Win Some, Lose Some - Influential Competitive Buffs and Nerfs Between Generations | Part 2
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Introduction
Over 7 generations and 20 years of Pokémon games we've seen a lot of changes to moves, abilities, and items. While few care that Sweet Scent now lowers the foe's evasion by two stages instead of one or that Twineedle can no longer poison Steel-types, there's been plenty of buffs and nerfs that have played a bigger role in competitive battling. This article will cover the most significant ones, as well as some honorable mentions. Now we're in the second part of the article that covers all the nerfs, you can check out the first part for all the buffs over here. Without further ado, let's continue!
Nerfs
Weather-inducing abilities
In Gen V, weather archetypes were at their peak. After generations of weather summoning and weather synergy abilities, as well as powerful sweepers to go along with them, Dream World granted Drizzle to Politoed and Drought to Ninetales through hidden abilities, finally giving OU access to permanent sun and rain. While permanent sand and hail were already available in OU at this time, those weathers didn't have the power, versatility, or quantity of prominent users to really shape the metagame like sun and rain were about to. Rain was the more diverse in terms of playstyles, coming in the form of offense, stall, and balance. Offense was by far the most popular and threatening with their picks: Swift Swim sweepers like Kingdra, Omastar, Kabutops, and Ludicolo, as well as powerful special attackers in Thundurus, Tornadus-T, Keldeo, and Manaphy. There was also rain stall, where users like Ferrothorn, Quagsire, Rain Dish Tentacruel, and defensive Dragonite took advantage of the permanent downpour that Politoed provided to stall out the competition. On the other side there was sun, which was almost only focused on offense, as more defensive Grass-types that benefited from the sun were also hurt just as much by the stronger Fire-type moves. Chlorophyll users such as Venusaur, Tangrowth, and Shiftry, as well as strong Fire-types such as Volcarona, Heatran, and Victini, were able to plow through plenty of teams, with support from Ground-types like Dugtrio and Donphan to trap walls and spin away hazards that plagued the sun sweepers. These weathers' influence eventually proved too great for the metagame, leading to the clause disallowing Drizzle + Swift Swim and, later, Drought + Chlorophyll users on the same team as well as the bans of Thundurus, Tornadus-T, and Manaphy to Ubers. However, as Gen VI rolled up, all weather abilities were nerfed to function like their move counterparts, only summoning weather for 5 turns, up to 8 turns with their respective boosting Rock item. Although the weather-related bans from the previous generation were now undone after this change, it still essentially killed most of the diversity available to weather teams, with rain teams being forced to go all-out offensive and sun teams mostly fading away in viability. Weather is still alive and kicking to this day, all from hyper offense teams with Aurora Veil support in hail, Excadrill sweeping in sand, and a myriad of powerful rain teams using the newly introduced Drizzle Pelipper and powerful attackers such as Urshifu-R and Swift Swim Kingdra. But just as overcast comes in and turns everything gray, the peak of weather teams has passed.
Art by Ciran.
Dark Void
Signature move of Darkrai and a sleep inducing move with 80% accuracy, Dark Void was seen as the second best of its kind, right behind Spore. It allowed Darkrai to freely set up Nasty Plot against most of its competition in Ubers, as well as enabling some lead Smeargle to put Grass-types and Overcoat users to sleep that would otherwise block Spore from it. In singles play Dark Void was balanced and nothing out of the ordinary, but it was in doubles play that it truly shined above its competition with its ability to hit both foes at once. While Dark Void had been banned from Doubles OU and VGC ever since Gen V, when the VGC '14 season came around they decided to unban the move for use, and it stayed available for the two coming seasons as well. This led to a flood of Dark Void Smeargle usage in the following years, as the advantage of being able to put both of your foes to sleep at once was immense in such a fast-paced metagame, where a single turn of incapacitation could decide the outcome of the entire match. There were ways to deal with Dark Void Smeargle, using moves like Fake Out and Prankster Taunt, but these could just as easily be countered using your own teammate's Quick Guard or faster Fake Out, for example. And to top if it all off, a strategy known as "Voidcats" had also popped up, utilizing the Prankster Assist from Liepard to call upon Dark Void with a +1 priority, a major nuisance to any player that was caught unaware by it. As VGC entered Gen VII, Dark Void had been thoroughly dealt with: instead of another rules ban, its mechanics were changed so it could only be used by Darkrai and had its accuracy slashed down to 50%. This heavy-handed action not only affected the doubles metagames but also made Dark Void an awful choice for Darkrai in singles, as even Hypnosis had better accuracy now.
