Arcanine 8/10 ?
The dog has been rated 8/10 since the update which is equivalent to flareon and lower than charizard (8.5) while he's still the best fire mon out there with better stat than charizard and better quick move than flareon.
Is it because you're only using fire type against grass type pkm now, and double resistance makes charizard as tanky as arcanine so he's rated higher despite taking more damage from rock and ice type mons ?
Answers
I totally agree. My Arcanine is still my go-to pure fire type. I like using it much more than my Fireblast Flareon, which now has about 300 more CP after the update. I do love my Charizard, but still consider my Arc above it.
I also question some other ratings. Why is Blastoise rated so highly after its large nerf?
If you find your Arcanine useful why do you care about rating?
In my case, everybody says Machamp is useless, that he has the worst quick move of the game and stuff, he is rated 7.5 in this page, however, I got one with average IV's and performs pretty well against many pokémon including Snorlax and Lapras. Everything depends on your purpose.
I think Arcanine being 8/10 and Charizard being 8.5 has to do with the rise of some ground/rock pokemon e.g. Rhydon/Golem. Charizard's typing provides a weakness to rock, but no weakness to ground (like Arcanine and Flareon) which is more common with the stat rise of Rhy/Golem. Snorlax earthquake has also always been a wildcard vs fires.
I think to be as effective with Flareon you have to dodge more due to its low hp, Arcanine is great for brute attacking where you just don't even care about dodging and spam moves. Arcanine has Fire Fang (superior to Ember in every way) and Arcanine also has the HP to tank most anything.
The rating system tries to take into account the common defenders and I think that's where the 0.5 rating adjustment came from. Vaporeon got buffed by about 10% as well while Arcanine shifted slightly downwards in stats consistent with a lot of other waters, which still don't have many drawbacks on attack.
But the truth is no one's gonna use any fire type pkm against either Golem or Rhydon when choosing gym attacker and putting Fire mons into gym for defending is not a smart choice either since their counters got so much buffed. So I dont think taking neutral damage to ground type makes any difference, and yes Snorlax might be the case.
I think it's quite fair actually, Arcanine now has a lower attack than both Charizard and Flareon. While Charizard have the added advantage of a double resistance against Grass and Bug moves, and those are the Pokémon you usually pit a Fire type against. Flareon have less health than Arcanine but let's face it, neither are tanks nor good at gym defense so they're about equal since Flareon have almost 10% more attack.
Yeah Arcanine has a slightly higher attack than Charizard but it's so small that's negligible, FF is better than Ember but does not offset the difference in attack against Flareon, it does have more health, but if you have to pick which one of the two to use in battle, I would still prefer Arcanine but the difference is small enough that I will choose whichever has the better CP and moveset. Therefore I would agree that Arcanine and Flareon deserves about the same rating, Charizard would be more ideal for the type advantage.
