Is Gastrodon or Gyarados better in Platinum?

Question

i'm doing an vanilla playthrough of Pokemon Platinum and decided upon a team but can't make my mind up on which Pokemon to go for the Water-type.
Here's the team so far: Infernape, Luxray, Leafeon, Garchomp, Crobat/Togekiss (depending on what ability the Togepi is). Please help me out with the Water-type both are pretty strong so can't figure out. Please help for the full team.

Answer 1

You already have Garchomp, which is the best Pokemon sinnoh has to offer, barring legendaries of course especially that unkillable monster known as Giratina. As such, Gastrodon is out of the question as Garchomp is a ground type itself

Gyarados on the other hand, is the one of the best in game Pokemon of all time just because it can dragon dance and brute force its way through everything

Here's a quick comparison

Gyarados

• better ability
• faster and stronger
• can be caught as early as jubilife city
• unusable second stab offensively

Gastrodon

• ground typing which means only one weakness
• lesser offensive capabilities
• both its abilities are pointless. The ai doesn't use trick or knock off and storm drain is just useless
• can use both its stabs in battle
• has reliable recovery

Despite all these traits, offense is the most important thing in an in game play through and since Gastrodon has a type overlap with Garchomp, it should be obvious who the clear winner is

Comments

Gabite is too weak to sweep Volkner... Immunity to the final gym leader doesn't mean that the mons don't carry coverage moves such as Ice Fang....

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Why would your Gabite still be unevolved at that point in the first place?

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I never said Garchomp was bad. I just think some Pokemon, like Torterra, Infernape, or Gyarados, might be better, and Yorec's comment did not address this possibility. All 3 of these Pokemon learn powerful moves early in the game, have trouble against only one gym, and can handle most of the Pokemon League by themselves.

There are several reasons why a Gabite might reach level 48 after defeating Volkner. Some people like using lots of Pokemon and consequently giving less experience to each one, and other people like going through routes without battling all the trainers. Last time I played Platinum and recorded every Pokemon's levels, my Pokemon earned about 516051 experience before Volkner. This is enough to evolve Garchomp if I used 4 Pokemon but not if I used 5.

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Well, it has stab earthquake as soon as you catch it which is in the level twenties so it already has one of the best moves in the game

That would just honestly depend on how you wanna play the game I guess. As I said earlier, levelling up isn't too difficult because you can just day care everyhing and it would probably just take the same amount of time as poaching wild pokemon. The original question did mention that the guy wanted to use a Garchomp so I assumed that he would be willing to take the time to level it up

As they say, there's always a price tag when it comes to things like this. On Garchomp, it is that incredible pain to level up but the rewards are worth it since with just sd and x speed, you just rip through things. You won't even need x speed most of the time. The only mons naturally faster than Chomp in the game, which I believe are Alakazam, Gengar, Weavile, Froslass and Azelf. Zam and Gengar don't pose a threat to Chomp while no npc has Zelf. He also has Infernape to deal with the other two and the only one who can annoy Garchomp is Bronzong which is only encountered once

The fact that Chomp outspeeds most of the entire game and can take a strong hit is enough for me to consider it the best pokemon in sinnoh. It can even beat Weavile and Froslass if you overlevel

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Really? I forgot about that. Thanks for the reminder