I think the extra fascinating thing about this is that the reverse has happened in Gen 2, with Golem becoming super popular and Rhydon falling off a lot. This was a really great explanation!
@Bren But accord to screen shots from the video. It wasn't an issue of not being able to code it in, it was literally "hey we didn't even know this quirk existed".
@Bren It has very little to do with an inability to code. By the mid 2000s all simulators had coding for tbolt not to paralyze electrics because that was common knowledge. Also sims had abilities and EV IV system, etc. Being unable to code something so basic is utterly absurd to even think was a possibility. No the actual truth is basically no one knew about it.
@Cameron L they didn't know anything about Golem's viability lol they just knew that normals couldn't be paralyzed by normal type attacks. Why? Because speedrunners play on the physical cart or emulator whereas competitive players play on a sim. Makes sense. Speedrunners might not even know that Tauros is the best gen 1 OU mon because their job is to speedrun.
What's the most crazy thing about the Body Slam discovery is that they TOLD us in Pokémon Stadium 2. There's an Academy in the game where they cover changes from Gen I to Gen II, and there's a bit there where they tell us that in Gen I moves couldn't status Pokémon of the same type, but in Gen II they can. They use an Electabuzz getting paralysed by Thunderbolt to demonstrate it, which the game explains wasn't possible before in the original games. So they kind of did tell us and there were probably people out there who knew about Body Slam and normal types because millions of people had that game!
@@franko1597 Because poison is treated differently compared to the other statuses. It couldn't poison poison-types, but could poison anyone else regardless of the move's type
You only touched that point on the surface, but this seems to be yet another case of a Pokemon that had uses in a high tier (OU), but is unviable in a lower tier (UU). RBY UU doesn't have the demand for a bulky normal resist the way OU does, so Golems main use just wasn't needed. This is similar to Quagsire and Gastrodon having their uses in OU and even Ubers despite being RU/UU/PU by usage. Before the Body Slam discovery, Golem had enough usage to stay in OU, but once it droped, it went almost straight to NU because it was way worse in UU than in OU.
Pokémon that kinda ignore the tiering system are fascinating to me. Mons like Ditto, Shuckle, or Pyukumuku can be seen in any tier from Ubers to ZU. I'd love to see a video discussing that in more depth.
This is even echoed by Alolan Golem in gen 7. It's useful in OU because it can trap and kill Heatran, but not useful enough to be in the tier. Then in every lower tier it is 100% useless.
Quagsire only seems to show up a lot when the overall power level of certain mons gets a bit too high because Unaware + Water/Ground typing can be the perfect counter to many busted setup mons. However when there isn't a dominant threat where Unaware and that typing is needed it kinda just chills in the lower tiers because you have other options that are better overall. It only shows up when the other things that are normally better than it don't work and you all of a sudden need that Unaware Water/Ground combo.
Kinda interesting that Golem wasn't good in UU despite being OU for most of RBY. Goes to show how different two metagames in the same generation could be.
Also why Reuniclus has been decent in OU every gen despite normally chilling in RU or why Volcanion is set to rise to OU despite being pretty bad in UU.
I have a feeling a good chunk of the people playing via Showdown never touched the early Gen games, especially the side stuff, outside of the site. That being said, I never actually used Body Slam until my most recent play through of Yellow because I always had Thunderwave and just plain stronger attacks for the story and even then you don’t face that many Normal types that are challenging so it’s not something that you notice outside of a challenge run of some kind.
I remember reading something on the smogon forums about how its impossible to catch a perfect IV geodude in gen 1, and people were debating whether trading one from gen 2 would be allowed. I never did find out the conclusion of this.
slight correction - Chansey and Snorlax WERE already on every GOOD competitive team in 2014, it's just Reflect was rarely seen and chansey didn't run seismic toss. Also the rhydon/golem debate wasn't as clear cut in golem's favor as you make it sound, some players were already adamant Rhydon was better even back then. I think the meta would have EVENTUALLY shifted to Rhydon anyway given enough time and new players, since looking back, rhydon might have always been better. I was a diehard pro-golem guy back then and after using the same pokemon since 2003 it was hard to convince me to change my mind. I think a lot of players were like that, stuck in the mindset of using the same Pokémon since the beginning, and It took the metagame shifting hard for players to finally switch.
Outside of reflect not being as present back then to nulify the effects of explosion, something that ocurred to me is that slowbro may have been more popular during that time, and golem already having explosion to deal with it while simulteaneously checking the electrics was more apreciated as a result, because I don't think they were too keen of making sacrifices to fit victribel in their team, especially since wrap wasn't recognized as a proper tool back then, more do like a cheese move. But those are just my thoughts.
Eh you can at least make the argument for not having snorlax on t wave spam teams. It doesn’t really benifit much from the entire opponent’s team being paralyzed like a wrapper or even machamp does nor does it learn twave
With reflect being common on Chansey now, does that make Chansey the best Snorlax switchin in the game? You get in on body slam, never get paralyzed (which is what makes Reflect so much better), set up reflect, and now Snorlax will never beat you unless he tries to freeze or explode on you.
@@drunyon214 snorlax can possibly pp stall with sleep. And letting a set with amnesia setup isn’t the best idea. Maybe it’s a good idea if your goal is to make it sleep then switch in a wrapper to abuse that but that’s about it.
I just find it kinda sad that what little niche differences Golem granted compared to Rhydon are just vastly outclassed by going all in on more Normal types who were already seeing high usage anyway so you weren't reaching to cover specific niches.
Request: Why is Quagsire so... Quagsire? It's a Pokemon which has consistently been a lower tier lifer, yet somehow always found ways to finagle its way into viability in many, many tiers, including even Ubers.
Unaware is the main answer, but its typing is also godlike. Water/Ground has only one weakness (double weakness to Grass, which isn't even that common as an attacking type), one immunity (Electric, very useful for avoiding many sources of paralysis including TWave), and 4 resistances (Fire, Rock, Steel and Poison). The combination of that ability, that typing, decent stats and a wide movepool containing a lot of useful stuff makes it always relevant, especially for stopping setup sweepers that can neither demolish it with a super effective move nor overpower it with their upped stats. Quag laughs in the face of men and gods alike.
Unaware isn't the only thing that made Quag good, although Unaware made it viable for many more tiers it was still viable in past gens using Water Absorb, his movepool and typing is just that good he could fill niches
Thanks for this, used to browse Smogon over a decade ago and Golem used to be OU, so I was stunned to see that on a revisit, it had dropped all the way to NU.
I mean, it was stated in stadium 2 that paralysis from body slam won't land on normal types, so yeah... It's kinda surprising nobody had known about it until the end of 2014
I like obscure and intricate trivia facts like this, I find them more interesting than the ones that can be summed up with "the mon is broken" like why was Dracovish or Greninja banned, altough the way you explain in extreme detail what part of their kits make them so good in their metagame is very good too
I would just recommend watching crystal_ and chickasaurus evie's videos, because they are the ones who are constantly discovering these stuff and making informative videos about it.
I love how decades later peope can still discover things about pokemon. People might complain about its' code being held together by duct tape and bubblegum but we still discover new stuff all the time. Its amazing. I doubt theres many other video games that have undergone this level of scrutiny
Could you maybe do a video on dugtrio? Specifically how it went from OU in Gens 3-6 to untiered in Gen 7 and 8. I don’t think there’s been a fall of tiers that bad since lucifer.
