WaitWaitWaitWaitWaitWaitWaitWaitWaitWait My Boi Tauros only gets C because of availability !? So why is Jynx up in A then ? Tauros just destroys in Gen 1 ! Is so extremely strong ! Should be at least B. And Jolteon is a no brainer for A tier. Anyways. Really nice tier list. Keep up the great work :)
They missed their opportunities to do Galarian Nidos. In a region based on Great Britain, the most popular remaining monarchy, Pokemon that are king and queen, they really should have made special versions.
There's certain rules about how the queen can be depicted in media iirc? The laws might be long gone, but I know some parody isn't allowed. I imagine they might have been playing safe by not having any royals. I think I remember this because certain American tv shows like the daily show or something covered the royal wedding and the episode was banned in the UK.
I remember destroying the whole game with Sandslash's 3001% crit rate Slash attacks. I assumed it was extra powerful because he was a specialist in Slash because of his name when I was a kid lol.
Fun fact You mentioned that farfetch'd was originally named "a duck bearing leeks" Well see thats the joke. The english team thought that the japanese devs had to fetch that idea pretty far out in their imagination. And so they aptly named the pokemon after their perception of the design. Far-fetched
The concept is pushed in a different way in french, there it's named artichoke-duck, even when it's clearly a leek it's holding, because it's such a joke it doesn't even need an accurate name.
Farfetch'd's Japanese name, Kamonegi, comes from a saying, "A duck comes, bearing spring onions." It means an easy target or golden opportunity, to the point where it's completely farfetched. Thus the English name.
@@edchampagne1806 I...guess so? I think "clickbaiting" is using deceptive titles and thumbnails, and I do actually talk about how Nidoking is the best Gen 1 pokemon, so it wouldn't be clickbait in this case, I don't think.
@@ImportedCheese I'm pretty sure there's malicious clickbait(don't remember the name) where they put something popular in the thumbnail that has nothing to do with the video and normal clickbaitwhich is putting something popular the thumbnail then actually talking about it.
@@kingd8232 No, he wasn't saying everything in between the 8 gyms and the elite 4, he was saying everything throughout, including between the 8 gyms. The routes between Brock and Misty, for example.
Great video man, had it on my to watch list for ages but forgot about it until seeing you uploaded the Gen 2 video. Very knowledgeable, very calm, very reasoned. "I'd look up Hitmonchan's Special but I just ate" was my highlight
One thing I think you slept on a little bit was Swords Dance on the likes of Kabutops and Scyther, for those late game gym leaders and elite 4 members you set up a couple Swords Dances and you can sweep unchallenged
I'd agree with this if not for the glitch (design choice...?it's gen 1, it's probably a glitch...) that makes crits ignore your own stat boosts. This makes both of their most powerful moves, the auto-crit Slash, unusable with Swords Dance, not to mention that they have a 15-20% chance to crit normally, missing out on their attack boosts. Still, they're pretty good overall!
I would put Pikachu up in B tier for a few reasons, 1) You can get Pikachu VERY early, It is the first Electric Type you can get, 2) Raichu actually has pretty good stats 3)with all of the early game flying and water pokemon you fight Pikachu can do a LOT of work for your team.
You forgot MissingNo which would be very good since it multiplicates your Masterballs and Rare Candy, but you get him rather late and he's mostly useless in a fight.
missingno. is hot garbage in an efficiency tier list. You have to abuse glitches to get it before cinnabar, the exact same type of glitch that can get you any pokemon at level 100 before misty. Getting it at cinnabar with the cinnabar method is way too late, and depending of your ingame nickname, isn't garenteed. It's item multiplaction properties are absolutely outclassed by other glitches were you can just give yourself any amount of any item way earlier than when you get the masterball. It's stats and movepool makes no sense, it's bird typing is not a real typing. And as glitch mon goes, it's outclassed by 'M that has all the same properties than missingno. but can evolve into kangaskan, wich makes it the only other perfect hm slave that can learn cut fly surf and strength. This imo makes 'M special utility tier. But getting a 'M is harder than getting a mew anyway, defeating the entire point of getting 'M. If we start seriously considering glitches in an efficency run, almost all mon will be D as you can just immediately go finish the game.
It's one of the few ways to do item duplication to get over 99 of an item, which is needed to get a stack of 255 items. With that you can then do inventory underflow, which in turn allows you to get glitch items, including 8F which you can do arbitrary code execution with. Once you have that you can give yourself a full team of level 100s with perfect EVs and IVs
I agree with most of your rankings. I like your approach of practical campaign usefulness. I'd like to add my two cents on a few I think you're underrating though: Seel/Dewgong. I think it's worthy of B, maybe even A tier. You hold it back for being a late edition to the team, but before Cinnabar, there's not a lot of need for water/ice types. You can get Seel through an in-game trade for a Ponyta from the Pokémon mansion (which are caught up to level 36). It can immediately learn surf and blow through Blaine's and Giovani's gyms, and play a big role in victory road and the elite four. It's a low-investment workhouse, both in terms of total XP needed to level it up and player time to acquire. Consider it vs. Cloyster. It's acquired at a higher level, has trade boosted XP and is in a faster XP growth curve, while having the same speed, typing and move pool and better special and health. Getting Shelder earlier doesn't really help with any major battles, and defense doesn't matter if you don't get hit (not that Dewgong is fragile, and Cloyster is quite vulnerable to special attacks). Dewgong will oneshot everything weak against water and ice for the rest of the game, and likely outspeed all of them except for Dugtrio and Aerodactyl which it should easily survive a hit from. Dewgong is a fantastic addition to a Bulbasaur/Charmander run, proving you with water/ice typing exactly when you need them, while using up minimal XP keeping the rest of your team higher level. Doduo/Dodrio. This is worth B at least. You say you can't get this Pokémon until cycling road, but actually you can catch it as soon as you hit Celadon in the patch of grass on the way to the fly HM, well before you get the pokeflute. It's a little fragile until it evolves, but still quite quick and powerful for that stage of the game. You can teach it fly and tri-attack right away, both STAB. Body slam is an option as well if you don't have other plans for the TM. Quite quickly you'll get drill peck, the best flying move. You can use the rocket game corner, Pokémon Tower and Erica's gym minions for XP to evolve. Once evolved, it will make short work of Erica and the fighting dojo. With STAB normal and 110 base attack, It's got the hardest hitting non-suicidal physical attack in the game if you're willing to invest in the hyper beam TM, but even without that it'll one-shot anything vulnerable to physical attacks at surprisingly low levels. It's very fast too; the consumate alpha striker. It's one of the best options for Sabrina once you cross the outspeed threshold and it'll one shot your rival's executor or Venasaur easily. I think of it as the better Fearow. It's attack is quite a bit better, while the rest of it's stats are a wash, with pretty much the same move pool and XP growth curve. Fearow can be acquired earlier, but it doesn't counter any of the earlier gym leaders. Jolteon. I don't really disagree with your analysis, I just think it's strengths merit A tier. Jolteon takes zero effort to acquire, can be taught thunderbolt instantly and will outspeed everything for the rest of the game. It's a crit machine, and chews threw the fishermen and bird catchers that plague the mid-game. The list of Pokémon it will one shot throughout the game is massive. Admittedly, it doesn't really counter any gym leaders, but it's one of the best contributors to the elite four + champion, easily countering 9-10 Pokémon from those fights (Jynx and Dugtrio are also standouts). It'll outspeed and oneshot Aerodactyl which is a rare feat. It's also arguably the best Pokémon in the game to counter Lorelei, given Zapdos' ice vulnerability. Weedle/Kakuna/Beedrill. Okay, so it's not good, but I think it deserves C tier. It evolves early and it's hard hitting for the early game, potentially contributing to Brock, Misty, Surge and early Rival fights, while strongly countering Erica. and it's also the only real bug type attacker in the game. There are many better Pokemon, but none similar to Beedrill. It doesn't sabotage your playthrough, and in fact makes things somewhat easier for the first half of the game, at which point you should probably ditch it. If Butterfree is an A despite being outclassed in the late game, I think Beedrill deserves a bit more love. It's useable, rather than being an active detriment to your run.
Wow, thank you for leaving such a detailed response! I overlooked the trade bonuses that were available for Seel/Dewgong, and since Ice is not yet the worst type ever, I agree that it should move up to B. Or, I would agree, except Seel and Dewgong have the laziest names ever, so they actually belong in the Pewter Crucible alongside Onix. Great points on Doduo/Dodrio, especially considering how powerful Normal coverage is in Gen 1. I agree, they should move up. I'll agree again on Jolteon, I should have given more weight to how easily he fries the zillions of water types you have to plow through. I will push back a bit on Beedrill, I do think it's near irredeemable. I wouldn't say it's the worst Pokemon in the game or anything, but unlike Butterfree who at least gets a few gyms to shine, Beedrill is never your best option. Even compared to the lineup of losers you can have by Brock, the Weedle family is the worst. He can't even be used to cheese Brock with poison damage because of Brock's sponsorship deal with the Pokemart, which provides him with 5 full heals (wtf why.) Being the only bug-type offense also isn't even worth the novelty, a supereffective twinneedle reaches 150 BP factoring STAB, which isn't bad by any means, but that's barely more than a decent Flamethrower/Surf from a Pokemon that's...not Beedrill. In my more recent Gen 2 tier list I added an extra tier, and I think that went a long ways towards representing each Pokemon's merits more fairly.
@@ImportedCheese You have to remember that not only are Fire types rare in Gen 1 Kanto, the Pokemon that learn Flamethrower do it at really high levels. Charmeleon does it at level 42, which means 6 levels of withholding evolution, unless you wait for Charizard to learn it at level 46. Growlithe learns it at level 50, which is horrible. Magmar learns it at 55, which is downright useless. And Flareon learns it at 54 in RB and 52 in Yellow. And Moltres doesn't even learn it. The earliest you can get Flamethrower is with Vulpix at level 35, only if you're playing Blue version. Fire Blast is a really late TM, has less accuracy than Blizzard, only 5 PP and is a one time use only. But there is an extremely important detail you're missing, Twin Needle is four times effective against all Grass type Pokemon except for Tangela, meaning that against them it gets a BP of 300 factoring in STAB, surpassing Flamethrower with 2x effectiveness and STAB. So considering how early available, easily accesible and stupidly spammable it is, plus how viable it is I think it warrants Beedrill at least C tier. Besides, there's a lot of Poison types in the games, and a lot of trainers that use them.
Oh I’m so glad to see availability taken into account on a Pokemon tier list. This has been something I’ve been thinking about for a long time as I’ve been looking at Fire Emblem tier lists lol
I'd argue that Chansey needs some props for the ability to use Softboiled to reduce the number of potions you use to heal the whole team in the event that money becomes an issue.
Very good bird. Just as good as Fearow if not a bit better. Just a bit later is all. Easy to make up for lost time at least if you choose to go that route.
Nice video. Would definitely only change 1 thing which is that Jolteon should be in A-tier purely because it learns Pin Missile which is a bug type move and with Jolteon's high speed/crit rate, it can annihilate Psychic types. Ok now I gotta watch the updated video.
Exactly what I came here to say. It's much harder to use Oddish, because it doesn't have Razor Leaf. It only has Absorb as its damaging move up to level 24, when it gets Acid. Or if you want to evolve it at level 21, when it does, it only learns Acid at level 28. And Petal Dance is pretty bad in my opinion. The absolute highest it should have gone is C.
@@Krisipoke It's not that bad 70 power is much worse then like 110, but i mean no one says shadow ball is bad at 80. though getting confused can suck if you don't want to swap, and i hate using moves pre buffs
If your playing blue, and you chose charmander, butterfree is the ONLY reasonable way to get past brock. Everything else is a crappy physical attacker with no easy access to fighting moves (the nidorans only get them in yellow, in red/blue, they learn double kick in the 30s or 40s :0). Your only option is to grind until Charmanders ember beats them down despite the type disadvantage, or get butterfree by accidentally leveling them in viridian, then crushing brock with a nuetral special attack psychic move!
Just finished a run with Venusaur, Fearow, Dugtrio and Starmie as my team (Snorlax was there but just to use strength and surf before I got Starmie lol) and this may be my favorite run that I've ever done in Red! 😊
The Nidos were my favorite pokemon line in my childhood. However, there are 3 superficial things about them pissing me off: 1. Their moveset is so versatile that I can't decide what to teach them. 2. Because of their moveset they can deal with a lot of different foes, which always made me feel that some other pokemon in my team became obsolete. And because of that, I sometimes dropped the Nidos out of my team (instead of other members) because it's too easy, a bit less challenging and I used them way too often in my playthroughs. And I always disliked the idea of dropping members after wasted EXP on them, since it's harder than in following games to level up to 50ish without doing the obvious elite 4 runs. 3. Despite his bulky and hulky appearance, Nidoking is shorter than the average human, although he seems to dwarf many humans in the series. This doesn't affect in-game performance but it was sad for me as a kid to find out he's short. I used to believe he would be comparable in size to Rhydon, Tyranitar and Aggron.
@@NeedsMoDakka which is such BS. Dig is already worse than EQ because it takes twice as long, there was no good reason to make it weaker. The 60 BP dig has in Gen 2 and 3 is stupid.
I remember when I first got back to Pokemon when FR/LG were released, I decided to trade the Nidoran female for the male in FR, and Holy fucking shit. Not only does it evolve so soon into Nidorino, but like you said, you can instantly evolve him into Nidoking with a moon stone you just got. The best part is that you aren't missing any moves and even though he is supposedly weak vs. Misty, he can actually defeat her if you train a little bit north of the gym. Capable of tanking Water Pulses and retaliate with Thrash. Amazing movepool and stats for that early in the game. He can practically carry the team so reliably all the way to the Pokemon League.
Squirtle’s move pool is actually great. Surf, icebeam, bodyslam, earthquake pretty good move pool for a gen 1 Blastoise. Depending on whether or not you will allow for trade back and forth from gold and silver you could’ve bread confusion onto a Squirtle. I would swap bodyslam for confusion if I needed psychic type coverage. Unfortunately it would be a traded squirrel that had confusion.
Only if abra line doesn't use a psychic move, which is faster and a OHKO for poor old poison Beedrill. (Obviously if your Beedrill is faster then it wins, but that isn't the norm)
@@8Gion hard to say but with EVs/Base Points over time and a higher level, it probably can outspeed at least Kadabra. it also has access to Agility and Swords Dance so it can abuse that along with badgeboost pretty well edit: just checked this out. at level 45 with half the max base points in speed at 8 Speed DVs, it outspeeds Sabrina's Kadabra.
