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Perhaps the next theorem video could be why move sets (like mix attacking, fast physical, bulky special, etc) are close to everything or the Dragonite theorem
@@playersnake Why Sabotage (Taunt, Encore, Magic Bounce, Toxic/Twave/Wisp, etc) is Close to Everything - Sableye Theorem (Or maybe some other Pokemon would be better to name it after, Sableye was just the first to come to my mind)
The weird thing about pre-nerf Explosion/Self-Destruct is that the games themselves never tells you about the defense halving mechanic. Now obviously, the mechanic exists because moves are coded in 8-bit, thus base power of move cannot be above 255, but I always find it strange that this mechanic is completely hidden from the player. I never knew about the defense halving mechanic until I got into competitive Pokémon 7 years ago.
yeah there aren't any "patch notes" or anything like that for Pokemon afaik so a lot of these weird quirks are things you HAVE to stumble upon through discovery, or through word of mouth/the internet
Eh that's not the reason. Being 8-bit doesn't mean you have a maximum integer size of 8 bits (256 total values). Using only 8 bits for move BP was an active choice by the developers, and it's most likely because Explosion and Selfdestruct were the only two moves that would've taken advantage of an extra byte. It would have been a waste of precious space for every other move. It's also possible those two moves were added in late, after the move data structure was already established and implemented.
I think in the context of singleplayer, telling the player "this move does 250 damage and kills the user" and "this move does 250 damage and kills the user and halves the opponent's defense" doesn't really make a difference because 250 is such a higher number than 90, that both statements convey "this move is a nuke," but the former is less wordy and has less potential for confusion.
Chronomon's Holy Flare Has A Base Power Of At Least 200 In The First Three Digimon World DS Games,DS,Dawn,Dusk!Then It Got Nerfed To 75 In Lost Evolution!
*Fun fact:* Self-Destruct and Explosion originally halved Defense because it was intended to be double its actual power, but a move's base power couldn't be higher than 255.
If Game Freak thinks it's okay to have moves that can scale up to over 200 BP with no negative effects on the user (like Rage Fist and Last Respects) then they should bring back SD/Explosion halving the target's defense
@@rustyy674 Honestly, just having those moves increase by 25BP per stack with a maximum of 5 stacks would be perfectly fine. No idea wtf they were smoking to make those they way they currently are.
@LocalHobo631 If their answer to power creep is "just make everything new, busted" instead of coming up with actual unique solutions, then there's no excuse to nerf a tool for older Pokémon who already struggle to keep up.
Meta has evolved enough to not consider explosion a threat. Steels everywhere, rock not being as terrible in general, hail doubling defense of ice, and several viable ghost. Also, meta being far faster and substitute are a thing
Also shout-out to Hiker Dudley, also known as that guy with the two Geodudes and a Graveler who all like to go boom on unsuspecting solo challenge runners.
SD & Explosion really are those two moves that just about give you a heart attack 9 out of every 10 times you see the other Pokémon use them. It becomes 10 out 10 if you’re doing a Nuzlocke.
It certainly made my late-game grind on my X Nuzlocke an absolute nightmare. Of course the highest level area to train for the Pokémon League is also full of exploding Graveller(!) And if you play X or Y without using the experience share like I did on that run, you'll find the level curve to be harsh in the midgame and downright BRUTAL in the late game. I needed that exp, the explosion grind was almost mandatory!
Surprised you didn't talk about how team preview would be a huge buff for explosion. In older generations, whenever you used explosion early you always risked the possibility of needing that pokemon for an enemy that hasn't been revealed yet. With team preview, this dynamic goes away making explosion less risky as it's much easier to tell if you'll need a pokemon later in the game
The thing is those moves are single-target, meaning that in the official competitive format (VGC), they can't just clear your opponent's side of the field in a single turn. Explosion on the other hand could do that, meaning that you could theoretically end battles in just two turns. Also Codel showed how you could shut down Protect with a mon having both Protect and Imprison on the same moveset. Plus in order for those moves to get to those stupid base powers you need a lot of setup, something that just isn't possible in VGC with how fast-paced it is. In singles they're absolutely busted that's for sure, but in VGC that's not the case.
