Why not do gen 8 competitive? We have: - Fastest electric ball ever - Greninja but fire and bunny - A dog with a sword - An onion deer thing riding a pony - An ice monke with 2 choice items at once - Grass monke with drums - Mega skarmory - Deformed dinosaur
I personally don’t mind power creep because of smogon. I like that lower tiers are more interesting due to the strong pokemons who couldn’t cut it anymore in OU or UU
Isn't kinda bad game design that you have to rely on what is ultimately a fanmade format to get any balance or variety rather than the game ITSELF having balance and variety?
@@DrCoeloCephalo Tell me about it lmao... I wish there was already a similar format in the game so we could have fun battles with NO dynamax and no OP pokemon depending on the tier.
Regigigas still has Slow Start for "balance". While they kept bullcrap Pheramosa,Zacian-C,Urshifu-S and Mega Rayquazza. And they removed Hidden Power because it was too much. Just make a Sp.Atk version of Intimidate, and give it to Regigigas,Chesnaught,Copparajah and ect.
@@Nosretep I think that should be freeze instead. Ya know, BRAINfreeze, it would heavily buff ice types, which I think is the type that deserves the most buffs tbh.
I feel like Dracovish being a menace wasn’t actually intended. Just “Oh yea, give it a cool new move like the other one and Strong Jaw, that makes sense.”
Mega Rayquaza: What a nice day to have my own tier, I hear that a new Pokémon is going to join me. Zacian: *bark* Mega Rayquaza: PLEASE LET ME BACK INTO UBERS! DON’T LEAVE ME HERE WITH THIS MANIAC!
In order to combat power creep, I’d love for gamefreak to give small base stat, ability, and moveset buffs to older Pokémon in the same way they did to Pelipper by giving it drizzle or Mantine by adding 20 HP to it’s BST. It could go a long way to making some of the older mons much more viable.
@@EBgCampos That's part of powercreep too tho. Look at the nerfs some incredibly powerful Pokémon got the generation after their introduction. Talonflame's Gale Wings getting nerfed after Gen 6, Drought/Drizzle/Sand Stream/Snow Warning not being permanent after gen 5. Aerilate and Pixilate got damage nerfs. Powerful things from the previous generation usually get nerfed, but the new stuff is allowed to be broken for a generation.
@@justalurker3489 for talonflame, gale wings was broken, but now it's kinda useless. They're just too harsh on some pokémon sometimes...(at least for Talonflame, I'm fine with most of the other nerfs)
Don't forget venomoth tho, that shit went all up from NU to RU in Gen 5 thanks to quiver dance and was even banned from Gen 6 UU at some point due to Batton pass as well
@@DrCoeloCephalo I actually see the most overly-oppressively-powerful legendaries as the ‘trash’. Legendaries are always geared towards raw power to such a degree that they rarely ever get significantly useful moves that aren’t straight-up Attacks or stat-boosts intended to bolster those attacks, and that really doesn’t feel like it lends itself to actual strategic thinking. Non-legendaries also aren’t bogged down design-wise by the ‘this is a god, it needs to look a certain sort of powerful and be tied to a vague broad philosophical or natural concept’ problem.
And then there are the true trash of the horrible legendaries/mythical, like Reshiram, Articuno, Calyrex by itself, apparently Giratina in Series 10, Latias is later generation, all Kyurem formes until Generation 8 and even then, Mesprit (and by some peopl all three Lake Trio Pokémon), Darkrai since Generation 6…
Power creep only TRULY becomes an issue because each gen more and more Pokémon get yeeted into the abyss as they don't get buffed and Pokémon from previous gens that were on higher tiers often fall to lower tiers to the point of kicking out the already bad ones. So it kinda sucks for the Pokémon that never get 'adapted' to these power creeps. So it is less about power creep going too far and more about GF ignoring some(a lot, even) Pokémon for far too long.
I think another point of interest is how much more favourably they distribute stats to the mons they want to be good now. Like a fast mixed sweeper in infernape is nothing compared to cinderace now.
When it comes to this kind of discussion, I don't see enough brought up about how Electric, Ice, and Rock are treated. It's like Game Freak thinks the metagame will die slow and painfully if any of those types ever become viable. Luxray's entire existence is suffering, Eelektross is a waste of a really cool concept (A Pokemon with no weaknesses) due to piss poor Speed and HP stats, Ramparados is so slow that he had to run special attacks just to sit somewhere (and even that only worked for two generations at most, he was untiered in Gen 7), Walrein was quickly euthanized after he become OU, Aggron was dead on arrival thanks to the x4 weakness to Fighting, Avalugg never stood a chance with 28 speed, Manetric got a little taste of hope thanks to Hidden Power and Megas only to have both of those taken away, Ampharos fought so hard just to fall out of tiering altogether, and Archeops was denied his chance to be the new Aerodactyl with that godawful Defeatist ability. And just to give all of them an extra bird, Stealth Rock was practically designed to make Ice, already a typing weaker than *Bug* in the defensive department, utterly nonexistent in the tiers.
@@graphitetailgrace3870 I think those types were specifically nerfed because of their advantages against other types? Like, electric against the most common type (water), ice against the most 'powerful' type (dragon, though fairy does this in a much stronger way, and dragon really isn't that strong ), and rock against... Uh.... Actually yeah they just hate rock.
@@graphitetailgrace3870 Ikr, give electric type a better physical move. Its not like the metagame is gonna collapsed if luxray have access to 85bp electric move with no recoil.
Everybody knows how broken Zacian, the Calyrex riders, the Necrozma forms, and the primal Pokémon are. If you play online battles with strangers, all of them will regularly appear on the screen and in contrast to Grimmsnarl, CInderace, Regieleki, Dragopult and others, these ones are strong and hard to defeat - which is why I think that GameFreak should introduce the selectable rules "No legendaries" and "No mythicals" because the "special" G-Max Pokémon really aren't that broken.
I'd definitely support more format options - I like seeing the different Pokemon that can shine under the different conditions. It's really interesting to see Mienshao, which has not been a very common Pokemon through Sword and Shield, see a lot of usage in VGC series 10 as a great answer to Incineroar and some of the scary legendaries
I’m surprised a no legends format still isn’t a thing. Sure not every legendary Pokémon is overpowered but enough are and have the metagame focused on them like Lando-T, Latios, and the Tapus considering multiple generations. In a meta without them it could give a chance for other Pokémon to be useful but the only problem could be that pseudo legendaries would just replace the legends.
I'd like to just point out that being a legendary means nothing when it comes to competitive viability, articuno(regular and galarian),regigigas and regice aren't the same as zacian or primal groudon, so you must ban pokemon by it's power, not because it's legendary.
power creep is clearly seen in the increase of base stats every new gen, it may not have gone "too far" yet but the trend is showing that we're heading there also old pokemons that were OU in old gens aren't anymore, that's an indication of power creep but no I don't think power creep has gone too far yet, OU bans definitely help that
I do see what you mean - a lot of the new Pokemon are seen at the top of OU. But you're right - smogon bans help to maintain a balanced tier. We just might expect to see even more bans with each new generation
Well, it's also incredibly difficult to tell what has actually been power crept. You can't compare anything to Gen 1 due to its critical hit system and single Special state. Gen 2 has the broken Rest, leading to many OU Pokémon to become Rest + Sleep Talk Pokémon. And one layer of Spikes. Gen 3 gives 3 layers of Spikes, Abilities for the first time, and thus Tyranitar's Sand Stream. Gen 4 introduces moves being what determines physical or special, not typing, thus making mix attackers entirely different. Stealth Rock also heavily changed the metagame. Then Gen 5 broke everything with its weather mechanics. And while Gen 6 nerfed weather, it also introduced Mega Evolution and Defog. And Gen 7 introduced the Z moves, Ultra Beasts, even more Defog and had stat changes for some Pokémon. From that lens, there never was a "standard metagame" to compare to. It definitely isn't Gen 3 due to Gen 4's moves determining their hits, not types. Maybe Gen 4 can be a baseline, but one point of Garchomp's ban was the fact that Sand Veil was its only ability, and on a Pokémon that strong with a near constant sandstorm due to Sand Stream, so a single missed move would ruin an attempt to counter it. Hence why trainers would use Cacturne, getting Sand Veil banned. Salamance was banned due to its power backed versatility, similar to Mew, and so you would have to sacrifice multiple Pokémon to learn its set and thus find a way to counter it. Meanwhile, Latias was unbanned from Ubers because its ability to counter Salamance's counters and checks, which got it banned, was non-existence due to Salamance being gone. Then Gen 5-7 just break everything with weather teams, then Mega Evolutions and then Z moves. While there certainly is power creep, not just from Pokémon but also items like Life Orb and Choice Specs, this isn't Yu-Gi-Oh. The metagame of the previous generation has honestly never had a say on the next generation, because the next generation had both new strong and weak Pokémon, entirely new mechanics, and even stat changes to older Pokémon.
Haxorus' 540 BST is nothing new We've jad at least 1 pokémon with that BST each gen until Gen 5 (arguably gen 6 with Florgws) Gen 1 - Arcanine (555). Gyarados Gen 2 - Kingdra and Blissey Gen 3 - Milotic Gen 4 - Electivire, Magmortar and Togekiss (that last one of which of which is 545) Gen 5 - Haxorus, Volcarona (550) Gen 6 - Florges (552) After then, anything and everything that's not a legend, mythical, UB, mega, or pseudo now have *no more than 535 BST at most*
@@goGothitaLOL A good point. But it does seem like the power creep lies in the majority of older "regular" Pokemon either being outclassed or just unable to hold their own with the newly introduced Pokemon and the accompanying mechanics. Exeggutor, for example, was a giant of Generation I, and still prominent in Generation II. But from Generation III and on, it has never seen the light of OU due to events like Celebi being unbanned, Natures and smaller EV limits, and the environment of the metagame just being unkind to it. I don't think new Pokemon or mechanics are necessarily broken or even stronger than previous generations, but what makes it true power creep is that the roles of Pokemon and demand thereof are determined by the sum of it all. Exeggutor isn't any weaker, and isn't bad at all, but its role and talents aren't suited for this metagame since so many things have changed.
Regarding power creep, I feel like the number of untiered pokemons per generation, along with tier shifts between generations, would be better metrics than usage percentages in OU and VGC. Good video nonetheless!
Good suggestions - there's definitely not just one way to try to measure this. In terms of the tier shifts, considering the usage/banning of new Pokemon kind of does a similar job, as with over-representation of new Pokemon you would expect a trend towards downward tier shifts for existing Pokemon, but it would certainly be an interesting metric to double check.
@@determineddaaf3 Like Gallade who used to be great at killing bulky water types in its debut generation only for it to go south to where even mega evolution wouldn't save it from being outclassed. Though it propably wouldve been mitigated if its ability was something else instead of inner focus.
Exactly what I was thinking of, especially given how many pokemon that were important in OU just fell into the next tier in gens 4 and 5 but that wasn't captured because lack of bans. Also, Keldio and Latios should've been banned to ubers in gen 5.
I disagree on one thing. I think the huge step in terms of powercreep is Gen 5. I think that Gen 6 is when people took action for banning stuff. This was a very informative video. Thanks for putting it together, even though my boyfriend scolded me for listening to this while we were making breakfast.
Gen 5 had a huge impact on the game! I think a big change here was that everything got a buff with hidden abilities, so its true that everything probably got more powerful at the same time
Mechanically I think in gen 5 a big issue was weather, so a lot of weather pokemon rode the wave of that and became really powerful. Whereas in gen 6 I feel like the best megas were often powerful regardless of such mechanics (unless you consider mega a mechanic, in which case fair)
Gen 5 is when OU got the massive powercreep Juice, but at the same time had several ascend from low tier hell mostly off of interaction with weather meanwhile, whilst Gen 7 didn't have much direct powercreep in the higher tiers, from what i've heard (and seen from looking in the tier rosters), the lower tiers got hella powercrept thanks to having almost all off the non-legendary selection of gen 7 sucking ass
Regardless of tiers, I'm downright tired of the sheer amount of OHKO power that's all over the past few generations. I prefer the older days where the top tier Pokemon were only *kinda* strong but also extremely versatile in use, giving them great strength without handing them free kill buttons. That meant that a Pokemon who was statistically super weak but had an extremely useful niche and a good player could do a LOT more than I feel like it can now. It's just about having big, beefy stats rather than being particularly creative now and that sucks.
it's this reason exactly that I think DPPt OU was the peak of singles metagame tbh. Everything was reasonably strong, but unless you misplayed or sacked intentionally, nothing was really getting oneshot, certainly not by a neutral unboosted hit (except explosion, but that has a massive drawback) so DPPt OU felt the most balanced imo.
This seems to be the end result of all power creeps. I never understood power creep anyway, especially with something like pokemon where people are going to be buying the new games anyway. There's no need to incentivize the new games unlike card games. But yeah, every game that power creeps inevitably leads to some form of OHKO. I don't understand why devs feel the need to scale up instead of scaling out. More options > more stats.
I'd like to make a correction about the reason Wobbufett was banned. It's not just the ability, it's the fact that it only knows counter attacks, meaning that if two Wobbufett face each other, neither can damage the other untill they use Struggle, but if they're holding leftovers, they regain more health than the damage they take and the game is an automatic draw.
Similar reason to why Funbro was banned. Although in that case, they banned Leppa Berry + any way to recycle it (which at the time was Recycle and Harvest).
This only applies to gen 3, since gen 4 struggle will always do exactly 25% of your hp, additionally a pokemon with shadow tag can no longer trap another pokemon with shadow tag.
Dracovish is probably the most notable case of broken pokemon. In the words word of wolfey a champion of pikemons national competitive scene " put Mr.Fish on your team and you win."
Wait there is power creep? Better nerf greninja In all seriousness I will admit power creep bad but it's easy to fix via buffing or giving other pokemon new tools -or nerfing stealth rock-
@@fulltimeslackerii8229 Oh certainly 😂😂 I’ve always thought about how cool that would be, and then immediately went “nope. Let’s not.” I mean, unless it’s a super swuishy or mid-speed pokemon
I guess my one problem with how they handled generation 7 is that they introduced a lot of innovative ideas on their new non-legendary pokemon, but then made the majority of them nigh-unusable via stats. Incineroar is a staple of competitive Pokémon, and Primarina has seen some interesting usage in generation 8, but other than that, pretty much any Pokémon from generation 7 that isn’t a Legendary or an Ultra-Beast is practically nonexistent in the past 3 seasons of SwSh VGC. That may sound like I’m just griping, but it’s a bigger deal when the number of newly-introduced non-legendary pokemon is as small as it was in Gen 7.
You can also expand that to Singles as well, outside of the Tapu and a handful of Ultra Beasts, only Toxapex is good in OU (okay, Kommo-O has been buffed and now sees uses in OU as well though it was TERRIBLE during SM and hard to justify in USUM, Primarina has had it's moment and Incineroar had like the Home metagame before the dlc dropped where it had a fringe niche in OU but nothing crazy). Gen 7 introduced very few actually impactful new Pokemon unfortunately
That is pretty true. Gen 8 has done this much better in terms of having a lot of viable non-legendary pokemon. There are some cool niche gen 7 mons though like Dhelmise, Turtonator and Tsareena which have seen usage
@@foofootoo Tsareena is quite a good example of something going *right* for one of gen-7’s mons. Bruxish isn’t even in SwSh, but it has a functionally identical signature ability and I would’ve loved to try it out in SwSh. Turtonator and Dhelmise are both cool, but with Turtonator especially it’s hard to get real mileage out of using it a lot of the time. Vikavolt feels like almost one of the worst offenders though. it’s dex entries talk about how fast it is, and then it has speed built for Trick-room, and to top it off it shares the all-too common problem with many gen-7 mons of not having good enough bulk, or just not enough HP to make use of the bulk they have.