@@MegamanStarforce2010 The madman actually did the math, I was actually wondering if I was really correct with my assumption about abra line outspeeding Beedrill. However I believe your situation is not realistic sadly, I'm going to assume that by half base stat in speed you mean something around 32767 bs. Well, that is more than the soft cap of carbos (the soft cap being around 26000 something). In my experience, using a team of 6 pokemon and doing all fights and no grinding against wild pokemon, at the end of the game, my team is around 10000 bs (and I'm being generous). So to get a 32700 speed bs Beedrill you will need to give it carbos untill it soft caps, and exclusively use Beedrill for all fights until then (or grind wild pokemon), which will make it level up over 45 anyway, making the entire base stat discussion redundant. (I know those numbers as I like to export my teams in pokemon stadium, and I make them attain the 26000 soft cap) Also Sabrina's best pokemon is level 43, this might depend of the playstyle ofc, but I rarely ever overlevel to have higher level than the leaders. (But considering Beedrill, it probably needs to be higher level to keep up with the rest of the team). Also setup Beedrill, like farfetchd, it has access to amazing setup moves, sadly it doesn't survive a turn to make it reliable. Their defense stats are way too low and focus sash doesn't exist. I believe I'd need to do a solo perfect IV Beedrill run to erase all doubts about my assumption, sadly I don't have a lot of free time these days :(, and I'm pretty sure it will overlevel too much anyway. Edit: so the youtuber mahdrybread did a Beedrill solo, and at level 47 it outsped kadabra (which is level 38), but couldn't outspeed the lvl 43 alakazam. I guess my final thought are that Beedrill is ok if given special attention, but any pokemon will be ok if given special attention, even onyx.
Sadly Beedrill just sucks. A level 30 Beedrill using a Twin Needle against a level 30 Kadabra maxes out at 83% damage. Plus it would be outsped and get OHKOd itself. For a guaranteed OHKO and to outspeed you need to be level 38. And for an Alakazam you'd need to be level 43. That's pretty bad. And the Abra line is one of the only things Beedrill is usable against, yet you still have to be overleveled by a lot. Against most other Pokemon it's terrible.
@@jaybee946 i once did a bug monotype and beedrill was very useful. There is a fucking lot of poison types around in gen 1, and bug moves where super effective againist poison because of a bug. That is the generation where many pokemons only get an usable stab at the halfway point, Beedrill get one very early. It's what is supposes to be. A mon that peak early and eventually get surpassed. But being good at some point is better than never being good.
Poor onix. in Anime: Colossal Boulder Python in Games: tiny pebble worm who touches waterdrops or leafs then blows up +Pewter crucible sounds low key awesome
Doing a Beedrill solo run, and it ended up being more powerful than I initially thought. Then again, this isn't a solo run tier list, so Beedrill being low makes some sense when you have to balance it in a team as opposed to trying to solo the game with it.
Your music choices are so consistently good. Octopath in particular - great choice. Only complaint is that I’m so consistently attracted by the music that I sometimes distract myself from the video to listen to the song!
For the most part I agree with this but charmander being in the same tier as squirter and bulbasaur doesn't sit right with me as he comes up short in the hardest part of the game and by the time it comes online you have other options id say b tier for sure definitely not a
Yeah, especially since around the time it becomes useful you can get a growlith and evolve pretty early, and if you don’t want one you have access to flareon around the same time, but I normally want jolteon
@@supreme_king_obama1158 Growlithe is Red-exclusive and will take until Level 50 to learn Flamethrower and Flareon locks you out of choosing Vaporeon or Jolteon tho. Charmander locks you out of the two other starters as well but beyond Venusaur's autocrit Razor Leaf you're not missing out on much
I did a Char run not too long ago for the first time ever. It isn't as bad as others make it seem. Though it could be a lot better. If dig wasn't 100 base power back then, it might be much worse lol
Hey, thanks for watching my video! I hope you enjoyed it! For some reason, RUclips is pushing my second video ever instead of my more recent, more polished content - there are probably a few placement changes I would make based on the discussion here in the comments, so please keep telling me I'm a dunderhead xD If you'd be interested, I believe my Gen 2 video has better supported takes overall, mostly because I added an additional tier and differentiated more clearly within the tiers themselves. Give that a watch if you've got the time! ruclips.net/video/5x0913yMN34/видео.html Thank you, hope to battle you in the other comment section as well!
at 16:50 you said Oddish gets Razor Leaf. this confused me, as i have my old guide book on the bed. it can learn petal dance and solar beam, and all the powder moves, but no Razor Leaf. and it can only learn Mega Drain in this generation if you teach it Erika's TM. in future games Mega Drain becomes a standard level up move for it.
One thing that makes Rattata undervalued imo Hes the only normal type pokemon that can learn fire, water, ground, ice and electric attacks. They wont hit the hardest, but in the context of it being useful in-game, to become the champion, that is insanely useful. You can be strong against almost everyone while not having to worry about typings except fighting and psychic. I.e., i used to have a raticate with fully boosted special through calcium to whom i taught : Hyper Fang Flamethrower Hydro Pump Thunderbolt And then, if you dont wanna do it like that, you can also teach Raticate every HM move except Fly (Flash, Cut, Strength, Surf) and make sure all your combat oriented pokemons have their 4 best possible moves Rattata is the literal swiss army knife of gen 1 and for that he is a high A tier pick. You should always have one even if only to be your walking HM prompt
In-Game Trade Dewgong is something special. Trade for Ponytail super easy. Immediate access to Water/Ice coverage, Doesn’t even need Ice Beam TM, BOOSTED experience to shoot past the rest of your team, and obtained right before the Fire & Ground Gyms and Elite Four where Ice/Water coverage basically mops up the rest. Trade Dewgong is the game’s “If you didn’t choose Squirtle and can’t bother catching Articuno” emergency button. And it’s a good one.
Glad you gave Butterfree the respect it deserves. It not only learns psychic moves, but it does so at a super low level (I think like 13-15 but it’s been years since I’ve touched RBY). It tears through the early game.
I think Meowth should be raised up a tier for two reasons. First of all, it is the only line that can learn Pay Day. Before the Elite Four then, it's the only source of renewable income you have. Given that you need 500 Poke to get into the Safari Zone, that can prevent you from getting softlocked, and either way, in case you need some cash but have fought all the Trainers you can that's the only way to go given there are not abilities like Pickup and that you can't fight other Trainers. It's a niche move, but rather unique in the game and it can't really be replaced. Also, Slash is very overpowered with Persian. It's a guaranteed crit so 140 base power- but also with STAB that makes it 210 base power, basically almost equivalent to Hyper Beam except it's 100% accurate and you don't need to recharge. So yeah, I think Meowth should be bumped up to Tier B.
@@honor2425 The guards only let you in in yellow if you got no money, you can get softlocked in red/blue, but money is never a real problem in these games anyway.
Onix: good against you when Brock is using it against your pre-evolved, weak Pokemon that it resists. Absolutely useless for you, and the easiest Pokemon to knock out once you have something that knows Razor Leaf or Surf. No wonder Bruno sucks, he has fighting types and Onix.
onix isn't even good when brock is using it. bulbasaur and squirtle both one shot it easily and even though it resists fire, its special stat is so piss poor that charmander is still very likely to just win that exchange. also here is just how weak onix is: brunos onix can't one shot a charizard of equal level.
Enjoyed the video. Nice job! I will say that doduo is at least one tier low. You can get it right out it rock tunnel after 3 badges by cutting the tree in celedon. And it comes just in time to fight Erika, the grass gym leader. This thing with Stab tri attack, body slam, drill peck and fly wreaks havoc on anything with low defense
I miss this style of the tier videos. Low speaking volume, soothing music, minimal chuckling, etc. I've been using this to help me sleep the last few weeks.
Pretty solid tier list, although you did make a few mistakes. For example, Ditto is available after pokeflute, which considering you can skip the game corner, you can get pretty early. Still trash though. I think you underestimated gyarados though. You can get a level 15 magikarp pretty easily and early, and after that you can give it 2 or 3 rare candies and some traditional leveling to get the big sea monster. It can easily handle pokemon above its level thanks to dragon rage doing fixed damage. It will catch up to your team fairly quickly. After that, body slam, bubblebeam, surf, etc, the possibilities are endless. Worth to mention that Abra and gastly would probably be nidoking tier if they evolved some other way. Especially Abra, I usually get him to Kadabra by the time my starter is level 21 or so. So he's not that far behind and will start sweeping pretty much immediately after evolving.
I like this concept overall. Here are my thoughts on your list: -Charmander is B tier at best. You have to power level to use it to beat Brock efficiently and it struggles completely against Starmie. It can be useful against Surge but that’s with Dig (which you are taking away from something that can use it more effectively if you use it on your Charmander). -Caterpie belongs in B tier, and this is being very generous. Its use goes down considerably after Misty, and it’s really not even your best option against her. Training up a Pikachu, Gloom or Weepinbell is superior for Misty since Butterfree won’t even get STAB to be super effective against Starmie. There is little point in keeping it on your team after Brock. It isn’t that good for Surge, you have better options by then to face Erika with and everyone else stomps it after that. -Nidoran (F) can join the kingdom. Body Slam is superior to Thrash by far as a learned move by level up and because it learns it naturally you can also save your TM08 for duplication or for someone else who can use it better. -Clefairy goes into B tier; arguably C. It is difficult to train when you get it even with Mega Punch and making it into Clefable is nowhere near as good as getting an early Nidoking or queen because when you get it there’s no reason to evolve it before your Nidorin_. -Sandshrew is C; arguably a D. I like the Sandshrew line and always have personally but it is outclassed by the Nidos and the Geodude family entirely. It also doesn’t learn EQ or Dig naturally. -Mankey belongs in D tier. Outside of Yellow it doesn’t gain any advantage, but even then you can do an in game trade to get a Machamp at least. In RB there is no reason to use it at all. And I love Primeape personally. -Rattata is C tier. Lots of options with TMs but you’re getting no benefit taking access of good moves away from better Pokémon. Raticate with BoltBeam, Bubblebeam, Body Slam, Dig, Super Fang, etc…is really fun to use though. I’d put it in A tier otherwise because of how fun it can be to use. -Shellder is D tier by your logic. It is a stone evolution and aside from its defense it is better suited as a kamikaze Pokémon if anything else. Other Pokémon do its job better with Surf/Blizzard or Ice Beam, and when you gain access to it you also gain access to the infinitely better Staryu. Lapras is also a better option due to its movepool…by far. -Drowzee and Slowpoke need to switch tiers. Drowzee has access to Hypnosis but other Pokémon better than it do also, and Slowpoke also gets access to Amnesia and Surf and can be used concurrently pretty well with the Abra line since it also uses a water slot on your team. A Surf, Blizzard or Psychic off of Amnesia boosts, two of which being STAB boosted hits hard. Drowzee isn’t even fielded if you use Abra anyway who is superior. -Snorlax goes into A because it has a great movepool. It also learns body slam naturally meaning like Nidoqueen it doesn’t take away TM08 access from something else. -Lapras > Omanyte. By a lot. Considerably better movepool and better availability. It is also easier to train despite being lower level because of this. I’d switch their tiers. -Farfetch’d sucks even if you do the in game trade because Fearow and Dodrio are superior. If its only use is for being an HM slave and Slash, you have access to better Slash users with better overall staying power or movepools. If it’s an HM Slave it isn’t even being trained or used in any aspect of advancing through the game other than the overworld lol. -Vulpix, Ponyta, Flareon and Growlithe are all D tier, with Growlithe at least being arguable for remaining in C because of its great stats. Beyond that all of them have a horrible movepool and are utterly outclassed by Charizard in that regard. Even Magmar is better in that it gets possible Psychic access…though that doesn’t save it from also being a D tier candidate). -Horsea, Voltorb, Magnemite, Venonat Goldeen, Scyther and Pinsir are all D tier. They are all either just bad (Goldeen, Venonat, and Horsea, bc no Kingdra and therefore no reason to use it over any other water type you get access to), or have a horrible movepool relative to their stats (Scyther and Pinsir), or are just outclassed completely by anything that comes before it in terms of either stats or availability (Orb/Magnet) -Moltres is D tier. Worse movepool than Charizard (and even Arcanine and Magmar) and horrible typing. Charizard avoids its weaknesses somewhat with access to EQ and Dig but Moltres doesn’t have any way to check any potential threats against it. Sorry for the lengthy comment. I’ll watch the GSC tier list later. Good job overall!
I personaly think Pinsir is VERY underrated. It can pull some nice sweeps with Swords Dance and Body Slam/Hyper Beam/Submission. Of course it will get walled by ghosts, but it will also have plenty of oportunities to shine. It destroys Sabrina and most of the elite four.
@@ImportedCheese lol not really. I know RBY’s mechanics like the back of my hand and whenever I do play competitively I always play RBY. Didn’t take as long as you’d think.
@@janyozenith9037 Depending on when you get to the Safari Zone you will likely already be past Sabrina. If you are, Pinsir does okay against Koga, is destroyed by Blaine and underwhelming against Giovanni. Plus Pinsir gets Swords Dance somewhere in its 50s naturally? Will you grind it up to that level for just 2 gyms if it brings nothing that other Pokémon can’t do in some capacity without setting up? If you use TM03 on it then you take it away from Charizard... I love both Scyther and Pinsir, but this generation was not good to them. Now, if Pinsir got something like Dig access in this generation (and maybe even Twinneedle) that’d be a different story.
@@pikminologueraisin2139 Moltres is D tier no matter what. It has a 4x weakness to rock types and Victory Road is littered with them. It can’t even learn Ember via level up and its best attacking moves at that time are Sky Attack and Fly as your options that don’t take a TM away from something infinitely better. Furthermore when you get to the Elite Four it isn’t even useful against any of them except for Bruno, and even then you still have two Onix that have type advantage over it. Would you really waste your Master Ball on that? 😂 The Charmander argument for that tier is based on the fact that in the early game your options for long term good Pokémon are limited. If a Pokémon doesn’t need to be carried as much by a full team and has coverage options available to it early on then it is a higher tier Pokémon. Again Charmander’s flaws are only in the early game due to type matchups against the first two gyms, but it needs extra help to get past that early game hump where Bulbasaur and Squirtle do not. It does very well in literally every other gym after that, including Viridian City because by that time it will have EQ resistance and other coverage options to defeat Gio’s Nidos.
