Despite Aerodactyl being obviously good, I do love pointing out that it has rock head, there are TWO potential stab moves it could use that ability with, Head Smash and Brave Bird, and it gets neither of them.
I like how torchic gets brave bird, leading one to think the pre requisite for it is being bird and not necessarily flight, then zubat gets it, which implies the exact opposite, aerodactyl still doesn't get it
Surprised at no Venomoth mention, it was useless until it got quiver dance and tinted lens in gen 5 and even got banned from UU in gen 6 without even being in the tier
It's unfortunately ZU at the moment, a massive fall from Gen 7 and Gen 8 NatDex RUBL placement. The biggest factor is probably Smogon's Silly Sleep Ban since Sleep Powder was major factor to its gameplay.
@@hirocoldy6023 "Man, this one pokemon we just unbanned is really good at abusing sleep... Oh I know! Instead of rebanning it, let's ban sleep entirely!"
@@TrixterTheFemboythere were also a few other sleep abusers rising in popularity apparently, namely hypnosis iron valiant and the chlorophyll squad, as well as red card amoonguss basically guaranteeing a sleep because you can't just use a grass type
Alomomola's probably my favorite example of a pokemon that got good later on. It started in Gen 5 NU, yet only ever rose up in the tiers bar Sword and Shield where it was a victim of Dexit. And in Gen 9, despite Scarlet and Violet being the most powercrept generation sense generation 5 where Alomomola was introduced, it's become an OU staple and quite possibly the best supporting pokemon in the tier. Regenerator, Wish, and Flipturn are a hell of a combination.
Rock Slide was a TM in both Gen 1 and 2, but Aerodactyl still can't learn it. There is evidence that it should have been able to in Gen 2 because Lance has an illegal Acrodactyl with Rock Slide, or at least it could at some point, and they never removed it from Lance's Aerodactyl. Lance using Game Shark strats in both Gens 1 and 2 (Barrier Dragonite is also illegal)
@@piratebear3126 I honestly think it was supposed to have it. They must have made Aero compatible with RS in gen 2 but then forgot that the player has no way of teaching the move cause its not a level-up move. As for the breeding, I think Aero does not breed with any Rock Slide users so it couldn't inherit it
1:00 another thing that helped Azumarill is the changes to breeding mechanics in XY letting both parents pass egg moves. Prior to this Aqua Jet and Belly Drum were incompatible due to no father learning both, but now that mothers can pass egg moves that’s no longer an issue.
Another one to mention: Incineroar originally didn't have intimidate, making it not that great in VGC. Once it got intimidate, though... yeah you know what happened
Another thing about Crawdaunt is that Gen 6 also gave it Aqua Jet. This finally allowed it to somewhat overcome its slow speed, letting it hit faster foes safely as well as clean up lategame more easily. (Meanwhile, Azumarill had Aqua Jet ever since Gen 4.)
Fun fact: Azumarill has been indirectly buffed in gen 5 - despite it being used as a Huge Power sweeper, the opponent can't use a grass move safely due to the possibility of it having Sap Sipper
Here’s a video idea: How types have changed throughout generations. Like Psychic and Normal types used to be top tier in Gen 1, but now they are mediocre or bad.
