Low Tier Letdown / Pokémon

Image by Shadowshocker. Used with permission.

"Ledian is one of the worst, most shockingly awful Pokémon of all time, and it's honestly pretty easy to see why, like you don't need me to tell you that. It has absolutely horrible stats, and in each and every tier of each and every generation, Ledian was worse than anything else available more than ninety-nine times out of ten."

— False Swipe Gaming on Ledian, "How GOOD was Ledian ACTUALLY? - History of Ledian in Competitive Pokémon (Gens 2-7)"

With over 1,000 monsters and counting in existence, it's impossible for Pokémon to ensure that every creature can be viable in competitive or even in-game play. As Power Creep marches on, more and more Pokémon will end up letting down players in competitive play. Below are the many species that got the shaft from Game Freak.

For those on the opposite end of the spectrum, click here.

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Types in General

With eighteen types in the game, each of which can be combined with the other, how these types interact is a critical part of Pokémon. Sadly, some of these types are worse off than the rest through having unfavorable matchups which don't match its advantages. Often, these types will hinder a Pokémon's competitive viability just by being applied.

Across all generations

• Normal, par for the course for the "starter type"^note As in, a type meant to teach the player to get familiar with the type chart was bound to be this. Offensively, it doesn't hit any type super-effectively, and fails to meaningfully hurt Rock and Steel (or in the case of Ghost, at all); defensively, it only has one weakness to Fighting, but doesn't resist any type save for Ghost, which it is mutually immune to. The result is a type that excels at nothing. Notably, in Gen I, the type previously dominated competitive battles (on par with Psychic as the Infinity +1 Element), but started to become this as subsequent generations buffed each type and gave them more of an identity — the introduction of the Steel-type in Gen II and the increasing relevancy of Fighting and Ghost starting with Gen II/Gens III-IV, respectively, would start taking the wind out of Normal's sails, and eventually, the type's Master of None status came back to bite it, especially with Power Creep in play. Normal-types have thus been rare in the higher tiers since then, with the few viable ones being either perennial Stone Walls Chansey and Blissey as well as Porygon2, or those that make up for Normal's lack of super-effective hits with their sheer power like Arceus without a Plate (due to the mon already being a Master of All), Mega Kangaskhan, Mega Lopunny, and Ursaluna (both forms). Unfortunately, Gen VIII removed Return and Frustration, removing the niche of providing strong, neutral coverage the type once had and forcing physically offensive Normal-types to either rely on weaker moves like Body Slam, or the less accessible Double-Edge. In Generation IX, the only Normal-types to rank above UU are Blissey, Arceus, Bloodmoon Ursaluna, and Terapagos, with even promising candidates such as Maushold and Hisuian Zoroark falling to the wayside.
• Ice is infamous for being one of the most misunderstood types by Game Freak, as determined by fans. It's notorious for being one of the most dangerous offensive types in the game, hitting various offensive and defensive types in Grass, Ground, Flying and Dragon for massive damage, and more often than not, these types are rarely paired with the types that resist Ice in Fire, Water, Ice itself and Steel; in fact, thanks to the other types' utility in higher tiers, 4x weaknesses to Ice tend to be very common. However, it has far and away the worst defensive profile in the game; Ice not only has common weaknesses in Fire, Fighting, Rock^note And thus to Stealth Rock and Steel, but it has no immunities and only resists itself. This tends to overcompensate for Ice's offensive strengths; simply having an Ice-type on your team tends to detract from its defensive integrity as, in an inverse of the Steel-type, pairing Ice with another type tends to worsen said other type. And to add insult to injury, many Ice-type mons tend to be lumbering and bulky instead of speedier but fragile, forcing them to take a strong hit before they can properly retaliate back. As a result of these qualities, the type's mons are commonly shoved to the lower rungs of competitive play. However, in an oxymoron, the type's balance is so lopsided, that a mon that makes up for Ice's defensive shortcomings can get out of control quickly and shove it into the opposite realm, such as with Weavile, Kyurem, Chien-Pao and Baxcalibur (the second one even getting banned to Ubers in Gen VIII, and the latter two having the same destiny in in Gen IX). Regardless, even after the introduction of Aurora Veil^note A status move that combines the effects of Reflect and Light Screen, halving damage from both physical and special attacks for 5 turns (8 with Light Clay) and even stacking with dual screens in Gen VII, the type still struggled. It took until Gen IX where hail (and its related move Hail) was replaced with snow and Snowscape, losing the passive damage but granting any Ice-types a very useful Defense boost, further upping the viability of the type; this particular change combined with Snow Warning pushing the previously-good but not amazing Alolan Ninetales into High-Tier Scrappy territory and was a major contributing factor in sending Baxcalibur to Ubers. For Ice-types unable to fully abuse snow however, the introduction of Terastallization also allows these mons to become any type that's not Ice, with the least to lose and most to gain from changing their type.
• Psychic, after a stint in Generation I where it was notoriously unbalanced, has had its viability slowly tumble down a cliff as time has gone on. Offensively, while not outright bad, it only hits Fighting and Poison hard, while itself and Steel resist it and Dark is immune to it; the niche of a type that can hit much of the cast at least neutrally is also already done by other types like Electric, Ghost, Dragon and Dark, causing Psychic to be outclassed. It's also pretty lackluster defensively, resisting only itself and Fighting, while possessing no immunities and weaknesses to Bug, Ghost and Dark. Its broken status in Gen I was mainly due to having basically no weaknesses (Bug had weak moves with zero good abusers, and due to a programming error, Psychic was outright immune to Ghost) and abusing the Special stat to full effect; after Gen I, the introduction of Dark and Steel, two types specifically made to nerf Psychic, was a huge blow to the type's viability, though the type still saw use due to its niche of being able to check Fighting-types while not being weak to Stealth Rock. However, the type has significantly declined from Gen VI and on no thanks to the buffs to Ghost and Dark, and the introduction of Fairy, which does everything else Psychic did (except hitting Poison) but better. Game Freak is at least aware of Psychic's problems and have attempted to solve it, with Gen VII onward emphasizing on their offensive prowess with the introduction of Psychic Terrain as well as a wonderful setter and abuser in Tapu Lele, though this otherwise requires setup due to no other Pokémon receiving the Ability (until Indeedee in Gen VIII). All in all, Psychic's problematic offenses make it outclassed by types that can already hit just as hard and better, like Ground or Flying, while its defensive profile remains laughable.
• Bug has historically been one of the worst types in the franchise, which is equal parts fitting (like Normal, it's more of a "starter type") and ironic^note Pokémon was born from Satoshi Tajiri's fondness of collecting bugs when he was younger and his desire for kids to feel the same when catching and collecting creatures. Offensively, it's got awful effectiveness, hitting Grass, Psychic and Dark (the former of which is the most useful and the other two being generally mediocre), but resisted by a whopping seven types^note Fire, Fighting (a mutual resistance), Poison, Flying, Ghost, Steel and Fairy. It's actually better defensively, resisting Grass, Fighting and Ground, but its also weak to common offensive types in Fire, Flying, and Rock^note And thus to Stealth Rock, like Ice; not to mention many of the type's mons have low stats and poor type combos, causing Flying itself to fill whatever defensive niche Bug can do better (having in fact, an immunity to Ground as opposed to just a resistance). Generally speaking, most Bugs are forced to run Heavy-Duty Boots in an attempt to function offensively, or Sticky Web-centric lead sets for utility. It's also not much better in Doubles, as the weaknesses of Bug Pokémon leave them wide open to spread moves such as Heat Wave and Rock Slide. And to hit the nail in the coffin, while Grass also hits seven types for not very effective damage, its former's matchups in Water, Ground and Rock^*So, one of the best defensive types, and two of the best offensive ones are miles more useful than Bug's own matchups^*A specialized but otherwise passable type, a type infamous for its bad defensive typing (as seen above), and a type that's defensively countered by the other types that can hit it super-effectively. It's telling that most competitively useful Bug-types thrive thanks to their stats and traits rather than (or actually, in spite of) their typings. Probably the only real advantage Bug has is that its lack of immunities (be it to types or Abilities) is partially what makes U-turn one of the best moves in competitive play; other than that, all of this amounts to what's usually considered one of the worst types around — and for some, the outright worst.
• Rock, much like Ice above, is a type that's designed more like a Mighty Glacier or Stone Wall, but ends up a Glass Cannon in practice. It's awesome offensively, hurting Fire, Ice, Flying and Bug, while only being resisted by Fighting, Ground and Steel and having no types immune to it; this offensive profile is part of the reason for Stealth Rock's infamy, limiting a notoriously high amount of Pokémon, while also making it an excellent type to pair offensively with types like Fighting or Ground. However, defensively, Rock suffers from a deluge of weaknesses in Water, Grass, Fighting, Ground and Steel, while not resisting as many types in Normal, Fire, Poison and Flying; of these, only Fire stands out the most, while the Steel-type otherwise outclasses Rock defensively due to its fewer weaknesses and drastically more resistances. Rock had a great start in Gen I, being one of two types (along with Ghost) that resisted Normal; starting with Gen II, however, the type would start dwindling due to Steel's introduction in Gen II and the buffs to Fighting and Grass. A Normal resistance is no longer much of a selling point, and many Rock-types have at least one 4x weakness — which is a terrible thing when most Rock Pokémon have, again, Mighty Glacier stats. It really says something when Aggron losing this type post-Mega Evolution proved to be a boon than a detriment. Finally and, ironically, despite its stupendous offensive matchups, the type surprisingly struggles in terms of offense, as its main physical attacking moves (Rock Slide and Stone Edge) suffer from imperfect accuracy, and its special attacking ones have limited distribution (Meteor Beam and Power Gem) or poor power (Ancient Power). While there are numerous strong Rock-type Pokémon that take full advantage of its strengths, the type also has the curious dishonor of never having a Pokémon be banned to Ubers^note Besides Arceus-Rock, but Arceus is a Pokémon that can have any of the 18 types in the game, and Arceus-Rock isn't viable in Ubers; additionally, many of the Rock-types that were introduced in Gen IX are exceptions that prove the rule — Garganacl often Terastallizes into a better defensive type, while Glimmora is best used as a lead, making the defensive weaknesses of its typing not nearly as relevant.

Specific generations

• Fire started out as a rather mediocre type in Gen I. Unlike in recent generations, Fire actually had a mediocre profile overall, hitting Grass, Ice and Bug while being not very effective against itself, Water, Rock or Dragon, and being weak to common types in Water, Ground and Rock while resisting itself, Grass and Bug — back then, it didn't resist Ice. Being weak to common offensive types, resistant to bad ones, not being able to hit important targets and, most damningly, thawing out a frozen Pokémon^note In Gen I only, frozen Pokémon cannot thaw out on their own, essentially reducing them to death fodder, means that having a Fire-type on one's team was generally a bad idea. In recent years, Moltres has found a niche in OU, but mainly due to its excellent stats and access to Agility and Fire Spin (a clone of Wrap), not its typing. In fact, there are no other viable Fire-types in the tier, or UU for that matter; Fire was that bad! The Fire type also suffered badly in the standard campaign, as it severely lacked a midgame move between Ember and Flamethrower/Fire Blast^note other than Fire Punch, which was limited to only Magmar among Fire types, who itself was resoundingly mediocre and couldn't be obtained until very late anyway, while Flamethrower wasn't learnable until a Pokémon's level was in their late 30s in the best of cases (while some, in the case of Growlithe and Flareon, couldn't learn it until their 50s, or in the case of Ponyta and Rapidash, couldn't learn it at all), and there was no Fire TMs aside from Fire Blast (which wasn't obtainable until the seventh gym). As a result, any Fire type used by the player would be stuck with the puny 40 power Ember for their only STAB move for most of the game, while other types got better moves much sooner (Water types for example, got a Bubblebeam TM as a prize for beating the second gym, and got an endgame-caliber move in Surf from an infinitely reusable HM before the fifth gym).
  
  Gen II fortunately buffed the type with the introduction of the Steel-type which Fire hits super-effectively and resists (and is often its best counter, since Steel's other two weaknesses mostly hit its sky-high physical defense) and a new resistance to Ice; though while Gen IV's Physical/Special split was extremely kind to Fire, it would also introduce Stealth Rock, which Fire suffers a weakness from. Subsequent generations have given Fire more buffs, such as a resistance to Fairy in Gen VI and the introduction of Heavy-Duty Boots in Gen VIII. Gen II would also help Fire types for campaign play by turning Fire Punch into a TM, introducing Flame Wheel as another midgame option between Ember and Flamethrower, and made Flamethrower learnable sooner by some Fire Pokémon, while future Gens would continue to introduce much more Fire moves stronger than Ember. Nowadays, Fire is commonly agreed to have started to hit its stride in Gen IV (despite the introduction of Stealth Rock) and it has only gotten better over time, though not without a shaky start.
• Fighting is one of the best offensive types, but like Fire, it got off to a rocky start in Gen I, to the point of putting in a strong case for being its worst type. Offensively, the type in Gen I is strong against Rock, Ice, and most importantly, Normal, giving it an apparent niche as a counter to one of the most popular types. Sadly, Fighting is also hard-countered by the other most popular type, Psychic, which resists Fighting and deals super-effective damage to it. The type also has no defensive utility to make up for this gaping weakness, with low Special stats on the whole and both its resisted types (Bug and Rock) being rare on offense. Its moves in Gen I all boast some combination of poor distribution, lackluster power, or shaky accuracy, with the strongest widely-distributed one being the notoriously flawed Submission^note 80 power, 80% accuracy, and 1/4 recoil damage. The move is so bad that some Fighting-types actually prefer to run Low Kick instead, a move with 50 power.—when combined with the type not resisting Normal, it frequently struggles to do even its one job in competitive without taking heavy damage in the process. Tellingly, nearly all the Fighting-types in Gen I (save Poliwrath^note It's the only one with an additional type, has a passable Special stat, and learns Hypnosis and the amazing Status Buff Amnesia) are stuck in PU, and many are considered bad choices even there. The introduction of the Dark- and Steel-types in Gen II gave Fighting much more of an offensive niche (Fighting is super-effective against both, and resists Dark), and paired with the introduction of better Fighting moves like Cross Chop, Superpower, Close Combat, and so on, the type has been able to start making a name for itself since then.
• Poison. Resisting Grass, Fighting and itself plus being immune to the poison status effect meant nothing when the type was weak to Ground, Psychic, and in Generation I only, Bug. And offensively, it was just as bad, hitting only Grass and Bug while being resisted by itself, Ground, Rock and Ghost. On top of this, in Gen I, Poison's strongest move is the mediocre Sludge, which only two lines can even learn and even then, only five fully-evolved Pokémon are hit by it super-effectively. Being weak to Psychic (again, the most notoriously dominant type in the game) and Ground (which carries one of the most common physical attacking moves in Earthquake) easily ensured a horrendous start for the type, and its advantage in easily inflicting the poison status^note In Gen I, the status effect only inflicted 1/16 damage of max HP each turn, unlike from Gen II onward where it inflicts 1/8 was ironically a downside, since being poisoned made the victim immune to more dangerous status effects like paralysis^note Until Gen VII, the user's max Speed was cut to 1/4 of it, rather than 1/2, sleep^note In Gen I only, waking up took a full turn and the Pokémon couldn't attack until the next one, prompting the opponent to put the victim to sleep again, rinse and repeat or most notably freezing. The generation had some part-Poison Pokémon that saw some viability, like Gengar, Tentacruel, and Victreebel, but this is mainly because there were thirteen different Poison-type families in Gen I and the type was therefore bound to see some successes—in almost all cases, the type is seen as the main thing holding them back. Gen II would bring both buffs and nerfs to Poison, but would nerf it overall — while the more powerful Sludge Bomb was introduced, the Psychic-type was neutered, and Poison now resisted Bug, it lost its strength against the type and the newly-introduced Steel-type (despite also nerfing Psychic), was outright immune to Poison, leaving the type with arguably the worst offensive profile.
  
  Subsequent generations have given the type much more love through constant buffs; Gen IV introduced Toxic Spikes and a bunch of offensive moves like Poison Jab and Gunk Shot (meaning the Physical/Special split was quite kind to the type), Gen VI introduced the powerful Fairy-type which Poison resists and hits super-effectively, finally giving it a second type vulnerable to it besides Grass (and is often a better Fairy counter than Steel as several powerful Fairies sport a Steel-resistant secondary type). Almost every generation has introduced strong Poison-types. While its buffing process has been much slower than Fire or Fighting, and it's still considered one of the weaker types, Poison has proven to be very respectable defensive- and utility-wise since then.
• The Stellar Tera Type was hyped up in initial marketing for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet as a powerful Tera Type that possesses the powers of all Types, sacrificing the defensive benefit of Terastalization for pure offense. The actual, ugly truth is that the mechanic appears to have been perhaps over-balanced. While you get a boost to all of your attacks, the attack boost amounts to a measly 20% bonus damage for non-STAB attacks and the standard 2x bonus for STAB; furthermore, each bonus is only good once per type, meaning that the momentum boost you get off of the Stellar-type wears off very quickly relative to the investment you have to put in considering that you only get one Terastallization per game. This makes the Stellar-type inferior in virtually every use case where you would want to use a Tera to gain an advantage, since normal Terastallization confers defensive counterplay and superior long-term damage. Tera Raids do bypass the "once per type" rule by boosting attacks multiple times, so it seems as if the Stellar-type was made with Raids in mind. Outside of Raids, however, the only Pokémon who would realistically be caught using the Stellar-type is Terapagos, who despite being conferred the boosts permanently (even outside of Tera Raids) is also gimped by its reliance on needing Terastallization to transform, and even then merely becomes a mediocre Legendary.

