Altaria or Flygon for Emerald playthroughs?

Question

I had planned to get a flygon for my emerald game, but I was recently reminded that swablu exists and I desperately need grass-type coverage. But from almost anywhere I look I keep hearing that flygon is the better option so idk what to do.

Comments

(edit to fit rule 1.6)

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If you need grass coverage, the best option is you add an 7º pokémon specificaly for that, you don't have to be stuck with six. The game won't be harder if you have one more on your current team.

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However if you want to stick to six no matter what. If your playing skills are higher than average you don't need coverage, so choose Flygon. If your skills are average or below, this can be a issue so in this situation you should use altaria because will fit more your necessities, also important to mention that the ingame is not a very difficult thing, so you can do well without having perfect pokémons. So the best answer for your question is this.

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I'd recommend neither. Altaria and Flygon evolve relatively late, and they don't have the best stats even after evolving. If you have issues with grass Pokemon, I think Breloom, Swellow, Vileplume, and Heracross would be better options.

Answer 1

Flygon has...
- Better HP, Attack, Special Attack, and Speed
- Fewer weaknesses
- More learnable HMs

Altaria has...
- Better Defense and Special Defense
- An earlier evolution
- Dragon Dance by level up
- Arguably a better movepool

Both these Pokemon are fine, but not great in Emerald. Both of them get their best STAB options from TMs, and Altaria has to rely on Aerial Ace or Fly for a Flying move. Flygon is generally considered the better choice thanks to typing and offenses, but if you're struggling with Grass types, I would recommend Altaria. Though there aren't many Grass types in the game, Altaria will usually do a much better job dealing with them than Flygon.

Altaria
Ability: Natural Cure
- Fly / Aerial Ace
- Ice Beam / Dragon Dance
- Return
- Earthquake / Dragon Dance

This moveset is physical, allowing you to take advantage of Dragon Dance if you so choose. Dragon STAB is unnecessary because the Dragon Claw TM detour isn't worth it and Drake can be moderately handled if you include Ice Beam on the set (though it will miss out on a few KOs). Besides that, Fly/Aerial Ace are your strongest STAB options, and Return/Earthquake hit whatever resists Flying moves.