"Gyarados and its place in the meta"

#PokemonGO: Gyarados lost its unique niche as a water-type dragon killer with the loss of Dragonbreath. This was particularly useful against defending Dragonites with Steel Wing because fairies, the natural counter to dragons, are weak to steel.Gyarados is one of 4 fully evolved Pokemon to have terrible movesBelow is a list of Pokemon that have 0 or 1 STAB moves possible.PokemonSTAB MoveKinglerWater PulseWeezingSludge BombSeaking(none)GyaradosHydro PumpGyarados should not be on the same offensive level as any of these other Pokemon. It's a freaking Gyarados.This list did not include the one-stage Pokemon (Kangaskhan, Aerodactyl, Porygon, Mew). Kangaskhan hasn't mega evolved yet, so it's understandable that no one remembers what it does. Porygon has never been competitively viable, and no one has found the IRL truck that Mew is hiding under yet. A case could be made for Aerodactyl, I suppose.So assuming you don't get shafted by Twister, let's move on to see what Gyarados can do.Gyarados as a soft counter to psychics?The first thing that comes to mind is Slowbro. Gyarados resists Water Gun and Water Pulse while dealing SE damage with Bite. However Slowbro often carries Confusion, and has access to Psychic, making it seem like there's not that much point to using Gyarados over electric-types that get both STAB and SE and a much better special in Thunder. To be fair, electrics are pretty gimped so far in PoGo in terms of raw stats, so Gyarados might still have the edge here.PokemonHPAtkDefGyarados190192196Jolteon130192174Raichu120200154Electabuzz130198160The other dominant psychic type is Exeggutor. Gyarados is neutral to all of its moves, but considering all of Exeggutor's moves are STAB and none of Gyarados's charge moves hit Exeggutor particularly hard, you're probably better off using something like Flareon who also gets STAB SE and resists Seed Bomb and Solarbeam.Gyarados as a soft counter to Dragonite?As mentioned above, Gyarados resists Steel Wing, giving it a small advantage over the ice- and fairy-types that are normally considered counters to dragons. The problem is that the only ice-type that seems to be worth using is Lapras, who is neutral to Steel Wing anyway and does a lot more damage to Dragonite than Gyarados will ever hope to do with her double SE + STAB = 1.95x ice-type moves. Gyarados does have a slight edge over fairies once again because of its raw stats and because only Wigglytuff has a STAB basic attack in the form of Pound.And the other problem in this soft-counter situation is once again, the fact that SE moves get the same bonus as non-SE STAB. Gyarados's charge moves aren't particularly that useful. You're still better off using Hydro Pump vs. Dragonite than Dragon Pulse.MoveDamageTimeBase DPSvs. DragoniteTwister252.7 s8.510.6Dragon Pulse653.6 s17.121.4Hydro Pump903.8 s22.522.5Here are some DPS calculations for comparison. "Atk scaled" takes into account that these Pokemon have slightly lower base Atk than Gyarados, for a fairer comparison.MoveDamageTimeBase DPSvs. DragoniteAtk scaledWigglytuff's Play Rough552.9 s17.627.524.1Clefable's Moonblast854.1 s19.830.928.6Lapras's Ice Beam653.7 s16.933.031.0Lapras's Blizzard1003.9 s24.447.5844.7Lapras's Dragon Pulse653.6 s17.121.420.1So Gyarados does better than Dragon Pulse Lapras -- if you also discount the advantage from Lapras's ice-type basic attacks.Gyarados in comparison other water-types?Let's say you get a Hydro Pump Gyarados. Is it worth using over other water-types that also get Hydro Pump?PokemonHPAtkDefGyarados190192196Vaporeon260186168Poliwrath180180202Blastoise158186222Golduck160194176Tentacruel160170196Starmie120194192Cloyster100196196Seadra110176150Gyarados faces stiff competition from Vaporeon, who has 17% more effective health and loses only 3% of Hydro Pump's damage. Poliwrath and Blastoise are next in line, though both have slightly lower damage output and slightly less EHP (2.5% and 6% respectively). However, Poliwrath and Blastoise both have STAB basic attacks in the form of Bubble and Water Gun respectively, so it's pretty much a wash. We won't talk about the others.TL;DR:STAB is broken.Gyarados with Bite doesn't have much of a niche that can't be filled by another Pokemon.Gyarados is still one of the top offensive water-types due to its high stats... but Vaporeon pretty much does its job better. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2bWESac