The "Is This REALLY Useless?" Thread

So, playing back through Black 2 and, as a rule, I have to catch every Pokemon in an area when I re-play a game. Searching for Dunsparce, getting ready to give up and move on because it is literally the most useless Pokemon ever. It doesn't even evolve into anything to make it worthwhile.

Has anyone found any kind of use or niche for Dunsparce at all, or is it really and truly a rare but useless Pokemon?

What about any other things? Are there any items, moves, Pokemon, or abilities that you initially thought were useless but turned out to be surprisingly good?
Or anything you decided to give a shot and it turned out to be genuinely useless?

What kind of strategies did you discover upon giving a seemingly useless move/Pokemon/item/ability a chance?

Serene Grace with Headbutt/Bite/Ancient Power/Rock Slide kind of works. With King's Rock.
That's if it goes first. Otherwise Ancient Power to boost its stats. Or maybe Coil.

I gave Kecleon a shot and it's doing pretty well. :"D In Emerald, I went along with Castform and its weather tactics actually made me win a few battles. But then again, it was in game.

Can anyone use the gimmicky items well? Like Eject Button or Red Card?

Eject Button sounds incredibly useful. If you need a fast Pokemon to attack and then gtfo but you don't want that two-turn switch penalty it sounds pretty good. Or if you have a glass cannon in your party that can only take maybe one hit. And the Red Card sounds like a variation of the Roar/Whirlwind type moves. If you know the exact order your opponent will send in Pokemon, or you send the Red Card Pokemon in when they announce the next Pokemon (in-game) it might find some use.

What about the things like the Ring Target or the Iron Ball? The Flame and Toxic Orbs I can see being used to pump up attacks like Facade.

Ooh, the Ring Target is fun with a Switcherooer. Especially against the unexpected Spiritomb, or even a Shedinja!

- Anything that stops evolution really, we have the 'B' button for that. Then I realised how I hated the time it consumed, having to watch it try evolve if I was in a hurry.
- Ring Target, still not found a real use for that, yet. lol.

The problem with Ring Target is that it's just not as crippling to Trick on to an opponent as say, a Choice Scarf, Flame Orb or Iron Ball. I guess you could try getting a Rapid Spin user like Claydol to Trick the Ring Target onto a spinblocker as they switch in, which would guarantee successful spinning for the rest of the match. Still a pretty shaky strategy though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FairyRed

Ooh, the Ring Target is fun with a Switcherooer. Especially against the unexpected Spiritomb, or even a Shedinja!

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Not going to lie, I had to look up Switcheroo. It has a very small number of Pokemon that can learn it.
More importantly, the animation looks like they're trading little flans (you know, the custard).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by metalamor

More importantly, the animation looks like they're trading little flans (you know, the custard).

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I think they're supposed to be upside-down cups, like you might use for a shell game.

Well I managed to make a decent use of a Beautifly in Ruby a few months ago:

Beautifly
- Silver Wind
- Giga Drain
- Aerial Ace
- Toxic

Now one might think that a pokémon like Beautifly isnt worth your time, but it does have 90 in SpAtt. :)

I used to think Zubat was worthless until I finally decided to keep one in my party as an experiment. Boy was I wrong. When they made it able to evolve into Crobat, Zubat became downright good to have. My Golbat evolved at level 25 in my re-run of HeartGold 0.o

Gulpin is pretty good too. I don't know how many people think it's actually useless, but the first time I played Emerald, I saw it and I HAD to have it for some reason. Then I saw that it was pure Poison-type and was disappointed, as Poison-types aren't great offensively and I like offensive Pokemon. I thought I was going to regret sticking with him, but he turned out to be a pretty great little guy. As an added bonus, Swalot looks quite like a gentleman. All he needs is a tophat, monocle, and cane and he becomes quite a sir.

Sunflora is pretty decent in-game, too. Not great, but not completely useless. I've only done one playthrough with a Sunkern/Sunflora (the first time I played Gold...I didn't know Sunkern had the lowest stats of any Pokemon xD). Every time I wanted to box the Sunkern I looked at it and it was just too cute to put away, so it stuck. It's not a champion by any stretch, but in-game it's a decent addition to the team. Helps if you find Sunkern irresistibly cute long enough to level it up decently and evolve it.

I've thought about using an eject button in combo with cofagrigus and slaking to get rid of truant.