@@sephikong8323 uhhhh what about ttar, ferrethorn, landorus, heatran, slowbro, etc. so many staples from previous gens have maintained Ou viability and dominance through all the “power creep”
@@fulltimeslackerii8229 ? I genuinely don't understand how that relate to what I said. What the existence of Ttar has to do with the fact gen 7 introduced almost no new OU staples outside of the Tapu, Pex and like 2-3 UB (and Kommo-o now in gen 8 but not really during gen 7)
Zacian and Zamazenta confuse me the most. Not only they have abnormally high base stat total (670, and 720 for crowned) and practically minimized special attack. Zacian has incredibly high attack stat for its ability whereas Zamazenta does not learn Body Press. Whoever made the base stats for these two should be fired.
Also noticed how when making counterparts, they make their movesets nearly identical except different STABs or other coverage. Zacian and Zamazenta have the same forms of coverage (except the signature moves), yet there are minor differences like Zamazenta knowing screens and Zacian knowing Air Slash. They didn’t differentiate them enough. This can extend to the Swords of Justice (Keldeo for example that doesn’t know Ice Beam but knows Air Slash, SE and Megahorn like the other members).
@@diamondminer5459 I believe box legendaries have almost always been equally good atleast in the games in which they are boxart legendaries so it is a big thing (atleast for consumers, maybe not for Game Freak) that Zamazenta is literally useless compared to Zacian, its sad.
It surprises me that you did not cover the introduction of items, abilities, stronger moves and hidden abilities. Pokemon as a game became more and more offensive with each generation.
That's a great point, I was focusing on the Pokemon as that is how most people frame comments about power creep. But it's totally true that all the things you listed definitely increased the power level of the game. Though any Pokemon can potentially benefit from new items or moves, so that's why they weren't included
@@foofootoo a pokemon gaining a new insainly powerful hidden move. IE cinccino with skill link. Or ditto with imposter. Can be a huge in rease tpvits power.
@@foofootoo But...that's power creep. I know you tried to define it as just when new pokemon arrive that specifically shake up the meta, but powercreep has always been defined as game design decisions that make older content less viable. Your example of Scolipede vs. Beedrill is a textbook example. But it's not limited to that. Generational changes have seen various pokemon's utility fluctuate, in the base game as well as competitive. Remember, charmander never used to learn metal claw, making him the hard-mode choice in Gen 1. You may never be able to use the Gen 1 moveset anymore, but it's undeniable that that one change made charmander stronger, and that was just one of many over the years.
@@zerobudgetgamer Yeah I mean, Dragonite was there both in Gen 4 and in Gen 5, so it's one of those pokemons that don't come up in the video, but the former had Inner Focus while the latter had Multiscale. And Hurricane.
Megas were the real deal: they were way too much powerfull, but they were the core of the building. What I would really watch for a more complete analysis is the the statistics of the mons or the gameplay introductions in the generation. Rillaboom and Urshifu are literally game changer, one can fake out, moves by priority with a really powerfull attack and can change terrain, while the other one breaks the entire mechanic of protect just with its kit... Dynamax is another story, you have to relearn how to manage resources and play the game itself. I know an offensive gameplay is way funnier to play but holy heck who thought about putting dynamax in the game was a good idea lol
I agree with more statistical analysis. For vgc i would love to see the amount of times a specific pokemon is actually picked to be in the 4/6 mons that go into battle as well as how many times they get maxed in official events. Probably these are stats that arent easily available but i think they would say a lot more about the metagame especially since the most successful pokemon would see a lot more usage through surviving deeper into brackets. When 70% of all competitive games have gmax landoT due to stab airstream that paints a very different picture of what the format actually plays like than raw usage statistics from a niche ladder where people go to experiment.
This isn't the best way to view power creep, it's a great analysis but I think any analysis of power creep without talking about how many Pokemon were forced out of their previous tiers due to the introduction of new better Pokemon is incomplete. I understand what that specific analysis misses (if it's better but doesn't change the meta it isn't power creep, and with the introduction of new Pokemon as long as their balanced will crowd tiers), but I think the conjunction of your analysis with this would offer a more complete picture of power creep. Generation 5 is infamous for sending older Pokemon into complete obscurity. So Generation 5 could be said to be a huge generation for power creep.
That's a fair comment - I might consider doing a follow-up for completeness to look at the other side of the coin. Not hust the hyper powerful mons that need to be banned, but the mons that are made obsolete too
I think wobuffet's ban in ADV also had to do with the fact that 2 wobuffets holding leftovers would be trapped in a neverending battle. They had to change struggle and shadow tag mechanics in gen 4
I really, really hate to be that guy, but... the Cinderace in the beginning of the video should have been named Energizer instead of Duracell if you’re looking for battery brand names, because of the famous rabbit with the drum.
Who owns the "durcell/energizer" bunny depends on where you live. In Europe and outside of the US in general it's Duracell, in the US it's Engerizer. It has some complex marketing history behind it.
For me, power creep are those pokemon that force you to make 1 or more checks (because there's no counters). For example, with Mewtwo in AG. I need to prepare for a Sweeper Mewtwo or an All-out attacker one, or it will 6-0 me. That always requires at least 2 mons. I also play a lot Balance Hackmons in Showdown, and I need to have at least 1 pokemon able to check Blissey with the Impostor ability. Otherwise I'll forfeit all the time. Those are power creep for me.
I mean power creep is inevitable because Game Freak needs to add new, innovative and stronger Pokémon because in the end of the day they are a company trying to make as much money as possible, however I wouldn’t say as a whole it was negative because it lets the newer Pokémon shine in their new game and let’s players fall in love with these new Pokémon
Yep, and if it’s really broken, they’ll nerf it the following generation when the new Pokémon is no longer in the spotlight. For example, Gale wings talonflame in gen6.
The main problem with that is... a lot of newer mons are usually garbage in competitive. Take Frosmoth for example; it is basically a Galarian Volcarona, but for some reason its bst(and especially its Speed) is absolutely cut down compared to the fire moth. Or Cramorant, a mon with a super unique and interesting ability... that does jack all in the full scope of a battle. That point would work, and is what I think the devs could be going for and failing, if so many newer mons didn't fall so far behind previously established powerhouses. Like, look at Scizor, a mon that was introduced way back in Gen 2. Despite being made over 20 years ago, it still hangs out around OU and UU, absolutely stumping the 60% of new mons that can't even make it out of ZU and a majority of the others that make it to higher tiers.
Dont mind power creep, I just believe every gen older pokemon should get access move to new moves (and in some cases new stat buffs) not having them taken away. Just imagine aerodactyl with brave bird and head smash
tbh power creep has gotten pretty absurd. Old ubers have fallen into OU or even UU. Look at Blaziken. In gen 5 it went nuclear and was a major threat in ubers, but now in gen 8 it's not even OU.
@@foofootoo definitely, though tbh I wouldn't mind it if they kept the older pokemon up better. It's a bit disheartening when a lot of old cool pokemon get left in the dust from lack of buffs
@@breadeater1194 definitely not, there's so much other powerful pokemon that it's not anywhere near the beast it once was. It's UUBL rn, the same rating it had in gen 3 before it got speed boost
Incineroar is nearly 70% now in Doubles so I feel like you should have accounted for full shifts because anything this far over 50% is kind of controlling. Sometimes power creep is very slow and one or two things will shift up because of tools they have. A good few Pokemon control the game and kind of bog down team building because you need to counter them if you expect to win.
I kind of hope there is a way to balance megas and reintroduce them. It would be nice to have them back without them completely disrupting the meta. I know a lot of people, along with myself who find megas much more interesting then dynamax and z-moves.
A way to balance Megas would be to just not give them broken abilities that spit out 200 damage Seismic Tosses or STAB Flying type 144 bp Double-Edges. I honestly believe that the bst boost is a non-offense, except for maybe when they super 'roid out Speed(and even then, Mega Beedrill and Mega Aero weren't even strong enough to breach OU - in part due to having pretty "average" abilities). Attack boosts don't matter if you don't have an ability to back it up nowadays, and defense boosts can't really get too much headway since HP always remains static. See Mega Tyranitar for an example of a super stat dump that didn't actually do that much for the mon - remaining in OU with its base form. Also give already really strong mons Garchomp-esque megas, where they build into a separate niche rather than just get stronger overall. I don't want to see Mega Dragapult with 202 Speed, 140 Sp. Atk, and Adaptability.
A way to balance Megas is to not give Megas to Pokemon who don't need an extra 100 BST and a new ability to be good. Also don't rearrange their stat spreads to BE more competitive, maybe some slight adjustment but mostly just add onto what they are already working with. Give it to meme Pokemon like Dunsparce or Delibird, or pokemon that just plain suck instead of 'well it's popularz so it gets megaz!'. Some of them that already exist like Audino barely made an impact. It's dumb shit like mega legendaries and popular Pokemon who are already good getting free power boosts that made megas OP.
Megas are fine, but some were stupidly unnecesary outside of designs(legendaries and some pseudo legendaries) and some with really broken abilities (parental bond crap). The thing is, they: 1) Just allow some useless mons to have a Mega, and not the overrated ones 2) Make them have MANAGABLE abilities for what they can do, not just some broken ability that it's even more broken with the new stats (Mawile)
Having a slot for one type of Mon you have to include is boring. That mechanic wasn't the good and the one pokemon restriction makes it hard to design for (v easy to accidentally power creep a mega)
@@FakeHeroFang the thing is that the competitive side isn't the main target audience, so the tricky part is finding a balance in between weak pokemon and popular pokemon, for some mons it work, like Charizard, Gardevior, Beedrill, Manectric, Pidgeott.
I feel the the best way to measure power creep would be o compare Pokémon with similar roles (ei. starters with other starters, mythicals with otther mythicals) and in that regard Power Creep has most definitely gone way to far. Cinderace is the single most disgustingly competitively optimized Pokemon in history (broken ability, a movepool that breaks logic (Gunk Shot, Sucker Punch, really?), and the stat spread hand-crafted by the Smogon Gods . Meanwhile Typhlosion is stuck with Charizard's horrid stat spread, a situation ability, and a movepool so worthless that it had to have been intentionally truncated to make it objectively worse than Charizard (it isn't even allowed to have basic stuff like Earth Power or Ancient Power, two moves pretty much every other Volcano-based Pokémon gets ). Charizard avoided the disgrace of powercreep due to Game Freak's classic favoritism.
What's funny about Typhlosion is that when Gen II came out, you can't imagine the hype when people found out it could learn Thunderpunch. A fire-type with an electric move for water-types, all the kids at my school went nuts! But now everything seems to have strong moves of every type (I know it's not strictly true yet, but it does seem like that sometimes, with some of crazy the movesets I see in modern Pokemon). Starmie having the stats it did and being able to learn Surf, Psychic, Thunderbolt AND Ice Beam was once awe-inspiring. But today it's not remarkable in the slightest. Even when Electivire came out there was so much hype about its offensive movepool.
Such a great video, even tho I personally don't play competitive at all, it such a fascinating topic. Now I need videos covering power creeping in other competitive games. Nice work bro 😁
Yeah I'm the guy who would run a Mamoswine to beat more than half of the chalk set up taking care of Heatran, thunderous, landorous T, and Amoongus. Then I'd run it with other things which counter the remaining top twenty pokemon in the meta. I got to around the 1700's in the smogon latter before hitting a skill barrier.
@@foofootoo Yeah, I ended up OHKOing half the opponents team very often with a lead life orb Mamoswine. I also brought a steadfast Lucario with defense investment to wipe the floor with mega Kangaskhan.
wish there was some tier in between smogon’s Ubers and OU. Pokemon like Landorus-I, Genesect, and Spectrier are great but completely outmuscled in Ubers, and fade into obscurity. Getting banned from OU is often earned, but essentially a death sentence for these great offensive mons
Agree. Also put Clef, Pex, Lando-T, Blissey, and Tapus (minus Bulu) there. While they're not broken, I'm bored seeing them in OU, which in dire need of more team diversity
I would think that GameFreak would do well to revise certain old gems to make them more viable. As an Emerald aficionado, here are some ideas that I can think of: Give regular Swampert Regenerator instead of that pretty much useless Damp. Axolotls, which Swampert is based off on, are literally known for being able to REGENERATE their limbs. Give Mightyena Strong Jaw instead of Moxie - Mightyena aint strong enough on its own to get that KO to start Moxie, and even when it does it is still hard to get that second KO. Hyenas, which Mightyena is based off on, are known for their strong bites. Buff Magnet Pull to have it act like Lightningrod, but for Steel Type moves and boost Defense instead of Special Attack. Give Flygon Sand Stream, since its PokeDex entries often highlight how it kicks up a Sandstorm just by flapping its wings Nerf Mega Banette slightly (something like 64 135 80 88 78 80) and make it a permanent evolution
Sir, swampert does not need regenerator. Imagine being bulky, only have 1 weakness, slapped HDB on it and that thing will never die. Oh you have a grass type, switches out to Corviknight, Oh nice fire type u got there, switches back to swampert, repeat cycle till the end of time
@@fixjustin2699 Swampert doesn't only have 1 weakness: It is also 4x weak to Freeze Dry. Damp just sucks. Also, the official competitive format is VGC, not Smogon.
I dislike seeing those legendaries everywhere. Like they're as common as a regular pikachu. Regardless they need to buff older mons aswell, perhaps in stats, movepool or event more option with abilities.
@@iantaakalla8180 Meganium needs an overhaul big time to keep up with the other stages 2 evolutions for Johto. Make it Grass/Ground like Torrtera and give it better moves in its movepool
still, i like how in the OU viability rankings the tierlist has more pokemon than just those in OU, showing that some niche picks have a place in the meta
Yeah I get that. But then the thing I find most fun is identifying unusual and uncommon Pokemon and trying to get them to work. If everything was great, it wouldn't feel like as much of an accomplishment when I win battles with Wimpod, for example
@@foofootoo you are right. And of course, having all pokemon being absurdly strong may not be a good thing. Despite that, I think that some pokemon really need buffs, such as stantler, arbok, mightyena, etc
Hey Foo, it’s Psiji! I haven’t played much competitive in the last few years but I was heavy into VGC13-15 when power creep was very noticeable. It’s definitely a problem. However, it’s a problem that partially exists because new mons need to compete with 700 other mons to feel powerful. If box legends didn’t have to compete with other box legends they’d be able to feel a lot more powerful around a 600(ish) BST, I think one thing rarely mentioned in talks of power creep is the effect of a larger Pokédex. VGC14 was one of the healthiest formats ever where team diversity was incredible. VGC15 expanded to the national dex and as a result the presence of more offensive threats required more defensive checks leading to the rise of the CHALK(T) teams. These consisted of Cresselia, Heatran, Amoongus, Landorus-T, Kangaskhan and Thundurus. Having a wider pool results in having to answer more threats, this leads to a requirement to lean heavily on defensive threats (Cress, Amoongus, Lando-T) that can answer a wide swathe of mons. However, this also leads to a necessity to run mons that break those mons (Kang, Thundurus, Heatran). It’s certainly a hot take but I think there’s an argument that’s more limited format allows for more creativity. The most common mega in VGC14 was Mawile which was often fairly defensive and by VGC15 it was pushed out by things like Lando and Heatran. Power creep leads to homogeneity as does the necessity to answer 700 mons with only 6. I think there’s a real argument that formats would be significantly healthier if there was around 300 mons. It certainly wouldn’t be popular with fans (as seen by Dexit around the start of Sword/Shield) but I think it would be wonderful for the health of competitive formats to have only a curated list of mons legal, as was the case in VGC14. Hope you enjoyed the essay and keep up the good content. I really enjoyed hearing your take on the matter!
