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One of the biggest reason why people realized gems were broken were Z-Moves in gen 7. Once people realized how impactful they were, more people tried gems in gen 5.
Z-Moves didn't make people realize how absurd gems are. It's the recent culmination of people realizing that gems make overpowered pokemon even more broken.
There is a reason why gen 5 has so much shit banned in ou. By far the biggest power creep in pokemon history, not even zacian or galar forms come close.
Weavile was actually not that common Cloyster was but there were also breloom, Latios, volcarona, etc Though this is not to say weavile was bad or anything, just it was a little under the radar
You cannot tell me Gems affecting all hits of multihit moves was a little known mechanic. Grass Gem Bullet Seed Breloom was run a ton in the BW era, when Showdown wasn't even popular yet and Pokémon Online was still relevant xD
Flying type + Flying Gem + Acrobatics = OH DEAR LORD THE DAMAGE!!! Yes, Acrobatics gets its X2 power bonus after using Flying Gem. Keep in mind Archeops has 140 Base Attack and can learn Acrobatics.
Thats insane, it was pretty common to give Archeops a Flying Gem when Gen 5 was current since people (myself included) assumed that it just helped boost the power of item-held Acrobatics (making it a 82 power move). I had no idea until now basically that it boosted the power of unburdened acrobatics, that's nuts.
Funnily enough the gems got nerfed in gen 6 (x1.5 to x1.3), but were still in the game files (you just could not obtain them legally). They also added a fairy gem to the game files, which was also unobtainable. Additionally, XY also contained the Lati@s mega stones, which arent obtainable either (until ORAS).
I'd like to think Gems were ultimately reworked into Z-Moves, and expanded it to also take benefit on non-attacking moves at the cost of being less abundant and not working on moves like Acrobatics or multi-hit moves quite as well. Though that also got the axe in the Gen 8 so who knows.
@@Djirifoekrkfkf i think that a good idea would to have gems be the same as in gen 5, only they dont affect mutli hit moves and they tell your opponent that you have them, kind of like air balloon.
One of my personal favorites was Archeops with Acrobatics and the flying gem, because it was STAB, plus it would Consume the Gem and buff acrobatics, but by the time the move actually comes out the gem has been consumed so you get the doubled base power of acrobatics, multiplied by 1.5x, alongside STAB. It basically made my Archeops a pokemon I would be able to switch in to a huge threat that I outsped and just Delete them.
I think lessons learned from New gens driving innovation in old gens is also a thing here. When Gen 5 was current, a 1 time boost did come off as less important/powerful impaired to consistent items performing throughout the game- culturally, used to older gens and dealing with more broken shit, the singles player base wasn’t as a tune to the boost value as later players who grew up with Gen 7 and the massive hype/power/restrictions of Z moves. I think Gen 7 informed Gen 5 play retrospectively, just as Gen 3-5 gets a lot more Knock Off use and Gen 2 a lot more Thief use after Gen 6 did more to inform players of the value of removing items through forced item loss. Rise of Gen 4 Clefable is also later-Gen informed imo.
You’re absolutely correct. I remember King’s Rock being extremely popular because a timely flinch could change the battle completely. And people in general were more focused on how to counter the meta and figure out ways to beat other weather teams
BKC after hearing this news: "Everything is going according to the plan. Soon BW Ou will be a fair and balanced competitive metagame, all without me needing to throw a direct coup and go dictator mode on the tier." BKC is Emperor Palpatine for Smogon, confirmed. Memes aside, I love Gen 5 but what drugs were GF on when they made some of the stuff in the games. From Drizzle/Drought on normal pokemon, Gems, Regenerator, etc
I think BW was affected by it being the first gen developed while VGC was up and running. Gamefreak or TPC (probably the latter) likely wanted big and explosive matches that would catch the eyes of casuals who would normally have no interest in competitive pokemon. So you get stuff like nuke mons, broken set up sweepers, gems, weather wars, trick room spam, etc. Makes the game a lot more fun on a casual spectator level, even if competitiors might find it a little frustrating.
