How GOOD was Skarmory ACTUALLY? - History of Skarmory in Competitive Pokemon (Gens 2-6)
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 5 фев 2025
- SKARMORY! The Armor Bird Pokemon! The armored bird with blood red wings may look cool but how did it fare in Competitive Pokemon over the course of the generations? Join False Swipe Gaming and find out with this brief overview of the competitive History of Skarmory!
PATREON!: If you want to support FSG even more or just feeling generous, please go here!: / falseswipegaming
The Official False Swipe Gaming Twitter:
/ falseswipeg
Directed & Edited by Kellen
/ kellen_fsg
Follow Me On Twitch!: / kellen_fsg
Sound Edited by Ryan Gonzales
ryangonzalesfil...
Written By
Zane Bhansali aka Epengu
Follow Him: / epengu
DISCLAIMERS ON FORMATS COVERED:
Notice I said POPULAR formats, meaning a format where there is a significant amount of people who compete in it for tournaments and so on and so forth. Now Popular does not mean official even though two of the formats I will be covering were official formats being Japan Nintendo Cup and VGC, but it is an indicator of what a good portion of competitive players thought was “optimal” at the time. Also sometimes the Pokemon Battle Historia doesn't provide enough information to talk about certain Pokemon so I add Smogon analysis to make sense of it. This is pretty rare though.
To the people asking why I don't cover Smogon Singles for Gens 1 and 2: It wouldn't really be a history video if I covered those because online Smogon gen 1 meta to my knowledge wasn't actually played until late 2000s. I wanted to cover tournaments/competitive battling that was actually played during the early years of Pokemon (late 90s).
To the people asking why I cover Smogon at all for singles: To my knowledge, Smogon was the most popular format for Gens 3-5 and held a number of tournaments throughout the years. As for Gen 6, I am not covering Battle Spot Singles because there is more information and explanations about sets being used relative to their own meta on Smogon. In other words, there are few written analyses about Battle Spot Pokemon besides the Top tiers and I would like to avoid theorycrafting because it may have a hint of bias (though I theorycraft if I REALLY couldn't find information on a certain Pokemon). The keyword here is explanations. Though I did find statistics of most Pokemon used and most moves used, there wasn't really any explanations on why. Also the few Pokemon I did find analysis of for Top Tier Battle Spot Singles had very similar move sets to the Smogon OU sets anyway.
For the record, I do not care what rules or formats people play their battles by nor am I saying these formats are the only formats that should be played. The way you play Pokemon is between you and your opponent and I will not fault you for using evasion or whatever, I just like examining popular tournament formats.
Song Used:
See End of Video
My Twitter:
/ kellen_fsg
Resources and Historical References
History of Rule Variants: bulbapedia.bulb...
Smogon University:
www.smogon.com/
Maikiri
/ nbmakiri
Aaron Cybertron Zheng:
/ cybertronvgc
Pokeaim
/ joeypokeaim
Pokemon Battle Historia:
pokemon.s20.xre...
Nintendo Cup 2000 Team Construction:
pokemon.s20.xre...
Nintendo Cup 2000 Tier List:
pokemon.s20.xre...
FULL RESEARCH SOURCES HERE:
docs.google.co...
Pokemon Japanese Battle Wiki:
wiki.xn--rckteq...
Sprites From:
www.spriters-r...
pldh.net/dex/s...
Skarmory (Pokedex): Despite being clad entirely in iron-hard armor, it flies at speeds *over 180 mph*.
Also Skarmory: speed base stat 70
Venusaur (a fat, heavy-looking plant): I have a speed base stat of 80
I think speed in pokemon really means agility is the battlefield
the pokedex pulls stuff out of its butt
@@skiffy8121 ikr Gardevoir can open black holes, magikarp can junp mountains and freaking machamps can hold mountains with one arm
@@skiffy8121 no it doesn't.
Speed is primarily a gameplay mechanics, it doesn't have any sort or form of relevance on the game's story.
And if it did, speed most likely would represent combat speed, like reaction time and whatnot.
OU in every generation since its debut. Skarmory is that damn good.
Except, it is falling out of favor in Gen 7. Gen 7 is basically Skarmory's unlucky number.
@@shadowtitanx3962 Still OU tho, still too good for UU AND BL.
The Zozo and Rico Suave Podcast gen 8 it will probably drop to uubl or uu. Since corviknight would mean it faces more competition
@@Hayds126 bold of you to assume skarmory even gets into gen 8
John Edelman showdown are keeping all their pokemon. No way they would give up on not having precious lando t
I really enjoyed all of the "... in singles" near the end.
Skarmory is one of the better examples of well competitively designed mons. His stats are pretty average/low except for his defense, but his typying and moves allow it to be a monster
RIP VGC though.
@@Ropalme1914 it's still in OU
@@Ropalme1914 mimikyu is at a c- rank while skarmory is c- rank its a bit better than mimikyu
@@Ropalme1914 oh I thought mimikyu moved down by now haven't looked at ou in a while been too busy playing Pu, Ru and Zu.