@@AceAviations2 Last Respects just requires that your team faints (which happens as long as you don't win), though VGC being 4v4 limits it to 150-200bp. Side note, is the _format_ officially called "Video Game Championships", or is it a shorthand?
And so the narrator came back to tell you that Gengar fucking died (any resemblance to Gengars competitive career after losing Levitate purely accidental)
I feel like explosion should be rebuffed along with hyper beam. Power creep has made their original forms less overkill and its a good risk/reward play
They should bring back Hyper Beam's Gen 1 effect and so the same for Giga Impact. Probably not for its variants though since those can be super-effective (plus Overgrow/Blaze/Torrent) and would probably turn the game into a spam fest. But HB/GI/Boom being Normal type balances them out well And for the love of Arceus, Game Freak needs to stop making recharge moves, they'll never be good lol
@@GoldGuard Uh-huh nope. I don't want Porygon-Z and Sylveon running rampant on my teams just by clicking Hyper Beam. Especially with something like Tera-Normal Crawdaunt suddenly cracking walls like they were cake with Giga Impact
@@GoldGuard Roar of Time should 100% get it, maybe with a BP nerf so Dialga isn't too ridiculous. It's literally Roar of *Time*, it makes thematic sense to have it get around recharge on KO
Ironically actually did face one of these on vgc ladder in reg C, trick room team. I double protected to stall out trick room as he used explosion next to a Rabsca (with blessing used up). I didn't even realize he'd explode. Cue understandable disconnection.
No mention of Mega Galie or Aloan Golem with their Refrigerate/Galvanize Explosion, Mega Glalie already ran Explosion as a move. So an un-nerfed (gen 6) Refrigerate Explosion would be even more of a nuke than it already is.
@Rarest26 Ice type Fridge Boom would shoot Mega Glalie into OU. Only thing it thuds into is Protect and Heatran as the only common 4x Ice resist. Effective 975 BP with no immunities is absurd.
@@DeckKnight You raise a good point, but keep in mind. It’s a mega. There’s a lot of opportunity cost with those, and I don’t think most people would be super excited to use their one on an explosion. Not saying it wouldn’t be tried out, but I don’t see it being a common pick. Especially in oras due to the speed change thing.
I actually love using Mega Glalie. If you explode and take something down (pretty likely with refrigerate), great! If you severely dent something, a teammate can revenge. If you barely damage something, you still get a free switch.
When you think about it they were pretty crazy moves in the first few gens. A 400/500 bp nuke with a 100% to flinch, given that it lands, and gives you momentum.
In the VGC ladder of SV I saw often various people testing with tera normal Explosion shenanigans. One that I remember fondly from Regulation D was Choice Band Tera Normal Self-Destruct Overqwil as part of a rain team, because even outside this powerful (and fast) boom with rain it was also a decent threat. For an additional mean bonus the team also had Chien-Pao, that could easily Protect or use Tera Ghost (instead of tera on Overqwil) and stay safe while giving a smaller version of the pre-nerf boom thanks to Sword of Ruin.
Blissey: “You look tasty! I make you chocolate!” Gengar: “You are a fool- I’m going to crush you, and throw you into the wind!” “…I do this for you, Agility Empoleon…”
a cool addition could be type boom moves with additional effects, less power, but also do something interesting (preferably not obvious). - cloud seed - steel move that sets the rain condition. - vacum zone - electric move to set up winds. - fairy dust - fairy move, the next pokemon to enter the field get healed. - rock frack - water move to set up sand.
I personally treat self-destruct and explosion in playthrough's as a sort of "last resort", like if you know the mon who have out who knows one of those moves is going down soon, you might as well go for a kamikaze for some big damage
I feel that some attacks now are so stupidly strong (think Rage Fist or Fishious Rend) that the cost of losing a pokemon for not that much more power wouldn't necessarily be worth it. Obviously that depends on distribution, but in a vacuumm...
I think these moves should be buffed back a bit, but not necessarily power-wise. -Both use user's higher attacking stat -Buff Explosion's power to 300, power creep is steadily approaching 200 power with much less self-destructive moves -Make Self-Destruct a single-target move that bypasses screens, etc., partially bypasses Protect (like Z/Max moves), and flinches the opponent (replicating early gen behaviour), to differentiate it from Explosion with extra utility. The lore explaination would be that Explosion is just you exploding right there and then, while SD makes you get up close and then KAPOW.
