Competitive Pokemon History - Torterra Quiz

Answer: Three

Only having three resistances looks fairly ho-hum on paper, but when having a look at what those resistances are, the prospects improve. Being resistant to both Ground and Rock is amazing, enabling Torterra to take on offensive Ground types incredibly effectively, hitting them with super effective Grass attacks while resisting whatever they throw at it. An immunity to Electric is helpful, giving Torterra the ability to ignore Thunder Wave and pivot into Electric type attacks.

Answer: Four

Unfortunately, where its resistances can all be pretty useful, its weaknesses are all quite easy to exploit. In a meta where Scizor was a major player, being weak to Bug was annoying to deal with. Being weak to Flying and unable to hit Flying appreciably with its STAB also meant Torterra was at the mercy of anything with wings.

While Torterra could hit Fire types super effecyively, they could do the same in kind, and its low Speed and Special Defense meant that, while they were poor switch ins, they would generally have the upper hand if they met Torterra on the battlefield in equal condition to it.

However, Torterra had the unfortunate 4x weakness to Ice, which was extremely easy for the average team to exploit. This particular weakness nudged Torterra a shade outside of standard play viability, unfortunately.

Answer: Attack

A base 109 in Attack is workable for an offensive Pokemon that has access to Swords Dance. Fortunately, Torterra also had some powerful physical moves, such as Wood Hammer and Earthquake, to take advantage of this. Torterra's Speed was unfortunately quite low, though access to Rock Polish could attempt to patch this up. On the whole, when factoring in its weaknesses and resistances, Torterra's bulk was generally acceptable. Thus, it could plausibly attempt to look for opportunities throughout the average game to boost with Swords Dance and pose a credible threat to sweep with.

This made it so that, while it really wasn't 'viable' in standard play, it wasn't totally pathetic if used in fourth generation OverUsed.

Answer: Untiered

Bizarrely, Torterra ended up descending all the way from being natively UnderUsed to falling out of a competitive tier altogether. Admittedly, it was no longer viable in UU, so falling from that tier made sense. However, Torterra did settle into a viable function in RU.

Its workable stats and good movepool gave credence to it as a useful Pokemon, both offensively and defensively. Since it didn't see the usage stats necessary to be in RU, it could also perform adequately in NU too. Yet, for some reason, it didn't even receive the usage stats to be natively NeverUsed either, causing it to fall into the depths of being Untiered.

However, this status is definitely deceptive, as Torterra was not competitively unusable by any stretch. It simply didn't receive the usage necessary to reflect that.

Answer: Shell Armor

Shell Armor renders the user completely immune to being critically hit by anything. Seeing as how Torterra is kind of some turtle with a massive tree on its back, the ability can definitely be argued as thematically appropriate. And it did have some degree of use too, making Torterra immune to being out'lucked' by a timely critical hit from its assailant.

However, that's all it really did, so it wasn't the most useful of abilities on Torterra.

Answer: Weezing

Alolan and Mega Weezing do not exist, while Galarian Weezing had not been released yet. Kantonian Weezing was therefore the correct choice. Weezing's Levitate ability gave it an immunity to Earthquake, while its Poison typing allowed it to resist Torterra's Wood Hammer. Weezing was incredibly physically bulky and packed Will-o-Wisp quite frequently, enabling it to thwart Torterra's efforts at trying to overcome it with a neutrally effective Stone Edge. Weezing also sometimes came packed with Flamethrower, which hit Torterra super effectively. Thus, Torterra had no real way of overcoming the Team Rocket staple Pokemon, and would need the help of teammates to remove Weezing in order to be useful in the battle.

Answer: Its Speed was too poor

The problem definitely wasn't Torterra's movepool, giving it strong options in STAB Earthquake, STAB Wood Hammer and Stone Edge for coverage. In theory, this would seem to make a Swords Dance + 3 Attacks set be quite effective. However, Torterra's awful base 56 Speed took away any sort of chance this set had to shine in competitive play. Torterra was much too easily revenge killed thanks to its exploitable weaknesses.

A Rock Polish + 3 Attacks set had a far easier time sweeping, patching up Torterra's awful Speed stat and letting it sweep a lot easier. Alternatively, if the player absolutely had to make Torterra more powerful somehow, a Choice Band set that enabled Torterra to hit harder right off the bat was a viable alternative.

Answer: Untiered

Once again, Torterra found itself as an Untiered Pokemon. Much like before, it retained some degree of viability even as high as seventh generation RU. However, it is much easier to explain why it did not receive appreciable usage stats this time around; the heightened level of competition it received for a team slot.

In RU, Torterra was absurdly niche and, while viable, only worth usage for extremely specific reasons. In NU, Whimsicott and Sceptile provided tons of competition for its use, hindering its usage stats there.

In PU, Torterra's roles were contested by the top tier Regirock and the excellent Mudsdale, causing it to fall in usage even in the lowest tier in the game. However, once again, Torterra was definitely viable in at least two, generally three competitive tiers, so it was far from useless overall.

Answer: Grass types in general

Flying and Bug types had to watch out for a strong super effective Stone Edge, while the frailer Flying types couldn't even switch into a resisted, albeit still strong, Wood Hammer. Steel types were definitely not a good idea, as they were weak or at least neutral to strong STAB Earthquakes.

Torterra's bretheren Grass types inconveniently happened to stop it its tracks quite easily. In PU, Tangela and Lurantis were two of many defensive Grass types that just came in and beat Torterra down with ease. In NU, Dhelmise could not only beat Torterra down, but was too bulky for Torterra to ever plausibly threaten as well. In RU, the dangerous tandem of Shaymin and Virizion beat Torterra incredibly easily. Virizion even resisted Stone Edge along with Torterra's STAB combination! Thus, Grass types were generally insurmountable for Torterra.

Answer: Z-Crystals

Torterra could really make use of either Grassium-Z, Groundium-Z or Rockium-Z. It really depended on what the trainer wanted, but Wood Hammer, Earthquake and Stone Edge were all strong enough to justify using any of those three Z-Crystals.