Pokemon Go Countering Grass Type Gym Defenders

Pokemon Go Countering Grass Type Gym Defenders by chatchan

Today I’ll be discussing how to beat the strongest Grass types in the game. Just as a reminder, the average base stats for fully-evolved and non-evolving Pokemon in Gen 1 are 154/175/172, in the order of Stamina, Attack, and Defense. Hope you enjoy today’s post!

Grass Types

Countertypes: Fire, Flying, Bug, Poison

Other effective types: Ice

Four strongest Pokemon:

Exeggutor (190/232/164)

Venusaur (160/198/200)

Victreebel (160/222/152)

Vileplume (150/202/190)

First things first: ignore that list of countertypes for a moment, because it’s only here for reference.

Grass types are a bit of an odd bunch. You need to know that their countertypes, while plentiful, are not usually complete counters since the best Grass types all have secondary STAB options that still deal neutral damage to most of the things that resist Grass.

Since Grass types can hit hard with their great Attack stats and hard-to-resist move combinations, fighting them can come across as a bit of a mix between Fire and Water types. Despite the lack of true counters for the best Grass types in the game, you’ll generally still want to use Pokemon who counter at least one of their two types. But because of the complications introduced by the best Grass types having these dual typings, from here I’ll go ahead and break into discussion of two subsections: Exeggutor, the game’s sole Grass/Psychic type, then Venusaur, Victreebel, and Vileplume, a trio of Grass/Poison types.

Exeggutor (190/232/164)

You may initially look at Exeggutor, and, after managing to pick yourself up off the floor from laughing at its appearance, move on to concluding that it should be pretty easy to beat due to its bad Grass/Psychic type combination.

The truth is that while Exeggutor’s typing affords it several weaknesses, some of these are hard or even downright impossible to effectively exploit in Generation 1. Additionally, even though Grass/Psychic is a liability defensively, in an offensive sense it’s actually very, very good. There are almost no usable Pokemon in Generation 1 who resist both Grass and Psychic attacks (only Magneton and Exeggutor itself), giving Exeggutor the opportunity to put its massive Attack stat to work on almost anything it goes up against.

So how exactly do you come at this thing? The easiest way is to pick attackers who deal super effective damage with their STAB moves while not being weak to either of Exeggutor’s STABs. Exeggutor is weak to seven types – Fire, Ice, Flying, Bug, Poison, Ghost, and Dark – so let’s see if we can narrow down this list of possibilities to make things a bit less overwhelming.

Firstly, there aren’t any Dark types in Gen 1, so we can forget about that. We don’t really want to use Poison types since they’re weak to Psychic, and every Ghost type in Gen 1 is half Poison, so we’ll leave those out too. Three of the four usable Ice types in the game are half Water, making it a bit risky to use them in case Exeggutor has Grass moves, and Jynx’s Stamina and Defense (130 and 134) are terrible, so Ice types are pretty much out unless you’re up against an Exeggutor with only Psychic moves (or don’t mind risking a failed dodge on a powerful Grass move like Solar Beam).

There are 11 usable Flying types in the game right now, and I would argue that seven of them (Butterfree, Pidgeot, Fearow, Golbat, Farfetch’d, Dodrio, and Aerodactyl) aren’t the best choices for fighting Exeggutor either because their stats just aren’t very good or they’re weak to Psychic. Likewise, half of the six usable Bug types (Buttefree, Beedrill, and Venomoth) are basically useless in this situation, either because they’re weak to Psychic, have terrible stats, or both.

What does that leave us with? Primarily, Fire types, and you’ll mostly want to focus on Arcanine since its combination of stats, especially Stamina and Defense, are better than the rest. There are still a few non-Fire Pokemon that can work against Exeggutor, but would I go so far as to recommend them? Not really except for Scyther, Pinsir, and Parasect, and these are all generally inferior to the strongest Fire types in the game. Despite not having a super effective STAB move, Dragonite also works due to its huge Attack stat and double resistance to Grass.

Once you’ve picked from your shortlist of potential answers to Exeggutor, be ready to spend a lot of time dodging and try to get Pokemon with the highest CP you can manage, because anything that either stands there and takes hits or that has a large CP disadvantage is at serious risk of being torn to shreds. You can’t afford to bank on resistances alone when you’re up against a huge offensive presence and don’t even resist both of its attacks.

All in all, Exeggutor is a monster of a Pokemon. Its wide variety of weaknesses completely overshadow how easily it can kill its would-be counters due to its sheer offensive power and the fact that nothing worth using against it resists its Psychic type attacks. Ignore its goofy appearance and treat it as the serious, top-tier Pokemon it truly is.

Venusaur (160/198/200), Victreebel (160/222/152), and Vileplume (150/202/190)

Next, let’s go ahead and talk about the trio of three-stage Grass types. Firstly, all of them are Grass/Poison types, not Grass/Psychic like Exeggutor, so stopping them will be a little different. They have the same Fire, Ice, and Flying weaknesses as Exeggutor, but beyond that, their only other weakness is Psychic.

Unlike with Exeggutor, there are several Pokemon in Gen 1 that resist the Grass + Poison combination (Magneton and the majority of Poison types), but very few of these also have attacks that deal super effective damage in return. The only ones I could find are Beedrill (which isn’t a good choice for competition), Golbat, and Venomoth (which is also a very questionable choice for battle), but most Poison types are going to work decently as long as they don’t have a large CP disadvantage and aren’t relying on resisted moves.

You can also always go the Exeggutor route and just choose Pokemon who aren’t weak to either Grass or Poison while still being able to do super effective damage with their STAB attacks. Standouts include the stronger Fire types like Arcanine, but Hypno is also pretty useful. Remember that Bug types aren’t as useful here, since their STAB moves aren’t super effective against Grass/Poison types. As with Exeggutor, there are some other Pokemon who aren’t weak to either of these two types and have some super effective STAB options, but I’m not sure I’d actually recommend them due to factors like their defensive frailty or lacking offensive presence.

Grass Type Battling Summary

i) Grass types can be hard to fight since they have good Attack stats, typically decent or good defensive capabilities, and type combinations that make it hard to resist their each of their STAB moves.

ii) Although Grass types have plenty of weaknesses, many are hard to effectively exploit since their representatives have a hard time either taking hits or dishing them out.

iii) Fire types, especially Arcanine, are generally a safe bet for taking on Grass types.