Hi! Thanks a lot for the comment! I know there's been a lot of discussion over the years about whether the limited dex or national dex formats allow for a more diverse meta. I think everyone would agree that VGC15 was very limiting in terms of teambuilding which may be due to it being a National dex meta. But the current Sword and Shield meta (series 9) was quite a varied format. And series 6, in which the most common Pokemon from the previous series were removed, was quite a limiting format as some of the balancing Pokemon were taken away. I can't say that I have the most experience here, especially in the older VGC formats, but seeing the shifting metas is very interesting to me. And even in the very limited formats, the creativity and innovation may come from more of the micro decisions you make such as EV spreads, natures and a surprise move option. Though my favourite formats are the ones where some more unusual mons can be viable with the right support options [:
Personally, as someone very upset about the missing Pokemon, I wouldn't mind not being able to use them in competitive events if they were just in the game at all. We've had regional 'dex formats before, and I don't remember any great wailing and gnashing of teeth about those, so something like that could be really interesting.
It is also noted that Sword and Shield’s earliest meta allowed for strange Pokémon to become good, like Avalugg and Galarian Corsola. Avalugg has a Special Defense so low that you’d want to hit it there, but with much fewer Pokémon it could act like the physical tank it tried to be. Galarian Corsola means nothing in this meta but much earlier its ability to shut down physical attackers with Strength Sap means it was a unique sort of staller. Naturally, both Pokémon are unviable out of 894 Pokémon with insane efficiency. However, back when there were only 400 Pokémon and only just Zacian, Zamazenta, and Eternatus they did well. Based on that, the healthiest metagame, assuming no further power creep, will be around 400 Pokémon: diverse enough that unique tricks can be used but distinct enough that bad things are recognized as bad.
Honestly, why doesn’t Pokémon have a “official” format without legendary/ restricted Pokémon. Thank godd for Smogon Power creep is happening in VG and TCG. It will stay around and maybe die slowly.
Its a bit of a mixed opinion, but I think Gen 7 OU was my favorite generation of OU, because it had the weird case of having too many options. There were a lot of viable things there, which meant a lot to look out for but that also comes with the caveat of you being unable to counter everything. There will be a team that you will simply lose to but at the same time, you had a lot of options to choose from.
Same, gen 7 had many styles and Z moves sort of replaced megas for a little bit making for this "megas" versus "very strong moves" teams and others just using the weird talents introduced for funny playstyles
Very great video. I’m kinda suprised I didn’t see Melmetal in that ban list in gen 8. I remember how melmetal had a crazy run in OU until Banded or life orb double iron bash did so much damage that it got banned for a while. I guess it didn’t make much of an impact on the ban list like I assumed it would, but all in all it was a nice video and a great watch for sure
Fighting is one the best offensive types, that would just buff Zacian. +1 252+ Atk Zacian-Crowned Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Groudon-Primal: 204-240 (50.4 - 59.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO +1 252+ Atk Zacian-Crowned Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Unaware Quagsire: 211-249 (53.5 - 63.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO With Fighting type, this thing would have no possible counters.
@@amayurubashaka3608 nah i doubt, Fairy-Steel is way too op compared to Fighting-Steel. Zacian is objectively better with that typing, resisting lots of types and is naturally bulky
@@fixjustin2699 Zacian isn't a defensive mon and close combat is probably the best widespread physical attack in the game. 120 base power. If Close combat was stab on it, the very few pokemon that were able to wall zacian would get 2HKOD. Mons like necrozma dusk mane, quagsire, and arcanine would get obliterated by stab CC. I can't even find a mon that won't die in two hits.
Being honest, I think broken is used more in the sense of "This pokemons make other less used pokemons unviable", which, I could see it somewhat in the singles format, since that has always been the case (vgc was usually the place where unused pokemon had their chance to shine thanks to a good team that helped them, I mean, even parasect was a viable choice in Diamond and Pearl's vgc format). I kinda understand the idea of wanting to stay true to what Karen says in their monologue (I've tried running teams of entirely unused pokemons, usually with terrible results, and had to learn from that to improve). Being honest, some are more likely to be successful in a meta than others. I guess it would be better to say that even pokemon that are generally perceived as weak have something that sets them apart and can make them the better choice in some sittuations (For instance, pachirisu in that vgc tournament, he was a pretty weak pokemon, yet had a moveset that was so devastating to the opponents and had enough stats to survive the current meta's threats. There's part of the underdog essence in that sittuation, but also some deeply thought teambuilding to get to that point. If one wants to fight with their favourite, they must acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses, and understand that sometimes, they will have to run pokemon that are viewed as strong and that's ok.). Also, there is low tiers, where some pokemon that don't perform well in tiers like OU and such can have their time to shine too (sometimes, it's a lot more fun to run some low tier in order to see some wacky strategies with a pokemon that probably you didn't expect to see used). In the end, power creep is something that always happens, because new pokemon, abilities and moves that tend to surpass the ones that were before, pushing the power level further, however, I'm confident that in those cases, there will be buffs and nerfs to make sure that things don't spiral out of control. I mean, Stealth Rocks were dominant for a good amount of time, and buffs to defog, rapid spin, and the creation of the heavy-duty boots were there to tone down a bit the effects of that move, so, I think that it won't be that bad, and there will be metas were underappreciated pokemon will have their chance to shine, which is why I still enjoy teambuilding, to find those hidden gems. The only thing I might think was done poorly was the dynamax, because it was clearly created for doubles, but in singles things just spiral out of control way too fast to deal with it, causing some really annoying sweeps without being able to do anything about it. Gyarados and Krookodyle being a great example of how that powercreeped the singles format, since it became a who's the first one to sweep and once it started, there was no way to stop it. Luckily they banned it in singles, because if that had continued, the singles format would've outright disappeared, because sweeping can be fun for a while, but when the entire meta revolves around it, it starts to lose the fun element quite quick. Like, it could've been like the weather abilities in 5th gen, where they would've banned moxie entirely because of the dynamax. In that sense, I admit VGC is more fair and balanced, even though they have some truly busted pokemon, they still can be dealt with.
I think a good way to help the older mons is not necessarily boosting stats, but rather 'fix' up their stat spreads. some of the mons have the issue of really messy stat spreads that makes them bad at everything and not have a particular niche. Fixing the stat spreads in conjunction with better movepools/abilities can give them a new life in doubles or singles. Now that newer generations are adding new niches with gen IX bringing in tera-whatever, I think it is a decently smart way to possibly bring lesser used pokemon into the limelight. A new niche that cycles out can keep things fresh each gen, and maybe new formats of combining past niches would be an interesting way for competitive to thrive.
I think the last broken pokemon in single or the pokemon who need to be ban if you prefer is melmetal because of his attack stat and his bulk. It's just ridiculous how many pokemon he checks.
I agree with banning Melmetal. It's got 10 resistances, weak only to fighting, ground, and fire, and can only be damaged by Ghost, Dark, Electric, and Water
Just to add to the pokemon that got banned from Urbers zacian hero of many battles got banned from Urbers so zacian the first Pokemon with more than 1 form had both it's forms banned from Urbers
I've just been playing anything goes lately to use whatever I want from the gen 8 Dex and I find my teams only work because they're built to counter some common strats which does kinda limit me as I feel like I have to prepare for inevitable set up pokemon, hazard spammers, be bulky enough to sponge hits from super intimidating calyrex shadow and urshifu, shut down set up sweepers with taunt and roar and stuff eg unaware quagsire walls+kills with earthquake zacian and kills other physical set up sweepers with toxic.
I think it would have been interesting to focus on power creep driven by abilities and items rather than just the Pokemon themselves. I also think having a third of the top 20 of a generation be new Pokemon, is itself a decent measure of power creep. With each successive generation, the new Pokemon generally need to contend with a higher number of existing mons (unless half of the Pokemon just don't happen to be in a new gen for some reason), so seeing that top 20 % not change or even increase over generations is kind of crazy.
Definitely, each generation having 1/3 of the top 20 most used Pokemon being replaced by new Pokemon definitely shows growing power each generation. I didn't focus on items since most people talk about power creep in the context of Pokemon getting stronger, but items have certainly raised the power level of the game. I guess all Pokemon have access to these items though, so the effect is not so easily measured looking at usage statistics
Landorus is the face I put on why I stopped playing competitive modes, I became so sick of running into basically the same team every battle, it's probably no coincidence that Gen 8 has got me looking at it again
Gen 7 and 8 have been doing a lot of interesting experimentation with more unique moves and abilities and thats really been helping new pokemon shine. I think its less about power creep (though it definitely exists) and more about more battle focused development. I think that since the switch to 3d, they're stopping and spending more time on the fewer new pokemon they introduce.
One Pokémon I’m rather fond of that’s been hit hard by powercreep is Parasect. As a Spore-setter, it’s brutally outclassed in Speed by Breloom, and in tankiness by Amoongus. Even its “niche” of being bug/grass has it competing with the more offensively focused Leavanny, which just has better stat distribution for hitting hard and fast. Parasect’s stats, abilities, and movepool leave it struggling to do any job even decently, while newer Pokémon with more BST and better distribution of that BST leave it in the dust.
Parasect did have a niche in some VGC teams when Kyogre was allowed - with Dry Skin it was immune to the water moves. But even here, Amoonguss could do a similar thing in a more versatile way
For those who don't know, Zamazenta-C was tested in ou for a bit. It obviously stayed banned, but imo it wasn't broken. Definitely the most tame thing that has been suspect tested in gen 8 ou. Nonetheless, I think it's worth mentioning that it was tested.
That would be an interesting experiment. Though there is a lot more that makes a Pokémon good than just BST. Just look at the starter Pokémon all with similar or identical BST but some are a ton better than others
@@foofootoo In that example, that'd be Charizard over Typhlosion. Despite having identical stat spreads (only defense stats are swapped) Charizard is infinitely more viable to use that Typhlosion. Which sucks because he's like my 2nd favorite Fire Starter T^T
@@Whodjathink typhlosion and charizard don't even have swapped defenses, their entire statlines are identical, leaving Typhlosion to be charizard but without the favoritism (or hell, just forgotten outright, being the one volcano-themed pokemon to lack Earth Power)
@@gypsysprite4824 ah yes, idk why but when I looked up their stats years ago I swore they were swapped. But if anything that shows us how bad Typhlosion has it. Typhlosion should also learn discharge because volcanoes, believe it or not, do produce static electricity in its smog when it erupts
@@Whodjathink honestly, this dissapointment with typhlosion is why typhlosion was pretty much the fist theorycraft i ever had for buffing things: Theory Craft text wall below you have been warned Fire/Ground typing 70 hp 100 Atk 70 def 100 Spatk 80 Spdef 115 Spd Hidden ability changes to adaptability and then add on Earth Power, Stone Edge/Rock slide, and rapid spin if typhlosion never got that why would I weaken it's base Spatk? mean to begin with i'm making it have good numbers in both offenses and spd, so i decided to make it faster but weaker than Infernape statwise, though while Typhlosion gets more damage in the end from adaptbility nonsense, infernape's better coverage, better typing, and priority or you can make it's Hidden Ability Sand Rush and make it 105atk/105spatk/105spd offenses, but i only thought of this after playing the Rom Hack inclement emerald, which gives typhlosion sand rush, but mnyeh
14:43 the complex ban was due to magic guard hazard stack teams w/ alakazam and reuniclus. Smogon was like damn if only we had a GOOD rapid spinner cuz starmie became doo doo. But they realized the banned a solid rapid spinner, so they just decided to clip excas wings
The worst part about new and old favorites alike get power crept to hell and back is seeing Pokémon that never worked continue to get neglected. Unown can’t use it’s physical attack stat. Phione is still an objectively worse version of Manaphy. Delibird can’t compare to even first stage forms of viable Pokémon. It’s disheartening.
I think I get most annoyed by giving already good mons incredibly good moves (most importantly Close Combat); I like giving coverage, but why the crazy ones, why is Superpower not okay? Why is it not okay to have moves like Signal Beam or other around base 70 moves as coverage? Why 120 ones with incredible power creep?
@@foofootoo I'm a little more ok with the more inaccurate moves being more frequent, but still. Moves like that should be given out as coverage on rare occasion and mostly to “bad“ Pokemon to set themselves apart and give a reason to use them.
@@fulltimeslackerii8229 I just think with Dynamic Speed this gen, it would be extremely hard to counter. It'd require this pokemon on every team to check it and here's why: TR is set with the ability. Cool, but you dont want TR up. So you have to get rid of it with your own trick room or *this ability on this pokemon.* And *switch out + protect on TR Sweeper > switch TR Ability Setter back in* is huge for this, because as soon as TR is undone, you can just switch back in, forcing heavy prediction while a TR Sweeper goes ham. Dynamic Speed changes everything about this, and I just don't think there's a good way to balance it. The immediacy of it would overcentralize this mon, and if not, at least trick room teams or trick room counter teams. I'm not super duper against it (as someone who heavily dislikes Regieleki lol) but it'd be unfun to say the least. Stay safe. :)
Power creep in Pokémon is stupid in my opinion ,because every game is isolated and so the main point to power creep which is to make you buy the new stuf doesn’t apply because you can’t battle in gen 6 with gen 7, if the new Pokémons dominate then it is a balancing issue not a power creep issue. If a dlc or remake introduces an op mon then that is a power creep issue otherwise I wouldn’t call it that way.
I like smogon tiers. It enables pokemon that would otherwise be useless to have a relatively balanced place to play. It's the same thing broughy1332 does with GTA 5 cars, adding tiers within the wildly unbalanced classes to group cars together against other cars that are competitive with them.
There are a few more points that could have been touched on in regards to whether or not the games have experienced powercreep. 1. The reasoning behind bans is a bit more nuanced a lot of the time. Greninja did not get banned until it got Gunk Shot in ORAS to help it defeat Azumaril. Excadrill was not the sole offender of the weather wars, Kingdra was typically seen as even more of a threat at the time. 2. What dropped from OU. Seeing when Pokemon fall out of favor can give a clearer picture of when the general power level is higher. Many OU staples have fallen to UU and below, though some were the result of Steel getting nerfed in Gen 6 or Abilities like Pixilate getting adjusted in Gen 7. 3. Which new Pokemon were unbanned in the subsequent generations? The genies were unbanned in Generation 6, Greninja and Aegislash were unbanned in Generation 7. To me Generation 7 was by far the biggest step up in power for singles in recent times. Magearna and the Tapus especially were so absurd that Greninja, now with Protean OR the Ash forme, was able to fit in without much issue.
