How viable is Joltik in Little Cup?

Question

It has good speed and a wide movepool, and moves like Giga Drain, Electro Ball, and Bug Buzz. It's also one of the few Electric types not weak to Ground and one of the few Bug types that can take neutral Flying hits. Is Joltik viable in Gen 8 LC? How much do people use it? Just wondering, thanks :)

Comments

Is this for Generation 8?

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yes :)

Answer 1

Joltik is okay, but it's outclassed both by other Bug types and other Electric types. It's a Bug type, and Bug types aren't too good in LC at the present. It's fast, but outsped by many threats, like Scorbunny, Onix, and Archen. All can easily take out Joltik within one or two hits, as Joltik doesn't often run Eviolite. Scorbunny absolutely murders it with Blaze Kick, Archen squashes it with Head Smash, and while it has Giga Drain, Onix is faster and can take it out with Rock Blast while staying alive thanks to Sturdy. Joltik is weak to Stealth Rock, and using Heavy-Duty Boots means you can't use something like a Life Orb.

In comparison to other Bug types, Joltik finds a small niche as the best special attacker out of any of them, but special Bug types aren't exactly in large demand in the current metagame. Anorith is a better physical attacker, with Swords Dance, Hone Claws, and Swift Swim, while Dewpider is better defensively, with Sticky Web and more bulk.

In comparison to other Electric types, Joltik is not even close to the best. Magnemite resists Flying, it's a special attacker, and it can pull Berry Juice + Sturdy + Recycle shenanigans to annoy an opponent. Elekid is even faster than Joltik, boasts a higher Special Attack, and gets moves like Psychic, Ice Punch, and Brick Break.

Now, Joltik isn't necessarily bad. It's able to take out slower threats like Mareanie, sometimes Pawniard, and non-Eviolite Timburr, but it still struggles. It's too frail, weak to Stealth Rock, outclassed by Magnemite and Elekid, and its Special Attack, while good, isn't the greatest. It's okay as a Bug special attacker, but as I said, those aren't very popular at the present.

Hope I helped!

Comments

thanks :D

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Happy to help!

Answer 2

Joltik boasts a useful array of moves such as Giga Drain as well as a unique typing that gives it a resistance to Fighting-type moves. Nevertheless, its lackluster Special Attack and Stealth Rock weakness results in Joltik not being a good choice for a team. Joltik is outclassed by Magnemite and Elekid as strong special attackers that are more efficient throughout games.

Joltik tries to make use of its decent coverage by being able to hit common Electric-type checks such as Onix with Giga Drain. However, there is little reason to use it over Elekid and Magnemite, which are faster and stronger than Joltik.

Source

Even though it's for SM, not much has changed after SwSh. Currently, both Joltik and Elekid are unranked. Magnemite is at much higher rank in the Viability rankings.
Hence, Joltik is not a good choice. In case of Elekid, it has fallen to Unrated because of Arena Trappers like Diglett.

Truth be told, a few of the B- --> UR mons have a shot at getting into C, mainly Tirtouga and Elekid Imo, though this mainly goes for Tirtouga since Elekid kinda sucks with all the trappers flying around, but it still has some nice coverage and can be kind of hard to switch into unless you have something like Chinchou (hint hint).

Therefore, Magnemite is the better Electric-type.

At the moment, I feel like Magnemite is in a really good position in the meta: it literally feasts on teams with no Ground-type (which are more common at the moment due to people prefering Pawniard over Onix as a dedicated flycheck to not invite Grookey in as freely), checks the aforementioned Grookey (and can put quite a dent on its partner-in-crime Woobat), somewhat prevents flying types to spam their flying stabs (although it doesn't want to in most of the time as it fears a Knock Off from Vulla or a Scald burn from Gull), takes advantage of Mareanie's current place in the meta, checks Abra...

Source

Hope this helps!

Comments

Thanks for the advice, :) this was really interesting to read!

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No problem.