Think its nice that the starters in Gen 1 are very balanced for the most part. Charizard is probably the worst of the 3 due to its typing and lack of bulk, but it has a high crit rate and gets slash, fire spin for stunlocking, and flamethrower so you don't have to rely on fire blast. Venusaur gets razor leaf which is better than slash, plus access to sleep powder and the dreaded toxic/leech seed combo. Blastoise is the only one without a guaranteed crit move, but it's made up for by having access to possibly the best move in the game, blizzard, as well as surf. Mono water is a great typing considering Venusaur is weak to the extremely strong psychic type and Charizard is weak to water, the second most common type after normal. You really can't go wrong, I agree that all 3 are deserving of A tier.
Hi man, as a new subscriber to your channel i just wanted to say that i am impressed. This video was great and it was in my recommended, so i am sure more people will see it. I am happy for you. You have great videos and google is helping you (the algorithm i guess). Keep it up and good luck!
Hey, thank you so much! Hope to see you in future videos xD I have one that will hopefully be coming out tonight here in Japan, should be Saturday morning for anyone stateside.
Sorry for the late reply, but thanks for watching! These are all just opinions (and opinions based on the narrow criteria of in-game performance only.) As for stadium I'd imagine the every team would be Alakazam, Tauros and...another Psychic type, maybe Exeggutor? Either that or Rhydon/Golem, but Stadium is an entirely different beast than the actual adventure.
@@ImportedCheese Honestly a Stadium OU viability ranking would be a pretty good general indicator of what's good and what's not, and then you just adjust for unbanning RNG strats like Evasion or OHKO moves (just imagine Gengar using Hypnosis, and then getting at bare minimum 1 free Double Team if the opponent does the optimal move and switches out) EDIT: unless you judged how good the rentals are, I guess lol
As a kid zubat was my first shiny in granite cave (Ruby) and although i know it isnt a great pokemon in a main game sense, I always catch one now and evolve it up to crobat. With some egg moves and tms crobat can be useful in doubles at least.
Mew is basically better Nidoking. Better Stats, movepool and typing. The one Major difference is that it starts with only pound, but you can give it every TM without losing out on much. Mew can easily steamroll everything, and still Horn drill cheeses if you so desire... It’s probably the new best, if it counts. Same goes for a Mewtwo encountered in the same way. Even more extreme stats than Mew, and starts with an actual moveset. Which means psychic. The game no longer exists if you start with Mewtwo.
Mew would be broken game tier, use growl 6 time to catch it to level 1, make it win some exp but not enough to get to level 2, it will immediately jump to 100. It is the perfect hm slave and imo should only be used as such.
Beedrill may or may not be an F tier but he can do some neat stuff. Once he gets Twin Needle he can literally sweep the entire Celadon City gym by himself because almost everything in there takes x4 damage from Bug. Also, Lorelei's First Dewgong will always spam Amnesia against him so if you run him with Agility and Swords Dance you can max both of them and sweep her team. I'm not trying to argue that he's actually good, but he's far from completely useless. Also, getting Magikarp to level 20 early isn't as much of a nightmare as you make it out to be. If you put a level 5 Magikarp in the daycare it takes less than 20 minutes of continuous movement on the bicycle to get it to level 18. I normally do daycare until 18 and then use two Rare Candies to instantly bridge the last two levels, then I'll use my TM10 (Water Gun) on my new Gyarados and I've got a fully functional water type stat monster for the rest of the game, and you can do this as soon as you have the Bicycle, so before even Misty potentially. Worth it IMO.
You'll have to forgive me...at least things can only get better! People accused me of being a Machamp shill for placing him in A in Gen 4. I don't hate Machamp, I promise!
Another notable fact about Jolteon is that it learns Pin Missile, making it the only Pokémon that learns a damaging Bug-type move and is not weak against Psychic attacks; for this reason, I would end up using that against Sabrina because I focused too much on type advantages.
I loved to abuse X-Accuracy on Rapidash. Just pick your poison: Perma-trapping with Fire Spin (plus ~20% chance to crit due to Speed, and in Gen I if a Trapping move crits, all subsequent hits crit), or just sweep with Horn Drill if you feel bad for the opponent.
Unless the nidokingdom is just a meme tier to show how much you like nidoking (which is totally understandable as it's amazing), I'm a tad disappointed that abra, tentacool, and staryu didn't make it up there. You admitted that even kadabra can blast through the game, and starmie's type and movepool is insane, both of which make them top tier pokemon. Fantastic tier list by the way
It's a bit of a meme-tier, but I do think that Nidoking is a step above everything else in the game. If I were the remake the tier list today, i'd probably expand the Nidokingdom a bit, at least to Nidoqueen and Clefable, probably.
You can get Slowbro before you get Surf. Fish with Super Rod at Indigo Plateau after the fourth badge. Means you can use it for Koga, Pokemon Tower and Team Rocket. Slowpoke is in Celadon too, but it’s too low level.
This reminds me of my Freshman year, and my classmate who would talk my ear off about Pokemon Gen 1 because I would listen and learn xD Thanks Trevor, I still your advice nowadays.
"Eeveelution pair," made me do a double-take lmao, too bad I chose Squirtle and then caught a Pikachu on my copy of Green. Only one left for my Party will be used to Defeat Erika and never again xD
Spearow and Caterpie should swap tiers. Fearow is faster, and Drill Peck is an awesome move. It can still keep up in the late game, making it totally worthy of the A tier. But Butterfree loses so much luster by the late game. Yes, sleep is great, but it just hits so weak, with no decent STAB attacks.
Dude forreal. I pretty much always have Fearow on my team (Sometimes Dodrio instead) It's early game, flying is convenient, Drill peck is a nice STAB attack, it's got decent normal options like double edge or hyper beam with a decent attack stat to play off of. I like using Fearow quite a bit.
Great list, and I agree with most of these picks, but there are 2 big things I'd change. 1) Slowbro should probably be A-tier. The water/psychic combination destroys the latter half of the gyms, as well as the elite 4, especially if you teach it Ice Beam or Blizzard for Lance. On top of that, Amnesia is absolutely busted. The only real downsides are that it's slow (but it's bulky enough that this isn't really a problem) and that you get it a little late (but just in time for it to be at its most useful as it wouldn't really be good for Erika or Surge anyway). 2) Nidoqueen learns Horn Drill via TM, and while it's a little slower than Nidoking, its increased bulk helps it set up X Speed and X Accuracy, so I think it should be in the same tier as it.
Slowbro is great, but in an efficiency tier list It's not top tier. It's way too slow, and needs to use amnesia. All other psychic are faster and dont need to use amnesia to destroy all ennemy pokemon. It's speed and availability really weights it down. However you can fish slowbro with the super rod and the rainbow badge really early on the road to victory road.
Porygon deserves to rot in Pewter tier. Due to how the Game Corner sells coins, even if you literally cheat and dupe nuggets, getting it is STILL a pain. And it sucks anyways.
It's cheaper in blue for no reason, honestly I get porygon just by playing the best slot machine (down right), turbo A emulator speed to 16 times normal speed.
I agree with almost all of your choices/reasons, the few i dont are Hitmonlee which you get at level 30 so it is relative to the others you can get at that time, it is a fast/strong sweeper and it is by a very wide margin the best fighting type in gen 1 (but that is not saying much). The other is Chancy, it is aquired late but it has the best move pool outside of Mew and has a very good special stat which can allow it to wreck everything with its special attack, and it has decent enough speed to go first most of the time.
Naw, Hitmonlee is the best of complete trash, not gonna be doing much with a mighty 85 bp Gen 1 Hi-Jump Kick. They didn't even spell it right! Chansey is pretty much impossible to catch and also has 50 base speed lol
I tried Hitmonlee once and it works to an extent, but it's practically paper and will die if your kick doesn't kill first (and that was a coin flip in my experience) I personally wouldn't do it again.
Sup cheese. I really like these tier lists! As a quick suggestion if there could be a time stamp in the description for when you actually start the rankings it would be really helpful! Great work though!
Just added one! I don't think there is much fluff in this intro, mostly I explain the tiering criteria. Hopefully adding a timestamp won't cause a flood of "What about X!" that I address in the intro =/
When I play Blue (I never personally had Red, and I'm fine with that), I use the Mew glitch to get Mew before battling Misty. Since he presumed no glitches would be used, I'd just like to say that in my opinion, Mew is at least A tier, as Mew can, with the right TMs, sweep practically every major battle, and can be gotten after just one badge.
I've seen some other comments address some of the other big ones I disagree with, but I haven't seen anyone else mention how you're REALLY sleeping on Magnemite. Granted, it's pretty out of the way unless you're playing yellow because it's exclusive to the power plant, but it should evolve basically right after you get it as a result, and even if you're playing Yellow and got it early, its first form is strong enough that it will still be able to hold its own until it evolves. Now, what really makes me love Magneton is the sheer power of its stats though. You said it had low speed, but a base speed of 70 is perfectly useable, and really is pretty much average overall, so I don't see the issue in that, especially since stat experience will make your team typically capable of outspeeding the opponent team anyways as long as your speed is at least decent. As for Magneton itself, I feel like it just can't be ignored because it has such amazing raw defensive and offensive strength. Due to Gen 1 special, it has amazing defensive stats in both areas, with 95 defense and 120 special, which gives it by far the best defensive stats of any electric type besides Zapdos. Electric is also a great defensive type, with its only weakness being ground, which is mostly easy to dispose of anyways since most of the ones you'll encounter in the main game are Rock/Ground types that will get wiped out by any water or grass move. Of course, that 120 special also doubles as an offensive stat, which is again far better than the special of any other electric type in the game besides Zapdos, with Jolteon being the only other choice who is even close (which I'd personally put in A by the way). This lets it hit like an absolute truck with thunder or thunderbolt. And electric is just as good of an offensice type as it is defensive, with ground being mostly a non-problem as I said before, and grass just being generally bad and not even really present any more by the time you get Magnemite anyways. There _are_ however a TON of water types right around when you can get Magnemite, and as you mentioned yourself, water types can be quite difficult to take down in Gen 1, but Mageton's monster special stat and electric typing makes easy work of them. Now, its movepool is admittedly very shallow, but because it has such great survivability and such amazing special combined with its great typing, it really doesn't need it and can easily obliterate opponent teams with thunderbolt alone.
Great points! You're really selling me on Yellow version Magnemite, but I am going to push back a bit and defend my tier placement, even in the context of Yellow. First, you're absolutely right about Magnemite's killer stats. Its Special is indeed incredible, and although 50 HP is pretty suspect, with Stat Xp and the passive badge boosts (not to mention how you tend to outlevel enemies) survivability is not an issue. While the Special is incredible, it's actually kind of overkill; while yes, you'd rather have more stats than not, for a casual playthrough "good enough" is all you need. Whether you deal 100% of the opponent's HP or 300% of it, the outcome is the same, you win. Nidoking's Special is pretty unspectacular, but it's precisely good enough to combine with his availability and movepool to (team) rocket him to the top. The 70 speed is also more than usable; it completely skipped my mind that Magneton is actually FASTER than its evolution, Magnezone, which is actually a trend with many of the Gen 4 evolutions where "evolving" seems to just mean...getting fat. (Seriously, Rhyperior, Magmortar, Electivire, Tangrowth, Lickylicky, what happened here...?) However, I think that Magnemite's shallow movepool is what really kills it. If it naturally learned Thunderbolt then maybe I could see it moving up to B, but if you want a reliable STAB, you need to invest the incredibly valuable Thunderbolt TM. Why not spend that TM on Haunter/Gengar or even Starmie, who can then sweep through pretty much any team? There's also the issue of being completely stonewalled (sand...walled?) by ground types, which applies to all electric types (except Zapdos, kinda, not that Drill Peck is going to be getting through Rhydon anytime this year.) Of course, you can just switch to a teammate, but if you just want to plow through the game, you don't ever want to switch, you want to just stuff a bunch of coverage moves on a decent stat stick and win the game. Magnemite is pretty much the definition of a one-trick Ponyta, and I don't think that trick is enough to earn it a spot higher than C, unfortunately.
The easiest way to get a gyarados is to put magikarp in the day care as soon as possible. Make the Ms. Ann and third badge than come back, give your magikarp a rare candy and destroy everything in rock tunnel with your gyarados.
Disagree with a few things. 1. Oddish isn’t nearly as good as bellsprout because it actually doesn’t learn razor leaf. Plus victribell is actually very good. Comparable to venusaur 2. Jolteon is way better in game. It’s high crit rate and special shred everything non ground. It’s basically an electric kadabra 3. Magickarp deserves to be in A tier. Usually your initial team will consist of your starter and nidoran. You can obviously cheese the entire game with nidoking but if you wanna have more fun you build a good all around team. If you get a magigkarp after pewter and train it off of your starter and nidorino from my moon to nugget bridge you’ll have an incredibly powerful team of gyrados with bubble beam, starter, and nidoking. Then catch an abra and put him in the day care for a little bit. Once that involves into kadabra you have a team that can run through the entire game. Catch a dugtrio and evolve your eevee into jolteon with thunderbolt... that team covers everything with fast hard hitting options from basically the 3rd gym on.