Gale Wings
With the regional bird family of three in Gen VI came a very powerful hidden ability in their arsenal: Gale Wings granted a +1 priority to all Flying-type moves. With Talonflame having the highest Attack stat of base 81 among the three, it seems highly mediocre offensively on paper. That is until you take in consideration that Talonflame has access to both Brave Bird and Acrobatics, making it one of the most powerful priority users in OU. Its sets ranged all the way from an all-out offensive Choice Band set, threatening sweeper sets with Swords Dance, and even some specially defensive sets, utilizing Acrobatics, Bulk Up, Will-O-Wisp, and its priority Roost to stall out and set up on many walls that were unable to touch it. While its pre-evolutions didn't have access to the powerful Brave Bird or Flare Blitz, they retained most of Talonflame's movepool and proved to be powerful threats in their own tiers. Fletchinder and Fletchling took upon the roles of bulky Swords Dance users with fearsome priority moves in RU and LC, respectively, with similar roles and movepools as Bulk Up Talonflame. Talonflame also came to be a prominent Pokémon in VGC, with its added access to priority Tailwind to support the rest of its team. Then Gen VII came along and threw a major wrench to this family's plan of metagame domination: Gale Wings would now only grant priority if its users were at full health. As Talonflame relied on recoil moves for most of its offensive pressure and was 4x weak to Stealth Rock, this came to be a severe fall in its viability in OU, plummeting all the way down to RU. However, all was not bad news, as the introduction of Z-Moves granted it a powerful one-time priority nuke that is able to revenge kill a plethora of threats. This eventually proved to be too much for the tier, and it was subsequently banned to RUBL. Fletchinder fared even worse, being completely unviable in even the lowest of tiers, while Fletchling kept only a small niche in LC, as it's mostly outclassed by the strong bird gang in Vullaby, Doduo, Archen, and more.
Art by Ciran.
Prankster
Similarly to Gale Wings, Prankster grants an extra +1 priority to all status moves instead. With a plethora of different users, it has proven to be a major influence across all tiers and metagames. Sableye is one of the most prominent, with its wide variety of options including Will-O-Wisp, Taunt, Recover, Calm Mind, and more, utilized by both its base forme and right before Mega Evolving. Thundurus and Klefki are known to shut down opposing Pokémon with Thunder Wave, with the former also setting up Nasty Plot for a sweep and the latter supporting its team with Spikes. Liepard and Whimsicott stop setup sweepers and walls in their tracks using Encore and let their teammates set up easily using Memento. Liepard and Riolu also set themselves apart by setting up stat boosts and then using Copycat on their own attacks, creating priority sweepers with powerful STAB moves in Dark Pulse and High Jump Kick. Liepard could also take advantage of Assist in specially crafted teams to call phazing moves with priority, a strategy so devious and infuriating that it ended up banned in BW NU. Klefki and Meowstic-M could also be seen setting up both Reflect and Light Screen to support offensive teams. Almost all of these frequently serve as weather setters as well, with the added inclusion of Tornadus, Volbeat, and Illumise. But like other entries here, Gen VII introduced a significant nerf to this ability: it made all Dark-type Pokémon immune and able to block any Prankster-boosted moves that target them. As some of the best moves to use with Prankster all targeted the other side, this made many Dark-types able to block many strategies by simply switching in to the moves, a change that struck Defog especially hard with its often overlooked evasion-lowering effect, as many Prankster users had gained access to the move with this generation. However, aside from this setback, Prankster users are still able to flourish against the other 17 types and remain a dominant force in metagames to this day.