Have Explosion's BP scale additionally with your remaining HP. This way, Explosion really only start to hurt at better HP thresholds, while giving faster mons a chance of survival by nerfing the damage if they can't pick up the K.O.
I feel like the move bp power creep is stuck more at 120. Game Freak will not let moves go near 150 bp unless they're: an SD move, Boomburst, or Last Respects/Rage Fist specifically in Singles - 6v6 Singles more specifically for the former.
@@christiancinnabars1402 a couple gens ago we got 150bp Mind Blown/Steel Beam that have half the downside for more than half the power of self-destructing moves, and this gen we got 160bp Gigaton Hammer/Blood Moon that are pretty much Hyper Beam except you can act while recharging. At this pace we'll get moves that just have 200bp with no downside by gen 13.
@@TheLaXandro Gigaton Hammer is exclusive to a Pokémon with a base Attack of 75, so the high BST is balanced out a bit. Blood Moon is on a 'Mon that might not even leave Gen 9.
Last hurrah for Explosion to me was on Mega Glalie in OR/AS. The sheer power of it was fun to play with, opening holes in the opponents' team and potentially gaining a lot of value if Glalie was already weakened and snagged a full health opponent, helping this was refrigerate not only bumping up the power and potentially super effectively hit things with it, but also just removing the chance of ghost types switching in! Probably not as powerful as the old double-power booms of times past, but still very nice that protect or ice resistant physical walls only being able to slightly slow it. It was unfortunate that Alomomola was in the same tier as Glalie when I used it, but leaving it at ~60% while giving a switch-in to another mon at least put some pressure on the opposing team to recover from this worst case scenario for Glalie's boom.
We also have to consider Mega Glalie and Alolan Golem Not only do their explosions gain STAB, becoming Ice and Electric respectively, but also get a boost from the ability, so Mega Glalie would have a 650 BP Explosion in Gen 6, while just being 600 BP in Gen 7 and beyond, and this alone would make Mega Glalie and Alolan Golem more viable because of the sheer power their explosions have.
@@bentowers3614 If you want to make it even worse add in the pre-nerf Electric Terrain boost (1.5x) and the pre-nerf 'ate' abilities (yes Galvanize didn't exist in gen 6, but it would have had a 1.3x boost). That could probably blow up the world.
I'm surprised you didn't really talk about boom teams. They may have been a gimmick, but my childhood self watching in horror as the opponent blew up each of their Pokemon would have appreciated it
Metagross: "This is farewell. Celebi... Zapdos... and even you, best buddy. (Salamence) Tyranitar: "Metagross, no!!" Metagross: Metagross... YEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!"
Gen 2 Explosion specifically honestly might be one of the strongest, meta-warping moves in Pokémon history. Special offense was at an all-time low in Gen 2 thanks to the Special stat split and a near complete lack of special boosting options (only Sp. Atk boosting move is Growth, and no useful held items existed yet) among other things. Thanks to “Boom”, special attackers can afford to have any sense of utility at all in such a bulky generation dominated by RestTalk and powerful special walls. But without “Boom Offense”, the game would become even more physically biased than it already was.
in pokemon xd gale of darkness electrode was actually a great pokemon for the orre collosseum (the brutally hard post game tournament which was basically the closest you can get to single player competitive, that thing required you to plan ahead and do EV training). electrode was great thanks to its speed and access to explosion. it made a good combo with dusklops and forretress. I had to use it with forretress in order to beat eldess despite the fact that he had pokemon that could handle explosions. dusclops wasn't just immune to the explosion, it could even boost its power with the pseudo-stab known as helping hand.
It's probably because of the shift to doubles formats as the official one. In singles the potential trade is quite strategic. In doubles it might be a bit too much power than they wanted for a spread move and meta warping to demand people bring multiple normal resist/immunities at all times just to deal with explosions.
I think the bigger issue is that the best counter play without forcing a switch is forcing protect, and protect is just so powerful you cant be throwing it around just hoping that they exploded on that turn
@@Aquilenne Yea its definitely that, but its funny that nowadays with multiple excellent ghosts and wide guard existing, it could maaaaaybe be tolerable. Also damp but nothing good gets it so who cares.
