By Matt
Today’s Pokemon of the day is… Buizel! Buizel has actually been one of my favorites for quite some time. The first time I saw a Buizel was when I happened to be channel surfing. An episode of Pokemon was showing, so I decided to watch it. The episode goes like this: a Buizel is stealing random stuff (I think it was fishing rods) from the people, causing Ash and Dawn, the Sinnoh heroes, to go after it. They finally catch up to it near a waterfall and find out that it is training, for no clear reason. Dawn sends her Piplup to go capture it, expecting Buizel to be a weak target. Buizel proves a tough adversary and avoids most of Piplup’s attacks. Dawn orders Piplup to use either Whirlpool or Brine, which weakens Buizel enough for her to capture it.
I found this strange, as Water-type against Water-type moves would only deal 0.75x damage (1.5x for moves that match the user’s type, divided by 2 for ineffective attacks), plus the fact Whirlpool/Brine was only used once. In order to get Buizel, I traded from my brother’s Platinum and bred it, because Pokemon Soul Silver covers only the Johto region and then some. Buizel’s only ability is Swift Swim, which doubles Speed in rain (Rainy Day). This was one of those redundant abilities, because Buizel’s strongest stat is in its Speed (second highest is in Attack).
Since it is said to spend a lot of time in the water, I think an ability like Water Absorb would be much more fitting (also, it would cover up its extremely weak points in Defense/Special Defense). Buizel, like Blitzle, which I have talked about earlier, has only a base stat of 35 in Defense, according to Serebii, and 30 in Special Defense. It can be taken out by wild Pokemon fairly easily (like Minccino, which I also covered earlier). It can easily make up for its loss of Speed if you decide to EV train it with the Macho Brace (or stat-specific items like the Power Belt, Band, etc.). It evolves into Floatzel at level 26, but I prefer to keep it a Buizel, no matter how weak it is.
Not all is lost though; it is able to learn some destructive moves, like Surf or Blizzard. The moves that it learns are relatively weak at the beginning, but if TMs are taught early on (or, even better, learned as an egg move), it can help Buizel level up quickly. Again, EV training for Defense is highly recommended. I was able to EV train Buizel in SoulSilver in the place under the last city by taking out Gravelers.
At first, even a move doing 4x damage would not KO the Gravelers, and they would get revenge and knock out Buizel by either using a kamikaze attack (Selfdestruct) or using some random powerful Rock-type attack. I have to admit, this was very annoying, but eventually, its Defense persisted, and was able to survive many hits. Finding a nature is important; its weak points must be raised in every possible way. If you EV train for Defense, find a nature that promotes Special Defense and lowers Speed, or vice-versa. No matter how low its stats are, Buizel will always be my third favorite.
Tags: Buizel, Nintendo DS