Torkoal is definitely one of the rarer Pokémon out there. It’s regional to Southeast Asia (primarily India). That makes it relatively difficult to obtain for the majority of players. Admittedly, that’s not the worst thing, as it isn’t super useful right now. But is it gonna be like that forever? What could actually happen to buff up the smoking tortoise? Let’s take a look!
To start with, let's set some ground rules for how we're going to go about theorycrafting our target Pokemon:
- We cannot change a Pokemon's typing or stats
- We cannot imagine an entirely new feature to the game that would fix them. For example: no unofficial Mega Evolutions or regional variants, and no unreleased features like Dynamax or Z-Moves.
- We cannot add new moves to their existing moveset that they cannot learn in the main series or make moves that don't exist in the main series
- We can theorycraft new moves based on currently unused moves that are in their main series movesets
- We can add new effects that exist, such as theorycrafting them as Shadow Pokemon
- We can change the effects of existing moves, though we will also need to look at the meta implications of this change if we do so
- The cardinal rule: we can't do anything that Niantic can't do given current game precedent
With that out of the way, let's get to it!
PvP Performance
What Is Torkoal?
Torkoal is a Fire-type with bulk comparable to Whiscash, Snorlax, and Jellicent. With a max CP of 2,093 (or 2,366 at Level 50), it’s mostly confined to Great League. It’s current moveset is:
Fast: Ember/Fire Spin
Charged: Overheat/Earthquake/Solar Beam
At the moment, if you ever see a Torkoal, it’ll run Fire Spin + Overheat, and then either Earthquake or Solar Beam. Fire Spin is mandatory for additional energy generation, and Overheat’s just a powerful move. Earthquake is cheaper if you want to have a chance at baiting before firing off Earthquakes, whereas Solar Beam gives some real threat against Water-types.
What’s Wrong?
Well, a couple things. As a Fire-type, Torkoal is necessarily kinda poorly positioned in the Great League metagame. Azumarill’s on every other team, Galarian Stunfisk hits you hard, and that’s not even mentioning things like Swampert, Politoed, Jellicent, and Altaria which are all super common. That’s a large part of why even theoretically powerful Fire-types like Ninetales don’t show up often. However, Torkoal has even more issues than that! Look at its moveset!
While it’s very bulky, it’s also incredibly slow. Obligatory tortoise joke goes here. Fire Spin’s energy generation is, at best, slightly above average at 3.33 Energy Per Turn. Then pair that with moves starting at 55 Energy (Overheat), and then going to 65 Energy (Earthquake) or 80 energy (Solar Beam) and you’ve got a Pokémon that can be hard countered by “I have a shield left.” This problem gets even worse when you note that Overheat doesn’t even function as a bait move, since it lowers your Attack by 2 stages on use.
How do we fix it?
Luckily, Torkoal is far from its peak performance. Let’s start with fast moves.
Iron Tail, Mud Slap, Rock Smash, Incinerate
Incinerate, other than the obvious “It’s a 5-turn move” downside, is a strict upgrade over Fire Spin. Instead of 3.33 EPT, you get a full 4 EPT. That’s significant, and would allow Torkoal to leverage its expensive moveset much more easily. But why stop there? Let’s look at its charged moves too!
Flame Wheel, Body Slam, Flamethrower, Heat Wave, Hyper Beam, Giga Impact, Rock Slide, Weather Ball, Rock Tomb, Bulldoze, Fire Blast, Sludge Bomb, Superpower, Gyro Ball, Earth Power, Stone Edge, Ancient Power, Skull Bash, Flame Charge
Yeah. That’s a lot, so let’s try to look at the interesting ones. Weather Ball would be a massive, massive upgrade for Torkoal. Not only is it one of the best moves in the game, being incredibly spammy for solid damage, but it also synergizes incredibly well with Torkoal’s more expensive moves! In all honesty, just giving Torkoal Weather Ball would probably be enough to satisfy Torkoal players (all 5 of us), but let’s take a break here for a performance checkpoint before moving onto some other charged move options.
Incinerate + Weather Ball is a strict upgrade over Fire Spin + Overheat, no matter which secondary move you run. Going straight Weather Ball, you’ve got notable wins against Deoxys-Defense, Galvantula, Greedent, Lickitung, Scrafty, Trevenant, and Umbreon in the 1shield. On top of that, you even beat Toxicroak, Sableye, and Galarian Stunfisk in the 2shield!
If you add Earthquake on top of that, you beat Galarian Stunfisk and Bastiodon (with bait, and it’s pretty easy to flip with energy).