I was around bw since the beginning. Gems were actually kind of a gimmick at the start. I mostly just remember normal gem explosion. It wasn't until late bw2 when sd rock gem terrak popped up as a way to beat slowbro among other things like latios etc. I think the late meta developments might have also had the benefit of hindsight after gen 7 taught us the value of a one time nuke
As someone who wasn't around the competitive scene until generation 6, I always assumed that gems were 1.3x like how modern normal gem functions. Do you think that if gems were ever back in the game with the modern 1.3x boost similar to how normal gem currently functions, that they'd be allowable?
I think you'd see some niche Gem usage, at least some Flying Gem Acrobatics, and/or Gem + Unburden. Essentially, what made Gems so good was that had the reward of a Choice item with a few added benefits, while not having enough drawbacks to compensate. Life Orb's drawback is not nearly as harsh as a Choice item's, or even a Gem arguably, so you'd rather just have your moves be 30% stronger at all times. Edit: I think you could make a case for Gems being decent in the lower tiers of Sw/Sh, where everyone and their grandpa is packing Poltergeist or Knock Off. A lot of Pokemon down there run no item to avoid these moves, so why not use a conumable Life Orb that you can activate at any time?
@@grunkleg.3110 i mean, some people run their psychic types itemless to avoid poltergeist damage and reduce knock off damage. Having an easily consumable item would be an improvement. Édit: you said that already. Haha sorry
I mean yes, but BW Ou specifically has plenty of extremely powerful offensive threats that can destroy your team if you dont prep for them. Like the main complaint about the tier is that there are so many threats that the meta itself turns into a matchup fish.
@@tomatogenesis complex bans are avoided.... gems are the problem so get rid of the problem..... it could bite them in the future and make tiering a pain in the future
I can see Freezai abusing Gems once he starts to do BW and BW2 Littlelocke or just outright ban it cause you can litterally farm these things with ease (only if you're lucky enough to get the right type though)
Oh wow so that's why only normal gen survived past gen 5 (and even then, very nerfed)? Damn. I always liked them as an item and while I knew of how much they beefed up attacks, its effect also applying on multi-hit moves as a whole is news to me.
Well *this* is probably not why it was removed It was removed bc of its effect on gen 5 VGC, and it wasn’t because of gem boosted multi hit moves But generally, yeah it’s bc it was a bit too strong (then they added mega kang…so idk maybe GF is just constantly high)
@@GravityIsFalling yeah gems were all the rage in VGC, and GF only really cares about what's breaking their competitive metagame, so they can balance VGC. They saw how good gems were there and said "whoops yeah we messed up, we'll just remove them in X/Y so we don't have to worry about this again"
I remember as a kid using rock gem Sceptile on showdown a couple times. I was really bad at teambuilding ofc but I think sceptile's hidden ability raised it's speed when an item was consumed, so it would come in, lure out whatever check, and rock gem rock slide would do a good bit and if it wasn't finished it would get outsped
Gem + Unburden was the only time I remember seeing it often, especially when you could only use Normal Gem. Fake Out Hitmonlee was quite common I think. Didn't realise it broke Cloyster with link moves.
@@sptflcrw8583 And other thing i noticed is for example: a pokemon with dual typing is bad, but when one of the types (or an ability) gets an immunity for a weakness of the other type it gets a good niche in that monotype.
Exactly, something like Cradily doesn't stand out usually but on mono grass teams it provides an answer to fire, flying, bug and poison, that's crazily powerful.
This video makes me wonder about the new mechanic in scarlet and violet, terrastilizing. The idea is that the Pokémon, till the end of the battle or till it’s knocked out, gets a boost to a specific type. It could be it’s own type or another one entirely, and while im not sure how strong exactly is the boost it likely would be a STAB boost (1.5x boost). I initially thought this new mechanic wouldn’t be broken in competitive but maybe it would be. After all it could mean powerful setup sweepers get access to nuke stab moves, or even get stab on a third type with no drawbacks, that could just make the competitive scene very chaotic, maybe not as much as dynamax, but it certainly is more powerful than even the gems were in gen 5, and possibly even more than the one time z moves. There’s still a lot we don’t know about the new mechanic, so we’ll have to wait to see.