To be fair, being not that great in OU is still quite the achievement
skarmory was once my favourite pokemon in primary school we had to make art sculptures out of scrap, paint, and everyday items.
I made a skarmory out of a painted pvc pipe for the body, knives for the wings and tail, forks for the legs and spoons for the head
I GOT AN 'A' FOR THAT ASSIGNMENT
Nice!
Cool!
What is Ur current favorite Pokémon?
I'd say you earned it, and anyone who says otherwise is probably just jealous that they didn't think to make something like that themselves.
Sounds pretty metal
Skarmory is undoubtedly one of the best Pokémon ever
*In singles*
Lol memes
Won't say one of the best. But Definitely the MOST ANNOYING!!
@@devilhex2802 that’s why he said one of
The Meta that actualy matters, VGC sucks
@@kirbyfazendoummoonwalk9214nobody likes you little timmy, stop commenting your trash opinions. Singles and vgs both are good, singles are more reliant on matchup vgc less. Both require strategy and skill thou, and non of them suck, you just suck.
Lay on that CLEFABLE fam. I'm seriously impressed in its transition from ZERO to HERO.
I predicted that it would be OU with the Fairy Type. Nobody believed me!
For real, people don't seem to remember Yung Clef's reign as the Queen of ORAS OU, easily the best Pokémon for gen 6 singles
Trofulds it was?.... I never ran into issues against any of these pokemon sadly... I EV train my squad so idk :/ I never really ran into too many problems
+Bryan Nieves Oh it was if you played Smogon on gen 6, any Clef set was just as viable as the other. I don't think Clef was that prominent in Doubles tho
+Trofulds I used Clefairy in my vgc team #FriendGuardSwag
Who else had Skarmory in their party instead of Pidgeot in Gen 2? I sure did. I was so amazed by the huge amount of resistances and 2 immunities, I even had it in my party in Emerald.
I had Noctowl :P
My johto tean
Typhlosion
Feraligater
Gengar
Dragonite
Sneasel
Swodowodo
since my team was only offense I didn't see it usable because of its attacking power -or lack of- , I might reconsider using it for my stall team that I'm breeding for in Crystal.
CosmicFlare I used it because it has a cool design,then i discovered it was very strong.
Power creep: exists
Skarmory: Hey that doesn’t exist well for me at least
Game Freak: Dexit
Skarmory: NOOOOOOOO!
Game Freak: Corviknight
Skarmory: Down to UU I go.
@@BlueWolfZero No corviknight has some problems that skarmory can take advantage of
for example. Skarmory is guaranteed 1 set of hazards, while corviknight is not
Douglas Archibald Corviknight isn’t made to be a hazard setter.
@@BlueWolfZero I know, then skarmory won't get knocked down to UU if it returns
Its valuable in it's own way
Your Pokemon content feels fresh, it reminds me of RUclips videos of today’s standard. Not that I don’t appreciate other Pokémon channels, they just all feel the same and feel like they are from 2011. Good job!
How good was Seadra/Kingdra ACTUALLY? We need this one!
Seadra doesn't warrant much coverage. The one gen it was fully evolved there were several better water options, and eviolite didn't make it that much better compared to the likes of Porygon2, Magneton, Dusclops etc
Skarmory : Steel/Flying is a fantastic typing
Many years later
Celesteela : I’m in
Corviknight : I’m in
Skarmory : Well ... I think it’s time to retire
It will be fantastic for UU.
@Void Spam It's UU now
@Void Spam F in the chat to pray respects to poor Skarmory
Magnezone : "good, good, the more, the merrier..."
I've only recently found your channel, and I have to say I really love it so far! I've noticed you focus on singles & VGC, and for other mons went into their rankings, for like OU, UU, RU etc. I'm personally only recently thinking about competitive Pokemon more, and was wondering, would you be willing to cover mons involved in Little Cup? Odd enough as it sounds, it's my current preferred metagame, at least on Pokemon Showdown. Sorry if you've got an FAQ covering this-- I couldn't find it D:
Do you remember when you said Scyther deserved his own video?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
He made it yesterday I think
A little thing called Corviknight came into existence and now outclasses Skarmory
I hate it when unique typings like skamories and Dialgas get shared.
I disagree
With me or the guy above.
Blaziking 05 corviknight does not get entry hazards however. It has to rely on roost+bulk up+body press
It gets taunt and defog, along with pressure to stall hazards
Skarmory is one of the best Competitive pokemon ever.
Period.
In singles*
Corviknight: Hold my soda.
@@BlueWolfZero Well atleast skarmory stayed for the second longest time relevant. When we look at the gen 2 mons.
Skarmory has two things that make it be so good: your design and your viability in competitive. Nice video
Make a How Good Was about Clefable or Jolteon
I feel like this is a Pokémon worthy of a remake
You predicted it!
How GOOD was Mew ACTUALLY?
An extremely versatile pokemon who has evolved and adapted every generation, and one of the few pokemon to drop from Ubers into standard play, this could be an interesting video that finally dives into the Ubers meta over time!
