#118+ #119: Goldeen and Seaking

I like fish, and not just as food. I also got a laugh out of the 'Seaking! F@@@ Yeah!' thing for about 10 minutes. The question we should now ask is whether it was worth that?

Goldeen is not worth that level of excitement, really, but it actually isn't too bad: far better than I ever remember in terms of stats. 67 attack, 60 defence, 50 special defence and 63 speed aren't dreadful, but reasonably ok for a first evolution. The downsides are that it only evolves once, so you should get more, and the HP is only 45, with 35 special attack. Since you're basically a goldfish, this is a water-type Pokemon, with the abilities water veil (prevents you from being burned), swift swim (speed doubles in rain) and the hidden ability lightning rod. Lightning rod is interesting enough to get its own sentence, since it grants electric immunity, which will be your most common threat, and also draws in electric attacks in multi-battles, and each time the Pokemon is hit with an electric attack, it will receive a one stage boost to its special attack, which is a shame, since the special attack here is in the toilet, so to physical attack would be much preferable. It's still cool for the immunity and the multi-battle focus, so this with swift swim could be awesome.

Remember, if your goldfish has a horn, take it to the vets...

Straight into the moveset we get tail whip (lowers the foe's defence) and water sport (lowers the damage taken from fire moves for your team), both of which make sense, but peck, a physical flying type move (base 35 with no extra effect) shows up out of nowhere. Never mind, as we charge on to supersonic (confuses the foe), horn attack (normal physical base 65), flail (haven't defined in a while: normal physical that hits harder the less %HP the user has), and then water pulse (base 60 special water with a chance to confuse). Keeping on trucking on, you can nab aqua ring (basically like a leftovers that can be baton passed), fury attack (base 15 that hits up to 5 times as normal physical), and agility. You can also pick up waterfall (water physical base 80 with a chance to flinch and lets you ride up waterfalls around the world).

If you haven't evolved yet, you can also nab horn drill (OHKO move that only hits Pokemon of a lower level than the user, with greater accuracy the lower level the foe is compared to you), soak (changes the foe's type to water), and megahorn (base 120 bug-type physical move with 5PP and 85 accuracy, and nothing else).

Along with the standard moves, you can nab things like blizzard and ice beam from TMs, along with scald, poison jab, surf, dive and secret power. So basically just the normally available moves and some filler that is of the wrong inclination (more special than physical). You can, however, breed in aqua tail (base 90 water physical) for a little more oomph. You can also chain in haze, body slam and mud shot, as well as routinely breeding in hydro pump, mud slap, mud sport (worthless if you have lightning rod), psybeam, signal beam and the recoil move skull bash. If you skip down to the tutor, they can offer aqua tail, bounce, drill run, icy wind, knock off, signal beam, snore and water pulse.

You evolve by level at level 32 into Seaking. Go on, yell it now, bonus points for being in public. With the new name comes 80HP, 92 attack, a disappointingly small increase to defence up to 65 (from 60), 65 special attack (still underwhelming), 80 special defence, and another depressingly small boost to the speed up to 68 (from 63, of course). The additions don't really stretch much further, either, since you stay the same type with the same abilities, the same level up list with the exception of poison jab being made available on evolving, hyper beam and giga impact being the only TM additions, and the same tutor list. Yeah, pretty dull.

Yeah, and if it has fangs too, then think about getting a different pet.

What we had here was a first evolution with a fair degree of potential: some promising stats, good abilities, a good typing and a few decent moves. The evolution doesn't add much worthwhile to the good stats, the best ability doesn't line up with the right attack stat, the move list doesn't grow, and all in all, this isn't really that impressive. You could be better off running an eviolite Goldeen, but it's not a Pokemon that will propel you to superstardom, most likely.

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