I always laugh when comparing Pokémon from Gen 5 to 6-8. Like the Kyurem forms have their signature moves need a charge turn, while now we get Precipice Blades, Origin Pulse, Astral Barrage, and Glacial Lance just have 0 drawbacks
Precipice Blades and Origin Pulse can both miss, but to compensate they can hit both opponents, but then again, so can Glacial Lance and Astral Barrage which *literally have NO DRAWBACKS*
While I think you make some good points, I think it's also important to look at the new tools made available to old pokémon as the generations advance. Sometimes certain pokémon get a massive power step because of a new ability or move or some new type of synergy that becomes available to them. Sometimes abilities get nerfed into the ground like Gale Wings, or items that synergise well with certain pokémon get buffed like the Pinch Berries with Gluttony pokémon. Sometimes entire game mechanics are added to nerf certain strategies, such as dark types becoming immune to prankster. These factors can all contribute to an older gen pokémon becoming better in a following generation, too, cranking up the power even further than just the new introductions. It's not just a case of new powerful things being added, it's a case of a lot of old things getting buffs as well, which can make the power balance established by previous metagames fall completely out of control and contribute to the power creep of the generation as a whole.
Honestly Zacian being banned would be perfectly fine Zacian is truly broken, with it being faster than most things, starts with +1 attack which when it doesn’t have a ton that can really take it out in one hit it can easily get +3 and spam behemoth blade especially since no ones running Zacian without rusted sword meaning it doesn’t have a weakness to poison, or steel the main things that deal with fairy types ground may work if sashed but even then good chance it’s gonna manage to tank one hit, and your mon is gone and you cant sd or dd because your going to die before you can even attack next turn
@@justartagain1056 mega evos are missing previous ou staples are missing lots of mins that dominated lowers tiers and kept them in check are also gone along with z moves being gone. Quite a few mons are still missing dude.
@@judehaylesa The point is that the percentage of good pokemon is too small regardless of how many are still missing. Even if old OU staples are gone, something else could take their place. The problem is that most pokemon available can't compete with the top dogs so only a few mons are actually commonly used in higher tiers.
Really good video. I would say there is nuance though, for example how Regieleki's speed stat is kind of suffocating in terms of speed control. I don't think it's a disaster, can just be a bit of a pain when a particular part of the strategy etc is kinda put on train tracks.
I think it would’ve been beneficial to also look at the new tools older Pokémon got. For example, Tangrowth became popular in singles due to it getting Regenerator and Assault Vest. That’s still a form of power creep, as most other grass tanks didn’t get a powerful hidden ability. Or Peliooer getting Drizzle, all the old Pokémon that got the fairy type, etc. The Pokémon that really hurt are the ones that don’t get powerful new tools and are very old, such as Taurus or Golem.
Honestly I think that's a kind of "wrong" way to classify powercreep, because what you're saying is correct but, in my opinion, it's necessary to look at the bigger picture instead of just a "generation by generation usage" thing. It's obvious by now that most of the most used pokémon in vgc are of the newer generations, which is a clear sign that overall old pokémon are getting nothing to be somehow relevant again (like megas upgraded older pokémon) while the newer ones keep dominating the meta since they get flashy cool signature moves and abilities while some pokémon can't even get a decent ability to begin with. I think the powercreep HAS gone too far, but instead of getting trash pokémon in the future generations I'd prefer older pokémon to get buffs. New moves, new abilities. Just look at Torkoal and Pelipper: a single new ability made them freaking meta while before Drizzle and Drought they were simple, pure trash that no one would ever use even as a meme. Game Freak needs to do more stuff like that, it's the only way old pokémon can compete with the inevitably better and better pokémon that keep coming out.
Power creep is definitely an issue, but one thing that you need to consider is that Game Freak is terrible at balancing the Pokemon games. They make some Pokemon really good while making others garbage for no reason whatsoever. I believe that every fully evolved Pokemon should be usable to some degree. Why make Pokemon like Luvdisc, Unown and Delibird so unusable even in story mode, but give Zacian Crowned a great typing, the same BST as Arceus, and 170 attack and 148 speed with an ability that boosts its attack even further? And why is it faster than its HOMB form? And its not just the Pokemon. Some moves are crazy good while others are terrible. Scald is an universally amazing move on any special attacking Water type, while Synchronoise is almost useless on anything. It was only 70 base power in Gen 5 for crying out loud, but even 120 isn't enough for a move with such a crippling drawback! The abilities and types aren't balanced either. I could go on. I know that it is very difficult to perfectly balance a game with so many variables, but in my opinion Game Freak needs to cut back on the new stuff for Gen 9 while reworking all of the current moves, types, abilities and base stats of all of the Pokemon. Removing features such as attacks, Z-Moves and Megas did nothing but annoy fans like me who liked them, while adding really powerful stuff like Dynamax/Gigantamax and more broken Pokemon only added to power creep.
Monster collectors like Dragon Quest Monsters, Yo-Kai Watch and Digimon have a way better sense of keeping monsters on similar power levels by making monsters have ranks of some kind. Pokemon doesn't really have that.
@@DrCoeloCephalo That's a very good point. Evolution levels were probably designed to be "ranks", but the problem is that, unlike in Digimon not every Pokemon has the same number of evolution levels, and the power level within those ranks varies wildly so it is impossible to judge exactly how strong a Pokemon is based on that alone.
@@pricelesschess In Yo-Kai Watch games, most Yo-Kai that evolve or fuse only evolve/fuse once. Only a small number of monsters have a 3rd or 4th stage. Despite that, most monsters that do make a significant jump in Rank and therefore power. Since that game also uses Ranks, the game makes it alot more clear that it's worth the investment and even moreso wtih how hard, fast and demanding Yo-Kai Watch games are. You don't need a ton of evolution stages to have a better sense of power gap.
Great video. Hoping for a second part when you can consider other aspects from Smogon like the National Dex format or the unbanning process through generations
pretty sure Garchomp was banned in dpp entireley because of Sand Veil, the ability proved to be too annoying and so anything that had it was banned from using it, Chomp included, but since it didn't have secondary, it had to be banned. Chomp was great dont get me wrong, but the final stamp was because of the sweeping of sand veil pokemon, not its viability.
13:00 I feel like this information is a bit misleading. Yes, shadow tag and arena trap are very powerful abilities but they weren't necessarily game breaking, seeing how it took several generations to ban arena trap in gen 7 or 8. Mainly why wobbufet was banned was due to the possibility for an infinite soft lock, where two wobbs can be out, none can switch out, and their struggle would not be able to deal enough damage to offset leftover recovery.
From what I’ve heard, Wobbuffet was banned not because of Shadow Tag in its own right, but because two Wobbuffet coming into contact with each other could force a dual-sided PP stall (as GameFreak had not yet allowed Pokémon with Shadow Tag to switch out against it, and most Wobbuffet sets ran reactive moves)
In gen 3 fet wasn’t allowed to use leftovers since 2 fets with leftovers would make the battle last until someone quit since leftovers healed more than struggle did in recoil and regular damage
"broken" is a title for things like Aegislash. With the right EV setups, you can survive attacks even when they are super effective. Not as well as before, you will have to have some HP EVs. Cinderace is one of its slight problems, same with Urshifu, It's kinda hard to beat a cinder without weakness policy + autotomize, but it has weak defenses. Urshifu can get punished with a king shield for atk drop than close combat it, It isnt broken in Ubers. but it IS in UU, It can also hold up in OUs, due to most of the dark types being 4x weak to fighting. Kings shield, Close combat, switch out, wish for support, go back to Slash, Rinse and Repeat.
I think, about Smogon, you should've talked about old Uber dropping tiers (Like Aegislash or Blaziken) or old non-Uber getting banned (like Mega-Metagross). I think Hoopa-Unbound, Aegislash anf Blaziken going from Uber to UU really shows the power creep. They were banned because they were too strong, and now they aren't even in OU.
This current season in doubles has 3 Pokémon that dominate the usage stats... Incineroar, regieleki, rillaboom. I play 2/3 of these in my team... incineroar and rillaboom. I feel as if my team would be worse with any alternatives to these and that not playing them would be to my detriment... Kind of like not playing Landorous during season 6. Maybe they should just autoban the top 10-20 most used every month to mix up the format and keep it moving
I could actually see an official pokemon tournament or maybe season rule set where it's basically banned the top 100 most popular to use pokemon in competitive battles. Using their analytics that I assume they have. Also, the potential for manipulation if they announced they'd be doing that ahead of time - everyone using unpopular pokemon to save or knock other pokemon out of the top 100 they'd otherwise be in.
VGC has these issues but smogon does it's best to separate the supreme outliers so powercreep is bad in VGC but managable in Smogon. That said stuff like Urshifu and dracovish did take things more then a bit to far imo. If anything nintendo should have the people who run VGC to straight up ban the most broken of broken mons at a minimum...
I hope you enjoy the video! What's your opinion on power creep?
Calyrex shadow is too damn fast
@@muggcat eh I get why that's fast but zacian makes zero sense a wolf hauling literally 540.1 kg giant metal armor is 148 base speed
It's toooo damn much
Welp power creep is just so strong
They should really just buff up most of the past mons to modern standards, in my opinion
Why not do gen 8 competitive? We have:
- Fastest electric ball ever
- Greninja but fire and bunny
- A dog with a sword
- An onion deer thing riding a pony
- An ice monke with 2 choice items at once
- Grass monke with drums
- Mega skarmory
- Deformed dinosaur
And a Mega Pangoro with critical hits.
@@rexhunterblazer5406 and ignores Protect/Detect
And a SPÆEDY dragon
*yes*
Deformed dinosaur?
I personally don’t mind power creep because of smogon. I like that lower tiers are more interesting due to the strong pokemons who couldn’t cut it anymore in OU or UU
That's a good point - it seems like each generation they could introduce a new lower tier because so many things drop. And more tiers means more fun!
I think at some point Smogon will run out of names for tiers, they are already at ZU - Zero Use
@@foofootoo yup, I think 1 new tier would be good
Isn't kinda bad game design that you have to rely on what is ultimately a fanmade format to get any balance or variety rather than the game ITSELF having balance and variety?
@@DrCoeloCephalo Tell me about it lmao... I wish there was already a similar format in the game so we could have fun battles with NO dynamax and no OP pokemon depending on the tier.
Regigigas still has Slow Start for "balance". While they kept bullcrap Pheramosa,Zacian-C,Urshifu-S and Mega Rayquazza. And they removed Hidden Power because it was too much.
Just make a Sp.Atk version of Intimidate, and give it to Regigigas,Chesnaught,Copparajah and ect.
It's been awesome to see how powerful Regigigas is without its ability in doubles now Neutralizing Gas Weezing is available
@@foofootoo But unfortunately Slow Start resets. Galarian Wheezing should've have great HP and Defensive Stats.
Better yet make pressure that “Sp.Atk version of intimidate”, now everything is broken. And, when everything is broken, nothing is.
@@tortle1055 Regular Poison is the Sp.Attack version of Burn(Toxic Spikes Poison won't have this effect.
Ricochet being Sp.Atk version of Iron Barbs
@@Nosretep I think that should be freeze instead. Ya know, BRAINfreeze, it would heavily buff ice types, which I think is the type that deserves the most buffs tbh.
I feel like Dracovish being a menace wasn’t actually intended. Just “Oh yea, give it a cool new move like the other one and Strong Jaw, that makes sense.”
Dracovish is bad the move is broken
They either didnt understand what base power stab fishous rend reaches with its effect or forgot that choice scarf exists
@@Lilybun MegaRayquaza exists. Does anyone honestly think they care about balancing things?
@@aikou2886 well they nerfed dark voud because of smeargle so... Yeah i guess?
Even more you cant really balance over 200 pokimanes
@@aikou2886 Talonflame's Gale Wings?
Mega Rayquaza: What a nice day to have my own tier, I hear that a new Pokémon is going to join me.
Zacian: *bark*
Mega Rayquaza: PLEASE LET ME BACK INTO UBERS! DON’T LEAVE ME HERE WITH THIS MANIAC!
And then when all hope seemed lost, quagsire wandered in from out of no where
@@royalhydra9790 Mega Rayquaza just hides behind Quagsire who’s just confused
@@YarnLalms711 did zacian can defeat quagsy with ease though?
Or our little wall can endure the damage?
@@DronesOverTheMoon Quagsire is the only Zacian C check
@Jesus Pernia every single one has or had either a legitimate place or niche in OU or even Ubers in quagsire's case
In order to combat power creep, I’d love for gamefreak to give small base stat, ability, and moveset buffs to older Pokémon in the same way they did to Pelipper by giving it drizzle or Mantine by adding 20 HP to it’s BST. It could go a long way to making some of the older mons much more viable.
Or nerf the newer pokemon once they see they went too far
@@EBgCampos That's part of powercreep too tho. Look at the nerfs some incredibly powerful Pokémon got the generation after their introduction. Talonflame's Gale Wings getting nerfed after Gen 6, Drought/Drizzle/Sand Stream/Snow Warning not being permanent after gen 5. Aerilate and Pixilate got damage nerfs. Powerful things from the previous generation usually get nerfed, but the new stuff is allowed to be broken for a generation.
@@justalurker3489 Talonflame needs its Gale Wings back😔
@@justalurker3489 for talonflame, gale wings was broken, but now it's kinda useless.
They're just too harsh on some pokémon sometimes...(at least for Talonflame, I'm fine with most of the other nerfs)
Don't forget venomoth tho, that shit went all up from NU to RU in Gen 5 thanks to quiver dance and was even banned from Gen 6 UU at some point due to Batton pass as well
Foo: "Power creep hasn't gone too far."
ZU and Untiered, getting bigger every gen: "Are you sure about that?"
The ratio of trash, low tier monsters in Pokemon getting so large is just sad.
@@DrCoeloCephalo I actually see the most overly-oppressively-powerful legendaries as the ‘trash’.
Legendaries are always geared towards raw power to such a degree that they rarely ever get significantly useful moves that aren’t straight-up Attacks or stat-boosts intended to bolster those attacks, and that really doesn’t feel like it lends itself to actual strategic thinking.
Non-legendaries also aren’t bogged down design-wise by the ‘this is a god, it needs to look a certain sort of powerful and be tied to a vague broad philosophical or natural concept’ problem.
@@arlen7726 well low tier legendaries like the swords of justice use a bit more strategy than just blasting OP attacks everywhere
@@bigmonke3348 yeah, but they’re pretty much one of the exceptions to the rule.
And then there are the true trash of the horrible legendaries/mythical, like Reshiram, Articuno, Calyrex by itself, apparently Giratina in Series 10, Latias is later generation, all Kyurem formes until Generation 8 and even then, Mesprit (and by some peopl all three Lake Trio Pokémon), Darkrai since Generation 6…
Power creep only TRULY becomes an issue because each gen more and more Pokémon get yeeted into the abyss as they don't get buffed and Pokémon from previous gens that were on higher tiers often fall to lower tiers to the point of kicking out the already bad ones. So it kinda sucks for the Pokémon that never get 'adapted' to these power creeps. So it is less about power creep going too far and more about GF ignoring some(a lot, even) Pokémon for far too long.
