Pokemon Y: The Seviper Solo Run

For some reason, I really like 'Mons that go in pairs. After having cruised Kalos with its two resident fossils Amaura and Tyrunt, I decided to lavish my attentions on Seviper and Zangoose, a.k.a. the sworn ennemies of the Pokemon world. With a long-running feud as a backstory, I expected that pair of 'Mons to sport opposing battling styles and Move pools, and I was curious to see what they had in store for me. I decided to start with Seviper, because I've been wanting to run solo with a pure Poison 'Mon for, like, ages. At the end of that much-awaited run, my main question was: why? Why does Seviper perform worse on the poisoning department than a 'Mon with Poison as secondary type such as Venipede? Why is Seviper such a one-trick pony, and a pony that cannot even pull out its main trick most of the time? Why so much wasted potential? Why, why, why?

Don't get me wrong, dear fellow gamers: I cruised Kalos just fine with the Poison snake, and reached the heights of the Pokemon League without breaking a sweat; so we're dealing with perfectly decent solo run material there. On the other hand, I just cannot wrap my head around how pointless Seviper is on the battlefield. Sure, he has high offensive stats, with a perfect balance between Attack and Sp.Attack; unfortunately, my Seviper's Moves were just a tad too weak to one-shoot everything with abandon, unless a Type weakness or particularly low defensive stats were involved. Seviper is also painfully slow — probably because despite what his name implies, he's actually closer to an anaconda when it comes to measurements. As far as my run was concerned, this means that blows were traded more often than not: and with Seviper's HP and defensive stats being as crappy as they are, I suffered quite a lot of damage on a regular basis. Hits from opposing 'Mons routinely drained a good third, if not half of my Seviper's life bar, and I had to keep him on a constant potion diet — I used more than 100 potions during that run, and that's my personal record in a Pokemon solo run. And mind you, all that happened with the benefit of overleveling. That probably means that in a regular run, Seviper can hardly ever strike first and cannot survive even one hit in most cases. So I have to ask: what's the point of that 'Mon? What's his fighting niche?

He's not a good poisoner, that's for sure. He doesn't have an awesome auto-poisoning ability such as Venipede's Poison Point, and his poisoning Moves fail most of the time because of the low probabilities involved. Take Poison Jab, a Move I spammed during most of my run: I can honestly count on the fingers of two hands, three at most, the number of times I managed to poison something. This means that Venoshock, a Move my Seviper also wielded and whose power is increased in case the target is poisoned, never got to live to its full potential. And weirdly enough, none of Seviper's Status Poison Moves can inflict poisoning: they are solely buffing and debuffing Moves that affect stats and abilities. Whats' the point of such Moves, when it's not even guaranteed that Seviper can strike first and survive the first hit? And how come a Poison 'Mon can poison so little? It doesn't help that Seviper's learnset is on the narrow side, with mostly Poison and Dark Moves at his disposal; as for his Shed Skin Ability, it would have been awesome if not for the fact that it only has a 30% chance of triggering. I can honestly count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Shed Skin triggered over the course of my run.

So let's sum up: serviceable yet not outstanding offensive stats, low defensive stats and low speed, Status Moves hampered by said low speed, shitty poisoning capabilities, narrow learnset and borderline useless Ability. We have to face the sad truth here: Seviper sucks hard, and I can only hope that Zangoose fares better when it comes to fighting prowess and overall balance. Let's check that without delay, now shall we? Until then, dear fellow gamers, thanks for reading as usual, and drop by anytime!