Parasect is something of a marvel to me. I honestly believe that as far as it attributes go, it’s one of the worst designed Pokemon in the game. Its typing is among the worst in the game (especially in more modern games), and its stats manage to be even worse. It has merely average attacking stats (but no good STAB), and somehow manages to be both frail, and tied for the slowest fully evolved Pokemon in RBY. What on earth was Game Freak trying to cook when they came up with this Pokemon?
It should be pretty clear that my expectations for Parasect were incredibly low, but the funny thing is, its movepool isn’t terrible. Sure, its only “usable” STAB option is Mega Drain, but it can spread status with its signature Spore, as well as Stun Spore, and has boosting options with Growth and Swords Dance. It’s tragic that it’s not a Normal type, because it gets Body Slam, Slash and Hyper Beam, basically every move that makes Normal types great in RBY.
Versatile support options and multiple boosting moves suggest that it can try various roles, but ultimately, it’s still reasonable to question whether this can translate to success when they’re attached to Parasect. Potential ideas fall into 3 categories:
- Dual Powder status spreader
- Growth
- Swords Dance
I dismissed dual powder sets almost immediately. Without useful STAB, Parasect is going to struggle dealing enough damage to effectively spread status (similar to Venomoth and Butterfree, though not as dire). I actually tested Growth, but it very quickly became apparent that Parasect’s lack of good STAB options made such a set entirely unviable. It requires several turns of boosting before it’s a threat (and it still can’t harm Chansey), which for a Pokemon so slow and frail is an absurd proposition.
That really only leaves Swords Dance, however what’s interesting is that you can potentially look at leading it, or keeping it in reserve. I ended up building teams around both concepts and think they’re both roughly as effective as each other. Outside the lead position you have a lot of flexibility to pick when you play it, meanwhile as a lead the only unplayable matchup is Jynx, which will typically OHKO. So how did these teams look?
Teambuilding
Firstly, what should Parasect’s set consist of? I think Spore, Swords Dance and Hyper Beam are all pretty much mandatory, but there’s an array of other options for that 4th slot.
- Stun Spore is an option for additional status spreading
- Mega Drain deals significant damage to Rhydon. It’s actually still a losing matchup if Don has Rock Slide due to Rhydon being faster and too powerful, but dealing a huge amount of chip damage is still much better than what a mono-Normal set can achieve
- Body Slam exists I guess? It can unreliably spread paralysis and it doesn’t risk giving a completely free turn to the opponent the way Hyper Beam does, but I think the lower damage output overrides those benefits
When I was initially building the team where Parasect wasn’t leading I favoured Mega Drain to significantly dent Rhydon rather than being hard countered. When I started leading Parasect I swapped it for Stun Spore, as its role shifts more to supporting its team than being itself supported.
For the non-lead team, I opted for standard Tauros and AttackLax. With Parasect leaning heavily on Normal attacks, I wasn’t going to compromise coverage on Tauros. PhysLax on the other hand is there as an aggressive wallbreaker, and I figured if the opponent had a ReflectLax, Parasect is actually a solid response to that set. I went for the standard Body Slam/Hyper Beam/EQ/Boom, however Counter is a potential option that can potentially bait opposing EQs for Parasect to switch into.
Raish Chansey also provided support for physical attackers, and I rounded the team out with BlizzPsy Starmie and standard lead Alakazam. Starmie and Zam both provide para support and threaten Gengar, while Blizzard on Starmie hits Rhydon and Zapdos super effectively.
My teambuilding process for my lead Parasect team actually ended up looking rather different. The first thing I considered is that there’s a real possibility that my opponent brings in Zapdos early, threatening an OHKO on Parasect. Consequently, I added a standard Rhydon set to the team to punish any opponent that tries this. One thing I’ll note is that if you’re baiting the opponent into Zapdos early, there’s a solid argument to be made that Golem can be used instead, however I didn’t quite follow through on that.
Starmie was a logical addition to that core, being effective against opposing Water types as well as Rhydon. In this case I chose SurfBolt to maximise its efficacy in those matchups, as well as supporting vs Jynx, a crucial matchup that Parasect cannot handle.