IIRC Arena Trap Got banned after Smogon stopped updating the tier list in multiple formats. So Dugtrio is only OU by Technicality as it was still OU at the end of the BW era but it's main niche got banned for Gen 4 onwards. Sometimes there are bans put into place after the tier list stopped updating on Smogon, I'm pretty sure ADV Mr. Mime is in ubers due to all the baton pass win fishing that it was used for rather than its actual power with baton pass.
I think a video on why dugtrio is very good in gen 1 uu is going to be far more interesting, considering how everyone knows about arena trap. Also those gen 2 sub swagger sets, jesus christ.
@@costby1105 dugtrio also had its base attack increased from 80 to 100 in SM, so previously there was a lot of people it had trouble threatening due to its low attack but base 100 attack changed that drastically
Man, you discover 1 little immunity, & everything just spirals out of control, & it all comes tumbling down. Neat analysis video! Thanks for uploading!
Worth noting, while what was said here is the reasons it dropped to NU, it's not a bad pokemon in OU. It's not the easiest pokemon to use but if you know how to, it can still be a great addition to a team.
All though arguably harder to pull off, this also applies to uu. Being able to threaten a paralyzed articuno and barrage hard hitting earthquakes when giving the opportunity while simulteaneously checking electabuzz and kadabra to a certain extent is pretty damn good and unique.
Forgot to mention that bringim him on the field it's made easier thanks to to the partial trapping utility that wrap provides, functioning as a pseudo u-turn that defines the metagame as a whole, not to mention golem resists the move, making it more useful for pivoting.
@@wannabecinnabon in many ways, yes golem is a more reliable and better option, but golems explosion is enough to make it better is a lot of situations. A simplified way to say it would be that Rhydon is better on more defensive or balanced teams, while golem is better on more offensive teams.
@@wertyxq3468 Yeah no, not really, Articuno normally runs agility which lets it ignore the paralysis drop, which it would use on the turn golem comes in and still threaten to OHKO it, and Electabuzz isn't common enough to warrant running Golem to check. Meanwhile it can't get in very well against anything else and most of the tier outspeed and threatens to OHKO/2HKO. There are also multiple pokemon that can switch into it decently well such as the grasses, vaporeon, gyarados, and dnite, (those last 2 relying on prediction) before forcing it out. By comparison, other wallbreakers like Kangaskhan, Gyarados, Dragonite, and Dodrio, have far fewer answers than golem does and consistently accomplish more on a game to game basis. It can work in UU, but its not very good.
RIP Golem. whenever i played casually, i always had Rhydon on my team, because Golem required an in game trade, which was too much of a hassle. plus you can catch Rhydon fairly commonly in Cerulean Cave in Pokemon yellow version, which is a great place to save your game, and catch a whole bunch of Rhydon, and try to find one with that 15 attack DV
Having started to play in 2017 in gen 1 ou specifically, watching the metagame legitimately shift in the last few years has been wild, considering how golem/Rhydon were still treated as somewhat interchangeable even then.
Golem is pretty good in NU though. Its stats are pretty high for the tier and NU has this problem were every fire spinner in the game is in the tier and they are really good and most of the good water type are in the upper tiers you can make a half your team consist of just fire spinners and the other half just to counter what fire is weak too and have a really good chance at winning. fire spin should be banned from NU honestly
@@lkjkhfggd In Gen 1, moves like Bind, Clamp, and Fire Spin actually stop the opposing Pokemon from doing anything while being trapped. That's actually the main reason Dragonite is used, since Dragon is a trash type and Flying has like 2 moves in Gen 1. It just perma-wraps anything slower than it.
@@lkjkhfggd In Generation 2 onwards, Trapping attacks (Wrap, Bind, Clamp, Fire Spin.) prevented the victim from switching, but not from attacking. In Generation 1, it's the reverse: Trapping moves let you switch, but they prevent you from USING MOVES. If you get hit with a trapping move in Generation 1, you can't use any moves for its whole random duration, be that 2, 3, 4 or even 5 turns. & if the trapping move user is FASTER than their victim, they can restart the trap EVERY TURN; So long as you don't miss, any slower foe can't make a move. Literally.
there where many instances of me having to switch moltres on an earthquake, just to double back to blastoise to take less damage from rock slide/bodyslam, or just risk the fire spin if i really don't have another choice. Golem just hits too hard for the tier man, and mandibluzztoise is already tasked with mostly checking virtually almost every offensive threat that just so happened to tumble down to rock bottom NU. So yeah, I (maybe) make sure my teams don't get destroyed by golem every time he switches in.
I'm gonna be honest. I don't actually play competitive Pokémon. At most maybe some random team battles occasionally. But I've still grown to love this channel. The videos are short (although I wouldn't mind longer ones too) so I always feel like I can watch it whenever, they're also just interesting. I think that mainly lends to the way its presented, not just the info. You could definitely make a video saying this information, and have it be very boring. But their videos somehow always balance that line perfectly, of being pretty niche and nerdy, but still avoiding being boring!
It’s amazing how taking a shortcut in programming can have such a heavy effect on a game. I believe the reason Body Slam doesn’t paralyze normals and such is a side-effect from them making Ice, Fire and Poison types immune to their respective statuses. Instead of taking the time to specifically code each type, they just made a “types can’t be statused by moves of their same type,” not thinking about moves like Body Slam or Tri-Attack that have statuses without being associated with their expected types
Yeah, it's a weird but unique thing in gen 1, where pokemon can't be given a status by moves of the same type as them. I honestly think it should be something that could be brought back as it'd be a nice little interesting thing to add on top.
@@mrboost4186 They already are, powder moves in general don't affect Grass-types anymore. Though they weren't immune to those in Gen 1, pure status moves were treated differently, it was only side-effects that couldn't affect the same type as the move.
Literally my favorite Pokemon in the entire game. I had one in Pokemon Leaf green that straight up beat half my older brother's team. We were kids but up until gen 8 I ran Golem in every team I played. (Note, I only play monotype)
I like how it took Smogon until 2014 to realize the paralysis quirk of Gen 1 when Stadium 2 basically tells you this and the speedrunning community knew about it well before lol
It might be because competitive scenes of any game are kinda snobbish and only pay attention to competitive stuff and tend to either ignore or flat out dismiss anything else.
True. I've seen more than enough competitive players not know incidental shit like Scald removing freeze on its user, or Electric Terrain preventing sleep against grounded Pokémon.
An intresting additional note is that fire types are infact not immune to burn inately in generation 2 only that they cant be burned due to sharing a type with fire moves which cause triattack to be able to burn fire types in generation 2.
It's super interesting how metagames can change so far after the games were released! I've never played Gen 1 (or any of the remakes tbh... don't look at me like that), so this certainly comes as news to me!
That is absolutely insane to me. Golem was always a huge powerhouse in the gen 1 meta game and honestly in a lot of respects was just better than Rhydon. Now it can't even hold it's own in UU because it can't deal with the water types. Insane.
