Blaziken or Machamp
I have been wondering which is the best fighting type pokemon in the game right now.
Blaziken boasts a very high attack stat while Machamp despite having lower attack, its defence and stamina is needed to be mentioned.
I just got myself a good IV Blaziken with move set Fire spin+Overheat, so I want to know is it worth using TM to change or leave it be.
Answers
Breloom's slightly higher attack doesn't make enough of a difference, it only has 6 more Attack and its Defense and Stamina are both notably lower, as such there is not really a situation where Breloom will outperform a Machamp, except maybe attacking a fully demotivated weak defender. And while Hariyama's Attack is a fair margin lower than both and even with a lower Defense stat, it's Stamina is monstrously higher (greater than 100 more than Machamp), giving it a greater TDO rating than Machamp in a few circumstances.
32 more Attack coupled with 168 less HP, does that really seem like Breloom will do more damage before it faints? Again, maybe against a gym defender that has lost all of its motivation, thus making the higher DPS vs. survivability more of a factor, but any raid boss will kill a Breloom before it can do more damage than a Champ or Hariyama.
Think about it this way, is it ever more worth it to use a Starmie instead of a Vaporeon? They have the same best moveset and Starmie has the higher DPS of the two, but the tankiness of Vaporeon ensures it will be more useful in essentially every scenario, and though the stat comparison between Breloom and Hariyama isn't exactly the same, it is quite similar.
The only situation I can see where it wouldn't be a poor choice is if you are in an overtly large raid group and you lead your team with the higher DPS mon, they'll go down quickly, but increase your damage contribution. And even then, it's unlikely having a full team of the glass cannons would be a good idea.
RIGHT after the gen 3 update, I discovered that a local park had suddenly shifted to a Torchic nest. I am living in a place where Machop is very rare and my local raid group rarely tackles Machamp. On top of that, I cannot yet solo Machamp raids (soon...), So my ONLY worthwhile machamp is my 89%. This is why I sort of went insane when I caught a 91% 15 atk Torchic. I spent days farming Torchics and spent nearly all of my stardust, but in the end, I got a lv36.5 double fighting Blaziken.
I speak from experience with this one: it may not be as good as Machamp, but its still worthwhile as a 2nd choice. I do not regret my choice (despite finding a 100% Makuhita not long after....)