I think another point of interest is how much more favourably they distribute stats to the mons they want to be good now. Like a fast mixed sweeper in infernape is nothing compared to cinderace now.
#bringbackfearow
#givefearowa3rdevolution
When it comes to this kind of discussion, I don't see enough brought up about how Electric, Ice, and Rock are treated. It's like Game Freak thinks the metagame will die slow and painfully if any of those types ever become viable. Luxray's entire existence is suffering, Eelektross is a waste of a really cool concept (A Pokemon with no weaknesses) due to piss poor Speed and HP stats, Ramparados is so slow that he had to run special attacks just to sit somewhere (and even that only worked for two generations at most, he was untiered in Gen 7), Walrein was quickly euthanized after he become OU, Aggron was dead on arrival thanks to the x4 weakness to Fighting, Avalugg never stood a chance with 28 speed, Manetric got a little taste of hope thanks to Hidden Power and Megas only to have both of those taken away, Ampharos fought so hard just to fall out of tiering altogether, and Archeops was denied his chance to be the new Aerodactyl with that godawful Defeatist ability. And just to give all of them an extra bird, Stealth Rock was practically designed to make Ice, already a typing weaker than *Bug* in the defensive department, utterly nonexistent in the tiers.
@@graphitetailgrace3870 I think those types were specifically nerfed because of their advantages against other types? Like, electric against the most common type (water), ice against the most 'powerful' type (dragon, though fairy does this in a much stronger way, and dragon really isn't that strong ), and rock against... Uh.... Actually yeah they just hate rock.
@@graphitetailgrace3870 Ikr, give electric type a better physical move. Its not like the metagame is gonna collapsed if luxray have access to 85bp electric move with no recoil.
Everybody knows how broken Zacian, the Calyrex riders, the Necrozma forms, and the primal Pokémon are. If you play online battles with strangers, all of them will regularly appear on the screen and in contrast to Grimmsnarl, CInderace, Regieleki, Dragopult and others, these ones are strong and hard to defeat - which is why I think that GameFreak should introduce the selectable rules "No legendaries" and "No mythicals" because the "special" G-Max Pokémon really aren't that broken.
I'd definitely support more format options - I like seeing the different Pokemon that can shine under the different conditions. It's really interesting to see Mienshao, which has not been a very common Pokemon through Sword and Shield, see a lot of usage in VGC series 10 as a great answer to Incineroar and some of the scary legendaries
"the necrozma forms" lmao only 1 is viable in ubers and base form is quite low in the tiers
And this is why i watch Pimpnite....he trolls anyone who does that
I’m surprised a no legends format still isn’t a thing. Sure not every legendary Pokémon is overpowered but enough are and have the metagame focused on them like Lando-T, Latios, and the Tapus considering multiple generations. In a meta without them it could give a chance for other Pokémon to be useful but the only problem could be that pseudo legendaries would just replace the legends.
I'd like to just point out that being a legendary means nothing when it comes to competitive viability, articuno(regular and galarian),regigigas and regice aren't the same as zacian or primal groudon, so you must ban pokemon by it's power, not because it's legendary.
power creep is clearly seen in the increase of base stats every new gen, it may not have gone "too far" yet but the trend is showing that we're heading there
also old pokemons that were OU in old gens aren't anymore, that's an indication of power creep
but no I don't think power creep has gone too far yet, OU bans definitely help that
I do see what you mean - a lot of the new Pokemon are seen at the top of OU. But you're right - smogon bans help to maintain a balanced tier. We just might expect to see even more bans with each new generation
Well, it's also incredibly difficult to tell what has actually been power crept. You can't compare anything to Gen 1 due to its critical hit system and single Special state. Gen 2 has the broken Rest, leading to many OU Pokémon to become Rest + Sleep Talk Pokémon. And one layer of Spikes. Gen 3 gives 3 layers of Spikes, Abilities for the first time, and thus Tyranitar's Sand Stream. Gen 4 introduces moves being what determines physical or special, not typing, thus making mix attackers entirely different. Stealth Rock also heavily changed the metagame. Then Gen 5 broke everything with its weather mechanics. And while Gen 6 nerfed weather, it also introduced Mega Evolution and Defog. And Gen 7 introduced the Z moves, Ultra Beasts, even more Defog and had stat changes for some Pokémon.
From that lens, there never was a "standard metagame" to compare to. It definitely isn't Gen 3 due to Gen 4's moves determining their hits, not types. Maybe Gen 4 can be a baseline, but one point of Garchomp's ban was the fact that Sand Veil was its only ability, and on a Pokémon that strong with a near constant sandstorm due to Sand Stream, so a single missed move would ruin an attempt to counter it. Hence why trainers would use Cacturne, getting Sand Veil banned. Salamance was banned due to its power backed versatility, similar to Mew, and so you would have to sacrifice multiple Pokémon to learn its set and thus find a way to counter it. Meanwhile, Latias was unbanned from Ubers because its ability to counter Salamance's counters and checks, which got it banned, was non-existence due to Salamance being gone. Then Gen 5-7 just break everything with weather teams, then Mega Evolutions and then Z moves. While there certainly is power creep, not just from Pokémon but also items like Life Orb and Choice Specs, this isn't Yu-Gi-Oh. The metagame of the previous generation has honestly never had a say on the next generation, because the next generation had both new strong and weak Pokémon, entirely new mechanics, and even stat changes to older Pokémon.
Haxorus' 540 BST is nothing new
We've jad at least 1 pokémon with that BST each gen until Gen 5 (arguably gen 6 with Florgws)
Gen 1 - Arcanine (555). Gyarados
Gen 2 - Kingdra and Blissey
Gen 3 - Milotic
Gen 4 - Electivire, Magmortar and Togekiss (that last one of which of which is 545)
Gen 5 - Haxorus, Volcarona (550)
Gen 6 - Florges (552)
After then, anything and everything that's not a legend, mythical, UB, mega, or pseudo now have *no more than 535 BST at most*
@@goGothitaLOL A good point. But it does seem like the power creep lies in the majority of older "regular" Pokemon either being outclassed or just unable to hold their own with the newly introduced Pokemon and the accompanying mechanics. Exeggutor, for example, was a giant of Generation I, and still prominent in Generation II. But from Generation III and on, it has never seen the light of OU due to events like Celebi being unbanned, Natures and smaller EV limits, and the environment of the metagame just being unkind to it. I don't think new Pokemon or mechanics are necessarily broken or even stronger than previous generations, but what makes it true power creep is that the roles of Pokemon and demand thereof are determined by the sum of it all. Exeggutor isn't any weaker, and isn't bad at all, but its role and talents aren't suited for this metagame since so many things have changed.
@@goGothitaLOL it's not about BST, it's the distribution of that BST
for example pex is only 495 BST
Regarding power creep, I feel like the number of untiered pokemons per generation, along with tier shifts between generations, would be better metrics than usage percentages in OU and VGC. Good video nonetheless!
Good suggestions - there's definitely not just one way to try to measure this. In terms of the tier shifts, considering the usage/banning of new Pokemon kind of does a similar job, as with over-representation of new Pokemon you would expect a trend towards downward tier shifts for existing Pokemon, but it would certainly be an interesting metric to double check.
It's so sad how so many cool and unique pokemon now just fall into an untiered limbo like category ;-;
FSG really showing us the sad reality of most pokemon regarding power creep
@@determineddaaf3 Like Gallade who used to be great at killing bulky water types in its debut generation only for it to go south to where even mega evolution wouldn't save it from being outclassed. Though it propably wouldve been mitigated if its ability was something else instead of inner focus.
Exactly what I was thinking of, especially given how many pokemon that were important in OU just fell into the next tier in gens 4 and 5 but that wasn't captured because lack of bans.
Also, Keldio and Latios should've been banned to ubers in gen 5.
I disagree on one thing. I think the huge step in terms of powercreep is Gen 5. I think that Gen 6 is when people took action for banning stuff. This was a very informative video. Thanks for putting it together, even though my boyfriend scolded me for listening to this while we were making breakfast.
Gen 5 had a huge impact on the game! I think a big change here was that everything got a buff with hidden abilities, so its true that everything probably got more powerful at the same time
As known, Gen 5 killed the game
Mechanically I think in gen 5 a big issue was weather, so a lot of weather pokemon rode the wave of that and became really powerful. Whereas in gen 6 I feel like the best megas were often powerful regardless of such mechanics (unless you consider mega a mechanic, in which case fair)
Agree, like for God's sake, TENTACRUEL was legitimate in UBERS and CHASEY AND BLISSEY were NOT GOOD in OU
Gen 5 is when OU got the massive powercreep Juice, but at the same time had several ascend from low tier hell mostly off of interaction with weather
meanwhile, whilst Gen 7 didn't have much direct powercreep in the higher tiers, from what i've heard (and seen from looking in the tier rosters), the lower tiers got hella powercrept thanks to having almost all off the non-legendary selection of gen 7 sucking ass
Regardless of tiers, I'm downright tired of the sheer amount of OHKO power that's all over the past few generations. I prefer the older days where the top tier Pokemon were only *kinda* strong but also extremely versatile in use, giving them great strength without handing them free kill buttons. That meant that a Pokemon who was statistically super weak but had an extremely useful niche and a good player could do a LOT more than I feel like it can now. It's just about having big, beefy stats rather than being particularly creative now and that sucks.
Yeah I understand that feeling
I'm reading a nice ADV OU description here.
it's this reason exactly that I think DPPt OU was the peak of singles metagame tbh. Everything was reasonably strong, but unless you misplayed or sacked intentionally, nothing was really getting oneshot, certainly not by a neutral unboosted hit (except explosion, but that has a massive drawback) so DPPt OU felt the most balanced imo.
Kartana
Zacian
Mega Ray
Pheromosa
Nagadel
Calyrex Shadow Rider
Primal Groudon
Greninja
Rillaboom
Cinderace
Urshifu
G.Darmanitan
Ultra Necrozma
This seems to be the end result of all power creeps. I never understood power creep anyway, especially with something like pokemon where people are going to be buying the new games anyway. There's no need to incentivize the new games unlike card games. But yeah, every game that power creeps inevitably leads to some form of OHKO. I don't understand why devs feel the need to scale up instead of scaling out. More options > more stats.
I'd like to make a correction about the reason Wobbufett was banned. It's not just the ability, it's the fact that it only knows counter attacks, meaning that if two Wobbufett face each other, neither can damage the other untill they use Struggle, but if they're holding leftovers, they regain more health than the damage they take and the game is an automatic draw.
Similar reason to why Funbro was banned. Although in that case, they banned Leppa Berry + any way to recycle it (which at the time was Recycle and Harvest).
This only applies to gen 3, since gen 4 struggle will always do exactly 25% of your hp, additionally a pokemon with shadow tag can no longer trap another pokemon with shadow tag.
@@jebusauriorets The Wobbuffet and Wynaut situation was basically the reason why they changed the mechanices of Struggle and Shadow Tag.
Dracovish is probably the most notable case of broken pokemon. In the words word of wolfey a champion of pikemons national competitive scene " put Mr.Fish on your team and you win."
Wait there is power creep?
Better nerf greninja
In all seriousness I will admit power creep bad but it's easy to fix via buffing or giving other pokemon new tools
-or nerfing stealth rock-
Yeah I think power creep is a continuous cycle of new Pokemon and buffs which give different Pokemon the limelight in each generation
Give a mon the ability to set trick room on entry and the entire meta will be flipped on its head
@@fulltimeslackerii8229 Oh certainly 😂😂 I’ve always thought about how cool that would be, and then immediately went “nope. Let’s not.”
I mean, unless it’s a super swuishy or mid-speed pokemon
@@gromplin well you can give it mightyhena esque stats
@@milesandrews6711 Not even Mighteyena deserves the atrocity that is Mightyena’s stats 😭😭
I guess my one problem with how they handled generation 7 is that they introduced a lot of innovative ideas on their new non-legendary pokemon, but then made the majority of them nigh-unusable via stats.
Incineroar is a staple of competitive Pokémon, and Primarina has seen some interesting usage in generation 8, but other than that, pretty much any Pokémon from generation 7 that isn’t a Legendary or an Ultra-Beast is practically nonexistent in the past 3 seasons of SwSh VGC.
That may sound like I’m just griping, but it’s a bigger deal when the number of newly-introduced non-legendary pokemon is as small as it was in Gen 7.
You can also expand that to Singles as well, outside of the Tapu and a handful of Ultra Beasts, only Toxapex is good in OU (okay, Kommo-O has been buffed and now sees uses in OU as well though it was TERRIBLE during SM and hard to justify in USUM, Primarina has had it's moment and Incineroar had like the Home metagame before the dlc dropped where it had a fringe niche in OU but nothing crazy). Gen 7 introduced very few actually impactful new Pokemon unfortunately
That is pretty true. Gen 8 has done this much better in terms of having a lot of viable non-legendary pokemon. There are some cool niche gen 7 mons though like Dhelmise, Turtonator and Tsareena which have seen usage
@@foofootoo Tsareena is quite a good example of something going *right* for one of gen-7’s mons. Bruxish isn’t even in SwSh, but it has a functionally identical signature ability and I would’ve loved to try it out in SwSh.
Turtonator and Dhelmise are both cool, but with Turtonator especially it’s hard to get real mileage out of using it a lot of the time.
Vikavolt feels like almost one of the worst offenders though. it’s dex entries talk about how fast it is, and then it has speed built for Trick-room, and to top it off it shares the all-too common problem with many gen-7 mons of not having good enough bulk, or just not enough HP to make use of the bulk they have.
@@sephikong8323 uhhhh what about ttar, ferrethorn, landorus, heatran, slowbro, etc. so many staples from previous gens have maintained Ou viability and dominance through all the “power creep”
@@fulltimeslackerii8229 ?
I genuinely don't understand how that relate to what I said. What the existence of Ttar has to do with the fact gen 7 introduced almost no new OU staples outside of the Tapu, Pex and like 2-3 UB (and Kommo-o now in gen 8 but not really during gen 7)
Zacian and Zamazenta confuse me the most. Not only they have abnormally high base stat total (670, and 720 for crowned) and practically minimized special attack. Zacian has incredibly high attack stat for its ability whereas Zamazenta does not learn Body Press. Whoever made the base stats for these two should be fired.
Also noticed how when making counterparts, they make their movesets nearly identical except different STABs or other coverage.
Zacian and Zamazenta have the same forms of coverage (except the signature moves), yet there are minor differences like Zamazenta knowing screens and Zacian knowing Air Slash. They didn’t differentiate them enough.
This can extend to the Swords of Justice (Keldeo for example that doesn’t know Ice Beam but knows Air Slash, SE and Megahorn like the other members).
@@IgnitedQuils Yep I noticed that too. While counterparts are cool, more controlled movesets would have been nicer.
I don’t think they were made with competition in mind, being box legendaries and all
@@diamondminer5459 I believe box legendaries have almost always been equally good atleast in the games in which they are boxart legendaries so it is a big thing (atleast for consumers, maybe not for Game Freak) that Zamazenta is literally useless compared to Zacian, its sad.
@@UltraAryan10 "Box legendaries have been good in their debut game"
Dude, Reshiram is the Ubers equivalent of UT
14:26 it was decided that rush drill couldn't be used on sand, then rain decided to use it, then rush was banned in general.