As the last OU Golem user, I think its higher Speed is also worth mentioning since it will beat Rhydon in the 1v1 scenario. Still, doing better into 1 mon at the cost of worse performance into the rest of the tier outside of Explosion is a tradeoff I think most people don't want to make. Ultimately when people see a mon get dropped from OU they just assume its "become useless." Golem is still a genuinely strong Pokemon in the right situation, same with Victreebel and Lapras (the latter of whom I think is much worse than Golem in competitive OU). But I can certainly understand why people would be less receptive to it with Rhydon as its competition.
I also use golem but i use It with victribel I think It works beter than rhydon if You treat victribel asa win condtion with wrap sleep powder and razor leaf. Golem can counter jolteon Zapdos and Gengar Wich shut down victribel and he can explode when there's none of those
The weird part of no one ever knowing this is that the EXACT thing abuot normal types being immune to para by T-wave is in stadium 2's classroom mode in one of the lessons there.
There has to be at least one guy who figured out the body slam quirk back in the 90s who now feels extremely vindicated that it took over 15 years for everyone else
To be fair though...If rhydon didn't exist it might still be used up there right? So it is just the case of a pokemon being completely outclassed rather than fundamentally trash (yes I count them as two separate things.)
If rhydon wasnt there then golem would have probably shifted its sets to be more like Rhydon.Although once again it would be a bit worse since for example it cant set up 101 hp subs.The meta would probably be a bit worse in my opinion since reflect would become even more omnipresent without Rhydon.
I think this discovery occurred so late because, pokemon effectiveness and status was a thing after gen 6 when Electric Types can't be paralyzed and Grass Types nullifies powder moves. Who could think Gen 1 had this type of stuff lol
Is there a reason why people say that SD/Explosion HALVED the enemy’s defense instead of IGNORED or PIERCED half of it? Did the enemy somehow become twice as vulnerable to physical hits if they survived the blowing up? Edit: I’m a dumb dumb and forgot to add in the “half” part after ignore/pierce
SD/Explosion only halves the defense stat during damage calculation, defense boosts that were already there still apply bar crits, didn't you hear what he said about how exploding to a pokemon with a reflect up being moslty inefective? (All though now im not sure if he mentioned that at all, either way how did you reach that conclusion?)
@@DisastrousIntentionally So why not say “ignores half the enemy’s defense?” Saying “halves the enemy’s defense” sounds like you’re dropping it by two stages or smth
You know, this drop was so sharp... You would think there was some sort of power behind it, assisting Golem to be the best it could be. *and then one day, it didn't answer.* Nothing but glitch noise...
Imagine if you will a level 85 chansey. You mock the opponent and they seismic toss your snorlax 3 times in a row for 255 damage. *Pity!* You say to yourself. Then all of a sudden your sleep doesnt work and you get thunderwaved. You now realize that gen 1 recovery moves CAN FAIL.
If you're open to taking suggestions: something I'm wondering is why Scizor went from being an all-time great from Gens 2-7 to being projected to drop from SwSh OU soon. (It's still great in BDSP OU, though.)
@@MrZahsome yeah, despite the great stats and amazing typing, it's movepool was just too weak until Platinum gave it Bullet Punch. No coincidence that basically every Scizor has run it since!
I see people are taking this change at face value. People saying that “Golem is complete OU trash!” Is pretty wrong. Like, no... Golem is still pretty viable for use in OU
It would be cool if Body Slam's chance for paralysis was based on weight. A Chansey Body Slam would have little chance. A Snorlax Body Slam would be almost guaranteed.
I know this vid is old but I think it might be prudent to point out something. In gen 1 no pokemon will be affected by a status condition if they are the same type as the move. If an ice type move could burn it would not burn ice type pokemon and if a ground move could posion it wouldn't affect ground types. It just so happens that the only moves I can think of that would ever do this is body slam and tri-beam. Both of these will not affect normals but can freeze/burn/paralize ice/fire/electric types respectively as the move itself is normal type
Can you do a video on what determines the available formats on Showdown? Like is there a reason they still don't have an anything goes or national dex format for doubles?
I find metagames with so few viable Pokémon very interesting because each tier is so wildly different. Golem was better in OU than it was in UU because of how different the meta was in UU, because there just isn't a lower tier equivalent of e.g. Zapdos. You just wouldn't see this happening in a format like gen 8, where there are hundreds of viable pokémon because each tier is still fundamentally similar. For example, let's say Garchomp, Urshifu and Melmetal was banned from OU. Suddenly, there isn't much need to run Slowbro anymore, so it drops to UU. Slowbro won't be worse in OU than UU because, on a fundamental level, UU is similar to OU, and Slowbro would still have it's purpose of beating mons like Zygarde, Lycanroc and Conk.
Im sure that in whatever tier marowak and gravwler coexist, the latter still outclasses it, the rock typing it's very useful to negate the flimsy attempts of birds and electric types of wearing down their main checks, and most importantly graveler still has a much higher attack stat than marowak, packing stab rock slide and the trusty explosion to go off with a bang. Gen 1 marowak can't just catch a break, tho I guess it does win the 1 on 1 matchup against graveler thanks to being faster than it, resisting it's moves and packing blizzard, so I guess theres that.
@@wertyxq3468 Rock is neutral to electric and I don't know but but even in gen 1, I don't see many Flies (flys?) and Sky Attacks. Still, yeah Graveler is probably better.
@@rifasclub ? You are obviously hitting the electric types supereffectively with earthquake, rock slide is for the flying types that may come in. Most importantly, STAB rock slide is important to 2hitko them, take a look at primeape's rock slide for example, it can't even do that to golbat, and the same applies to marowak's blizzard. And if for some reason an electric type tries to pivot in to no get hit by earthquake then rock slide will still hurt them a lot because again, it comes from it's higher attack stat, and it's STAB. And again, this is all functioning in your hipotetical scenario where those two pokemon coexist in the same tier, which I guess it would be some sort of zu, which apparently it doesn't exist at all and it was only speculated, maybe played once in a while with the rejects of pu, from what I gathered is full of unevolved pokemon, and hitmonchan of course. I do not know anything else, I basically confused this for PU, wich already has the excellent sandslash. Also you are seem to be intentionally forgetting the only viable flying type move that's actually being used, "Drill peck". Dodrio is locked in uu, but doduo and fearow exist you know? Not to mention they would rarely use their flying stab except maybe to catch a gastly, but rather spam their powerful normal stab's respectively, which guess what? Rock also happens to resist!
It's find of funny how after years of Years of Gen 1 being the jank gen with explosions and Gen 2 being known as the stall paradise, Gen 1 ended up becoming basically a wall war and Gen 2 is the generation that now has explosions. Life working in ironic ways.
there's something else that people found out about the RBY mechanics that was also never implemented in simulators You cannot catch a 15/15/15/15 pokemon in RBY iirc
I mean tbf it is still usable in OU.Like i would take golem over machamp any day in OU its just that rhydon does what it does ever so slightly better.I still think its worth a shot if you want a more fast paced hyper offensive team but if your new to gen 1 or you want to win more consistently then Rhydon is just the better mon overall.
Yeah but isn't that exactly the point? If another pokemon does the same but better, there's no reason to pick it from an optimal point of view. Therefore, less usage. Therefore, demoted from the tier. Tons of pokemon have usage in higher tiers, including ubers even tho they're at the bottom ones in the history of competitive pokemon. (to name a few : quagsire, ditto, smeargle, ...) But there's a reason why they're not fixed in the higher tiers. Same goes for Golem.
