gengar

Intro

Hello everyone it's foo here and today I want to talk about the Gengar. The posterboy ghost Pokemon. In terms of brand recognition, Gengar is right up there in the pantheon with the likes of charizard and pikachu.

And Gengar has always been a powerful competitive pokemon too, with it's unique ghost/poison typing, a relatively fast speed stat, and  great special attack stat with a brilliant movepool.

SO let's check in on how he's doing in Scarlet and Violet... *Show 0% usage*

oh dear.

What happened? Why does no one want to play with Gengar anymore?? Was Gengar nerfed?

Well the only time Gengar was directly nerfed was wayyy back in generation 6 when its awesome, reliable Levitate ability was changed to Cursed Body. Levitate turned Gengar's ground type weakness into an immunity, meaning Gengar's poor defensive stats weren't such a drawback considering his 3 immunities and 2 quad resistances. Whereas, Cursed Body was nowhere near as good for 2 reasons.
1. for activation, gengar must be hit by a damaging move. Gengar does not like to be hit by damaging moves.
*oof*
2. The opponent's move has a 30%chance of being disabled. 30% is not 100%. Levitate is a 100% chance of an immunity...
BUTTT

this was all academic since in the same generation as this pretty rubbish nerf, Gengar gained a broken mega evolution with an unholy stat distribution combined with the shadow tag ability which just removes the option of switching for the opponent. Aren't abilities that turn off defensive counterplay just so fun and healthy for the game... *Urshifu fade in*

Gengar also benefitted from fairy type's introduction in generation 6 which turned poison type from being objectively the worst offensive type in the gameto actually being useful for something.

Seriously, do you remember how bad poison was offensively pre-gen 6? 4 types resisted it and steel was completely immune to damage and the poison status. But grass types were weak to poison, that's a fair trade right?... *I give you meme* Incredibly, gen 6 made poison viable by simply creating fairy types. Fairy is super strong defensively with resistances to common attacking types like fighting, dark, and U-Turn- I mean bug type, while being completely immune to dragon. Fairies are only weak to steel and, fortunately for Gengar, poison! Even senpai smogon recommended poison type moves for Gengar!

These buffs led to Gengar's heyday in generations 6 and 7. Mega Gengar single-handedly supported perish-trap team archetypes with its combo of perish song and shadow tag. However, its most impressive showing was in the restricted meta of 2016, where weather wars and positioning were vital, meaning Mega Gengar's Shadow Tag could be used to isolate and take out your opponent's weather setter thereby winning the weather war and likely the game. Gengar was present on both the winning and second place team at worlds 2016

But then generation 8 blew in and gengar became a shadow ball of its former self. Despite avoiding the Thanos click of dexit, Gengar lost access to its mega evolution. But not only that, power creep finally caught up with our fated purple gremlin.
Prior to gen 8, Gengar had faced limited competition for its role with most other ghost types being slower or considerably less powerful. But Dragapult usurped Gengar's role with ease, not just by being slightly faster than Gengar, but by being the fastest pokemon in the metagame. As an offensive ghost type, Dragapult far outclassed Gengar and not just because of its speed, but also because it benefitted much more from the Sword and Shield gimmick of dynamax. Gengar is more frail than dragapult and still took huge damage even with doubled dynamax HP. But more importantly, ghost type moves turned into max phantasm which dropped both opponents' defense stat. This does nothing for Gengar as a special attacker, but allows physical attacking Dragapult to snowball and pick up further KOs against weakened opponents. Dynamax was definitely more of an asset for physical ghost types.

As a sidenote, Gengar did actually get a unique gigantamax form which meant that instead of max phantasm, its ghost type moves turned into G-Max Terror which prevented the opponent from switching, which was preferrable to max phantasm's defense drop but did not help Gengar to sweep and was still not worth expending your valuable dynamax resource to do.

And so it was that Dragapult became the premier ghost type attacker. That was until the Isle of Crown Tundrarmor DLC released, bringing with it Spectrier, a new ghost type Pokemon that was again faster than Gengar, and with an even higher special attack stat. Not only that, but Spectrier also had a vastly superior ability in Grim Neigh, giving it special attack boosts upon KOs and allowing it to sweep with ease. Oh yeah, and Spectrier was significantly bulkier than Gengar too with a base 100 HP stat compared to Gengar's base 60.
So now Gengar had to face up against 2 faster offensive ghost types. Fortunately for Gengar, it still held a small niche that Spectrier and Dragapult could not emulate due to its wide movepool including useful support moves like Trick Room and Icy Wind.