Yeah exactly [:
Improve. Adapt. Overcome. Banned.
It surprises me that you did not cover the introduction of items, abilities, stronger moves and hidden abilities.
Pokemon as a game became more and more offensive with each generation.
That's a great point, I was focusing on the Pokemon as that is how most people frame comments about power creep. But it's totally true that all the things you listed definitely increased the power level of the game. Though any Pokemon can potentially benefit from new items or moves, so that's why they weren't included
@@foofootoo a pokemon gaining a new insainly powerful hidden move. IE cinccino with skill link. Or ditto with imposter. Can be a huge in rease tpvits power.
@@foofootoo But...that's power creep. I know you tried to define it as just when new pokemon arrive that specifically shake up the meta, but powercreep has always been defined as game design decisions that make older content less viable. Your example of Scolipede vs. Beedrill is a textbook example.
But it's not limited to that. Generational changes have seen various pokemon's utility fluctuate, in the base game as well as competitive. Remember, charmander never used to learn metal claw, making him the hard-mode choice in Gen 1. You may never be able to use the Gen 1 moveset anymore, but it's undeniable that that one change made charmander stronger, and that was just one of many over the years.
@@zerobudgetgamer Yeah I mean, Dragonite was there both in Gen 4 and in Gen 5, so it's one of those pokemons that don't come up in the video, but the former had Inner Focus while the latter had Multiscale. And Hurricane.
Megas were the real deal: they were way too much powerfull, but they were the core of the building. What I would really watch for a more complete analysis is the the statistics of the mons or the gameplay introductions in the generation. Rillaboom and Urshifu are literally game changer, one can fake out, moves by priority with a really powerfull attack and can change terrain, while the other one breaks the entire mechanic of protect just with its kit... Dynamax is another story, you have to relearn how to manage resources and play the game itself. I know an offensive gameplay is way funnier to play but holy heck who thought about putting dynamax in the game was a good idea lol
I agree with more statistical analysis.
For vgc i would love to see the amount of times a specific pokemon is actually picked to be in the 4/6 mons that go into battle as well as how many times they get maxed in official events. Probably these are stats that arent easily available but i think they would say a lot more about the metagame especially since the most successful pokemon would see a lot more usage through surviving deeper into brackets.
When 70% of all competitive games have gmax landoT due to stab airstream that paints a very different picture of what the format actually plays like than raw usage statistics from a niche ladder where people go to experiment.
Megas weren't as broken in single because you got a much wider choice in which méga to pick, sometimes picking two and evolcing according to context.
Power creep is a real thing. Celebi went from Gen 7 UU with Megas and Z-Moves to Gen 8 NU with no megas and no Z-Moves. Power creep is very real
cuz of Zarude
This isn't the best way to view power creep, it's a great analysis but I think any analysis of power creep without talking about how many Pokemon were forced out of their previous tiers due to the introduction of new better Pokemon is incomplete. I understand what that specific analysis misses (if it's better but doesn't change the meta it isn't power creep, and with the introduction of new Pokemon as long as their balanced will crowd tiers), but I think the conjunction of your analysis with this would offer a more complete picture of power creep. Generation 5 is infamous for sending older Pokemon into complete obscurity. So Generation 5 could be said to be a huge generation for power creep.
That's a fair comment - I might consider doing a follow-up for completeness to look at the other side of the coin. Not hust the hyper powerful mons that need to be banned, but the mons that are made obsolete too
I think wobuffet's ban in ADV also had to do with the fact that 2 wobuffets holding leftovers would be trapped in a neverending battle. They had to change struggle and shadow tag mechanics in gen 4
I really, really hate to be that guy, but... the Cinderace in the beginning of the video should have been named Energizer instead of Duracell if you’re looking for battery brand names, because of the famous rabbit with the drum.
Duracell ads in the UK also use a pink rabbit.
@@graphitetailgrace3870 Wait, really? Huh. Neat 🐰
@@bdt2002gaming th-cam.com/video/43VhRKJX_sk/w-d-xo.html :)
Who owns the "durcell/energizer" bunny depends on where you live. In Europe and outside of the US in general it's Duracell, in the US it's Engerizer. It has some complex marketing history behind it.
Short answer: yes
Long answer: it's become so bad I've lost any design to interact with the franchise outside of news
Ditto. Then again I've got other games to occupy my time instead.
Same.
It's literally gotten so bad that _legendaries and mythicals_ are dropping into the lower tiers. See Latias, the Lake Trio, Keldeo, etc.
For me, power creep are those pokemon that force you to make 1 or more checks (because there's no counters).
For example, with Mewtwo in AG. I need to prepare for a Sweeper Mewtwo or an All-out attacker one, or it will 6-0 me. That always requires at least 2 mons.
I also play a lot Balance Hackmons in Showdown, and I need to have at least 1 pokemon able to check Blissey with the Impostor ability. Otherwise I'll forfeit all the time.
Those are power creep for me.
Or heatran in OU. You need a plan for it or you will lose.
Ehh Mewtwo isn't a major threat in AG. Literally every team has A Yveltal or NDM. Not to mention you can slap on Shadow rider anywhere.
@@aliveisuppose ban every mythical and legendary in OU. Please.
@@Nparalelo Not until they give Regigigas a non-trashfire Ability so Alaking will stop kicking it around and laughing at it.
Gen 8: I have the worst power creep ever.
Gen 9: Hold my beer.
I mean power creep is inevitable because Game Freak needs to add new, innovative and stronger Pokémon because in the end of the day they are a company trying to make as much money as possible, however I wouldn’t say as a whole it was negative because it lets the newer Pokémon shine in their new game and let’s players fall in love with these new Pokémon
Yeah this was my conclusion too - as long as there is a fun competitive format to play, then there's not really an issue.
@@foofootoo for real ❤️
Yep, and if it’s really broken, they’ll nerf it the following generation when the new Pokémon is no longer in the spotlight. For example, Gale wings talonflame in gen6.
@@rusty8311 or it’ll just be banned
The main problem with that is... a lot of newer mons are usually garbage in competitive. Take Frosmoth for example; it is basically a Galarian Volcarona, but for some reason its bst(and especially its Speed) is absolutely cut down compared to the fire moth. Or Cramorant, a mon with a super unique and interesting ability... that does jack all in the full scope of a battle.
That point would work, and is what I think the devs could be going for and failing, if so many newer mons didn't fall so far behind previously established powerhouses. Like, look at Scizor, a mon that was introduced way back in Gen 2. Despite being made over 20 years ago, it still hangs out around OU and UU, absolutely stumping the 60% of new mons that can't even make it out of ZU and a majority of the others that make it to higher tiers.
Dont mind power creep, I just believe every gen older pokemon should get access move to new moves (and in some cases new stat buffs) not having them taken away.
Just imagine aerodactyl with brave bird and head smash
Bro, just give Scizor Roost and Bug Bite back.
Brave Bird doesn't make sense tho, it's a Reptile not a bird. Can we get Dragon typing for Aerdoactyl ?
@@Breakaway-ic5gj But Crobat has Brave Bird even though it's a mammal.
@@lucassilvateixeira3730 That one doesn't make sense either
They had a great plan with Megas that made less viable pokemon viable. Then they started giving them to already powerful pokemon and it got ruined.
tbh power creep has gotten pretty absurd. Old ubers have fallen into OU or even UU. Look at Blaziken. In gen 5 it went nuclear and was a major threat in ubers, but now in gen 8 it's not even OU.
For sure the highest tiers are more busted than ever. Mega Rayquaza then Zacian Crowned are absolutely insane Pokemon.
@@foofootoo definitely, though tbh I wouldn't mind it if they kept the older pokemon up better. It's a bit disheartening when a lot of old cool pokemon get left in the dust from lack of buffs
Blaziken's still busted in National Dex though.
@@breadeater1194 definitely not, there's so much other powerful pokemon that it's not anywhere near the beast it once was. It's UUBL rn, the same rating it had in gen 3 before it got speed boost
@@breadeater1194 not really, it's super easy to chip and it hates all the priority moves running around
Incineroar is nearly 70% now in Doubles so I feel like you should have accounted for full shifts because anything this far over 50% is kind of controlling. Sometimes power creep is very slow and one or two things will shift up because of tools they have. A good few Pokemon control the game and kind of bog down team building because you need to counter them if you expect to win.
This video was made before series 10 stats were available. I would have definitely mentioned this otherwise. That Incineroar usage is insane
@@foofootoo It keeps going up. It was getting really nutty. This shift is crazy.
Incineroar's usage was at like 90% in VGC 2019 moon series. That's insane.
I kind of hope there is a way to balance megas and reintroduce them. It would be nice to have them back without them completely disrupting the meta. I know a lot of people, along with myself who find megas much more interesting then dynamax and z-moves.
A way to balance Megas would be to just not give them broken abilities that spit out 200 damage Seismic Tosses or STAB Flying type 144 bp Double-Edges.
I honestly believe that the bst boost is a non-offense, except for maybe when they super 'roid out Speed(and even then, Mega Beedrill and Mega Aero weren't even strong enough to breach OU - in part due to having pretty "average" abilities). Attack boosts don't matter if you don't have an ability to back it up nowadays, and defense boosts can't really get too much headway since HP always remains static. See Mega Tyranitar for an example of a super stat dump that didn't actually do that much for the mon - remaining in OU with its base form.
Also give already really strong mons Garchomp-esque megas, where they build into a separate niche rather than just get stronger overall. I don't want to see Mega Dragapult with 202 Speed, 140 Sp. Atk, and Adaptability.
A way to balance Megas is to not give Megas to Pokemon who don't need an extra 100 BST and a new ability to be good. Also don't rearrange their stat spreads to BE more competitive, maybe some slight adjustment but mostly just add onto what they are already working with. Give it to meme Pokemon like Dunsparce or Delibird, or pokemon that just plain suck instead of 'well it's popularz so it gets megaz!'. Some of them that already exist like Audino barely made an impact. It's dumb shit like mega legendaries and popular Pokemon who are already good getting free power boosts that made megas OP.
Megas are fine, but some were stupidly unnecesary outside of designs(legendaries and some pseudo legendaries) and some with really broken abilities (parental bond crap). The thing is, they:
1) Just allow some useless mons to have a Mega, and not the overrated ones
2) Make them have MANAGABLE abilities for what they can do, not just some broken ability that it's even more broken with the new stats (Mawile)
Having a slot for one type of Mon you have to include is boring. That mechanic wasn't the good and the one pokemon restriction makes it hard to design for (v easy to accidentally power creep a mega)
@@FakeHeroFang the thing is that the competitive side isn't the main target audience, so the tricky part is finding a balance in between weak pokemon and popular pokemon, for some mons it work, like Charizard, Gardevior, Beedrill, Manectric, Pidgeott.
I feel the the best way to measure power creep would be o compare Pokémon with similar roles (ei. starters with other starters, mythicals with otther mythicals) and in that regard Power Creep has most definitely gone way to far. Cinderace is the single most disgustingly competitively optimized Pokemon in history (broken ability, a movepool that breaks logic (Gunk Shot, Sucker Punch, really?), and the stat spread hand-crafted by the Smogon Gods . Meanwhile Typhlosion is stuck with Charizard's horrid stat spread, a situation ability, and a movepool so worthless that it had to have been intentionally truncated to make it objectively worse than Charizard (it isn't even allowed to have basic stuff like Earth Power or Ancient Power, two moves pretty much every other Volcano-based Pokémon gets ). Charizard avoided the disgrace of powercreep due to Game Freak's classic favoritism.
What's funny about Typhlosion is that when Gen II came out, you can't imagine the hype when people found out it could learn Thunderpunch. A fire-type with an electric move for water-types, all the kids at my school went nuts! But now everything seems to have strong moves of every type (I know it's not strictly true yet, but it does seem like that sometimes, with some of crazy the movesets I see in modern Pokemon). Starmie having the stats it did and being able to learn Surf, Psychic, Thunderbolt AND Ice Beam was once awe-inspiring. But today it's not remarkable in the slightest. Even when Electivire came out there was so much hype about its offensive movepool.
Such a great video, even tho I personally don't play competitive at all, it such a fascinating topic. Now I need videos covering power creeping in other competitive games. Nice work bro 😁
Thanks! That's what I was aiming for... It's a topic I'd be interested in even for games I do not play
Yeah I'm the guy who would run a Mamoswine to beat more than half of the chalk set up taking care of Heatran, thunderous, landorous T, and Amoongus. Then I'd run it with other things which counter the remaining top twenty pokemon in the meta. I got to around the 1700's in the smogon latter before hitting a skill barrier.
I love that, identifying the anti-meta mons is so satisfying
@@foofootoo Yeah, I ended up OHKOing half the opponents team very often with a lead life orb Mamoswine. I also brought a steadfast Lucario with defense investment to wipe the floor with mega Kangaskhan.
wish there was some tier in between smogon’s Ubers and OU. Pokemon like Landorus-I, Genesect, and Spectrier are great but completely outmuscled in Ubers, and fade into obscurity. Getting banned from OU is often earned, but essentially a death sentence for these great offensive mons
Agree. Also put Clef, Pex, Lando-T, Blissey, and Tapus (minus Bulu) there. While they're not broken, I'm bored seeing them in OU, which in dire need of more team diversity
I would think that GameFreak would do well to revise certain old gems to make them more viable.
As an Emerald aficionado, here are some ideas that I can think of:
Give regular Swampert Regenerator instead of that pretty much useless Damp. Axolotls, which Swampert is based off on, are literally known for being able to REGENERATE their limbs.
Give Mightyena Strong Jaw instead of Moxie - Mightyena aint strong enough on its own to get that KO to start Moxie, and even when it does it is still hard to get that second KO. Hyenas, which Mightyena is based off on, are known for their strong bites.
Buff Magnet Pull to have it act like Lightningrod, but for Steel Type moves and boost Defense instead of Special Attack.
Give Flygon Sand Stream, since its PokeDex entries often highlight how it kicks up a Sandstorm just by flapping its wings
Nerf Mega Banette slightly (something like 64 135 80 88 78 80) and make it a permanent evolution
Really cool suggestions for a lot of Pokémon I love! Mightyena buffs sound fun!
Sir, swampert does not need regenerator. Imagine being bulky, only have 1 weakness, slapped HDB on it and that thing will never die.
Oh you have a grass type, switches out to Corviknight, Oh nice fire type u got there, switches back to swampert, repeat cycle till the end of time
@@fixjustin2699 Swampert doesn't only have 1 weakness: It is also 4x weak to Freeze Dry. Damp just sucks. Also, the official competitive format is VGC, not Smogon.
@@mattishidayeo okay and all your suggestions are for single format not vgc so dont go around telling me that the OfFicIAL ForMAT is vgc not smogon
@@fixjustin2699 How are my suggestions for singles?
I dislike seeing those legendaries everywhere. Like they're as common as a regular pikachu.
Regardless they need to buff older mons aswell, perhaps in stats, movepool or event more option with abilities.
I agree that buffing older Pokemon is the way forward
And the thing is they will never do that for the Pokémon that truly need it sufficiently enough for them to become good wherever they land.
