HP being so powerful in gen 3 is a big part of why I love gen 3, it makes so many Pogies super flexible and harder to predict without seeing the full team
some ancient GSC context: HP on Electrics was also controversial because some people felt it wasn't realistic to get such exact DVs on a Pokémon that can't breed. I wasn't really battling at this time but these were the arguments on like Pokemasters circa 2000. HP Bug on Marowak has the nice trait of lowering Marowak's attack DV to the exact value it needs to be below 1024 after two Swords Dances and avoid wrapping around to unusable single-digit values
1:33:36 “what’s it called? hidden power was removed” spent a whole video talking about the move, then forgot what it was called lmao never change, love the vids
I think it's a good thing for adv because a lot of types lack any good attacking moves whatsoever (strongest viable grass move is leaf blade with fkn 70 base power and high crit rate.. And only Sceptile learns it lol)
I hated how certain Pokemon with the stats to be good were stuck with this move as their "strongest" STAB move: Aerodactyl, Gyarados, Salamence, Scizor. It was better than nothing but those Pokemon could have been so much more impactful. Made using them on cartridge suck too
Physical special split should’ve been a thing since RBY. Gen 3 literally had different checks for if moves made contact or not, for things like rough skin, no idea why they didn’t implement the split there.
@@pablojams5152 yeah I agree I've said the same thing before. There's some weird moves that counted as contact though that shouldn't have, when I play emerald battle Factory I get Static from some moves I didn't expect to be contact. Can't remember off the top of my head though
@@pablojams5152 But I agree about the p/s split it makes taking down Blissey and Skarmory so annoying because of not having any weaknesses on their good stat. This made just about any Water type a good physical wall too, with Swampert being god-like.
I honestly really like how much thought goes into picking a hidden power in gen 3, and how many pokemon would *really* like to run two or more versions, but are forced to pick one. It means that there will always be something you can't cover on any given set, and some pokemon even have to choose between STAB and coverage. As much as I like this dynamic, however, it was very much a product of its time, as new threats with better and better natural coverage would appear in later generations, with hidden power simply filling in the one or two holes that weren't already filled. Sad as I am to see such an interesting move gone in gen 8, I can see that it isn't nearly as necessary (or healthy) in an environment like gen 8 as it was in earlier gens.
I always loved the mind games of hp fire lati twins in gen 5. If you looked at their team and saw they were ferro weak (which is an awful thing to do in gen 5) you could often assume they had hp fire on latias or latios. Switching in my own lati and playing chicken with them on if it's a speed tie or not was always fun. It's the only reason I didn't run hp fire on a lati twin and found alternative answers to ferrothorn.
I cant thank you enough for the amount of content you've provided lately. I've been following your channels for years, always excited for the next video and in depth breakdown of the inner workings of some of the most advanced pokemon strategies mankind has ever seen. The last few months have been absolutely mind blowing, thank you for all that you do Blaze Kickin Chicken
Recall that GF only even claims to care about VGC competitive, where dynamax is honestly kind of a cool mechanic positionally imo. the idea is still lame as hell, but it provides some interesting possibilities. (also imagine hp ice regieleki lmao)
@@jacksonsmith2955 I often play VGC and most of the people I know are very happy about series 10 getting rid of Dynamax, by far the most broken generational gimmick.
@@jacksonsmith2955 except that's a blatant lie. Heavy Duty Boots are specifically for the singles game. I know what they claim, but, it's just obviously false.
Shout out to the dumbness of GSC Hidden Power, where it was dumb enough that theres discussion around whether or not Hidden Power on Zapdos and Raikou can be legalized for the format or something
If HP Fairy was a thing (and hidden power was back to 70 bp and could be powered up with gems) who would run it? Imagine fairy gem hp Fairy chandelure smacking a hydreigon on the switch (since normally drei walls chandelure) that would be heat
I love hearing your thoughts on all these impactful moves and metas. You have very nuanced takes that really consider all the factors regarding how different moves affect which Pokemon, and I feel smarter and better off for having heard your words.
