"Pokemon GO Meta Analysis: Pidgeot"

#PokemonGO: Other than the starting Pokemon, one of the first Pokemon you encounter early on is Pidgey. Chances are that the first evolved Pokemon you've run into were also Pidgeotto and Pidgeot. So how good is that Pidgey, once you fully evolve it? Should you even be using it?Pidgeot is probably the easiest 3rd stage Pokemon you can get. This is because Pidgeys can be found pretty much everywhere, and the amount of candy needed to evolve Pidgey to Pidgeotto and Pidgeotto to Pidgeot is low compared to the amount of candy needed for other evolutions. Thus, Pidgeot is a good entry level Pokemon for gym battles, because you get it early, and Pidgeot is also better than most alternatives you get at this point (such as Raticate and Golbat).How well does Pidgeot do in Pokemon GO? Let's start with the obvious: Pidgeot is the 4th strongest Flying type pokemon, behind Dragonite, Charizard and Gyarados. However, Dragonite and Gyarados have no movesets that deal flying type damage, while Charizard is better known for it's fire capabilities. Unlike Charizard, Pidgeot's best moveset deals pure flying damage, allowing it to deal neutral damage to Dragon, Water and other Fire types. It's moveset of Wing Attack/Hurricane is one of the best fast/special attacks in game, and makes up for it's medicore stats.Generally speaking, Pidgeot is a decent offensive Pokemon that faces off well against Grass types (Such as Venusaur, Exeggutor, Victreebel and Vileplume), Fighting types (Such as Machamp and defensive Poliwrath), and Bug types (Such as Pinsir and Venomoth). This sounds well in theory, but in the current meta, Bug types are rarely used for defending gyms. While Grass types are more common than Bug, fully evolved Grass types are still relatively uncommon, and even when encountered, Pidgeot faces competition from the more common fire types such as Arcanine and Flareon. Pidgeot's niche over fire types is that it's not weak to the very common Water types, thus it doesn't have to switch out when facing a Grass type followed by a Water type. Fighting types, like Grass types, are also uncommon, but due to the lack of viable Psychic and Ghost types, Pidgeot is one of the best matchups against them. Defensive Poliwrath is a great matchup for Pidgeot, since it utilizes mud slap, an attack that Pidgeot resists, and deals two super effective moves in return.Pidgeot does have a few flaws. First, as a somewhat fast Pokemon, Pidgeot suffers from the current implementation of the Speed stat into Pokemon GO. Second, while Pidgeot can be used for attacking gyms, it cannot be used as a good defender. Third, most Pidgeots rarely live up to their full potential. This is because of the Pokedex scaling bug, which means that only hatched Pidgeys have high IVs. Should you finally hatch one, know that only one moveset Pidgeot utilizes is useful, while the other five are useless. Non-Hurricane movesets deal significantly less DPS while Steel Wing does bad against the two most common Fire and Water types.One last thing to consider is that getting a Perfect Pidgeot generally hurts your level progression, because the fastest way of leveling up currently is evolving Pidgeys to Pidgeottos and transferring them (and not fully evolve them). The full evolution from Pidgeotto to Pidgeot will cost you thousands of EXP per Pidgeot, and since Pidgeot has five bad movesets (out of six!), the probability of getting the right moveset is low (Even after 6 attempts, you will only have ~66% of getting the right moveset!). If you end up with average IVs and the best moveset, you should probably stop there, unless you don't mind slowing down your level progression.To sum it up, you can use your Pidgeot, which carries Wing Attack/Hurricane as an offensive Pokemon that can be used to counter Fighting types, as well as Grass types.Hope this helped anyone. I may turn this into a series and review other Pokemon later on. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2bkOjTd