Pro Nuzlocker Ranks Every Encounter For A Pokemon FireRed & LeafGreen Nuzlocke!

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Idk what drugs you're taking, but Charmander NEVER 2HKO's Onix. I gave a level 14 Charmander max attack IVs, Adamant nature, and 252 Attack EVs (which you would never get that many Attack EVs without overleveling). I also gave the level 14 Onix a Defense lowering nature, 0 IVs in HP and Defense, and Metal Claw does 33.3% to 42.4% to Onix. If I drop the EVs from Charmander to make things more realistic, Metal Claw deals 24.2% to 30.3%. You don't even 3HKO. To guarantee a 3HKO with this mythical perfect Charmander vs this equally mythical worst possible Onix, you'd need 176 Attack EVs. Mankey gives 1 Attack EV, so you'd need to kill 176 Mankey. You don't have enough experience to not overlevel by doing this. The literal only reason Brock is possible with Charmander is because Brock's AI won't let him pick Rock Tomb if your Charmander is slower than Onix. But once you drop to low enough HP, where Rock Tomb is a guaranteed KO, he's guaranteed to click it and you lose. With an average Charmander vs an average Onix, you have about 3-5 turns of being alive. You will be faster with Charmander because you killed over 100 Pidgey and Rattata to get to level 14. Your Speed has a ton of EVs in it, so now you're faster than Onix, so Brock will pick Rock Tomb. A God-Mander with 31 IVs in HP and Defense, as well as a Defense boosting nature takes 43.5% minimum from a neutral natured 0 Attack IV Onix's Rock Tomb. 3 Tackles later, Onix will always see the kill with Rock Tomb and you lose. But you won't have a perfect Charmander. So instead of dying in Rock Tomb > 3 Tackles > Rock Tomb, you die in 2 Rock Tombs, gg, Charmander F tier. Moving on from your Charmander propaganda, you really need to re-evaluate your tierlist. Not only do you completely disregard how good Fearow and Butterfree are, you completely disrespect the early game encounters. You won't have any backups or replacements until after the 2nd gym, so all your early encounters have to be good. Also, Squirtle is an S tier encounter. It learns Surf and Ice Beam by HM/TM, and Bite by level up. Bite is one of the few Dark type moves in Gen 3, so it's good vs Misty, the hardest gym leader in the game because she has the strongest Pokemon relative to your own team. You have a guaranteed win vs her. Also, Surf and Ice Beam is basically perfect coverage in just a single Pokemon, leaving the rest of your encounters plenty of leeway to be terrible encounters. You're also on some kind of drugs if you rate Parasect highly for using Spore when it has a 4x weakness to Fire AND Flying. Meanwhile, Butterfree is faster than Parasect, has 97% accurate Sleep Powders thanks to Compound Eyes, and is a better attacker since it learns Psybeam and unlike Parasect, isn't WEAK to the thousands of Poison types in FRLG. You've got all of the Rocket Grunts, you've got Pokemon Tower, you've got Koga, Erika's whole gym is full of Grass/Poison type trainers, Agatha, Giovanni's 2 Nidos, seriously, there are a thousand different Poison types that Parasect is going to get outsped by and damaged heavily, while Butterfree will likely outspeed all of them and use Sleep Powder. Your tierlist is just completely wrong from start to finish and I'd direct anyone looking for advice on FRLG nuzlockes to look literally anywhere else.

>Charmander in A tier >brain dead

The Mr Mime disrespect is unreal! yeah if you're playing with trades, Alakazam is clearly better. But if not, Mr Mime will out-last Kadabra 100%. It also learns Magical Leaf for some reason, which is great coverage in Kanto. PLUS it has the trade stat boost, which is extremely helpful when you get it at a lower level. Will likely outlevel your badges midgame it's so efficient.

I think Bulbasaur is the best starter because of Misty I don't think you're guaranteed a counter for her. Venasaur definitely does fall off more than Blastoise later on.