It’s so wild to me, how long this actually went undiscovered. I noticed it within days, when fighting Lorelei. During long stall battles between snorlax and her Lapras with bodyslam, I was like „damn, that’s odd“.
Psychic is by far the best typing in gen one; no weaknesses, super effective against Tentacruel and Gengar and the two very best Pokémon in the game are two banned psychic Pokémon. Is just that Snorlax, Chansey and Tauros are better than Alakazam, Slowbro and Satermie as a whole, which to be fair are still OU threats on their own.
At least porygon fans can now use it's favorite mon legitimaly, as it now has a real niche as a pokemon that can wall all variants of snorlax that lack amnesia (which for me forms part of the best sets snorlax can ever run, but each to their own) thanks to snorlax not breaking past it's reflect while not virtually having a chance to crit through it repeatdly, while porygon attempts to freeze it while stalling it down. Porygon is very cool, and now you can use it so, it's not all too bad I guess.
Funnily enough, now Porygon counters Tauros and Snorlax and Porygon was arguably the very worst fully evolved Pokémon before discovering this, so it won't get it out of untired, but that's something. Still, yeah, the OU normal type trinity is now a must use.
@@rifasclub I don't think it's untiered, it has a decent spot in NU as a recovering special attacker that can spread paralysis, tho it doesn't hold up very well against golem. Also, it doesn't counter tauros at all, that thing get's a crit 1/5 of the time, which in my book and experience it means nearly always if it's not my tauros, and you can't switch him on a body slam, because if it gets a roll that's not minimum it can very well KO it with the following hyperbeam! at best he can try to check it, but only if you feel like this is your lucky day, so in other words, no tauros, yes snorlax without amnesia, because hthe latter is slower and gets virtually no crits. Also, really? where did you even hear something like that? porygon the worst fully evolved pokemon? ever heard of hitmonchan? farfetch? arguably almost all the remaining pokemon? Unlike those porygon at least can spread paraylysis and at least TRY to hit everything with its coverage moves, which he has plenty! not to mention it has recover? does pidgeot get recover? does it also get bolbeam? and because of that, unlike the other more terrible pokemon that would kill to get a fraction of it's movepool, it's also much better at fishing for luck! something that's actually very important if you are a BAD pokemon!
golem is actually still not awful in rby ou in terms of viability rankings. they were just bad in uu and not nearly as good as rhydon in ou. so calling it trash isn't really fair imo
The meta really has shifted. Explosion isn't as good anymore, because it can't consistently kill Chansey now which is important because both Golem and Exeggutor use it. Explosion and Golem being able to attack before Rhydon (this one to a lesser extent because Golem doesn't 2HKO Rhydon) were the reasons to go Golem over Rhydon. It's become really hard to use Golem as Golem just won't do well against any top OU threat and you really need to be able to eat Thunder Wave.
Pieces of oddly specific, but fascinating competitive history like this are the reason I love this channel
Exactly
yes lol
proof showdown/smogon players are casuals
I think the extra fascinating thing about this is that the reverse has happened in Gen 2, with Golem becoming super popular and Rhydon falling off a lot. This was a really great explanation!
Hey, Freezai could do a video on that, too
people definitely figured out how good explosion offense was in gen 2 after so many years of stall.
Then Golem fell off again after they took away Rapid Spin from it...
@@martinus_mars Is Golem just bad and uncompetitive in every game once the games are figured out properly?
what happened there?
Actually the speedrunning community knew about this long before the competitive community did. Still interesting to see such a shift in the meta.
@Bren But accord to screen shots from the video. It wasn't an issue of not being able to code it in, it was literally "hey we didn't even know this quirk existed".
@Bren It has very little to do with an inability to code. By the mid 2000s all simulators had coding for tbolt not to paralyze electrics because that was common knowledge. Also sims had abilities and EV IV system, etc. Being unable to code something so basic is utterly absurd to even think was a possibility. No the actual truth is basically no one knew about it.
@Cameron L they didn't know anything about Golem's viability lol they just knew that normals couldn't be paralyzed by normal type attacks. Why? Because speedrunners play on the physical cart or emulator whereas competitive players play on a sim. Makes sense. Speedrunners might not even know that Tauros is the best gen 1 OU mon because their job is to speedrun.
@Cameron L I don't think you can call something a lie if you don't understand what's being said
@Cameron L you know nothing about speed running, they datamine like crazy.
What's the most crazy thing about the Body Slam discovery is that they TOLD us in Pokémon Stadium 2. There's an Academy in the game where they cover changes from Gen I to Gen II, and there's a bit there where they tell us that in Gen I moves couldn't status Pokémon of the same type, but in Gen II they can. They use an Electabuzz getting paralysed by Thunderbolt to demonstrate it, which the game explains wasn't possible before in the original games. So they kind of did tell us and there were probably people out there who knew about Body Slam and normal types because millions of people had that game!
Twineedle can poison a bug pokémon.
@@franko1597 Because poison is treated differently compared to the other statuses. It couldn't poison poison-types, but could poison anyone else regardless of the move's type
@@smaragdchaos Twinneedle actually COULD poison Poison-types in Gen 1 and 2 (and Steel in Gen 2).
You only touched that point on the surface, but this seems to be yet another case of a Pokemon that had uses in a high tier (OU), but is unviable in a lower tier (UU). RBY UU doesn't have the demand for a bulky normal resist the way OU does, so Golems main use just wasn't needed. This is similar to Quagsire and Gastrodon having their uses in OU and even Ubers despite being RU/UU/PU by usage. Before the Body Slam discovery, Golem had enough usage to stay in OU, but once it droped, it went almost straight to NU because it was way worse in UU than in OU.
also, don't Water types kinda rule over Gen 1 UU in a similar vein to normal types ruling over OU?
Pokémon that kinda ignore the tiering system are fascinating to me. Mons like Ditto, Shuckle, or Pyukumuku can be seen in any tier from Ubers to ZU. I'd love to see a video discussing that in more depth.
This is even echoed by Alolan Golem in gen 7. It's useful in OU because it can trap and kill Heatran, but not useful enough to be in the tier. Then in every lower tier it is 100% useless.
@@japanpanda2179 in Monotype Electric A-Golem is good too, it has Stealth Rock, a strong physical movepool and trapping Power
Quagsire only seems to show up a lot when the overall power level of certain mons gets a bit too high because Unaware + Water/Ground typing can be the perfect counter to many busted setup mons. However when there isn't a dominant threat where Unaware and that typing is needed it kinda just chills in the lower tiers because you have other options that are better overall. It only shows up when the other things that are normally better than it don't work and you all of a sudden need that Unaware Water/Ground combo.
Kinda interesting that Golem wasn't good in UU despite being OU for most of RBY. Goes to show how different two metagames in the same generation could be.
Definitely, with the exception of Gen 4 all generations have a very different OU and UU
Also why Reuniclus has been decent in OU every gen despite normally chilling in RU or why Volcanion is set to rise to OU despite being pretty bad in UU.
@@maagic2031 isnt volcanion ru?
@@alphanbuster9292 It's RU because it was bad in UU.
