Pseudo Legendaries Kind of Suck, Actually

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Credits: Craig Livingstone (Production), Weebra (Editing)

[shinyflygon]

16:30 There is another drawback. The catch rate is 3. Beldum's line is tied for the lowest catch rate in the game and the lowest of all non-legendaries. Its so annoying trying to catch it.

[BuffoFesss]

Little correction on Gible in Diamond and Pearl: you also need strength, the boulders were removed in Platinum to make the cave accessable early. Also in the same cave you can find earthquake soooo...

Edit: Also you forgot to include Gabite in Platinum, it can be caught in the Victory Road

[kagari]

Gen 1 dragon: my only dragon move does 40 flat damage

[deoxsus]

I recently played Y, and had no intention of running Goodra, because I've never really liked it. But then the game decided to give me a shiny, modest Goomy, and I was suddenly Goodra-pilled. I definitely gained more appreciation for it, after using it. It's a good general special attack soaker, even with no SP def investment

[Arbok]

The modern philosophy of late-game, low-investment Pseudos has another fundamental problem: if you catch them just a few levels before their final evolution, then what's the point of the other two stages? Even if we accept that it should be a multi-stage Pokémon, one of the three stages is going to go basically completely unused—either you catch it in the middle-stage (ignoring the first), or you catch it so late in the first that it's going to blow through that in a single level.

Sure, the earlier games' Pseudos were more of a time-sink than a worthwhile investment, but their first and second stages of evolution actually felt like meaningful checkpoints on the long grind... meanwhile, for newer Pseudo-Legendaries, that three-form evolutionary line feels like a vestigial holdover from early designs where the grind was meant to actually matter.

Additionally, some of the Pseudos (Dreepy, in particular) evolve so late and are so bad in their first form that even trading them in to a new file isn't worth it, as they're basically unusable until they evolve.

[tragicallyhypno]

You know you're watching a Canadian when YouTube subtitles "out" with "oat"

[lvlVaporeon]

Imagine raising a garchomp and realizing when you finally evolve it, it does not naturally learn earthquake.

Truely a gamefreak moment.

[Chronobus]

1. Collect all 15 rare candies
2. Collect all gym badges
3. Go to Meteor falls and go to Bagon room
4. Find a level 35 Bagon and catch it
5. Use all 15 rare candies on Bagon
6. Bada-bing, you got yourself a nice level 50 Salamence

[rjante]

Level 48 to get a fully-evolved psuedo is so nice.

[darkfiredragon]

One other thing that hurts Goodra's viability in XY is the presence of a 5% chance swooping encounter Hydreigon at lv 59 in Victory Road; you just throw a few TMs on it and the mans is ready to go.
Between being faster and stronger offensively, actually having a secondary type plus Levitate, actually having higher physical bulk than Goodra, learning a setup move in Work Up - even if it's not the best, but at least it has the option - and U-Turn to get out of bad matchups without completely forfeiting your turn... yeah don't bother with Goodra (which is sad, justice for Kalosian blob dragon).

Edit: oh yeah, this is without even mentioning the 20% chance to find Gible once you reach Route 13.

[retwerd]

Y’know, I’m now realizing I’ve never used a Pseudo as part of my playthrough team.

[smackjack]

I didn’t think about it, but your point on Garchomp is right. It feels like every member of the line gets to shine at some point or another. They are on par and competent with the teams they face. More early access to Psuedo legendaries would help a ton. Platinum Garchomp and Goodra-H are the only two I can think of with this trait, helps their usefulness stick out in my mind

[ktosmiy]

I always thought that the purpose of pseudo-legendaries is to be a late-game boss.

Think about it, in original R/B/Y Lance as a decoy final boss is the only trainer in the game that have access to pseudo-legendary that is also a dragon type. Unless you were lucky in Safari Zone, you didn't catched Dratini and in 90's you couldn't just check in the internet what dragon type is, so you basically had to figured it out on your own.

Dragon resist Fire, Water, Grass and Electric - ensuring your starter will be countered. You'll probably had to experiment a lot with types to figure out that ice beat dragons. Combine unique type with very high base stats and you get a very difficult obstacle to overcome.

Just like Onyx, Dragonite was never designed to be seriously used in normal playthrough. It was designed as signature pokemon filling role of the boss for you to defeat.

[thalmoragent]

*Tyrannitar is 100% just an objectively awesome Pseudo Legendary.*

[xXFoiXx]

So what I learned from this is that nobody but me does the battle frontier when playing emerald

[The_Clorox_Bleach]

SmithPlays: "We need something with a zero to hero arc."

Goomy: 😃

SmithPlays: "Not you."

[Domo_]

Side note, those fan made Gen 5 style sprites for the Dragapult and Baxcalibur are so perfect and look authentic like you would see them in black and white. Makes me wish they would go back to that, so much more personality

[aGemInI]

Garchomp’s debut in Gen4 was so busted that it banned to Smogon’s UBERS.

Moreover, it’s the only Dragon type on this list who CANNOT learn DRAGON DANCE.

🦈 🐐

[ivanbluecool]

Honestly they should do more of those wild low level final evolution salamance again. I think that's pretty cool to reward players with a pseudo at a low level to play with.

I'd love to see Metagross running around.

[Spiderpig]

No mention of the Alolan appearance of Beldum when it's actually different than it was in B2W2 due to actually having something resembling that "zero to hero" arc you were talking about? Like yeah, Salamence is there, but it feels weird to not even mention it.