Competitive Pokemon History - Vespiquen Quiz

Answer: 102

In later generations, this would unfortunately be insufficient thanks to Vespiquen's middling HP stat. In the low power levels of the fourth generation, as well as the accommodating nature of fourth generation UU, this was good enough to carve Vespiquen a niche as a solid defensive Pokémon.

Answer: Heal Vespiquen for half its max HP

This move is pretty simply a Recover clone. However, Vespiquen's access to Roost meant that running this move, if the trainer had the ability to do so, was better. Roost would occasionally allow Vespiquen to lose its Flying typing, which could be helpful in the face of opposing Ice or Electric type threats which happened to be slower than Vespiquen. Because of this, Roost was preferred since it did something Heal Order did not.

However, because the trainer would have to start an entire new playthrough and go through the single player game again just to get another TM for Roost, Heal Order was perfectly usable.

It was quite reasonable to just run this instead of going through the immensely tedious process of purchasing a second game just to get Vespiquen an incredibly minor upgrade to its healing move.

Answer: Higher critical hit ratio

Even if the move does not hit critically, its Base 90 Power is higher than that of Bug Bite and X-Scissor, Vespiquen's other Bug type options, making Attack Order clearly superior to them. Vespiquen is definitely not an offensive Pokémon, but Attack Order was useful to help immediately deal with Pokémon Vespiquen had a type advantage against, such as Alakazam and Sceptile.

Answer: Five

Vespiquen is weak to Fire, Ice, Electric, Flying and is extremely weak to Rock. These are all very common typings, so the opponent is almost assuredly going to have the means to hit Vespiquen very hard. However, the straw off the camel's back is Vespiquen's major weakness to Rock, specifically Stealth Rock. Losing half its health every time it comes to the field completely ruins Vespiquen's solid bulk, especially because the entry hazard was so hard to remove in the fifth generation. Thus, Vespiquen was just about never worth using in the fifth generation, as there were far better choices for a defensive Pokémon, and Vespiquen's forgettable offensive stats and abysmal Speed made exploring an offensive set laughable at best.

Answer: Pressure

Close Combat is a strong Fighting type move that has a meager eight power points, which Pressure can help sap up. Vespiquen's good bulk and 4x resistance to the move means it can basically switch in for free on this particular move and punish usage of it using Pressure.

Unfortunately, Vespiquen cannot hope to try and use Pressure to stall out Stone Edge due to its miserable Speed and major weakness to the move, so its utility pretty much extends to just Close Combat and irritating defensive Pokémon by draining a bit more of their PP.

Answer: Poison and Steel

Vespiquen's poor Attacking stats make it so that it can only hope to deal noticeable damage through the use of Toxic. Therefore, Pokémon who are immune to the move, Poison and Steel types, can switch into Vespiquen with impunity and do whatever they want to it. Conveniently, they also happen to resist Bug, while Steel resists Flying, so they can sponge up whatever attacking move Vespiquen throws at them all day.

While there are plenty of Fire, Rock, Electric and even Ice types that can do this, switching one of them in to Vespiquen's Toxic can make actually countering it over the course of a long battle a bit trickyas the passive damage from Toxic increases every turn. A Toxic-less Vespiquen can be switched in to effortlessly with these Pokémon, however.

Answer: 40

When your Pokémon needs Speed investment just to outspeed or Speed-tie Camerupt, that's really bad. Granted, a defensive Pokémon does not necessarily need to have great Speed, but Vespiquen's other crippling deficiencies make it so that it would have needed a great Speed stat to be at least relevant. Clearly, it did not receive this, or come anywhere close.

Answer: Destiny Bond

The idea was to use Tailwind, throw out a few attacks, then use Destiny Bond when the opponent was about to score a KO on Vespiquen. The 'niche' was that this set could support its team with Tailwind while also scoring a KO on the opposing Pokémon. It ended up predictably falling flat due to the extremely predictable nature of the set. Vespiquen's moveset is unfortunately very bland, so if it is not running a defensive set, it will become obvious, and the player will immediately know to watch out for Destiny Bond. Vespiquen does not have any way to actually force the opponent to attack it once it has put up Destiny Bond, so the set is extremely prediction reliant to actually land a KO.

It can also be bypassed completely if Vespiquen is afflicted with damaging status. If Vespiquen is KOed by said status, Destiny Bond will not activate and score a KO.

Answer: Heavy Duty Boots

Heavy Duty Boots completely negates the effects of entry hazards on the user's side. This made Vespiquen essentially immune to Stealth Rock, instead of losing half its HP from the hazard. This was absolutely massive, and enabled it to switch in to damaging attacks with its good bulk a lot easier.

Answer: Vespiquen is the only Pokemon to always have been Untiered since Untiered's debut generation

In the fifth, sixth, seventh and even the eighth generation, Vespiquen has been Untiered. Even with Heavy Duty Boots, Vespiquen's terrible defensive typing and subpar all-around stats have made it an undesirable pick most of the time in the eighth generation, even for the PU tier.

It is at least slightly viable in the eighth generation, but it simply did not see enough usage to natively be a member of the lowest tier in the franchise. Vespiquen is the only Pokémon to have been Untiered in every generation that Untiered has existed in, which is just sad.