@@maagic2031 well
The most interesting part is that Stadium 2 told us about this so-called hidden mechanic in the Gen 1 games long ago.
I have a feeling a good chunk of the people playing via Showdown never touched the early Gen games, especially the side stuff, outside of the site. That being said, I never actually used Body Slam until my most recent play through of Yellow because I always had Thunderwave and just plain stronger attacks for the story and even then you don’t face that many Normal types that are challenging so it’s not something that you notice outside of a challenge run of some kind.
I remember reading something on the smogon forums about how its impossible to catch a perfect IV geodude in gen 1, and people were debating whether trading one from gen 2 would be allowed. I never did find out the conclusion of this.
I think they allow that for the purpose of DVs, but no GSC-exclusive movesets for the original 151 (e.g. Aerodactyl with Earthquake).
Golem hit rock bottom.
Ba dum tss
...so you're telling me golem used to be a rock _top_ ? mighty interesting...
It's not Very Effective.
Funny joke, but it's really stone cold toward Golem.
harr harr
I was so confused about the "discovery", so having it finally explained was nice. Amazing video
slight correction - Chansey and Snorlax WERE already on every GOOD competitive team in 2014, it's just Reflect was rarely seen and chansey didn't run seismic toss. Also the rhydon/golem debate wasn't as clear cut in golem's favor as you make it sound, some players were already adamant Rhydon was better even back then.
I think the meta would have EVENTUALLY shifted to Rhydon anyway given enough time and new players, since looking back, rhydon might have always been better. I was a diehard pro-golem guy back then and after using the same pokemon since 2003 it was hard to convince me to change my mind. I think a lot of players were like that, stuck in the mindset of using the same Pokémon since the beginning, and It took the metagame shifting hard for players to finally switch.
Outside of reflect not being as present back then to nulify the effects of explosion, something that ocurred to me is that slowbro may have been more popular during that time, and golem already having explosion to deal with it while simulteaneously checking the electrics was more apreciated as a result, because I don't think they were too keen of making sacrifices to fit victribel in their team, especially since wrap wasn't recognized as a proper tool back then, more do like a cheese move.
But those are just my thoughts.
Eh you can at least make the argument for not having snorlax on t wave spam teams. It doesn’t really benifit much from the entire opponent’s team being paralyzed like a wrapper or even machamp does nor does it learn twave
With reflect being common on Chansey now, does that make Chansey the best Snorlax switchin in the game? You get in on body slam, never get paralyzed (which is what makes Reflect so much better), set up reflect, and now Snorlax will never beat you unless he tries to freeze or explode on you.
@@drunyon214 snorlax can possibly pp stall with sleep. And letting a set with amnesia setup isn’t the best idea. Maybe it’s a good idea if your goal is to make it sleep then switch in a wrapper to abuse that but that’s about it.
I just find it kinda sad that what little niche differences Golem granted compared to Rhydon are just vastly outclassed by going all in on more Normal types who were already seeing high usage anyway so you weren't reaching to cover specific niches.
Request: Why is Quagsire so... Quagsire? It's a Pokemon which has consistently been a lower tier lifer, yet somehow always found ways to finagle its way into viability in many, many tiers, including even Ubers.
what you're asking for is a proper documentary, but i'd still love to see it
One word: Unaware.
Slightly longer: Quagsire just does what it wants.
unaware is just fucking cracked lmao
Unaware is the main answer, but its typing is also godlike. Water/Ground has only one weakness (double weakness to Grass, which isn't even that common as an attacking type), one immunity (Electric, very useful for avoiding many sources of paralysis including TWave), and 4 resistances (Fire, Rock, Steel and Poison). The combination of that ability, that typing, decent stats and a wide movepool containing a lot of useful stuff makes it always relevant, especially for stopping setup sweepers that can neither demolish it with a super effective move nor overpower it with their upped stats. Quag laughs in the face of men and gods alike.
Unaware isn't the only thing that made Quag good, although Unaware made it viable for many more tiers it was still viable in past gens using Water Absorb, his movepool and typing is just that good he could fill niches
Thanks for this, used to browse Smogon over a decade ago and Golem used to be OU, so I was stunned to see that on a revisit, it had dropped all the way to NU.
Kinda weird how just a discovery of a one line code can change a competitive's game entire strategy.Damn
"discovery"
The knowledge has been around for 10 years.
@@vyor8837 But at that time it was a discovery, they’re not wrong.
@@vyor8837 it was still "discovered" at some point (10 years ago)
I mean, it was stated in stadium 2 that paralysis from body slam won't land on normal types, so yeah... It's kinda surprising nobody had known about it until the end of 2014
I sincerely love how abruptly these videos end.
I like obscure and intricate trivia facts like this, I find them more interesting than the ones that can be summed up with "the mon is broken" like why was Dracovish or Greninja banned, altough the way you explain in extreme detail what part of their kits make them so good in their metagame is very good too
Hyper Beam skipping the recharge after a K.O. needs to come back.
You never stop with the niche stories/metagame explainations! Keep it up bro. Love the content
Make more videos on gen 1. It’s the most interesting generation mechanically and not many are educated on it due to how different it is
Big yellow has good gen 1 videos
would recommend big yellow, they make great vids about competitive gen 1 :>
I would just recommend watching crystal_ and chickasaurus evie's videos, because they are the ones who are constantly discovering these stuff and making informative videos about it.
@@minimaxify his videos are so interesting.
@@scrollingonthiswebsite they?
I love how decades later peope can still discover things about pokemon. People might complain about its' code being held together by duct tape and bubblegum but we still discover new stuff all the time. Its amazing. I doubt theres many other video games that have undergone this level of scrutiny
2:28 "It shouldn't be exploding early" good one there
Could you maybe do a video on dugtrio? Specifically how it went from OU in Gens 3-6 to untiered in Gen 7 and 8. I don’t think there’s been a fall of tiers that bad since lucifer.
IIRC Arena Trap Got banned after Smogon stopped updating the tier list in multiple formats. So Dugtrio is only OU by Technicality as it was still OU at the end of the BW era but it's main niche got banned for Gen 4 onwards. Sometimes there are bans put into place after the tier list stopped updating on Smogon, I'm pretty sure ADV Mr. Mime is in ubers due to all the baton pass win fishing that it was used for rather than its actual power with baton pass.
upvoted your comment just for the clever joke
I think a video on why dugtrio is very good in gen 1 uu is going to be far more interesting, considering how everyone knows about arena trap. Also those gen 2 sub swagger sets, jesus christ.
That’s an easy one, Arena trap is banned, and without it, Dugtrio is ass
@@costby1105 dugtrio also had its base attack increased from 80 to 100 in SM, so previously there was a lot of people it had trouble threatening due to its low attack but base 100 attack changed that drastically
Man, you discover 1 little immunity, & everything just spirals out of control, & it all comes tumbling down.
Neat analysis video! Thanks for uploading!
Worth noting, while what was said here is the reasons it dropped to NU, it's not a bad pokemon in OU.
It's not the easiest pokemon to use but if you know how to, it can still be a great addition to a team.
All though arguably harder to pull off, this also applies to uu. Being able to threaten a paralyzed articuno and barrage hard hitting earthquakes when giving the opportunity while simulteaneously checking electabuzz and kadabra to a certain extent is pretty damn good and unique.