However, in restricted formats, Calyrex Shadow Rider was legal. With stats that even MEGA Gengar would envy, its signature spread move Astral Barrage, and access to 2 abilities... Needless to say this was the best ghost type pokemon we've seen to date, proven by the fact that it was on the winning team at worlds 2022.

But the most heinous disrespect was still to come as we reach the current day with Scarlet and Violet. A ghost type Pokemon that causes all other ghost types to quake in their etehereal boots has floated onto the scene. Flutter Mane has arrived. Having a similar stat distribution to Gengar but being both faster, more powerful and much bulkier on the special side, Flutter Mane outcompetes Gengar for its role as a fast special ghost type attacker. Most notably, Flutter Mane's secondary fairy typing is much more spammable than Gengar's poison typing. Plus Protosynthesis giving Flutter Mane access to Booster Energy, one of the most versatile items in the game, is far superior to Gengar's Cursed Body. For these reasons, Flutter Mane has been the most used Pokemon for every ruleset it has been available. *Insert Ogerpon* But the most egregious insult to Gengar is Flutter Mane's movepool. None of Gengar's previous competitors had quite the same breadth of offensive coverage moves and useful utility moves that Gengar boasted. But Flutter Mane does. Shadow Ball, check. Coverage for dark types, check. Trick Room, check. Imprison, check. Taunt, check. Icy Wind, check. With so much overlap in their movepools, but with Flutter Mane's superior stats and typing, it is extremely difficult to ever justify using Gengar instead of Flutter Mane.

In fact, to add to Gengar's humiliation, there were VGC metagames in which I found it easier to justify using Haunter over Flutter Mane than to use Gengar over Flutter Mane.

A little known fact is that Haunter gained notable buffs in Scarlet and Violet. Prior to this generation, Gengar had a much wider movepool than Haunter, with important coverage moves like Focus Blast that Haunter did not learn. But that gap was significantly narrowed in generation 9. Examples of moves Haunter now learns that it did not before include Focus Blast, Thunder, Acid Spray, and Imprison. On top of that, Haunter retained its Levitate ability in generation 6. Now the only things that differentiate Gengar and Haunter are that Gengar has higher stats, but Haunter has a better ability. And Haunter's ability gives it something that neither Gengar nor Flutter Mane can do: completely wall Great Tusk and Normalmoon Ursaluna's STAB moves. It can also float next to an ally using earthquake without getting decimated. So I had some fun with a Haunter team in early metagames where Great Tusk and Normalmoon ursaluna were more common.

But what can Gengar do that Flutter Mane cannot do?

No seriously, that's not a rhetorical question. In fact, that question was a challenge. I challenged myself to make a team using Gengar utilising the 2 miniscule advantages that Gengar does have over Flutter Mane. And I was actually surprised at the results.

The first advantage is Gengar's poison typing. As mentioned previously, poison isn't the strongest offensive typing, but it is super effective against two very important types in the current metagame: grass and fairy. Having a strong super effectivemove against grass types is incredibly valuable due to the rise in Ogerpon usage, with Wellspring Ogerpon usage alone rivaling FLutter Mane for the most used Pokemon. Ogerpon Hearthflame and Ogerpon Teal Mask have also seen competitive success. And there's also Rillaboom which is usually floating around the top 10 in usage too. Gengar can threaten KOs on all of these Pokemon, or at least very heavy damage in the case of assault vest rillaboom.

But what about fairy types? The premier fairy in the current meta is flutter mane which does not take super effective damage from poison type moves, while outspeeding and KOing Gengar in return with shadow ball. And there are no other fairy types any where near the top 10 usage right? Riiight??

WRONG.

Some of the most common pokemon are now opting to terastalise into fairy types as an amazing defensive typing, especially in the matchup against the increasingly popular Urshifu single strike. Fairy is the most popular tera type for raging bolt, kingambit, farigiraf, indeedee, gouging fire, and archaludon. Even Gholdengo likes to terastalise into a fairy type.

So Gengar offers a fantastic way of dealing massive damage to these bulky pokemon even if they terastlise into a fairy type.

The other minor advantage is that Gengar does get some useful support moves that Flutter Mane does not. I opted to use Encore to try to catch some protects or fake outs. Outside of that, will-o-wisp or disable are reasonable options too.