GamePress

Does Omastar actually kinda..... suck?

(warning: I wrote a freakin novel. If you don't want to read it, you don't have to!)

With the recent changes, I got excited about Omastar again - I always had a soft spot for the spiny little fossil.

So imagine my excitement when I found a lvl 24 89% IV Omanyte in the wild. I evolved him and got...Water Gun/Hydro Pump.

My reactions since then have gone back and forth between "Holy crap not another Water Gun Hydro Pump" and "Hell yeah I'm going to level this guy up to infinity."

But when I think of where I'd use him...I draw a blank.

After doing a bit of thinking, I'm not sure he's worth powering up. My thoughts below:

1) Hydro Pump Overload. I don't know about you guys, but between all the water Pokemon I have quite a few of these. For fun, I counted. I have 29 Pokemon with this moveset ranging from 1107 to 2706. I try to have them spread out for prestige purposes:

Vape: 7x from 2072 to 2706
Starmie: 7x from 1299 to 1937
Golduck: 9x from 1107 to 1897
Blastoise: 1x at 1281
Seadra: 4x from 1110 to 1522
Omastar: 1x at 1817

2) Does his rock secondary type actually help him? Or hurt him?
So maybe he has a spot if he brings a big type advantage to the table. Let's look.
You're gaining:
- Fire (1x to 2x)
- Normal
- Flying
- Poison
You're losing:
- Grass (1x to 2x)
- Ground
- Steel
- Water
- Fighting

The normal is nice, I guess, for Hyper Beam protection....but the rest is worthless. 2x Fire protection is overkill...and when's the last time you worried about Flying or Poison moves on defense?

Now consider that you're giving up resistance to water (Vaporeon, Gyarados), Steel (Dragonite), Ground (Rhydon, Golem, Snorlax EQ), and Grass (Exeggutor, Venusaur)

Sure looks to me like you're giving up a type advantage vs. almost every top defender in the game. Rhydon, Vaporeon, Snorlax, and Dragonite are all commonly defeated with Vape on attack. Imagine having to worry about what attacks they had?

3) He's mad rare

This is an important point. By the time most people collect enough Omanytes to get at least 3-4 Omastars to get the moves they want, they'll probably have a Pokemon collection like mine filled with Hydro Pumps who get the job done just fine

4) His stats really aren't even all that much better than Golduck or Starmie...

vs. Golduck:
ATK + 16
DEF + 64
STA (- 20)

vs. Starmie:
ATK (-3)
DEF + 43
STA + 20

So in both cases you're giving up about 60 total defensive stats with minimal difference in ATK. As we all probably know, if you dodge, the ATK stat is more impt anyway

5) His stats are worse than Vape's:

He's got 70 less stats than vape with about the same attack.

*Edit::

6) If you normalize his stats for the same cost in dust, then he might actually be worse. Why? Most of us have caught enough Psyduck/Staryu/Eevee/etc. to find at least a few level 28-30 with decent IV's that we evolved and didn't spend a single dust on. The odds you find an Omanyte that fits that description are slim. Chances are most ppl will be powering it up from a hatched egg.

If you take that 75k dust you would have spent going from 20 to 30 powering up your wild-caught Golduck past 30, the stats might even out!

So there it is. If someone actually read to this point and would care to give a counter-argument, I'm all ears!! We all know dust, just like life, is a precious resource!!!

Asked by nugjuice8 years 5 months ago

Report

Answers

Having walked a fair few K to finally get one, I confess that I've barely used mine (admittedly with a dual type moveset).

I won't lie - I've made a special trip 45 min into the city just to check out an Omanyte nest. I was pumped to get the candy to power him up.

But after a few power-up fiascos, I'm doing this crazy new thing where instead of just looking at raw DPS rankings I try to actually think about where I'm going to use him.

I'm having a similar issue with Gengar right now =/

Also, that was part of my point about how rare he is! The odds you get the moveset you want on the first evolution are slim. You can catch 30,40 Psyducks a day until you get what you want.

He was better before they removed the rock quick attack. I agree that a water/water pulse one is good, but worse than vaporeon. I'm not going to power mine up.