@@iantaakalla8180 Meganium needs an overhaul big time to keep up with the other stages 2 evolutions for Johto. Make it Grass/Ground like Torrtera and give it better moves in its movepool
Wait till you hear about the tcg
wait till you people start playing yugioh :/
@@Paulito-ym4qc Yugioh is dead no matter what the playerbase says. The compettive scene has become unplayable.
@@Nephalem2002 ok yugiboomer
@@RinaShinomiyaVal I played Competitive from 2017-August of this year, I know what I’m talking about.
I love pokemon, but I found very sad that, of almost 1000 pokemon, only about 30 or 40 of them are actually used (without counting lower tiers)
still, i like how in the OU viability rankings the tierlist has more pokemon than just those in OU, showing that some niche picks have a place in the meta
Yeah I get that. But then the thing I find most fun is identifying unusual and uncommon Pokemon and trying to get them to work. If everything was great, it wouldn't feel like as much of an accomplishment when I win battles with Wimpod, for example
@@foofootoo you are right. And of course, having all pokemon being absurdly strong may not be a good thing. Despite that, I think that some pokemon really need buffs, such as stantler, arbok, mightyena, etc
Considering you need a 4% usage to be OU, then yeah, that’s about right.
Honestly their as bad as Yugioh when it comes to that. Only about 4-500 cards are actually good out of over 10,000 yugioh cards these days.
Hey Foo, it’s Psiji! I haven’t played much competitive in the last few years but I was heavy into VGC13-15 when power creep was very noticeable. It’s definitely a problem. However, it’s a problem that partially exists because new mons need to compete with 700 other mons to feel powerful. If box legends didn’t have to compete with other box legends they’d be able to feel a lot more powerful around a 600(ish) BST,
I think one thing rarely mentioned in talks of power creep is the effect of a larger Pokédex. VGC14 was one of the healthiest formats ever where team diversity was incredible. VGC15 expanded to the national dex and as a result the presence of more offensive threats required more defensive checks leading to the rise of the CHALK(T) teams. These consisted of Cresselia, Heatran, Amoongus, Landorus-T, Kangaskhan and Thundurus. Having a wider pool results in having to answer more threats, this leads to a requirement to lean heavily on defensive threats (Cress, Amoongus, Lando-T) that can answer a wide swathe of mons. However, this also leads to a necessity to run mons that break those mons (Kang, Thundurus, Heatran).
It’s certainly a hot take but I think there’s an argument that’s more limited format allows for more creativity. The most common mega in VGC14 was Mawile which was often fairly defensive and by VGC15 it was pushed out by things like Lando and Heatran. Power creep leads to homogeneity as does the necessity to answer 700 mons with only 6. I think there’s a real argument that formats would be significantly healthier if there was around 300 mons. It certainly wouldn’t be popular with fans (as seen by Dexit around the start of Sword/Shield) but I think it would be wonderful for the health of competitive formats to have only a curated list of mons legal, as was the case in VGC14.
Hope you enjoyed the essay and keep up the good content. I really enjoyed hearing your take on the matter!
Hi! Thanks a lot for the comment! I know there's been a lot of discussion over the years about whether the limited dex or national dex formats allow for a more diverse meta. I think everyone would agree that VGC15 was very limiting in terms of teambuilding which may be due to it being a National dex meta. But the current Sword and Shield meta (series 9) was quite a varied format. And series 6, in which the most common Pokemon from the previous series were removed, was quite a limiting format as some of the balancing Pokemon were taken away.
I can't say that I have the most experience here, especially in the older VGC formats, but seeing the shifting metas is very interesting to me. And even in the very limited formats, the creativity and innovation may come from more of the micro decisions you make such as EV spreads, natures and a surprise move option. Though my favourite formats are the ones where some more unusual mons can be viable with the right support options [:
Personally, as someone very upset about the missing Pokemon, I wouldn't mind not being able to use them in competitive events if they were just in the game at all. We've had regional 'dex formats before, and I don't remember any great wailing and gnashing of teeth about those, so something like that could be really interesting.
It is also noted that Sword and Shield’s earliest meta allowed for strange Pokémon to become good, like Avalugg and Galarian Corsola. Avalugg has a Special Defense so low that you’d want to hit it there, but with much fewer Pokémon it could act like the physical tank it tried to be.
Galarian Corsola means nothing in this meta but much earlier its ability to shut down physical attackers with Strength Sap means it was a unique sort of staller.
Naturally, both Pokémon are unviable out of 894 Pokémon with insane efficiency. However, back when there were only 400 Pokémon and only just Zacian, Zamazenta, and Eternatus they did well.
Based on that, the healthiest metagame, assuming no further power creep, will be around 400 Pokémon: diverse enough that unique tricks can be used but distinct enough that bad things are recognized as bad.
Honestly, why doesn’t Pokémon have a “official” format without legendary/ restricted Pokémon. Thank godd for Smogon
Power creep is happening in VG and TCG. It will stay around and maybe die slowly.
power creep has been happening in the tcg since gen 2, its a normal thing for that game
@@kingwailord4143 normal doesn’t make it good
Its a bit of a mixed opinion, but I think Gen 7 OU was my favorite generation of OU, because it had the weird case of having too many options.
There were a lot of viable things there, which meant a lot to look out for but that also comes with the caveat of you being unable to counter everything. There will be a team that you will simply lose to but at the same time, you had a lot of options to choose from.
Same, gen 7 had many styles and Z moves sort of replaced megas for a little bit making for this "megas" versus "very strong moves" teams and others just using the weird talents introduced for funny playstyles
Very great video. I’m kinda suprised I didn’t see Melmetal in that ban list in gen 8. I remember how melmetal had a crazy run in OU until Banded or life orb double iron bash did so much damage that it got banned for a while. I guess it didn’t make much of an impact on the ban list like I assumed it would, but all in all it was a nice video and a great watch for sure
"foofootoo uploaded:" my favourite TH-cam notification
😁
If they gave zamazenta swapped typings with zacian, they both would’ve been balanced NGL.
I doubt it tbh, that’s the most powerful close combat in the game you are looking at, it would just be a buff to zamazenta if anything
@@shady8045 zacian crowned would be banned to triple AG with STAB Close Combat
Fighting is one the best offensive types, that would just buff Zacian.
+1 252+ Atk Zacian-Crowned Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Groudon-Primal: 204-240 (50.4 - 59.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 252+ Atk Zacian-Crowned Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Unaware Quagsire: 211-249 (53.5 - 63.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
With Fighting type, this thing would have no possible counters.
@@amayurubashaka3608 nah i doubt, Fairy-Steel is way too op compared to Fighting-Steel. Zacian is objectively better with that typing, resisting lots of types and is naturally bulky
@@fixjustin2699 Zacian isn't a defensive mon and close combat is probably the best widespread physical attack in the game. 120 base power. If Close combat was stab on it, the very few pokemon that were able to wall zacian would get 2HKOD.
Mons like necrozma dusk mane, quagsire, and arcanine would get obliterated by stab CC. I can't even find a mon that won't die in two hits.
Being honest, I think broken is used more in the sense of "This pokemons make other less used pokemons unviable", which, I could see it somewhat in the singles format, since that has always been the case (vgc was usually the place where unused pokemon had their chance to shine thanks to a good team that helped them, I mean, even parasect was a viable choice in Diamond and Pearl's vgc format). I kinda understand the idea of wanting to stay true to what Karen says in their monologue (I've tried running teams of entirely unused pokemons, usually with terrible results, and had to learn from that to improve). Being honest, some are more likely to be successful in a meta than others. I guess it would be better to say that even pokemon that are generally perceived as weak have something that sets them apart and can make them the better choice in some sittuations (For instance, pachirisu in that vgc tournament, he was a pretty weak pokemon, yet had a moveset that was so devastating to the opponents and had enough stats to survive the current meta's threats. There's part of the underdog essence in that sittuation, but also some deeply thought teambuilding to get to that point. If one wants to fight with their favourite, they must acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses, and understand that sometimes, they will have to run pokemon that are viewed as strong and that's ok.).
Also, there is low tiers, where some pokemon that don't perform well in tiers like OU and such can have their time to shine too (sometimes, it's a lot more fun to run some low tier in order to see some wacky strategies with a pokemon that probably you didn't expect to see used).
In the end, power creep is something that always happens, because new pokemon, abilities and moves that tend to surpass the ones that were before, pushing the power level further, however, I'm confident that in those cases, there will be buffs and nerfs to make sure that things don't spiral out of control. I mean, Stealth Rocks were dominant for a good amount of time, and buffs to defog, rapid spin, and the creation of the heavy-duty boots were there to tone down a bit the effects of that move, so, I think that it won't be that bad, and there will be metas were underappreciated pokemon will have their chance to shine, which is why I still enjoy teambuilding, to find those hidden gems.
The only thing I might think was done poorly was the dynamax, because it was clearly created for doubles, but in singles things just spiral out of control way too fast to deal with it, causing some really annoying sweeps without being able to do anything about it. Gyarados and Krookodyle being a great example of how that powercreeped the singles format, since it became a who's the first one to sweep and once it started, there was no way to stop it. Luckily they banned it in singles, because if that had continued, the singles format would've outright disappeared, because sweeping can be fun for a while, but when the entire meta revolves around it, it starts to lose the fun element quite quick. Like, it could've been like the weather abilities in 5th gen, where they would've banned moxie entirely because of the dynamax. In that sense, I admit VGC is more fair and balanced, even though they have some truly busted pokemon, they still can be dealt with.
I think a good way to help the older mons is not necessarily boosting stats, but rather 'fix' up their stat spreads. some of the mons have the issue of really messy stat spreads that makes them bad at everything and not have a particular niche. Fixing the stat spreads in conjunction with better movepools/abilities can give them a new life in doubles or singles. Now that newer generations are adding new niches with gen IX bringing in tera-whatever, I think it is a decently smart way to possibly bring lesser used pokemon into the limelight. A new niche that cycles out can keep things fresh each gen, and maybe new formats of combining past niches would be an interesting way for competitive to thrive.
I think the last broken pokemon in single or the pokemon who need to be ban if you prefer is melmetal because of his attack stat and his bulk. It's just ridiculous how many pokemon he checks.
The bulk, typing and power is just so strong
I agree with banning Melmetal. It's got 10 resistances, weak only to fighting, ground, and fire, and can only be damaged by Ghost, Dark, Electric, and Water
Just to add to the pokemon that got banned from Urbers zacian hero of many battles got banned from Urbers so zacian the first Pokemon with more than 1 form had both it's forms banned from Urbers
Yes, I started making this video before that changed happened, thanks for clarifying!
@@foofootoo np
I've just been playing anything goes lately to use whatever I want from the gen 8 Dex and I find my teams only work because they're built to counter some common strats which does kinda limit me as I feel like I have to prepare for inevitable set up pokemon, hazard spammers, be bulky enough to sponge hits from super intimidating calyrex shadow and urshifu, shut down set up sweepers with taunt and roar and stuff eg unaware quagsire walls+kills with earthquake zacian and kills other physical set up sweepers with toxic.
For sure, Anything Goes is a crazy place. You have to be a very good teambuilder to prepare for the monsters there!
Really nice discussion, I always wanted to see a video elaborating on these subjects. Well done, foo!
I think it would have been interesting to focus on power creep driven by abilities and items rather than just the Pokemon themselves. I also think having a third of the top 20 of a generation be new Pokemon, is itself a decent measure of power creep. With each successive generation, the new Pokemon generally need to contend with a higher number of existing mons (unless half of the Pokemon just don't happen to be in a new gen for some reason), so seeing that top 20 % not change or even increase over generations is kind of crazy.
Definitely, each generation having 1/3 of the top 20 most used Pokemon being replaced by new Pokemon definitely shows growing power each generation. I didn't focus on items since most people talk about power creep in the context of Pokemon getting stronger, but items have certainly raised the power level of the game. I guess all Pokemon have access to these items though, so the effect is not so easily measured looking at usage statistics
Landorus is the face I put on why I stopped playing competitive modes, I became so sick of running into basically the same team every battle, it's probably no coincidence that Gen 8 has got me looking at it again
Gen 7 and 8 have been doing a lot of interesting experimentation with more unique moves and abilities and thats really been helping new pokemon shine. I think its less about power creep (though it definitely exists) and more about more battle focused development. I think that since the switch to 3d, they're stopping and spending more time on the fewer new pokemon they introduce.
Yes I completely agree - I think some of the tutor moves added in the Isle of Armor DLC were a great example of your suggestion
One Pokémon I’m rather fond of that’s been hit hard by powercreep is Parasect. As a Spore-setter, it’s brutally outclassed in Speed by Breloom, and in tankiness by Amoongus. Even its “niche” of being bug/grass has it competing with the more offensively focused Leavanny, which just has better stat distribution for hitting hard and fast. Parasect’s stats, abilities, and movepool leave it struggling to do any job even decently, while newer Pokémon with more BST and better distribution of that BST leave it in the dust.
Parasect did have a niche in some VGC teams when Kyogre was allowed - with Dry Skin it was immune to the water moves. But even here, Amoonguss could do a similar thing in a more versatile way
For those who don't know, Zamazenta-C was tested in ou for a bit. It obviously stayed banned, but imo it wasn't broken. Definitely the most tame thing that has been suspect tested in gen 8 ou. Nonetheless, I think it's worth mentioning that it was tested.
Naw dawg I despise zacian simply bc of comp. In gen 8
I think a good test of power creep would be to look at the average BST of all fully evolved mons in a generation and kinda see what happens there.
That would be an interesting experiment. Though there is a lot more that makes a Pokémon good than just BST. Just look at the starter Pokémon all with similar or identical BST but some are a ton better than others
@@foofootoo In that example, that'd be Charizard over Typhlosion. Despite having identical stat spreads (only defense stats are swapped) Charizard is infinitely more viable to use that Typhlosion. Which sucks because he's like my 2nd favorite Fire Starter T^T
@@Whodjathink typhlosion and charizard don't even have swapped defenses, their entire statlines are identical, leaving Typhlosion to be charizard but without the favoritism (or hell, just forgotten outright, being the one volcano-themed pokemon to lack Earth Power)
@@gypsysprite4824 ah yes, idk why but when I looked up their stats years ago I swore they were swapped. But if anything that shows us how bad Typhlosion has it. Typhlosion should also learn discharge because volcanoes, believe it or not, do produce static electricity in its smog when it erupts
@@Whodjathink honestly, this dissapointment with typhlosion is why typhlosion was pretty much the fist theorycraft i ever had for buffing things:
Theory Craft text wall below
you have been warned
Fire/Ground typing
70 hp
100 Atk
70 def
100 Spatk
80 Spdef
115 Spd
Hidden ability changes to adaptability
and then add on Earth Power, Stone Edge/Rock slide, and rapid spin if typhlosion never got that
why would I weaken it's base Spatk? mean to begin with i'm making it have good numbers in both offenses and spd, so i decided to make it faster but weaker than Infernape statwise, though while Typhlosion gets more damage in the end from adaptbility nonsense, infernape's better coverage, better typing, and priority
or you can make it's Hidden Ability Sand Rush and make it 105atk/105spatk/105spd offenses, but i only thought of this after playing the Rom Hack inclement emerald, which gives typhlosion sand rush, but mnyeh
I wish we got balance changes more often in pokemon, or at least more of them when we do get them.