Specific Pokémon (Smogon Singles)

Generation I

• Breakout Character Charizard has had multiple temporary Super Modes that have all been successful in various competitive formats, and despite its crippling weakness to Stealth Rock, its base form has nonetheless proven to be one of the best Pokémon in the lowest tiers such as NU and PU throughout the generations. It even managed to rise to OU in Gen III, where it is held as a genuinely decent wallbreaker with a lot of viable movesets. The problem lies in its Popularity Power; many players will lament Charizard's lack of potency compared to many OU Pokémon and attempt to make it work in standard play,^note or even, egregiously, tiers such as Gen V Ubers, usually with Solar Power sets on sun teams with their extreme wallbreaking power (often trying to fill the void left by its Mega Evolutions and Gigantamax form in generations where they don't exist).^note It doesn't help that Charizard physically resembles many Dragon-type Pokémon (such as its own X Mega Evolution), many of which are in OU and UU, furthering the negative comparisons and psychologically encouraging some players to use it in the same way. Even fellow Gen I "non-Dragon-type dragon" Gyarados has been a staple in UU or OU since its introduction, further encouraging this train of thought. However, Charizard is a flat-out Master of None compared to the OU titans, with many other Fire-types in most generations (especially Moltres, Volcarona and Iron Moth) able to fill its offensive and defensive roles much more effectively. While many Charizard fans were quick to blame the introduction of Stealth Rock for Charizard's lack of viability, factors such as the aforementioned Moltres and Volcarona and the fact that the Heavy-Duty Boots item^note allows the holder to ignore entry hazards didn't do much to improve Charizard's standing showed that Stealth Rock was merely one of its many, many woes. Its Solar Power sets fall into this trope quite hard; they are only really usable in higher tiers with automatic weather setters such as Torkoal, but are too frail and predictable to use effectively,^note and are also too weak if Charizard foregoes a Choice item to instead use Heavy-Duty Boots to overcome its Stealth Rock weakness, which is especially problematic in Generation IX OU where Gholdengo exists, giving them no real niche in any metagame. Additionally, Solar Power Charizard is directly outclassed in Gen IX by Iron Moth, which is faster and stronger by default, and can use Booster Energy to activate a similar power boost without the self-damage. Thankfully, Charizard has improved within the bottom tiers throughout the generations (where, ironically, its Stealth Rock weakness sometimes helps it by making it easier to consistently activate its Blaze ability), but its popularity will always cause it to be compared to far stronger Pokémon that it has no place competing against and its Solar Power gimmick has never risen out of Awesome, but Impractical territory, never finding a true home outside of Gen VIII VGC.
• When people think of bad early-game Bug-types, Beedrill is almost always one of the first names. Built as a Crutch Character to teach the player about evolution early, Beedrill's stats start struggling the moment it leaves Viridian Forest. Its highest stat is its 90 Attack, buffed from 80 in the sixth generation, with the rest of its stats ranging from sub-mediocre to flat-out awful. Its Gen 1 performance stands out: it was given the only somewhat workable STAB Bug move in the game in Twineedle, making it the only thing capable of hitting Psychics with good super-effective damage... and then slapped with a Poison typing and 45 Special, meaning that every Psychic in the game, all the way down to Slowpoke, two-shots it at minimum. Beedrill is a strong candidate for the worst fully-evolved first-generation Pokémon outside of Ditto, and certainly the worst one to not be single-stage. Future generations tried to do something for the poor Bug, with Gen II giving it buffed Special Defense, Gen III letting it pass boosts, and Gen IV handing it useful moves like Toxic Spikes and U-Turn, but it hasn't done anything to keep Beedrill out of whatever lowest tier is available. It finally received a genuine new lease on life with its Mega, which managed to push its once-awful stats to their absolute maximum with harsh Min-Maxing and Adaptability, but the Mega did nothing for standard Beedrill, and its removal in Gen VIII meant that the only thing saving Beedrill from Untiered was that it didn't make it into Gen VIII or IX at all.
• While many Trainers gravitate toward Pidgeot in their in-game quests, its non-Mega form is one of the worst Flying-types you could use in competitive play: its lackluster offenses, generic and barren movepool and poor bulk would even make post-Gen VII Farfetch'd a better choice. Thankfully it's not all bad: when Gens II-III's lower tiers developed, Pidgeot found solid niches in both gens' NU tiers (it's still the lowest of their official tiers, but it's something).
• Fearow's another generic and oft-neglected Flying-type that's bad for similar reasons as Pidgeot. While it had its places in Gen I PU and NU, Gen II NU, and Gen III UU, power creep made its base 90 Attack and base 80 Flying STAB pale in comparison to every Flying type from Gen IV and beyond, where base Attacks greater than 100 and base 120 Flying STAB moves are the norm. Even gaining access to a valuable Ground-type coverage move in Drill Run in Gen V did nothing to keep it from falling to ZU in that same generation.
• Arbok has been a miserably weak Pokémon since its inception, which is very unfortunate despite its popularity. It started out as one of the worst Pokémon in Gen I, with middling stats all around, an awful mono-Poison typing with no STAB moves stronger than Acid, and a galaxy of other Wrap users that could do everything it did better. Arbok's stats have not taken well to Power Creep at all, and despite a few useful buffs like Intimidate, Coil, and a boost to its attack stat, it's remained in the lowest tiers — though, to its credit, it has found some success in bottom-tier play in the later generations.
• You'd think with exclusive, high-powered moves and a broken item on any other mon, Series Mascot Pikachu would be a dangerous presence. However, even the Light Ball can't fix Pika's dreadful bulk and good-but-not-great Speed tier, making it an attacker that's trivially easy scare out or prevent from hitting the field. It still had a solid presence in Gens II-III lower tiers, and even early Gen VIII formats thanks to its Gigantamax form spreading harmful paralysis, but it's a far cry from what fans of the anime and Super Smash Bros. wanted to see from one of their favorite Pokémon. Somewhat justified in that Pikachu is an unevolved Pokémon that merely happens to be the face of the franchise, so of course it'd be underpowered compared to its fully-evolved brethren. That said, its evolution Raichu isn't much better; despite having a great Speed stat of 110 (compared to Pikachu's 90), it suffers from many of the same problems such as awful bulk and a limited movepool. Not to mention that despite being an evolution of Pikachu, Raichu does not receive any benefits at all from the Light Ball item.
• Wigglytuff, the final form of the popular Jigglypuff, let fans down thanks to its promising movepool getting "balanced" by a mon that can't use it effectively. It may seem like quite the wall with its massive HP stat, but its terrible defenses and so-so defensive typing make it much less bulky than it looks. Even its Fairy typing, Wish + Teleport combo and access to the rare, dangerous Competitive ability did it no favors in later generations. Fortunately it's great in Gen II NU, but not without Normal-type competition.
• Parasect and its memorable, creepy design has never seen success in any Singles format, despite its access to the 100% accurate, sleep-inducing Spore. The reasons are obvious: its horrendous defensive typing in Bug/Grass gives it a wide range of weaknesses, said weaknesses of one typing effectively cancelling out the strengths of the other, and its lack of offensive stats or moves. That being said, Parasect has had a few moments of glory: VGC 2010, with many Pokémon weak to its STAB combo and its prevalance of Trick Room, and Gen IV Ubers, where it was used early in the meta to absorb Kyogre's dreaded Water Spouts and Thunders.
• Persian got off to a strong start in Gen I, with access to a scary guaranteed-crit Slash and STAB Hyper Beam making it a menacing offensive threat in UU despite its low stats outside of Speed. However, when critical hits and Hyper Beam mechanics were changed in Gen II^note Critical hits were now a flat chance for every Pokémon instead of being tied to Speed, while Hyper Beam now always required a recharge turn even if it knocked out the target., Persian lost the offensive power it once had and became a shadow of its former self. Unlike other fast-but-weak Pokémon, its support movepool isn't that great either, leaving it outclassed as both an offensive and utility Pokémon. Tellingly, it's mostly been in the bottom tiers of competitive play since Gen II, and dropped to Untiered as soon as it was available.
• Golduck always lived in the shadow of the franchise's many Water-types. Its stats were always decent but nothing special, with a movepool that doesn't fully address its problems compared to other Waters (even as a Gen I Amnesia sweeper, it has heavy competition from Slowbro and Poliwrath). While the duck has geniune niches in Gen III UU and Gen VI PU, and even found itself in high-level play in Alola Dex VGC format as its best Swift Swim user, it's telling that it shares its placements with other underwhelming Waters and usually gets considered when nothing else is available. Gen IX did throw Golduck a bone by giving it Nasty Plot, making it a more viable option as a rain sweeper.
• Golem had a strong start in Generation I: with its valuable set of resistances and Explosion, there was a genuine debate about whether Golem or Rhydon was better. Sadly, further exploration of Gen I mechanics led to a much bulkier metagame that Golem despised; its Explosions could get absorbed by Reflect Normals, and its lesser staying power than Rhydon showed. While not awful in a vacuum, and maintaining a ranking in the tier to this day, its good points over Rhydon became far less worthwhile, and so it dropped out of the tier due to being seen as simply outclassed. These days, its home tier is Gen I UU, where it's considered fairly useful but still somewhat flawed (though it had a rather long stint in NU, of all places, due to being seen as a bad fit for the UU metagame). While Golem saw a resurgence in the Explosion and Rapid Spin-centric Gen II OU metagame, even eclipsing its old rival Rhydon, general power creep would kick Golem down several tiers because of its increasingly exploitable weaknesses and stat spread that wasn't that strong anymore. It still finds a niche in the lowest tiers, but only as a lead that's meant to have little staying power, a far cry from the rock-solid tank fans liked it for.
• Years before Magneton would receive Magnet Pull, a coveted Steel typing, and a powerful evolution, it languished in the depths of Gen I's tiering rung as one of the least useful (or even interesting) Electric types in the game. Without any special attributes, it was simply a bland Electric attacker with a terrible movepool even by Gen I Electric type standards (at least Zapdos, Jolteon, and even Raichu got the odd coverage move here and there) and an odd stat spread, lacking the trademark Speed of Electric types and only having average defenses in return, which wasn't going to help with its weakness to the ubiquitous Earthquake. It did have a high Special to fire off Thunderbolts with, but with such a terrible movepool lacking any coverage whatsoever to hit its resistances, the opponent could just switch in any Rock/Ground type and make its efforts completely moot. It didn't do much better in Gen II either, suffering a lot of the same problems despite gaining a type and the new Hidden Power helping its coverage, but truly came into its own with the introduction of Abilities, with its Magnet Pull ability being instrumental in trapping and removing the infamous Skarmory.
• Kantonian Farfetch'd is almost never worth the Spearow you traded for it. With miserable stats for a fully evolved Pokémon, an interesting movepool that could never be used viably, and a regional evolution that didn't actually fix the original mon, the duck would never see play even in the lowest tiers...with the exception of Gen II NU, where it's surprisingly one of the most dangerous mons there thanks to its Spikes immunity and Baton Pass.
• In the first three generations, Dodrio was a threatening Flying attacker with great Speed and Hidden Power-augmented coverage. However, the Physical-Special split turned Hidden Power into a purely special attack with no added coverage to let Dodrio hit opposing Rock and Steel-types. It proceeded to plummet down the tiering rung, no thanks to Stealth Rock being introduced in that same generation. While it found a good niche in Gen IV NU despite these weaknesses, Dodrio would stay in the shadow of other, better birds until Gen VII, where it finally got a good Fighting attack and re-established itself, albeit in PU.
• In the original Gen I games, Onix was the absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of both Rock- and Ground-types, and was underpowered to borderline Memetic Loser levels. Designed primarily as a Warm-Up Boss used by Brock to teach players about type matchups and the difference between physical and special attacks, Onix has a gargantuan base 160 Defense stat and absolutely nothing else. Its base 45 Attack is the second-lowest attack stat of any fully-evolved Pokémon in the generation (only beating out Chansey), its HP and Special are both atrocious (ensuring a One-Hit KO from practically any incoming special attack), and its mediocre Speed means it can only trap and pivot on slow Pokémon with Bind — and even then, it'd better hope Bind doesn't miss with its 75% accuracy. Its typing gives it a valuable Normal resistance, but it pays the price with crippling weaknesses to Ground and Water, causing it to lose to most threats even in RBY PU. Fortunately, gen II gave Onix a much-needed evolution in Steelix, allowing Onix to see play in Little Cup — and since it was originally designed as a weak fully-evolved Pokémon, it's been a solid choice there throughout the generations, especially when gen VIII gave it Body Press to give it more offensive muscle.
• Hypno started out as a bulkier, slower alternative to Alakazam, before transitioning in Gens II-III into a solid supporter in UU. After that, however, it became a victim of Power Creep, as better and more specialized support options became available, and Hypno barely gained anything in the way of competitive options, in addition to being hampered by its mediocre physical bulk of 87/70 and a lack of offensive options. It ended up falling to Untiered in Gen VI, and has stayed there ever since.
• Hitmonchan is considered the black sheep of its brothers; it's not especially strong, yet not bulky either, with their same limited base stats. While this wouldn't make Hitmonchan hated in of itself, two periods stood out for it:
  • In Gen I, it's a strong contender for the worst fully evolved Pokémon, outside of Joke Characters Farfetch'd and Ditto. Its stat spread sets it up as a balanced alternative to the Glass Cannon Hitmonlee with less Speed and Attack but more Defense, but this just results in it being slow and nonthreatening while also having pathetic bulk due to its awful HP. Though it's intended to have a niche in being able to learn the elemental punches, prior to the physical/special split, these punches would be coming off a downright pathetic Special stat. Its only STAB move is learning Submission through TM, a famously flawed move due to having bad accuracy and recoil despite only average damage output. And all this is on top of it being a Fighting-type, which is the worst type in the game. This is despite it being a mid-game gift Pokémon players have to work to obtain and mutually exclusive with its brother, which set up the expectation that Hitmonchan was some kind of powerhouse.
  • In Gen V, Hitmonchan was stuck in RU. Despite being outclassed, players gravitated toward its apparently versatile skillset, seemingly fondly recalling its good showings in lower tiers of prior generations. On paper, it had all the good traits of those prior generations, such as a wide movepool, access to Rapid Spin, and the Iron Fist ability to boost the power of its punches — the problem was that Gen V was a period notorious for Power Creep, which led to many other Fighting-types with similar traits dropping into RU as well. This left Hitmonchan neither particularly bulky nor particularly threatening on offense, and its status as a potential Rapid Spinner was undone by the fact that it struggled to handle Ghost-types. Astoundingly, it managed to even stay in RU for the early days of the sixth generation, only dropping after what amounted to a concerted effort from the playerbase.
• Seaking has always bottomed out as the worst of the Gen I Waters, all the more impressive for a type as packed as Water is. It has the worst stat total of any fully-evolved Water-type in its debut generation^note Seadra's Special Defense was nerfed in Gen II, but it also received an evolution, with its best stat being 92 Attack and everything else being 80s and 65s. Even as a physical Water-type, it was outclassed from day one by Gyarados, Kingler, Kabutops, Poliwrath, and Cloyster, and things only got worse from there. What's more, Seaking also has pitiful utility; barring a few horn-based moves like Megahorn, nearly everything in its arsenal is learned by dozens of more viable Waters. Even getting Lightning Rod in Gen V, which left it with only one weakness, couldn't really save the poor fish. It isn't even good ingame, since Goldeen is typically obtained by fishing (and often requires a Good Rod), meaning that you'll almost always have access to multiple better Water-types by the time you encounter one. Seaking has consistently only been able to find success in tiers so low that most of its competition isn't even fully evolved.
• Lapras's secondary Ice typing has always been one of its biggest flaws as a defensive Water type. In Gen I, this was a non factor since Fire and Fighting type attacks were basically non-existent in the higher tiers, but later Generations buffed both those types, along with adding the Steel type. In Gens II-III, it struggled to keep up with the OU metagame but was found to be too bulky for lower tiers. Then Gen IV introduced Stealth Rock and finally sealed poor Lapras's fate, leading it tumbling all the way through the tiering rung until it was finally Untiered in Gen VII, staying there in Gen VIII as well. In Gen VII, certain players kept using it in PU despite it being completely outclassed by other Water types that has more firepower, speed, better typing or better movepool. Gen VIII finally gave it some new power with its Gigantamax form able to set up Aurora Veil with any Ice move, leading it to find a niche in Anything Goes, the only Singles format that allows for Dynamax, as a defensive wall immune to the OHKO move Sheer Cold, while either setting up Aurora Veil or keeping up offensive pressure by spamming both OHKO moves Sheer Cold and Horn Drill. In Gen VIII's VGC, Lapras also managed to find a niche as an Aurora Veil bulky Water supporter.
• The Eeveelutions have the same problem as Pikachu: they're immensely popular and heavily marketed despite frequently having a poor or highly limited skillset in the competitive scene (generally due to their poor movepools and formulaic stat spreads). They are infamous for staying in tiers where they don't belong due to their popularity, where new and/or less experienced players keep trying in vain to make them work competitively when better options are always available. It's telling that their uses came more from the strength of Baton Pass than anything else, and when that move was axed from Gen IV onwards, their usage stats dwindled.
  • To see this in action, look no further than Vaporeon: without Baton Pass, it's outclassed by every bulky Water in Gen III OU onward despite sharing the same tier. Two infamous cases of this were in Gen V OU, where its Hydration+Rest strategy is easily foiled despite new players claiming it to be unstoppable, and Gen VI UU, where its prestige kept it in a tier where the far superior Alomomola thrived. Fortunately, Gen VII finally saw Vaporeon fall to NU, where it's stayed since as a solid defensive Water-type, and has continued being a lower-tier staple as the generations go by.
  • Jolteon became a bog-standard Electric-type without Baton Pass, but its popularity and OU status attracted players despite being horribly outclassed in Gen IV and Gen V OU. This prestige is also why Jolteon was stuck in Gen VII RU: its higher Speed tier wasn't enough of a selling point compared to the tier's stable of good Electric-type options, but it kept seeing use anyway.
  • Flareon has a horribly unoptimized stat spread that betrays whatever offensive potential it might have had; it was already struggling as a slow, frail Magic Knight in Gen I and then lost power on both fronts in Gen II after the Hyper Beam nerf neutered its best physical attack and the Special split cut into the power of its Fire-type STAB, leaving it with high Special Defense that gets evened out by its low HP regardless. On top of that, it was weak to hazards and had no reliable recovery, and its remaining high Attack meshed poorly with its physically-deficient movepool. What was particularly insulting was that its best physical Fire attack was the 65 BP Fire Fang, yet even when it got the much stronger Flare Blitz, Flareon's Speed and bulk were so dismal that it would never get through the first turn it hit play, much less the ensuing recoil damage.
  • Umbreon was not only an Ensemble Dark Horse, but a High-Tier Scrappy thanks to Mean Look's interaction with Baton Pass in Gens II-IV. When paired with status attacks like Attract and Confuse Ray, Umbreon could essentially delete one of your Pokémon if it passed Mean Look to a check, and it was especially dangerous if said check was a setup sweeper. This was thankfully banned or dramatically nerfed in each tier, but since Umbreon had little else in Gens III-IV and tier shifts had ended years prior, it became stuck in OU, unviable ever since.
  • Leafeon has an awkward stat spread for a Grass-type (being physically-oriented and therefore lacking Hidden Power, on a type with historically barren coverage options, and having to resort to Normal-type moves just to get around its resists) with their usual offensive and defensive faults, firmly placing it in the lower tiers of competitive play. Unlike the other low-tier Eeveelutions, there are a few metagames where it's a top threat: Gen IV UU gave it Dugtrio support to get rid of pesky Steels, and the lower power levels of Gen VI PU made its stats look awesome in comparison to the low base stats everywhere.
  • Glaceon took up the mantle of the worst Eeveelution since its introduction. It's a slow, bulky Ice-type with all of the typical shortcomings of the archetype, and while its powerful Ice Beams give it some offensive clout, it also has a shallow movepool that can't beat Ice's resistances. As a result, there are always better Ice-types than their poster mon.
• Ditto in the first four generations is a total gimmick with very few legitimate uses. As the name implies, it copies the opponent and uses their stats and moves... but with base 48 speed, it'll likely have to take a hit before transforming, and with base 48 HP and defenses, it'll take huge damage — and even after transforming, it'll speed tie with the opponent, so there's a 50% chance that the foe can just attack again and finish Ditto off. Even if Ditto transforms into a Support Party Member that can't take it out immediately, it retains its poor base HP after transforming, leaving it easy to defeat unless it copies a seriously Armored But Frail opponent. Fortunately, Gen V gave Ditto a great Balance Buff by giving it the Imposter ability, which lets it transform as soon as it switches in, turning it into a niche yet potent revenge killer with a Choice Scarf.
• Articuno was a solid special attacker in Gen I OU and UU, but every generation since was one poor performance after another. While it could enjoy having great power and bulk in Gen I, Gen II's Special split left it with comparatively lacking offenses and excellent defenses...on a mon with one of the worst defensive typings you could ask for in Ice/Flying. It was restricted the UU Banlist for years, too weak for top-tier usage but far too strong for lower tiers thanks to its titanic base stats. Gen IV "corrected" this with Stealth Rock, sending Articuno out of the banlists... and into near-unviability, thanks to the pebbles effectively cutting its HP in half if it switched in once. It still finds use on the odd stall team thanks to Heal Bell and a bizarrely good matchup against Water-types, but it's hardly up to par with its brethren in Zapdos and fellow quadruple Stealth Rock weak Moltres.

