Now to be fair, given the sheer number of pokemon available in the game even in Gen 3, we can't expect every single one to be viable competitively. Especially when legendaries blow most regular mons out the water anyway.
A shame too, because Rapidash is cool as shit
My boy Zangoose. Please tell me you'll do everything to keep this precious kitten alive.Time for a new Update on my OR nuzlocke.
I'm at Route 114 now, ready to hit Meteor falls.
After a few unlucky deaths (Slakoth, Voltorb, Zigzagoon, Beautifly, Surskit and Poochyena) against crits from random trainers and Rival 2,
my team looks like this
Machop Lv. 20
Skarmory Lv. 20
Zangoose Lv. 21
Numel Lv. 24
Swellow Lv. 24
Marshtomp Lv. 26
Sadly no MVP Koffing for this run.
The Maxie fight on top of Mt. Chimney is the next major obstacle, in the remakes he is pretty nasty.
My team should be around Level 24-27 when i face him.
Taught Marshtomp water pledge over water gun in case Camerupt goes for amnesia on the switch.
The plan is to beat Mightyena with Machop and Zangoose, both equipped with persim berries.
Skarmory has to slowly whittle down Golbat while tanking it's moves.
When the camel get's sent out, Skarmory will bait out a fire move, i switch into marshtomp and win.
If confusion messes me up, there is always a pre-burned Guts Swellow with Facade in the back.
Honestly, is Rapidash really that bad? Its base stat distribution easily lets it fit the archetype of a glass cannon (and a speedy one at that).
It's not necessarily bad, there is just a lot of competition, namely Infernape, Arcanine and Darmanitan.
100 base Attack/SpAttack is extremely mediocre in modern-day Pokemon. Usable, sure, but you'll probably want more if you don't have super powerful moves or any good offensive abilities to back it up. 105 Speed also isn't too great for being Rapidash's highest stat
Base 100? Extremely mediocre? No way. Compared to the starters and legendaries, sure, but Rapidash is a somewhat common pokemon. Base 100 atk with 105 speed may not be meta relevant, but that's nothing to scoff at.
Rapidash evolves at like Level 40. That's pretty late. I expect something a little higher than 100 and 105 being a late-evolving Pokemon's highest stats. The only time Rapidash was ever all that good ingame was in Diamond and Pearl. A game with like two Fire-Types, as mentioned previously in this thread. In every other game Rapidash appears in, you get way better options for Fire-Types way earlier
Or hell, even a split-evolution based on the two variants.
Not even a new evo. Just a few stat boosts and a better ability than Run Away
A straight buff to Rapidash itself isn't likely as Game Freak have yet to straight up tweak the stats of mon without restricting it to a regional variant.
Galarian Rapidash already fills that fairy type niche and is already a dual type. Although, a Fire/Flying pegasus rapidash would be cool.
Arbok is so close to being a good pokemon. He has a great ability in Intimidate and a lot of useful moves such as glare, coil, and sucker punch, but his stats are so mediocre. An evolution that just beefs up all of his stats would do him wonders, hell he could even stay pure poison since its a pretty great defensive typing.
There actually were some stat changes for Gen 7, but they were all small. For instance, Arbok's attack increased from 85 to 95.
They actually first did it in Gen 6, but as you mentioned they only changed stats by 10. Mostly for Gen 1 pokemon, but they buffed pokemon from as recent as Gen 5. In Gen 7 they got a bit crazier with the highest change in BST being 40 for Masquerain (SpA and Spe), and a tie between Swellow (SpA) and Farfetch'd (Att) for highest stat change of 25.