We have a move that can scale up to 300 BP with no secondary effect in Last Respects. I think we can bring back Explosion and SD’s Defense halving secondary effect with it’s original RBY BP. Maybe we could even do something similar for Misty Explosion, except with Special Defense.
Last Respects can go even higher if you use a 'Mon with Revival Blessing. It can scale into the thousands if you're just doing it against the in-game trainers and you use revives to bring them back.
"I'm going to blow you into so many pieces you won't be able to regenerate!" "Goodbye Swampert, Skarmory… And yes, even you Tyranitar" "Gengar no!" "GEENGARRR YEEEEEEEEEESS!"
It would be pretty cool if SD and Explosion were guaranteed crits, so that they'd break through Defence boosted mons and get just that little boost. And then maybe a held item that boosts the damage of crits, so that a dedicated Exploder could regain the former glory of the Half-Defence feature (1.5 crit x 1.333 crit item = 2x total).
@@nolongeraperson PG-Z fails against ghost types, particularly against Annihilape. Its only special anti-ghost coverage move is Dark Pulse (which does neutral damage to ape). Sylveon's a bit more rough, but most of the good stall mons are resistant to fairy anyway (Toxapex, any steels) or have high Sp.Df anyway (Blissey).
@@therexyogaming That doesn't change much. You still suddenly have an easy sweeper who can just click 1 button to go ham. They can be your backup to your normal setup sweeper while still performing their normal roles like before, like Sylveon being a Sp.Def tank while now also being a nuker.
Man, full boom teams are just so much fun. Surprised there wasn't any mention of Mega Glalie or Alolan Golem. With their type changing abilities they could make for some very potent cornerstones for full explosion teams. Another Pokemon that I could see jumping up a ton from old Explosion is Silvally. A support Pokemon that can be any type is a huge boon for teambuilding and Parting Shot is great for keeping up momentum. Not sure if this would keep me in the game after the King's Rock ban, but even if you can't overcome Ghosts with Explosion alone, you can find Dark types like Alolan Muk to do the job as well
I remember when in Platinum Double Battle Tower I used to lead with Mismagius and Life Orb Metagross with Explosion. It usually took down both opponent’s Pomémon and gave me an advantage. I reached 200 victories. Good times Also no mention of Mega Glalie? 😢
Bro galvanized explosion (or self destruct. IDK which one alola golem gets) would prolly be one of the strongest electric type moves ever if there was no boom nerf. Especially in electric terrain.
My annoyance with azelf back in the day is exactly why I made it a habit to run double ghosts in singles for some time. Spiritomb was especially nice for me considering it didn't add any weakness to my team and had nice ways to support.
full powered explosion would be a legitimate meta in VGC and would 100% add another layer of meta-antimeta strategies. you'd also get tinted lens and scrappy explosion setups, there'd be some pokemon who'd actually run damp as an ability, and instead of just tera normal ekiller sets you'd also see tera normal boom sets, especially in vgc. not to mention, way more mons would run sash/sturdy just to live the boom and get off one turn of whatever they'd want to do. ghost types as explosion blanks would be also much more common, but what would be REALLY interesting would be aerilate/pixilate booms as well
I used to think Gen 4 adding a, "But there was no target..." message after a Pokémon faints early was kind of pointless, but I didn't even consider (or at least forgot about) the surviving Pokémon still being able to use a move to heal or power itself up!
Boom has the interesting effect of being about the only way to win a 4v4 doubles match in 1 turn. In gen iii, switches happen immediately. So if you explode and faint both opponents, then explode again and faint the second two opponents before the end of the first turn.
Not anything particular to add to the competitive side but learning about explosion's quirks from 1g to 4g has made some movesets on casual playthroughs more... Explosive! It has been a lot of fun to use the move even in a casual setting, and it's a bit unfortunate that it won't come back in it's full glory. Fun move
Honestly, at this point, what would we consider the current strongest move? Stealth Rocks? Knock Off? Classic Earthquake? Tera Blast? The answer goes a couple of ways depending on where the meta is at, and that’s neat.
honestly I think Explosion could've still been a useful move even without halving the defense if it ignored stat boosts, bonus points if it was given some extra base power too, maybe somewhere from 270 to 300 base power instead of 250, making it closer, but not quite equal to it's power in gen 1 and 2.