Yeah sucks I didn't get one of those in time before the change...

But I'll be honest, even with that quick attack on defense, is it worth it to have a 2x weakness to grass? Everyone makes fun of Gyarados, Dragonite and Rhydon all day b/c of their double weaknesses and how easy it makes them. Not sure why Omastar should get a pass

Well if you were one of those ridiciulously lucky people to get the legacy double Rock moveset, then you can use it against Lapras very well.

Yeah I recently got mine and although it's got about 1900 CP with Water Gun + Hydro Pump, I have a 2729 CP Vaporeon (lvl 31) with Water Gun + Hydro Pump

Honestly I feel the best moveset atm is probably Water Gun + Rock Slide, since the rock coverage is really strong as a typing and more importantly helps with the lapras match up. (Lapras' only full counter is Omastar)

Also with Rock slide, he has a lot better match up against Dragonite than Vaporeon.

In my opinion getting even weaker to grass is fine since Omastar should be used as an offesive Pokémon anyways.

Overall, because of Omastar's weaknesses, it's not the best user of Hydro pump (we all know who that is) but is a decent user of Rock Slide

Yeah, you're right. I guess I've have to give you that...since Lapras only has one hard counter in the whole game, it makes sense that he's bumped up past where he'd normally be. But I still think he's been bumped way too far.

Tthe facts that A) it's a legacy moveset which is the ideal setup, and B) it's only 1-2 movesets out of 6 that are good on a rare Pokemon to begin with, need to balance out his ranking a bit.

I mean c'mon he's ranked above Cloyster on offense? Cloyster matches up well against Dragonite, Exeggutor, and Rhydon with multiple possible movesets, and you can actually find enough to have a few of them.

Ranked above Venusaur with Vine Whip/Solar? Crazy

I just wonder how many have that legacy set though. Can't be many.

Side note:

It's absolutely crazy to me that Omastar is ranked above Venusaur and Cloyster on offense.

I know the guys who run this site do a good job considering real world applications and not just raw stats and dmg output vs. random Pokemon. But I think they fell asleep at the wheel on this one...

His typing is perfect. No weaknesses. He's a mini Lapras

Venusaur is a beast against vaporeon, considering thats the absolute most common defender and usefulness should put him above omastar. I've used Venusaur more than any other since starting this game.

I use him all the time for Prestige I was actually bummed that they raised his CP

When my kids and I take over a Gym and want to prestige it up for 4+

We drop 2 Fire Types in
Go to town with Omastarup to whatever level we want

Then split the fire pokemon up with a Grass & Dump a Water on top

It's still a very unique mon and rated pretty highly as a gym defender. I personally don't have one yet, but if I got as luck as you, I'd surely bring him at least to 2000 CP!

And of course you have loads of amazing WG+HP Vaporeons to attack gyms already, but how boring are they by now?

Hmm
Yes have just realized that I have this moveset a lot of times too. Not as many as you have but about half as many spread out in the same IV range,
I went throughso much trouble to get candy for Omastar evolution. Got Mud shot/Ancient Power twice.
I'm throwing in the towel on Omastar. Thanks for making me see the light.

Omastar has niche skill set that makes it the absolute best prestige building mon against fire types. Before the Arcanine was nerfed I used mine heavily. There really isnt a better mon currently in the game at doing this.
Id hold off on powering that off and look to save candies and try to save Omanyte's that will evolve into trainers at 1300, 1200, 1100, 1000, 900 and maybe one at 3-400. This is the game once you get into the 30s.

This

Omastar is a tank, with its resistance to ice and normal.
I used mine (water gun+rock slide) a couple days ago to prestige in a high level gym: it performed exceptionally well against Snorlax.

Before the CP update, Arcanine was the go to gym defender for players that didn't have a lot of high CP pokemon. Omastar with Water Gun+Hydro Pump was good against that overabundance of Arcanines (at least the ones without buldoze).

Now, Rhydon has taken the place for most ubiquitous gym defender. Omastar is not as good against Rhydon because it is weak to both of Rhydon's fast moves.

Omastar is still a good choice against a Snorlax with Body Slam or Hyper Beam though.