Generation II

• The Johto starters are generally considered the weakest of all the starter trios over the years, even before powercreep kicked in and pushed them further into competitive obscurity. While Feraligatr managed to escape this fate and found success in every generation it appeared in, the others weren't so lucky:
  • Meganium used to be a solid bulky Grass-type in the lower tiers despite its limited recovery options and was even in fact considered the best of the Johto starters performance-wise in the second Generation's OU due to having unique roles it could fit in. Then generational power creep knocked it down to the bottom of the tiers before the introduction of Eviolite wiped out any viability it once had: certain unevolved Grass-types like Roselia, Tangela and Quilladin would become much bulkier than Meganium thanks to this item, and their better support options made it worth potentially having their Eviolites removed. As a result, Meganium became the first starter to fall to Untiered, and even in the lowest tiers, it's hopelessly outclassed by other Grass-types and defensive Pokémon with each passing generation's increasing power creep dooming Meganium to further uselessness.
  • Typhlosion had two periods of unviability. The first was in Gens II-III, as Typhlosion's base stats made it too powerful for lower tiers yet had no selling points for legitimate OU play compared to other Fire-types. The second was in Gens VI and VII, which requires some context to understand: a few generations prior, Typhlosion got Eruption^note a move with power proportional to the user's remaining HP, capped at 150 for full HP, and it was so strong that it gave Typhlosion a decent showing in Gen V RU despite immense competition for a Fire-type slot. When Gen VI RU rolled around, however, the metagame became extremely hostile to Typhlosion: bulky Fire resists were everywhere, Assault Vest gave a ton of bulky mons insurance against Eruption, and there were several Fire-types that had more offensive or defensive utility while being threatening wallbreakers anyway. Unfortunately, Typhlosion utterly destroyed NU, the next lowest tier, so badly that it ended up getting banned, and it went through the exact same song and dance in Gen VII NU and PU, respectively. This left it in the unfortunate position of being a one-trick pony in the limbo between "borderline useless" and "utterly despised" with no in-between to call home. Thankfully, Legends: Arceus introduced its part-Ghost type Hisuian form, which was a marked improvement.
• Players may like Ledian's cool design, but even diehard fans can't bring themselves to use it in competitive play. Its horribly unoptimized design (a stat spread prioritizing Special Defense on a frail Bug/Flying-type, in addition to a wide offensive movepool and a Hidden Ability that boosts punching moves on a mon that hits as hard as Weedle), historically bad typing and good-but-nothing-special support movepool guarantee its fate as a bottom-of-the-barrel choice. It only found a solid niche in Gen II NU, but that's because of Baton Pass's absurdity more than anything else.
• Ariados, the other Bug-type Johto Com Mon, is similarly considered to be useless even in lower tiers. Its stats are terrible or average at best, making it too frail to switch into anything, too weak to make a dent in an opponent's team and too slow to reliably set up its coveted Sticky Web. While a perfect storm of traits gave it a selling point in Gen IV Ubers, of all things^note STAB Bug moves, priority and Insomnia made it a hard counter to popular Deoxys-Speed and Darkrai leads, and its access to Toxic Spikes is debilitating in a meta without many good grounded Poison-types or hazard removers, it's considered a cute gimmick on its best days and miserable everywhere else.
• Sudowoodo isn't worth much, even in the lower tiers. Mono-Rock is considered a poor defensive typing despite its alright physical bulk, and it doesn't have reliable recovery to work as a wall. Additionally, much of what it can do, other Pokémon can do much better, even in lower tiers, such as being reliable Stealth Rock setters, or benefitting from Rock Head. Much of its time in the metagame has been spent in either the lowest tiers or being Untiered, and unless a miraculous change happens, it looks like it will stay that way.
• Politoed has rarely seen success in every generation it's been part of. It's a generic, bulky Water-type with balanced stats across the board that fail to make a significant impact, and the moveset you'd expect of any Water mon. As a result, in every generation that isn't Gen II, there has always been one Pokémon that outclasses Politoed. As explained in the franchise's High-Tier Scrappy page, it did have its time to shine in Gen V OU after the introduction of Drizzle as its Hidden Ability, but with Gen VI nerfing Drizzle to last five turns instead of permanently, rain teams lost most of their potency, and thus Politoed lost its niche as one of the most influential Pokémon in OU (with the introduction of Mega Swampert in OR/AS not being enough to bump it up). In a cruel twist of fate, however, abilities that permanently set up sun/rain are usually banned in any tier that's not OU, thus leading Politoed to contend in the lowest of tiers with fierce competition that far outclasses it. This became worse in Gen VII, where Pelipper received Drizzle and whose superior movepool lets it outclass Politoed despite its 4x weakness to Electric; rain teams have seen a resurgence since then... just not with Politoed as their anchor, who instead fell to Untiered.
• Over 20 years since its introduction, Sunflora remains a strong contender for the worst Grass-type in the entire franchise. It sports a Poor, Predictable Rock moveset consisting of just Grass moves and Sludge Bomb, poor bulk at 75/55/85 paired with Grass' many weaknesses, and an awful Speed of just 30, ensuring that it will be outspeed by most mons even with Chlorophyll active. Its only redeeming feature is its 105 Special Attack, but good luck accomplishing anything when its options are otherwise aimless. Even its access to Earth Power from Gen IV onwards did nothing to save it.
• Much like Meganium, Bellossom's well-rounded stats gave it a place in lower tiers for the first few generations of its life. However, power creep and the gradual introduction of bulkier and more useful Grass-types, with very few buffs to compensate, shunted Bellossom into unviability from Gen IV onwards. While its luck changed in Gen VII PU thanks to getting both Strength Sap and Quiver Dance, giving it decent (albeit matchup-dependent) utility, Gen VIII's severe power creep kicked it out yet again.
• In ancillary media, Unown are mysterious godlike entities that become dangerous in groups. In battle, bringing multiple Unown is forfeiting with extra steps. The species has stats on par with unevolved Pokémon, access to a single, unimpressive move in Hidden Power, and no reason to be used over literally anything with its Hidden Power type.
• Forretress is an interesting case in that it's not loathed for being weak per se, but rather for finding itself in tiers that it does not belong in. On paper, Forretress's phenomenal Bug/Steel typing and sky-high Defense combined with access to three hazard-setting moves (Spikes, Toxic Spikes, and Stealth Rock) and Rapid Spin make it seem highly appealing. However, its mediocre HP, barely-existent Special Defense and passive, predictable nature prevent it from succeeding in higher tiers. It's certainly viable in the lower tiers... that is, if it's able to drop down to them. Unfortunately, Forretress's on-paper strengths make it a highly appealing noob trap, and this often keeps it in tiers where it's unusable (namely Gen V OU and, for about 8 months, Gen IX UU) to the chagrin of more skilled players.
• Wobbuffet has a neat concept: what if a Pokémon had no ways of directly damaging the opponent? Its movepool seems to synergize with this concept well, too: Counter and Mirror Coat deflected both kinds of damaging attacks, Destiny Bond was a failsafe if Wobb was about to go down, and Gen III's addition of Encore would, in theory, force opponents to interact with it. In practice, none of these tools could generate the Wobb user any advantage if the opponent simply switched out and PP stalled it — even Magikarp would make more progress. While Wobb does have an Ability to prevent switching, it's banned in most formats for making Wobb the opposite of this trope.
• Stantler has long been a punchline among Pokémon players for how aggressively mediocre and forgettable it is. It gets a few interesting tricks, like Intimidate and Hypnosis alongside a wide movepool, but can't make use of them due to its awful defenses and merely average attacking stats and Speed. It had a place in gen II NU and gen III UU, but past then, it's been relegated to the lowest tiers. Its evolution Wyrdeer hasn't had it much better, but at least it allowed Stantler to run an Eviolite to patch up its defenses, giving it more of a use in Gen IX ZU.
• Octillery got off to a decent start in the early generations, being an effective tank in the NU tiers of gens II and III with its solid typing, good mixed offensive stats, and vast movepool. After that, however, general power creep kicked Octillery to the bottom tiers — its once-usable defensive stats became too flimsy to function with its terrible speed, while its offensive stats declined from good to unimpressive, especially with mixed attackers in general declining in prevalence. It did get Moody in gen V, but as that ability is universally banned on Smogon, this did nothing to help it, causing it to plummet to ZU in that same generation, where it has stayed ever since — and even in gen VIII ZU, it's considered unviable.
• Magcargo may be a novel concept for a Pokémon, but its natural focus on defense works with its Fire/Rock typing like water and oil. The sheer prevelance of its two quad-weaknesses (Ground and Water) make it a "wall" that can't stop anything, and while it can make some progress with Lava Plume burns or setting Stealth Rock, it's hardly worth the effort of getting Magcargo in play. Not even Shell Smash or finally gaining a somewhat serviceable special Rock STAB in Power Gem as of Gen IX was able to give it an offensive niche. At least it's good for hatching eggs in-game...
• Delibird is basically Farfetch'd wearing a Santa suit: its stats pale in comparison to unevolved mons and squander any potential from its deep utility movepool. A lot of its traits seem like cruel jokes: it's a Rapid Spinner that's quad-weak to Stealth Rock, its Hidden Ability is functionally the same as one of its normal ones, most of its STAB options were subpar until Gen VIII, and its signature attack, Present, has erratic damage and can sometimes heal the target. Delibird does sometimes find viability in the absolute lowest tiers, though, such as GSC PU^note Purely because it's the only Pokémon left which learns Spikes and ADV and SV ZU.
• Despite its majesty and popularity, Lugia is one of the series' biggest victims of Power Creep. For the first few generations of its existence, it was a seemingly unkillable Stone Wall that had to rely on Damage Over Time and Scratch Damage to wear foes down due to its low offenses, but could do so very well thanks to moves such as Toxic and Calm Mind. It got even better in Generation V, with its hidden ability Multiscale letting it tank powerful attacks from full HP, and continued to be decently viable as the generations went on despite its Stealth Rock weakness (even having access to Defog), although it did start to drop in usage. Generation VIII, however, is where Lugia's flaws were all laid bare: as it lost access to Toxic, it became far more passive, making said flaws much easier to exploit. While in theory the new Heavy-Duty Boots item should have helped Lugia with its Stealth Rock weakness and made Multiscale more consistent, its typing of Psychic/Flying didn't do much for it defensively, and caused it to struggle against top threats such as Yveltal, Lunala, Shadow Rider Calyrex and Dusk Mane Necrozma. This turned Lugia into little more than a sitting duck on most Ubers teams. Despite Yveltal being removed and Shadow Rider Calyrex being banned in Gen IX Ubers, Lugia lost access to Defog and continued to struggle especially with the prevalence of Dusk Mane Necrozma, the newly popular Origin Forme Giratina,^note which is one of the few viable Defoggers in Gen IX Ubers, and the new Miraidon, one of the most powerful Electric-type attackers ever. Furthermore, Lugia has a horrendous matchup against Skeledirge, an UU Pokémon commonly used in Ubers, as it's weak to Skeledirge's Ghost typing and Unaware cancels out any stat boosts that Lugia may try. As such, Lugia is completely unviable in both Generation VIII and IX Ubers, and even in Ubers UU it still isn't a great choice and only just barely hangs on to viability. Although a few fans theorize that Lugia could be balanced in OU, this is largely a minority opinion as most players believe that it would be too problematic and hard to take down for the tier.

