How do you know if a Pokemon is usable?

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Pokeplayer150

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This question has been stirring in my brain a lot recently: what qualities define a Pokemon that's usable in battle. Now, I'm not asking in competitive terms, just in general. I've been looking to get back into the games and I felt that I could use some advice on what I should look for when wandering into the tall grass. If anyone could help me, I would very much appreciate it.
 
I think it all depends on your level of skill and patience. Sometimes, certain Pokemon truly surprise me when they get a chance. I once caught the Skill Link Minccino in the Hidden Grotto in W2, and figured I'd carry it around as a reviver shield. By some way or another, it proved itself to be a great fighter, and ended up on my main team. It dealt the final blows to many unbelievable victories. "Usable" is, as a result, rather subjective. I believe it's a Pokemon that can consistently produce good results, and win average battles while keeping its HP in the green. Versatile movesets, good stats, and good coverage attribute to this. There are some Pokemon, like Luvdisc and whatnot, that just exist for no good reason, but give a 'mon a chance, and they can prove "usable."

tl;dr: Aside from the ones that we all know are good for nothing (Luvdisc...) just about anything you run into can become something good, if you have the patience. Unless, of course, you have the bad luck of finding something with deplorable IV's and a bad Nature. :D
 
Excluding competitive terms, I guess whatever you like could be usable. Every pokemon has their pros and cons. Like mentioned by @BlackOsprey; pokemon like Luvdisc or Sunkern are hardly usable in battles because they are 'weak', and pretty much 'useless' (low defenses, shallow movepool, etc...) I guess Luvdisc itself has its uses since you can fish up HeartScales from Luvdisc (though in B2W2, there's someone who gives out HeartScales daily, so Luvdisc pretty much lost its purpose there...)

Unless you're doing solo-runs or single-type runs, as long as you gather various types with different stats, you'd be able to create a decent team with what you can find in the wild.
 
Agreed with the above. Almost any Pokemon can be usable provided they have a decent movepool and stats. I've been known to use several Pokemon that most would probably consider suckish; ie all Pikaclones, Liepard, Delphox, Parasect, Linoone, etc. They all turned out to be great team members capable of taking out opponents on their own. As long as you can raise it, it can be useful and usable in battle.
 
BlackOsprey said:
I think it all depends on your level of skill and patience. Sometimes, certain Pokemon truly surprise me when they get a chance. I once caught the Skill Link Minccino in the Hidden Grotto in W2, and figured I'd carry it around as a reviver shield. By some way or another, it proved itself to be a great fighter, and ended up on my main team. It dealt the final blows to many unbelievable victories. "Usable" is, as a result, rather subjective. I believe it's a Pokemon that can consistently produce good results, and win average battles while keeping its HP in the green. Versatile movesets, good stats, and good coverage attribute to this. There are some Pokemon, like Luvdisc and whatnot, that just exist for no good reason, but give a 'mon a chance, and they can prove "usable."

tl;dr: Aside from the ones that we all know are good for nothing (Luvdisc...) just about anything you run into can become something good, if you have the patience. Unless, of course, you have the bad luck of finding something with deplorable IV's and a bad Nature. :D
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Is Luvdisc really THAT bad? I mean, I know it gets a lot of crap on the internet and, based on what I've read about it, it's not without good reason. But, at least from my perspective, there seems to be much worse fully evolved Pokemon than Luvdisc (looks at Delibird and Unown).
 
Most Pokemon are usable to some extent in-game. EV training isn't just useful for competitive battles, if a Pokemon is very weak and has trouble keeping up with the rest of your party then some EV training can give it the boost it needs. I've successfully used Pokemon like Spinda and Delibird on my teams by doing this.

The same goes for keeping Pokemon unevolved, except Eviolite can boost their usefulness even more in post Gen V games.
 
Eh, it's just the first that comes to mind. Plus, I don't like its concept, its design is lazy, and at least the Unown had some pretty cool moments in the anime. Of course, those qualities have nothing to do with in-game usefulness, but they do make me come up with Luvdisc more than the others if you ask me what's no good.
 
Really, the only thing I care about in a Pokemon is if I like it or not, stats, EV's, etc. mean very little to me
 
Pretty much every Pokemon has their uses. I've seen people kick some major ass with the likes of Linoone, Sunflora, Fearow, Beedrill, Butterfree... they all have their great uses if used correctly. I've even seen people rock with not fully evolved Pokemon like Drifloon and Tangela.

The only Pokemon that I personally wouldn't use and found to be the most useless is Unown, only because it cannot be taught anything and only knows Hidden Power, and with the base power set at 60 and it's stats being so lousy, I don't even bother to use it in-game. Maybe if I had a whole team of them and they all had different Hidden Powers to counter whatever is thrown at me, but even then I wouldn't go that far just to bring some use out of Unown.
 
ocelotl said:
Pretty much every Pokemon has their uses. I've seen people kick some major ass with the likes of Linoone, Sunflora, Fearow, Beedrill, Butterfree... they all have their great uses if used correctly. I've even seen people rock with not fully evolved Pokemon like Drifloon and Tangela.