Man gems are honestly my favorite mechanic of gen 5. Sad to see them gone not only in gen 6, but now on Showdown as well. Wish they would make a return. After all, someone at Gamefreak looked at Zaician and thought "yeah send it boys 😎 " and then went a step further with some of the DLC stuff. I'll never understand Gamefreak's weird thought process. I think they should have just made it to where you can only have 1 on a team and it nullifies any others you have after usage. But with that in mind, I think keeping it at 1.5x power boost would be fine. After that it's just another run of the mill Shell Smash Cloyster or Beat Up Weavile. Regarding the power boost for 1 hit vs 5 hits can be debated though.
complex bans for limiting smth for 1 per team... is usually avoided... bp was made like that was still uncompetetive and had to go through many readjustments. Volc is still broken with gems and so is cloyster and its still a guessing game ..
@@athath2010 nah gems are vulnerable to Trick, Switcharoo, Covet, Knock Off, Imprison, etc, and can still miss. Also only buff offensive moves. You're oversimplifying it.
I truly miss the raw power of Flying Gem Acrobatics. Used it on Archeops and blew my friends away. Shout outs to Lickilicky’s Normal Gem Explosions too.
Bkc made a great detailed video on the rise of Moltres. Pretty much the same thing applies to Charizard who has weaker stats but access to focus punch to bypass Blissey
@@adrianclamens6679 We always new Focus Punch though. Its a tale as old as time. Por que? Focus Punch in Gen 3 Ou? And I recall him playing zard in gen3ou with breloom years ago, not so much as officially moving into ou.
I used to run a hybrid cloyster with icicle spear, rock blast, shell smash, and ice shard back in gen 5. For the item it used to have a kings rock, than either an ice or rock gem, and in gen 7 its running a herb set to counteract shell smash defence drop.
Back in 2012 I had a top 50 ou team, but I never used a gem in ou. Dragon gem Draco in vgc, for sure. But in long weather wars, it didn’t seem worth it.
I think the gems should be turned into a single item that just powers up the first move you use in battle. That way you cant use multiple gems and you cant save a certain gem boosted move for later on certain pokemon
Even at 1.3x, Gems were a godsend in the challenge runs I've done of Unbound. My Monobug First Stage run made considerable use of them- being able to boost one attack with no caveats is great when that one attack knocks out a key threat. And Unbound lowers the damage to 1.3x since it's got Gen 8 mechanics! Gen 5 gems were utter lunacy.
I feel like it'd be interesting to look at what might change if gems ever came back. I feel like in their current state, they'd probably only wind up seeing niche use. There's clearly still value for things like Acrobatics and Unburden, but beyond that, do they really offer enough to justify them over a type item or Life Orb?
Ironically reading all of these comments about how Gems should've been complex banned just made me wonder why some complex bans still exist. If banning Drizzle isn't a possibility because novelty is apparently more important than balance and no Swift Swim user has a positive impact on the tier (or any impact for that matter) why bother keeping the latter around? The same question applies for Chlorophyll. Aldaron's proposal sounds like it belongs with RSE UU's recently removed NFE clause.
Because getting tiering changes through in old gens can be a bureaucratic mess to deal with, especially in old gens, so rather than spend a ton of time trying to ban Swift Swim and Chlorophyll and changing very little as a result, the council (I presume) would just prefer to stick with the current system and save themselves a lot of time.
For those wondering why not ban Z moves as they are literally better Gems. The answer is simple, you can run multiple Gems on the same team. It's not the same but imagine multiple Z-moves on a team? Yikes. One thing I saw people use was Rock Gem Terrakion OHKOing Phys Def Lando T after Rocks and Swords Dance despite Intimidate. Lando T to this day is THE BEST check to Terrak in the game and it could be bypassed like that. Gems were mad broken.
Z moves themselves got a lot of criticism as well. IIRC there were even talks of them being banworthy at one point in SM/USUM because of they made mons like Kartana or Magearna even dumber.