Blizzard
Part of the strong weather accuracy-boosted trio of moves, together with Thunder and Hurricane, Blizzard started out a bit differently in Gen 1: it had an accuracy of 90% compared to its fellow Thunder at 70%. This made Thunder a much less relevant option, as the added power at the expense of accuracy wasn't worth it compared to Thunderbolt, but it certainly was in the case of Blizzard versus Ice Beam. It was a popular choice across a multitude of special attackers, such as as a coverage move on Starmie or as a STAB move on Cloyster, Lapras, and Jynx, able to heavily dent popular staples such as Rhydon, Zapdos, and Exeggutor. It could also be found on otherwise primarily physical attackers in Tauros and Snorlax. Tauros runs it for the ability to 2HKO Rhydon, while it can be found on offensive Amnesia Snorlax sets, as it hits very hard after just a single boost in Special. It also had the major benefit of a 10% freeze chance (the Japanese versions of the games had a 30% instead), as freeze was for all intents and purposes a death sentence to anyone afflicted, with thawing out limited to very obscure situations like being hit by an opposing Fire-type move with a chance to burn or the opponent using Haze on your Pokémon. This was mostly just an added bonus to the already powerful move, as more dedicated attempts to freeze foes were done using Ice Beam, with its perfect accuracy and higher PP. But then Gen II reared its head and bumped Blizzard's accuracy back to the same level as Thunder; meanwhile, Thunder gained an increase in its paralysis chance to 30% from its previous 10%. This effectively killed of almost all usage of Blizzard in Gen II, while Thunder gained in popularity and took its place as the designated strong special attack, and it has never really recovered since, only being used by Snow Warning users that get the automatic perfect accuracy or as the sole Ice-type move available for Rotom-F.
Explosion and Self-Destruct
Final resort moves, Explosion and Self-Destruct sacrifice the user's remaining HP in favor of inflicting major damage, with Base Powers of 170 and 130, respectively, at their introduction in Gen I. As the damage mechanics of the time limited Base Power to a maximum of 255, these moves also halved the Defense stat of the foe before they struck, effectively giving them Base Powers of 340 and 260 in reality. These moves were able to play a major role in competitive, as their unmatched strength meant that they had to be taken in to consideration and played around so they wouldn't cripple your team completely, leading to heavy mind games and predictions to survive with as little damage taken as possible. Explosion became the clear choice of two in almost all cases, with almost guaranteed usage on the ever-popular Exeggutor in Gen I, as well as a prime choice on Cloyster, Gengar, and Golem. Explosion might seem like a weird choice for Gengar and its base 65 Attack stat, but it was often its best choice against the many special walls such as Chansey and Alakazam, a trend that would follow on other special attackers in later generations. Self-Destruct was left for those that couldn't learn Explosion, like Snorlax, which still packed a big punch due to the STAB bonus granted on Snorlax in particular. Things stepped up further in Gen II, with the Base Powers of the two moves increased to 250 and 200, respectively, 500 and 400 effectively, making them even harder to sponge up through one's team. With more and more users available throughout Gen II-IV, and the addition of items like Choice Band and Life Orb to further boost the destructiveness, these self-sacrificing moves remained ever popular through staples like Metagross, Azelf, Gengar, Snorlax, Bronzong, Forretress, and Magnezone. Then Gen V came along and removed their Defense-halving effect, cutting their effective power in half. Suddenly the tradeoff for these moves became much less attractive, and they lost their place as a metagame mainstay, becoming mostly relegated to suicide hazard, weather, or Trick Room leads to prevent removal and quickly leave place for another teammate. They also saw use as neutral coverage on setup sweepers like Normalium Z Cloyster or other strong physical attackers like Refrigerate Mega Glalie and Choice Scarf Landorus-T as a last resort.
Hidden Power
Coverage has always been a prevalent issue in competitive Pokémon, especially in earlier generations when there were fewer moves and those that existed saw smaller distributions than nowadays. Fortunately, Gen II introduced the unique Hidden Power, a move whose type, with their corresponding physical or special nature, and Base Power were based off of the Pokémon's particular IVs, up to a maximum of 70 Base Power. Throughout Gen II and III, Hidden Power was used to patch up lacking coverage, or even as STAB options for the unlucky few, of all sorts of Pokémon. Despite the mediocre max Base Power, the intricate IV requirements of getting certain types and Base Powers, and the limit of only being able to use one type at a time, Hidden Power remained as a necessity on staples such as Salamence, Gyarados, Magneton, and Celebi. With the physical/special split of Gen IV, Hidden Power was turned in to a special attack regardless of the type it took on, eliminating its viability among previous physical users but greatly opening up the type options available for special users instead. Things remained the same up and through Gen V, with it mostly taking on the types of Fire and Ice, two types that had plenty of 4x weak targets to deal significant damage towards. Then Gen VI came along with both good and bad news: removing the move's complex calculation of Base Power in favor of a fixed one, but lowering that number to 60 instead of the previous 70. While this might not seem like much of a change, plenty of calculations of the past were now thrown off, turning OHKOs to 2HKOs, 2HKOs to 3HKOs, and so on. The freedom of the fixed Base Power did give users the option on min-maxing IV spreads more easily without having to worry about a weaker Hidden Power. Sadly, Gen VIII dropped the worst of news: the complete removal of the move, making it unusable in battles. While our current smaller Dex has somewhat limited the impact of this major change, plenty of Pokémon still suffer from this new lack of coverage, most notably Electric-types that heavily relied on Hidden Power Ice or Grass to deal with Ground-types that are otherwise immune to their attacks. With the greater distribution of some moves like Mystical Fire to help alleviate the loss of Hidden Power Fire and the uncertainty of what new options are to be given to the re-introduction of old staples through the upcoming Crown Tundra DLC, the full impact of this is yet to be seen.
