Sunday, July 13

Ranking the Pokemon: #21- Dragonair

Dragonair is one cool cat...er, dragon. The curvy body, pointed tail and unicorn horn make it look more snakelike (with a unicorn horn) than anything else, but I guess GameFreak didn't really have a lot of experience drawing dragons, since Dragonair's evolutionary line is the only one in the game. Besides, that baby blue color is just so hot right now. Well done, Hansel.

I just learned this right now, but Dragonair's base stats are 20 points higher in each category than Dratini's. That makes Dragonair, along with the other two dagrons, one of the few Pokemon that has a base stat ending in a number that's not 0 or 5 (in Dragonair's case, it's its 84 base Attack stat). That's some odd trivia, ain't it?

Draggy is tied with Haunter for highest total base stats for an unevolved Pokemon, which is another bit of trivia. It's also a way of saying Dragonairlines is a pretty solid battler. The Attack is its best stat, but everything else is right around average to above average. I also learned today that Dragonair is actually a real airlines in Hong Kong, and now that I think about it, I may have even flown on it when I studied abroad in China. Even more of a reason to like Dragonair (the Pokemon).

For your moveset, Thunder Wave should be a part of every Dragonair--in fact, any Pokemon that can learn Thunder Wave should have it as one of its four moves. There's just something that's pretty helpful about being able to paralyze your opponent 100% of the time. Someone once told me the Thunder Wave/Wrap combo with Dragonair was the most effective thing in the game, but for people who don't have the patience to do like 2 HP worth of damage at a time, Blizzard and Thunderbolt are much more satisfying alternatives. I'd put those two on for sure, and then include Fire Blast, Hyper Beam, Agility, Reflect or Surf as my final move, in that order. Blizzard basically takes care of everything Surf would (except for Fire), and even though I'm not a big Fire Blast fan, Dragonair's one weakness is Ice, so it's nice to be able to do some good damage against 'em.

Of course, that moveset isn't taking any advantage of Dragonair's Attack rating, but the difference between that rating and the Special one is subtle enough that you can still turn Dragonairhead into a special sweeper, often with overwhelming success.

Battling Grade: B+

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