#43 - #45 + #182: Oddish, Gloom, Vileplume and Bellossom

Oh good! A nice happy generation one family which gained a fourth member, making it a divergent series... Way to complicate this, Pokemon people...

So we start with Oddish. Being brief you can say that the stats aren't bad, or at least the special stats aren't bad: 75 special attack with 65 special defence, actually rather impressive for an unevolved Pokemon. The thing is, the speed is poor, HP is just 45, defence is 55 and attack is 50, so make of this what you will... Abilities wise, the poor speed is almost made up for by chlorophyll, which doubles speed in the sun (but you carry the risk of being hit by fire moves which will kill your grass/poison-type self), but you can also get run away, which is pointless...

Looks rather happy and cute...

Since there are four Pokemon to discuss here I'm going to be brief on the moves lists (which maybe I should carry over a bit more to other posts). By level up, all you get are special moves and status moves, so this negates the comparatively poor attack. You evolve at level 21 into Gloom, so I'm going to cut off there: you get very little... You start with absorb (basically you drain some of their health, but not much since this is the weakest of the absorb/mega drain/giga drain line of moves), you can also get sweet scent (improves your accuracy, and in the field entices wild Pokemon, forcing a horde battle if available). Acid is available as a weak STAB poison attack, you also get poison powder, sleep powder and stun spore (all 75% accuracy) and then mega drain, which is double the power of absorb. You do get some better moves down the line, such as giga drain, moon blast and petal dance.

From the TM list, venoshock isn't a bad option (STAB and special correlation), hidden power could be useful as coverage, sunny day sits well with chlorophyll and solar beam (if you can survive, that is), otherwise you could take a safer option with energy ball. Round is a possibility, especially in double battles, and if you don't want venoshock then you can take sludge bomb. Grass knot would also be viable against heavier enemies. There are a lot of the standard TM moves that every Pokemon seems to learn, like rest/return/substitute/blah, but here you may choose infestation as a bug-type move that deals sustained damage. HM wise, you get cut, despite their being no evidence Oddish has anything to cut with... Moves via breeding tend to be on the physical side and thus not really that great since they also carry lower base power than the TM moves you could go with. Tutor-wise, giga drain is available, so if you don't want to level to it, then here it is as one of your better STAB options.

Level 21, you get Gloom... Nice cheery name for a Pokemon that doesn't see that much of an improvement on its predecessor. The major change is that the hidden ability is replaced by stench, which reduces the wild encounter rate and also adds the chance of flinching the opponent when contact is made, so not dreadful, really...

I guess Oddish went into an emo-phase?

So we have small improvements across the stats and a middling ability replacing a useless one. From here you will probably go for the moves you didn't stretch to with Oddish (that is you evolved and now can go for them if you wish), so giga drain is one you should really consider. Moonlight is a reasonable healing move that has different powers dependent on the weather (clear bestows 1/2, sunny gives 2/3s and other weathers only 1/4), but unless you're going with a sunshine set to buff speed and give spammable solar beams then giga drain is better since it's reliable and covers for solar beam quite nicely. Petal blizzard is a high damage physical attack, but petal dance is a harder hitting special attack with a twist: it hits for a few turns at 120 base before confusing you.

TM wise there is nothing else new, but with the tutor you could take seed bomb or drain punch if you randomly decide to focus on the weaker physical attack side of things.

So... which stone will you use: leaf or sun? Let's go with leaf first, shall we? Say hello to Vileplume, where the stats look great, other than 50 speed. 110 special attack, 90 special defence, 85 defence, 80 attack and 75 HP are all pretty good, and you get to keep chlorophyll and the poison/grass-typing. Stench as the hidden ability is replaces by effect spore, which has a 30% chance of causing an affliction on a Pokemon that makes contact.

Looks shady... HAHA!

If you've chosen this route, I hope you got all the moves you wanted, since the only new one from level-up is solar beam, with the vast majority of earlier moves no unavailable. Further to this, nothing of real consequence is added to TMs or tutors.

If, rather than the leaf stone, you took the sun stone, you will get Bellossom, which doesn't carry the damage output, but defends better, with stats reading 75HP, 80 attack/90 special attack, 95 defence/100 special defence and still 50 speed. You lose the poison-typing to go with the friendlier name, so now you're pure grass, for better or worse. You keep chlorophyll, but you replace stench with healer as the hidden ability. Healer carries a 30% chance of healing an adjacent ally's status conditions at the end of each turn in multi-battles. So chlorophyll may be wiser... maybe...

That reminds me to go to that limbo competition...

In place of solar beam by level-up (pretty much everything else by level has been covered in the previous evolutions and the list looks the same as the contracted one for Vileplume bar the last) you get leaf storm, which hits a little harder than solar beam without the need for charging. The issue with leaf storm is that it drops your special attack by a whopping two stages, so this is pretty ruinous unless you can get it on a contrary Pokemon. The TM and tutor lists have basically been covered, and are rather uninspired, sadly.

All in all, this isn't a bad little run of Pokemon. For Oddish and Gloom, they offer decent damage outputs with more than acceptable defence to cover for the poor speed: stick them with eviolite and you could do pretty well... Moving to the top table duo, and things get more complicated. If you want to pull off sunny day, run with a heat stone and it will extend it from 5 to 8 turns, but this may be better on a support Pokemon. You could go choice items for more power or speed (but without the sun the speed will still suck), or you could go life orb, which works wonders with giga drain, since you can patch over the previous turn's recoil. Another option is assault vest if you don't want to use status afflictions and rely on just pure damage output. The choice is yours, but forgive the slightly frail typing...

(All artwork presented by Ken Sugimori, taken from the Bulbapedia image archives)