The Geodude line in D tier? I respect you as a content creator, but damn, that's a bad take. Sure he's not the best into late game, but a defensive rock/ground type is busted in Kanto where coverage moves are few and most pokemon have one or two normal moves in their learnset. It's also a great pivot around any potential exploders, like the Koffing or Voltorb lines, which can seriously mess you up if you don't have a resist. My Golem, John Quincy Adams, pretty much carried me through the midgame of my most recent Leaf Green run. Couldn't have asked for a better physical tank (until the Elite 4, where I reluctantly swapped him out for Ford the Slowbro)

Believe me, Charmander isn't gonna even 4 hit KO geodude and Onix. Even with EV on how they work at low level. He is no nearly as good as It seems when you prove him

The problem with Charmander is that, like other commenters pointed out, you can't solo Brock without unrealistic EVs, IVs, and pretty good luck, but there is one pokemon that you can get that trivializes Brock aside from the starters: Mankey. If you do the math, the probability of getting Mankey on route 22 with dupes clause and catching all your encounters is about 80%. For reference, this is about the same accuracy as stone edge, which is notoriously unreliable, and failure is more than 3 times as likely as a critical hit.

As someone who has, quite recently used Charmander to Solo Brock, no. You are wrong, Geodude almost always takes 3 metal claws and Onix takes about 5 if you don't get an attack boost. But that doesn't matter because Onix has like a 90% chance to go for Rock Slide on the first move, nearly Killing you and lowering your speed enough so it outspeeds you next turn, when it definitely kills you. Don't get me wrong, it's possible, just with a lot of resets that I personally don't find to be worth it.

7:05 I don't believe Starmie has Confusion in FRLG at all for Misty It's Water Pulse, Swift, Recover and Rapid Spin

Fearow is much better than Pidgeot. While with Pidgeot you have to evolve Pidgey to Pidgeotto at lv18 and be stuck using Pidgeotto until lv36, with Fearow you can just evolve Spearow at lv20, and it has better speed, attack, and moves than Pidgeot anyway. Not to mention that Spearow is already as strong as Pidgeotto with 60 attack and only one point slower with 70 speed, so it can do good damage in the early game right away.

Misty’s starmie doesnt have confusions

I'd have probably put Guts Raticate in the B tier, it's surprisingly effective as a heavy hitter although very frail.

I usually respect your opinion but I feel like this list just has so many wrongs.The fact you brought up “opportunity cost” doesn’t sit well with me, to me you look at it way to speedrun based. The whole fun for me in nuzlockes is dealing with the hand your dealt, I can understand that you don’t see it this way but lowering some Pokemon to lower tiers even though they are great encounters on their own just is wrong.

Hmmm I disagree with charmander being a tier as with a few bad roles for encounters he becomes a burden and honestly fire types suffer greatly in first gen I am all in on squirtle squad

I'm surprised paras is so high with spore while caterpie is much lower despite having a much faster compoundeyes sleep powder once it evolves which is almost as accurate as spore.

starmie does not have confusion in fr/lg, moveset is rapid spin, swift, recover, and water pulse

I hate the constant Beedrill slander. Hes not great, but he is a FE mon with secret power, brick break, twinneedle, and whatever else. Great for misty, helps w/surge, good for eirika, and a fast one can slap sabrina. Better than f for sure

You underrate Butterfree, compound eyes and sleep powder is pretty busted. Also Rattata with guts is pretty amazing, may actually help your poor charmander beat brock even though hyper fang is resisted. I'm not going to lie I think it's very based that Charmander got that A spot, Bulbasaur dies late game hard, and Blastoise can be replaced by nearly any water type, meanwhile Charmander is the best fire type you're going to get in this challenge and he catches up on a lot of kills mid to late game. I will say that you're overhyping him since he does not beat Brock as easy as you say, if you don't get a Mankey it's going to be a struggle. I say B tier for all starters and that's my hot take.

I will say that one of the original Nuzlocke comics, Pettyartist, took Butterfree to the Elite Four. She ran Psychic/Sleep Powder/Dream Eater/Aerial Ace, and it worked out pretty much perfectly. After all, half the point of the challenge was to force the player to make the best of what they got, including using things they'd either avoid or box.