Gengar is a very interesting case study in this imo. I would posit that no mon has recieved more consistent generation after generation buffs than the funny ghost man. Gengar was an interesting mon in gen 1 OU. As the tier's only ghost type in a normal dominated meta, being one of the only mons capable of swapping into hyper beam or body slam without taking heavy damage. It also has rather high special attack and an excellent 110 base speed tier, allowing it to speed tie the mighty Tauros. It has a decent enough special movepool with thunderbolt and psychic, super fast though inaccurate sleep, and even explosion. It had everything except for stab moves, which were both very weak and physical making them not even remotely worth using. Despite its moveset awkwardness though, it still had a place in OU because its typing was just that good. Gen 2 Gengar was mostly the same as Gen 1 Gengar, with the notable additions of the elemental punches allowing it to complete its coverage and letting it go on the offensive. It also was gifted with Destiny Bond, giving it a new way to sacrifice itself to take out an opponent. The addition of Shadow Ball didn't really help it at all as Gengar's physical attack was still quite bad. Overall Gengar got some meaningful buffs that didn't meaningfully change how it played. Gen 3 saw Gengar go from being decent to excellent. It got levitate, which removes a solid chunk of the normal drawbacks associated with its poison typing and gives it an embarrassment of abusable immunities to swap in on. Taunt and Will O Wisp give it some excellent utility options for stopping hazard setup or punishing physical attackers looking for an easy KO like TTar. In gen 4 Gengar was one of the game's biggest beneficiaries from the physical/special split. Up until now, Gengar basically didn't have STAB moves due to both poison and ghost being physical. With the addition of special ghost and poison moves, Gengar effectively got a 1.5 times boost to its still-excellent 130 base special attack, allowing it to be a real threat. It also got the powerful but unreliable focus blast, which when combined with shadow ball gave it perfect neutral coverage. Gengar no longer relied on hitting things super effectively to deal meaningful damage, and could instead threaten things all on its own. It also quite enjoyed the new life orb and black sludge items, the former giving it even more power at the cost of usually-not-relevant life and the latter being a poison-specific leftovers that punishes trick users. Gen 5 might be the only gen where Gengar didn't see a major buff. It doesn't especially care for the weather wars meta, but it found some niches anyway just off the strength of its gen 4 buffs. Gen 6 gave us Mega Gengar and a bunch of brand new targets in the fairy type. It also nerfed steel types so Gengar's shadow ball can hit things like Aegislash and Metagross super effectively. In gen 7 Gengar lost levitate for cursed body. Normally, this would be a massive nerf, but it just so happened that in that same generation, they introduced the terrain setting tapus who proceeded to define the entire meta game. As it turns out, Gengar absolutely loves every single terrain. Psychic terrain makes it immune to the dreaded priority moves, letting it stay in on things like Bisharp and Azumarill without fear of just dying to priority. Electric Terrain beefs up its thunderbolt to STAB levels and makes it immune to sleep, making Gengar one of the best offensive Breloom checks in the game. Even Grassey Terrain can offset Life Orb damage and make weaker Earthquakes survivable. The only terrain Gengar isn't completely in move with is Misty Terrain, and even then Tapu Fini being swap in bait for Gengar is not a bad thing in the slightest. Far from losing its place in OU, Gengar is arguably stronger here than it was in gen 6 (ignoring Mega Gengar). Dunno what happened to Gengar after that. I imagine the Cursed Body nerf started actually mattering after the Tapus got cut.
@@TaLeng2023 Cursed body is already a great general purpose ability. It can provide huge momentum swings when a sweeper mon disables one of its opponents moves on the way out, and its obviously strong on tanky mon as well.
Plus static/flame body with eviolite. Worked out nicely. I love that dusclops, porygon 2, magmar, rhydon and electabuzz got evos but they're so disliked (electivire coulda been cool but nah) that their evolite sets work better than their evolutions. Because all those mons have bad evos imo (except electivire but it still sucks move pool wise). S/o to my boi dusclops holding it down.
@@ElectricWindGirlFriend fair enough but it is also the best example of anti-power creep in Pokémon so I thought it was worth mentioning even in passing
Fun fact! Huge power, despite doubling the attack stat, actually results in an attack stat equal to if the mon's base attack was TRIPPLED. Azumaril isn't hitting you with a 100 base attack aqua jet, it's a 150 base attack aqua jet. It's as if RAYQUAZA hit you with a STAB priority move.
@@stefperb9531 To put it simply, how much attack each "stat point" actually provides has deminishing returns. Huge/Pure power skips this deminishing return and directly doubles the stat.
@@stefperb9531 input values on showdown teambuilder; if you double the attack stack of fully invested base 50 it's the equivalent of fully invested base 149 because stat boosts due to EVs are essentially additive to base stats
Crawdaunt makes me wonder why Dark was ever a special type. Im pretty sure every dark type move with the exception of any status moves ended up being Physical after the split.
It's just due to evening things out. Dark was introduced alongside steel, and steel isn't going to be special, so dark - which can be either evil or shadow based - was the one that was chosen instead.