@@theimpersonator7086 As well as being the only generation where Landorus-T was genuinely banworthy because the classical "just bring a grass type" doesn't work against flynium Z. Z-moves in general are just broken but at least they're kinda limited. Gems are LESS BROKEN BUT they can be in every member of your team.
@@N12015 then there's d max,which gives you 3 turns of z-move level attacks that can give you stat boosts at the same time. We probably would have had banned to ubers gyarados at some point if that was still around. Actually have anyway made a alternate timeline list of likely bans in the smogon keeps dynamax timeline.
Who says gems on multiple mons is a hood thing? A team full of gemed up mons would suck. Only a small handful of gen 5 ou mons had viable gem sets. This ban was so soft.
Also the base power is a set increase and does take the full base power of the move into the damage calculation, unlike z moves. A Z Draco Meteor is gonna be 150 base power, a Dragon Gem one is gonna be 210. A Z Icicle Spear will be 120 base power, a Ice Gem Icicle Spear 5 Hit will be 187.5
Huh. I figured PvP was where gems were used since I never used held items that get used up in the main game. The attack boost didn’t feel worth it when I would have to get replacements over and over. I know that isn’t the case in PvP since the held item returns after the battle, but I also don’t really do competitive PvP, so I still don’t take it seriously enough to consider using them.
I hope gems come back someday, they were really fun to use and I like them better than Z-Moves. I feel that there's already so much power creep nowadays that gems wouldn't be as crazy in current metas compared to BW.
Now how are my Bullet Punches in competitive Gen 5 OU gonna hurt huh? My traditional swords dance set can only do so much! Steel Gem helps out my Bullet Punches turn into a NUKE against my enemies!
There is a clear connection between Gems and the Terastal Crystals. They probably banned them after Gen 5 to better flesh out the idea later (right now)
So how effective would a Linoone with Belly Drum, Espeed and a Normal Gem be? If you could set up previously with a mom that sleeps and mementos, giving Linoone the free Belly Drum turn? Could it one-shot everything with the 5.3x attack STAB priority move?
Holy crap, how did I never realize the combination of gems with multi hit moves? I remember people only using king’s rock or white herb on cloyster but an ice gem sounds absolutely absurd on it
I only got into competitive Pokemon content after gen 6 so hearing about gen 5 being host to a bunch of migraine inducing broken strategies feels like someone describing the wild west to me.
Gen 6-wise, Talonflame would also be a huge winner - its bulky BU Acrobatics set can actually now run an item that makes it can fire of something that basically is almost as strong as CB Brave Bird with zero drawbacks
The entire meta balances on a hinge, and every team you make is vulnerable to getting wrecked by some broken threat. Then the broken threats get that one hit to blast past the normal checks and he'll breaks loose, it's all just match-up fishing noe
i’ve never once in my life played pokémon showdown. but goddamn do i love your videos. unfortunately they are the sole reasoning why i will never have enough confidence to play showdown in fear of being absolutely embarrassed lmaooo
just play random battles to start so you dont have to teambuild immediately. ultimately you want to build up to that (which is the most fun part imo) but you can get the basics from whichever gen u like most’s random battles. if you want to play ou then resources exist on smogons ruins of alph for all past gen tiers and are everywhere for current gen
@@bokaytrebuchet you don't need to play rdb if you already played the game. It is more useful to ask help in specific rooms and to watch matches of high elo players
I remember thinking they seemed so useless in-game and I sorta assumed the same applied to competitive, since I never got into competitive till Gen 6 when they weren’t really around anymore. Surprising to hear how busted they were but it makes sense
Considering both are broken mechanics and both generations still have enough defining aspects to separate them from the rest...the tiers are better off without them
It’s a good thing then that Galar is such a shitty region that it made people realize how overpowered Gems were by getting people more used to the idea that regional mechanics do not always work in competitive. That and Z-Moves in Alola.
