Pokémon Diamond, Pearl & Platinum In-game Tier List Discussion

Tier definitions aren't to be strictly followed and will have exceptions -- they're only there to give a general guideline and rough idea of what to aim for. That said, it might be worth adding something to explain high utility Pokémon.

Being able to learn 6 HMs is definitely more useful than being able to learn 4 because you get to pick and choose based on what you need and what you have in your party already. If, for instance, you have a Vaporeon that knows Surf as a team member; you don't need to have that on Bibarel, but all four of its moveslots will still be filled by HMs you need/want. It also helps to know which HMs those are rather than just looking at the raw number -- the only ones it's missing are Defog (virtually useless, as gone over a few pages ago) and Fly (nice to have, but not necessary and you can just get a Zubat or Starly out of the PC whenever you need to use it). Compare to something like Piplup and Buizel who have decent utility, but are ultimately limited in the role when put next to something like Bibarel. Piplup's ability to learn Surf (something I'd want on a team member anyway), Defog (once again, virtually useless), Waterfall and Rock Smash just doesn't stack up to something that can learn everything I need. If you think there's a better utility Pokémon out there, by all means, do tell; but I can't see a worthy candidate. Bibarel's been a constant in every Platinum playthrough I've done because it's always able to take on the HMs I need and didn't put on a team member. It's hugely reliable and no-brainer in its role and use.
 

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So the only thing Bibarel is good for is to remain at the back of the party, at level 15, knowing four HM moves for the entire game? Still, it seems that no matter what five Pokemon comprise the team (as long as there are a few A tier Pokemon in there), there's always another Pokemon that can learn all the remaining HMs and is better than Bibarel in battle. If this is not true, then I guess Bibarel should be S tier, as it's the earliest-evolving Pokemon that can learn both rock climb and waterfall.
ok look

you can say "machop can learn rock smash and machop is better than bibarel" all you want but the thing is that giving rock smash to machop is a decision you'll regret later when you want to run stuff like cross chop or dynamic punch/secondary fighting move with more pp/return or something/coverage and meanwhile rock smash is this puny 40 bp move that you never use. bibarel doesn't care about that because it doesn't battle anyway

in a nutshell, the reason why bibarel is good is because hm slave + 5 mons is much more efficient than spreading out hms (many of them a complete waste of space) across the rest of your party. this is because with bibarel carrying the hms, the rest of your team can perform to their full potential, more than making up for bibarel's underwhelming performance in battle. additionally, if you have bibarel, you aren't forced to carry mons that can learn a certain hm on your team (like if you want to use kricketot but you need a rock climb user).

also we don't rank based on whether something is outclassed, "there are better options" is not an argument

idk just some food for thought
 
Here's the basic version of it.

HM's outside of Surf are either objectively limiting your options (outside Surf they're all Physical attacks or just plain terrible) or just terrible in general (Rock Smash and Cut stand out). Most Pokemon would prefer not to have to carry an HM, and most times, a team of 5 Pokemon with their 4 ideal moves and one HM slave is more efficient than spreading them across 6 dedicated battlers. It saves time for having to visit the PC to swap them around or forcing you to use a mon that can fit an HM you have no place for otherwise.

It's not just about the number of battlers, but how well they can manage. Bibarel makes it easier to have 5 mons with peak performance rather than 6 mons with above average performance.
 
If Bibarel "doesn't battle anyway", it has no place being anywhere near tier S.

Gible (Platinum) is overrated too. Earthquake is likely contested by many, and it reaches its 3rd tier evolution too late. I wouldn't place it above B-rank personally.

I have never, ever, ever needed a full team of six competent battlers in any Pokémon game. You only really need four to beat any given title, and I've gone through a couple with only three. You are also underselling the opportunity cost of a wasted moveslot, especially since some Pokemon like Chimchar love have STABs + coverage, and not being able to unlearn HMs on a whim is extremely annoying.
Generally, the more mons you run, the more difficult you make the playthrough for yourself so I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove.
 
It's supposed to prove that 5 Pokémon + 1 HM slave is a lot more viable than it's being made out to be. Which I think he and other posts here have succeeded at very well.

