A while back I had a brief exchange with fellow trashmon enthusiast Tarvold discussing the worst fully evolved Pokemon in the game. We also particularly discussed the merits of Seadra vs Seaking, however at the time I’d only used Seaking. Since then, I’ve gone on to test Seadra and I can safely say that there are no winners here. After all, we’ve both used teams featuring these atrocious wastes of a teamslot and concluded that they were better left untouched.
In that exchange, I suggested that I thought Seadra’s superior power made it better than Seaking as an Agility Water type, and thus slightly less useless. I continue to maintain that position, but it needs to be stressed that by comparing Seadra to Seaking, I’m comparing it to a Pokemon I deemed to be the second worst fully evolved Pokemon in the game. Tarvold thought differently, but we both agree that the context in which Seadra exists does it no favours.
Seadra’s movepool is fairly minimal. It’s hard to arrive at any conclusion other than that an Agility set is its best option. That’s still fine though. Agility isn’t a great niche, but it’s good enough to be technically valid. The trouble is, even though it seems to be the best Agility Water type, it manages to run into stiff competition. Starmie is naturally fast, has Recover and an array of incredible moves to choose from, making it one of the best Pokemon in the game. However the real competition is Articuno. Despite not being a Water type at all, its typing functions similarly defensively, while its better STAB (Blizzard) and superior stats give it the strongest unboosted Special attack in RBY.
How can Seadra separate itself from Articuno? Its typing is its best bet, however in practice that’s easier said than done. It has an Ice resistance which is theoretically invaluable, but worthless in practice as Seadra lacks the tools to threaten anything that regularly uses Ice attacks. After that it becomes bleak. It isn’t weak to Rock, which helps vs Rhydon, but Articuno’s Earthquake immunity is generally more valuable. Probably the only area where Seadra is unequivocally better than Articuno is against Fire types. That’s a clear win, but unfortunately simply not valuable as Fire types are incredibly rare in competitive play.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any other options to carve out a niche for Seadra. Outside of a set consisting of Agility, Hydro Pump, Blizzard and Surf, its movepool becomes a desolate wasteland, with the next best option being Smokescreen. Safe to say, outside of its offensive utility, it’s doing nothing to support the team. So with all that said, what does building around Seadra look like?
Teambuilding
My first idea for building around Seadra was to pair it with another Ice type. Then theoretically Seadra would outperform Articuno as Articuno would compound those Ice type weaknesses. Heck, in an ideal world Articuno would be that Ice type as in RBY the best way to justify an outclassed Pokemon is to double it up with the better version. I decided that wouldn’t work though, as I felt that they both have too many issues dealing with their counters (Chansey and Starmie). Instead I decided on Cloyster, with Explosion hopefully clearing the way for Seadra.
That team ended up being Jolteon (lead), SToss/Sing Chansey, PhysLax, Tauros, Cloy and Seadra. And let me tell you, it didn’t work. The biggest issue I encountered initially was that Chansey as a solo sleeper is not a great idea, so I eventually swapped it for an Exeggutor. I expected that to fail, and it did, but not in the way I expected. Jolteon as a lead tends to lure in Exeggutor, and Seadra was my best response after Jolteon absorbed sleep. Trouble is, Seadra sucks if you bring it in early, and that was never the intention anyway.
I looked at Lapras over Cloyster, as an Ice type that could switch into Egg much better and still threaten Chansey and Starmie thanks to its coverage. Ultimately, this team felt way too unreliable, with status being incredibly awkward to deal with, so I scrapped this team concept for a more standard team. Possibly I should’ve looked at a Jynx lead, but I don’t think that would’ve been enough. I did also try returning to this team structure when I tested Smokescreen as a way to play Seadra early game, but this never worked out. Seadra just lacks the bulk necessary for a supporting or defensive role.
Ultimately I found a standard structure with the 3 Normals, Seadra, Exeggutor and a Jolteon lead was my best-performing team. Chansey used a Seismic Toss/Sing set, Lax used Reflect/Hyper Beam, Exeggutor was dual powder and Jolteon ran Pin Missile. In all honesty, I don’t even remember why I made those choices, aside from dual powder Egg being preferred for an additional para spreader, while Jolteon provides Zap insurance and a wallbreaking threat. The importable can be found here.
Blizz/Surf
Results
In testing Seadra, I found there are two main ways to play it. The “optimal” way to use it is as a sweeper, giving it its best chance of having a substantial impact. In practice though, this seldom eventuates, I found that I tended to either win without ever revealing my Seadra, or it would fail to turn around a losing situation. This replay is the best example I have of a replay where it swept, but I still think I got lucky- outlucking Zam with Hydro Pump is a very dubious idea.
Of course, if you fail to eliminate Starmie and Chansey, then Seadra’s not going to sweep. It’s not really going to do anything as long as they’re alive. Too bad they both have amazing longevity and are both on the majority of high level teams. There are no shortage of matches I had where Seadra would achieve nothing because they were still alive. And that ties into the second way I tried using Seadra- as a midgame attacker. Here’s a gif summarising that experience:
To be fair, it’s a serviceable attacker against the right targets, capable of pressuring ReflectLax and notably better into Jynx than the normally superior Articuno. But when your only threat against an incoming Chansey/Starmie is an aggressive double switch, it’s only a matter of time before your opponent tries to exploit that (this replay is a showcase of that). Its defensive stats aren’t sufficient for it to have a defensive role anyway, so it struggles to switch in.
The thing to note with these posts is that I tend to save replays in which my featured trashmon plays a significant role. That means there’s a huge survivorship bias in terms of what gets saved. The other replays I have saved feature Seadra mostly doing nothing beyond getting walled by Chansey/Starmie, but it at least does a little beyond that:
- Here’s a match where I used the threat of Seadra’s Blizzard to stymie a Victreebel. It didn’t deal any damage itself though, as Chansey walled it completely. Eventually I used it as cannon fodder once it became too badly chipped
- In this match Seadra had a solid matchup, and managed to claim a KO on Rhydon. This was only because the opposing Chansey was so low that it couldn’t switch in, which is far from a common situation
- And lastly, I have a match where Seadra got a bit of chip damage off on Egg, and achieved nothing else
In conclusion, please don’t use Seadra. I personally have it in the same tier as Beedrill and Butterfree. I honestly think I might be a little generous with that, but it’s still squarely in a range where I won’t consider using it any longer, even in my trashmon era.
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