In Wynaut's case I believe thats specifically just due to shadow tag being banned and it having no other possible abilities. I think seeing a video on indirect bans would be neat though
I don't understand how come gems affecting all hits of a multi-hit move is news to anyone? The description even says "move" not "instance of damage". I don't understand how someone could assume otherwise?
i think the biggest problem with gems is that BW OU was Always a problematic meta which died and Need a rebuilt After a lot of time so yeah gems which could have been as ok, now are being seriously considered bad
Don't know how competitive it was because you know, casual player, but I remember really enjoying the power boost a flying gem gave Acrobatics because the move would check it no item was there after the gem was consumed.
"What if Z moves took some steroids?" Jokes aside, being able to use more than one gem is really what breaks them. Game Freak was actually ahead of us, this time. Good job
i think its less-so the amount of gems as it is the specific circumstances that gen 5 ou has that make them overwhelming, there are better/more defensive options that arent feasible in the volatile gen 5 metagame in gen 7. if they were in gen 7 they mightve also been broken (idk) but in gen 5 they made like 4ish specific pokémon overrun their only defensive checks. if u wanted to check both psychic and bug gem volc then u needed two diff pokemon to do it for example same goes for all the diff 50/50 gem sets. the main issue is all of the adjustments you could make that help you win against gem hyper offense teams made you far worse off against both opposing sand teams and opposing rain teams (the other two team formats in the meta) so u literally cant build a team that matches up okay into all of those structures, making for a really flashy game of rock paper scissors.
Wouldn't you say that it only applying to a single attack makes it more balanced? If you play it poorly then you've wasted the use of the gem, compared to a choice item which one wrong move or using the move at the wrong moment won't be wasted. Is the advantage of ohko-ing an enemy pokemon via use of the move, then being weaker the rest of the battle but with full choice, compared to having a smoother strength, but being locked into one move or switch, really that strong? I mean, rather than compare it to choice items, it should be compared to life orb. Life orb you can boost yourself and deal the damage, so you're exchanging a permanent 1.3 times boost at the cost of 10% hp per attack for a higher 1.5 times boost once per battle per pokemon. If a pokemon is using a stab-gem, they're basically forced to use non stab moves, which won't deal that much damage even with a boost. Seems like the problem is of high level play, on low levels there's not enough skill to make not wasting the gem common, so it isn't that busted. With teams pokemon x is super strong but has 1 pokemon on the enemy team which counters it, normally that would be an issue, but when you have another pokemon that can oneshot its counter, that enables the original pokemon to be strong and bypass its counters. It doesn't matter if the second pokemon is weak af after oneshotting, its purpose was to remove the original pokemon's counters.
It’s kinda funny how many changes they made to make the game more competitive focused in the multiplayer aspect but gen 5 is seen as the gen that didn’t really do much. I guess it was that? Gen 2 added weather and items, gen 3 added abilities and doubles, gen 4 added the physical special split, and gen 6 onwards added a new battle mechanic each time. None of the new battle types in gen 5 took off but hidden abilities and competitive revamp are sure something huh?
I find it fitting that the region based off of mainland America is always at war combating the new broken threat in a never-ending gauntlet and the opinions are the most divided there. It wouldn’t be America without a life-altering, existentialist, bitter war about how to do anything, wouldn’t it?
@@cheruledge I'm sorry, but Avalugg is a joke, even with good hp and defense,it's pure ice so it barely switches into resisted hits and absolutely crumbles neutral and super effective special moves.
Damn... so I was the only one back in the day who consistently used Gems during my Online/Wifi Pkmon League runs 🤣🤣🤣 glad I was the one who knew of it being broken and kept it to myself haha (least back during the BW 1 & 2 years).
I remember back in the day no one seemed to ever use any gem except for flying with acrobatics. I remember when Gen 7 first showed off z moves thinking isn't this the same as gems? There's no way this will be useful
Now that I think about it, gems are returning in Scarlet/Violet as terrastalizing forms but with much needed concessions, such as losing dual typing and being limited to one terra mon per match. I completely forgot Gems existed pass Gen VI. I always found their spawns in caves way too rare and found sand and rain much more impactful to the Gen V meta. To hear sleep has been banned in Gen V just goes to show why status moves were so heavily nerfed in future gens.