With 3 remaining slots, it should come as no surprise that I opted for the 3 Normals of RBY. Tauros is a standard set as I didn’t want to drop coverage. Chansey is SToss/Sing- I needed a backup sleeper, and I was concerned that running Mono Ice Beam would make this team too weak to Water types. Lax is Ice Beam/Reflect. I wanted a defensive anchor, and figured that a less aggressive Lax set was fine with Don also providing wallbreaking support.
Results
With my expectations being rock-bottom, Parasect almost always offered a positive surprise. Although it can struggle to find an opening, its predicament isn’t as dire as you might think, while reliable sleep and Swords Dance means that it can be a truly potent threat if the opponent isn’t careful.
Outside the lead position, it really is a matter of choosing the right moment to deploy Parasect. These openings aren’t common, but fortunately Snorlax is ubiquitous and genuinely a solid matchup for Parasect (Slowbro’s even better, but far less common). Anything with Rest also presents an opening for Parasect, as Spore is one of the best ways to exploit the wakeup turn. Having said that, Parasect really appreciates paralysis support, refraining from paralysing to avoid giving the opponent sleep blockers is never worth it. This means you may not always be going for Spore right away.
Once Parasect is in, every turn counts. You’re generally looking to sleep something, boost up, and deal a shitload of damage to a second pokemon before dying, and it’s not uncommon for this to be achieved over the course of 3-4 turns. Unless the opponent has a hard counter, Parasect is usually able to achieve this, as sleep+Swords Dance is an extremely potent combo, and any scenario where you plausibly use a single Pokemon to (practically) incapacitate 2 is solid value. Admittedly, there is a potential for the opponent to outplay as well, by blocking sleep and punishing turns spent boosting. And again, this only applies if no hard counter such as Gengar is present.
Overall though, a Pokemon that’s expected to survive for less than half a dozen turns is wild in the context of RBY, even something like Gengar can usually survive longer. A major factor is that once Parasect has taken a hit, almost anything can revenge kill it. Additionally, because Parasect needs to be so selective about when it enters play, it tends to be very tempting to allow it to be revenge killed. This leads to theoretical lines where Parasect is shut down by an immediately sacrificing the Pokemon that’s been put to sleep, however this rarely eventuates in practice.
As a lead, Parasect is capable, but prone to unreliability, which is ironic for the only Pokemon with access to Spore. It’s forced out by the threat of an OHKO by Jynx, but Blizzard Starmie will also KO if it lands a crit. Assuming Starmie doesn’t crit/freeze, or the opponent is using another lead like Zam, Parasect will reliably land sleep. After that, the guessing game truly begins. You first need to determine whether the opponent will stay in to burn sleep, or swap to something else. Given that (probably) only a single turn has taken place, this is a mostly blind guess. Oh, and your main attacking option is Hyper Beam, which is itself a risky click.
All this means that lead Parasect has a lot of variance in its performance, and whether or not it’s able to incapacitate more than one Pokemon. Additionally, it doesn’t help that the Parasect lead meta is understandably underdeveloped. I found that opponents tended to favour staying in with their slept Pokemon (far from a guarantee though), but who knows if that would hold true if it ever became optimised?
The funny thing is, because Parasect’s lifespan is so limited, you really do start to evaluate it in a transactional manner- if you spend one Pokemon slot to sleep something and deal significant damage to something else, that can be characterised as 1.5 Pokemon slots worth of value (for example). It’s really quite rare for that kind of thinking to make much sense.
I will admit that I have glossed over Parasect’s susceptibility to bad matchups, with the main obstacles being Gengar and Zapdos. The only way to extract value against Gengar is by double switching into an attacker that targets it. You generate momentum which is fine, but for a Pokemon that struggles to enter play, that’s a disappointing outcome. As for Zapdos, it threatens an OHKO, and you can’t really touch it unless you can land status, or Hyper Beam it to death. Zapdos is also much less exploitable via double switching than Gengar is.
Despite all of Parasect’s flaws, it managed to win me over. It’s still not a good Pokemon, but I consider it usable, and currently have it ranked alongside Poliwhirl. Parasect is the kind of Pokemon that barely makes it into play, but when it does, it has a strong chance of pulling above its weight in the few turns for which it survives.