Parental Bond
The combined power of mother and child: Parental Bond was the signature ability of Mega Kangaskhan, making it able to hit a target twice with any attack, with the second attack dealing half the damage of the first one. This essentially gave Mega Kangaskhan a free Choice Band power boost, without the drawback of locking itself in to a single move. But the benefits didn't stop there, as it could now reliably bypass Sturdy and Focus Sash users, trigger secondary effects like Power-Up Punch's Attack raise and Body Slam's chance for paralysis twice, and even use moves like Seismic Toss and Super Fang twice to their full extent, dealing up to 200 HP of unresisted damage or reducing a foe's current HP to a mere quarter. These twin strikes did bring adverse effects in taking Rough Skin and Rocky Helmet recoil twice, something that would become a common countermeasure against Mega Kangaskhan, as well triggering other defensive secondary effects like Static, Flame Body, and Effect Spore twice. But the benefits far outweighed the downsides, and Mega Kangaskhan, utilizing this ability and its stellar base stats, managed to become one of the most dominant forces in Gen VI competitive, being banished to Ubers in the early XY metagame and wreaking havoc in BSS and VGC for a long time to come. This didn't pass Game Freak by unnoticed, as the ability was nerfed with the release of Gen VII, lowering the power of the second strike to a mere quarter. While uses of it in Ubers could still take advantage of Seismic Toss as reliably as before, its viability in BSS and VGC dropped significantly. As all Mega Evolutions were discontinued as of Gen VIII, the ability received its ultimate nerf, as it's no longer available for use at all.
Rest and Sleep Talk
Rest was introduced in Gen I and was available to almost all Pokémon, making it the sole recovery option for a majority of them and popular on staples like Snorlax and Slowbro. While it had glitches like keeping stat reductions from paralysis or burn after they were cured and odd interactions with Toxic's already convoluted damage calculation, it had a reliable sleep duration of two turns compared to the otherwise unreliable sleep status that ranged from 1 to 7 turns. But it was the introduction of Sleep Talk in Gen II that pushed this move combination to soaring heights: Sleep Talk allowed the use of almost any of a user's other three moves at random while asleep, removing the passivity that Rest used to bring and saving PP of the moves used through it. Whether unintended or not, calling Rest with Sleep Talk also triggered its healing effects and reset the sleep counter back to two turns, coining and cementing these two moves as a RestTalk strategy, which would come to dominate competitive in Gen II. RestTalk together with the introduction of items, specifically Leftovers, gave everything a lot more longevity, making the metagame focus more on tanks and slowly trying to whittle down your opponent's Pokémon and PP. While Gen I had its fair share of wars using chip damage and recovery through moves like Recover and Soft-Boiled, RestTalk allowed Pokémon to get rid of status effects as well and was available to almost everything again. Popular users included Zapdos, Raikou, Snorlax, Heracross, and Vaporeon, with the last three also being able to also boost their stats with Curse and Growth. In Gen III we saw a big change to this combo: rolling Rest through Sleep Talk would now fail instead, greatly hampering the opportunities to continuously recover health. Another change more recently discovered was that switching out after Sleep Talk uses would also negate those turns towards Rest's sleep counter, effectively resetting the counter in many cases and making it harder for users to stay healthy over the period of a game. While the latter mechanic change didn't follow suit after Gen III, this trend of diminished use continued on throughout the generations that followed. Its lowest point came during Gen V, when the mechanics behind sleep changed once more to now always reset the sleep turns on switch out, making even self-inflicted sleep a dangerous risk to your team. While the legacy of CroCune (RestTalk + Calm Mind Suicune) and its many variations live on to this day, RestTalk will always be in the shadow of its glory days.