These are my favourite kinds of videos! Watching you explain a certain move or concept present in Pokemon is super interesting. I make games, currently creating a turn-based one, so this is just golden as something to listen to from a game-design perspective. Thank you!
I never really considered how devastating Hidden Power could be on Zapdos. I'm so used to it in later generations being a strong attacker but with low coverage options. Guess that would happen in Gen 2 where there's far less outs.
I'm still terrified by what happened once they gave it Hurricane and Weather Ball. Rain Zapdos is legit one of the hardest mons to switch into if you don't have a blob/Rock Godzilla at the ready
@@sephikong8323 To be fair, that mon has essentially three perfectly accurate stab moves that complement each other quite well. And the weakest is 100 BP.
Gen 8 being the first gen that I’ve been around for since the beginning. Started playing smogon every now and then on the last few months of gen 7, and playing w/ hidden power feels like cheating, especially slapping HP fire on magnezone and messing around W/ teams restricted to mons Ash caught+cheater juice just to play them in their final form+megas. I be one shotting landos on the switch w/ HP ice pikachu
@@fulltimeslackerii8229 They created choice band before specs, they have 120 base power moves on the phisical side with almost no drawbacks in comparison to special ones (Focus blast vs Close combat for example, even distribution of superpower vs aura sphere for example for years) and they created assault vest only to fuck special attackers more. Nah, physical has always been their main interest at least since the split by far, to this day you dont eveb have a reliable special rock attack, dark pulse and shadow ball are meager 80 moves (And they massively buffed knock off and created poltergeist for phisicals) etc
@@VincentChaos92 On the other hand, burn has no special counterpart, intimidate has no special counterpart, and there are relatively few mons with massive spdef compared to physdef. All the strong physical moves do pretty much have downsides as well, even if they are generally less important than the special move downsides. I would say they are about even, but I would lean slightly towards physical.
gonna keep a few running notes on the types of HP I hear are most important in each format. gen 2-ice (zapdos) water (raikou), bug (foretress and scizor) fire (also foretress) flying (machamp) electric (cloyster) and I think I heard a few mentions about HP Ghost. gen 3-flying (aerodactyl and salamence for stab) fighting (potential use by aerodactyl, this is a type that I thought might not have any use due to how many good fighting attacks there are in more recent generations, as well as use by jirachi and porygon2, basically all of them to hit T tar) grass (celebi, as well as a counter to swampert) bug (dugtrio and flygon) rock (gyarados, regirock, possibly as a more accurate option over rock slide, but I kind of figured rock wasn't used that much since there's almost always been stronger rock attacks like rock slide) fire (lots of mentions to answer skarmory and forretress) ground (skarmory) steel (some snorlax sets to hit or not be walled by certain opponents, but it's obvious that this is a very common application, another type I doubted would have much use) and it seems like the most used types were bug ghost grass and fire.
gen 4-much less use of HP since so many more moves were introduced in gen 4, plus the split which meant many critters could get better moves or had to resort to a different hp type. ice and grass(has a few mentions) electric (rare use against gyarados) ground (jirachi) and that's it! gen 5-ice ice baby baby (landorus vs gliscor and other landorus, also used by forretress and alakazam) grass (heatran to hit the usual rain suspects). flying (keldeo), ghost (slowbro and slowking). a few mentions of HP Fire, but it's so cold up here with all these pokemon using Hidden Power Ice. gen 6-grass (charizard x?) fire (diancie, vs steel types) more ice, a reference to rock (but again, stone edge exists for most things trying to hit flying types) gen 7-ice and electric (amusing but uncommon applications for mega zard) fire (ferrothorn vs kartana) grass and fire (greninja) POISON (keldeo for countering tapu bulu and fini. despite keldeo not being very common, this was more than I expected. poison isn't a type that you really need to attack with even on poison types, and if you needed a poison attack for fairies, there's sludge bomb and poison jab)
well that was an incredibly satisfying summary of what types of hidden power were used across different metas. I can see that gen 2 and 3 were where the most pokemon had the use for the move, gen 3 especially being the one where the greatest variety of types were viable, partially due to the quirks of physical/special and also for lack of certain moves. but overall, just a few types that were never mentioned, likely for not having any use. hp normal and fairy are impossible, the move itself is technically a normal type and it's not like it can even hit anything supereffective, and I guess hp fairy isn't possible either, but there's several fairy moves for mostly fairy stab anyway. hp dragon would be silly, there's oodles of stronger dragon attacks and that's what hp ice is for. the only other 3 were poison dark and psychic. poison had that one apparent use by keldeo, but still not very useful. I thought hp dark might have a use but I guess that's what hp ghost is for. and hp psychic... well, what kind of pokemon could possibly need psychic coverage, that couldn't learn psychic?
