Despite the exellence of Frenzy Plant, I see no situation where Meganium outclasses Venusaur. Venusaur gets a 4 DPS boost between best obtainable grass set and best legacy; that boost applied to Meganium doesn't even reach best obtainable for Venusaur. Their defences are roughly similar, and generally speaking, it's worth risking the mutual weakness of raid bosses for an extra 4 DPS minimum.
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Thinking of the next CD
I know that eevee's event kinda screwed the pattern we all thought there was, but that still does leave a few possible options for whats next, they did have the starters every other month, so if they do that (and this is a if) how good would a frenzy plant meganium be? I know it has (significantly) less attack than Venasaur, but isnt held back in Groudon raids by a poison subtype against mudshot/earthquake or some sets of starmie in raids if it comes back, and could it make meganium a more useful defender?
(Personally I hope it isnt meganium, but are there any other possible ones you guys think/would hope to see?)
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DPS vs MS/EQ Groudon:
VW/FP Venusaur: 15.596
VW/FP Meganium: 11.906
TDO vs MS/EQ Groudon:
VW/FP Venusaur: 262
VW/FP Meganium: 283
Comparable TDO with much lower DPS? Meganium doesn't even register here.
If they continue to run through the starters I'd bet Chikorita would either be the next one or the one after that. If not Chikorita then I'm hoping one of the Gen 3 10k 3-stagers. I'm convinced Eevee's breaking the cycle was only for LGPE promotion, we'd need another curveball CD for me to fully believe anything and everything has CD potential.
Semi-related, I sincerely hope they continue the trend of spreading it across 2 days the way they did with Eevee days as well as give us extended evolution windows for the signature moves. I know a large reason they did so was to handle Espeon/Umbreon walkers but honestly it was incredibly nice having the full 6 hours dedicated purely to catches.
Wow, meganium's stats are just that bad
I Agree, I do hope they skip the gen 2 starters, they only did a special thing with Squirtle because they did take notice of how lackluster it would be (likely only doing Squirtle to complete the original starters trio) and the gen 2 starters would be that 3 times over, as while feraligatr would be good, swampert will be better
Honestly, it's mostly just Meganium that's terrible. Consider these numbers as well:
DPS vs FB/BZ Regice
FS/BB Charizard: 11.961
E/BB Typhlosion: 11.283
TDO vs FB/BZ Regice
FS/BB Charizard: 224.2
E/BB Typhlosion: 293.8
DPS vs MS/SB Groudon
WF/HP Kyogre: 16.534
WF/HC Feraligatr: 16.237 EDIT: Is actually 15.715
WG/HC Blastoise: 13.682
TDO vs MS/SB Groudon
WF/HP Kyogre: 258
WF/HC Feraligatr: 190.2 EDIT: Is actually 184.1
WG/HC Blastoise: 158.9
There's no denying that the Gen 3 starters with community day moves will trump all of these, but until then Typhlosion and Feraligatr provide pretty solid options. Charizard and Typhlosion will have a relationship similar to Moltres and Entei, where the lack of a dual typing helps Typhlosion in some situations. It's easy to overlook Typhlosion's potential since it lacks Fire Spin, but it has the exact same stats as Charizard. Numbers show with BB it doesn't need FS to get close enough.
Feraligatr will have Kyogre-tier DPS, making it a formidable water type glass cannon.
EDIT: I fucked up. The original numbers listed for Feraligatr are with Water Gun/Hydro Cannon, a move combination inaccessible unless they un-legacy Water Gun. With Waterfall it doesn't /quite/ reach Kyogre levels of DPS but is still within a full point of it.
Interesting, I did kinda write of typhlosion (because it does lack firespin) but I didnt know that with hydro cannon, feraligatr would have that level of DPS. Given how potentially good those can be, it would seem likely they'd give a meganium event, but hopefully they'd also consider it isnt that desirable of a pokemon beyond a collectors piece and the event will be more about the secondary effect (like the decreased hatch distance with Squirtle or the 3x dust with eevee) Niantic is taking notice of players concerns and criticism, maybe they will use that and further improve the game
(BTW, where do you get all these numbers? how did you put blast burn and hydro cannon in for those, is there some option for custom moves in the DPS/TDO rankings? And side note, is there any chart form of it, or is that a custom made thing just for raid counters/guides)
Regardless of what extra they do for Chikorita I'd still play for the shiny hunting and whatever bonus they tack onto it.
In the DPS/TDO ranking page you can use the customize tab to add moves to any given species. Just type in the move you want to add, save it, the hit the refresh button below customize and it will reload the chart with your added options. For the specific matchups I just used the drop down tabs, then type in each Pokemon in the search bar to bring up their relevant information.
Playing around with different movesets helps immensely with speculation. It answers pretty much any "what if?" question someone could come up with. The moves tab allows speculation similar to the "Frenzy Punch" and "Waterfall clone" checks covered in the Gen 4 safest bets article.
Keep in mind unreleased legendaries have their raw base stats entered. To get post-nerf information you need to multiply the entered stat by 0.91 and round it to accommodate the 9% nerf.
Sadly, Meganium has awful stats, so even with FP, it won't be making any waves in the meta.
Also, I think it's more difficult now to try and predict what the next CD will be. Technically, Eevee can be considered a starter Mon (I was told that it was in one of the games and will be for the Let's Go: Eevee game), which means they've done two starter CDs in a row now (Squirtle/Eevee).
If they reverted back to the previously observed pattern, then Ralts should be up next, but honestly I think just about any Mon could be a potential CD candidate at this point.