Generation III

• Mightyena, an Ensemble Dark Horse of this gen, certainly wasn't liked on its competitive merit. Its Attack was average for its debut generation but had no STAB moves to use it on, its other stats are subpar, and its movepool is generic as can be. It may have a dangerous Hidden Ability in Moxie, but Mightyena's not strong enough to get the boost, fast enough to keep the sweep going nor bulky enough to get its chance consistently, even in tiers where unevolved Dark-types are meta staples. Unless it gets an evolution or a truly game-changing buff, it's stuck in Untiered with no end in sight.
• Beautifly and Dustox have had no luck in the competitive scene. Beautifly has decent Special Attack, pitiful defensive stats, and middling Speed, meaning that it's too slow to land a hit and can't take hits either, and not even getting Quiver Dance, a special boosting option that other mons would die for, was enough to salvage it. Its defensive counterpart Dustox fared a bit better, but with no options to punish switch-ins outside of poisoning them and middling defensive stats even for low-tier standards, it still didn't see any use in any format outside of ADV ZU — and to put things in perspective, that's a tier where Delibird, Delcatty, and Castform are viable.
• Slaking is the community-held standard alongside Regigigas on how to positively murder a Pokémon's usability in competitive. It has a Base Stat total rivaling Legendary Pokémon, an offensive and defensive stat distribution even Groudon would be jealous of, and almost any move you could ask for. It needed some sort of balancing factor to make it usable in competitive, and boy, did it get one: Truant, the absolute worst Ability seen yet, which makes Slaking spend every other turn doing nothing. This might not sound so bad, since it has a high Attack stat and you can at least switch out on the penalty turn, but not only does it make Slaking's average damage output worse than Rattata's, but it's also stonewalled by Protect, healing moves, or just switching out to a resist. Even if played immaculately, you're basically giving your opponent free chances to do whatever they want, including mowing down your team with a boosting sweeper. You can feasibly remove the Ability in Double Battles^note Skill Swap was historically the go-to method, but it's now easier with Grafaiai's Doodle, but it's generally considered too time-consuming, interruptable and low-reward to be worth it. It's telling that its pre-evolution Vigoroth, who has much worse stats but doesn't have Truant, outclasses it by a country mile.
• Delcatty is widely considered the absolute worst fully evolved Pokémon ever. It was seemingly created for the sole purpose of being used in Contests and deliberately designed to fare poorly in actual battles, as hinted by its Pokédex entries. It has a huge movepool and an interesting ability in Normalize, which makes all its moves Normal-Typed, meaning it gets STAB on all its attacking moves, and can paralyze Ground-Types with Thunder Wave (It's still useless against Electric-Types and Pokémon with the Ability Limber, however). After that one trick, that's where any good it has ends. Delcatty's stats are downright atrocious (its BST is a paltry 380, the lowest of any fully-evolved Pokémon that isn’t Shedinja if you discount standalone Pokémon, leaving it outclassed by even the early-game bugs before it got buffed to a marginally less pathetic 400) with its highest stat (its Speed) being an average 90 and the rest being no higher than 70. Normalize also renders Delcatty utterly useless against any Rock, Steel or Ghost-type, as it now has no type coverage to hit them. Almost anything Delcatty does is horribly outclassed. This is one of the few Pokémon where its Pokédex entries match its performance, Delcatty is extremely passive and doesn't fight. Considering just how awful it is, it's sadly accurate and even justified. At least it's cute and can perform in Pokémon Contests, maybe. Even with these flaws, Delcatty managed to find a place in ADV ZU due to its utility movepool being highly useful there.
• Plusle and Minun are two of the first Pikaclones to be introduced, and they also happen to be some of the worst out of them in competitive play. Both of them suffer from having subpar stats aside from Speed with their abilities, Plus and Minus only work in Doubles, it isn’t until Gen VI where Plusle and Minun gain Lightning Rod and Volt Absorb which have at least some utility in Singles, respectively. They still pose no threat in Doubles even with the Sp. Attack boost from Plus and Minus, as their abysmal bulk means almost any attacks can knock them out (in particular, Earthquake is very likely to knock them both out in one turn), and their coverage basically doesn't exist (in their most recent playable generations, their only non-Electric Special moves over 60 power are a few Normal-type moves and Signal Beam). Their niche comes from being Baton Pass users in Singles, but unfortunately for them, the increasing Power Creep led to the ban of Baton Pass from Gen VII onward, leaving Plusle and Minun nothing going for them in modern low tiers.
• To say Altaria suffers from an identity crisis is an understatement. When it was introduced in Gen III, it seemed to be intended as a bulky physical sweeper that utilizes Dragon Dance in combination with Flying type moves, with its Dragon-typing meant largely to enhance its at the time impressive defenses and not really meant to enhance its offensive capabilities. Gen IV greatly enhanced the effectiveness of Dragon-type attacks on offensive Altaria sets with the physical/special split. After a brief stint of competitive viability in Gen VI and VIII on account of its Mega Form which turns it into a Magic Knight with the offensively jacked Dragon/Fairy typing, in Gen VIII Game Freak decided to transition Altaria into being a purely special-focused Pokémon by either restricting or outright removing a lot of its physical options such as Dragon Dance and Outrage, but neglected to give it a move that buffs its special attack, such as Calm Mind or Nasty Plot, to replace Dragon Dance. Problem is, both of Altaria's offensive stats without its Mega Form are complete garbage. Even by Gen III standards they were mediocre at best. The only viability it's ever had without its Mega Form is as a purely defensive Pokémon, and before Generation IX it didn't have the movepool to support such a playstyle. However, Scarlet and Violet blessed it with Will-O-Wisp and Fire Spin, as well as letting it keep Defog even as other Pokémon lost it, giving it a defensive niche in the lower tiers. Still, its other numerous flaws keep it back from being a top defensive threat. Additionally, in Pokémon GO, Altaria gained a massive reversal of fortune, to the point of qualifying for the opposite trope in Great League.
• On paper, Zangoose seems like a powerful Glass Cannon for the lower tiers, with its ability Toxic Boost increasing the power of its physical moves by 50% when poisoned. This, combined with Facade (A Normal-type STAB move that deals double damage when the user has a status ailment) and Swords Dance would paint the picture of a powerful physical machine of destruction. Unfortunately, Zangoose has just about everything and the kitchen sink holding it back. Its low defenses means that it will often be taken out instantly while trying to set up Swords Dance, and even if it survives, its self inflicted poison will finish it off shortly after. Its speed is deceptively slow, meaning that it will often be outsped by several Pokémon that you wouldn't expect to outspeed, and will take it out before it can strike back. If Swords Dance is switched for another attacking move, Zangoose will frequently miss KOs by just a small amount, and it can't make too many dents in teams due to Toxic putting Zangoose on a timer. And of course there's the necessity of holding a Toxic Orb, locking it away from more appealing items such as Choice Band, Choice Scarf, or Leftovers. Worse still, whenever Zangoose finds itself in a tier where these issues seemingly wouldn't hurt it enough to keep it from being a top tier threat, it's always accompanied by Ursaring (A Pokémon with a similar role to Zangoose, but has Guts, meaning it can use a Flame Orb to take much less passive damage, and has better defenses and Attack in exchange for some speed) and Kantonian Tauros (Another Normal type physical attacker who can reach similar damage outputs, but has a much better stat spread, movepool, and abilities to allow it to hold better items), leaving it to be Overshadowed by Awesome twofold. Since a gen after its debut, the poor mongoose has found itself just above the lowest possible tier in each generation, and even in those tiers it's never more than just an okay physical wallbreaker.
• While Zangoose is quite pitiful in competitive, as seen above, its rival Seviper is infinitely worse, and it is often mocked for being completely inferior. Seviper is a total Master of None; both of its offensive stats are merely above-average as opposed to having one good one, its defenses are too low to take many hits, and it's too slow to outspeed all but the slowest of opponents. Its mono-Poison typing is also terrible offensively, especially pre-Gen VI, and while it does have a useful set of resistances, it lacks the bulk to take advantage of them. While it's usable against slower teams due to its versatile offense, it's practically dead weight against any sort of offensive pressure. Seviper started in PU in Gen III and just went downhill from there, finally plummeting to Untiered in Gen VI. Even in the semi-official ZU tiers, it's often seen as one of the weakest Pokémon there, being seen as inferior to just about any other Poison-type in the tier.
• Wailord may have been the largest Pokémon in the series for five generations, but size tragically doesn't translate to viability, as it's is a good case study in how bad stat distribution can doom a Pokémon. Wailord seems built as a tank with its massive 170 HP, but it adds on 45 in both defensive stats, which makes its tanking ability mediocre.^note For comparison, this makes its defensive bulk only a little better than Phione. It also has 90 in both offensive stats, which leaves it as a barely-average attacker on both sides, and its Speed of 60 is too slow to outspeed anything but not slow enough for Trick Room. It has the potentially amazing Water Spout, which was initially exclusive to it and Kyogre, but the aforementioned mediocre Special Attack and low Speed coupled with Water Spout dropping off in power as Wailord takes damage makes it far less effective. Wailord is considered excellent in Gen III NU, but it nonetheless stands out there for having the third-highest base stats in the tier (only outclassed by Shuckle and the similarly unfortunate Flareon), with most of its competition being in the low-mid 400s compared to its 500. In Gen IV, NU became much more crowded and Water Spout distribution became wider, and Wailord's shaky viability proceeded to fall off a cliff. Whatever niche it had was then taken by Jellicent, which is also a bulky Water with Water Spout but boasts superior typing, abilities, Special bulk, and moves, with the only thing Wailord boasting in comparison being its access to Pressure. By Gen V, it was struggling in PU, by Gen VI, it was struggling in ZU, and by Gen VII, it wasn't even ranked there.
• Grumpig's issues are the same as the aforementioned Hypno; while it started as a decent special tank in lower tiers, its lackluster stats (with physical bulk WORSE than Hypno), mediocre mono-Psychic typing, and power creep that gave it no benefits quickly got it into a position where anything it can do, other Pokémon can do better, even in the lowest tiers.
• Spinda boasts a terrible stat spread of 60 in every stat. This renders it essentially unusable in any position it's put in, and its movepool isn't even that great despite a decent variety of Physical options. Its only value is Superpower mixed with Contrary, but even that does little with how terrible its stats are compared to other, better Contrary users (namely Malamar and Lurantis). And just to add insult to injury, Game Freak appears to have completely forgotten that Spinda can even learn Superpower; despite the move being available from tutors since Gen IV, the only way to get it on Spinda is from the now-defunct Dream World, so chances are your Spinda won't even have that going for it.
• Whiscash has the coveted Water/Ground typing, but suffers from horrible offensive and defensive stats, as well as a lack of coverage. It's completely outclassed by fellow Water/Ground types Swampert and Quagsire. It has access to Dragon Dance, but it's still not enough to let it compete with those Pokémon because of its low base stats — its Attack is still underwhelming at +1, and its base 60 Speed is so low that Whiscash will most likely be outsped even after pulling off one Dragon Dance. The release of Gastrodon and Seismitoad completely remove its niche as a lower tier Water/Ground tank in place of Swampert and Quagsire, leaving it with virtually no usage and being Untiered. Fortunately, unlike others in this list, Pokémon GO gave it a reversal of fortune, where it's one of the main threats in Great League. Many players consider a good (and cheaper) alternative to Swampert here due to a bulkier stat distribution at or below 1500 CP.
• Castform has a cool ability in Forecast, which changes its type to match sunny, rainy, or hailing weather conditions, a once-signature move in Weather Ball that also changes its type with weather for automatic STAB, and a great movepool even beyond that allowing for amazing type coverage, but it can't utilize any good thing it has with a terrible 70 in every single one of its base stats. Even with its weather gimmick, it takes a turn to set up its own weather unless it is already active, it doesn't get a form for Sandstorm, the more common weather type, and its stats mean it will barely scratch anything or take any hits even with weather up. Even during the Weather Wars of Gen V, where it could have been a versatile type-changing Jack of All Stats, it was sadly just a Master of None, completely overlooked in favor of actually useful Pokémon. This is to say nothing of weather being nerfed afterwards to always be temporary. It's a gimmick Pokémon created solely to show off the weather mechanic.
• Tropius has been a joke in every generation it's been in. It's intended as a Substitute + Leech Seed user, but nearly everything holds it back. Its stats are mediocre with a bad Speed stat of 51, which means it's likely to get outsped and KO'd or Taunted before it uses its Substitute (not helped by its HP being mediocre at 99). Grass/Flying is not a great defensive combination, leaving it weak to Fire, Ice, Rock, and Stealth Rocks. And if you were thinking of utilizing its vast movepool as an offensive Pokémon, think again; its physical Attack is as strong as a Turtwig, and its Special Attack is on par with Unown. With no real niche, it currently sits in Untiered.
• Dusclops. When Gen V began, it was widely talked up for its massive defensive stats with Eviolite and hailed as a better version of its own evolution, with many players grumbling at how hard it was to punch through. But as it turned out, Dusclops had almost nothing going for it aside from being a spinblocker and Stone Wall; its supporting movepool was barren outside of Will-O-Wisp and Toxic, and its attacking stats were dreadful, meaning that it could basically do nothing aside from burn or poison the opponent and then spam Night Shade. Even as a Stone Wall, it proved to be a lot worse in practice, thanks to low HP and lack of reliable recovery. It had the worst viability ranking of UU when the generation closed, and the moment the Gen VI metagame got rolling, it dropped to PU — and even there, it's considered nothing special, especially after the buff to Knock Off.
• Banette was one of two pure Ghost-types introduced in this generation, but much like its defensive counterpart Dusclops, it never found much success. It largely suffers from a poor movepool and unfocused stat spread, with a great Attack and decent Special Attack but every other stat being awful, meaning it will get outsped and KOed before it even gets an attack off. In Gen III, it enjoyed using its immunities to Fighting, Normal and sleep moves to come in and launch powerful Shadow Balls, but Power Creep and the physical-special split forcing it to use the weaker Shadow Claw sent it further down the tier list with every generation. The only true niches it found itself in were gimmicks that didn't even involve its high Attack, even as Mega Banette.
• Luvdisc has been a common candidate for the worst Pokémon in the game since its introduction. Barring a mildly above-average Speed of 97, its stats are in the range of what you'd expect for the first stage of a three-stage line—that is to say, utterly abysmal, with its overall offense and bulk being behind that of Bulbasaur. What's more, unlike your typical terribly-statted single-stager, it also has no real gimmick to fall back on in battle; its type is the ludicrously common Water, and both its moves and its ability are widely available and aren't anything to write home about. Its only redeeming factor is that wild Luvdisc might hold a Heart Scale, which can be exchanged for the Move Reminder to teach moves a Pokémon has already forgotten. Even then, there's many other methods to obtain Heart Scales. In Pokémon Black and White plenty of fans were disappointed to learn that, despite their extremely similar appearance, Alomomola wasn't a much-needed evolution for Luvdisc, still leaving Luvdisc with no way to improve itself.
• Glalie's... bizarre. Its base stat total is 480, with 80 in all of its stats. However, in practice, it comes down as a Master of None, due to miniscule coverage outside of Water moves and Earthquake and having a mediocre mono-Ice typing. With power creep quickly pushing it out of its niche as a somewhat speedy Spikes setter, it quickly became Untiered. Mega Glalie, while an improvement in giving it more of an offensive presence with Refrigerate and higher Attack, Sp. Attack, and Speed, still wasn't enough to pull it out of RU at most.
• The original Regi Quartet is widely considered to be the worst set of Legendary Pokémon in the competitive scene. Two of the original trio's issues rise from having stats befitting Mighty Glaciers while bearing typings better suited for Glass Cannons, while the remaining members of the quartet struggle with a poor offensive presence. All members of the quartet lack reliable recovery, making it difficult for them to properly wall anything. Game Freak seemed to learn their lesson by Gen VIII as the two new Regi (Regieleki and Regidrago) saw much more competitive successes. Registeel has seen decent levels of success across the middle tiers of competitive play, but as for the rest...
  • While Regirock was nowhere near the threat levels of Regice in ADV, it was still a decent pick thanks to its colossal 200 defense and decent movepool. However, as the generations flew by and Power Creep settled in, Regirock's numerous weaknesses began to show. Its poor defensive typing and lack of recovery hampered its usefulness as a wall, and it didn't have nearly enough firepower nor speed to become an attacker. It tumbled all the way down to NU immediately, and as of Gen VII, it's dropped further PU. At the very least, Regirock is always one of the best options wherever it ends up, keeping top metagame threats in check and being easy to include in teams. Gen VIII was even kinder to it, giving it Body Press, which works off its monstrous Defense stat and makes it less passive offensively. It still hasn't managed to climb its way out of the bottom tiers, but it at least has quite a bit going for it down there.
  • Regice is widely considered to be the worst of the Golems. It started off strong in Gen III, working as a special-oriented tank that could take hits with its mammoth Special Defense and dish them out with a decent 100 Special Attack and a wide movepool that sported the coveted BoltBeam combo. Gen IV, however, crippled it with not just the advent of Stealth Rock (which knocked off 25% of its HP) and stronger Rock-type moves, but also the physical/special move split, giving opponents more options to exploit its good-but-still-weaker Defense and pure Ice typing, which was already a problem to begin with (see Ice typing in the "General Letdowns - Types in General" section above ^). As power creep reared its ugly head, Regice continued to tumble further into the lower tiers with each passing generation. Nowadays, what was once a massive threat in the ADV days is now stuck with the dishonorable badge of "Untiered".
  • Despite being the creator of the other legendary titans, Regigigas is an extreme example of Blessed with Suck, especially in Single Battles. It was designed as a gimmick Pokémon: an Olympus Mon with extremely high base stats (including an astounding 160 Attack and very good 100 Speed) and a hindering ability to make it balanced enough for standard play. Unfortunately, said ability — Slow Start — ended up working too well: every time Regigigas switches in, its Attack and Speed are halved for five turns, resulting in a very weak Pokémon that's more of a Stone Wall than the Lightning Bruiser that its stats suggest. This would be fine, except for the fact that Regigigas can't learn any HP recovery moves or Protect, which just makes it harder to keep alive and prevents it from doing anything of note. On top of that, it bears repeating that Slow Start resets every time Regigigas switches out, meaning that it can be crippled even more easily if it's forced to switch with another Pokémon, either because of a threat or a "phasing" move like Roar, Whirlwind, or Dragon Tail. Forget focusing on Special attacks, too, because its Special movepool is small and it has no way to boost its rather average 80 Special Attack stat anyway. And even for what it's worth, many other Pokémon can easily match Regigigas' full power by boosting their stats and/or Mega Evolving, especially with Power Creep as new games and generations have been released. All these traits turn what was designed to be a Difficult, but Awesome unstoppable force into one of the absolute worst and weakest Pokémon in the series, so much that it isn't even considered usable in the lowest tiers (including the ZU tier, which is the unofficial tier below PU). It's also highly impractical to use in Platinum even on a single-player team, where it's found in the post-game at level 1 (down from 70 in Diamond and Pearl). The Gen VIII games, however, decided to cut some slack on the poor titan, with Regigigas finally getting Protect and Rest to stall out Slow Start turns, and the addition of the ability Neutralizing Gas (which disables all abilities on the field) for the Weezing line substantially shooting up Regigigas's viability in Doubles and making it a legitimate threat, especially with Dynamax. But even despite all this, it still sadly remains Untiered in singles alongside Regice. Even Pokémon Legends: Arceus was merciless towards the poor colossus, giving it Slow Start in a game without any Abilities.
• Deoxys-Normal has been regarded as the worst Pokémon in Ubers for nearly every appearance since its debut. Deoxys forms as a whole have a gimmick of incredibly min-maxed statlines, with Deoxys-Normal having great Speed and attacking stats and terrible everything else. However, Deoxys-Attack has the exact same idea, but moreso, with even lower defenses in exchange for higher attacking stats. The issue is that when its bulk is already on par with an untransformed Ditto, having even less of it doesn't really matter (especially when it's going to be taking hits from Olympus Mons), while the extra offense is actually meaningful. And if you don't care about the offensive side and want it to take a hit or two while maintaining its speed, then Deoxys-Speed is even faster while also being significantly bulkier. The result is that Deoxys-Normal is in the unfortunate position of being outclassed by itself, with correspondingly miserable viability rankings and usage statistics, yet it finds itself unable to escape to OU as its stats are far too powerful to even consider allowing into any generation of OU, ever. The advent of the Ubers UU tier on Smogon did throw Deoxys-Normal a bone, however, allowing it to become a top offensive threat without Deoxys-Attack to contend with.

Generation IV

• Early-game bugs don't get a good rap, but poor Burmy probably gets it the worst — four distinct evolutions, and none of them are particularly well-regarded. Wormadam and its various Forms suffer from being defensively oriented stat wise while also being Bug-type, which is a rather bad defensive typing (and two of the three are dual-typed with similarly bad defensive ones). Mothim, on the other hand, has an even worse Bug/Flying type, while also being essentially a worse Butterfree in terms of its movepool and abilities (and consider just how bad you must be to achieve that label). On top of that, their stats are awful across the board. The only one to be even mildly useful is ironically Trash Cloak Wormadam, which has a solid defensive typing and can do surprisingly well in-game when one considers that there were only about four Fire-types in all its generation. Even then, outside of that environment it won't do much beyond that, as Bug/Steel isn't an especially rare type combination, with both Forretress and Escavalier doing everything Trash Wormadam does better.
• Luxray, despite its popularity, has been a consistently poor choice for an Electric-type in competitive play. While its design would suggest a Fragile Speedster, it's instead a slow Glass Cannon, except it doesn't even have much "cannon" to it — its main STAB move Wild Charge has underwhelming power and wears it down through recoil, and its special attack stat isn't quite high enough to be useful. Luxray can use its Guts ability to beef up the power of its physical attacks with a Flame Orb, but this cuts into what little bulk it has, prevents it from running Intimidate to improve its matchup against physical attackers, and also takes up its item slot, while doing nothing to improve its poor speed.
• Both of the Sinnoh fossils suffer quite heavily from this.
  • Rampardos is a Glass Cannon with an acceptable movepool… but it also happens to be very slow. Its Speed is better with a Choice Scarf, but its best strategy revolves around spamming its once-signature move Head Smash, which is powerful but also severely damages it with every use; Aggron and Tyrantrum, who have the ability Rock Head, have no such drawback. It is also completely outclassed by Midday-forme Lycanroc, who is much faster, can use Swords Dance, and has access to priority, as well as Tyrantrum, which has lower Attack but higher Speed, much higher Defense, the Rock Head ability which lets it fire off drawback-free Head Smashes, a Dragon secondary typing, and Dragon Dance. Furthermore, even as a Choice Scarf sweeper, it is slower than its competition. By proxy of being a Rock-type, it also has weaknesses to five types, all of which are common in competitive (especially Fighting, Ground, and Water). It looks like a good sweeper at first, but it is Untiered for a reason.
  • Bastiodon looks like a very good Stone Wall on paper due to its sky-high defensive stats and being a Steel-type… but because it’s a fossil Pokémon, it also has the Rock-type, one of the few types bad enough to ruin Steel’s defensive capabilities, and in particular, Fighting- and Ground-types (which are common) are effectively a death sentence for it. Unlike Aggron and Probopass (who share its typing), Bastiodon has horrid offensive stats, meaning it has no way to perform well in spite of its bad typing. It is also very passive and has nothing in the way of recovery, meaning it is effectively shut down by Taunt users. Even its best set leaves it outclassed by Bronzor (who happens to be unevolved). All of this adds up to a Pokémon that is bad even by Untiered standards.
• Ambipom has a similar issue to Forretress in that it's not a terrible Pokémon on its own, but it finds itself in tiers where it's unviable due to being a noob trap. In its debut generation, it was legitimately effective in UU as a lead, since it was the only Pokémon with STAB Technician Fake Out, which allowed it to get in a free hit on the opponent's lead, and then follow up with a Taunt to shut down hazard-setters, a tag-out with U-turn, or a few swings with your choice of Pursuit, Return, or Low Kick. Then the fifth generation added Team Preview, and Ambipom's viability fell off a cliff: without the surprise factor, it was easily countered, since the opponent could now bring in a bulky Normal-resist and watch Fake Out barely scratch them before two-shotting Ambipom with a STAB move of choice. Add in Gen V's signature Power Creep, and a bunch of formerly OU Pokémon dropping, and Ambipom was left as a Glass Cannon that neither hit hard enough nor had the set-up moves to justify using it—outclassed not only by Snorlax in the same tier, but by Cinccino in the tier below. Nonetheless, because of players remembering its fourth-gen glory days, and players lower on the ladder fearing Fake Out, it saw far more use than it had any right to and remained in UU for the entire generation. It would go on to repeat this feat multiple times in future generations (with its Gen VI RU days being particularly infamous), as though it kept dropping, powercreep more than kept pace with those drops, leaving it with multiple competitive analyses that read like desperate pleas aimed at lower-ladder players to stop using it. It really doesn't get Scrappier than a Pokémon that got blacklisted from discussion on the Smogon forums. If it helps, it has finally dropped to Gen IX NU on December 2023, but only time will tell if its popularity with low ladder players will doom it once again to rise to RU/UU or if it for once will find a true niche in its new home.
• While it is quite potent when Mega Evolved, regular Lopunny is a good candidate for worst fully-evolved Pokémon in the entire franchise. It is decently fast and has okay Special Defense (albeit hampered by its low HP stat), but its other stats range from middling to abysmal. None of its abilities are particularly good (Cute Charm is considered to be useless in a competitive setting, Limber is situational, and Klutz outright prevents it from using held items), it has no reliable recovery, and while it has a good movepool, it lacks the offenses to abuse it. Its only real niche is for item-swapping shenanigans, since Klutz prevents it from being affected by an item's negative effects, but it's dead weight after using Switcheroo. It has languished in Untiered since Gen VI, and even in ZU, it's worthless.
• Lumineon' stands out in the aspect of just not standing out at all. Lumineon is hardly the best Water-Type, but not among the most infamously awful either. While it does possess two very good abilities in Swift Swim and Storm Drain, it ended up being a very forgettable Water-type due to its stats, which are balanced but unremarkable. It also lacks any specific ability or move to give it a special niche. On the bright side, at least it looks very cute.
• Electivire mostly suffers from this due to Hype Backlash and its early Skill Gate Character status. In the early Generation IV days, it was seen as a brand-new powerhouse, due to its incredibly high Attack, a defensive typing giving it only one weakness, a good 95 Speed that could be boosted with Motor Drive by switching it into an Electric attack (which meant you could potentially pair it with the newly-buffed Gyarados to cover each other's weaknesses), and most importantly, a large movepool that gave it the potential to hit just about anything super-effectively. But then people discovered that Electivire's offense wasn't all that great, due to most of its coverage moves and even its STAB lacking power. Without a Motor Drive boost, which was hard to come by due to the scarcity of Electric moves in OU and "Gyaravire" becoming a very predictable strategy, its Speed was a lot worse than you'd expect, especially since it couldn't viably run Choice Scarf as that would take away its coverage and make its offense even worse. It also offered no defensive utility to teams, due to an Earthquake weakness and few notable resistances. Consequently, Electivire struggled to fit a niche: it wasn't fast or damaging enough to blitz an opponent and kill them in a single shot, but it wasn't sturdy enough to slug it out with a fellow offensive threat. And then the Rotom forms came along, able to laugh off all its attacks before neutering it or Gyarados with Will-O-Wisp and then three-shotting it with Shadow Ball. Although Electivire stayed OU throughout Gen IV, the vast majority of the playerbase agrees that it shouldn't have, and it sees no serious usage in modern DPP OU. What little viability it could have gained in Generation V, with Wild Charge finally giving it a stronger Electric move than Thunder Punch, was destroyed by Team Preview, which pretty much ruined any hope of it ever activating Motor Drive against a competent opponent. Once the new-toy syndrome wore off, Electivire fell off hard, plummeting to Untiered by the time of Generation VII and having limited use wherever it wound up before then. Gen VII cut poor Electivire a bit of a break in the unofficial ZU format, where it is a legitimately viable Pokémon, and not just a gimmick... only for Power Creep in Gen VIII to push it out of viability even there.
• Dusclops's evolution Dusknoir received a lot of initial hype early in Gen IV due to its improved Attack and potential as a Pressure staller. But both of these factors proved to be far less useful than they seemed to be for a variety of reasons: it’s still held back by having the same middling movepool as Dusclops, and even using it as a Mighty Glacier isn’t worth it as the best STAB move to make use of its physical attack stat is Shadow Punch, which has a base power of 60. It took until the first DLC for Gen VIII for it to get a good STAB move through Poltergeist, which has an impressive base power of 110 so long as the opponent is holding an item... but even this wasn’t enough to help it, so Dusknoir now shares the bottom tier with its pre-evolution. Some fans opine Dusknoir is the most unnecessary evolution in the entire series, gaining small buffs but otherwise being utterly identical to Dusclops in use and execution.
• Rotom's appliance forms’ loss of their Ghost typing might have benefited Rotom-Wash and Rotom-Heat, but still nonetheless eliminated their coveted niche as spinblockers (which admittedly became less relevant after Defog was buffed). Rotom-Frost and Rotom-Fan suffered the most from the change because blocking Rapid Spin was their sole draw and their new types left them with some glaring new weaknesses, mainly Stealth Rock. Rotom-Frost fell out of favor due to the inherent curse of being a defensively oriented Ice type and having its strongest Ice move be the inaccurate Blizzard, but Rotom-Fan infamously gained a double immunity to Ground type attacks that left its once-helpful Levitate ability totally superfluous. This, along with its form-exclusive move Air Slash lacking power compared to those of the other forms and a lack of relevant strategies that other Rotom forms (and other Pokémon) couldn't perform better, rendered it the least relevant and viable of Rotom's forms, even vanilla Rotom. However, with the removal of abilities in Pokémon Legends: Arceus Rotom-Fan is Not Completely Useless since all the other forms have lost the Levitate ability and can be seriously hurt by Ground type attacks, something Rotom-Fan is still safe from due to its Flying typing.
• Darkrai was once one of the most feared Uber Pokémon thanks to its high Speed, Special Attack, and access to Dark Void, which was an 80% accurate Sleep-inducing move that synergized fantastically with its ability, Bad Dreams^*deals damage equal to 1/8th of a sleeping opponent's maximum HP every turn. The introduction of Fairy-types in Generation VI was not enough to prevent it from being a terrifying Nasty Plot sweeper. However, Game Freak overcorrected the Pitch Black Pokémon when they nerfed Dark Void to have only 50% accuracy in Generation VII^note which was most likely done to nerf Smeargle instead... despite the move also being changed so that only Darkrai could use it in that same generation, which is worse than Hypnosis. This caused Darkrai's viability to tumble off of a cliff and into a burning volcano; ever since then, it's been thoroughly outclassed by nearly any other fast Special sweeper, particularly Yveltal, who shares a typing with it. Even in the semi-official Ubers Underused tier, it's basically worthless due to being completely outclassed by Chi-Yu and its nuclear Special attacks that don't require boosts to hit hard. The prevalence of Magearna, who completely walls Darkrai unless it burns up a Tera, only adds insult to injury. Generation IX's Power Creep was so severe that Darkrai was finally allowed into Overused with the release of The Indigo Disk, and while not exactly game-breaking there (owing to both power creep and the Dark Void nerf), it served as a major hinderance to the tier with Hypnosis of all things^*Thanks to Sleep Clause preventing multiple Pokemon from falling asleep on a single team, the 100% accurate Spore could thus be baited out into Pokemon that didn't mind getting put to sleep and thus protect the rest of the team. However, Hypnosis's poor accuracy ironically proved beneficial as it missing the bait could allow Darkrai to simply put another Pokemon to sleep later, or put the bait in a lose-lose situation. Among other things, this would later contribute to Gen IX OU banning moves that directly induce sleep- effectively banning sleep outright save for extreme fringe cases (Relic Song Meloetta and Dire Claw Smeargle, as the mentioned moves are not guaranteed to induce sleep if they connect) or one putting themselves to sleep with Rest..

