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!
Once I decided to move on from the awful Seaking, I set my sights on another Pokemon that I thought could potentially join it in the abyss: Venomoth. My reasoning here is that Venomoth shares many of Butterfree’s strengths and weaknesses. After all, they’re both dual powder users with poor typings and negligible offensive output. That meant that though Venomoth had better stats and a different typing, I wasn’t sure if it could achieve anything.
My initial thought with Venomoth was to try a Toxic+Wrap strategy. I had considered this with Butterfree as well, but I regarded Venomoth as a better candidate due to lacking an Ice weakness and thus synergising with Dragonite better. However, it quickly became apparent that like with Butterfree, Venomoth isn’t good enough at spreading status to pull off such a strategy. Once Venomoth lands status, its lack of offensive output means it generally cannot force a switch into anything else.
So I resorted to the same approach I took with Butterfree- get Venomoth in asap, land sleep, then win with the rest of the team. The comparison with Butterfree here is interesting. Butterfree is weak to 2 critical types in Ice and Electric, whereas Venomoth’s only major weakness is Psychic.
That said, Psychic is possibly the worst weakness to have early in the game, as early games tend to be rife with Psychics trying to control sleep and paralysis. Fortunately, Venomoth isn’t weak to Chansey and its superior bulk to Butterfree means that it’s far better at taking neutral hits. This then leads into a game plan of trying to lure in Normals so that you can bring in Venomoth safely to land sleep.
Teambuilding
As you might expect, I opted to run double powder on Venomoth, alongside Psychic and Double Edge. Moth’s Attack stat isn’t great, but against frail targets like Alakazam and Jynx it’s usable, and another point of difference between it and Butterfree. Additionally, with the goal of luring in Chansey asap, I decided there’s no better option than lead Starmie (Blizzard+Psychic). No Pokemon invites a Chansey quite like Starmie after all, right?
I wasn’t sure where to go from there though. I considered *checks notes* a team incorporating Sandslash? What? It seems my concerns were Rhydon and Zapdos, which Sandslash does admittedly cover. However that proved to be unviable. I tried a few more interesting options (lead Chansey + Zap), but ultimately was dragged kicking and screaming to a very generic team. It always ends this way when you’re building around shitty Pokemon.
That team used the aforementioned Venomoth set, with lead Alakazam with Kinesis rather than my original idea of Starmie. I decided that Starmie covered too many gaps defensively and had to pull it from lead duties. My idea behind Kinesis Alakazam is that it’s a solid way to interfere with the opponent’s plays without spreading status that could block Moth’s sleep. I didn’t just want to lean on Psychic for this, since in the lead position Psychic tends to hit Pokemon that can recover it off, and you’re not realistically breaking through them without paralysis.
As I alluded to, Starmie was also on this team, leaving 3 spots to be filled by the 3 main Normal types. I opted for Psychic+Thunderbolt Starmie for STAB and Water coverage. Tauros is standard, while I defaulted to BoltBeam for Chansey (you could theoretically run some other set). As for Snorlax, I decided that my team was sufficiently covered against Gengar and therefore that I could cheat on covering it by running Reflect+Hyper Beam Lax. If you’re looking for the full importable it can be found here.
It’s also worth noting that I may not have comprehensively tested Venomoth. In a post on Smogon, Bug Maniac Aydon raised Flash as a move option for Venomoth. I was initially skeptical of this, but a good argument would be that Flash isn’t the worst option for a Pokemon that struggles to force switches. Of course, Flash is just generally a bad move, and although Venomoth doesn’t get much value out of moves that aren’t Sleep Powder, they do still have their uses.
Results
For the most part, Venomoth performs much as expected. The goal is indeed to get it in asap, land sleep, then win with the rest of the team. It struggles early game with the prevalence of Psychic types, but Chansey gives it an opening. It also offers nothing defensively and despite an improved matchup against some sleep blockers, is still largely useless in that scenario.
What I didn’t expect though, was just how much of a game-changer Double Edge would be when compared with Butterfree. As I mentioned, Double Edge can deal respectable chip damage to Alakazam and Jynx, but it’s also surprisingly effective against Chansey. You’re not powerful enough to seriously threaten it mind you, but you’re dealing 21-25% damage with each attack, which means that Chansey will likely be going for Softboiled with every 2nd Double Edge. When you combine that with Venomoth’s neutrality to all of Chansey’s standard moves, Venomoth is rather handy in this matchup.
Venomoth’s Chansey matchup isn’t enough for it to be an answer in and of itself, but it does make things easier for the rest of the team, allowing you to potentially pivot into something else without the actual answer taking chip damage or risking status. Another neat little tech Venomoth has against Chansey is to suicide via Double Edge recoil. This deals a good amount of chip damage to Chansey, but more importantly prevents it from recovering, as Venomoth KOing itself ends the turn before Softboiled can occur. It’s like a broke man’s version of Explosion.
Replays
This replay is the best that I have saved for Venomoth- it lands sleep on a Psychic-weak Pokemon, which meant it could then land paralysis on their Chansey and play for a bit of chip damage. Later on in the game it also made an appearance, switching into Cloyster and threatening it with significant chip damage, before using Double Edge to kamikaze against the opposing Zam, denying it recovery. That said, although my opponent had a reasonable ladder rating here, I don’t consider their team viable.
In saying that that’s the best replay I have, it should be obvious that the rest aren’t great. For all my talk of Venomoth helping against Chansey, the reality is that more often than not, it simply lands sleep and does nothing else. Here are two examples of this, as well as a 3rd one where Venomoth could’ve also paralysed a Starmie… but failed and died without doing anything other than landing sleep. This replay illustrates a different shortcoming of Venomoth- my opponent made a couple trades with Explosion which I failed to predict. Because Venomoth is useless both offensively and defensively, I was at a disadvantage in the ensuing 4v4 and subsequently lost.
Verdict
Overall Venomoth was a pleasant surprise and a significant upgrade over Butterfree, but is still not good enough to take seriously. It’s only really a status spreader, but isn’t all that effective in that role and although it can help against one of the top Pokemon in the game, it still only serves a complementary role. All this while doing nothing defensively or offensively. I consider Venomoth to be unambiguously worse than Hitmonchan, but still within the same tier, and clearly better than Butterfree and its ilk.
Leave a Reply