Update: since I completed my testing of this Pokemon, many of Showdown’s replays were lost (occurred Nov/Dec 2023). Consequently, some of the replays I used as a showcase may no longer work- apologies!
In my post documenting my usage of Ditto, I noted that Golbat was one of two Pokemon typically proposed to be worse than Ditto, and I myself did this at one point. So naturally this was a priority for me to test. With arguably the worst typing in the game, mediocre stats and a movepool with literally no good options for it, it appears to have no redeeming qualities, and it’s basically impossible to conceive of it having any sort of niche in competitive play. But what if you used it anyway?
Inventing a niche for Golbat
I’m not exaggerating when I say that Golbat has nothing going for it. I think a list of the moves I considered using would be the best way to highlight this
- Double-Edge. This isn’t a terrible move, however with no STAB and base 80 Attack, it’s not very threatening.
- Hyper Beam. This is actually a good move, but everything I just said about Double Edge applies to it. Additionally, it’s hard to envisage Golbat KOing anything, which is necessary to avoid Hyper Beam’s drawbacks.
- Mega Drain. This move has a power of 40, with no STAB. I think that says it all.
- Screech. This move sees no competitive usage, but here I am being forced to consider it. Spending a turn clicking this move when its effect is easily negated by switching is a terrible use of a turn.
- Confuse Ray. This is one of the most cringeworthy moves in the game. Typically seen wielded by inexperienced players, competent players generally avoid this move for similar reasons to Screech. It’s a whole turn spent for an effect that’s easily negated by switching and isn’t even guaranteed to yield any benefits.
- Toxic. In RBY, Toxic resets to Poison when the affected Pokemon switches out, however the damage from Poison is so poor that much of the time being Poisoned is considered beneficial since you can’t receive other status effects. It can be exploited when paired with Wrap, but I’ve never seen this done consistently.
So yeah, there’s not a lot to take advantage of, but I had to come up with something. I tried to come up with a Toxic+Wrap strategy, but every team I made along those lines had gaping holes. I noticed that Confuse Ray and Screech is actually a combination of moves no other Pokemon learns, and decided that Golbat could theoretically use them late game to create “checkmate” scenarios, where switching out to negate their effects could be punished. That’s not enough to be considered a niche, but it’s a theoretical use case, which is good enough for me.
With Confuse Ray and Screech on the set, I rounded it out with Double-Edge and Mega Drain, with the former being Golbat’s best general damaging option, and the latter allowing it to leverage its Ground immunity to do… something… versus Rhydon. Note that although I’m using both Confuse Ray and Screech, they actually have terrible synergy, since they’re both negated by switching. This is instead more of a case of giving myself the option of going for one or the other. I also think it’s incredibly ironic that I’m talking about having options with Golbat.
Teambuilding
Now for the rest of the team. With Golbat’s atrocious typing, I decided that I needed the rest of the team to have minimal weaknesses defensively- this meant that the three Normals were immediately added to the team, and I filled my final non-lead slot with Starmie, since it’s effective against a broad range of threats and is usually able to find value even in bad matchups.
I ran Stomp on Tauros, with the idea that it could work in conjunction with Confuse Ray. Snorlax started out as a Reflect/EQ set, to maximise defensive utility and also hit Gengar. Chansey was Ice Beam/Sing since I needed a sleep user and Starmie was Hydro Pump + Thunderbolt, with the idea being that it could be a secondary sweeper. Alakazam was my lead, since if it somehow managed to stay healthy, it could help mitigate my Electric weakness- I considered Jolteon as well, but decided being countered by Rhydon wasn’t worth it.
I later swapped Starmie to a BlizzBolt variant, as I found Exeggutor to be awkward to deal with and Starmie wasn’t really filling the sweeper role, and Chansey to Seismic Toss/Sing, for more consistent damage and to not get walled by Water types. This version of the team struggled since it had a dire lack of offensive firepower though.
My final version of the team saw me swap Snorlax to a standard Amnesia set for more offensive firepower, as well as swapping Starmie to Psychic/Tbolt, since I decided hitting Snorlax with STAB was more important than an awkward Exeggutor matchup. The other final change I made was swapping out Alakazam for Hypno. Yeah, on a team with Golbat, I decided the final piece was a rather esoteric lead option. My rationale was that this team really needs paralysis support, but I didn’t like the prospect of landing sleep if I started throwing around paralysis. Therefore a dual status lead was required to secure an early sleep and still provide paralysis, and I preferred Hypno over something like Exeggutor because of its lack of defensive weaknesses.
The final version of this team can be found here.
The positives
So how did this pan out? Well, I was mildly surprised by how Golbat performed, but only because the bar I set for it wasn’t high. As in I didn’t really set the bar, rather I kinda just left it lying on the ground somewhere. Golbat is still terrible and doesn’t really have a niche, but I found that it was able to make small contributions to wins surprisingly often.
As I suspected, there were some instances where Screech and Confuse Ray were able to help, especially in lategame scenarios, but these were generally quite rare. Screech was obviously more consistent, but Confuse Ray’s inherent luck element gives it more upside in terms of bullshitting your way to an advantage. This replay showcases Screech being used to force a predictable switch which I was able to make the opponent pay for. This replay is just wild and is probably worth including here- I play terribly against a relatively weak opponent and somehow came away with the win.
There were other uses to Golbat though. As I mentioned when discussing its niche, its Ground immunity coupled with Mega Drain lets it not be useless against Rhydon. It can’t actually beat Rhydon, even with free switch as Mega Drain deals roughly 40% damage, while Rock Slide easily 2HKOs, dealing roughly 75% damage to Golbat. With that said it can still chase Rhydon out, letting it masquerade as a Rhydon check- although Rhydon beats Golbat, it takes so much damage in the process that it usually isn’t worth it. Most often this will see them exchange attacks once before the Rhydon switches out.
The last use I found for Golbat was using Screech to disrupt defensive play and more importantly, interfere with bulky setup sweepers (i.e. Amnesia users). This is less of a testament to Golbat’s efficacy but more to Screech being an underrated move. This replay demonstrates this best, where I’m able to use Golbat to reign in an out of control AmnesiaLax- a small but very valuable contribution.
The negatives
It’s important to clarify that the positives listed above amount to minor use cases and that Golbat will typically fall flat, often without contributing anything. It’s totally incapable of dealing significant damage and weak to virtually everything. This means that although it can force switches, the opponent can switch in literally anything on their team. This means that these switches are extremely difficult to exploit, almost totally negating that use case for Golbat.
The other important thing to note is that Golbat will usually die in the process of trying to achieve anything. Its typing is just too awful for this to be avoidable.
Conclusion
The best that can be said of Golbat is that has relatively unique utility… but that utility is essentially negligible. I was able to make use of it on ladder, however even with the low standard of ladder play, winning was challenging. I did try bringing it to a tournament match,and got completely eviscerated as a direct result. Golbat managed to make several showings in the match but didn’t really achieve anything.
Any uses you can find for Golbat are scraping the bottom of the barrel, it’s generally useless otherwise. Although a step above Ditto, it’s still totally unusable. In all honesty my opinion on Golbat is only diminishing over time (relevant for Butterfree and Seaking, which are next in line for my posts), but I haven’t touched it since my testing stage, which means that my initial, less negative opinion is probably more accurate.
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