>>34650296>Your points on Feraligatr would be accurate if Water was also mostly unnecessary, and the game didn't throw you a free shiny already evolved Gyarados mid game.It's still accurate. Gyarados takes more experience to level and Johto fucking sucks when it comes to experience. Feraligatr will simply put in more work due to how early you get it and how much less experience it takes to level up. And by the time you get something else you want to use, it learns pretty much any relevant HM you want to give it.
>Regardless of Fire being largely useless, Typhlosion is stronger and faster and can get access to Flamethrower/Fire Punch by GoldenrodNot quite. Unless you're power leveling Cyndaquil only, you might have a Typhlosion by Ecruteak. There's no way you're actually going to have a Typhlosion by the time you first hit Goldenrod and Quilava can't learn Fire Punch. Flamethrower takes more time to get (and/or money) as well. And yeah, I know about that in Crystal. It's why I mentioned GS only.
Smogon actually has in-game viability rankings and that reason is why Totodile is considered one of the absolute best things in the game to use (the other being Abra). I'll admit they take a few different things into account, though.