I think that’s why I absolutely love smogon vs the actual pokemon company’s official fornat. Smogon’s tiers really do help balance everything
14:43 the complex ban was due to magic guard hazard stack teams w/ alakazam and reuniclus. Smogon was like damn if only we had a GOOD rapid spinner cuz starmie became doo doo. But they realized the banned a solid rapid spinner, so they just decided to clip excas wings
The worst part about new and old favorites alike get power crept to hell and back is seeing Pokémon that never worked continue to get neglected.
Unown can’t use it’s physical attack stat.
Phione is still an objectively worse version of Manaphy.
Delibird can’t compare to even first stage forms of viable Pokémon.
It’s disheartening.
I think I get most annoyed by giving already good mons incredibly good moves (most importantly Close Combat); I like giving coverage, but why the crazy ones, why is Superpower not okay? Why is it not okay to have moves like Signal Beam or other around base 70 moves as coverage? Why 120 ones with incredible power creep?
This is true, Zapdos was already amazing and it now gets Hurricane. And mons like Conkeldurr and Aegislash getting Close Combat is crazy
@@foofootoo I'm a little more ok with the more inaccurate moves being more frequent, but still. Moves like that should be given out as coverage on rare occasion and mostly to “bad“ Pokemon to set themselves apart and give a reason to use them.
they gave Conkeldurr and Aegsislash CC, but not Electivire or even Toxicroak
@@goGothitaLOL Or Luxray too... :/ (I'm sensing a pattern here).
@@lynxfresh5214 Give Luxray Hone Claws + Bolt Strike, problem solved. 😼
Hey Foo! Just wanted to say that I appreciate every upload a ton, whatever the topic is I'll always look forward to hearing your thoughts on it
Thanks so much 😁
You know what would greatly shake up the meta? A mon that sets trick room with its ability
As someone who is for this idea and likes it, this idea is terrible and would be disgustingly unhealthy with GFs balancing. :)
@@raoulpersona7022 why would it be unbalanced?
@@fulltimeslackerii8229 I just think with Dynamic Speed this gen, it would be extremely hard to counter. It'd require this pokemon on every team to check it and here's why:
TR is set with the ability.
Cool, but you dont want TR up.
So you have to get rid of it with your own trick room or *this ability on this pokemon.*
And *switch out + protect on TR Sweeper > switch TR Ability Setter back in* is huge for this, because as soon as TR is undone, you can just switch back in, forcing heavy prediction while a TR Sweeper goes ham. Dynamic Speed changes everything about this, and I just don't think there's a good way to balance it. The immediacy of it would overcentralize this mon, and if not, at least trick room teams or trick room counter teams.
I'm not super duper against it (as someone who heavily dislikes Regieleki lol) but it'd be unfun to say the least. Stay safe. :)
Power creep in Pokémon is stupid in my opinion ,because every game is isolated and so the main point to power creep which is to make you buy the new stuf doesn’t apply because you can’t battle in gen 6 with gen 7, if the new Pokémons dominate then it is a balancing issue not a power creep issue. If a dlc or remake introduces an op mon then that is a power creep issue otherwise I wouldn’t call it that way.
I like smogon tiers. It enables pokemon that would otherwise be useless to have a relatively balanced place to play. It's the same thing broughy1332 does with GTA 5 cars, adding tiers within the wildly unbalanced classes to group cars together against other cars that are competitive with them.
Salamence, Keldio and Aegislash, 2 of them EX ubers and Keldio almost banned from OU several times, are in UU. That should be more than enough proof.
Aegislash got 2 separate nerfs, so that may be a separate issue to power creep, but the other 2 are good examples for sure
There are a few more points that could have been touched on in regards to whether or not the games have experienced powercreep.
1. The reasoning behind bans is a bit more nuanced a lot of the time. Greninja did not get banned until it got Gunk Shot in ORAS to help it defeat Azumaril. Excadrill was not the sole offender of the weather wars, Kingdra was typically seen as even more of a threat at the time.
2. What dropped from OU. Seeing when Pokemon fall out of favor can give a clearer picture of when the general power level is higher. Many OU staples have fallen to UU and below, though some were the result of Steel getting nerfed in Gen 6 or Abilities like Pixilate getting adjusted in Gen 7.
3. Which new Pokemon were unbanned in the subsequent generations? The genies were unbanned in Generation 6, Greninja and Aegislash were unbanned in Generation 7.
To me Generation 7 was by far the biggest step up in power for singles in recent times. Magearna and the Tapus especially were so absurd that Greninja, now with Protean OR the Ash forme, was able to fit in without much issue.
I always laugh when comparing Pokémon from Gen 5 to 6-8.
Like the Kyurem forms have their signature moves need a charge turn, while now we get Precipice Blades, Origin Pulse, Astral Barrage, and Glacial Lance just have 0 drawbacks
Precipice Blades and Origin Pulse can both miss, but to compensate they can hit both opponents, but then again, so can Glacial Lance and Astral Barrage which *literally have NO DRAWBACKS*
While I think you make some good points, I think it's also important to look at the new tools made available to old pokémon as the generations advance. Sometimes certain pokémon get a massive power step because of a new ability or move or some new type of synergy that becomes available to them. Sometimes abilities get nerfed into the ground like Gale Wings, or items that synergise well with certain pokémon get buffed like the Pinch Berries with Gluttony pokémon. Sometimes entire game mechanics are added to nerf certain strategies, such as dark types becoming immune to prankster. These factors can all contribute to an older gen pokémon becoming better in a following generation, too, cranking up the power even further than just the new introductions. It's not just a case of new powerful things being added, it's a case of a lot of old things getting buffs as well, which can make the power balance established by previous metagames fall completely out of control and contribute to the power creep of the generation as a whole.
love how 2 of the 5 videos he mentions of strange broken pokemon are immediately dismissed as verlisify on sight for me
Honestly Zacian being banned would be perfectly fine Zacian is truly broken, with it being faster than most things, starts with +1 attack which when it doesn’t have a ton that can really take it out in one hit it can easily get +3 and spam behemoth blade especially since no ones running Zacian without rusted sword meaning it doesn’t have a weakness to poison, or steel the main things that deal with fairy types ground may work if sashed but even then good chance it’s gonna manage to tank one hit, and your mon is gone and you cant sd or dd because your going to die before you can even attack next turn
Considering how few pokemon are currently in OU compared to previous gens I would definitely say that power creep is getting worse.
I think are less pokemon in OU because they're just less pokemon in general 🗿
@@judehaylesa Untiered has about 4 times as many mons. Plus, they did bring back most of the old mons so there's not that many missing anymore
@@justartagain1056 mega evos are missing previous ou staples are missing lots of mins that dominated lowers tiers and kept them in check are also gone along with z moves being gone. Quite a few mons are still missing dude.
@@judehaylesa The point is that the percentage of good pokemon is too small regardless of how many are still missing. Even if old OU staples are gone, something else could take their place. The problem is that most pokemon available can't compete with the top dogs so only a few mons are actually commonly used in higher tiers.
Really good video. I would say there is nuance though, for example how Regieleki's speed stat is kind of suffocating in terms of speed control. I don't think it's a disaster, can just be a bit of a pain when a particular part of the strategy etc is kinda put on train tracks.
You forgot something important: for the next VGC season Daynamax is banned
I think it would’ve been beneficial to also look at the new tools older Pokémon got. For example, Tangrowth became popular in singles due to it getting Regenerator and Assault Vest. That’s still a form of power creep, as most other grass tanks didn’t get a powerful hidden ability. Or Peliooer getting Drizzle, all the old Pokémon that got the fairy type, etc.
The Pokémon that really hurt are the ones that don’t get powerful new tools and are very old, such as Taurus or Golem.
In gen 4, you forgot about arceus being banned from ubers.
Ah true, the trendsetter! It seems like this is a feature for the even-numbered gens (4, 6, 8)
But not 2. Also, this was the arceus that could only have 100 EVs max in each stat.
I think arceus was not actually banned from gen4 ubers because of it's power but because it wan entirely unavailable until gen 5 came
Arceus, the literal fucking GOD of Pokemon: ... Well why the fuck am I not in this list?
Honestly I think that's a kind of "wrong" way to classify powercreep, because what you're saying is correct but, in my opinion, it's necessary to look at the bigger picture instead of just a "generation by generation usage" thing.
It's obvious by now that most of the most used pokémon in vgc are of the newer generations, which is a clear sign that overall old pokémon are getting nothing to be somehow relevant again (like megas upgraded older pokémon) while the newer ones keep dominating the meta since they get flashy cool signature moves and abilities while some pokémon can't even get a decent ability to begin with. I think the powercreep HAS gone too far, but instead of getting trash pokémon in the future generations I'd prefer older pokémon to get buffs. New moves, new abilities. Just look at Torkoal and Pelipper: a single new ability made them freaking meta while before Drizzle and Drought they were simple, pure trash that no one would ever use even as a meme. Game Freak needs to do more stuff like that, it's the only way old pokémon can compete with the inevitably better and better pokémon that keep coming out.
Yeah I like that idea - buffs are always super exciting
I mean, we just saw Groudon and Zapdos MVP in the VGC as anti-meta.
Power creep is definitely an issue, but one thing that you need to consider is that Game Freak is terrible at balancing the Pokemon games. They make some Pokemon really good while making others garbage for no reason whatsoever. I believe that every fully evolved Pokemon should be usable to some degree. Why make Pokemon like Luvdisc, Unown and Delibird so unusable even in story mode, but give Zacian Crowned a great typing, the same BST as Arceus, and 170 attack and 148 speed with an ability that boosts its attack even further? And why is it faster than its HOMB form?
And its not just the Pokemon. Some moves are crazy good while others are terrible. Scald is an universally amazing move on any special attacking Water type, while Synchronoise is almost useless on anything. It was only 70 base power in Gen 5 for crying out loud, but even 120 isn't enough for a move with such a crippling drawback! The abilities and types aren't balanced either. I could go on.
I know that it is very difficult to perfectly balance a game with so many variables, but in my opinion Game Freak needs to cut back on the new stuff for Gen 9 while reworking all of the current moves, types, abilities and base stats of all of the Pokemon. Removing features such as attacks, Z-Moves and Megas did nothing but annoy fans like me who liked them, while adding really powerful stuff like Dynamax/Gigantamax and more broken Pokemon only added to power creep.
Monster collectors like Dragon Quest Monsters, Yo-Kai Watch and Digimon have a way better sense of keeping monsters on similar power levels by making monsters have ranks of some kind. Pokemon doesn't really have that.
@@DrCoeloCephalo That's a very good point. Evolution levels were probably designed to be "ranks", but the problem is that, unlike in Digimon not every Pokemon has the same number of evolution levels, and the power level within those ranks varies wildly so it is impossible to judge exactly how strong a Pokemon is based on that alone.
@@pricelesschess In Yo-Kai Watch games, most Yo-Kai that evolve or fuse only evolve/fuse once. Only a small number of monsters have a 3rd or 4th stage. Despite that, most monsters that do make a significant jump in Rank and therefore power. Since that game also uses Ranks, the game makes it alot more clear that it's worth the investment and even moreso wtih how hard, fast and demanding Yo-Kai Watch games are.
You don't need a ton of evolution stages to have a better sense of power gap.
The fact that they nerfed Poison types in Gen 2 is proof that Gamefreak has a warped definition of balancing.
Great video. Hoping for a second part when you can consider other aspects from Smogon like the National Dex format or the unbanning process through generations
Cool suggestions, though I am not so familiar with the National Dex format. It looks really fun!
pretty sure Garchomp was banned in dpp entireley because of Sand Veil, the ability proved to be too annoying and so anything that had it was banned from using it, Chomp included, but since it didn't have secondary, it had to be banned. Chomp was great dont get me wrong, but the final stamp was because of the sweeping of sand veil pokemon, not its viability.
Don't forget, even Hero Zacian was banned to Anything Goes.
13:00 I feel like this information is a bit misleading. Yes, shadow tag and arena trap are very powerful abilities but they weren't necessarily game breaking, seeing how it took several generations to ban arena trap in gen 7 or 8. Mainly why wobbufet was banned was due to the possibility for an infinite soft lock, where two wobbs can be out, none can switch out, and their struggle would not be able to deal enough damage to offset leftover recovery.
From what I’ve heard, Wobbuffet was banned not because of Shadow Tag in its own right, but because two Wobbuffet coming into contact with each other could force a dual-sided PP stall (as GameFreak had not yet allowed Pokémon with Shadow Tag to switch out against it, and most Wobbuffet sets ran reactive moves)
In gen 3 fet wasn’t allowed to use leftovers since 2 fets with leftovers would make the battle last until someone quit since leftovers healed more than struggle did in recoil and regular damage
The way that Dynamax prevents a Pokemon from flinching is also really helpful for less used Pokemon
The way that dinamax prevents flinching, destiny bond, weight moves, encore, and perish song, protects your OP broken legendary from pesky strategy
What a wonderfully informative video! I've learned so much.
"broken" is a title for things like Aegislash. With the right EV setups, you can survive attacks even when they are super effective. Not as well as before, you will have to have some HP EVs. Cinderace is one of its slight problems, same with Urshifu, It's kinda hard to beat a cinder without weakness policy + autotomize, but it has weak defenses. Urshifu can get punished with a king shield for atk drop than close combat it, It isnt broken in Ubers. but it IS in UU, It can also hold up in OUs, due to most of the dark types being 4x weak to fighting. Kings shield, Close combat, switch out, wish for support, go back to Slash, Rinse and Repeat.
I think, about Smogon, you should've talked about old Uber dropping tiers (Like Aegislash or Blaziken) or old non-Uber getting banned (like Mega-Metagross).
I think Hoopa-Unbound, Aegislash anf Blaziken going from Uber to UU really shows the power creep. They were banned because they were too strong, and now they aren't even in OU.
I’m calling all my Urshifu BearKnuckle from here on out, thanks foo 🤣❤️
😁
For me a buffed up extreme speed has saved my a$$ from creeping also focus sash
This current season in doubles has 3 Pokémon that dominate the usage stats... Incineroar, regieleki, rillaboom. I play 2/3 of these in my team... incineroar and rillaboom. I feel as if my team would be worse with any alternatives to these and that not playing them would be to my detriment... Kind of like not playing Landorous during season 6. Maybe they should just autoban the top 10-20 most used every month to mix up the format and keep it moving
Yeah I didn't have series 10 stats when I researched the video. This metagame is the most unbalanced of gen 8 for sure
I could actually see an official pokemon tournament or maybe season rule set where it's basically banned the top 100 most popular to use pokemon in competitive battles.
Using their analytics that I assume they have. Also, the potential for manipulation if they announced they'd be doing that ahead of time - everyone using unpopular pokemon to save or knock other pokemon out of the top 100 they'd otherwise be in.
they done something like that before, but with the Top 25 banned in Series 5 of SWSH
There needs to be a pokemon with the ability that makes your other pokemons moves more accurate
Victini has this ability :]
Auto-Gravity could be cool but yeah Victory Star exists
I loved the intro when you roasted the ones who puts _OP_ alongside with every Pokemon in their thumbnail 😂
VGC has these issues but smogon does it's best to separate the supreme outliers so powercreep is bad in VGC but managable in Smogon. That said stuff like Urshifu and dracovish did take things more then a bit to far imo. If anything nintendo should have the people who run VGC to straight up ban the most broken of broken mons at a minimum...