Gible's fine. It's got a couple problems - most notably Exp. gain - but those are only enough to push it down to A imo.
 
You know what's even more viable? 3 Pokemon + 1 HM slave. 1/2 is even better if they're self-sufficient. Is an empty slot in your team as good as Bibarel? At least we've acknowledged Bibarel fights as well as an empty slot.

Gabite's got plenty of problems, the main one being Gabite's late lv. 48 evolution and its mediocre stats until then.
 

atsync

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In RBY, using X Accuracy on a Pokemon causes all moves used by a Pokemon to ignore accuracy checks (i.e. they always land successfully). When I say all moves, I mean ALL moves, including OHKO moves. This means that as long as the Pokemon is faster than the opposing Pokemon (a requirement for OHKO moves succeeding in gen 1), they will OHKO it without fail. With X Accuracy being obtainable in infinite amounts, this is obviously a powerful strategy that is exacerbated by the fact that both Horn Drill and Fissure are available to many Pokemon as TMs, along with Guillotine being available to a handful of others.

I was put in charge of the RBY in-game tier project towards the end of its run. Naturally, I and the other regular contributors of that project were able to recognise that the X Accuracy + OHKO combo was a powerful asset for anything that got it. Despite this, there was a general agreement since before I took the project over that the strategy shouldn't be weighted heavily when tiering Pokemon in RBY (although it was never explicitly banned in the same way that glitches are banned). Why not? Because it placed a damper on any potentially interesting discussion that could come out of the project by making things too cut-and-dry - it's the same reason why we avoid tiering things based on their ability to solo the game. Allowing the combo placed a risk wherein people would start trying to focus discussion on which Pokemon learned a OHKO move and which ones didn't, and that in turn could lead discussion away from other relevant aspects of a Pokemon's performance and result in an unhelpful tier list, with stuff like Fissure Lickitung and Horn Drill Dragonair in higher tiers than they ought to be.

Why am I bringing any of this up in the DPP thread? Because reading these arguments about Bibarel being in S-tier because of utility alone reminded me of the X-Accuracy + OHKO situation in RBY - essentially, people are attempting to take an otherwise mediocre Pokemon and call it one of the absolute best Pokemon in the game because it's an early route mon with access to lots of HM moves. Comparing OHKO moves with HM compatibility is a huge stretch, but I think there is some parallel in the way weighing a Pokemon's utility so heavily is causing things to be overly cut-and-dry.

By placing so much weight on HM utility in the case of Bidoof, a dangerous precedent is placed wherein every Pokemon's potential utility has to be weighed just as heavily. It is a double standard to shove Bidoof in S tier for its utility alone, fighting prowess be damned, and then have it have seemingly little impact on the final tiering of anything else. Accordingly, by using this approach for Bidoof, you guys are going to have to assess EVERY Pokemon's HM compatibility/utility just as heavily for consistency. I have previously used the example of Piplup in this thread, whose evolutionary family has access to SEVEN HMs, and yet this doesn't seem to have received as much attention as Bidoof's six HMs. Psyduck's family has access to five HMs, and the only one it misses out on compared to Bidoof, Cut, is barely useful after leaving Eterna City if you only care about reaching the end of the game (which is all we should care about for an efficient run), so perhaps Psyduck ought to be raised from its current B-tier. Kricketot's line is early-route and has access to Rock Smash, Cut and Strength, so maybe its "utility" makes it too good for E-tier. I could go on, especially if we start to bring things like Dig and possibly even moves used solely to help catch Pokemon (i.e. status moves).

Alternatively, and more sensibly in my opinion, we could treat Bibarel like every other Pokemon and stop giving it the special treatment I've seen throughout this thread. I would not go so far as to say HM compatibility should not be considered period, but it has to be weighed up in comparison with the usual criteria that Pokemon are assessed by: availability, stats, moves, match-ups and so on. In Bibarel's case, it happens to rank highly in the availability criteria and is an excellent HM slave, and I would argue that its move pool is not half bad outside of its HM access, but it ranks poorly in stats and its match-ups overall are mediocre, which I think is enough to bring it down. Bibarel's battling prowess is mostly limited to being an ok route sweeper, and that only starts being true when it first gets Headbutt (which is mercifully pretty early overall, but as a Bidoof its performance is garbage).