hey man thanks for the reply! I was just having a good time documenting what types of hp were used and finding which types were less used or not used at all. so hearing about a use case for one of those remaining types was super helpful.
I cannot fully express how glad I am Gen 8 dropped Hidden Power. It was so fucking toxic to check/counter if you weren't running Blissey/Chansey to universally sponge it, and then Gen 5 had Secret Sword Keldeo who not only trivialized Blissey, but then could run various HPs to troll Celebi/bulky water checks. Unbelievable that mon wasn't banned to Ubers all things considered. Like I don't have a problem with mons having inherently good type coverage. But getting super effective coverage of choice (especially at low opportunity cost), there's almost no actual safe way to scout that without statchecking it.
It makes the game more interesting, but at the same time, it was kinda unfair that the ground and ground/rock types went from countering them to being countered themselves.
As sad as I am pursuit was removed from gen 8, I am glad hidden power is gone. There is no more being surprised by a random hidden power. Also no scenarios where a mon that is balanced by lack of coverage can get around that. Sure, my boy jolteon is pu without hp ice, but I think volcarona and regieleki would be banned with hidden power.
Probably. Volc is only fine in nat dex because of the strong priority users, tapu fini, and general fast offensive mons that don't let it set up. Eleki would be overcentralizing for sure, forcing volt absorb mons or things like spdef hippo on every team.
HP Ghost Rayquaza and Groudon ♥️ It looks and feels sooo uncanny because their best fitting HP moves doesn't benefit from stab. But the fact it allows them to Take out Mewtwo, Lugia the Twins and Deoxys just speaks volumes how important it was.
Like I didn’t care about hp, until I used pokemon with no coverage but really strong like xurxitree, blastoise, empoleon etc and now I reallY want it back lol
6:02 I thought Hidden Power was banned on the legendary Electrics because in an actual game, it was hard to get the actual Hidden Power you wanted, unless you soft reseted or something.
@ They likely banned it whenever people would competitively battle on Tournaments that were not battle simulators, but instead link battles with real hardware. It was not easy to get max stats on everything, let alone the right IVs for the correct Hidden Power, with solely the physical cartridge itself.
@@BeeEmpress except for all ghosts and psychics that literally couldn't switch in if there was a ttar. if pursuit was normal type it would be fine (and would also preserve the ghosts are immune to trapping thing)
@@whydoiexist2180 interesting that while you claim that there's only one ghost in ou and only one new ghost banned to ubers (excluding Calyrex-S because it's a restricted that would be uber even with pursuit). There are currently more ice types in OU (Kyurem and Weavile) than ghost types (Dragapult).
Am like one minute in and already suprised, based on your opinions on team preview I expected you to defend hp. I mean it's arguably also an unknown but sort of guessable factor like the last mon in a team or smth. Rip hidden power, may it never come back
I think hidden power could have been okay of they somehow changed it up. I miss it. But in its debut generstion the base power was too high. Being base 50 seemed very reasonable to me as a trade off for its power. But I think that it was beautiful as it was before the physical special split in gen 4. If they made a physical counter part and kept half the types as physical lets call it hidden power and a special one we can called hidden pulse. Thst could have been interesting to keep hp bug physical for example. Because HP after that was very lopsided. And I think if it announced in using the attack what type it was would have been good. But ultimately I think this would have been a good way to keep it around as a legacy move. Hear me out because i want it to stay forever even crippled. Tie HP to pokemon natures. HP is now a random type each time you use it, however depending on nature it is more likely to be certain types based on stat boosted and derank other types based on stat reduced. I dont like the idea of removing moves from the game entirely. It deletes play styles. And players can choose to ban moves if they want between friends and in unofficial play as they always have. I dont need gamefreak to delete a playstyle me and a friend might want to play. Anyhow just my 2 cents.