I still remember my first playthrough of Pokémon yellow. I leveled up 2 pidgeys into pidegeottos just to beat Brock then boxed one of them before surge. I also remember a few years later going back with an elemental punching alakazam with psychic at level 18 that I traded back to Pokémon yellow And completely solo’d and shit stomped the entire game
I looked for a tier list to ban broken pokemon from my nuzlocke of pokemon blue. It's not exactly what I wanted, but that's ok, your explanations makes it pretty clear that it's more like a mekkah tier list than what I was expecting. Some changes I'd make are: Charmander: fire pokemon are bad in gen 1 also because they have high attack and low special, sure you get Charmander sooner than moltres, but like it, it cannot be good, I'd put it in C, because, as a bulbafan, Charizard is the perfect nemesis, it would damage the rivalry if it was lower. Edit: I changed my mind, charmander should be a tier lower than Squirtle and Bulbasaur, but this tier list has not enough tiers. Charmander is perfectly placed in cheese's new tier list. Growlith: Arcanine is the best fire mon imo because it is the only one that has a real use for it's attack stat, make it learn dig, fire move and a strong normal move like body slam or hyper beam and it will be amazing, instantly surpassing chamander from celadon and later and even dare I say it, Nidoking. (Nidoking is still top because of early game ofc), I'd put it in B (it does need dig to work tho) Edit: I changed my mind: growlith cannot work without dig, a tm really important for surge, having to keep it for growlith is bad. Charmander too needs dig, and works exactly like Arcanine, but is there for surge. Growlith is high C. Oddish and Bellsprout: a good gen 1 plant mon *needs* razor leaf (which is slash on steroids, and can be super effective), oddish doesn't learn it, not only that but oddish is slower and weaker than Bellsprout. I'd put oddish in Low C/High D (it still has sleep), I'd keep Bellsprout a tier under Bulbasaur, as it is not available for brock and mt moon, but it work exactly like it (slower than Bulbasaur, but stronger). Meowth: he learns bubblebeam, imo that gives it way more utility. Slash and bubblebeam is an excellent synergy. I'd put him in B Farfetchd: no farfetchd is absolute garbage, yes it has slash, but its slash is weaker than any other flying type drill peck, even with 100% crit, it is important to note that flying is a really really good offensive typing, slash is normal type therefore is never super effective. Farfetchd would have been perfect with sword dance and agility and hyper beam and slash, but crits don't work with sword dance, and he doesn't learn hyper beam and it will never survive the setup turn anyways. It is a perfect hm slave, only learning cut and fly may look bad, but that combination is actually really rare, and synergies very well with another hm slave with strength and surf. I'd put him in don't bother, hm slave can be boxed until needed. Edit: bonus exp doesn't make it good either, for the same number of pokemon defeated, fearow would be level 40, and farfetchd 45, that not enough of a gap to make farfetchd viable (farfetchd needs +20 levels to keep up with fearow) Abra: you can get abra as soon as you can, put him in the daycare, do the ss anne and electric gym, boom it's level 15, ready to evolve twice in your hands. Alakazam is broken, l'd put it in low Nidoking tier. Mr.mime: you can get this psychic type before you do the ss Anne, it's fast, learns thunder bolt, and is psychic. Easy A tier, people underestimate him because he's highly disturbing, but he's amazing. Especially if you don't want to bother with abra early levels. (In blue you can get the casino abra with only coins on the ground, ready to trade) Magicarp: get the almost free Magikarp from mt moon, put it in the daycare, do ss anne, electric gym and get all the cut goodies from after the Diglett cave, when you come back for rock tunnel, retrieve it at level 19 and boom, you have the absolute king of nuzlocke. I'd put it in low A/high B. Flareon: don't bother, Vaporeon or jolteon are just infinitely better, you will never need it, ever, just get Arcanine. Edit: this is just mean, Flearon sucks, but not enough to be D. Low C Moltres: don't bother, it's Charizard, but endgame instead of earlygame. Mew: you can get it as soon as you get an abra with a glitch, best hm slave in the game, makes the game infinitely more injoyable, special utility tier. I won't talk about doduo as another comment went far more in depth than I could. But B imo
Mew's basically God tier. Of course if you're doing glitchless runs or just want to ban broken Pokemon, it's the best Pokemon in the game at the earliest point you can get it. It isn't too bad to catch since it has a higher catch rate than the legendary birds and Mewtwo so if you've got something like Clefairy with Sing, it's not too bad to catch. There's also the fact that it continues to be the best Pokemon for the rest of the playthrough and it has no real bad match-up and it can basically play any role and excel at it. A simple set of Body Slam, BoltBeam/QuakeSlide and STAB or pretty much whatever coverage moves you need cleaves through the whole game. It can also OHKO abuse better than anything so even Nidoking's X Accuracy and X Speed strat works with Mew only better due to it having better stats and typing.
@@ShiningJudgment666 you're right, mew is uber, like mewtwo, however I believe it's utility as a hm slave far exceeds any other sets it can have if you just want to finish the game (and it can have so many sets). But that is due to my playstyle I suppose. I can beat the game with my 6 pokemon and only use one hm slave mew, or I can use mew as a main member of the team and manage 2 hm slaves (generally farfetch'd and a nido). The second option being way more painful. I don't like to consider items, as basically any pokemon with items is invincible, even a team of splash only magikarp cannot lose if you have enough X items, full restore and revive. (yes I know that team cannot beat Agatha, that 's not the point).
@@8Gion Yeah. That is true. Mew learns all the HMs and the only other one that learns all the required HMs is Kingler who you can't get until later on. You don't need Flash in Gen 1 but that's besides the point. Mew as HM Slave isn't the worst but to me it feels like a waste of its power. You can also do the Mew glitch more than once as long as you have trainers to battle to perform the glitch so you can have a HM Slave Mew and a main team member Mew. Magikarp teams also won't even make it to Agatha either since it won't even get past the Pokemon Tower unless you take something specifically to get rid of ghosts.
Idk about that, Mewtwo and slowbro can get to 999 special with Amnesia and Articuno can't boost it's special. There is also snorlax's self destruct, as it's stabbed and halves the ennemy defense, has a base power of 390 everything considered. It seems way stronger than the 180 base power of Articuno's stabbed blizzard. And golem gets the strongest explosion with 340 base power.
@@8Gion yeah, but it's not about boosting, because a +6 special articuno still does more than a +6 mewtwo or slowbro, it just doesn't get amnesia. (just get some x specials if you wanna test.) secondly, i proly meant strongest /special/ attack, my b.
@@knockoffsans.3636 I forgot you can use items. Not that Articuno really needs it as it destroy the game once you have it, but it's fun to theorycraft. In that case it's tied with Exegguttor solar beam, zapdos thunder and moltres fire blast. Blizzard being the best as it takes one turn and has better accuracy than thunder. Edit: yeah i forgot about moltres half way, oops
Solid tier list, although I have my doubts on a few mons. I don't think Mankey deserves B, even with the niche it has in Yellow. Ya boi in the Nidokingdom gets Double Kick at level 12 in Yellow, as well as Nidoran F, and both offer much more for your overall playthrough than Mankey. That being said, I'd put it in C since it's a good route-cleaner with all of the Normal-type trainers you find, and you get Mankey super early which means more stat exp. Bold Caterpie nom, but A is really overselling it. You make good points on its qualities, but the stats, bad typing, and no STAB means it's essentially a hindrance in the mid-late game. Butterfree is also base 70 speed (same as Onix) not 80. C at best imo. I don't think Gastly's A tier, either. The Normal-immunity is nice, but it's a serious resource-hog. If you want this mon to faint mons quickly, it needs TMs, and even with them equipped, it's not making nearly as much headway as Abra and Jynx. Plus, it's essentially stone-walled by opposing Psychics (Psychic is immune to Ghost in Gen 1 so no Lick) and Gastly is weak to them. B is more ideal. This one's a bit of a nitpick but I don't think Moltres even deserves C. Its Elite 4 matchup isn't...really good outside maybe Bruno and a few of the Rival's mons.
Ahh thanks for the in-depth reply! I'll agree on Mankey, fighting types just can't catch a break in Gen 1... A might be overselling our boy Margarine a bit, but I don't think he goes lower than B. He's outclassed by...well, most things after you reach Cerulean, but he at least gets psychic coverage and Sleep Powder with Gen 1 sleep mechanics. I might also just be biased towards Butterfree because I'm a filthy Charmander player and Butterfree is your best bet for besting Brock (oof) if you're not playing Yellow. I gotta defend Ghastly tho, I think he's really good. It's true that he hogs TMs, but especially in Red/Blue Ghost type makes you immune to like...half the enemy movesets in the game because of all the random normal moves. No usable Ghost STAB sucks, but with 130 special and 110 speed are both ludicrous, I don't think he dips down to B. ...Yeah, Moltres sucks.
@@ImportedCheese I'm a CharStander myself, so I know the feel lmao. That being said, the Brock matchup really ain't that bad as long as Onix spams Bide a healthy amount, where you can Growl on the charge turns. Takes a while longer than Confusion Butterfree, though. I'll give you the points you made on Gastly, though.
Shoutout to 7 year old me for using the master ball on an Onix because I didn't realize there was only one and it was the first new encounter I saw after picking it up 😎
I don't really remember the reason, but I decided to solo Pokemon red with Nidoking as a kid, I think just because I liked it. I wish I knew the horn drill strat but it decimated everything without it. Access to thunderbolt is really nice. I remember just spamming thrash against most opponents.
Making quick attack its best move until you get fly... so basically until Pidgeot. Which has garbage stats. Pick Spearow or Doduo instead (the latter isn't that late, you can get it just before cycling road with cut iirc)
i remember sweeping most of the game with my gyarados i got pre misty as i put in the investment and the 2 rare candies u get b4 fighting her or nugget bridge so i was able to destroy misty and everything to surge which i just cheesed with my lvl 31 dugtrio i caught. Then Icebeam Thunderbolt Hyperbeam and Surf sealed the rest of the games fate with my Hypno hard walling the rivals and sabrinas alakazams and agatha's gastly line. I also used flareon as i liked how hard fluffy it was. But Gyarados and Hypno were my main sweepers.
Notably in Japanese Blue you can trade a Persian for a Tauros. This makes Tauros guaranteed and gives it 1.5 times trade exp. While this shouldn't change either of their rankings since this was mostly about R/B I think it probably makes them collectively low A or high B tier in that game.
★UPDATED GEN 1 TIER LIST HERE!★
Charizard Reviews My Gen 1 Tier List and Puts it on Blast (Burn)
ruclips.net/video/BvvDyOS4gzA/видео.html
I just saw this comment after watching the whole video and now i have more homework for my pokemon blue kaizo playthrough.
WaitWaitWaitWaitWaitWaitWaitWaitWaitWait
My Boi Tauros only gets C because of availability !? So why is Jynx up in A then ? Tauros just destroys in Gen 1 ! Is so extremely strong ! Should be at least B. And Jolteon is a no brainer for A tier.
Anyways. Really nice tier list. Keep up the great work :)
I want to see a gen 2.
Sorry, quick question - what is the really light, background music in the first 40 seconds? It reminds me of Octopath but didnt think it was that.
@@feanorn8409 I agree, Tauros is a legend in Gen 1 competitive for a reason, that speed makes it monstrous!
They missed their opportunities to do Galarian Nidos. In a region based on Great Britain, the most popular remaining monarchy, Pokemon that are king and queen, they really should have made special versions.
Theres a ton of british-esque pokemon that should have been in galar. Should have had Stoutland, at least
Dark/Ground and Fairy/Ground would have been very cool.
@@66Roses steel/ground for king fighting/ground for queen
Could be the flygon case the Pokémon are so perfect they do not know how to alter them
There's certain rules about how the queen can be depicted in media iirc? The laws might be long gone, but I know some parody isn't allowed. I imagine they might have been playing safe by not having any royals.
I think I remember this because certain American tv shows like the daily show or something covered the royal wedding and the episode was banned in the UK.
I remember destroying the whole game with Sandslash's 3001% crit rate Slash attacks. I assumed it was extra powerful because he was a specialist in Slash because of his name when I was a kid lol.
Flawless logic, I mean, why name it SandSlash if it didn't get bonuses to slash?!
that.. actually makes sense. It should get a special ability like that 😩
Also a Good HM slave. Slash and maybe dig with Strength, Cut, ...
@@barccyagreed Sandslash is an HM slave on my team for Pokemon Glazed and a damn good one too
Same name attack bonus S.N.A.B
Every time I start a new playthrough of any Pokémon game, I always tell myself "OK, I'm not gonna use Nidoking this time", but I do every time.
It’s so good in a nuzlocke
Me too, and with Gyarados in most games or Lapras in the Kanto games XD
That’s me with Abra/Kadabra
Use nidoqueen next time
I always use Dugtrio as my ground type lol
Fun fact
You mentioned that farfetch'd was originally named "a duck bearing leeks"
Well see thats the joke. The english team thought that the japanese devs had to fetch that idea pretty far out in their imagination. And so they aptly named the pokemon after their perception of the design. Far-fetched
werent the english translations of the first 4 pokemon gens all done by one guy
@@theccarbiter idk, maybe. Then replace "the team" with "the guy"
Even tho i did say the dev team, as in everyone who worked on the finished product
The concept is pushed in a different way in french, there it's named artichoke-duck, even when it's clearly a leek it's holding, because it's such a joke it doesn't even need an accurate name.
Makes sense..
Farfetch'd's Japanese name, Kamonegi, comes from a saying, "A duck comes, bearing spring onions." It means an easy target or golden opportunity, to the point where it's completely farfetched. Thus the English name.
I'm a simple man: I see Nidoking in the title, I click
Nidoking is so powerful he can even clickbait!
Nidoking is life
@@ImportedCheese so you admit to clickbaiting
@@edchampagne1806 I...guess so? I think "clickbaiting" is using deceptive titles and thumbnails, and I do actually talk about how Nidoking is the best Gen 1 pokemon, so it wouldn't be clickbait in this case, I don't think.
@@ImportedCheese I'm pretty sure there's malicious clickbait(don't remember the name) where they put something popular in the thumbnail that has nothing to do with the video and normal clickbaitwhich is putting something popular the thumbnail then actually talking about it.
“The 8 gyms, the elite four and -everything in between-“
So, victory road?
I think I more meant all of the routes and rando trainers along the way.
@@ImportedCheese So, yes, Victory Road.
@@kingd8232 No, he wasn't saying everything in between the 8 gyms and the elite 4, he was saying everything throughout, including between the 8 gyms. The routes between Brock and Misty, for example.
@@matthew55793 So, yes, Victory Road.
@@kingd8232 this dude thinks mt moon and lavender town are part of victory road lmao
Nidoking and the design is actually what got me into Pokemon.
It was the gastly line for me. Never seen ghosts look as cool and fun as that I guess. Made Casper look even lamer than he actually was.
Great video man, had it on my to watch list for ages but forgot about it until seeing you uploaded the Gen 2 video. Very knowledgeable, very calm, very reasoned. "I'd look up Hitmonchan's Special but I just ate" was my highlight
One thing I think you slept on a little bit was Swords Dance on the likes of Kabutops and Scyther, for those late game gym leaders and elite 4 members you set up a couple Swords Dances and you can sweep unchallenged
Ahaha, thanks for watching! Hopefully I'll catch you on the Gen 2 (and future Gen 3...?) videos as well!
I'd agree with this if not for the glitch (design choice...?it's gen 1, it's probably a glitch...) that makes crits ignore your own stat boosts. This makes both of their most powerful moves, the auto-crit Slash, unusable with Swords Dance, not to mention that they have a 15-20% chance to crit normally, missing out on their attack boosts.
Still, they're pretty good overall!
I would put Pikachu up in B tier for a few reasons, 1) You can get Pikachu VERY early, It is the first Electric Type you can get, 2) Raichu actually has pretty good stats 3)with all of the early game flying and water pokemon you fight Pikachu can do a LOT of work for your team.