Soul Dew
The Eon Twins have always been a power couple: ever since their debut in Gen III, they've managed to stay top tier in almost every metagame they've been in. In fact, it wasn't until Gen V that the power creep allowed both of them to stay down in OU, with Latias also only recently making its way back in the present-day Gen IV metagame. All of that is if you don't even take in to consideration what truly brought these two over the line: their signature item Soul Dew, which when held would increase their Special Attack and Special Defense by 50% each. Such a boost has led the item to be banned from every OU tier and even from every official Nintendo tournament and metagame through Gen III to VI. It's not hard to see why, as these two already powerful and well-rounded legendaries became behemoths in their own right when using Soul Dew, rivaling even some of the otherwise stronger cover legendaries. Equipped with Soul Dew in Ubers, their expansive movepool of moves like Calm Mind, Recover, and plenty of powerful coverage and the almost unresisted Dragon-type STAB, few things were able to stand in their way, and they were able check titans such as Kyogre, Rayquaza, Giratina, and Groudon with their above average Speed stat for the tier. Gen VI did introduce the Fairy type to keep all Dragons in check, as well as new Mega Evolutions to the twins, but they kept on trucking with Soul Dew as before and even outclassed their new Mega Evolutions. Then we arrive at Gen VII, and Game Freak finally stopped restricting Soul Dew; this is not because the power creep had escalated enough, but rather it is because they nerfed the item to the level of the Creation Trio's signature orbs: 20% boost to moves matching their typing, Dragon and Psychic. With that, the item was also released back in to OU, where basically no one used it and it will likely be forgotten moving forward.
Art by Ciran.
Gems
Power-boosting items have always had a strong effect on competitive play, so when Gen V introduced Gems, single-use items that corresponded to each type and boosted their moves by 50% when used, they took off big time. Previously such a power boost was limited to Choice Band and Choice Specs, but now you weren't restricted by the move locking that they imposed, greatly opening up strategic options for players. Prominent users in OU were Rock Gem Terrakion and Dragon Gem Latios, able to set up and muscle past what otherwise would be counters. While one-time use items can be a detriment in the long term, they interact well with strategies that depend on the consumption or lack of items, mainly Unburden and Acrobatics. Unburden users such as Hitmonlee gained a reliable way of activating their Speed boost through the use of priority in Fake Out, while Acrobatics users in Archeops and Tornadus could fire off a strong Flying-type attack in an instant, as the Flying Gem was consumed and activated before the Acrobatics damage was calculated, hence giving it the double power of a Pokémon with no item. Drifloon and Drifblim held the distinction of utilizing both of these techniques at once, creating a respectable niche for these two balloons. While the power boost saw decent use in singles, it saw significantly more usage in the doubles metagames of VGC and Doubles OU. As they are much more offensive metagames, these power-boosting Gems helped a lot to summon immediate power that didn't come at the cost of move restriction from Choice items, as access to Protect and other support moves at all times is very important. With 17 different Gems available as well, they helped circumvent the Item Clause restriction present in VGC. Unfortunately, when Gen VI came along, the Gems had been nerfed to a mere 30% boost. While this could've been bad enough to turn these unviable, Game Freak also made the draconian decision of making every Gem but Normal Gem unobtainable during normal gameplay, including the newly introduced Fairy Gem to correspond with the new type. While we don't know if they intended to release them again at a later date, they remained unreleased for the entirety of Gen VI and stayed that way throughout Gen VII and again at the start of Gen VIII. While Game Freak has a habit of never removing items from the game data despite no longer being used, Normal Gem has oddly enough always stayed released with these newer generations, despite Z-Moves and Max Moves of Gen VII and Gen VIII functioning as Gems' spiritual successors. With only Normal Gem being available, it has stagnated to a sole niche of boosting the power of Explosion on various hazard and support leads, a far cry from its haydays.