Forgot to mention that bringim him on the field it's made easier thanks to to the partial trapping utility that wrap provides, functioning as a pseudo u-turn that defines the metagame as a whole, not to mention golem resists the move, making it more useful for pivoting.
It's not bad but it's just outclassed by Rhydon. But yes, it is still much better in OU than in UU because of the way the meta is.
@@wannabecinnabon in many ways, yes golem is a more reliable and better option, but golems explosion is enough to make it better is a lot of situations.
A simplified way to say it would be that Rhydon is better on more defensive or balanced teams, while golem is better on more offensive teams.
@@wertyxq3468 Yeah no, not really, Articuno normally runs agility which lets it ignore the paralysis drop, which it would use on the turn golem comes in and still threaten to OHKO it, and Electabuzz isn't common enough to warrant running Golem to check. Meanwhile it can't get in very well against anything else and most of the tier outspeed and threatens to OHKO/2HKO. There are also multiple pokemon that can switch into it decently well such as the grasses, vaporeon, gyarados, and dnite, (those last 2 relying on prediction) before forcing it out. By comparison, other wallbreakers like Kangaskhan, Gyarados, Dragonite, and Dodrio, have far fewer answers than golem does and consistently accomplish more on a game to game basis. It can work in UU, but its not very good.
RIP Golem. whenever i played casually, i always had Rhydon on my team, because Golem required an in game trade, which was too much of a hassle.
plus you can catch Rhydon fairly commonly in Cerulean Cave in Pokemon yellow version, which is a great place to save your game, and catch a whole bunch of Rhydon, and try to find one with that 15 attack DV
Late but i dislike how the pokemon inside cerulean cave changed over the gens.(also adding wobbuffet to it was a mistake).
That's fascinating! Thanks for sharing
I knew golem usage dropped over time, but I didn't realize this was the reason. Cool vid.
Having started to play in 2017 in gen 1 ou specifically, watching the metagame legitimately shift in the last few years has been wild, considering how golem/Rhydon were still treated as somewhat interchangeable even then.
Golem is pretty good in NU though. Its stats are pretty high for the tier and NU has this problem were every fire spinner in the game is in the tier and they are really good and most of the good water type are in the upper tiers
you can make a half your team consist of just fire spinners and the other half just to counter what fire is weak too and have a really good chance at winning. fire spin should be banned from NU honestly
Can you remind me what fire spin does (too lazy to look it up myself)?
@@lkjkhfggd In Gen 1, moves like Bind, Clamp, and Fire Spin actually stop the opposing Pokemon from doing anything while being trapped. That's actually the main reason Dragonite is used, since Dragon is a trash type and Flying has like 2 moves in Gen 1. It just perma-wraps anything slower than it.
@@lkjkhfggd In Generation 2 onwards, Trapping attacks (Wrap, Bind, Clamp, Fire Spin.) prevented the victim from switching, but not from attacking. In Generation 1, it's the reverse: Trapping moves let you switch, but they prevent you from USING MOVES.
If you get hit with a trapping move in Generation 1, you can't use any moves for its whole random duration, be that 2, 3, 4 or even 5 turns.
& if the trapping move user is FASTER than their victim, they can restart the trap EVERY TURN; So long as you don't miss, any slower foe can't make a move. Literally.
there where many instances of me having to switch moltres on an earthquake, just to double back to blastoise to take less damage from rock slide/bodyslam, or just risk the fire spin if i really don't have another choice. Golem just hits too hard for the tier man, and mandibluzztoise is already tasked with mostly checking virtually almost every offensive threat that just so happened to tumble down to rock bottom NU. So yeah, I (maybe) make sure my teams don't get destroyed by golem every time he switches in.
Snorlax: "See me as I am, no longer afraid of anything!"
porygon: hi
I'm gonna be honest. I don't actually play competitive Pokémon. At most maybe some random team battles occasionally. But I've still grown to love this channel. The videos are short (although I wouldn't mind longer ones too) so I always feel like I can watch it whenever, they're also just interesting. I think that mainly lends to the way its presented, not just the info. You could definitely make a video saying this information, and have it be very boring. But their videos somehow always balance that line perfectly, of being pretty niche and nerdy, but still avoiding being boring!
Yay, you used my suggestion!
It’s amazing how taking a shortcut in programming can have such a heavy effect on a game.
I believe the reason Body Slam doesn’t paralyze normals and such is a side-effect from them making Ice, Fire and Poison types immune to their respective statuses. Instead of taking the time to specifically code each type, they just made a “types can’t be statused by moves of their same type,” not thinking about moves like Body Slam or Tri-Attack that have statuses without being associated with their expected types
Tri attack doesn't inflict any status in gen 1.
Makes me wonder if Twin needle can inflict poison onto poison types
@@Chaosfly10 Twineedle can poison poison and steel types in gens 1 and 2!
@@Tomix4k That's pretty awesome actually! Just wish that move was on a more viable pokemon even though I love beedrill
@@rifasclub Ah! My bad there
Yeah, it's a weird but unique thing in gen 1, where pokemon can't be given a status by moves of the same type as them. I honestly think it should be something that could be brought back as it'd be a nice little interesting thing to add on top.
That would mean Grass types are immune to Stun Spore/Sleep Powder/Spore in Gen 1?
@@mrboost4186 that and electric types being immune to prlz and fire types to burn...
@@mrboost4186 pretty sure they are
@@mrboost4186 They already are, powder moves in general don't affect Grass-types anymore. Though they weren't immune to those in Gen 1, pure status moves were treated differently, it was only side-effects that couldn't affect the same type as the move.
It already works like that body slam was just an oversight. It's one of the few moves that makes a status that's not of the same type
I love seeing the waves the bodyslam change made with the community. Its really fascinating and adds alot to RBY's storied metagame.
I love how the both things looks unrelated at first, but once you explain, make sense.
How a simple discovery ruined Golem's career.
Literally my favorite Pokemon in the entire game. I had one in Pokemon Leaf green that straight up beat half my older brother's team. We were kids but up until gen 8 I ran Golem in every team I played. (Note, I only play monotype)
I like how it took Smogon until 2014 to realize the paralysis quirk of Gen 1 when Stadium 2 basically tells you this and the speedrunning community knew about it well before lol
It might be because competitive scenes of any game are kinda snobbish and only pay attention to competitive stuff and tend to either ignore or flat out dismiss anything else.
True. I've seen more than enough competitive players not know incidental shit like Scald removing freeze on its user, or Electric Terrain preventing sleep against grounded Pokémon.
@@lytethekyte That's pretty accurate
An intresting additional note is that fire types are infact not immune to burn inately in generation 2 only that they cant be burned due to sharing a type with fire moves which cause triattack to be able to burn fire types in generation 2.
You are doing a great job on those short informative video's, i really enjoy them. You have earned my sub man.
1:54 "One of the important things that Golem used to do was explode on Chansey" PAUSE
Well, never seen any of your videos before but I love bites of history or lore, and this shit was a good watch. Subscribe earned.
Welp, golem got grounded.
My man's speedrunning youtube algorithm 30k almost already
Golems world got turned on its head.
What a discovery.
It's super interesting how metagames can change so far after the games were released! I've never played Gen 1 (or any of the remakes tbh... don't look at me like that), so this certainly comes as news to me!