I think the in the "Charizard Reviews" version of this list, Pikachu is indeed in B.
You forgot MissingNo which would be very good since it multiplicates your Masterballs and Rare Candy, but you get him rather late and he's mostly useless in a fight.
missingno. is hot garbage in an efficiency tier list.
You have to abuse glitches to get it before cinnabar, the exact same type of glitch that can get you any pokemon at level 100 before misty.
Getting it at cinnabar with the cinnabar method is way too late, and depending of your ingame nickname, isn't garenteed.
It's item multiplaction properties are absolutely outclassed by other glitches were you can just give yourself any amount of any item way earlier than when you get the masterball.
It's stats and movepool makes no sense, it's bird typing is not a real typing.
And as glitch mon goes, it's outclassed by 'M that has all the same properties than missingno. but can evolve into kangaskan, wich makes it the only other perfect hm slave that can learn cut fly surf and strength. This imo makes 'M special utility tier. But getting a 'M is harder than getting a mew anyway, defeating the entire point of getting 'M.
If we start seriously considering glitches in an efficency run, almost all mon will be D as you can just immediately go finish the game.
@@8Gion missingno can also be found via mew glitch. Which is early game.
I put it in high D tier(bad tier) but it's beaten by Wigglytuff
@@RinaShinomiyaVal he said that?
It's one of the few ways to do item duplication to get over 99 of an item, which is needed to get a stack of 255 items. With that you can then do inventory underflow, which in turn allows you to get glitch items, including 8F which you can do arbitrary code execution with. Once you have that you can give yourself a full team of level 100s with perfect EVs and IVs
I agree with most of your rankings. I like your approach of practical campaign usefulness. I'd like to add my two cents on a few I think you're underrating though:
Seel/Dewgong. I think it's worthy of B, maybe even A tier. You hold it back for being a late edition to the team, but before Cinnabar, there's not a lot of need for water/ice types. You can get Seel through an in-game trade for a Ponyta from the Pokémon mansion (which are caught up to level 36). It can immediately learn surf and blow through Blaine's and Giovani's gyms, and play a big role in victory road and the elite four. It's a low-investment workhouse, both in terms of total XP needed to level it up and player time to acquire. Consider it vs. Cloyster. It's acquired at a higher level, has trade boosted XP and is in a faster XP growth curve, while having the same speed, typing and move pool and better special and health. Getting Shelder earlier doesn't really help with any major battles, and defense doesn't matter if you don't get hit (not that Dewgong is fragile, and Cloyster is quite vulnerable to special attacks). Dewgong will oneshot everything weak against water and ice for the rest of the game, and likely outspeed all of them except for Dugtrio and Aerodactyl which it should easily survive a hit from. Dewgong is a fantastic addition to a Bulbasaur/Charmander run, proving you with water/ice typing exactly when you need them, while using up minimal XP keeping the rest of your team higher level.
Doduo/Dodrio. This is worth B at least. You say you can't get this Pokémon until cycling road, but actually you can catch it as soon as you hit Celadon in the patch of grass on the way to the fly HM, well before you get the pokeflute. It's a little fragile until it evolves, but still quite quick and powerful for that stage of the game. You can teach it fly and tri-attack right away, both STAB. Body slam is an option as well if you don't have other plans for the TM. Quite quickly you'll get drill peck, the best flying move. You can use the rocket game corner, Pokémon Tower and Erica's gym minions for XP to evolve. Once evolved, it will make short work of Erica and the fighting dojo. With STAB normal and 110 base attack, It's got the hardest hitting non-suicidal physical attack in the game if you're willing to invest in the hyper beam TM, but even without that it'll one-shot anything vulnerable to physical attacks at surprisingly low levels. It's very fast too; the consumate alpha striker. It's one of the best options for Sabrina once you cross the outspeed threshold and it'll one shot your rival's executor or Venasaur easily. I think of it as the better Fearow. It's attack is quite a bit better, while the rest of it's stats are a wash, with pretty much the same move pool and XP growth curve. Fearow can be acquired earlier, but it doesn't counter any of the earlier gym leaders.
Jolteon. I don't really disagree with your analysis, I just think it's strengths merit A tier. Jolteon takes zero effort to acquire, can be taught thunderbolt instantly and will outspeed everything for the rest of the game. It's a crit machine, and chews threw the fishermen and bird catchers that plague the mid-game. The list of Pokémon it will one shot throughout the game is massive. Admittedly, it doesn't really counter any gym leaders, but it's one of the best contributors to the elite four + champion, easily countering 9-10 Pokémon from those fights (Jynx and Dugtrio are also standouts). It'll outspeed and oneshot Aerodactyl which is a rare feat. It's also arguably the best Pokémon in the game to counter Lorelei, given Zapdos' ice vulnerability.
Weedle/Kakuna/Beedrill. Okay, so it's not good, but I think it deserves C tier. It evolves early and it's hard hitting for the early game, potentially contributing to Brock, Misty, Surge and early Rival fights, while strongly countering Erica. and it's also the only real bug type attacker in the game. There are many better Pokemon, but none similar to Beedrill. It doesn't sabotage your playthrough, and in fact makes things somewhat easier for the first half of the game, at which point you should probably ditch it. If Butterfree is an A despite being outclassed in the late game, I think Beedrill deserves a bit more love. It's useable, rather than being an active detriment to your run.
Wow, thank you for leaving such a detailed response!
I overlooked the trade bonuses that were available for Seel/Dewgong, and since Ice is not yet the worst type ever, I agree that it should move up to B. Or, I would agree, except Seel and Dewgong have the laziest names ever, so they actually belong in the Pewter Crucible alongside Onix.
Great points on Doduo/Dodrio, especially considering how powerful Normal coverage is in Gen 1. I agree, they should move up.
I'll agree again on Jolteon, I should have given more weight to how easily he fries the zillions of water types you have to plow through.
I will push back a bit on Beedrill, I do think it's near irredeemable. I wouldn't say it's the worst Pokemon in the game or anything, but unlike Butterfree who at least gets a few gyms to shine, Beedrill is never your best option. Even compared to the lineup of losers you can have by Brock, the Weedle family is the worst. He can't even be used to cheese Brock with poison damage because of Brock's sponsorship deal with the Pokemart, which provides him with 5 full heals (wtf why.) Being the only bug-type offense also isn't even worth the novelty, a supereffective twinneedle reaches 150 BP factoring STAB, which isn't bad by any means, but that's barely more than a decent Flamethrower/Surf from a Pokemon that's...not Beedrill.
In my more recent Gen 2 tier list I added an extra tier, and I think that went a long ways towards representing each Pokemon's merits more fairly.
@@ImportedCheese You have to remember that not only are Fire types rare in Gen 1 Kanto, the Pokemon that learn Flamethrower do it at really high levels. Charmeleon does it at level 42, which means 6 levels of withholding evolution, unless you wait for Charizard to learn it at level 46.
Growlithe learns it at level 50, which is horrible. Magmar learns it at 55, which is downright useless. And Flareon learns it at 54 in RB and 52 in Yellow. And Moltres doesn't even learn it. The earliest you can get Flamethrower is with Vulpix at level 35, only if you're playing Blue version.
Fire Blast is a really late TM, has less accuracy than Blizzard, only 5 PP and is a one time use only. But there is an extremely important detail you're missing, Twin Needle is four times effective against all Grass type Pokemon except for Tangela, meaning that against them it gets a BP of 300 factoring in STAB, surpassing Flamethrower with 2x effectiveness and STAB.
So considering how early available, easily accesible and stupidly spammable it is, plus how viable it is I think it warrants Beedrill at least C tier. Besides, there's a lot of Poison types in the games, and a lot of trainers that use them.
Oh I’m so glad to see availability taken into account on a Pokemon tier list. This has been something I’ve been thinking about for a long time as I’ve been looking at Fire Emblem tier lists lol
I've been watching a lot of tier lists by Mekkah, I can't deny that's why I weight availability so heavily >.>
How much do they help you beat the game?
If this is the question you're asking, then availability has to matter.
Benching Butterfree is a pitfall
I'd argue that Chansey needs some props for the ability to use Softboiled to reduce the number of potions you use to heal the whole team in the event that money becomes an issue.
@Zedrik Allen Sure, I'm not saying it deserves a better rank. Just that its huge HP has a reason for existing.
@@weakspirit_ early game. Usually in nuzlockes you might even buy tons of poke balls in case u find a rare encounter
@@weakspirit_ Gen 1 Pokemon has extremely limited money. No rebattling trainers, no carried items, no Pickup. And losing halves your cash.
@@mrredapple2572 damn didn't know the Safari Zone was early game
@@Alex-mq6qi
Meowth and Chansey, truly the heroes of gen 1's early game.
How would we beat Brock without them?
Machamp is one of your favs? As the kids say, “Yup, I’m thinking based”
Everyday I wish I had two more arms.
Baragon:hi nidoking from pokemon
Nidoking:hi baragon from godzilla
Doduo can be caught pre erica right for the grass gym and with stab drill peck and tri attack, I think it deserves B. Though, amazing video!
It deserves A tier above Butterfree in my opinion
It's A tier: the speed and damage with crit.
And it can get hyper beam. If it KOs there was no recharge in gen 1.
Very good bird. Just as good as Fearow if not a bit better. Just a bit later is all. Easy to make up for lost time at least if you choose to go that route.
Nice video. Would definitely only change 1 thing which is that Jolteon should be in A-tier purely because it learns Pin Missile which is a bug type move and with Jolteon's high speed/crit rate, it can annihilate Psychic types. Ok now I gotta watch the updated video.
"Vaporeon is thicc!"
I've heard some things about that.
Stop right here
Oddish actually doesn't get razor leaf,but petal dance is usable
Exactly what I came here to say. It's much harder to use Oddish, because it doesn't have Razor Leaf. It only has Absorb as its damaging move up to level 24, when it gets Acid. Or if you want to evolve it at level 21, when it does, it only learns Acid at level 28. And Petal Dance is pretty bad in my opinion. The absolute highest it should have gone is C.
@@Krisipoke It's not that bad 70 power is much worse then like 110, but i mean no one says shadow ball is bad at 80. though getting confused can suck if you don't want to swap, and i hate using moves pre buffs
@@viola8422 Yeah, it wouldn't be that bad if it had 70 power with no drawbacks, but being locked into it and getting confused are not great.
@@Krisipoke ehhh in single player with grass it's barely a big deal,but it does suck.
If your playing blue, and you chose charmander, butterfree is the ONLY reasonable way to get past brock. Everything else is a crappy physical attacker with no easy access to fighting moves (the nidorans only get them in yellow, in red/blue, they learn double kick in the 30s or 40s :0). Your only option is to grind until Charmanders ember beats them down despite the type disadvantage, or get butterfree by accidentally leveling them in viridian, then crushing brock with a nuetral special attack psychic move!
4x weak to the gym typing, still the best way past
Doduo too late? You get it before you even need to get the fourth badge in Celadon.
I think it's fair to argue that Doduo should be placed higher than I did. It'll be higher in the FR/LG list!
Agree, it's so good in FR/LG
That's kinda late imho, I usually have a full team before lv25
I love nidoking hands down my favorite Pokémon as a kid I only used him and charizard to wreck the whole game
Just finished a run with Venusaur, Fearow, Dugtrio and Starmie as my team (Snorlax was there but just to use strength and surf before I got Starmie lol) and this may be my favorite run that I've ever done in Red! 😊
The Nidos were my favorite pokemon line in my childhood. However, there are 3 superficial things about them pissing me off:
1. Their moveset is so versatile that I can't decide what to teach them.
2. Because of their moveset they can deal with a lot of different foes, which always made me feel that some other pokemon in my team became obsolete. And because of that, I sometimes dropped the Nidos out of my team (instead of other members) because it's too easy, a bit less challenging and I used them way too often in my playthroughs. And I always disliked the idea of dropping members after wasted EXP on them, since it's harder than in following games to level up to 50ish without doing the obvious elite 4 runs.
3. Despite his bulky and hulky appearance, Nidoking is shorter than the average human, although he seems to dwarf many humans in the series. This doesn't affect in-game performance but it was sad for me as a kid to find out he's short. I used to believe he would be comparable in size to Rhydon, Tyranitar and Aggron.
“dig has 100 base power”??
Only in Gen 1, yes!
@@ImportedCheese Notable for being pretty much the only move from gen 1 to gen 2 to get NERFED
I always wondered why I loved spamming dig in gen 1
@@NeedsMoDakka which is such BS.
Dig is already worse than EQ because it takes twice as long, there was no good reason to make it weaker.
The 60 BP dig has in Gen 2 and 3 is stupid.
@@NeedsMoDakka hyper beam
Nido: **is on top**
Some 5000iq spoon wizard: *I'm bout to end this man's whole career*
Nah Nido is definitely better, better movepool and already the king while Abra is still unable to attack. Sad!
@@ImportedCheese its a good point but its shot down by the fact that TM/TRs exist
@@onyxthaphonix5784 wuh how? Mega punchingabra isn't going to get very far
All that Nidoking hype, and no mention of the move Thrash?
hrondrill plus x accuracy is better
I remember when I first got back to Pokemon when FR/LG were released, I decided to trade the Nidoran female for the male in FR, and Holy fucking shit.
Not only does it evolve so soon into Nidorino, but like you said, you can instantly evolve him into Nidoking with a moon stone you just got. The best part is that you aren't missing any moves and even though he is supposedly weak vs. Misty, he can actually defeat her if you train a little bit north of the gym. Capable of tanking Water Pulses and retaliate with Thrash.
Amazing movepool and stats for that early in the game. He can practically carry the team so reliably all the way to the Pokemon League.
Squirtle’s move pool is actually great. Surf, icebeam, bodyslam, earthquake pretty good move pool for a gen 1 Blastoise. Depending on whether or not you will allow for trade back and forth from gold and silver you could’ve bread confusion onto a Squirtle. I would swap bodyslam for confusion if I needed psychic type coverage. Unfortunately it would be a traded squirrel that had confusion.
That was my op strat back in the days!
Honestly beedrill and twinneedle is fairly good. Destroys all the poison types in the game and can ohko Abra line pretty consistently.
Only if abra line doesn't use a psychic move, which is faster and a OHKO for poor old poison Beedrill. (Obviously if your Beedrill is faster then it wins, but that isn't the norm)
@@8Gion hard to say but with EVs/Base Points over time and a higher level, it probably can outspeed at least Kadabra.
it also has access to Agility and Swords Dance so it can abuse that along with badgeboost pretty well
edit: just checked this out. at level 45 with half the max base points in speed at 8 Speed DVs, it outspeeds Sabrina's Kadabra.