I think that Bibarel should be A tier. It is a convenient Pokemon that can pull its weight against randoms, but it should not be ranked alongside the likes of Chimchar and Starly, who should be in a tier on their own above everything else.
 
I think the reason Bibarel's weighed so heavily for HM access is because he has access to every vital HM in the game, and Sinnoh is a very HM heavy region while also having a significant number of battles that you can't quite mindlessly steamroll outright. For the Gen 1 OHKO example, the effectiveness of that is top of the game, but I debate to what extent it's worth it, since Gen 1 is such an unbalanced mess that it's fairly possible to find a team full of OHKO Pokemon anyway thanks to things like the Special stat inflation, Slash abuse, or Hyper Beam shenanigans.

I can understand the precedent you argue about the HM tiering, but the fact remains, HM usage is more important in Sinnoh than any region, and Bibarel is famous among both the efficient and the casual crowd as a convenient mon for an important non-battling role. You're going to require several TM's at once for several points in the game, and Bibarel is basically the most flexible option you can dedicate to 4 of them. In a region that leans heavily on HM's for its level design, I think the best option for circumventing that obstacle should certainly rank the highest.

When considering the definitions, it does help to look at the criteria, but I think that's better considered as a guideline that the ultimate reasoning. I'm of the opinion that Bibarel is the only time an HM Slave could earn S-Rank, because Sinnoh inevitably requires one and all experience I have had playing and watching runs has proven including a Bibarel actively makes your run more efficient than any battler you could put in that 6th slot.
 

Karxrida

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Chimchar has two STABs once it evolves and also learns Grass Knot to deal with Waters. By endgame you probably want two Fire STABs: either you go with one Physical (i.e. Flame Wheel) and one Special, or two Special with one being Fire Blast for a nuke. That's four slots. Earthquake is also an option to consider if you're not using Gible.

Starly wants Normal STAB, Flying STAB (probably Fly), and Close Combat once it becomes Staraptor. You can teach it Defog in the fourth slot, but having a Flying move other than Fly is nice since you won't have to rely on a two-turn move to kill Flying-weak Pokemon. It also gets Brave Bird around endgame, and you definitely want that.
 
The appeal of a lot of the S-Rank mons is that they're powerful enough and have the coverage to not take a significant amount of planning. Just know to have these 4 moves on them and you're good, no need to plan around who's covering a type since these members can't plow through them or who's sacrificing power for an HM slot.
 
Bidoof should 100% be S Rank

This shouldn't even be remotely contested. Sinnoh is by far the region where HMs are most mandatory - sure, having an Alakazam who can blow through the entire game is great and all, but you know what's better? Reaching an area where I'm forced to use Rock Smash or Rock Climb and not having to backtrack all the way to the Pokemon Centre or sacrifice a critically useful move on one of my team members just to move further forward through the game. Knowing multiple HMs in 1 makes you a hell of a lot more useful than a decent offensive mon would ever be in Sinnoh, and anybody who says otherwise hasn't played D/P/Pl recently. I haven't seen a single D/P/Pl runthrough where people don't use Bidoof/Bibarel at any point, which says a lot about its viability in-game.

Besides, let's stop pretending that Bidoof is somehow totally useless as a battler and is only ever useful for HM Slaving:
  • It evolves at Level 15 - so you have a fully evolved Pokemon with base 85 attack and great stats for where you are in the game
  • Stats are balanced enough to not fall off completely even if you opt not to render it a slave at any point
  • It also evolves right around when you face Roark - so being a Water type it can even curbstomp Roark if you really want it to, although admittedly its later gym matchups are poor on the whole... but by then you can just make it your HM Slave anyways as Rock Smash & Cut come very shortly afterwards
  • Quite a few of the HMs it learns also have utility as general moves - obviously Cut & Rock Smash suck, but Surf, Strength and Rock Climb do a fine job at keeping Bibarel relevant at battling wild foes and trainers it has advantagous matchups against
  • Yawn can provide team support if you're in a disadvantageous matchup and have a move slot spare
And of course as far as HM slaves go, Bidoof/Bibarel are far and away the best in the game, learning 6/8 of them, being common in almost any part of the region, and requiring basically no babying or use of limited resources like TMs to function. And the 2 HMs it doesn't learn can be learned by almost any Flying type, of which there are numerous options to choose from.