@@Cousinouf When you remember how even with the current state where it has no coverage, when the Pokemon was first introduced it was pretty much Schrodinger's Pokemon where people simultaneously thought it could be Uber or UU, and there was some insane strats with that mon in teambuilding as well (the infamous Zoroark/Klefki Ring Target Trick teams or the Spikes stacking teams that used Eleki as a way to force in the ground types to take heavy spikes damage for nothing and help create weaknesses). So when that mon was considered to be a pretty centralizing force for a few weeks in it's current state, I tend to agree that if it had HP Ice it would have been sent straight to Ubers
I hope when HP comes back in the DP remakes thanks to the Unown caves they keep it strictly to Unown (and buff it back to 70 or even raise it a bit higher). It was pretty bad for balance when infinite coverage is a thing and I think the devs realized that with how scant coverage on some pokemon is in Gen 8. Hell they even removed Signal Beam
ngl i think removing signal beam was a really bad decision. even if you argue that infinite coverage is bad signal beam was just a cool move as a bug-type move for nonbugs to learn and offensively bug has never been a busted coverage type to begin with.
@@starduststriker8792 Gives magneton/zone some actual coverage so it can smack grasses that don't get smacked by flash cannon, just an example. Electrics are really the main thing that benefits from signal beam and they aren't known for they're coverage (just look at regieleki's moveset dear god).
people are like "I wish hidden power was back" ok..... let me show you hp ice zeraora, hp fire magnezone, and hp fire kyurem... god that is gonna be frustrating
@@fulltimeslackerii8229 kyurem doesn't have 4 move syndrome. Its two sets subroost and Specs are fine with the moves they have, I mean, Ice and ground are really good coverage already.
Hp fire mag might not even be used that much tbh. Body press is generally better on a lot of teams. Hp ice zer would be annoying but it already has 4-moveslot syndrome. Kyu probably wouldn't run hp fire just for scizor except in really niche cases.
Why does everyone think Regieleki would be broken with hp ice? We literally had a very similar power level with tapu koko last gen when terrain was 1.5x
It's so much faster. It outspeeds most scarf pokemon and with hp ice as an option rising voltage would legitimately require a specific counter on every team.
I'm a certified HPH (Hidden Power Hater). Join your local HPH Society today, and if your community doesn't have one, start one! We need to #KeepHiddenPowerOutOfGen9
They aren't tested in UU. That's why it is called OU by technicality. There are too few players in the past gen lower tiers, so they won't have enough data to decide whether the mons are viable for UU or too strong for UU.
Fringe cases. For example, mega chomp was OU by technicality last gen because it saw almost no use in OU, but garchomp base form was OU and the mega was never tested down.
I’m a HEAVY advocater for hp ground for zone in any meta with heatran, great for tran removal tbolt hits skarm and later corv harder than hp fire anyway. I always prefer hp ground over fire, bc Fire also loses to tran. I feel it’s the definitive better option. (Hp ground rather than hp fire)
Most teams with magnezone don't have as much trouble with heatran as they do with ferrothorn and (mega) scizor. Also magnezone doesn't outspeed offensive heatran
@@fatchitanda I just feel it opens up your own tran or other things stopped by tran. That’s how I use zone personally. Ferro takes chip all game anyway.
It’s funny I started out this day saying I’m far past my stage of defending swsh and realizing hp was removed was the last straw and these games are officially pathetic.. but now on my 3rd video on the subject I’m officially somewhat turned for the sake of the competitive community it seems a lot more fun without hidden power. My thing is I’m never a fan of them taking things out of Pokémon I’m sick of them changing it all willy nilly just however they see fit, but I can concede on this one point for the sake of the comp battlers
Hidden Power is the single move I hate the most and I'm happy to see gone. It gives pokemon unfairly unpredictable coverage beyond its movepool. Too much variance.