@@MegamanStarforce2010 The madman actually did the math, I was actually wondering if I was really correct with my assumption about abra line outspeeding Beedrill.
However I believe your situation is not realistic sadly, I'm going to assume that by half base stat in speed you mean something around 32767 bs. Well, that is more than the soft cap of carbos (the soft cap being around 26000 something). In my experience, using a team of 6 pokemon and doing all fights and no grinding against wild pokemon, at the end of the game, my team is around 10000 bs (and I'm being generous). So to get a 32700 speed bs Beedrill you will need to give it carbos untill it soft caps, and exclusively use Beedrill for all fights until then (or grind wild pokemon), which will make it level up over 45 anyway, making the entire base stat discussion redundant.
(I know those numbers as I like to export my teams in pokemon stadium, and I make them attain the 26000 soft cap)
Also Sabrina's best pokemon is level 43, this might depend of the playstyle ofc, but I rarely ever overlevel to have higher level than the leaders. (But considering Beedrill, it probably needs to be higher level to keep up with the rest of the team).
Also setup Beedrill, like farfetchd, it has access to amazing setup moves, sadly it doesn't survive a turn to make it reliable. Their defense stats are way too low and focus sash doesn't exist.
I believe I'd need to do a solo perfect IV Beedrill run to erase all doubts about my assumption, sadly I don't have a lot of free time these days :(, and I'm pretty sure it will overlevel too much anyway.
Edit: so the youtuber mahdrybread did a Beedrill solo, and at level 47 it outsped kadabra (which is level 38), but couldn't outspeed the lvl 43 alakazam. I guess my final thought are that Beedrill is ok if given special attention, but any pokemon will be ok if given special attention, even onyx.
Sadly Beedrill just sucks. A level 30 Beedrill using a Twin Needle against a level 30 Kadabra maxes out at 83% damage. Plus it would be outsped and get OHKOd itself. For a guaranteed OHKO and to outspeed you need to be level 38. And for an Alakazam you'd need to be level 43. That's pretty bad. And the Abra line is one of the only things Beedrill is usable against, yet you still have to be overleveled by a lot. Against most other Pokemon it's terrible.
@@jaybee946 i once did a bug monotype and beedrill was very useful. There is a fucking lot of poison types around in gen 1, and bug moves where super effective againist poison because of a bug.
That is the generation where many pokemons only get an usable stab at the halfway point, Beedrill get one very early. It's what is supposes to be. A mon that peak early and eventually get surpassed. But being good at some point is better than never being good.
Poor onix.
in Anime: Colossal Boulder Python
in Games: tiny pebble worm who touches waterdrops or leafs then blows up
+Pewter crucible sounds low key awesome
horn drill plus X accuracy in gen 1 is absolutely busted
Doing a Beedrill solo run, and it ended up being more powerful than I initially thought. Then again, this isn't a solo run tier list, so Beedrill being low makes some sense when you have to balance it in a team as opposed to trying to solo the game with it.
Beedrill is surprisingly good. It falls off by the elite four, but who cares. It still hits. And it's super cool. Beedrill needs more love!
Your music choices are so consistently good. Octopath in particular - great choice. Only complaint is that I’m so consistently attracted by the music that I sometimes distract myself from the video to listen to the song!
The 14 dislikes are Jake Macaulay fans, because he's the number 1 Weedle fan!
It might be the people who have legit beef with some of the mistakes that slipped in >.>
Oddish doesn't learn Razor Leaf, it's true!
@@ImportedCheese the Pokemon with leaves on its head doesn't learn razor leaf yet a dinosaur with a bulb does?
For the most part I agree with this but charmander being in the same tier as squirter and bulbasaur doesn't sit right with me as he comes up short in the hardest part of the game and by the time it comes online you have other options id say b tier for sure definitely not a
Yeah, especially since around the time it becomes useful you can get a growlith and evolve pretty early, and if you don’t want one you have access to flareon around the same time, but I normally want jolteon
@@supreme_king_obama1158 Growlithe is Red-exclusive and will take until Level 50 to learn Flamethrower and Flareon locks you out of choosing Vaporeon or Jolteon tho. Charmander locks you out of the two other starters as well but beyond Venusaur's autocrit Razor Leaf you're not missing out on much
I did a Char run not too long ago for the first time ever. It isn't as bad as others make it seem. Though it could be a lot better. If dig wasn't 100 base power back then, it might be much worse lol
Hey, thanks for watching my video! I hope you enjoyed it!
For some reason, RUclips is pushing my second video ever instead of my more recent, more polished content - there are probably a few placement changes I would make based on the discussion here in the comments, so please keep telling me I'm a dunderhead xD
If you'd be interested, I believe my Gen 2 video has better supported takes overall, mostly because I added an additional tier and differentiated more clearly within the tiers themselves. Give that a watch if you've got the time!
ruclips.net/video/5x0913yMN34/видео.html
Thank you, hope to battle you in the other comment section as well!
at 16:50 you said Oddish gets Razor Leaf. this confused me, as i have my old guide book on the bed.
it can learn petal dance and solar beam, and all the powder moves, but no Razor Leaf.
and it can only learn Mega Drain in this generation if you teach it Erika's TM. in future games Mega Drain becomes a standard level up move for it.
One thing that makes Rattata undervalued imo
Hes the only normal type pokemon that can learn fire, water, ground, ice and electric attacks. They wont hit the hardest, but in the context of it being useful in-game, to become the champion, that is insanely useful. You can be strong against almost everyone while not having to worry about typings except fighting and psychic.
I.e., i used to have a raticate with fully boosted special through calcium to whom i taught :
Hyper Fang
Flamethrower
Hydro Pump
Thunderbolt
And then, if you dont wanna do it like that, you can also teach Raticate every HM move except Fly (Flash, Cut, Strength, Surf) and make sure all your combat oriented pokemons have their 4 best possible moves
Rattata is the literal swiss army knife of gen 1 and for that he is a high A tier pick. You should always have one even if only to be your walking HM prompt
In-Game Trade Dewgong is something special. Trade for Ponytail super easy. Immediate access to Water/Ice coverage, Doesn’t even need Ice Beam TM, BOOSTED experience to shoot past the rest of your team, and obtained right before the Fire & Ground Gyms and Elite Four where Ice/Water coverage basically mops up the rest. Trade Dewgong is the game’s “If you didn’t choose Squirtle and can’t bother catching Articuno” emergency button. And it’s a good one.
I'm not impressed! Late with mediocre stats! And worst of all, a boring name!
Given a similar number of battles it’ll be at a higher level (and thus better stats) than Cloyster
Glad you gave Butterfree the respect it deserves. It not only learns psychic moves, but it does so at a super low level (I think like 13-15 but it’s been years since I’ve touched RBY). It tears through the early game.
It's uh, definitely better than Beedrill
I think Meowth should be raised up a tier for two reasons. First of all, it is the only line that can learn Pay Day. Before the Elite Four then, it's the only source of renewable income you have. Given that you need 500 Poke to get into the Safari Zone, that can prevent you from getting softlocked, and either way, in case you need some cash but have fought all the Trainers you can that's the only way to go given there are not abilities like Pickup and that you can't fight other Trainers. It's a niche move, but rather unique in the game and it can't really be replaced.
Also, Slash is very overpowered with Persian. It's a guaranteed crit so 140 base power- but also with STAB that makes it 210 base power, basically almost equivalent to Hyper Beam except it's 100% accurate and you don't need to recharge.
So yeah, I think Meowth should be bumped up to Tier B.
Safari zone. You do not need money, he lets you in for free if you keep trying.
@@honor2425 The guards only let you in in yellow if you got no money, you can get softlocked in red/blue, but money is never a real problem in these games anyway.
@@honor2425 on in yellow version
Onix: good against you when Brock is using it against your pre-evolved, weak Pokemon that it resists. Absolutely useless for you, and the easiest Pokemon to knock out once you have something that knows Razor Leaf or Surf. No wonder Bruno sucks, he has fighting types and Onix.
onix isn't even good when brock is using it.
bulbasaur and squirtle both one shot it easily and even though it resists fire, its special stat is so piss poor that charmander is still very likely to just win that exchange.
also here is just how weak onix is: brunos onix can't one shot a charizard of equal level.
Enjoyed the video. Nice job! I will say that doduo is at least one tier low. You can get it right out it rock tunnel after 3 badges by cutting the tree in celedon. And it comes just in time to fight Erika, the grass gym leader. This thing with Stab tri attack, body slam, drill peck and fly wreaks havoc on anything with low defense
uh I think there's a new version that has doduo higher
I miss this style of the tier videos. Low speaking volume, soothing music, minimal chuckling, etc. I've been using this to help me sleep the last few weeks.
One day there will be a video with NO chuckling.
@@ImportedCheese ...An Onix solo?
Pretty solid tier list, although you did make a few mistakes. For example, Ditto is available after pokeflute, which considering you can skip the game corner, you can get pretty early. Still trash though.
I think you underestimated gyarados though. You can get a level 15 magikarp pretty easily and early, and after that you can give it 2 or 3 rare candies and some traditional leveling to get the big sea monster. It can easily handle pokemon above its level thanks to dragon rage doing fixed damage. It will catch up to your team fairly quickly.
After that, body slam, bubblebeam, surf, etc, the possibilities are endless.
Worth to mention that Abra and gastly would probably be nidoking tier if they evolved some other way. Especially Abra, I usually get him to Kadabra by the time my starter is level 21 or so. So he's not that far behind and will start sweeping pretty much immediately after evolving.
I like this concept overall. Here are my thoughts on your list:
-Charmander is B tier at best. You have to power level to use it to beat Brock efficiently and it struggles completely against Starmie. It can be useful against Surge but that’s with Dig (which you are taking away from something that can use it more effectively if you use it on your Charmander).
-Caterpie belongs in B tier, and this is being very generous. Its use goes down considerably after Misty, and it’s really not even your best option against her. Training up a Pikachu, Gloom or Weepinbell is superior for Misty since Butterfree won’t even get STAB to be super effective against Starmie. There is little point in keeping it on your team after Brock. It isn’t that good for Surge, you have better options by then to face Erika with and everyone else stomps it after that.
-Nidoran (F) can join the kingdom. Body Slam is superior to Thrash by far as a learned move by level up and because it learns it naturally you can also save your TM08 for duplication or for someone else who can use it better.
-Clefairy goes into B tier; arguably C. It is difficult to train when you get it even with Mega Punch and making it into Clefable is nowhere near as good as getting an early Nidoking or queen because when you get it there’s no reason to evolve it before your Nidorin_.
-Sandshrew is C; arguably a D. I like the Sandshrew line and always have personally but it is outclassed by the Nidos and the Geodude family entirely. It also doesn’t learn EQ or Dig naturally.
-Mankey belongs in D tier. Outside of Yellow it doesn’t gain any advantage, but even then you can do an in game trade to get a Machamp at least. In RB there is no reason to use it at all. And I love Primeape personally.
-Rattata is C tier. Lots of options with TMs but you’re getting no benefit taking access of good moves away from better Pokémon. Raticate with BoltBeam, Bubblebeam, Body Slam, Dig, Super Fang, etc…is really fun to use though. I’d put it in A tier otherwise because of how fun it can be to use.
-Shellder is D tier by your logic. It is a stone evolution and aside from its defense it is better suited as a kamikaze Pokémon if anything else. Other Pokémon do its job better with Surf/Blizzard or Ice Beam, and when you gain access to it you also gain access to the infinitely better Staryu. Lapras is also a better option due to its movepool…by far.
-Drowzee and Slowpoke need to switch tiers. Drowzee has access to Hypnosis but other Pokémon better than it do also, and Slowpoke also gets access to
Amnesia and Surf and can be used concurrently pretty well with the Abra line since it also uses a water slot on your team. A Surf, Blizzard or Psychic off of Amnesia boosts, two of which being STAB boosted hits hard. Drowzee isn’t even fielded if you use Abra anyway who is superior.
-Snorlax goes into A because it has a great movepool. It also learns body slam naturally meaning like Nidoqueen it doesn’t take away TM08 access from something else.
-Lapras > Omanyte. By a lot. Considerably better movepool and better availability. It is also easier to train despite being lower level because of this. I’d switch their tiers.
-Farfetch’d sucks even if you do the in game trade because Fearow and Dodrio are superior. If its only use is for being an HM slave and Slash, you have access to better Slash users with better overall staying power or movepools. If it’s an HM Slave it isn’t even being trained or used in any aspect of advancing through the game other than the overworld lol.
-Vulpix, Ponyta, Flareon and Growlithe are all D tier, with Growlithe at least being arguable for remaining in C because of its great stats. Beyond that all of them have a horrible movepool and are utterly outclassed by Charizard in that regard. Even Magmar is better in that it gets possible Psychic access…though that doesn’t save it from also being a D tier candidate).
-Horsea, Voltorb, Magnemite, Venonat Goldeen, Scyther and Pinsir are all D tier. They are all either just bad (Goldeen, Venonat, and Horsea, bc no Kingdra and therefore no reason to use it over any other water type you get access to), or have a horrible movepool relative to their stats (Scyther and Pinsir), or are just outclassed completely by anything that comes before it in terms of either stats or availability (Orb/Magnet)
-Moltres is D tier. Worse movepool than Charizard (and even Arcanine and Magmar) and horrible typing. Charizard avoids its weaknesses somewhat with access to EQ and Dig but Moltres doesn’t have any way to check any potential threats against it.
Sorry for the lengthy comment. I’ll watch the GSC tier list later. Good job overall!
I personaly think Pinsir is VERY underrated. It can pull some nice sweeps with Swords Dance and Body Slam/Hyper Beam/Submission.
Of course it will get walled by ghosts, but it will also have plenty of oportunities to shine. It destroys Sabrina and most of the elite four.
This comment probably took more effort than my entire list
@@ImportedCheese lol not really. I know RBY’s mechanics like the back of my hand and whenever I do play competitively I always play RBY. Didn’t take as long as you’d think.
@@janyozenith9037 Depending on when you get to the Safari Zone you will likely already be past Sabrina. If you are, Pinsir does okay against Koga, is destroyed by Blaine and underwhelming against Giovanni. Plus Pinsir gets Swords Dance somewhere in its 50s naturally? Will you grind it up to that level for just 2 gyms if it brings nothing that other Pokémon can’t do in some capacity without setting up? If you use TM03 on it then you take it away from Charizard...