Farfetch'd in Gen 1 was considered a high tier for learning Cut & Fly in addition to proving rather self-sufficient as a battler in its own right. Bidoof/Bibarel are several leagues above Farfetch'd in both battling ability and efficiency as a HM Slave. There's really no excuse to not have it be S, at least for wild Bibarel. If anything, it makes your team MORE efficient since it gives the rest of your Pokemon room to use all the moves you want them to without sacrificing anything for HMs.
 
Yeah, somehow when discussing Bidoof's viability we forgot to mention that a crucial part of it is that it's very, very common and easily available. It's pretty much Alola's Yungoos and Raticate; you'll always be able to find it and/or its evolved form somewhere. Tropius is a bit out of the way and difficult to get -- not to mention it doesn't get Waterfall and Rock Climb, two important HMs you might not want to throw onto your team. Still, it might be the second best HM Slave in the game aside from that; so I'd say B at the least.
 
I'd love to participate in this.
I usually only use 3 Pokemon, 4 max in Gen 4. Grinding sucks in gen 4.
Please inform me of where I could start, since the rankings look pretty complete right now.
 
I don't think we're at the stage of writing up profiles for each Pokémon yet; we're still debating the placement of certain Pokémon rankings. I'd like to say that at least the Pokémon in S are fully sorted and agreed on, but...
 

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Another chime-in on the HM slave debate:

Most HMs are so bad that teaching them to a Pokémon is tantamount to sacrifice. You give up a moveslot, pretty much permanently, to be able to overcome field obstacles. When applying HMs, one should always consider the "alternative cost": "What am I giving up here?". For instance, take Infernape. You can teach it Rock Smash, but then there'd be no room for Mach Punch later. True, Empoleon can learn pretty much all the HMs, but it loses out on crucial STAB or coverage moves it could hit a lot harder with. The obvious exception is Surf, which Empoleon is a great user of in battle, but it would get very little mileage out of Strength or Cut compared to, say, Ice Beam or Flash Cannon.

What makes Bibarel so ideal is that nothing is lost by using it as a HM slave. It is not a good battler, it does not have an extensive movepool it would rather be using, and at any rate it's not particularly hard to find another Bibarel (at any point in the game!) if you absolutely want to use one for battles. Contrast Piplup again, whose "sacrifice" would consist of using your one-off Starter Pokémon for HM slavery. Bibarel is readily available, performs excellently as a HM slave, and has no other job it should rather be doing. It even gets STAB on Strength, Rock Climb, and Surf, and those are stronger than any level-up moves it has of those types, so even as a battler it would appreciate having those moves. In short, HM slavery amounts to the optimal use of Bibarel's moveslots, and possibly also team XP if you're being cynical and leaving it at level 15.

Admittedly, I don't know how Tropius fares in this regard. Similarly, I guess, since it has mediocre stats, learns few natural moves that would be helpful in a battle-oriented role, and gets STAB on Fly. However, its is only found in an optional side area, and comes much later in the game: In other words, you have to have taught the Cut and Rock Smash HMs to other Pokémon already before you get to it. The cherry on top of Bidoof's cake is that it is available before all the HMs, which Tropius definitely can't brag about.
 
Once again, efficiency as we know it in this tier list discussion is not the same as speedrunning. There are similarities and inter-sectional points; but only in the same way that Pokémon Heartgold is similar to Pokémon Platinum. They're not the same thing.
 
In Gen III/IV, I think the best balance is to have 4 pokemon + 2 HM Slave (Tropius + Tentacruel in Gen III and Tropius + Bibarel in Gen IV).
 

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