I love how different gen 1 is
This is my goto channel for my competitive daily dose.
Ohhhh... Amazing how the mecanics can change to turn GEN 1 glitch into a new meta. I have no words.
That is absolutely insane to me. Golem was always a huge powerhouse in the gen 1 meta game and honestly in a lot of respects was just better than Rhydon. Now it can't even hold it's own in UU because it can't deal with the water types. Insane.
Outside of explosion what did golem have that rhydon couldn't do better?
@@gojirarex5138 absolutely nothing
As the last OU Golem user, I think its higher Speed is also worth mentioning since it will beat Rhydon in the 1v1 scenario. Still, doing better into 1 mon at the cost of worse performance into the rest of the tier outside of Explosion is a tradeoff I think most people don't want to make.
Ultimately when people see a mon get dropped from OU they just assume its "become useless." Golem is still a genuinely strong Pokemon in the right situation, same with Victreebel and Lapras (the latter of whom I think is much worse than Golem in competitive OU). But I can certainly understand why people would be less receptive to it with Rhydon as its competition.
I also use golem but i use It with victribel
I think It works beter than rhydon if You treat victribel asa win condtion with wrap sleep powder and razor leaf.
Golem can counter jolteon Zapdos and Gengar Wich shut down victribel and he can explode when there's none of those
0:30 I'm subbed & chill voice
The weird part of no one ever knowing this is that the EXACT thing abuot normal types being immune to para by T-wave is in stadium 2's classroom mode in one of the lessons there.
There has to be at least one guy who figured out the body slam quirk back in the 90s who now feels extremely vindicated that it took over 15 years for everyone else
It bugs me that this is considered a discovery when Pokémon Stadium 2 literally tells you that this was a mechanic.
fun fact: initially after the discovery golem WAS considered better than Rhydon by a long shot
3:05 Don't you mean "Butterfree effect"?
...Okay, I'll see myself out.
I’m always amazed by the math that goes on competitive play
I'm having fucking flashbacks to Gen 1 Netbattle battles taking forever because of Paralysis 20+ years ago... my Gen 1 competitive trauma is a LIE!
One thing to note, golem still has a niche in OU because explosion isn’t awful, it’s just not quite as valuable. So it still has some use.
Yeah, I remember old false swipe gaming videos talking about how it was it or rhydon and then nowadays its always just rhydon
Great video, as always. I recommend you to have a tiny outro, the ending always seems a bit abrupt
People back then: Reject Rhydon embrace Golem
Genwunners now: Well, Move aside Rhydon is amazing now
0:32 cool tauros nickname
Insane that wasn't discovered until 2014, I just replayed Red and saw that plastered all over Bulbapedia, that's so funny.
Love this kind of content
"Uhh hey guys. It turns out that Gen 1 Chansey, Snorlax, and Tauros are even stronger than we thought."
This is only on Smogon / RBY cartridges / ROMs, though. In Stadium, Golem should retain its usage, right?
To be fair though...If rhydon didn't exist it might still be used up there right? So it is just the case of a pokemon being completely outclassed rather than fundamentally trash (yes I count them as two separate things.)
If rhydon wasnt there then golem would have probably shifted its sets to be more like Rhydon.Although once again it would be a bit worse since for example it cant set up 101 hp subs.The meta would probably be a bit worse in my opinion since reflect would become even more omnipresent without Rhydon.
@@noishfanboy1141 No doubt. I am only pointing out the difference between a outclassed poke and a fundamentally bad poke.
@@noahhendrix3498 ok
I think this discovery occurred so late because, pokemon effectiveness and status was a thing after gen 6 when Electric Types can't be paralyzed and Grass Types nullifies powder moves.
Who could think Gen 1 had this type of stuff lol
actually i'm pretty sure cloyster being frz immune was common knowledge
Is there a reason why people say that SD/Explosion HALVED the enemy’s defense instead of IGNORED or PIERCED half of it? Did the enemy somehow become twice as vulnerable to physical hits if they survived the blowing up?
Edit: I’m a dumb dumb and forgot to add in the “half” part after ignore/pierce
Halved it when dealing damage
SD/Explosion only halves the defense stat during damage calculation, defense boosts that were already there still apply bar crits, didn't you hear what he said about how exploding to a pokemon with a reflect up being moslty inefective?
(All though now im not sure if he mentioned that at all, either way how did you reach that conclusion?)
@@loudwhispre9406 The original comment's phrasing suggested that they thought Explosion literally didn't account for the Defense stat at all.
@@loudwhispre9406 look at the context of the reply
@@DisastrousIntentionally So why not say “ignores half the enemy’s defense?” Saying “halves the enemy’s defense” sounds like you’re dropping it by two stages or smth
You know, this drop was so sharp...
You would think there was some sort of power behind it, assisting Golem to be the best it could be.
*and then one day, it didn't answer.*
Nothing but glitch noise...
Ok now thats just depressing.
1:15 what was that "wah" there?
Imagine if you will a level 85 chansey. You mock the opponent and they seismic toss your snorlax 3 times in a row for 255 damage.
*Pity!* You say to yourself. Then all of a sudden your sleep doesnt work and you get thunderwaved. You now realize that gen 1 recovery moves CAN FAIL.
Oof, yeah that's a HUGE drop. Time makes fools of us all isn't usually supposed to mean that but for Golem it sucks super hard.
Crazy but such a mechanic in Gen 1 makes sense it feels like it would have some immunity thing to the type if T Bolt can't Para Elec.
If you're open to taking suggestions: something I'm wondering is why Scizor went from being an all-time great from Gens 2-7 to being projected to drop from SwSh OU soon. (It's still great in BDSP OU, though.)
Eh, Scizor wasn't really considered great until like mid gen 4. Up to that point, it had a few niches as a baton passer and that was about it.
@@MrZahsome yeah, despite the great stats and amazing typing, it's movepool was just too weak until Platinum gave it Bullet Punch. No coincidence that basically every Scizor has run it since!
LOVED THIS VIDEO
I see people are taking this change at face value. People saying that “Golem is complete OU trash!” Is pretty wrong. Like, no... Golem is still pretty viable for use in OU
Yeah. As long as you're not using it as an inferior Rhydon.
It would be cool if Body Slam's chance for paralysis was based on weight. A Chansey Body Slam would have little chance. A Snorlax Body Slam would be almost guaranteed.
U can say that rhydon was rock solid
I know this vid is old but I think it might be prudent to point out something. In gen 1 no pokemon will be affected by a status condition if they are the same type as the move. If an ice type move could burn it would not burn ice type pokemon and if a ground move could posion it wouldn't affect ground types. It just so happens that the only moves I can think of that would ever do this is body slam and tri-beam. Both of these will not affect normals but can freeze/burn/paralize ice/fire/electric types respectively as the move itself is normal type
tri attack was a strength clone in gen 1
Can you do a video on what determines the available formats on Showdown? Like is there a reason they still don't have an anything goes or national dex format for doubles?
hey, i saw you were using the random battles addon but mine doesnt work. do you know why?
I find metagames with so few viable Pokémon very interesting because each tier is so wildly different. Golem was better in OU than it was in UU because of how different the meta was in UU, because there just isn't a lower tier equivalent of e.g. Zapdos.