I love both Scyther and Pinsir, but this generation was not good to them. Now, if Pinsir got something like Dig access in this generation (and maybe even Twinneedle) that’d be a different story.
@@pikminologueraisin2139 Moltres is D tier no matter what. It has a 4x weakness to rock types and Victory Road is littered with them. It can’t even learn Ember via level up and its best attacking moves at that time are Sky Attack and Fly as your options that don’t take a TM away from something infinitely better. Furthermore when you get to the Elite Four it isn’t even useful against any of them except for Bruno, and even then you still have two Onix that have type advantage over it. Would you really waste your Master Ball on that? 😂
The Charmander argument for that tier is based on the fact that in the early game your options for long term good Pokémon are limited. If a Pokémon doesn’t need to be carried as much by a full team and has coverage options available to it early on then it is a higher tier Pokémon. Again Charmander’s flaws are only in the early game due to type matchups against the first two gyms, but it needs extra help to get past that early game hump where Bulbasaur and Squirtle do not. It does very well in literally every other gym after that, including Viridian City because by that time it will have EQ resistance and other coverage options to defeat Gio’s Nidos.
"Everyon'es favorite: the eeveelution pair"
I'd say you did Flareon dirty but gen 1 flareon was already 6 feet in the ground.
Think its nice that the starters in Gen 1 are very balanced for the most part. Charizard is probably the worst of the 3 due to its typing and lack of bulk, but it has a high crit rate and gets slash, fire spin for stunlocking, and flamethrower so you don't have to rely on fire blast. Venusaur gets razor leaf which is better than slash, plus access to sleep powder and the dreaded toxic/leech seed combo. Blastoise is the only one without a guaranteed crit move, but it's made up for by having access to possibly the best move in the game, blizzard, as well as surf. Mono water is a great typing considering Venusaur is weak to the extremely strong psychic type and Charizard is weak to water, the second most common type after normal. You really can't go wrong, I agree that all 3 are deserving of A tier.
I have a really in depth video on the three starters!
ruclips.net/video/_mZpCmwJ78M/видео.html
I never thought I'd disagree so much with a tier list but here we are
What would you change?
There's also an updated list in the pinned comment.
I like your approach to this, very well done in my opinion, thanks :-).
Thank you very much! Look forward to Gen 2 coming this weekend!
Hi man, as a new subscriber to your channel i just wanted to say that i am impressed. This video was great and it was in my recommended, so i am sure more people will see it. I am happy for you. You have great videos and google is helping you (the algorithm i guess). Keep it up and good luck!
Hey, thank you so much!
Hope to see you in future videos xD
I have one that will hopefully be coming out tonight here in Japan, should be Saturday morning for anyone stateside.
>I think people are sleeping on Butterfree, and they are sleeping because they got hit with Sleep Powder
Dude, that's why I love your channel so much
compoundeyes preeeeeety good!
Not in gen 1 tho
@@ImportedCheese I mean, wouldn't YOU want to increase your accuracy by having creepy segmented eyes? That's a great deal.
Damn, your voice is so nice to listen to.
Really engaging list.
Thanks for listening! I'm glad my phone's mic was acceptable, I didn't invest in a real mic until my Mewtwo video xD
Fun video! I disagree with a lot of these, and I’d also consider how well they do in Stadium, but this is cool to watch
Sorry for the late reply, but thanks for watching! These are all just opinions (and opinions based on the narrow criteria of in-game performance only.)
As for stadium I'd imagine the every team would be Alakazam, Tauros and...another Psychic type, maybe Exeggutor? Either that or Rhydon/Golem, but Stadium is an entirely different beast than the actual adventure.
Why include Stadium?
@@davidlarkin1040 I assume he meant in a different video? It might be worth making a special tier list for how Pokemon fare in the 3v3 Stadium format.
@@ImportedCheese Honestly a Stadium OU viability ranking would be a pretty good general indicator of what's good and what's not, and then you just adjust for unbanning RNG strats like Evasion or OHKO moves (just imagine Gengar using Hypnosis, and then getting at bare minimum 1 free Double Team if the opponent does the optimal move and switches out)
EDIT: unless you judged how good the rentals are, I guess lol
As a kid zubat was my first shiny in granite cave (Ruby) and although i know it isnt a great pokemon in a main game sense, I always catch one now and evolve it up to crobat. With some egg moves and tms crobat can be useful in doubles at least.
Crobat has crazy stats, takes a while to get good moves though
What about Mew?
Since you can get him as early as cerulean city via teleport glitch.
Bump this messege. Where would Mew be placed on the list if players allowed the Teleport glitch with Slowpoke near Bill's house?
Mew is basically better Nidoking. Better Stats, movepool and typing. The one Major difference is that it starts with only pound, but you can give it every TM without losing out on much. Mew can easily steamroll everything, and still Horn drill cheeses if you so desire... It’s probably the new best, if it counts. Same goes for a Mewtwo encountered in the same way. Even more extreme stats than Mew, and starts with an actual moveset. Which means psychic. The game no longer exists if you start with Mewtwo.
Mew would be broken game tier, use growl 6 time to catch it to level 1, make it win some exp but not enough to get to level 2, it will immediately jump to 100. It is the perfect hm slave and imo should only be used as such.
Beedrill may or may not be an F tier but he can do some neat stuff. Once he gets Twin Needle he can literally sweep the entire Celadon City gym by himself because almost everything in there takes x4 damage from Bug. Also, Lorelei's First Dewgong will always spam Amnesia against him so if you run him with Agility and Swords Dance you can max both of them and sweep her team. I'm not trying to argue that he's actually good, but he's far from completely useless.
Also, getting Magikarp to level 20 early isn't as much of a nightmare as you make it out to be. If you put a level 5 Magikarp in the daycare it takes less than 20 minutes of continuous movement on the bicycle to get it to level 18. I normally do daycare until 18 and then use two Rare Candies to instantly bridge the last two levels, then I'll use my TM10 (Water Gun) on my new Gyarados and I've got a fully functional water type stat monster for the rest of the game, and you can do this as soon as you have the Bicycle, so before even Misty potentially. Worth it IMO.
Love your octopath music in the background!
And I never used it again....
@@ImportedCheese why?
"Machamp is one of my favorite pokémons :D don't bother."
You'll have to forgive me...at least things can only get better!
People accused me of being a Machamp shill for placing him in A in Gen 4. I don't hate Machamp, I promise!
Nikoking is definitely one of my favourite Pokémon from Gen One and I've used it in every single run I ever did
Another notable fact about Jolteon is that it learns Pin Missile, making it the only Pokémon that learns a damaging Bug-type move and is not weak against Psychic attacks; for this reason, I would end up using that against Sabrina because I focused too much on type advantages.
Don't fall for the super effective swindle!
This was a really fun video to listen to!
Thank you! This was before I invested in a proper mic, so please excuse the phone-quality audio >.>
I loved to abuse X-Accuracy on Rapidash. Just pick your poison: Perma-trapping with Fire Spin (plus ~20% chance to crit due to Speed, and in Gen I if a Trapping move crits, all subsequent hits crit), or just sweep with Horn Drill if you feel bad for the opponent.
Probably the best thing you can do with Fire types in Gen 1...
At least we fire fans got our buffs later on.
hey dude love the way you talk, you're super chill but entertaining keep it up
Thank you! This is a uh...really old video, so the more recent lists are a bit more lively.
Unless the nidokingdom is just a meme tier to show how much you like nidoking (which is totally understandable as it's amazing), I'm a tad disappointed that abra, tentacool, and staryu didn't make it up there. You admitted that even kadabra can blast through the game, and starmie's type and movepool is insane, both of which make them top tier pokemon.
Fantastic tier list by the way
It's a bit of a meme-tier, but I do think that Nidoking is a step above everything else in the game.
If I were the remake the tier list today, i'd probably expand the Nidokingdom a bit, at least to Nidoqueen and Clefable, probably.
These are hilarious and informative -- eagerly looking forward to Gen V lists.
You can get Slowbro before you get Surf. Fish with Super Rod at Indigo Plateau after the fourth badge. Means you can use it for Koga, Pokemon Tower and Team Rocket.
Slowpoke is in Celadon too, but it’s too low level.
The Humble Beginnings of Cheese. Back when his brain was not yet damaged by small brain chat comments.
Recorded with a phone mic on a can of chickpeas!
This reminds me of my Freshman year, and my classmate who would talk my ear off about Pokemon Gen 1 because I would listen and learn xD Thanks Trevor, I still your advice nowadays.
Gen 1 fans will never be silent
"Eeveelution pair," made me do a double-take lmao, too bad I chose Squirtle and then caught a Pikachu on my copy of Green. Only one left for my Party will be used to Defeat Erika and never again xD
Spearow and Caterpie should swap tiers. Fearow is faster, and Drill Peck is an awesome move. It can still keep up in the late game, making it totally worthy of the A tier. But Butterfree loses so much luster by the late game. Yes, sleep is great, but it just hits so weak, with no decent STAB attacks.
Dude forreal. I pretty much always have Fearow on my team (Sometimes Dodrio instead) It's early game, flying is convenient, Drill peck is a nice STAB attack, it's got decent normal options like double edge or hyper beam with a decent attack stat to play off of. I like using Fearow quite a bit.
Great list, and I agree with most of these picks, but there are 2 big things I'd change.
1) Slowbro should probably be A-tier. The water/psychic combination destroys the latter half of the gyms, as well as the elite 4, especially if you teach it Ice Beam or Blizzard for Lance. On top of that, Amnesia is absolutely busted. The only real downsides are that it's slow (but it's bulky enough that this isn't really a problem) and that you get it a little late (but just in time for it to be at its most useful as it wouldn't really be good for Erika or Surge anyway).
2) Nidoqueen learns Horn Drill via TM, and while it's a little slower than Nidoking, its increased bulk helps it set up X Speed and X Accuracy, so I think it should be in the same tier as it.
Slowbro is great, but in an efficiency tier list It's not top tier. It's way too slow, and needs to use amnesia. All other psychic are faster and dont need to use amnesia to destroy all ennemy pokemon. It's speed and availability really weights it down.
However you can fish slowbro with the super rod and the rainbow badge really early on the road to victory road.
Porygon deserves to rot in Pewter tier. Due to how the Game Corner sells coins, even if you literally cheat and dupe nuggets, getting it is STILL a pain. And it sucks anyways.
It's cheaper in blue for no reason, honestly I get porygon just by playing the best slot machine (down right), turbo A emulator speed to 16 times normal speed.
I agree with almost all of your choices/reasons, the few i dont are Hitmonlee which you get at level 30 so it is relative to the others you can get at that time, it is a fast/strong sweeper and it is by a very wide margin the best fighting type in gen 1 (but that is not saying much). The other is Chancy, it is aquired late but it has the best move pool outside of Mew and has a very good special stat which can allow it to wreck everything with its special attack, and it has decent enough speed to go first most of the time.
Naw, Hitmonlee is the best of complete trash, not gonna be doing much with a mighty 85 bp Gen 1 Hi-Jump Kick. They didn't even spell it right!
Chansey is pretty much impossible to catch and also has 50 base speed lol
I tried Hitmonlee once and it works to an extent, but it's practically paper and will die if your kick doesn't kill first (and that was a coin flip in my experience) I personally wouldn't do it again.
what about a tierlist with the Mew Glitch? Would be funny to see how things would change up with an early game Gengar and Nidoqueen.
Sup cheese. I really like these tier lists! As a quick suggestion if there could be a time stamp in the description for when you actually start the rankings it would be really helpful! Great work though!
Just added one! I don't think there is much fluff in this intro, mostly I explain the tiering criteria. Hopefully adding a timestamp won't cause a flood of "What about X!" that I address in the intro =/
this video calms me so deeply
You probably won't see this but you got the voice of an angel my God.
Very helpful. Thanks!
Old list! But also old game!
When I play Blue (I never personally had Red, and I'm fine with that), I use the Mew glitch to get Mew before battling Misty. Since he presumed no glitches would be used, I'd just like to say that in my opinion, Mew is at least A tier, as Mew can, with the right TMs, sweep practically every major battle, and can be gotten after just one badge.
psychic pretty good
This will be my sleep video. Very relaxing voice
Thank you, old video tho :smolred:
@@ImportedCheese not because it’s boring or anything! I just like hearing about Pokémon as I drift off
The octopath traveler music in the background is sick
I've seen some other comments address some of the other big ones I disagree with, but I haven't seen anyone else mention how you're REALLY sleeping on Magnemite. Granted, it's pretty out of the way unless you're playing yellow because it's exclusive to the power plant, but it should evolve basically right after you get it as a result, and even if you're playing Yellow and got it early, its first form is strong enough that it will still be able to hold its own until it evolves. Now, what really makes me love Magneton is the sheer power of its stats though. You said it had low speed, but a base speed of 70 is perfectly useable, and really is pretty much average overall, so I don't see the issue in that, especially since stat experience will make your team typically capable of outspeeding the opponent team anyways as long as your speed is at least decent.
As for Magneton itself, I feel like it just can't be ignored because it has such amazing raw defensive and offensive strength. Due to Gen 1 special, it has amazing defensive stats in both areas, with 95 defense and 120 special, which gives it by far the best defensive stats of any electric type besides Zapdos. Electric is also a great defensive type, with its only weakness being ground, which is mostly easy to dispose of anyways since most of the ones you'll encounter in the main game are Rock/Ground types that will get wiped out by any water or grass move.
Of course, that 120 special also doubles as an offensive stat, which is again far better than the special of any other electric type in the game besides Zapdos, with Jolteon being the only other choice who is even close (which I'd personally put in A by the way). This lets it hit like an absolute truck with thunder or thunderbolt. And electric is just as good of an offensice type as it is defensive, with ground being mostly a non-problem as I said before, and grass just being generally bad and not even really present any more by the time you get Magnemite anyways. There _are_ however a TON of water types right around when you can get Magnemite, and as you mentioned yourself, water types can be quite difficult to take down in Gen 1, but Mageton's monster special stat and electric typing makes easy work of them. Now, its movepool is admittedly very shallow, but because it has such great survivability and such amazing special combined with its great typing, it really doesn't need it and can easily obliterate opponent teams with thunderbolt alone.
Great points! You're really selling me on Yellow version Magnemite, but I am going to push back a bit and defend my tier placement, even in the context of Yellow.