The only Pokemon that I personally wouldn't use and found to be the most useless is Unown, only because it cannot be taught anything and only knows Hidden Power, and with the base power set at 60 and it's stats being so lousy, I don't even bother to use it in-game. Maybe if I had a whole team of them and they all had different Hidden Powers to counter whatever is thrown at me, but even then I wouldn't go that far just to bring some use out of Unown.
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I totally agree with you on that.
 
CountessDeLaRoca said:
Really, the only thing I care about in a Pokemon is if I like it or not, stats, EV's, etc. mean very little to me
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And that's okay. In fact, I respect a person that likes a Pokemon for more than how strong it is. Because that's the reason I had the Pokemon I had as a kid, I just liked them. Maybe that's why Karen's philosophy resonated with me so well when I first read about it.
 
Technically every Pokemon is useable.

For what you meant, stats and move pool.
 
Pokeplayer150 said:
This question has been stirring in my brain a lot recently: what qualities define a Pokemon that's usable in battle. Now, I'm not asking in competitive terms, just in general. I've been looking to get back into the games and I felt that I could use some advice on what I should look for when wandering into the tall grass. If anyone could help me, I would very much appreciate it.
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Well, I usually just pick a team made from early route Pokémon and stick with it and it usually serves me well. But a good playthrough team...

- make sure you have type diversity. If you have a Fennekin, don't get a Fletchling, if you have a Froakie, don't get a Bidoof. If you absolutely must have two Pokémon of the same type, make sure they're both Dual-typed with different primary/secondary types (Staraptor and Crobat, for example)

- make sure you have both physicial and special attackers/tanks. If you come up against a Pokémon that can physically wall your 100% fighting team, you're screwed.

- not necessary, but three stage Pokémon are usually welcome. These tend to have high BST 9 times out of 10, and that's what you'll need late in the games.
 
For me, it's how well they stand up to EV training. If a Pokemon can thrive via this trial by fire, then I consider it useful. Those that can't are cut from the team, if you will. Case in point: in Black my Golett passed with flying colors but the Deino I was training ended up boxed due to constant fainting.
 
Well as a newbie to competitive battling I've noticed a lot of Pokemon I've used for playthroughs have been NU. The Pokemon I have used are usually ones I like the design of and aren't laughably weak. Usually I avoid first route Pokemon and sometimes Pokemon that only evolve once.
 
Once I beat Sapphire with a Spoink and Zigzagoon because I was feeling like I wanted to use cutesy pokemon. After that point I have decided that absolutely everything is usable.
 
Just out of curiosity, is there a Pokemon that is useful competitively, but not as so for in-game battles? That is without considering what HMs they can learn for exploration.
 
As for my thoughts on this topic, to me, the best Pokémon (at least, for in-game purposes) is the one who can get you through the entire game. This includes most of the starters, as well as many early game Pokémon who have powerful final forms, such as Zubat, Abra, Magikarp, and Ralts. The ones that aren't so useful are the ones who start off strong but fall behind very quickly (ie. any regional bug, bird, or rodent) and the ones who don't show up until very late and take a long time to catch up (ie. most Pseudo-Legendaries).

henrymidfields said:
Just out of curiosity, is there a Pokemon that is useful competitively, but not as so for in-game battles? That is without considering what HMs they can learn for exploration.
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I would probably say Chansey and Blissey. They're very good at soaking up Special hits (a skill that isn't useful in-game at all), and that's about it. Their offensive stats are pitiful, and they usually die to even the weakest Physical attacks.
 
It really depends.

Even different individuals of the same mon can have vastly different results, or the same mon across different generation games. For example, when I played through Heartgold, I ran across a wild Magnemite, caught it, trained it up, and it became a very strong player in the late-game as Magneton, even without deliberate EV training. Then when I played through Y shortly thereafter, I was understandably excited to find and catch a wild Magneton. With how much easier getting ideal EVs is in gen VI, I figured I'd have another strong Magneton team member for my team ready to go in no time. This was not the case. My first Kalos Magneton took too much damage, couldn't dish out enough in return, and was completely unable to make use of it's utility moveset. It simply could not pull its own weight in battle to save its life, and I had to bench it.

I learned later, once I got access to the stat judge, that my first Kalos Magneton had just about the worst stats possible, whereas my Heartgold Magneton had pretty good stats.

So really, in a playthrough of a game, it pays to shuffle through your mons, try out new ones you catch, see how they perform in battle. The ones that pull ahead or punch really well above their level will generally have good stats that reflect their performance, as will the ones that perform poorly, regardless of how the mon would generally perform in a competitive battle.
 
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