Is the Basic Electabuzz the best lightning Pokemon?
To answer this question, we'd truthfully
have to look through all of
the lightning Pokemon in existance, and
do polls and the like, which I refuse
to trouble myself with.
Instead, we can do a variety of things to narrow the
search of other
Pokemon for comparison, like looking for Pokemon that share
weaknesses that Electabuzz has. Here's a good weakness, doing
damage to
yourself. A lot of Lightning Pokemon do this, mainly
the best ones do in
fact, funny. Another thing is fighting
weakness, but since every Lightning
card has that save the Zapdos's,
let's disregard it.
Doing damage to
your own Pokemon, perhaps it's not as bad as it seems.
Let's
look at three popular lightning cards; Basic Raichu, Electabuzz, and
Rockets Zapdos. Each of these has the potential for doing damage to
itself,
and is used somewhat commonly (at least where I am).
Raichu can do a
guarenteed 60 damage to the opponent, with a possible
30 damage to it.
Rockets Zapdos can do 70 to the opponent, with 30-40
to itself, and last,
Electabuzz does 30-40 damage to the opponent
with a possible 10 damage to
itself. Electabuzz might just seem
not so good now, while it will only do up
to 40 damage to the
opponent (not usually enough for a one-turn-KO), the
others do much
more.
Now let's look at the speed
factor, this is what makes Buzz. Raichu
can do his attack as
early as the 4th turn (of course providing no other
interactions),
Zapdos as early as the 3rd turn, and Buzz as early as the 2nd
turn. Obviously, Buzz is the winner for speed. And in the
same tradition,
Buzz takes to energy, the rest take 4 (the colorless
aspect is the same for
all 3). Now, Buzz and Zappy only have a
difference of 1 turn in their attack
speed, Raichu is off by one more
turn, intolerable because we need a quicker
speed. Raichu must
be left out from now on in order to compare Zap and Buzz,
which have
thus been proved to be more similar.
In worst case Scenarios, Zap will do 40 damage to itself and 70 to the
opponent, giving a difference of 30; in best case scenarios, a difference
of
40. Electabuzz does a difference 20 in the worst case, and
40 in the best
case. For the sake of Comparison only, let's
apply the Worst case scenario
for buzz to Rockets Zapdos; The
difference of 20 would mean that Zapdos does
70 damage to the
opponent, and 50 to itself. Ouch. What we really have
here, is a reversal of damages, Electabuzz might not do any damage to
itself,
but doesn't have a set amount of damage to the
opponent. Whereas, Rockets
Zapdos always does a certain amount
of damage to itself, and has a set amount
for the opponent.
The only thing we have to go on is speed,
with a buzz, you can be
doing damage by the second turn, with a
Zados, it will take until the third
turn. While it's obvious
Zapdos is best as a Komikaze card, is it worth it
to wait until the
third turn and do 70 damage, or on the second turn do 30-40
damage? Well, with a Zapdos, let's say you do well, and on the
third turn do
70, with 30 to youreself, you have 40 HP left.
With a Buzz, doing poorly, by
the third turn, you've done 60 damage,
with 20 to yourelf, you have 5o HP
left. This seems
better. Look at the comparison, Buzz can do 60/70/80 by
the
third turn, Zappy will do 70, Buzz does 10/20 to itself, Zappy does
30/40. Any way you look at it, Buzz is better, 2/3 of the time it
does equal
or more damage to the defending Pokemon by the third turn
as a Rockets
Zapdos, and around 20 less damage of itself leaving it
for a longer duration.
So it seems, Buzz has been proven probably
the best of all Lightning
Pokemon. We took probably the 3 most
popular, and compared them, by process
of elimination took out 1, and
compared the last two. This in no way is ment
to diss Rockets
Zapdos, but it is probably the most used Lightning card next
to Buzz,
so it put itself in the position for an easy comparison.
Personally,
I think Buzz can be used in any deck, or in a deck by itself,
which
makes it already great, and Zapdos combos well with it.
You are fogetting about the 3 Lightning, 1 Metal, OPTINAL Plus Power R. Zappy combo (so it would do 60/70 and 10 to self), 3 Lightning + 1 Darkness+ Gold Berry+ R. Zappy (so it would do 80 and 0 to self), and 4 Lightning+1 Gold Berry+R. Zappy (so it would do 70 and 0 to self). I think Electabuzz is forgotten, though.