First, you're absolutely right about Magnemite's killer stats. Its Special is indeed incredible, and although 50 HP is pretty suspect, with Stat Xp and the passive badge boosts (not to mention how you tend to outlevel enemies) survivability is not an issue. While the Special is incredible, it's actually kind of overkill; while yes, you'd rather have more stats than not, for a casual playthrough "good enough" is all you need. Whether you deal 100% of the opponent's HP or 300% of it, the outcome is the same, you win. Nidoking's Special is pretty unspectacular, but it's precisely good enough to combine with his availability and movepool to (team) rocket him to the top.
The 70 speed is also more than usable; it completely skipped my mind that Magneton is actually FASTER than its evolution, Magnezone, which is actually a trend with many of the Gen 4 evolutions where "evolving" seems to just mean...getting fat. (Seriously, Rhyperior, Magmortar, Electivire, Tangrowth, Lickylicky, what happened here...?)
However, I think that Magnemite's shallow movepool is what really kills it. If it naturally learned Thunderbolt then maybe I could see it moving up to B, but if you want a reliable STAB, you need to invest the incredibly valuable Thunderbolt TM.
Why not spend that TM on Haunter/Gengar or even Starmie, who can then sweep through pretty much any team?
There's also the issue of being completely stonewalled (sand...walled?) by ground types, which applies to all electric types (except Zapdos, kinda, not that Drill Peck is going to be getting through Rhydon anytime this year.) Of course, you can just switch to a teammate, but if you just want to plow through the game, you don't ever want to switch, you want to just stuff a bunch of coverage moves on a decent stat stick and win the game. Magnemite is pretty much the definition of a one-trick Ponyta, and I don't think that trick is enough to earn it a spot higher than C, unfortunately.
Tauros in C tier tells me all I need to know about this list.
It's really hard to catch, and comes late in the game.
Its godlike if you can catch one. Issue is IF.
I caught it once. It was awesome.
...But I caught it ONCE lol
Flareon’s movepool? More like move puddle!!
And I say that with 1006% regret!
The easiest way to get a gyarados is to put magikarp in the day care as soon as possible. Make the Ms. Ann and third badge than come back, give your magikarp a rare candy and destroy everything in rock tunnel with your gyarados.
Disagree with a few things.
1. Oddish isn’t nearly as good as bellsprout because it actually doesn’t learn razor leaf. Plus victribell is actually very good. Comparable to venusaur
2. Jolteon is way better in game. It’s high crit rate and special shred everything non ground. It’s basically an electric kadabra
3. Magickarp deserves to be in A tier. Usually your initial team will consist of your starter and nidoran. You can obviously cheese the entire game with nidoking but if you wanna have more fun you build a good all around team. If you get a magigkarp after pewter and train it off of your starter and nidorino from my moon to nugget bridge you’ll have an incredibly powerful team of gyrados with bubble beam, starter, and nidoking. Then catch an abra and put him in the day care for a little bit. Once that involves into kadabra you have a team that can run through the entire game. Catch a dugtrio and evolve your eevee into jolteon with thunderbolt... that team covers everything with fast hard hitting options from basically the 3rd gym on.
Dude! Nice octopath music!!! Look into the hollow knight soundtrack too. You might be able to use some of that
I still remember my first playthrough of Pokémon yellow.
I leveled up 2 pidgeys into pidegeottos just to beat Brock then boxed one of them before surge.
I also remember a few years later going back with an elemental punching alakazam with psychic at level 18 that I traded back to Pokémon yellow
And completely solo’d and shit stomped the entire game
The retroactive Elemental Punch Out League....
I looked for a tier list to ban broken pokemon from my nuzlocke of pokemon blue. It's not exactly what I wanted, but that's ok, your explanations makes it pretty clear that it's more like a mekkah tier list than what I was expecting.
Some changes I'd make are:
Charmander: fire pokemon are bad in gen 1 also because they have high attack and low special, sure you get Charmander sooner than moltres, but like it, it cannot be good, I'd put it in C, because, as a bulbafan, Charizard is the perfect nemesis, it would damage the rivalry if it was lower. Edit: I changed my mind, charmander should be a tier lower than Squirtle and Bulbasaur, but this tier list has not enough tiers. Charmander is perfectly placed in cheese's new tier list.
Growlith: Arcanine is the best fire mon imo because it is the only one that has a real use for it's attack stat, make it learn dig, fire move and a strong normal move like body slam or hyper beam and it will be amazing, instantly surpassing chamander from celadon and later and even dare I say it, Nidoking. (Nidoking is still top because of early game ofc), I'd put it in B (it does need dig to work tho)
Edit: I changed my mind: growlith cannot work without dig, a tm really important for surge, having to keep it for growlith is bad. Charmander too needs dig, and works exactly like Arcanine, but is there for surge. Growlith is high C.
Oddish and Bellsprout: a good gen 1 plant mon *needs* razor leaf (which is slash on steroids, and can be super effective), oddish doesn't learn it, not only that but oddish is slower and weaker than Bellsprout. I'd put oddish in Low C/High D (it still has sleep), I'd keep Bellsprout a tier under Bulbasaur, as it is not available for brock and mt moon, but it work exactly like it (slower than Bulbasaur, but stronger).
Meowth: he learns bubblebeam, imo that gives it way more utility. Slash and bubblebeam is an excellent synergy. I'd put him in B
Farfetchd: no farfetchd is absolute garbage, yes it has slash, but its slash is weaker than any other flying type drill peck, even with 100% crit, it is important to note that flying is a really really good offensive typing, slash is normal type therefore is never super effective. Farfetchd would have been perfect with sword dance and agility and hyper beam and slash, but crits don't work with sword dance, and he doesn't learn hyper beam and it will never survive the setup turn anyways. It is a perfect hm slave, only learning cut and fly may look bad, but that combination is actually really rare, and synergies very well with another hm slave with strength and surf. I'd put him in don't bother, hm slave can be boxed until needed.
Edit: bonus exp doesn't make it good either, for the same number of pokemon defeated, fearow would be level 40, and farfetchd 45, that not enough of a gap to make farfetchd viable (farfetchd needs +20 levels to keep up with fearow)
Abra: you can get abra as soon as you can, put him in the daycare, do the ss anne and electric gym, boom it's level 15, ready to evolve twice in your hands. Alakazam is broken, l'd put it in low Nidoking tier.
Mr.mime: you can get this psychic type before you do the ss Anne, it's fast, learns thunder bolt, and is psychic. Easy A tier, people underestimate him because he's highly disturbing, but he's amazing. Especially if you don't want to bother with abra early levels. (In blue you can get the casino abra with only coins on the ground, ready to trade)
Magicarp: get the almost free Magikarp from mt moon, put it in the daycare, do ss anne, electric gym and get all the cut goodies from after the Diglett cave, when you come back for rock tunnel, retrieve it at level 19 and boom, you have the absolute king of nuzlocke. I'd put it in low A/high B.
Flareon: don't bother, Vaporeon or jolteon are just infinitely better, you will never need it, ever, just get Arcanine.
Edit: this is just mean, Flearon sucks, but not enough to be D. Low C
Moltres: don't bother, it's Charizard, but endgame instead of earlygame.
Mew: you can get it as soon as you get an abra with a glitch, best hm slave in the game, makes the game infinitely more injoyable, special utility tier.
I won't talk about doduo as another comment went far more in depth than I could. But B imo
Mew's basically God tier. Of course if you're doing glitchless runs or just want to ban broken Pokemon, it's the best Pokemon in the game at the earliest point you can get it. It isn't too bad to catch since it has a higher catch rate than the legendary birds and Mewtwo so if you've got something like Clefairy with Sing, it's not too bad to catch. There's also the fact that it continues to be the best Pokemon for the rest of the playthrough and it has no real bad match-up and it can basically play any role and excel at it. A simple set of Body Slam, BoltBeam/QuakeSlide and STAB or pretty much whatever coverage moves you need cleaves through the whole game. It can also OHKO abuse better than anything so even Nidoking's X Accuracy and X Speed strat works with Mew only better due to it having better stats and typing.
@@ShiningJudgment666 you're right, mew is uber, like mewtwo, however I believe it's utility as a hm slave far exceeds any other sets it can have if you just want to finish the game (and it can have so many sets). But that is due to my playstyle I suppose. I can beat the game with my 6 pokemon and only use one hm slave mew, or I can use mew as a main member of the team and manage 2 hm slaves (generally farfetch'd and a nido). The second option being way more painful.
I don't like to consider items, as basically any pokemon with items is invincible, even a team of splash only magikarp cannot lose if you have enough X items, full restore and revive. (yes I know that team cannot beat Agatha, that 's not the point).
@@8Gion Yeah. That is true. Mew learns all the HMs and the only other one that learns all the required HMs is Kingler who you can't get until later on. You don't need Flash in Gen 1 but that's besides the point. Mew as HM Slave isn't the worst but to me it feels like a waste of its power. You can also do the Mew glitch more than once as long as you have trainers to battle to perform the glitch so you can have a HM Slave Mew and a main team member Mew. Magikarp teams also won't even make it to Agatha either since it won't even get past the Pokemon Tower unless you take something specifically to get rid of ghosts.
@@ShiningJudgment666 Kingler is just missing fly to be a true replacement for mew, and ultimately having 2 hm slave is not that bad.
Fun fact:
Articuno's blizzard is actually the strongest attack in the game.
Stronger than Mewtwo psychic, even.
Idk about that, Mewtwo and slowbro can get to 999 special with Amnesia and Articuno can't boost it's special.
There is also snorlax's self destruct, as it's stabbed and halves the ennemy defense, has a base power of 390 everything considered. It seems way stronger than the 180 base power of Articuno's stabbed blizzard.
And golem gets the strongest explosion with 340 base power.
@@8Gion yeah, but it's not about boosting, because a +6 special articuno still does more than a +6 mewtwo or slowbro, it just doesn't get amnesia. (just get some x specials if you wanna test.)
secondly, i proly meant strongest /special/ attack, my b.
@@knockoffsans.3636 I forgot you can use items.
Not that Articuno really needs it as it destroy the game once you have it, but it's fun to theorycraft.
In that case it's tied with Exegguttor solar beam, zapdos thunder and moltres fire blast. Blizzard being the best as it takes one turn and has better accuracy than thunder.
Edit: yeah i forgot about moltres half way, oops
Solid tier list, although I have my doubts on a few mons.
I don't think Mankey deserves B, even with the niche it has in Yellow. Ya boi in the Nidokingdom gets Double Kick at level 12 in Yellow, as well as Nidoran F, and both offer much more for your overall playthrough than Mankey. That being said, I'd put it in C since it's a good route-cleaner with all of the Normal-type trainers you find, and you get Mankey super early which means more stat exp.
Bold Caterpie nom, but A is really overselling it. You make good points on its qualities, but the stats, bad typing, and no STAB means it's essentially a hindrance in the mid-late game. Butterfree is also base 70 speed (same as Onix) not 80. C at best imo.
I don't think Gastly's A tier, either. The Normal-immunity is nice, but it's a serious resource-hog. If you want this mon to faint mons quickly, it needs TMs, and even with them equipped, it's not making nearly as much headway as Abra and Jynx. Plus, it's essentially stone-walled by opposing Psychics (Psychic is immune to Ghost in Gen 1 so no Lick) and Gastly is weak to them. B is more ideal.
This one's a bit of a nitpick but I don't think Moltres even deserves C. Its Elite 4 matchup isn't...really good outside maybe Bruno and a few of the Rival's mons.
Ahh thanks for the in-depth reply!
I'll agree on Mankey, fighting types just can't catch a break in Gen 1...
A might be overselling our boy Margarine a bit, but I don't think he goes lower than B. He's outclassed by...well, most things after you reach Cerulean, but he at least gets psychic coverage and Sleep Powder with Gen 1 sleep mechanics. I might also just be biased towards Butterfree because I'm a filthy Charmander player and Butterfree is your best bet for besting Brock (oof) if you're not playing Yellow.
I gotta defend Ghastly tho, I think he's really good. It's true that he hogs TMs, but especially in Red/Blue Ghost type makes you immune to like...half the enemy movesets in the game because of all the random normal moves. No usable Ghost STAB sucks, but with 130 special and 110 speed are both ludicrous, I don't think he dips down to B.
...Yeah, Moltres sucks.
@@ImportedCheese I'm a CharStander myself, so I know the feel lmao. That being said, the Brock matchup really ain't that bad as long as Onix spams Bide a healthy amount, where you can Growl on the charge turns. Takes a while longer than Confusion Butterfree, though.
I'll give you the points you made on Gastly, though.
@@TheVengefulVadam If only Brock wasn't in the pockets of Big Pokemart, why does he have five Full Heals?
No way to get through with lucky burns...
Shoutout to 7 year old me for using the master ball on an Onix because I didn't realize there was only one and it was the first new encounter I saw after picking it up 😎
It's about sending a message
Im honestly dissapointed there is so little merch for Nidoking, the best performing, most powerful , best design(graphically) pokemon from gen 1.
They spent their whole marketing budget pushing Pikachu and Charizard merch =/
Great video, straight to the point and with a few jokes here and there
Thanks for watching! This video is...really old so I don't know why it gets pushed over newer lists, but I hope you enjoyed it!
I don't really remember the reason, but I decided to solo Pokemon red with Nidoking as a kid, I think just because I liked it. I wish I knew the horn drill strat but it decimated everything without it. Access to thunderbolt is really nice. I remember just spamming thrash against most opponents.
helped a lot by Gen 1 mechanics
Another reason why Pidgey sucks is that Wing Attack only has 35 base power in Gen 1
Making quick attack its best move until you get fly... so basically until Pidgeot. Which has garbage stats. Pick Spearow or Doduo instead (the latter isn't that late, you can get it just before cycling road with cut iirc)
@@kwayke9 yep
i remember sweeping most of the game with my gyarados i got pre misty as i put in the investment and the 2 rare candies u get b4 fighting her or nugget bridge so i was able to destroy misty and everything to surge which i just cheesed with my lvl 31 dugtrio i caught. Then Icebeam Thunderbolt Hyperbeam and Surf sealed the rest of the games fate with my Hypno hard walling the rivals and sabrinas alakazams and agatha's gastly line. I also used flareon as i liked how hard fluffy it was. But Gyarados and Hypno were my main sweepers.
100 base special moment
im here for that octopath music
A true man of culture.
As a kid, I almost ALWAYS caught and trained a Pidgey through most of the game!!
Pidgey is nothing if not reliable!
I remember initially hating Gen 3 as a kid because no Pidgey
Notably in Japanese Blue you can trade a Persian for a Tauros. This makes Tauros guaranteed and gives it 1.5 times trade exp. While this shouldn't change either of their rankings since this was mostly about R/B I think it probably makes them collectively low A or high B tier in that game.