Drifblim or Lopunny for my Platinum in-game team?

Question

I like both very much.

Drifblim has a very good flare boost ability, which helps a lot in your special attack
But it's kind of hard to find and doesn't have a good defense.

And Lopunny has excellent special defense and speed.
But there is no physical attack and special attack that good.

Anyway which one should I use?

My team:
Infernape
Staraptor
Luxray
Floatzel
Toxicroak
Drifblim or Lopunny

Comments

What do you want to do with these Pokemon? Do you want to battle other people, the Battle Frontier, in-game trainers, or something else?

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just in-game trainers

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In DP, Flint uses both Drifblim and Lopunny.
Coincidence?

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Just so you know, Drifblim doesn't have Flare Boost in Gen 4. :P

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Toxicroak doesn't do anything to your team in presence of Infernape. It is replaceable.

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Will you select ba? If you're not satisifed that's fine but I haven't gotten clarification and it's been 6 days

Answer 1

Let's see here...

Drifblim's Ghost-Flying typing gives it access to the neat STAB Shadow Ball. Outside of that...not good. It doesn't even get Flare Boost yet, it gets that in Gen 5. Without it, it's outclassed by Haunter and Staraptor. Drifblim has a large movepool but the moves it gets are unremarkable; its best options for coverage are Thunderbolt and Psychic, which don't really fit on its movepool well. It's also not very strong and is not as bulky as it seems. Haunter is faster and more versatile, and has a lot of good options it can use. Same applies to Staraptor.

And if you thought Drifblim was mediocre, Lopunny is just straight up bad. Playthroughs are focused on doing damage, and that's something Lopunny isn't good at, with its base 76 Attack. It being a friendship evolution also means it's hard to get and it really isn't worth your time at all.

TL;DR you're better off going with something like Garchomp, since both of these Pokemon are unspectacular and share a type with the superior Staraptor. Also you should be using Lucario over Toxicroak.

Comments

Lopunny gets STAB on the very powerful return, so it does more damage than Drifblim in many situations. Both are still worse than Staraptor, though.