Waiting for my child (Golisopod) to get +25 points in HP, access to No Retreat and Flip Turn, and Anger Shell as a hidden ability once generation 10 comes around
it really is incredible just how important abilities are, and how many pokemon were saved solely by having good ones on the opposite side we have pokemon like mew (600 bst split even, access to a plethora of moves, but bad typing + synchronize as an ability having it only holding a place in NU)
I think the biggest reason for Mew dropping to NU this gen is actually it not getting access to _any_ form of reliable recovery. Historically, at least one of Mew's most common sets ran either Soft Boiled or Roost, and towards Gen 7 - 8 that was especially true when its defensive stat spread started to be more beneficial than its offensive stat spread. Then in Gen 9, it lost access to both, leaving it kind of dead in the water. It's still weird to me how Mewtwo gets access to Recover naturally, while Mew hasn't ever gotten the move at all; you would think the one that can individually manipulate its cells to transform could learn Recover, while the one that can't wouldn't. Although, yes, Mew getting a proper ability is still a long time coming. If it got a good enough ability, like Magic Bounce, Magic Guard, or even Levitate with all the Ground-type mons running around the higher tiers, then it perhaps could have survived the moveset cuts.
@@christiancinnabars1402 why did mew lose access to both though? Removing those moves from other mons makes sense, but Mew is supposed to know almost every move. :V
This made my day. I was scrolling through yt for most of my days of boot leave just to find this channel and spend 2 hours watching this shit. I love it. Thanks for this channel
Crawdaunt also benefit from Steel Types losing resistance to Ghost and Dark Type moves. Thus Crawdaunt could spam Dark Moves more reliably. One of the Pokemon I feel got really good was Entei. Whoever the genius is who decided to have it learn Sacred Fire per Level Up needs a raise. Wish some of those must have moves weren't event exclusive. It think that held Entei back for most who prefer to play on cardridge. Also that Event Entei was locked to Adamant nature, a nature you might like to run, but is quiet restricting for singles.
Aero also got rock head in gen 3 which allowed it the insane movepool of earthquake rock slide double edge and then the option of a HP for coverage or it could go sub with Liechi or Salace either to gain enough power to sweep thru enemy walls or make it outspeed Jolteon the other fastest mon in the tier
My throat was a little raspy on this recording day and I didn't have time to do it later because of 2 midterms so here's the script: docs.google.com/document/d/1oqKtJNbozehKdoQmp-gBkbwF-eoR0DWMCFfCj1PhKQc/edit?usp=sharing
Rip to my absolute favorite Pokemon, Sableye, not getting a mention, but I think every Gen 6 ORAS competitive singles player has trauma caused by my little gremlin so I understand wanting to shine some light on lesser appreciated glow ups
Clefable has been a staple ever since it became fairy type. Torkoal wasn't great even after it got drought, until walking wake and other paradox mons came around.
How do we feel about reworking older pokemon to make them relevant? Or reworking a lot of new mins to reset power creep?? Does it matter at this point.
Hello ElectricWindGirlFriend while watching this top notch video about pokemon that got crazy good I’d like to mention again a pretty bad pokemon named Pyroar who I like very much okay have a wonderful day
Everyone talks about power creep like it’s a bad thing. Power creep is going to be in Pokemon and future games whether we like it or not. But there was one generation that was weaker than the previous: Gen 2. So I’d like a power point on the effect of weaker power had on Gen 2 Pokemon. How many have tops? Before/after getting new evolutions? And how does this compare to other mons introduced in subsequent generations?
Feraligator can be added to the list of Water types that got way better as generations passed. Probably not as much difference as Azumarill and Crawdaunt but notable nonetheless.
Yeah, DDance, good fighting coverage, sheer force, physical water STAB, physical ice & dark coverage. The only thing holding feraligatr back is just the fact that there are better physical water sweepers. It's very solid as is, you're just not gonna use it over others unless you love the blue alligator.
2:13 Slight correction here: Aerodactyl, despite having few moves, did still in fact have moves, meaning that it rarely used Struggle. Please correct this oversight.
I was always super baffled by the random +10 or so BST buffs that Game Freak gave a ton of old Pokemon around Gen 6 iirc. Did anyone actually benefit from them?
its a fucking crime that aerodactyl has rock head but doesnt get brave bird or head smash. In fact, the only recoil move it gets is takedown (and possibly double edge). It wouldnt be broken at all it would just make aerodactyl better
Please please please speak slow. This is not a competition of rap where speaking so fast that people don't understand what you are saying. Your otherwise good videos are useless unless played back at half speed. Seaking clearly and with the right pace is super important in videos like this