Generation V

• The Unova Starter Pokémon are considered the second-weakest Starter trio after the Johto Starters. They have cool designs, but they don't fare that well in battle, especially when compared to the Starters before (Sinnoh) and afterward (Kalos). Uniquely, all three of them are considered very poor Pokémon in Pokémon GO compared to other choices. In the main series, Serperior was able to find success ever since it gained access to its Hidden Ability, Contrary in ORAS (which reverses the double Special Attack drop from Leaf Storm to turn it from an aggressively mediocre Stone Wall to an aggressive if predictable Lightning Bruiser), but as for the other two...
  • Unlike the other Unova starters, Emboar has a second type and a wide movepool. Unfortunately, it's held back by its poorly-distributed stats — while its design suggests a bulky physical Mighty Glacier, it's instead a slow mixed Glass Cannon, with high HP and attacking stats but paper-thin defenses and horrid speed. It fares better with its Hidden Ability, Reckless, but like with Serperior, this isn't very helpful in-game and isn't as notable an improvement as Serperior's Contrary is. In Pokémon GO, Emboar is completely outclassed by Blaziken once again due to the lack of Abilities, as well as having lower stats and a more limited movepool than the fire chicken.
  • Samurott appears to suffer from an identity crisis. Its lore and appearance suggest that it is mainly a physical attacker, but its stats are geared towards special attacking, with an unremarkable movepool to top it off. Its Hidden Ability (Shell Armor) does very little for it, unlike its fellow Unova Starters. In Pokémon GO, it's simply one of many mediocre mono-Water-types that doesn't stand out in any way and is outclassed by Pokémon such as Kingler, Swampert, and Gyarados. Like Typhlosion, Pokémon Legends: Arceus gave it a Hisuian form with Water/Dark typing, a stat distribution more inclined towards being a decently fast physical attacker while sacrificing only 5 points in each of HP, Defense and Sp. Def, and a powerful signature move that also allows it to set up Spikes (and synergizes well with its Hidden Ability Sharpness), eventually proving to be one of the top dogs in OU and outclassing the Unovan original in every single way.
• Watchog is best summed up by Smogon's BW analysis: it's an overdone concept whose most notable aspect is its design rather than a cohesive kit. At best, Watchog will force a switch and use Analytic to power up its Normal STAB, but with low bulk and initial power, this strategy can be easily nullified by standing your ground and not switching.
• Unfezant was left without a single good Flying-type STAB move for three generations in a row, with its lack of coverage moves not helping matters as a wallbreaker. Despite its decent stat spread and the Flying type's evergreen utility, Unfezant was deemed one of the worst of the worst until Sword and Shield gave it the long-overdue Brave Bird. It's still nothing special in competitive, but it's at least competent at wallbreaking and pivoting in SS ZU and even found success in the pre-DLC metas.
• Swoobat was gifted with the amazing ability Simple^note  An ability that doubles any stat changes given, so drawbacks were needed to keep it at a decent power level. However, these drawbacks hold it back immensely and instead leave it languishing in the lowest of low tiers. While it's extremely speedy and has access to Stored Power to help it snowball out of control, its Special Attack right off the bat is mediocre and even when boosted isn't as overpowering as it may seem, its extreme frailty means it's easy to get KO'd (not helped by it having a weakness to Stealth Rocks), especially by priority moves, it has a weakness to common types like Dark and Rock, and it's easily walled by Steel-types if it's not packing Heat Wave.
• Maractus is a very unfortunate Pokémon, a mono-grass type with nothing to help it stand out from other Grass-Types. Its only positive traits, access to Chlorophyll and Water Absorb, and its 106 base Special Attack, are completely undermined by its abysmal movepool (Maractus has nothing to hit its weaknesses at all, and is forced to use Sucker Punch and Knock Off just to have something usable that's not Grass-Type), terrible other stats ensuring it can't take a hit nor score a KO before they get the chance, and a plethora of other Grass Pokémon that do its job, but MUCH better. Maractus is even made completely irrelevant by many of the not fully evolved Pokémon, such as Roselia and Ferroseed, despite it being a fully evolved Pokémon.
• Heatmor is in a similar situation to Seviper: it's billed as a counterpart and equal to a Pokémon it's far weaker than. While both it and Durant have the same base stat total, Durant's stats are min-maxed, sacrificing HP and special stats to become a physical Lightning Bruiser with a great defensive typing. Heatmor, on the other hand, is far weaker and less focused than Durant, despite being its predator; its attacking stats are well-rounded but unremarkable, while it's too slow to land the first hit on most foes and too frail to take even neutral hits for long. Heatmor has not only been stuck in the lowest tiers since its introduction, but has been considered a bad choice even there in most generations.
• While its Tao Dragon brethren have found various levels of success throughout the generations, Reshiram holds the dubious honor of being one of the most unviable box legendaries in every generation of its existence. At the start of Generation V, it was feared as a powerful wallbreaker in Ubers with an unresisted STAB combo (Dragon/Fire with a renamed Mold Breaker to hit Heatran) and an amazing Secret Art in Blue Flare, but required an inordinate amount of babysitting due to its Stealth Rock weakness and dependence on sun, especially with Kyogre running amok and Reshiram having no real effective way to deal with it. Its base 90 Speed also held it back significantly, as it could be outsped by other Pokémon that could threaten it easily. Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 then introduced White Kyurem, which was slightly faster and stronger, and could do everything Reshiram could but better despite lacking Blue Flare (only having access to Fusion Flare) and having Ice STAB instead of Fire. On top of that, Reshiram had no way to naturally boost its Sp. Atk, a problem plaguing fellow fiery dragon Charizard in lower tiers, though even that had Solar Power to make it a low-tier threat. In every generation since, despite being one of the few Dragon-type Pokémon to only take neutral damage from the new Fairy type, it's sat near the bottom of the Ubers viability rankings while Zekrom and Kyurem's forms have all been viable in their respective tiers at different points. Not helping matters was the introduction of Primal Groudon, which could easily OHKO Reshiram with a Precipice Blades despite its weather being beneficial to it, and discouraging the use of team-wide Sun support due to how much better it was than regular Groudon. Generation VIII was especially harsh to Reshiram; while its whole trio got Dragon Dance and it was able to make Zekrom better than it had ever been, Reshiram didn't benefit much from the move as a special attacker, already being able to boost its Speed via the similarly un-synergistic Flame Charge. In a twist of irony, Charizard's Gigantamax form was introduced in the same generation and outclassed Reshiram in formats where both were allowed, largely thanks to its own Damage Over Time Secret Art. Meanwhile, Reshiram's high stats and the positive traits that made it feared in early Gen V ensure that it will never drop to OU, at least until Power Creep catches up to it. Even in Ubers UU, where Dawn Wings Necrozma was a broken threat at one point, Reshiram still struggles to find a niche and is considered outclassed by Chi-Yu and old nemesis Kyurem-White; meanwhile, Reshiram's counterpart Zekrom was quickbanned from the tier.

Generation VI

• Despite Dedenne having an excellent type in Electric/Fairy, it's not anything to write home about. One notable issue of Dedenne is up until Gen VIII gave it Dazzling Gleam, it had to rely on Play Rough, a physical move that runs off of its abysmal Attack stat of 58, as its only Fairy-type attack. Dedenne has no niche and nothing to justify its use over other Mons of its type and caliber, even in the lowest of tiers and even among the other Pikaclones (which while usually being gimmicky Fragile Speedsters have at least something to work with, like Morpeko's Aura Wheel). The only things it has going for it are being adorable and its Item Caddy capacity due to its Pickup ability (it's much more useful in-game).
• Aurorus sounds great at first glance. Impressive 123/72/92 bulk sounds like it should have good staying power, it's got two great abilities in Refrigerate and Snow Warning, its movepool is huge, including Freeze-Dry, Thunderbolt, and Earth Power for near-perfect coverage, and it's got a decent 99 Special Attack to use it. There's two problems, however. It's got the dreaded Ice/Rock typing, giving it weaknesses to Water, Grass, Rock, and Ground, and double weaknesses to Fighting and Steel. Also, its base Speed is an abysmal 58. Its bulk is a lot less impressive when it's so easy to hit for double or quadruple damage, and since it's so slow, it has to soak a lot of hits. While it can learn Rock Polish to fix its Speed, it still generally doesn't have the knockout power to avoid taking hits, and its lack of reliable recovery moves is the final nail in the coffin. Aurorus plummeted to the lowest tiers almost immediately after it was released, and further generations haven't given it anything to make it shine.
• Avalugg is yet another Ice-type Stone Wall that struggles to perform the role it's supposed to. In addition to being weak to 4 common types and only resistant to Ice-type, Avalugg suffered from an abysmal special defense, meaning that any reasonable special move can tip it over. Despite possessing a colossal defense of 184 with Rapid Spin and Recover, Avalugg's flaws outweight any benefits it has, sinking all the way down to PU or even untiered. Surprisingly, Avalugg did have a fringe niche in Gen VII OU, particularly as a check to Zygarde prior to its ban. Gen IX's Terastallization did help its standing a bit thanks to allowing it to remove its Ice Type in favor of a more defensive-oriented one, but even then, it was not enough to make it anywhere near a high-tier staple or carve a niche there since there are many other Pokémon that benefit from Terastalization more.
• Mega Garchomp became quite the Memetic Loser among Mega Evolutions as it is widely considered worse than its base form. It still saw use due to its monstrous 170 attack that could be boosted further by its new Sand Force ability, but it suffered a nerf to its speed compared to its base form, going from 102 to 92. This may not seem significant, but the 102 speed was just enough for Garchomp to outspeed many other Pokémon that would normally threaten it. With it being reduced, it suddenly had a much harder time threatening its opponents despite the increase to its bulk and power as they could now turn the tables on it and barely outspeed it due to its own supposed power boost, such as the 100-speed Mega Charizards. Worse yet, it couldn't even drop to lower tiers because it was attached to a Pokémon that no one would ever even consider dropping out of OU in Gens VI and VII, leaving poor Mega Garchomp with only niche usage.
• Out of all the Mega Evolutions, Mega Audino is considered the weakest by a significant degree. At first glance, Mega Audino seems like a major improvement over its base form, with very impressive mixed bulk and a good Normal/Fairy typing. Combined with useful utility moves like Wish, Heal Bell, and Knock Off, as well as a boosting option in Calm Mind, and looks like Mega Audino should be a solid defensive Mega Evolution in the vein of Mega Sableye. However, what ultimately holds Mega Audino back is its ability. While base form Audino gets access to the incredibly useful Regenerator ability, Mega Audino is stuck with Healer, an ability that is completely useless in Singles play (and even in Doubles, it's generally less reliable and useful than Regenerator). The loss of Regenerator is especially bad for Mega Audino, as without it, it has no other forms of reliable recovery, forcing it to use much more exploitable methods of self-healing such as Wish + Protect and Rest. Because of this, as well as its poor-to-mediocre attacking stats, Mega Audino is the only Mega Evolution to end up in NU at the end both generations it exists in, and even in those tiers, it can often struggle due to how passive it is compared to other Pokémon. Even in Doubles, it faces stiff competition from Cresselia and Gothitelle as a support Pokémon since they don't take up a Mega slot. The introduction of Tapu Fini completely blows it out of the water since preventing status is better than relying on a random chance to cure the ally's status.

