GSC In-Game Tier List

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Molk

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Alright so i'm double posting because DHR said i could on discord, i'm basically finished with Pokemon Silver except for Red, who i'm currently grinding my Pokemon up to level 60ish for right now. Here are some of my thoughts.

Girafarig is amazing. I honestly considered it my strongest team member throughout the game overall, and that's without me completely optimizing its moveset by waiting for return, giving it shadow ball, etc. You have to make a detour to get it as early as possible, but that detour only takes about 5 minutes to be honest and it couldn't possibly come at a better time. Level 15 is a fairly decent catch level in my opinion, and it's extremely easy to grind up to the rest of your team since it comes with Confusion and Stomp which are decent BP moves for that point in the game. It also has a pretty much unloseable matchup vs the entirety of the Ecruteak gym thanks to its Ghost immunity and super effective Confusion against all the Gastly/Haunter/Gengar there. By the time you beat Morty, which you will easily, it'll be on par with the rest of your team.

The only coverage Girafarig ever really needs in my opinion is its STABs, since you're going to encounter very little throughout the game that actually resists this combination other than random Steel-types, and outside of boss fights the only one you're going to be seeing is Magnemite, which is frail anyway. This STAB combination makes Girafarig a great route cleaner, and even though its actual stats aren't the best, its damage output never started to falter for me, since whenever it seemed that might become a problem Girafarig got a stronger STAB move to keep up.

Girafarig also has very strong matchups, with its only noticeably bad matchup being Jasmine in my opinion. It will be able to do damage against basically every notable trainer, and has good matchups against a bunch such as Team Rocket, Silver (sans Magneton), Koga (sans Forretress), Chuck, and Bruno, among others.

Because of all this, i think Girafarig deserves to be bumped up to A rank, it was a powerful and consistent member of my team throughout my entire playthrough that was easy to find and obtain and required absolutely no babying, if that's not an A rank mon, i don't know what is.

Speaking of babying, Swinub requires a lot of it. I obtained my Swinub as soon as i could get to Ice Path, and it was basically deadweight until it evolved into Piloswine. Even outside of having to level it up, Swinub's stats were so low that it had trouble standing up to anything in the Team Rocket Radio Tower except very frail and/or Ice weak Pokemon, and even that's considering i specifically saved the Icy Wind TM from Pryce for it. Once Swinub evolved, it started pulling its weight more, but that required me spending two and eventually three TMs on it (Icy Wind, Blizzard, and Earthquake). The payoff for all of this effort was decent (for example, Piloswine trucked through at least half of my first elite four run for me by itself), but i don't think it's worth the costs of getting it to that level unless you're a really big Piloswine fan.

Kanto exclusive Pokemon aren't thought of very highly here because of their late availability and usually low catch levels, but i want to vouch for Houndour as one you *might* want to pick up. It's available right as you leave the S.S Aqua, and while it's underleveled, it didn't take too long for it to get to a high enough level for it to start putting in work for the team. Sabrina's gym is right next to the route where you catch it, and if you want to get cheesy even an underleveled Houndour can put in work against her because her Mr. Mime and Alakazam can't damage it at all except Alakazam's Future Sight which it never used in my exp. I decided to go through Cycling Road to get to Janine immediately after Sabrina, skipping Erika, and by the time i beat Janine it had already caught up enough that i dumped the Exp. Share iirc. From there Houndoom became an excellent route cleaner and soon enough it was like it had been there the whole time. Because of this, i think Houndour might need a bump, being Kanto exclusive definitely isn't a *good* thing, but imo it's one of the best Pokemon you can possibly pick up there, and ranking it alongside Pokemon like Smeargle, Tyrogue, and Yanma is a crime.
 
Alright so i'm double posting because DHR said i could on discord, i'm basically finished with Pokemon Silver except for Red, who i'm currently grinding my Pokemon up to level 60ish for right now. Here are some of my thoughts.

