medium Slow - 217,062
Slow - 273,726
Fluctuating - 276,016

There's actually a lot to say about this, believe it or not. Even though Erratic does, at times, require more experience lower levels, it obviously has its perks the higher we go (as noted before and also noted by sumwun). The real thing to draw from this, though, is just how slow Medium Fast is in comparison to Medium Slow at times - Medium Slow actually remains the second or third highest throughout a significant portion of the game, and thus speaking purely in terms of experience growth is probably one of the best pools to be in. That's probably a no surprise when you consider that your starters are almost always Medium Slow and many Pokemon usually fall into this branch of experience gain. Erratic definitely is better than Slow - I won't deny that claim whatsoever, and I feel that Slow Pokemon probably should be punished a bit differently, but to be fair some of them like Gyarados do have obnoxious advantages that can be taken advantage of as well.

I get that 1-60 definitely changes some things instead of 20-60, but the comparison at the time was Cranidos's experience gain in comparison to Pokemon of roughly the same level.

In lieu of nominating simply for a Cranidos drop, I do agree with sumwun here and believe that it's rather odd to put Gible in the A Rank after looking a lot closer at the experience table. Furthermore, Gabite is a rather underwhelming evolution in the later stages of the game before Garchomp. I guess for me another playthrough would be worthwhile to really sit down and evaluate this further, but basically contrary to popular belief of some people Medium Slow is actually a really good experience table to be in.
 
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Sorry for not following some kind of format or anything like that as this isn’t really a formal nomination, but something I think is incredibly important to note for Budew is that it is a pain in the arse to actually get it to evolve at any reasonable level. It is very useful versus the first gym and carries the fight vs. the first Galactic admin’s extremely dangerous Purugly if run alongside an Intimidate user like Shinx or Staravia thanks to Stun Spore, Growth and Mega Drain all beong learned fairly early on, but after that fight you will be scarily close to level 19 (the level you need to evolve it by if you don’t want to be stuck woth Mega Drain as your strongest attack until level 25—assuming you can evolve it by then) and probably not even close to having enough happiness to evolve it. As you don’t have access to poffins or friendship-increasing berries at that point, your best bet is to get the Soothe Bell at the end of Eterna Forest and then severely struggle to not get it to level 19 before the end of galactic HQ when you can get the bike to kind of speed up the process of running up and down in Eterna Coty to bolster happiness, at which point it will be below the level curve of the rest of your party and you will need to waste a lot of time cycling up and down. Given that all three starters have a great matchup versus the first gym and that there are plenty of ways to deal with Purugly, I feel it is generally better to wait until you are able to catch Roselia to catch it, given that it is available very soon afterwards, or alternatively use it until after cycling road (useful for elecs on there) and then box it until you can catch Roselia if it hasn’t evolved before the level where Roselia learns Magical Leaf (19 iirc).
 
sumwun said:
So...are you trying to move Budew down? This post has lots of good points in there, but I don't see a conclusion.
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O sry forgot to actually say what I was aiming for with that post lol.

I think that Roselia should be listed as A and that Budew should be listed as B. While the level up movesets are similar up until level 19 where Roselia learns Magical Leaf and Budew learns no more moves (worry seed/leech seed is only difference before that point iirc, with Leech obviously being better), happiness evolution means that starting from one or the other brings a different dynamic to a playthrough to the point that it is worth splitting them imo, and generally speaking you're better off starting with Roselia due to how early it is available (granted that Budew is still perfectly passable in a playthrough and is useful vs Oreburgh gym if you start with Chimchar+are underlevelled going into it)
 
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Gible, Gabite, Garchomp (Platinum)
Gible can be found in Wayward Cave, which is fairly early, though not early enough for Roark and Jupiter. Unfortunately, this early availability means it requires a lot of experience to avoid being underleveled. This is especially true for Gible because of its slow growth rate. Even worse, it's stuck as Gabite until level 48, so it stagnates mid-game even if it's not underleveled.
Gabite's stats aren't particularly good, as most A tier Pokemon can get a stat above 100 before the 5th gym. Because of this, Gabite's performance is underwhelming when it doesn't have a type advantage. Luckily for Gabite, its ground typing and relatively easy access to the earthquake TM means it does sometimes have a type advantage, though it's obviously much more useless when earthquake is taught to a teammate. As expected, its stats jump by a lot when it evolves into Garchomp, so it is among the strongest Pokemon to use against the Elite Four. Still, using Garchomp underlevels the entire team, so the extra power may not be worth it.
Because of the slow growth rate and even slower evolution, I nominate Gible for B, or maybe even C, tier in Platinum.
 
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