Honestly a cute buff four (misty) explosion and self destruct could be clearing all field conditions. It’d be nice utility though would mean it’s less useful on leads
I think a better alternative to reintroducing the halving of the Defence stat would simply be increasing their base power by 100, as it would be more obvious how powerful it is to casual players, while not being as powerful as halving the Defence stat
@False Swipe Gaming I’m not sure if you’d be interested in a video idea like this, but I would be very interested to hear an analysis on a hypothetical Metagame, where all 4 battle Gimmicks from Megas to Tera were allowed. How would meta like that look like. Or you could even throw the gen5 gems to the mix if more chaos is needed. Just an idea, I always speculate how the gimmicks would interract with each other. Would Z moves be able to destroy Dynamax Pokemon more easily, causing fear on dynamaxed Pokemon making them waste turns on Max Guard predicting Z moves, how would Tera pokemon affect Megas etc. Would be very interesting imo
I think it would be neat if they gave the Voltorb line a new ability that basically turned their Booms into the pre-Gen5 version. Blowing up is their whole identity, so it would be cool to both let them do it better than everyone else and also just experience old Boom again, even if its attached to Electrode
I love rocking a team I called "4 Boom" in Gen III, which was just four mons with Explosion/Self Destruct, with CM Suicune as a win-con and Magneton to trap steels.
Wanna know a lil' interesting tidbit about Self-Destruct? In Legends Arceus, the move had 150 Power (120 if Agile Style or 200 if Strong Style) and would deal between 70-90% recoil damage (80% if used normally while the min/max percentages were for Agile/Strong Style respectively). If Self-Destruct, Explosion, and Misty Explosion had THAT property, that'd mean at full HP, you could go boom with the same Pokemon TWICE. Also, Misty Explosion is a special attack, so it'd have to halve special defense to get the double power. What do you guys think? Is 2 booms with one Pokemon too much? Maybe Legends ZA will give us Mega Electrode who turns all exploding moves into Electric-Type moves and removes their recoil damage or something lol.
Before I learned about this sneaky mechanic, I always wondered how the hell a base 30 physical attack Voltorb kept one-shotting fully evolved Rock and Steel types with Explosion in Werster's Pokemon Stadium 2 speedruns.
I think the explosion nerf was the correct competitive move on game freaks part as, like you said, would have made the current day meta too much, which is why, they were wrong for nerfing it
Bro imagine if they never nerfed it? The Era of Tera Electric Galvanize Alolan Golem in Electric Terrain. The power that’d have is kinda crazy to think about
Mega Glalie (Glailie?) with STAB Refrigerate Explosion having an effective 975 power (900 in gen 7) with base 120 atk would be a freaking nuke. Yeah, you'd be using your mega slot on something you're quickly throwing away, but the ability to delete pretty much anything sounds awesome in the most overkill way possible.
Man I loved Boom in the earlier gens, and after Jim Cool brought back the Gen 3 Renaissance it really reminded me how much it added to so much dimension to a lot of different mons play. It kind of changed the nature of how you even had to use a defensive poke. I can just imagine how much gen 8 could have been improved by Boom returning to it's old glory.
One of my favourite (?) vgc games was when my opponent led Silvally and another pokemon I forget what. I had no idea what they were planning. Turns out it was helping hand normal gem explosion lead. It caught me totally off guard. Unexpected moves can be a huge edge in competitive pokemon......the problem is that when I said I had no idea what they were planning I decided to double protect turn 1 to get an idea what was happening...and now I was up 4-2. Fun game though
Halving defense is intentional in Gen I as Stadium would display their base power as twice the amount. But as they re-adjusted their powers in Gen 2, they seem to forgot to remove the halving of defense in boom moves until Gen 5.
A cool idea for a video would be "how BROKEN was evasion ACTUALLY" you could talk about pre ban, what led to it, it's use outside of smogon, how well it does in AG, etc
One of my favorite things to do in gen 7 was Z Explosion lead Azelf. Stealth Rock, Z Explosion (sacrifice 50 BP to still live after), Normal Explosion sets hazards and does huge chunks
Tyranitar is based on Godzilla but can't explode. Of all the rock types that were granted the ability to explode, but I've always wondered why GF never allowed Tyranitar to explode.
