Halt and Catch Fire
It’s often the case that Starter Pokémon create fanboys and we all know how vocal and irritating Cyndaquil fanboys can be. Unfortunately, there is not much to fantasize about the Cyndaquil Poké family in Pokémon GO.
As you’ll see in the breakdown below, Typhlosion is a far cry from the Top Tier, trailing far behind Flareon, Arcanine and Charizard. There’s plenty of reasons why, and majority of them relate to subpar moves and weird stat distribution.
We do not hide our disappointment as the writer of this guide is also a Cyndaquil/Typhlosion fanboy.
Cyndaquil, Quilava and Typhlosion Max CP and Stats
Cyndaquil family is notorious for having high Attack values and measly Defense, so it’s no surprise this hasn’t changed in Pokémon GO. Although Typhlosion has similar Max CP to Charizard, it’s uneven, Attack heavy stat distribution makes it significantly weaker in long running Gym battles.
Given the stat distribution and potential movesets, Typhlosion is a really bad Gym Defender, but could be useful in Gym Offense. The later will only be useful if you encounter Grass types in Gyms.
Overall, decent MAX CP and Attack heavy stat distribution make the entire family and especially Typhlosion a flame wielding glass canon. It can deal damage, but if you get hit, you’re going down.
# | Sprite | Name | MAX CP | ATK | STA | DEF | Total |
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155 | Cyndaquil FIRE |
831 | 116 | 78 | 29 | 290 | |
156 | Quilava FIRE |
1484 | 158 | 116 | 39 | 403 | |
157 | Typhlosion FIRE |
2686 | 223 | 156 | 53 | 555 |
Typhlosion Best Moves and movesets
If you take a look at the moves table below, you know that this is going to be a wild ride. Typhlosion, a fire breathing badger, has the weirdest and most conflicting move pool we’ve seen in ages.
Not only one of it’s quick moves is Shadow Claw GHOST, but one of it’s charge moves is Solar Beam, which is a GRASS type move. That’s just crazy, as none benefit from STAB and Solar Beam is completely opposite type to Fire.
If you apply some maths to that, you soon realise that your Typhlosion has measly 16.67% chance to get Ember/Overheat and additional 16.67% chance to get Shadow Claw/Overheat. In other words, you’ve got only 33% chance that your Typhlosion is going to be useful to some extent.
That’s the main reason why Typhlosion ranks so low when compared to Flareon, Arcanine and Charizard.
155 | EMBER10FLAMETHROWER70
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156 | EMBER10FLAMETHROWER70
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157 | SHADOW CLAW9OVERHEAT160
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Closing Words
We are very, very sad to see Typhlosion end up in this state in Pokémon GO. With a better move pool and a bit of stat tweaking, Typhlosion could be at least 20-25% better performer in Gyms.