Initially, I was pretty confused by the whole list, but then I noticed it wasn’t taking into account difficulty to get them. Which isn’t the worst way to tier Nuzlockes, but still, there’s some major issues with this one.
– Drop Dragonite. Is it strong? Sure. It also requires you to be level 55, and you’re not hitting that until the endgame. Once you’re level 55, between badge boosts and effort values, I’m pretty sure anything can do well in the endgame. And prior to that point, it’s Dragonair, which is completely mediocre. Dratini can be helpful if you grind coins and buy one early for Dragon Rage, I guess?
– Drop Lapras. There’s only one in the whole game, it’s level 15, and it’s only available after you’ve beaten Silph Co. By that point, your team should be in the low-mid 30s. You can catch it up, sure, but it shouldn’t be that far above the other Water-types.
– Drop Aerodactyl. It learns literally nothing but Normal STAB and it shows up really late. It’s fast, but you don’t have to be that fast to outspeed most things in Gen 1, and you’re not spoiled for choice when it comes to strong Flying-types or Pokemon who resist Normal (and Aerodactyl’s pretty frail). At the very least, it should be below Dodrio.
– Drop Electrode. It’s fast, sure, but it’s also made of glass and learns nothing but Normal moves by level-up. You have to blow the Thunderbolt TM to give it semi-acceptable offense or rely on Thunder’s shaky accuracy. Being able to blow yourself up is not a good thing in Nuzlockes.
– Drop Magneton. Similar issues to Electrode; it needs Thunderbolt to do anything offensively, but it’s also only showing up in the Power Plant. I think at that point, the only major battle left that really calls for Electric moves is Lorelei and cleaning up assorted Swimmers, and you might as well just teach Thunderbolt to something else.
– Drop Arcanine. You don’t get Fire Blast until Blaine, so either you raise Growlithe all the way to level 40 before evolving it, or you resign yourself to using Ember for 90% of the game. Aside from that problem, Fire-type is a really problematic type in Gen 1; aside from Erika’s Gym, you’re basically only hitting either bug catchers or Pokemon that have Water as a secondary type.
– Drop Weezing. Holy hell, how’d Weezing get into A-tier? Sure, it’s tanky and it has some utility due to being able to screw with some trainer AIs, but its offensive learnset basically consists of Sludge and Normal STAB. Are you really going to blow your Thunderbolt TM on Weezing? Not to mention, it only shows up pretty late and it doesn’t have any particularly good matchups against the remaining Gym Leaders and Elite Four (barring aforementioned AI-screwery, which any Poison-type can do).
– Drop Scyther. Again, how did it get up there? Sure, you can pick it up if you grind for coins, but a non-STAB Slash is the only thing it has going for it (it learns Swords Dance, but those two things don’t synergize). Its typing stuffs Fighting and Grass-types but basically nothing else of value and gives it some tricky weaknesses. There’s no way this thing is just below Tauros and right above Mr. Mime and Charizard; hell, Charizard has Slash, too, along with Flamethrower and some pretty great TMs.
– Drop all the Fighting-types (barring Poliwrath, that’s a good spot for it). Submission is a TM, so you don’t need it if you want to hit Normal-types super-effectively (and it has shaky accuracy), and Fighting doesn’t resist anything of importance. The Hitmons have terrible Special, as well.
– Drop Pidgeot. If you’re not taking availability into account, then Pidgeot suffers hard; its movepool basically doesn’t exist apart from Normal STAB and none of its stats stand out. At the very least, the gap between it and Fearow and Dodrio, who blow it out of the water, should be a lot larger.
– Drop Marowak. This thing is basically identical to Graveler stat-wise, minus the Rock typing that lets Graveler wall a huge chunk of the game (sure, it gives it Water and Grass weaknesses, but those stuff Marowak pretty hard as well). I have no idea why it’d go above Sandslash, which evolves sooner, has generally better stats, and can learn Slash naturally and Rock Slide and Swords Dance via TM. Sure, Bonemerang exists, but only at level 48, so you still probably need to teach Marowak a Ground-type move.
– Raise Mr. Mime. You can obtain this thing at any time you’ve obtained an Abra, at which you can then head over to Route 2 and trade for it. For that price, you immediately gain access to a Pokemon with similar stats to Kadabra (losing some of the raw Special but gaining notably better bulk), along with being a trade (meaning it gains XP faster). You could argue it’s worse than Kadabra, but if we’re discounting difficulty-to-obtain, then I really don’t see why it’d go below any of the other Psychic-types in A-tier.
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