Luxray or Electrivre for Pokemon Platinum?

Question

Im playing Pokemon platinum and I was thinking about adding a electric type to my team. Right now I have four gym badges and I'm about to fight crasher wake. I know Electabuzz is late game and is better, but I could really use an electric type Pokemon. Here is my team at the time of this question.
Grotle Lvl 28: bite, rock smash, mega drain, razor leaf.
Gabite lvl 28: dragon rage, slash, earthquake, sand tomb.
Golbat lvl 30: leech life, confuse ray, aerial ace, bite.
Gallade lvl27: confusion, calm mind, drain punch, magical leaf.

that's my current team notices they are all letter g'sI was thinking of replacing gabite for one of the two. thanks for the help in advanced.

Comments

y replace gabite? only 20 more lvls

Answer 1

Definitely use Luxray. Electivire doesn't get a chance to fight lot of electric-weak Pokemon, like the ones used by Wake and Team Galactic. Luxray also gets intimidate.

Comments

Also, trades have been shut down, he has no way of evolving the electabuzz

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Connecting to a nearby game using local network is still possible. I did that several times after the Internet got shut down.

Answer 2

I agree with sumwun completely, as Luxray is accessed far earlier in the game than Electabuzz (let alone Electivire), and Luxray can learn Spark at level 13, and is really helpful against Crasher Wake’s Gyarados and Floatzel. Luxray also learns Thunder Fang at level 35, which is great as that’s its best STAB move, and can really help with the Team Galactic Pokemon, as sumwun said below. Luxray is easily the better option here.

Comments

Luxray's thunder fang is weaker than its thunderbolt (and less accurate than spark), so it's not really a good move.

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Sorry, sumwun, I didn’t mean to be rude to you by calling you the wrong name. But anyways, Luxray is a physical attacker, so although Thunderbolt is a great move, Thunder Fang may be better suited for a physical attacker like Luxray. Thunder Fang has a 95 percent accuracy, so it’ll almost always be hitting, and it has the chance to paralyze AND flinch, so it’s at the very least an ok move.

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Luxray does have higher physical attack, but thunderbolt has more base power than spark or thunder fang. According to Showdown!'s damage calculator, thunderbolt does more damage if the target's defenses are equal.
84 SpA Luxray Thunderbolt vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Glalie: 64-76 (41.2 - 49%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
84 Atk Luxray Thunder Fang vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Glalie: 52-63 (33.5 - 40.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

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"Luxray can learn spark in lvl 13" I believe you mean shinx .-.

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Spark has a 30% chance of paralyzing, which is pretty good.

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If you really wanna use a physical STAB on Luxray in gen 4, you should use Spark.
It has higher accuracy, much higher paralyzing chance, all at the same power as thunder fang.
And besides getting flinches doesn`t matter that much in-game, so it`s just wiser to go with the more accurate move when both have the same power.
But if you want Luxray doing as much damage as it can while having 95-100 accuracy, as sumwun explained, Tbolt is better than the physical STABs it gets.