You just wouldn't see this happening in a format like gen 8, where there are hundreds of viable pokémon because each tier is still fundamentally similar. For example, let's say Garchomp, Urshifu and Melmetal was banned from OU. Suddenly, there isn't much need to run Slowbro anymore, so it drops to UU. Slowbro won't be worse in OU than UU because, on a fundamental level, UU is similar to OU, and Slowbro would still have it's purpose of beating mons like Zygarde, Lycanroc and Conk.
Idk if I’d say this “ruins” Golem, but yea. An unfortunate turn of events for the it.
@@mnm1273 it’s still quite usable in OU tho
@@mnm1273 yes, but it is still a fine Pokémon to use. Not ruined at all
Well at least marowak isn’t getting outclassed by graveler anymore
Im sure that in whatever tier marowak and gravwler coexist, the latter still outclasses it, the rock typing it's very useful to negate the flimsy attempts of birds and electric types of wearing down their main checks, and most importantly graveler still has a much higher attack stat than marowak, packing stab rock slide and the trusty explosion to go off with a bang.
Gen 1 marowak can't just catch a break, tho I guess it does win the 1 on 1 matchup against graveler thanks to being faster than it, resisting it's moves and packing blizzard, so I guess theres that.
@@wertyxq3468 Rock is neutral to electric and I don't know but but even in gen 1, I don't see many Flies (flys?) and Sky Attacks. Still, yeah Graveler is probably better.
@@rifasclub ?
You are obviously hitting the electric types supereffectively with earthquake, rock slide is for the flying types that may come in. Most importantly, STAB rock slide is important to 2hitko them, take a look at primeape's rock slide for example, it can't even do that to golbat, and the same applies to marowak's blizzard.
And if for some reason an electric type tries to pivot in to no get hit by earthquake then rock slide will still hurt them a lot because again, it comes from it's higher attack stat, and it's STAB.
And again, this is all functioning in your hipotetical scenario where those two pokemon coexist in the same tier, which I guess it would be some sort of zu, which apparently it doesn't exist at all and it was only speculated, maybe played once in a while with the rejects of pu, from what I gathered is full of unevolved pokemon, and hitmonchan of course. I do not know anything else, I basically confused this for PU, wich already has the excellent sandslash.
Also you are seem to be intentionally forgetting the only viable flying type move that's actually being used, "Drill peck".
Dodrio is locked in uu, but doduo and fearow exist you know?
Not to mention they would rarely use their flying stab except maybe to catch a gastly, but rather spam their powerful normal stab's respectively, which guess what? Rock also happens to resist!
It's find of funny how after years of Years of Gen 1 being the jank gen with explosions and Gen 2 being known as the stall paradise, Gen 1 ended up becoming basically a wall war and Gen 2 is the generation that now has explosions.
Life working in ironic ways.
reflect isn't all that overbearing
remember, lax's special bulk this gen is only decent
just slap it with eggy's psychic
Love this video.
there's something else that people found out about the RBY mechanics that was also never implemented in simulators
You cannot catch a 15/15/15/15 pokemon in RBY iirc
The logic behind it being that you can trade those dv perfect pokemon from gen 2, but without any tradeback moves allowed
@@wertyxq3468 but this entered a grey area regarding tradebacks, which of course people discarded because it was silly
I mean tbf it is still usable in OU.Like i would take golem over machamp any day in OU its just that rhydon does what it does ever so slightly better.I still think its worth a shot if you want a more fast paced hyper offensive team but if your new to gen 1 or you want to win more consistently then Rhydon is just the better mon overall.
Yeah but isn't that exactly the point? If another pokemon does the same but better, there's no reason to pick it from an optimal point of view.
Therefore, less usage.
Therefore, demoted from the tier.
Tons of pokemon have usage in higher tiers, including ubers even tho they're at the bottom ones in the history of competitive pokemon. (to name a few : quagsire, ditto, smeargle, ...)
But there's a reason why they're not fixed in the higher tiers.
Same goes for Golem.
@@MrBidonboy yeah ok I understand now
It’s so wild to me, how long this actually went undiscovered. I noticed it within days, when fighting Lorelei. During long stall battles between snorlax and her Lapras with bodyslam, I was like „damn, that’s odd“.
Is this true for Pokémon Stadium, too!?
The showdown community never played the carts
How is it that Gen 1 is so buggy that even 20 years later we find more bugs
I feel like this is a huge part of the reason people were pointing the finger at Psychic types for so long.
Psychic is by far the best typing in gen one; no weaknesses, super effective against Tentacruel and Gengar and the two very best Pokémon in the game are two banned psychic Pokémon. Is just that Snorlax, Chansey and Tauros are better than Alakazam, Slowbro and Satermie as a whole, which to be fair are still OU threats on their own.
Is gen 1 competitive better because of this change, or is it worse?
It made already top tier mons into an absolute necessity, so I guess it's worse
At least porygon fans can now use it's favorite mon legitimaly, as it now has a real niche as a pokemon that can wall all variants of snorlax that lack amnesia (which for me forms part of the best sets snorlax can ever run, but each to their own) thanks to snorlax not breaking past it's reflect while not virtually having a chance to crit through it repeatdly, while porygon attempts to freeze it while stalling it down.
Porygon is very cool, and now you can use it so, it's not all too bad I guess.
Funnily enough, now Porygon counters Tauros and Snorlax and Porygon was arguably the very worst fully evolved Pokémon before discovering this, so it won't get it out of untired, but that's something. Still, yeah, the OU normal type trinity is now a must use.
@@rifasclub I don't think it's untiered, it has a decent spot in NU as a recovering special attacker that can spread paralysis, tho it doesn't hold up very well against golem.
Also, it doesn't counter tauros at all, that thing get's a crit 1/5 of the time, which in my book and experience it means nearly always if it's not my tauros, and you can't switch him on a body slam, because if it gets a roll that's not minimum it can very well KO it with the following hyperbeam! at best he can try to check it, but only if you feel like this is your lucky day, so in other words, no tauros, yes snorlax without amnesia, because hthe latter is slower and gets virtually no crits.
Also, really? where did you even hear something like that? porygon the worst fully evolved pokemon? ever heard of hitmonchan? farfetch? arguably almost all the remaining pokemon? Unlike those porygon at least can spread paraylysis and at least TRY to hit everything with its coverage moves, which he has plenty! not to mention it has recover? does pidgeot get recover? does it also get bolbeam? and because of that, unlike the other more terrible pokemon that would kill to get a fraction of it's movepool, it's also much better at fishing for luck! something that's actually very important if you are a BAD pokemon!
golem is actually still not awful in rby ou in terms of viability rankings. they were just bad in uu and not nearly as good as rhydon in ou. so calling it trash isn't really fair imo
The meta really has shifted. Explosion isn't as good anymore, because it can't consistently kill Chansey now which is important because both Golem and Exeggutor use it. Explosion and Golem being able to attack before Rhydon (this one to a lesser extent because Golem doesn't 2HKO Rhydon) were the reasons to go Golem over Rhydon. It's become really hard to use Golem as Golem just won't do well against any top OU threat and you really need to be able to eat Thunder Wave.
Why didn't Snorlax and Chansey use Reflect before this change?
because then they would waste a move slot trying to be a physical wall when the most common physical move has a chance to shut them down