Generation VII

• Crabominable quickly became infamous for being a disappointing evolution to Crabrawler. It is yet another slow Ice-Type Pokémon, slower than its pre-evolution, but unlike the majority of Alola Pokémon, who have bulk added to them to compensate for their slower speed, Crabominable is a Glass Cannon, giving it the worst of both worlds. It's too slow to land a hit, and it can't take any either. A real shame, because Crabominable has a pretty good offensive typing (Ice/Fighting), and some decent moves, but that doesn't work as well as it should either, as it lacks moves like Ice Shard and Mach Punch, two moves that could've really helped it. Crabominable got quickly designated as a low-tier mon that will only succeed in rather gimmicky Trick Room teams, the only area it can possibly shine in.
• Midnight Form Lycanroc is agreed to be inferior to its Midday Form counterpart in every way. While the Midday Form gets an exclusive Rock-type priority move in Accelerock, Midnight Form instead gets Counter, with no way to learn its counterpart's move. Its stats also screw it over; while Midday Form is a Fragile Speedster with base 112 Speed, Midnight Form tries to be defensive...except that aside from having a fair number of common weaknesses as a Rock-type, it loses 30 points of Speed which are redistributed into its HP, Defense, and Special Defense — and the 10-point increase does nothing to make it less frail while simultaneously hampering its Speed significantly. It does enjoy a 100% accurate Stone Edge with its Hidden Ability No Guard but lacks the Speed to effectively take advantage of it.
• Lurantis is pretty much the embodiment of Overshadowed by Awesome. It's basically beaten in every way by Tsareena, another Mono-Grass Pokémon introduced in the exact same Generation. While Tsareena gets good stats, good utility, and an exceptionally useful signature move and ability in Trop Kick and Queenly Majesty, Lurantis is saddled with higher Special Attack (which isn't important since its attack stat is still higher) and a Physical variant of Solar Beam (which is considered useless outside of Sun teams due to the risk involved). Practically the only thing it has going for it is the rare and coveted Contrary ability, which is downright devastating when combined with Leaf Storm...except that Lurantis' special movepool is quite shallow (consisting of Grass attacks, Hidden Power, Round, and Weather Ball), meaning it gets upstaged anyway by Serperior, a Pokémon whose main fault is its shallow special movepool. Lurantis was eventually thrown a bone in Ultra Sun and Moon by getting access to Defog and Superpower from move tutors, allowing it to at least carve out some sort of niche in PU as a bulky Defogger and in Doubles as a Trick Room attacker, although it's still pretty much a one-trick pony. Then Scarlet and Violet took Superpower away, depriving Lurantis the main thing it had going for it until Tera-Stellar Tera Blast came about in the Indigo Disk... alongside Serperior, who outclasses it in every way imaginable.
• Minior seems like a very dangerous Shell Smash sweeper on paper, yet it ends up crashing down in practice. While in Meteor Form, it's immune to any status conditions. It also packs powerful moves such as Acrobatics, Stone Edge, and Earthquake. However, Meteor Form has pitiful offensive stats, meaning that it won't be too threatening even after the boosts from Shell Smash. Its low HP and average defensive stats also mean that Minior can easily be OHKO'd even in Meteor Form, so changing it to the more offensive Core Form by having its health reaching below half can be a hassle. Not only did Minior plummet all the way to NU, but it managed to get a D-rank in the NU tier's viability ranking thread, while being used too much to fall to a lower tier where it could have been more usable.
• Silvally was meant to be an Infinity -1 Sword version of the almighty Arceus, but due to several flaws holding it back it is in practice more of an infinity-minus-a-lot sword, landing all the way in NU/PU. While having 95 in every stat sounds like it could work for a Jack of All Trades, it's not only far from Arceus's 120, but also lackluster when compared to the stats held by more specialized Pokémon. Its movepool is fairly diverse, yet it lacks some crucial moves like any Ground-type attacks, priority moves, and recovery moves. Its Memories are barely a step-up from Genesect's Drive. While they change Silvally's type and that of Multi-Attack, they don't provide the 20% boost to STAB moves that the Plates do.^note This problem was fixed in Gen VIII: while effect of the Memories is unchanged, Multi-Attack has been buffed so that its base power equals the power of Arceus's Plate-boosted Judgment. To make matters worse, its pre-evolution, Type: Null, works much better than most Silvally types as a defensive Pokémon using Eviolite, since it has all the same stats as Silvally minus lower Speed. Parting Shot and Explosion are the only notable things about Silvally, and even then, it's not considered to be very threatening in PU. At best, it functions as either an awkward Defog utility attacker or a set-up attacker with Swords Dance or Work Up. Eventually, the usage of most Silvally types (and Type: Null) dropped so low, they fell into Untiered. Only a few Silvally types, most notably Silvally-Fairy and Silvally-Steel, have managed to have a niche in the lower tiers, almost solely due to their type.
• UB-05 Glutton, AKA Guzzlord, is generally seen as the weakest of the Ultra Beasts. Almost half of its stat points went straight to HP, which wouldn't be such an issue except for the fact that both of its defenses are terrible. Combine this with a double Fairy weakness and a bad defensive movepool, and Guzzlord flat-out fails to do its job as a wall. It isn't much better offensively due to its mediocre attack stats, and its awful Speed doesn't help. Tellingly, it was the only Ultra Beast to see no use at VGC Worlds 2017, and unlike its fellow Ultra Beasts, who are tiered no lower than UU in Gen VII, it's tiered all the way down in NU. Thankfully, its bulk and power are significantly more usable in that tier, making it much better.
• Dawn Wings Necrozma has gigantic base stats befitting of a box art Legendary (meaning it has no hope of ever dropping to OU or allowed in regular VGC plays short of massive power creep), but is always found lacking compare to its fellow Sun and Moon Legendaries: Dusk Mane has a better typing to become Ultra Necrozma, while Lunala has a better movepool, and its ability allows it to essentially have much bigger bulk, despite sharing the same weakness. The only thing it's got going for it is the ability to become Ultra Necrozma, so when Gen VIII rolled around and removed Z-Moves while powercreeping it with Calyrex Shadow Rider, while Lunala is still around to fill in any defensive niche it might have, Dawn Wing basically became useless in both Singles and VGC. With the advent of the Ubers UU tier in Generation IX, Dawn Wings Necrozma unsurprisingly dropped down to there... where it promptly became the opposite of this trope thanks to its obscene bulk and power making it a supreme abuser of Calm Mind or even Power Herb + Meteor Beam. This ultimately lead to it being suspected and banned from Ubers UU, leaving it with no tier to call home.

Generation VIII

• Cinderace is a mix between a low-tier letdown and the High-Tier Scrappy. After it proved to be an absolute menace in Gen 8 OU thanks to its fantastic Libero ability, Glass Cannon Fragile Speedster stats, and Court Change, it was booted into Ubers. However, Cinderace proved ill-equipped for the tier. Because of its Stealth Rock weakness, it is forced to use Heavy-Duty Boots to compensate. It also has mediocre defenses, which doesn't do it favours in a metagame filled with Olympus Mons. While its offenses aren't bad (with 116 Attack), most of the legendaries in the tier dwarf it, and anything with good bulk (namely Xerneas and Eternatus) can shrug off Pyro Ball or U-Turn with a smile. As a result, it finds itself in Ubers' D-rank (read: anything that lacks any niche in the tier whatsoever) alongside the aforementioned Dawn Wings Necrozma and Zamazenta. Fortunately for the rabbit, it was allowed back into OU in Gen 9, where it is a threat once again, albeit not as much as in Gen 8's OU due to Libero being nerfed.
• Inteleon is easily the weakest of the three Galar starters competitively, despite its amazing Sp. Attack and Speed making it look great on paper. Much of it has to do with its moveset and how it gels with the lizard; despite containing coverage options, most just aren't strong enough to break through enemy teams without boosting^note  The only boosting moves it has are Agility and arguably Focus Energy, lacking the more useful Nasty Plot... not that it would want to waste a turn setting up, seeing as how it's frailer than a piece of wet tissue. Being given a single type, it's also unable to use its STAB effectively. It can only really manage one set, and whatever it can do, other Water types and Special Attackers can do way better. And whereas Cinderace was blessed with Libero and Rillaboom with Grassy Surge, Inteleon is stuck with the situational Sniper. Inteleon, as a result, languished in PUBL by the time Gen VIII ended, and Gen IX wasn't kind to it either, as it received no notable buffs to help it out.
• Eldegoss is simply a Poor, Predictable Rock. While it has an excellent ability in Regenerator and decent Special Defense to back it up, it falls flat on its face for several reasons. First, it has a piss-poor movepool, consisting nothing more than Grass moves and Rapid Spin. It doesn’t even get any coverage moves, U-turn or Toxic to use its amazing ability or defensive capabilities to its maximum potential. Second, Grass is not a decent defensive typing by any means as it is weak to several common attacking types in the metagame, severely diminishing its viability. Third, it is heavily outclassed by other Rapid Spin users such as Tsareena, Hitmontop and Claydol. It should be no surprise that it got a one-way ticket to PU, where it at least found a solid niche as a bulky spinner.
• Cursola has a frightening 145 base Special Attack and respectable 135 Special Defence, which is unfortunately let down by its HP, Defense, and especially Speed being soundly awful, meaning it'll likely get knocked out before doing much of anything. Neither of its abilities help, either, as they rely on it taking a physical hit and somehow not keeling over on the spot for an underwhelming benefit: Perish Body will at best put Cursola itself on a timer and at worst just mildly annoy the opponent and make them switch once, and it's so slow that Weak Armor barely helps it outspeed anything. And to further drive the nail into its coffin, Cursola doesn't do anything that Chandelure and Aegislash can't do better. Pretty much the only thing its existence achieves is, ironically, to make its own pre-evolution more viable by allowing Galarian Corsola to run Eviolite and become very bulky.
• While an Ensemble Dark Horse, Falinks certainly wasn't made popular due to its competitive merits. Its highest stats being Attack and Defense at a mediocre 100, with any possible applications as a bulky attacker being let down by its special bulk of 65/60. While gaining access to moves like Close Combat, Megahorn, and the elusive First Impression, the problem is that there are better users of said moves, as Heracross gains access to the former two, and there are better options for the latter in both Generations it's been in^note  With Pokémon ranging from the mediocre Sirfetch'd to the decent Haxorus being better users in Generation VII, and the advent of even better users like Lokix and Slither Wing in Gen IX. Even No Retreat, while seeming like a good option on paper thanks to its omniboost effect, suffers due to not being stackable and being completely predictable on its moveset. It performed a smidge better in Gen IX, being banned from Untiered, but now it just can't be utilized in any tier viably.
• Pincurchin is an odd example, as it's not hated for being weak in a vacuum, but more due to Pokédex design and balance reasons. While it's not a good Pokémon, with below-average defenses, only decent mixed attacking stats, and a terrible 15 Speed, it's not completely hopeless like most of the other Pokémon on this page; it's usable in the low tiers like PU and ZU due to its access to Electric Surge, letting it support its team and toss out high-powered Zing Zaps and Rising Voltages, while nailing Ground-type switch-ins with Scald. However, Pincurchin is just too weak to do anything outside of those low-tier environments... which poses a problem in Gen IX, where it's the only Pokémon with Electric Surge in the game. Violet players despise Pincurchin because, while it's a waste of a teamslot in OU outside of setting Electric Terrain, they have to run it if they want to activate Quark Drive on their Paradox Pokémon without running Booster Energy on them, while Scarlet players get stronger Pokémon like Torkoal and Ninetales to fuel the Protosynthesis ability of their Paradox Pokémon.
• Frosmoth initially received hype as the next Volcarona, with its access to Quiver Dance and Heavy-Duty Boots singlehandely solving its would-be biggest hurdle, Stealth Rock. And to top it all off, Frosmoth has Ice Scales, an ability that halves the damage of special moves. Unfortunately, it's all held back by its lackluster speed of 65. Additionally, Bug/Ice-type is still terrible in general as Frosmoth struggles to find opportunity to set up with its common type weaknesses, even being doubly weak to Rock- and Fire-types, and can't make a dent on Fire- and Steel-types with its underwhelming coverage. Its flaws are too glaring to be ignored, and Frosmoth ended up dropping to PU in Generation VIII. Frosmoth's standing did improve with Terastallization in Gen IX, as it can now hit them with Ground-type Tera Blast, but Frosmoth is still far from a top-tier threat.
• Stonjourner seems like it could be a great lower-tier Rock-type at first glance, with good Attack and immense physical bulk. Unfortunately, it all comes tumbling down with an abysmal Special Defense of 20 — for reference, that is as low as Caterpie's, meaning any incoming special attack, even ones it resists, will likely result in a One-Hit KO. Stonjourner itself doesn't provide anything other Rock-types can't already do, but better. For example, even in the lower tiers, Gigalith has a much better Special Defense than it with Sand Stream to further boost it, and Aggron is part Steel-type while boasting recoil-less Head Smash thanks to Rock Head. Even its unique Power Spot ability isn't enough to make Stonjourner worth using in Doubles due to the aforementioned issues plaguing it. Stonjourner languished in Untiered for all of Gen VIII, though it at least became a useful physical tank in Gen IX ZU.
• Eiscue is an example of trying to be two archetypes in one and failing at both. Its primary form, with Ice Face active, is primarily defensive... except its Defenses are fairly mediocre, it lacks reliable recovery, and it has to deal with being a defensive Ice type. Once its face is broken, it turns into the Noice Face form, which lowers its defenses in exchange for boosting its speed. However, this form also has flaws. This includes the lack of boosting moves other than Belly Drum, having a mediocre attack stat even with the boosts, and anything that (likely) won't get KO'd will KO it in return. Eiscue also suffers from being predictable, with Ice Face being easy to play around by utilizing special moves. Lastly, there are much better physical Ice type attackers in higher tiers ^note Such as Weavile, Arctozolt post-Crown Tundra, Mamoswine, and Cloyster, leaving it without any real niche. As such, it's been untiered both generations it's been in. The only notable competitive use it’s had is through a cheesy gimmick set in Gen IX National Dex, where, due to Smogon’s definition for National Dex making it so both Hail and Snow exist in the tier, it can alternate between using Hail and Snowscape to keeps its Ice Face form active and become immune to physical attacks.
• Out of the Galarian fossils, Arctovish severely got the shaft compared to the other three, languishing in low tiers compared to Dracozolt and Arctozolt residing in UUBL, and especially Dracovish, who got banned to Ubers. In addition to being saddled with poor Speed and the Ice type (already not a good combination even before considering their Secret Art needing them to attack first), the "Arcto-" fossils simply have far less brute force than the "Draco-" ones; Dracovish's Strong Jaw-boosted Fishious Rend nukes things near-indiscriminately and Dracozolt's Hustle-boosted Bolt Beak isn't too far behind, but Arctovish and Arctozolt have no options for boosting their mediocre offensive power. Arctovish gets further shafted by its miserably shallow movepool with few coverage options, while Arctozolt at least gets a good offensive STAB combination. Their Hidden Ability Slush Rush ^note which doubles their unsavory Speed in Hail and helps them use their Secret Art finally became obtainable in October 2020 ^note via the Ability Patch introduced in the Crown Tundra DLC. This gave Arctozolt a major boost in viability, sending it all the way to UUBL. Arctovish, however, was not as lucky — it only made it to PUBL before being unbanned and eventually untiered. It was banned from NU, though only because of hail being unbanned.
• Zamazenta is notorious for being one of the most underwhelming box Legendaries in the series. Zamazenta's intended role is as a defensively-oriented contrast to its counterpart Zacian, with high bulk that is boosted further upon switching in, and its Crowned form bolstering that further with huge buffs to its defensive stats and the addition of a Steel typing. The problem with this is that while Zamazenta is tanky, it lacks the moves to actually capitalize on that tankiness in any meaningful fashion: it has no reliable recovery aside from Rest and no useful support moves, which more or less restricts it, ironically, to pure offense. Even on offense, its movepool struggles due to lacking a strong boosting move (to the point that many sets attempt to run Howl, a move typically seen on early-game Com Mons), giving it little to do beyond try to smack things with STAB moves. Though the Crowned form did eventually find a niche as a passable check to Yveltal (helped by its signature held item protecting it from Knock Off), the Hero form is one of the lowest-ranked Legendaries in the tier, to the point of being suspect-tested to drop out entirely at one point. To add further insult to injury, the aforementioned Zacian is notoriously regarded as one of the most overpowered Legendaries in the history of the franchise, with both forms of it being banned to Anything Goes. Gen IX kicked its teeth in further by nerfing its stats and ability just for being Zacian's counterpart... but it also gave it STAB Body Press to take advantage of its high Defense. While it initially dropped out of Ubers when the HOME meta began, it (or at least its Crowned form) soon proved to be too much for OU and eventually got banned back to Ubers again along with Chien-Pao. The silver lining is that Zamazenta-Hero remains a very good, albeit controversial Pokémon in Gen IX OU.
• Galarian Articuno is an improvement over its Kantonian counterpart, but that isn't saying much. While it now has a respectable Special Attack stat of 125 and Psychic/Flying is nowhere near as awful as Ice/Flying, it still leaves Galarian Articuno easily walled by Steel-types and Dark-types will prey on it if Articuno can't hit them with Hurricane. Not helping matters is Galarian Articuno lacks any coverage against them since it mostly learns Psychic-, Flying-, and Normal-type moves with Shadow Ball and Ancient Power. As a result, Galarian Articuno fell all the way down to PU whereas Galarian Zapdos and Moltres are placed in UUBL. Gen IX's Terastallization eventually give Articuno a breath of fresh air as it allows Articuno to replace its mediocre type combo in favor of Fighting-type to eliminate its obstacles, though it still isn't enough to move it to the higher tiers.
• When Calyrex and it steeds are united, they become some of the strongest mons in the series (so much that Shadow Rider took a one-way trip to AG in SV). While Spectrier at least has a decent Ubers UU showing to its name, Calyrex and Glastrier weren't good in any metagame.
  • Vanilla Calyrex is a contender for the worst Legendary. Its movepool is incredibly shallow, mostly consisting of STAB moves and Calm Mind, it has an awful defensive typing in Grass/Psychic, its stats are terribly mediocre ("boasting" a 100 in HP and 80 in everything else), and its Ability is the very situational Unnerve. It is completely overshadowed by Celebi and plummeted to Untiered, and even there it’s considered worthless. For what it's worth, this one is actually justified in-universe: Calyrex's subplot in the Crown Tundra DLC makes it pretty clear that it used to be leagues stronger than it is now, having been severely weakened due to God Needs Prayer Badly and can now only regain its full power by merging with its mounts.
  • Glastrier may have amazing bulk and Attack in a vacuum, but it's let down by its type and horrendous speed. Being a slow Ice-type, it can KO an opposing Pokémon, but will usually end up getting crippled by anything that can outspeed it (which isn't a hard task) and/or KO'd. It says something that, even in PU, Sneasel, an unevolved Pokémon, is a better option to fill in its role as a physical Ice-type attacker. It's not much better in Doubles, either; while it has support with Trick Room, it only benefits from it in a Dynamax meta. Without Dynamax, it's easily ganged up on with super-effective moves, has a bad matchup against Incineroar, one of the most common Pokémon, and its best STAB options are either inaccurate or weak. In metas allowing Restricted Pokémon ^note Usually reserved for box-art Legendaries, it's outclassed entirely by Calyrex-Ice, which is a complete upgrade stat-wise, has Glacial Lance as a decent STAB option, and can set up Trick Room by itself. Gen IX at least gave it Terastalization, which allows it to become a better defensive type, but it's not a common choice in Doubles, and in Singles, it continues to struggle.
• Hisuian Avalugg was considered an utter joke upon its reveal thanks to it being a Mighty Glacier Ice/Rock type ^note Known as the worst defensive dual-typing in the game. with horrible Sp. Def, and after HOME dropped it into the Gen IX metagame, it was unable to escape that fate. It simply has next to nothing going for it due to its cavalcade of weaknesses and bad speed, and it simply brings nothing to the table that its Kalosian cousin does not (already not a good sign when it's already considered a Low-Tier Letdown).
• While Origin Form Palkia is considered to be an upgrade to base Palkia thanks to its improved Speed stat^note though there are a few niche cases, such as on Trick Room teams, where base Palkia is preferred, poor Origin Form Dialga is considered to be nothing but a Power Up Letdown. In theory, moving 20 points from its seldom-used Attack stat to its Special Defense stat would make for a defensive behemoth, especially when combined with Dialga's excellent defensive typing. In practice, Dialga-Origin flounders thanks to a lack of recovery, something the base form struggled with but could at least alleviate with Leftovers, which the Origin Form can't use by virtue of being locked into holding the Adamant Crystal. While both forms of Dialga are considered poor in standard Ubers play, base Dialga is at least a fairly solid utility Pokémon in Ubers UU. Meanwhile, the Origin Form languishes in the D-Rank, with even the likes of Maushold and Smeargle being considered more useful than it.

Generation IX

Even Paldea, a region notorious for its immense Power Creep, has a few stinkers.

