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Now is a great time to start raising Venusaurs for PvP in Pokemon GO.
Thanks to Bulbusaur’s Community Day, every trainer will get an opportunity to get a Venusaur with Frenzy Plant, so long as they evolve Ivisaur during the event. If this was 2016, this would be phenomenal news since Venusaur used to be the best Grass-type attacker. Since then, many more Grass-types have taken center stage, so does Venusaur still hold up?
How good is this Generation I starter Pokemon?
The first thing trainers might notice when analyzing Venusaur is it’s really even stat line. It may not have the bulk of a Deoxys Defense, but Venusaur does get 190 Hit Points and 189 Defense. These are enough to give it a decent amount of longevity in most matchups.
It’s Attack stat just misses the 200 mark at 198. Again, this isn’t a dominant stat, but it’s enough to get good damage output.
The biggest tool Venusaur has in its arsenal is by far access to Frenzy Plant. This move hits 100 base power while only costing half the energy bar in Raids and 45 energy in PvP. Basically, this gives Venusaur a nuke that it can farm down to very quickly.
In terms of rankings, PvPoke only has Venusaur at 53rd in the Great League and 31st in the Ultra League. Shadow Venusaur, however, ranks all the way up at 16th in the Ultra League. This is likely because Venusaur can afford to lose some bulk to give it the power increase it really needs.
Venusaur also has some tough competition in these metas. Meganium is actually ranked higher than Venusaur since it gets access to Earthquake. This allows it to hit Steel-types like Galarian Stunfisk and Registeel; Venusaur is basically useless when fighting Steel-types.
The Generation I starter also now gets to contend with the new king of PvP: Trevenant. This Pokemon simply outdamages Venusaur, and Ghost is a much better secondary type than Poison.
Given things the way they are, it would be really hard to claim that Venusaur is the best Grass-type in PvP. Thanks to Frenzy Plant (and Sludge Bomb to hit Fairy-type Charm spammers), though, it is still a great Pokemon to use.