If you run Solar Beam instead of Earthquake, you still have a shot at beating Galarian Stunfisk in the 1shield, and you have a shot at beating even Hydro Pump Azu sets (though it’s both bait- and IV-dependent).
WB+EQ enables Torkoal to beat Galarian Stunfisk in the 2s straight WB, and in the 1s with one WB bait and an EQ. WB+SB lets you beat even IB/HP Azumarill and Whiscash in the 1-1 and 2-2 shield scenarios (with baits, of course)!
While that’s definitely about as good as it might get, there are still a few other fun options! Rock Slide helps Torkoal to handle Flying-types and any other Fires it might come up against. Earth Power’s lower energy cost makes it slightly less bait-dependent than Earthquake, but the reduced damage does make your Bastiodon and Alolan Marowak matchups meaningfully worse. Body Slam is a great move, but it doesn’t do anything special that Weather Ball/Earthquake Torkoal doesn’t. Superpower is interesting, and has potential against Bastiodon, but generally doesn’t stand out when you already have good anti-Steel coverage, and it’s not worth getting totally walled out by Azumarill.
All things considered, it seems like Incinerate + Weather Ball/Earthquake Torkoal has the best performance possible, though the threat of Solar Beam is pretty meaningful. That means, to take off, all Torkoal would need is two moves. Would it be at the top of the Great League meta? Probably not. It’s still hard out here for a Fire-type. But given that, at the moment, Torkoal isn’t even that good in the limited formats where Fire is playable, the mon could absolutely use the help!
Hidden Potential Rating:
Should Torkoal even be buffed?
As stated previously, Torkoal is not only a regional, but it’s an exceptionally rare regional. This adds a moral question to making it stronger. Since it’s not available to everyone, buffing Torkoal just adds additional imbalance to the game between who happens to have one and who doesn’t, and that’s not fair. This isn’t the first time this has come up, either. Niantic has historically shown an aversion to buffing up any regional Pokémon. The closest we got was back in March of 2019. When Leaf Tornado was announced as an addition to the game, Tropius was initially on the list of Pokémon intended to receive it. However, that got walked back before the initial announcement after community outrage. And frankly, that outrage is entirely fair! Tropius’s accessibility was increased significantly thanks to Montreal Safari Zone attendees having access to plenty of them, and being able to bring them back to their local communities. However, even this doesn’t account for the fact that there are many players who just don’t have Tropius through no fault of their own, and are at a disadvantage in PvP as a result. Maybe if the buff comes along with an event where Torkoal is globally accessible, it would be fair, but...probably not like this.
PvE Performance
What’s Torkoal?
Torkoal is a regional Pokemon that you probably don’t have, so that’s all that needs to be said!
…
...okay, fine. We’ll talk about Torkoal in the PvE meta. Torkoal is a mono-Fire type Pokemon that has been forced to live with a low 151 base attack stat. For reference, that is less than what Shedinja has to offer. Let that sink in for just a moment.
Born under the shadow of titans such as Shadow Moltres and Reshiram, poor Torkoal was never going to be a great Pokemon in raids. Or good. Or mediocre. Or acceptable. Even “bad” is looking like a weak term for Torkoal. However, it’s not all doom, gloom, and non-viability for poor Torkoal. It can sit atop a gym as a sign that says “look at me, I have a regional Pokemon!” while taking place in a meta as decayed as it is.
In short: yeah, Torkoal is bad.
What’s wrong?
Honestly, Torkoal only has one problem in Pokemon Go:
- Its attack stat has more in common with personal hygiene in the dark ages than it does other Fire Types
...but, sadly, this is arguably the most important metric in the game in deducing the utility of a Pokemon in raids.
How do we fix it?
We don’t.
Seriously: I could make a joke here about fusing Giga Impact and Weather Ball like we did for our Unown April Fool’s article, but no realistic precedent in the entire game can fix poor Torkoal.
Here are the top Fire Types in the game. Paragons of heat and light, all prepared to rise to any occasion and incinerate the opposition.
...and here’s Torkoal, unable to spark a pile of dehydrated straw and newspaper in the middle of a forest fire. We could give this poor thing a Fire Type Hydro Cannon clone and a Shadow Forme and it still wouldn’t be worth using. Let the poor tortoise bury itself and stop trying to make it a thing in raids. Please.
Hidden Potential Rating:
Closing
They say that slow and steady wins the race. By that logic, Torkoal is a safe bet because OH BOY has it been SLOW up to this point! While Torkoal’s attack stat isn’t anywhere near enough to let it do anything in the raid meta, it certainly has a lot of room to grow in PvP. It’s certainly questionable as to whether or not it’s fair to buff it up. However, if nothing else, it’s certainly nice to know that the potential is there.