• Spidops is yet another mediocre early-game Bug-type, having poor stats for a fully-evolved Pokémon (totalling at a literal 404), offensive stats that don't even reach the 80s, and a laughable 35 base Speed. Its highest stat is its 92 Defense, which it can't even use due to its bad defensive typing and paltry 60 base HP. It has a powerful Secret Art in Silk Trap (which is basically King's Shield but for Speed) and access to the rare Sticky Web, which it used to hang onto viability with, but with superior Sticky Web users in Masquerain pre-DLC, Rimbombee after Teal Mask and Smeargle after Indigo Disk, Spidops slowly but surely lost all viability it clung to even in the lowest tiers.
• Even compared to the other very mediocre two-stage dog Pokémon introduced in Paldea, Dachsbun stands out as easily the weakest. While a pure Fairy typing, solid Defense, and an excellent ability that provides a Fire immunity that also increases its Defense by two when hit by a Fire-type move all sound excellent, its completely ruined by its stats and movepool. Its stat spread is awful even for its low 477 BST, with a terrible HP stat of 57, which hurts its viability as a wish passer, a middling 80 Special Defense that is not helped by said HP, and an awfully low Attack stat of also 80. Only its high Defense of 115 and decent 95 Speed stand out, with the former being made much less impressive by its HP stat, and the latter not mattering much due to its lack of utility and offensive presence that take advantage of said Speed. Even worse than that, it has absolutely no support or set-up moves, only having the unreliable Wish as recovery and Roar to phase out Pokémon that inevitably try to take advantage of its passiveness. Players kept trying to use this Pokémon again and again to take advantage of its typing and ability, only for it to end up unviable in the end, resulting it going from RU all the way down to Untiered. Time will tell if it will eventually have a niche in ZU.
• Squawkabilly is yet another utterly unremarkable Normal/Flying type; it not only has poor stats, with its two best ones, Attack and Speed, being only decent at best, but it's also one of exceedingly few Pokémon introduced in the generation to lack any sort of Secret Art or signature ability whatsoever. Just about any role it could fill with the moves or abilities it has is one that can be filled better by another Pokémon — even other Normal/Flying types.
• While both Kantonian and Alolan Dugtrio have their own niches in different tiers thanks to Arena Trap and a decent defensive typing respectively, Wugtrio has absolutely nothing going for it. A combination of horrendous bulk, no useful abilities, and a movepool that's as shallow as a puddle leaves the convergent Pokémon outclassed by pretty much any offensive Water-type in the game, even in the lowest tiers. Even its signature move isn't much better than Liquidation.
• Combat Breed Paldean Tauros is a slightly improved version of its Kantonian relative thanks to a somewhat better typing, though that's not saying much given how hard base Tauros fell from grace. However, it's totally overshadowed by its Blaze and Aqua counterparts thanks to their superior dual typings and movepools, as well as taking advantage of the species' Secret Art Raging Bull, giving them reliable physical Fire- and Water-type STAB respectively. For poor Combat Breed Tauros however, the move is outclassed as a STAB by Close Combat and Body Press, moves that the Blaze and Aqua Breeds also get.
• Scovillain has a lot of positive traits at surface value. With a then-unique Grass/Fire typing, decent mixed-attacking stats, a great ability in Chlorophyll^note  Its other abilities are the situational Insomnia, and Moody, which is banned in most formats, and moves to compliment it like Solar Beam and Fire Blast. However, its downfall comes from an unfortunate mix of factors. To start with, it's got horrible 65/65/65 defenses and a mediocre 75 speed, with the intention of its low speed being fixed by Chlorophyll. This would be fine, except it leads to problem #2: the lowest-tiered sun setter is Kantonian Ninetales^note Setting up sun via Drought is key in keeping momentum, which resides in the UU tier, thereby limiting its possible usability^note Prior to Ninetales' release in the Teal Mask DLC, Torkoal did drop to RU once... though alongside it came Slither Wing, which completely outclasses it. Which leads to problem #3: it was unfortunately introduced alongside the Ancient Paradox Pokémon, which also get benefits from sun, and sometimes don't even need it thanks to Booster Energy giving the same effect. And these aren't mediocre Pokémon, either; Between them, OU and UU have powerhouses in Roaring Moon,^note Which was notably banned to Ubers pre-Indigo Disk. Gouging Fire, Walking Wake, Great Tusk,^note Which is one of the most used Pokémon in the Gen IX OU metagame. Raging Bolt and Sandy Shocks^note Which is among UU's best of the best, even rising to OU for a spell pre-DLC., and all outclass it in pretty much anything it can or want to do in stats and/or combat roles, not to mention other Sun users such as the already barely-viable Charizard. This leaves Scovillain unusable in OU or UU, and without any reliable sun setters in the lower tiers, causes the poor plant to descend downwards into Untiered. To add insult to injury, it suffered Uniqueness Decay in its own generation with Teal Mask introducing Ogerpon and her Hearthflame Mask, which gives her the same Grass/Fire typing, and proved good enough to be banned to Ubers, painting an even worse image for Scovillain. The final nail in the coffin was the re-introduction of Venusaur, which proved itself as one of the best non-Paradox Sun abusers with the exact same ability as Scovillain.
• In stark contrast to its bretheren, poor Wo-Chien struggles to make anything of itself despite its amazing Tablets of Ruin ability passively weakening enemy Attack stats. This is thanks to its abysmal defensive typing of Dark/Grass combined with a defensive statline and no real utility, reliable recovery or offensive output to do anything meaningful. Tellingly, while its fellow Treasures of Ruin either reside comfortably in OU or ended up outright banned, Wo-Chien fell through the tiering rung until by the month after the Indigo Disk DLC's release, it found itself in PU. Only time will tell if it can find an effective role there.
• Iron Thorns is widely considered to be among the least impressive of the Paradox Pokémon, alongside Scream Tail, Iron Jugulis, and Brute Bonnet. However, all three of them at least have niches that give them competitive success^note Scream Tail enjoys its high speed and bulk giving it use as team support and healing with Wish, Iron Jugulis is a decent Glass Cannon for its tier with powerful moves like STAB Hurricane at its back, and Brute Bonnet posseses a combination of high offenses, STAB Sucker Punch, Protosynthesis, and Spore. On the other hand, while Thorns has some use as a wallbreaker and Dragon Dance user in theory, in practice, its poor defensive typing (4x weak to Ground, 2x weak to Fighting, Water, and Grass) and middling Speed simply present too many hurdles. It's also hurting for decent STAB options that aren't inaccurate and don't have recoil, it has to rely on Booster Energy to utilize its Ability due to a dearth of good Electric Terrain setters, and it's simply not bulky enough to offset its serious weaknesses. In general, it brings nothing to the table that other wallbreakers and setup sweepers can't do much better without having to fear an Earthquake or Earth Power, and it has none of Tyranitar's utility, versatility, or ability to wall dominant offensive types, something that was made painfully clear whenever Tyranitar was in the same tier and proceeded to outclass its robotic descendant. Unfortunately, its in-theory use as a Dragon Dancer is highly appealing to newer players, causing it to stay in RU for most of its life, to the point of becoming the tenth most-used Pokémon in RU in November of 2023 despite being unviable there. It got a nominal buff in Indigo Disk by way of access to Supercell Slam, allowing it to finally have a powerful move to capitalize on Electric STAB without the guaranteed recoil of Wild Charge, but the miss recoil presents its own problems, and it's nowhere near enough of a buff to offset its many structural problems, and it dropped to NU the month after its release.
• Munkidori seems like a fairly solid wallbreaker on paper thanks to his Minmaxed stat spread, having excellent Special Attack and solid Speed as well as access to the rare Parting Shot. Having the incredibly powerful Toxic Chain ability also helps. In practice however, the simian Retainer Pokémon flounders for three main reasons. Firstly, his Psychic/Poison typing is poor offensively, leaving his STAB attacks walled by the common Steel-type unless Munkidori uses the unreliable Focus Blast. Second, his Speed, while good in a bubble, is rather slow in a metagame filled with lightning-fast threats unless he equips a Choice Scarf, which can cause him to be exploited by the aforementioned Steel-types. Finally, his laughable 66 Defense leaves him vulnerable to most forms of priority outside of Mach Punch, meaning that even if Munkidori outspeeds something he's prone to getting picked off anyway. Tellingly, while the other members of the Loyal Three reside in RU and have niches in tiers and formats with a power level higher than that, Munkidori tumbled down to NU as a result of these flaws, and even there he's considered middling at best.

Specific Pokémon (Other Formats)

VGCs/Official Doubles

• Generally, most Stone Walls tend to struggle in the Doubles environment if they don't provide support options, such as Trick Room, and Toxapex is no exception. Despite being one of the premier walls in OU and BSS with its recovery options, Toxapex's passiveness ends up biting it in VGC hard. Most of its strategies tend to be too slow in the fast-paced nature of VGC to really matter, and the roles Toxapex could do are easily fulfilled by other Pokémon that have offensive presence and additional benefits, such as Pelipper for spreading burn with Scald or Celesteela for Wide Guard. As a result, Toxapex never saw a day of light in VGC.
• Galarian Darmanitan serves as an example of how a Pokémon's success in Singles doesn't automatically translate well into Doubles. While it initially did see some success in VGC thanks to its Gorilla Tactics ability making even Dynamaxed Pokémon take significant damage from it, players began to notice its glaring issues as time progressed. Its frailty means that any good form of speed control can eliminate Darmanitan before it even gets the chance to attack, and more importantly, running Protect is awkward on it since Gorilla Tactics locks Darmanitan into using the same move, therefore it can't safely scout out attacks such as Fake Out. Darmanitan could alleviate this issue by opting for Zen Mode instead, but the loss of immediate firepower is noticeable and activating Zen Mode is difficult due to the aforementioned frailty. In the end, Galarian Darmanitan rapidly fell out of favor as the metagame became more hostile to it.
• After being a High-Tier Scrappy in Gen VIII, Coalossal took a colossal hit in Gen IX with the removal of Dynamax. Although it can Terastallize to remove its usual x4 weakness from the ally's Water-type attacks and activate its Steam Engine and Weakness Policy in the process, its glaring issues become more apparent without Dynamax to patch them up. Coalossal can be easily interrupted by Fake Out, can't afford to hold Covert Cloak to block flinching from it, and is much easier to take down without the x2 HP boost. Additionally, Coalossal lacks the terrifying Damage Over Time from G-Max Volcalith, severly hindering its offensive pressure. Needless to say, Coalossal sees little to no usage.
• Crowned Zamazenta is met with very little fanfare in VGC for an entirely different reason. Unlike in Ubers, Zamazenta does have some great supporting options, such as Wide Guard, Coaching, and Snarl. However, Zamazenta's biggest issue is that VGC 2021 and 2022 only allow one or two restricted Legendary Pokémon in a team. Most players tend to choose hard-hitters such as Zacian or Ho-oh over a more dedicated support Pokémon that takes up a restricted Legendary slot like Zamazenta. As a result, some players view Zamazenta as being much worse than it could've been without the restriction in place. The only time Zamazenta gets the spotlight in Gen VIII VGC is Series 13, which removed the restriction and allowed Mythical Pokémon, but unlike other series, Series 13 isn't held in tournaments and instead is exclusively for official ranked battles.

Pokémon GO

Player vs. Environment (gyms and raids)

• Jolteon is a surprisingly weak Pokémon in GO. It's easy to evolve and power up, but it really gets the short stick compared to the other two forms. Its stats really don't do it any favors, having lackluster defense and almost half as much health as Vaporeon does. Unlike Vaporeon, whose Water Gun has solid DPS, Jolteon's Thundershock has less than half as much DPS^note Water Gun's 20.0 DPS vs Thundershock's 8.3, and even after the update Water Gun still has a decent 12.0 DPS. As the final nail in the coffin, while Vaporeon's max CP is 2816 and Flareon's is 2643, Jolteon's max CP is a rather unimpressive 2140 (just a bit stronger than a Pidgeot). It's obvious Jolteon was intended to be a Fragile Speedster, but due to the way speed is weighted in this game, it's worth practically nothing. Mercifully, a balance update rectified this bringing up Jolteon to 2730 while Vaporeon was boosted to 3157 and Flareon to 2904, making it only slightly weaker instead of cripplingly so.
• Jolteon's position as the weakest of the Eeveelutions in Player Versus Environment would be usurped by Umbreon upon the launch of Gen II. Fellow Eeveelution Espeon's CP maxes out at exactly 3000, just a short margain ahead of Flareon and behind Vaporeon. Umbreon, on the other hand, is left in the dust with its painfully low max CP level of 2052, which is even lower than Jolteon's initial max CP, which made it next to useless in Gym Battles until the June 2017 gym revamp introduced the motivation system; giving it a sporting chance against de-motivated Pokémon. Even then, though, it's still not going to amount to much when put against fully motivated Pokémon, and doesn't change the fact that its max CP is still abysmal in comparison to the other Eeveelutions. Even worse with the May 2019 update, where the addition of Glaceon threw Umbreon down to hell. Stick this thing into PvP and nowhere else.
• While the other two Regi- legendaries sometimes get use as bulky mono-type attackers with solid offensive types, Registeel is hit hardest by the transition to the mobile platform. Its type is a niche attacker at best (and it doesn't help that it's surpassed in this regard by Aggron, whose base form is a Com Mon in many areas), its attacking stats are atrocious (on par with several not fully evolved 'mons like Teddiursa and Staravia, and dwarfed by Lairon, which is the evolution before Aggron) plus the formula for determining its stats in this game really hurts it (its balanced defenses do little for it, compared to what the unbalanced defensive stats of both Regice and Regirock are). Add in the inability to use it for gym defense as it's a legendary, and Registeel hands-down is known as the worst tier 5 legendary raid in the game at that moment. It really should just be used in the Great or Ultra leagues, and nowhere else.

Player vs. Player

• Single-type Pokémon with single-type movesets, while useful in raids and gym challenges, become this in Trainer Battles, as a player only needs to have knowledge of Pokémon types and use the appropriate counter. Some examples:
  • Raikou has a moveset comprised entirely of Electric-type moves, save for the Normal-type Return (which can only be found in Purified Raikou^note and following Dec. 2019, lost all kinds of viability and the Ghost-type Shadow Ball, which don't help in any way to counter Ground-type Pokémon.
  • Entei suffers the same situation as Raikou, with only Return and the Steel-type Iron Head as non-Fire-type moves.
• Also frowned upon are mons which can't charge their Charged Attack fast enough due to the pitiful gains of their Fast attacks:
  • Grumpig has both Shadow Ball and Psychic, which prove very powerful in the hands of other mons such as Hypno. The problem? It only has the awful Extrasensory and Charge Beam as fast attacks.
  • Throh has excellent stats for a PvP mon, but the only things it can learn are incredibly low quality moves like Zen Headbutt, Low Kick and Low Sweep. It also has no coverage to use its laughably shallow movepool.
  • Rayquaza and Salamence are two examples of Pokémon that are excellent in PvE (and the main games) but simply cannot function in PvP due to their slow Fast moves and offense-focused stat spreads. Rayquaza can only really function in Master League matchups, where it can muscle through its shortcomings with sheer uncapped CP.

In General

• Shuckle is an absolute beast of a Stone Wall when fought as a raid boss. As a regular Pokémon to use in battle, its pitiful attack power won't have it doing any major damage while its high defense can simply be bypassed by the opponent spamming powerful super effective charge moves on it. Its extremely low HP and CP don't help it either.
• Deoxys-Attack suffers from the transition to GO even worse than Registeel, bordering on Adaptational Wimp status. In the main series games, it's a terrifying Glass Cannon with obscenely high mixed attacking stats and very high speed, only kept in check by its inability to take any sort of hit. However, the battle system in GO focuses on bulk over all-out offense and doesn't factor in speed as much, so Deoxys-Attack will go down after only a few hits and won't accomplish anything.

In-Game

All of the above was mostly focused on the metagames, official and unofficial — but don't go thinking the single-player campaign where nearly any 'mon can shine is free from some really bad Pokémon.

