Note: During testing 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!
As I mentioned in my post about Butterfree, early game Bug types were never really destined for success, thanks to their pathetic stats and generally poor typing. But in RBY, every Bug type sucks, with only Pinsir not being unanimously considered a bad Pokemon. And frankly, Pinsir barely functions as a Bug type, entirely lacking a STAB attack. You would think that in a metagame where Psychic types have proliferated that Bug would be a sought after attacking type, no?
Well if you look for a good Bug type attack, you’ll come up empty. The best Bug attack though? That my friends, is Beedrill’s claim to fame. This attack, the peak of Bug type attacking prowess, is none other than the mighty Beedrill Twineedle…
…Yeah, so this move has an effective base power of 50, coming from a base 80 Attack. It is unambiguously the best Bug type Attack, but it is not a good move. On top of which, they gave it to Beedrill, which has a secondary Poison typing. This means that although it deals super effective damage to Psychic types, Beedrill also takes super effective damage in return. Still, with access to Swords Dance, my hope was that Beedrill would be capable of being morphed into a serviceable threat.
Teambuilding
Picking a set for Beedrill was fairly easy. Swords Dance is mandatory, Twineedle is its major selling point, and Hyper Beam is just generally a useful move. I did have a decision to make as to whether to use Double Edge or Agility. The former is Beedrill’s best move most of the time against targets neutral to Bug, while Agility is valuable for remedying its mediocre speed and avoiding revenge kills. I opted for Agility, and I think it’s the correct option. Beedrill needs to be able to outpace and hit Starmie and Alakazam if it wants to achieve anything.
The rest of the team was honestly really basic. Beedrill is a liability vs anything that isn’t a Grass type and needs paralysis support to achieve anything else (welcome to RBY, everything wants para). This meant that I just went with a balanced, boring team. Standard Tauros, RefIB Lax, BoltBeam Chansey and Stun Egg. I initially used a Jynx lead, figuring that if I slept a Psychic type early on and the opponent tried to sacrifice it later on, that could provide an opening for Beedrill.
I eventually dropped Jynx in favour of a BlizzPsy Starmie lead. Although I think I used reasonable rationale in picking Jynx, it was a defensive liability, which proved to be too much alongside Beedrill. This left me with the team below, with the full importable being available here.
Results
I won’t sugarcoat anything. Beedrill is absolutely awful, and a distinct step below most other trashmons. It’s much closer to Golbat and Seaking than it is to something like Pidgeot, which is really saying something. Having said that, I think it’s a hair above the bottom of the barrel, and on my personal viability rankings I created a new tier for it above Seaking and Golbat (I decided I was a bit harsh to Butterfree, so it joins Beedrill in this new tier). However that new tier is still within a realm where using Beedrill feels like you’re playing 5v6.
As mentioned in the intro, Beedrill and Psychic types both hit each other super effectively. The problem is that Psychic types threaten to OHKO Beedrill, while its pathetic stats and weak STAB mean that it can’t pose the same threat. This means that even if you bring Beedrill in against a vulnerable Psychic type, they often don’t respect it. A prime example comes in this ladder match, where I manage to bring Beedrill in vs Exeggutor. With a 4x effective STAB attack, I decide I can safely boost… and I subsequently die when they stay in and Psychic.
And it should be noted that bringing Beedrill in is not easy. It has paper thin defenses and no valuable resistances. Its best bet is to leverage its Grass resistance, but that means either coming in on Exeggutor Mega Drain which is incredibly risky, given that Egg prefers to spam Psychic which OHKOs, or Victreebel, which just isn’t that common (although it is an actual good matchup for Beedrill).
Getting Beedrill into play is just the beginning. It still needs to contend with:
- Numerous top threats outspeeding and threatening it (e.g. Starmie, Alakazam, Zapdos)
- It needs a lot of boosts to truly threaten neutral targets, or heavy chip damage
- It also needs to boost up to threaten Psychic types like it’s supposed to
As a general rule of thumb Beedrills needs to get to +4 ATK and +2 SPE to threaten a sweep (remember, supposed targets like Alakazam still outspeed and OHKO), unless the opponent is heavily weakened. Given that Beedrill has terrible longevity with no relevant resistances, your best bet is the latter. Even getting to +2/+2 is unrealistic, since spending multiple turns boosting with a Pokemon this weak is lunacy, but it only gets exponentially harder the more turns you boost. Meanwhile, supporting Beedrill with chip damage and paralysis can be achieved through normal play. Even then, when Beedrill has an opportunity it can shit the bed.
So Beedrill is too weak to pose a respectable threat without substantial boosts, unable to feasibly accumulate said boosts because it dies too easily, and unless it boosts its Speed it’s prone to revenge kills. Despite all that, I still can’t consider it to be as bad as Golbat and Seaking. Swords Dance is good enough that it can find value, and I’ve even swept with Beedrill (against lower level opponents). It actually thrives against Victreebel and despite its Poison typing, it can find value against Psychic types with careful play and (usually para support). Although it’s not cleanly KOing Psychic types, if it lands Twineedle before dying you’re usually able to revenge kill.
Overall Beedrill is awful, and is sufficiently bad that even as someone who dabbles extensively in trashmons, I don’t intend to use it again. It belongs in the same general category as Golbat, Seaking and Butterfree, but despite my criticisms of it, I still consider it better than at least Golbat and Seaking.
Leave a Reply