Guts ability plus which status orb?

Question

I see a lot of people using Guts + Toxic Orb, but the HP damage taken from bad poisoning increases the longer the Pokemon stays in battle, and therefore isn't a Flame Orb better (for non-Fire Pokemon with Guts), because it deals the equal amount of damage each turn and, because of this ability, it won't lower the attack stat.

So why is the Toxic Orb seemingly more popular than the Flame Orb?

Answer 1

Guts will power uo moves base power when there is a status promlem. If you use e.g Toxic orb it will inflict a status problem(poison obviously) therefore increasing the Pokemons base movepower and therefore doing more damage. Flame orb will also decrease the power but do less damage on the whole(on the holder I might add). While Toxic orb wil do more damage but doesn't decrease the attack power. Those who use toxic orb will switch Pokemon very often to prevent bulid up on the poison damage. The move facade also does damage if there is a status condition so a combo of the two,epichaly on a normal type(STAB) and do lots of damage. A good example of a Pokemon that can do this well is ursaring.

Please see the http://pokemondb.net/move/all and http://pokemondb.net/move/all for details.

Answer 2

Probably because Toxic gives less damage on the first turn... and a lot of switching takes place in competitive battling. Otherwise, I don't know.

Toxic Orb is an alternative that can do everything above as well, but the poison status inflicted by Toxic Orb causes less damage in the short-term while the burn status inflicted by Flame Orb causes less damage in the long-term—after 3 turns they will both have done the same amount of damage to the holder, before which Toxic Orb does less, and after which Flame Orb does less, owing to the increasing damage from Toxic poison. For this reason, Guts Pokemon that switch out often, such as Swellow, will typically use Toxic Orb, while those that try to stay in and sweep, such as Ursaring, will prefer Flame Orb.

~ Smogon