Girafarig is amazing. I honestly considered it my strongest team member throughout the game overall, and that's without me completely optimizing its moveset by waiting for return, giving it shadow ball, etc. You have to make a detour to get it as early as possible, but that detour only takes about 5 minutes to be honest and it couldn't possibly come at a better time. Level 15 is a fairly decent catch level in my opinion, and it's extremely easy to grind up to the rest of your team since it comes with Confusion and Stomp which are decent BP moves for that point in the game. It also has a pretty much unloseable matchup vs the entirety of the Ecruteak gym thanks to its Ghost immunity and super effective Confusion against all the Gastly/Haunter/Gengar there. By the time you beat Morty, which you will easily, it'll be on par with the rest of your team.

The only coverage Girafarig ever really needs in my opinion is its STABs, since you're going to encounter very little throughout the game that actually resists this combination other than random Steel-types, and outside of boss fights the only one you're going to be seeing is Magnemite, which is frail anyway. This STAB combination makes Girafarig a great route cleaner, and even though its actual stats aren't the best, its damage output never started to falter for me, since whenever it seemed that might become a problem Girafarig got a stronger STAB move to keep up.

Girafarig also has very strong matchups, with its only noticeably bad matchup being Jasmine in my opinion. It will be able to do damage against basically every notable trainer, and has good matchups against a bunch such as Team Rocket, Silver (sans Magneton), Koga (sans Forretress), Chuck, and Bruno, among others.

Because of all this, i think Girafarig deserves to be bumped up to A rank, it was a powerful and consistent member of my team throughout my entire playthrough that was easy to find and obtain and required absolutely no babying, if that's not an A rank mon, i don't know what is.

Speaking of babying, Swinub requires a lot of it. I obtained my Swinub as soon as i could get to Ice Path, and it was basically deadweight until it evolved into Piloswine. Even outside of having to level it up, Swinub's stats were so low that it had trouble standing up to anything in the Team Rocket Radio Tower except very frail and/or Ice weak Pokemon, and even that's considering i specifically saved the Icy Wind TM from Pryce for it. Once Swinub evolved, it started pulling its weight more, but that required me spending two and eventually three TMs on it (Icy Wind, Blizzard, and Earthquake). The payoff for all of this effort was decent (for example, Piloswine trucked through at least half of my first elite four run for me by itself), but i don't think it's worth the costs of getting it to that level unless you're a really big Piloswine fan.

Kanto exclusive Pokemon aren't thought of very highly here because of their late availability and usually low catch levels, but i want to vouch for Houndour as one you *might* want to pick up. It's available right as you leave the S.S Aqua, and while it's underleveled, it didn't take too long for it to get to a high enough level for it to start putting in work for the team. Sabrina's gym is right next to the route where you catch it, and if you want to get cheesy even an underleveled Houndour can put in work against her because her Mr. Mime and Alakazam can't damage it at all except Alakazam's Future Sight which it never used in my exp. I decided to go through Cycling Road to get to Janine immediately after Sabrina, skipping Erika, and by the time i beat Janine it had already caught up enough that i dumped the Exp. Share iirc. From there Houndoom became an excellent route cleaner and soon enough it was like it had been there the whole time. Because of this, i think Houndour might need a bump, being Kanto exclusive definitely isn't a *good* thing, but imo it's one of the best Pokemon you can possibly pick up there, and ranking it alongside Pokemon like Smeargle, Tyrogue, and Yanma is a crime.
I gotta add that Girafarig also has a great matchup against Morty. It's a pretty solid mon, shame Psybeam comes way too late and Psychic is a Kanto TM, but unlike other Psychics that suffer from the same issue, Girafarig has its normal STAB to fall back on and Shadow Ball for some coverage.

Thanks for reminding me of it, I'll try it out the next time I play GSC.
 

Molk

Godlike Usmash
is a Top Tutor Alumnusis a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnus
I gotta add that Girafarig also has a great matchup against Morty. It's a pretty solid mon, shame Psybeam comes way too late and Psychic is a Kanto TM, but unlike other Psychics that suffer from the same issue, Girafarig has its normal STAB to fall back on and Shadow Ball for some coverage.

Thanks for reminding me of it, I'll try it out the next time I play GSC.
The funny thing about it is that Girafarig's unique type combination/moveset meant it actually played a lot like a Dark-type at times, while it could put in work in pretty much every match the ghost immunity and psychic-type resist meant that it ended up having very similar specific targets to what you'd normally use a Dark-type for.

When a Normal/Psychic-type is the best "Dark-type" you can get before Kanto you know options are limited.
 
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