Plague von Karma
Banned deucer.
Mmm, not wholly sure if I'm sold on this. Maybe it's because I'm of the thought that the thread is for shittalking unusable Pokemon, but in my experience, Magmar has been at least decent.
Speaking of awful fire types in-game, let's talk about Magmar in Blue.
That's it. Honestly there is nothing about Magmar worth using for. I used it simply because it was cool as a rival to Charizard in the anime.
It comes like with three moves: Ember, Confuse Ray and Leer.
You grind it up to lv43 to teach it Fire Punch... thinking about it, doesn't Vulpix learn Flamethrower at lv35 and can evolve immediately with Fire Stone in the same game?
You see, Magmar is the Fire Type that can learn the TM Psychic. So you can get rid of mean Poison Type Elite 4 member...
Fire types are just awful in Gen 1. They can be useful to get rid of bugs early on and stupid weeds, but post game you are fighting seels, dragons and giant rocks. Fire Types struggle against those or are mediocer at best.
At least Gen 2 gave him Thunderpunch and you can get him early on.
I guess that's something anyone who has 2 Gameboys can try. Teach Magmar ThunderPunch and trade it back to Pokemon Blue. Tell me how good it performs against the Elite 4.
The thing with Magmar is it actually comes at one of the better times in terms of Fire-types. Coming on Cinnabar Island right before you get TM Fire Blast is great, as you don't need to actually grind for Fire Punch. Vulpix is actual suffering to use up until L35 as by that point you're starting to fight Pokemon that are far more powerful than it; this is a big drawback to stone evolutions not named Exeggcute in my in-game experience. Part of what makes Psychic handy on Magmar is that the Special drop usually lets you smack something with Fire Blast right after, while also being a Fire-type not stonewalled by the Rock-types of Victory Road or the ones that weird Hiker uses in the second Elite Four room. This is another thing Ninetales has issues with overall; you'll usually end up a few levels behind because there just isn't much opportunity to use it late-game. It should also be noted that Magmar isn't terrible against Lorelei at all, though it can't pull off a sweep because of Slowbro (unless it spams Withdraw!!!).
It's still not great solely on the basis of coming late, but the assessment just seems a little unfair.