Honorable Mentions
Gen 6 special moves nerfs
Ever since Gen I, special moves have always stood out over their physical counterparts when it comes to variety, availability, and power. Moves like Thunderbolt, Ice Beam, Flamethrower, and Surf at 95 Base Power were reliable and strong attacks, while Thunder, Blizzard, Hurricane, Hydro Pump, Focus Blast, and Fire Blast traded accuracy for even more power at 120 Base Power. Later on, Overheat, Leaf Storm, Draco Meteor, and Psycho Boost were introduced with a whopping 140 Base Power and a slightly higher accuracy than the three previously mentioned, but at the cost of dropping Special Attack by two stages upon each use. This all culminated in Gen V, when the power creep was at an all-time high and OU was filled with plenty of powerful special attackers, often aided by the powerful weather wars that were going on. And then Gen VI arrived and brought upon several Base Power revisions across the board, which included nerfs to almost all of the moves mentioned here. The 95s turned to 90, the 120s turned to 110, and the 140s turned to 130. While this might not look like much of a change on paper, special attackers have often relied on just the sheer Base Power of their moves, rather than just their base stats or plentiful boosting options that are typically available to many physical attackers. As a result, attacks that previously were OHKOs turned to 2HKOs, 2HKOs to 3HKOs, and so on, effectively balancing them out just enough to not be as overbearing without crippling them entirely.
Sucker Punch
Priority has always been a powerful force in competitive play but was for the most part held back by the moves' low Base Power, with none above 40 beside the rarely distributed Extreme Speed. Then came Gen IV and the introduction of Sucker Punch: a Dark-type priority move with a Base Power of 80, even rivaling that of Extreme Speed but with a much wider distribution. How did they deem this balanced? Well, Sucker Punch came with a drawback: failing if the opponent didn't select an attacking move. While this kept the move from being spammed without drawbacks, it also created a very potent mind game with your opponent where predicting the move's use could often decide entire games. This culminated in Gen VI with the removed resistance of Dark- and Ghost-type attacks for all Steel-type Pokémon, greatly opening up Sucker Punch's viability for strong users such as Bisharp, Honchkrow, Yveltal, Mega Mawile, Mega Kangaskhan, Mega Absol, and more. However, Sucker Punch later received a small Base Power nerf, from 80 to 70, in Gen VII. Similar to the special moves previously mentioned, this small nerf didn't ruin the move and just helped keep it a bit more in check, to the dismay of the move's most prevalent users.
Destiny Bond
Popular on leads and users that could execute the move before the opponent, Destiny Bond allows the user to take its foe down with it should it fall to their attacks. Even if you weren't able to use Destiny Bond before the opponent's turn, it would keep its effect active until your next turn and could also be used in succession without failing, unlike the similar mechanics of moves like Protect that would. This meant that you often didn't have to play around the opponent's attempt at not trying to trigger its effect and kept the initiative in the user's favor. Especially potent users of this strategy were Mega Banette, the only Prankster user with access to Destiny Bond, and Mega Gengar, which was able to trap most foes using Shadow Tag. Unfortunately, Gen VII remedied Destiny Bond's edge over moves like Protect, making it also fail when used in succession. This hampered its viability somewhat, but it would soon take another blow just a generation later. The Dynamax mechanic introduced in Gen VIII introduced a whole slew of interesting interactions between it and certain mechanics. One of those was that Dynamaxed users were now immune to the effect of Destiny Bond, creating another hindrance to those trying to take down a powerful threat before it runs over their team.
Copycat
This one is a bit more peculiar than the others, as Copycat is often quite an unremarkable move in most situations: copying the last used move in battle, with a few exceptions. Without a dedicated strategy built around it, it can often just be a blind shot in the dark. That's where Gen V and the introduction of Prankster enters the picture. Executed correctly, a Prankster user of Copycat is able to use moves at a +1 priority that were otherwise not possible. One application of this can be seen with Liepard: utilizing Nasty Plot to boost Special Attack, firing off a Dark Pulse, and then copying that Dark Pulse again to create a late-game sweeper that often can't be revenge killed by faster foes. But it was with Riolu that things started to get crazy. Riolu has access to both Prankster and Roar, which when copied by a Prankster Copycat had its negative priority overridden in favor of the +1 that Prankster grants Copycat. This turned Riolu in to a priority phazer, able to trigger a chain of consecutive Roar uses that often left an opponent helpless. Add in some entry hazards and you had a potent strategy, albeit cheap and uncompetitive in many people's eyes, that could wipe an unprepared team. Fortunately to those subjected, Gen VI added Roar and other phazing moves to the list of exceptions that Copycat can't call upon, though without touching the strategy employed by Liepard for example.
Final Thoughts
And that's the end of this competitive retrospect through the lens of moves and abilities! I hoped you enjoyed this journey and learned something new on how even small changes can have great ripple effects throughout a metagame. Some things might've been left out, but this article turned in to a bigger beast than I imagined and you have to make it end at some point. Until the next generation that will change things up, see ya!
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