• The early Com Mons that are based on mammals (Normal-types like Rattata, Sentret, Zigzagoon, Bidoof, Patrat, Bunnelby, Yungoos, Skwovet, and Lechonk, Dark-types like Poochyena, Purrloin, and Nickit, and Normal and Dark-types like Alolan Rattata and Galarian Zigzagoon) tend to be disliked due to not holding up for most of the journey or having bland designs. The only ones that really manage to escape the stigma are Lillipup (For being one of the very few to have a full evolution line, with the last evolution having surprisingly good stats) and Tandemaus (For being a Memetic Badass in competitive, with aspects of their infamy being useful in the main game). However, a few stand out:
  • Patrat, Black and White's version of the early-game Mon, is a contender for the most hated. Most of the other early-game Normal types can serve as good HM users and have appealing, if a bit simple, designs. However, the game's downplaying of H Ms hinder Patrat and Watchog heavily, and the line only learns a few HM moves anyways. While it does have the typical wide move pool of early-game rodents, it doesn't have the stats to take real advantage of it, and it's severely outclassed by other easily-available Normal types, such as Audino and Stoutland - the latter is especially notable as Lillipup can be found on the exact same route as Patrat but has a strictly better movepool, ability and evolutions. The creepy stoned eyes on a chipmunk design didn't help matters. Fans often describe Patrat as "the next Bidoof". Watchog also gained a reputation of being an absolute pain to deal with in-game, due to getting Hypnosis and learning several powerful moves early on. It's also notorious for being spammed in the early game by other trainers, especially Team Plasma grunts—more than half of all Plasma grunts have at least one Patrat or Watchog on their team!
  • Bunnelby is generally disliked for its somewhat bland design, but the source of many a player's ire towards it was because Wonder Trade was introduced in the same generation, and Bunnelby's widespread availability in early routes caused Wonder Trade to be flooded with the rabbit. Its evolution, Diggersby, is considered to be ugly but at the same time, the family has access to Huge Power as a hidden ability, making it a bit of a secretly decent pick.
• Similarly to the mammals, many early-game Bug types (Caterpie, Weedle, Paras, Ledyba, Spinarak, Wurmple, Kricketot, Burmy, Sewaddle, Venipede, Scatterbug, Grubbin, Blipbug, Tarountula, Nymble) are disliked for their incomparable weakness. Even their main purpose (Being quickly evolving Pokémon to give an early-game stat boost) isn't very useful either, as most first gyms use a type that the bugs are weak to. At the very least, they generally have more interesting designs than the mammals, and a select few are surprisingly decent even in the late game (Scolipede, Vikavolt, and Lokix have high enough stats to justifiably use them against even stronger battles).
• Zubat are notorious Goddamned Bats when encountered in the wild, but they can eventually evolve into the fast and powerful Crobat... with the exception of the Gen 1 games and their remakes, where you're stuck with Golbat. Golbat is a very subpar Pokémon, with Master of None stats, a very shallow movepool with few good attacking options, and a poor typing that leaves it weak to Psychic-type moves. Much like the wild Zubat it evolves from, Golbat won't be doing much more than annoying your opponent instead of actually defeating them.
• In Red and Blue, Lickitung is a notorious Junk Rare and one of the worst choices for a Pokémon to use both in-game and in competitive play. It's only available fairly late in the game by trading a Slowbro — a powerful Mighty Glacier with a great typing and access to the amazing Status Buff move Amnesia — to an NPC in a gatehouse. And what do you get for this trade? A Normal-type with a fantastic movepool... and nothing else. Lickitung is a textbook Master of None, with weak attacking stats, very slow speed, and subpar bulk — it's even weaker than the Crutch Character early-game Normal-types like Raticate and Pidgeot, and those don't require you to trade away a rare and powerful Pokémon to get them. Later generations would make Lickitung available earlier in the game and give it a more powerful evolution in Lickilicky, though it's still usually not one of the best options for your team.
• Similarly to Lickitung, Porygon is an incredibly rare Pokémon, only being available from purchasing one at the Rocket Game Corner, one of the biggest Luck Based Missions in the franchise.^note The ABSOLUTE cheapest you can get Porygon in any version is in Pokémon Blue or Green for 6500 coins, with many versions demanding the cap of 9999. The biggest payout you can recieve in one go is 300 coins. Despite this rarity, it has stats on par with many of the Com Mons you'd have obtained (and probably discarded for better ones) by even the earliest point you can access the Game Corner. It does have a good movepool, a unique Secret Art in Conversion^note  In Generation 1, converts Porygon to the target's type and Recover to try and make up for it, but overall, it struggles to stand out among the other excellent Normal types in the generation, most of which are obtainable through much quicker and simpler methods. Fortunately for it, Game Freak seemed to have noticed its status as a complete Junk Rare and gave it a powerful evolution in Porygon2.
• Ditto may have been useless in competitive play (at least until Gen V), but unfortunately it doesn't fare much better in-game either. The two primary factors that make it a Lethal Joke Character, the Imposter hidden ability and Choice Scarf, are very hard to obtain in casual playthroughs. Not only that, but the design of most in-game challenges is heavily stacked against any kind of Ditto Fighter.^note  Most trainers specialize in one type, that type resists itself the majority of the time, and Ditto only has 5 uses of each copied move, meaning it's common for Ditto to make little to no progress even when Transform is pulled off. Even if Ditto isn't completely ineffective, NPC Trainers' Pokémon rarely have EVs and tend to be lower-leveled than the player, meaning transformed Ditto will generally have lower stats than the rest of the party, and most enemy Pokémon have terrible movesets. As a result, in-game Ditto is generally seen as even worse than competitive Ditto, with Ditto-only runs of the games usually requiring Off the Rails strategies or glitches to even give Ditto a chance to succeed, and it's consistently ranked low or at the bottom on in-game tier lists.
• Gligar' was this for some fans back in Gen 2. Pokémon Gold had Gligar, the first Ground/Flying type, while Pokémon Silver had Skarmory, the first Steel/Flying type. The reason Gligar was seen as a joke back then was because its moveset is terrible. As a result, people only caught it for Pokédex data. However, it was saved from its unfortunate status as the Pokémon Generations moved on. Now able to learn moves like X-Scissor, Sky Uppercut, and even Earthquake, the fans began to see it as invaluable when fighting Poison, Electric, and Rock types. It also helps that since Sinnoh, it gained an evolution in Gliscor.
• The baby Pokémon (also introduced in Gen 2) come off as this for being largely inferior to their evolutions stat-wise, as well as having evolution requirements that range from difficult (raising one all the way to level 30) to needlessly situational (friendship evolution during a certain time of day). Furthermore, the baby Pokémon will simply evolve into a Pokémon that you likely had to obtain to breed for the baby in the first place. While a few learn moves that are inaccessible to their evolved forms (Pichu learning Nasty Plot), most are simply for filling the Pokédex. Gen 4 is where Game Freak finally realizes that Baby Pokémon should be used to allow players early access to more powerful Pokémon, such as making Budew and Munchlax available early on.
• Smeargle is one of the more drastic divides between in-game viability and competitive viability. Smeargle's primary deal is being able to use almost any move in the game by permanently copying it with Sketch, but compensating with an almost nonexistent statline. This makes it rather popular as a Utility Party Member in various competitive settings, where it can learn things like highly accurate status moves or strong entry hazards (in particular, its Baton Pass sets are considered a major reason for the move's competitive scrutiny). However, in-game, teaching Smeargle moves over the course of the game is rather slow and awkward: you need to either find a Pokémon who knows the move and then time a Sketch to right after when it uses it, or set Smeargle up in a situation where a Pokémon you have already knows the move and the opponent isn't doing anything. Smeargle also only learns Sketch every ten levels, meaning it doesn't even have four moveslots until level 31, and Sketching the wrong move will mean either a soft reset or Smeargle being stuck with something unhelpful for some time. And even if you do somehow get Smeargle a perfect moveset and you can't just use existing Pokémon that already have the moves you need, it still suffers from the fact that a pure utility character just isn't very helpful in-game, when simply overpowering the opponent with brute strength and super-effective moves is easy, fast, and reliable. The result is that Smeargle is consistently ranked in the absolute bottom of ingame tier lists, on par with Joke Character Pokémon like Unown.
• Volbeat and Illumise have historically been mediocre in competitive play, with Volbeat being limited to Baton Passing Tail Glow in earlier generations and setting weather in the low tiers later on, and Illumise being an even worse version of it. However, for as bad as they are in competitive, they're even worse in-game in Ruby and Sapphire, and are considered about as efficient to use as Luvdisc. Both of them have very low stats all around and barren level-up movepools — Volbeat at least gets Confuse Ray and Signal Beam via level up, but Illumise learns nothing but Normal attacks, fired off of its whopping base 47 Attack stat, and status moves. They're intended as support Pokémon, but not only is this a subpar role to fill when overpowering foes with brute force is so easy and reliable in-game, they can't even learn Baton Pass except as an egg move, so you'll need to go through the hassle of breeding it onto them to get to use it. Both of them also have awkward level curves that make them even more of a hassle to use.^note Volbeat's Erratic level curve causes it to level up slowly early on, then faster after level 50. It'll be very sluggish to level up at first, especially since it'll rarely be knocking foes out, and when it does finally hit its stride at level 50, enemy Pokémon will be so much stronger than it that a few extra levels won't change anything. Illumise's Fluctuating level curve causes it to level up quickly at first, but slow down about halfway through the game — but it comes too late to even be a useful Crutch Character, and on the off chance you decide to stick with it, it'll be underleveled and even weaker than normal later on.
• Feebas is terribly weak and rare, so getting one at all depends on the use of a strategy guide and luck, and evolving it into a Milotic is just as big of a pain. In Gens III-IV, it requires its beauty stat to be maximized in order to evolve, and only certain natures of Feebas make this possible. Thankfully, Feebas becomes much easier to evolve from Gen V onward by simply trading it while holding a Prism Scale.
• The elemental monkey trio, consisting of the Pansage, Pansear, and Panpour lines. They're prime examples of the Crutch Character trope, as they seem to only exist to help Trainers beat the first Gym. Their designs and competitive aspects are both mediocre, which doesn't help their cases. Special mention goes out to Simisear. In the Pokémon Election, a Japan-based Pokémon popularity poll, Simisear somehow scored last place^note It isn't even that unique a concept in the first place as Infernape and Darmanitan, introduced in the prior generation and the same generation as Simisear, are far more interesting fire monkeys. The poor fire monkey ended up getting a pity event to commemorate its loss.
• Crabrawler is decent for the early-game, but it can't evolve until the player reaches Mount Lanakila, which is the site of the Pokémon League. Crabrawler can be obtained before the first trial at level 8 or so, while Mount Lanakila is only accessible after defeating the Big Bad. Even with Eviolite to help its defenses and Power-Up Punch to boost its Attack, it has a whole lot of trouble holding its own until then, and often gets benched for better, much more easily obtained Fighting-types. Sadly, it's not much better as Crabominable: Despite its great Attack stat, decent HP, and a good movepool, it gains three weaknesses, loses one resistance, and only gains one, has mediocre defenses not helped by its type, and it loses quite a bit of Speed. It doesn't help that Crabrawler is the only thing that appears in Berry Ambushes, making it an unnecessary waste of time when people are simply hunting for Berries. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon throws the line a bone by letting you access a tiny part of Mount Lanakila on your first trip through Ula'ula Island (thus letting you evolve Crabrawler that much earlier), and Scarlet and Violet changed the evolution requirements to only need an Ice Stone, but the other problems, like Crabominable's Glass Cannon nature remain.
• Out of all the Eeveelutions, Glaceon has had it the worst of any of them for in-game playthroughs. Like Crabominable, Glaceon isn't able to reach that stage until the player reaches the frozen rock in any given game, which is almost always very late in the game, or in Black 2 and White 2, not at all until the postgame. Contrast that with every other Eeveelution, including Flareon, all of which can be obtained not long after catching or receiving Eevee. Not only that, but it also has to compete with other Ice-types found in the area that outshine it, and its Mighty Glacier stats simply do not work well with its weakness-ridden Ice typing. Gen VIII onwards threw it a bone by allowing to evolve with an Ice Stone, but like Crabominable its other issues are not answered for.
• Chikorita is the worst traditional starter Pokémon both in-game and competitively. It has a type disadvantage against three of the Johto Gyms while its sole type advantage is over part of Pryce's Gym, where most of the trainers have at least one Water, Water/Ice, or Ice/Ground Pokémon, despite being weak to the actual theme of the gym (Ice). It also fares poorly against Morty's Gym due to its shallow movepool not being effective against the Ghost/Poison-type Gastly line that makes up the entire gym. While it does provide utility with Reflect and Poisonpowder against Whitney, she’ll still be difficult anyway with just a starter ^note due to every starter being significantly more likely to be Male, making them vulnerable to Attract. Chuck's Poliwrath is literally the only Pokémon it has a clear advantage over. It won't fare well against Team Rocket either, as they frequently use Poison and Flying-types. It has a type advantage against many of the Kanto gyms, but by that point, players will have access to better Grass-types like the Oddish family or Victreebel. Its stats are also focused on defense and support over offense, which is less practical in the story. Sun and Moon mitigates things a little by having Chikorita available early on in the game for those who didn't pick Rowlet, but even then it is outclassed by other Grass-types such as Tsareena.
• Following Chikorita, Snivy is the second most difficult starter in the main series. While its Hidden Ability Contrary lets it hit like a tank with Leaf Storm and has propelled Serperior to great competitive success, this isn't legitimately obtainable in-game (their Hidden Abilities only first became available in Gen VI). The Snivy line's intended strategy is to stall and drain opponents away with Leech Seed and Giga Drain, which is time-consuming and impractical in non-competitive formats. It has a prohibitively small offensive movepool and average offensive stats that necessitate buffs with Coil or Calm Mind to be threatening. Its advantages lie in its high Speed and access to Glare, which is useful in disabling opponents and making legendaries easier to catch... but outside of trades, the move is unavailable until after beating the game, because it is an egg move and breeding is impossible until then. Additionally, while its gym type matchups aren't quite as bad as Chikorita's, it still has the odds stacked against it—not counting the Striaton trio, which counter all three starters, Snivy is ill-matched against Burgh, Elesa^note Snivy resists Electric, but in both Black and White and the Hard Mode of the sequels, her team boasts hefty anti-Grass coverage, Skyla, Brycen, and Drayden/Iris, as well as Roxie in B2W2, while only beating Clay and B2W2's Marlon.
• However, the worst starter of all time is the one from Pokémon Yellow: Pikachu. Pikachu can't evolve and is stuck with stats barely better than the other starters' base forms, lacking almost all the buffs that later games would give it: no Light Ball, Volt Tackle, nor Gigantamax forms. Its only buff from Red and Blue is an upgraded movepool that still has poor type coverage. Pikachu has terrible matchups against the Gym Leaders and Elite Four, with only Misty, Lorelei, and some assorted Flying-types being weak to it (and they're still a lot stronger than Pikachu, and it doesn't resist their attacks). Brock in particular becomes a full-on Wake-Up Call Boss in Yellow, because there's simply nothing Pikachu can do to his team—the designers altered the movepools of Mankey and the Nidorans to give the player a way to reasonably beat him. When they revisited the concept in Pokémon Let's Go, they had to retool Pikachu very heavily to make it viable as a starter: buffing its stats, giving it significantly overpowered moves, and handing a whole bunch of other mechanics to the player.
• Many Pokémon Black and White Pokémon that evolve by leveling up have abnormally higher thresholds than their contemporaries in earlier generations. This worked in Black and White when the main story only had these newer Pokémon and the ones that evolved "late" were also initially encountered at high levels in the main story, but in future games with different level curves, they will likely evolve much later than the rest of your team. Some like Larvesta and Tynamo are clear examples of Magikarp Power, but others like Rufflet only evolve at Level 54. This causes issues in later generations, where you can catch a Rufflet on Route 3 on Melemele Island early in the game and get nowhere near evolving it into Braviary until you've reached the Elite Four, or even after the credits and into the postgame. This becomes especially problematic in Scarlet and Violet, where you get access to three good early-game birds right out the gates of Mezagosa (Starly, Rookidee, and Fletchling), all of which evolve into their final forms much earlier than Rufflet.
• For the Battle Tree in Sun and Moon, the player starts out with only Rada as their Multi-Battle partner in the Battle Tree, and she may as well have selected the worst possible selection of Pokémon imaginable. Both her Barbaracle and Hawlucha are vulnerable to the alarmingly common Electric-type, the former being even more so to Grass-type attacks.
• The AI trainers provided in Pokémon Sword and Shield's Max Raid Battles are purposefully underwhelming to encourage playing with real people. Of particular note goes to Alfie's Wobbuffet, Poke Kid Freya's Eevee, and Martin's Solrock. The Wobbuffet, as it is usually meant to be, cannot attack the target directly, and often relies on Counter. The problem is, said target doesn't always target the Wobbuffet, leaving it doing no better than using Splash. Sadly, often when it is attacked, it's doing something else like using Amnesia, or just goes down anyway. The Eevee will never use anything other than Helping Hand despite having 3 attacking moves, which does not help at all when the target has 12 total shields and just needs to be attacked. The Solrock, despite having Psychic, would rather spend its time buffing its stats via Cosmic Power and Rock Polish, which the raid boss will simply reset the next turn. Martin is so widely hated, even Pokémon.com's official Max Raid Battle guide made fun of him and his "darn Solrock". It's notable that, while the CPU trainers in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet's Tera Raid Battles are nothing special, they're easily considered to be way, way better than the CPU raid partners from the previous generation.
• Despite the potential of Pokémon Legends: Arceus giving some Pokémon new forms, a lot of them have turned out underwhelming to use in-game.
  • Hisuian Avalugg gets the short end of the stick. Standard Avalugg's biggest flaw is being a literal Mighty Glacier stat-wise saddled with the worst defensive typing in the game, Ice. Hisuian Avalugg keeps nearly the same stat spread and gives it a dual-typing of Ice/Rock...which is even worse defensively, with six common weaknesses (two of them quadruple) and four uncommon resistances. Its Secret Art Mountain Gale gives it a powerful physical Ice move it was lacking before, but otherwise it's now a physical-oriented version of Aurorus with all the same issues, and Late Character Syndrome makes it a hard sell^note Avalugg and its pre-evolution, Bergmite, only appear in the final area.
  • Like Bergmite and Avalugg above, Hisuian Zorua are also found in the last area of the game. Zorua only spawns in an easy-to-miss hole in the ground in the Bonechill wastes. It's level 26 in an area filled to the brim with mons in the late 40s to early '50s, due to abilities being Dummied Out in this game, can't take proper advantage of its unique typing. Finally like its Unovan counterpart, Hisuian Zoroark has very few options in coverage moves. In fact, it only has ROCK SMASH as coverage for its only weakness (and its only strong non-STAB options are Flamethrower and Sludge Bomb). It doesn't help that it's just as frail as its regular version, and debuts in a game whose combat system often puts Glass Cannon Pokémon at a disadvantage. All these factors make Hisuian Zoroark incredibly hard to use during the main story. Postgame, however, it can be used to great effect against Giratina, especially since the game gives you one chance to catch a decently-levelled Zoroark.
  • Hisuian Arcanine may be relatively easy to get, but it's often a hard sell to keep it on your team. Fire/Rock is not a particularly good defensive typing, rendering it vulnerable to four common attacking types, including double weaknesses to Water and Ground (not helped by the area where Growlithe is found being particularly abundant in water). As such, it's not uncommon to see Arcanine getting nailed repeatedly by super effective hits, especially from Alpha Pokémon. As the final nail in the coffin, there are better Fire- and Rock-types (Cyndaquil, Chimchar, and Rhyhorn to name a few) that can be obtained much earlier.
  • Of all Pokémon, Garchomp. While it's still powerful, the mass move cut and Late Character Syndrome hit the landshark hard; it loses two of its staple moves, Earthquake (which isn't in the game) and Swords Dance (which is in the game but Garchomp can't learn, even with the move being nerfed), and loses access to the newly-buffed Dragon Pulse (which it could learn in previous games). All and all, it's seen as an inferior choice compared to the new Hisuian Goodra, who not only can be obtained much earlier (the second area has an Alpha Sliggoo), but does get Dragon Pulse, making Goodra invaluable against Giratina. Its main niche is being the strongest Dragon-type physical attacker in a game with very few Fairy-types, being able to take advantage of the newly buffed Dragon Claw and the reworked Outrage, but its lack of boosting moves and strong Ground-type physical STAB neuter it enough for it to fall behind.
  • Regigigas is even more of an absolute joke in Hisui than in the present day. It still suffers from Late Character Syndrome and can only be obtained in the postgame, but inexplicably keeps its crippling Slow Start debuff in a game without any Abilities. Add to that the lack of Double Battles or tiered PvP play, the fact that there is no "Restricted Pokémon" list like in the other mainline games when challenging the battle facilities, and the fact that you will have had to have caught Dialga and Palkia earlier,^note which have equally stellar base stats with better typing and no drawback, and you have a contender for the absolute worst Pokémon in the game,^note relative to when it's obtained; of course it's stronger than most Com Mons, but you get said Com Mons at a point in the game where they're actually appropriate, with absolutely no reason to use it at any point.
• Even spin-off titles are not immune to having annoying to use Pokémon. One such example is Cresselia in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers, crossing over with Damsel Scrappy. Not only do you have to escort her to the end of Dark Crater (a frustrating task already with regular Pokémon, and she's a Legendary), but she also has the habit of wandering over lava (Which burns her and ends up wasting your Reviver/Heal Seeds). She's also involved in the final battle against Darkrai, in which she's incapable of doing much of anything to him other than fighting off his Mooks.
• Phione is a Pokémon introduced in Gen IV that can only be obtained by breeding the event-exclusive Manaphy with Ditto. It suffers from the same problem as baby Pokémon, where obtaining one requires already having a better version of itself. Unlike Manaphy, it can't use the very rare Tail Glow or the signature move Heart Swap, and overall offers nothing that you can't get from the common Water-types you pick up while surfing or fishing. It's so disliked that when popular ROM hack creator Drayano60 put out a poll asking which Pokémon should be removed from his then-upcoming Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver hack in favor of including Sylveon, Phione "won" in a landslide.
• Ponyta and Rapidash in Diamond and Pearl. Rapidash's stats aren't terrible, but it doesn't evolve until Level 40 and its best Physical STAB until Level 58 is the Flame Wheel (which has a measly 60 BP). Not helping matters is that this line is the only Fire-Type Pokémon in the Diamond and Pearl Sinnoh Pokédex outside of the Chimchar Starter Mon line, which means those who didn't choose it had no choice but to use Rapidash if they wanted a Fire-Type.
• In addition to already being overshadowed by a myriad of other Water-types, Wiglett and Wugtrio don't have much going for them even in single-player Scarlet and Violet. While Wiglett can be obtained very early on, you have to go pretty far out of your way to find them, while Buizel is a common spawn in the very first area of the game and outclasses Wiglett in pretty much every way imaginable, and Magikarp isn't much harder to find and is much easier to raise in later generations as the experience system means you don't have to switch it in and out anymore. Players who don't stray too far off the beaten path will likely not find a Wiglett until around level 20+, at which point you can easily have a Floatzel or Gyarados instead, both of whom have better stats and movepools than Wugtrio. To make manners worse, one can also find Finizen very close to where Wiglett can be found, which, while requiring multiplayer to evolve at level 38, becomes Palafin, who has a much better movepool and, when transformed into its Hero Form, has base stats on par with a Legendary Pokémon. Even Wugtrio's Secret Art, Triple Dive, is effectively just Aqua Tail divided into three hits, rendering it more vulnerable to contact effects, with no benefits for doing so.

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