Vapereon; A worse Gyarados, which in turn is a worse Kyogre
Jolteon; Will likely be outclassed by Magnezone and Electrivire, even if you don't have the legendary electrics.
Flareon; A blast burn Charizard is better, as well as the legendaries
Umbreon; Sadly irrelevant due to Niantics CP formula and the non existant defense meta
Espeon. Best psychic attacker except Mewtwo, but psychic attackers only have a small number of uses
Leafeon; Likely outclassed by Tangrowth. Probably on par with Aloha Exeggcutor
Glaceon; Mamoswine will be stronger and easy to obtain, unless they give Mamoswine lacklusture moves
Sylveon; Should have good stats with Niantics current formula, with good bulk and an attack in the low 200's. Might be the most useful eevolution considering the small number of good fairy pokemon.
Overall the eevolutions are cute but don't have much use in the meta. Is this correct?
Hello Harry,
Thank you for the question.
Eeveelutions are a great choice for beginners to the game because of the relative ease of evolving them due to the 25 candy requirement. With a full set of them, there are very few bosses/gyms that are not covered at least adequately by them. All the alternatives you mentioned are great but again, none of which are as easy as the 25 candy, if we disregard the chance factor for the kanto eeveelutions.
The potential they have is near zero, aside from glaceon. Their ease of access is their sole saving grace when gen IV comes out, but beyond that they are mearly stepping stones to better pokemon. Their ultimate purpose is to let players get the better pokemon, and once that happens, or the ones that are the best of their type dont have much relevance, being relegated to very few specialist match ups that generalists can do
That's a fairly accurate appraisal.
I wouldn't say that they have no use in the meta, but they are all ultimately outclassed. What eclipses them however, in the majority of cases, are Pokemon that are legendary or can be tricky to get hold of. The Eeveelutions are all very easy to get acquire however, and as such are highly useful for those in the early stages in their PoGo career.
Correct, most of them are easy to get beginner units.
Notes on the future evolutions:
Leafeon: You don't even need Tangrowth to outclass it, its optimal moveset RL/GK is already outclassed in DPS by Sceptile, FP Venusaur, Cacturne and Victreebel.
Glaceon: Don't forget Weavile which will also outclass Glaceon given any double ice moveset. Swinub and Sneasel are both very rare in some biomes which may give Glaceon some additional worth even if it does get outclassed by them.
Sylveon: Fairy isn't a great attacking type. Dragons are better against dragons, psychic is better against fighting and fighting is better against dark, for the most part. I'll make every and any excuse to use Sylveon myself, but I predict less meta relevancy than Espeon and Glaceon.
Keep in mind the Eeveelutions had much more utility in earlier metas, before the gym rework, legendaries, and Gen 3. Vaporeon in particular was a must have for any player worth their salt, and the others bar Umbreon have a cost/benefit ratio that's still hard to ignore.
With the current game, they're easily accessible 2nd - 3rd stringers, but more dedicated players likely have a number of better alternatives.
I think Espeon is the best, like you said as it and Alakazam are neck and neck for the best psychic type after Mewtwo.
However, don't sleep on Flareon. Blast Burn Charizard is unattainable, and Moltres is difficult to power up. Flareon has more DPS than Entei. I rely on my multiple Flareon when I raid Registeel, especially in clear weather.
Depends.
If you're a low tier gym battler and your local gym scene sucks, then yes, having a bunch of eevolutions is probably not worth the space storage when you have a couple Kyogre, Moltres, Entei or high-level CDay specimens.
But if you happen to be constantly involved in local turf wars and no amount of health items could possibly keep your best attackers in good shape, then a dozen random eevolutions are a marvelous cheap investment of nothing but eevee candy.
I wouldn't invest stardust in them now, but just having them on standby ready to backup is really helpful when you actually have fun with gyms.
It's not quite as easy to get full squads of top-meta legendary pokemon up to usable levels as it is to just evolve common species that are still very good, even if leagues below the best of their types.
I mean, I guess I could technically have 6 maxed Kyogre (although I would need 4 times that amount to match my playstyle), but then I wouldn't have enough RC or dust for anything else. So a bunch of Vaporeon ready to fill in the gaps is a blessing. Same goes for Espeon in relation to Mewtwo, or Flareon in relation to Moltres.
Me and 99% of players can't afford to have full teams top-meta mons of each type. So to say they don't have much use in the meta is a wrong wording of the same idea: they are not the best in their field, but they are certainly not useless.
I had a lvl 35 shiny Umbreon score me two victories defending a gym today, so I guess some newcomers are still not up to the level needed to face such towering defenses (which they would be if they had a couple weather boosted eevolutions in their collection).
I've been hoarding lvl 35 eevees for a while waiting for the gen 4 eevolutions to come out in hopes that they are good, but I got so many more this weekend that I decided to just evolve a few dozen of them at random. Half of them are already fainted from battling but that's not the point.
For rural players not having acces to Legendaries and not much spawns they are good.
For us others they are more a filler option but in most cases not useless just not the first pick.
Not sure about this new healing before dying method (if its faster)
But with fighting the "traditional" way you need at least 2 Teams so there is plenty of space for the Eeveelotions.
I would rate them:
1. Espeon
2. Flareon
3. Glaceon (if Mamoswine gets bad moves its easy No. 1)
4. Jolteon
5. Vaporeon (potential if they rework gyms again)
6. Umbreon
? Leafeon (maybe with a good moveset)
? Sylveon (never heard of this guy)