Mew's problem is that it was a jack of all trades, master of none. In the early gens, the power creep wasn't as extreme, so a Pokemon with access to every TM and 100s in every stat was far too versatile for standard play. Eventually, people realized that the new Pokemon that were introduced were better than Mew at pretty much anything Mew could try an attempt. Example: Thundurus was a better Nasty Plot sweeper, Scizor was a better SD sweeper, Latios was a better defogger, Rotom was a better momentum volt-switch user, etc. It __can__ do anything, but it's outclassed by something else no matter what it tries to do. Also psychic typing sucks ass.
Hoope that answers your question, as I feel like a Mew video is a long way off.
are you trying to overwork our man?
+TheCanadianWifier I agree that Mew gets outclassed at everything, except for his role as a Defogger, sure the Latis and Fini are good offensive Defoggers but they have a hard time finding a moment to Defog against Offense since they get pressured so much. Mew on the other hand can be tailored to check anything your team is weak to, against any archetype. You're looking weak against Z-Lando and Zygarde, you can use fast Mew with Ice Beam so you can come in on rocks and threaten them with Beam. Weak against Medicham, you can use a slower Mew that threatens Medi and Defensive Lando with Wisp and Ice Beam, and so on
Let's do it with Crobat. It's my favourite poison type.
Pedro Correia it got better during RSE-present
And gen 6 as well.
That's what I said, gen 3- present gens
It's good in gen 2 if you did not know. Sure its not used in ou sure. But if you see it in UU. It was a terrifying threat
I really like the content of your videos. I am no surprise how fast your page grew over the last few months. You provide very good content here, thank you.
I'd like to see Gliscor/Gligar since it's great in battle and also my favorite
and it's STILL part of the meta even in gen 7, though magnezone does give it a hard time.
Imagine someone wanting to troll with magnezone by using embargo so that skarmory can't use shed shell. Yikes.
@@GoTELuckyCharms by that point skarmory would've switched out, so......
SCP- 173 unless Magnezone has magnet pull in which case it's dead
GoldRichness RS Embargo is a move, so switching out takes priority.
Your videos always put a smile on my face even though it's not really new information, just makes me happy 😊
I'd say Crobat/Golbat or Magnezone/Magneton could be an idea worth looking into.
Please do Kingdra! It is the most badass seahorse I know!
Zipzapadam z hell kingdra
Nah not really anymore. And in actuality its really boring to use.
Kingra is my 2nd favourate jhoto pokemon
Seadra AND Kingdra
StraightShooterGaming I don't like seadra was much
RIP Gen 8 skarmory :/ you had a phenomenal run
Crobat would be interesting
Imagine if Skarmony gets an evolution. Pokemon anime fans be like, yeah, new evolution. Pokemon gamers be like, damnnnnn, now everyone will put evolite on Skarmony. 😂😂😂
Somehow I rly doubt they would evolve it or even give it a mega evolution.
Just think about all the fairies we hate.
Skarmory will be the next chansey lol
@@HardGuess Have you forgotten Steelix?
@@rosarioesquivel1126 wdym? skarmory outclasses steelix defensive-wise due to reliable recovery and amazing typing. Walls need to kinda stick around for a long time, tanks are just offensive mons who can take a hit in a pinch.
New skarmory-like mon now! It’s one of the best Pokémon on Corviknight
Skarmory: you took everything from me!
Corviknight: *I don't even know who you are*
How about Magneton/Magnezone?
How good was onix/steelix
Skarmory certainly held an edge over other flying types by having resistance from ice, rock and electric which, until Corviknight in generation 8, remained as the only steel/flying type in the series.
How about Weezing? This is one of the few videos that didn't mention it in Gen 3, but given how often it was mentioned there, I'm curious to see how it did in other generations
THE PORYGON FAM!!!
I come here to pay my respect for my fav hazard layering tool bird. F. Your usage will never be forgotten :(
I want Slowbro! I want Slowbro!
Who is here after watching the remake?
surprisingly, very few of us
Celesteela and Corviknight: That's a nice type combination you have there.... I think we will take it!
I wanna see Crobat next! 👍
StellarGuard 1999 well... in GSC it sucked af. But it got bettwr throughout the gens
StellarGuard 1999 exactly my favourite poison type!
I use crobat and its great with this moveset
-fly
-poison fang
-confuse ray
-super fang
/And maybe haze and mega drain
Its a good pokemon
@@mrhotshot1521 Fly is a bad move in competitive.
The set i'd run would be:
-brave bird
-roost
-cross poison
-u-turn
No crobat is good in gsc uu. Because it is a sweeper there. It's flaws are it's shallow movepool. So crobat has a good start in gsc uu
Do Crobat!
Metal chicken’s winning strike and status keeps growing and growing on each gen
what about crobat?
How about Slowbro next?
So happy to see my favourite Pokemon get this video. Skarmory really is the GOAT
How. Good. Was. The. Porygon. Line. Actually.
It good it evolve forms are good porygon 2 is good with return
porygon Z is the best it has ever been with Z conversion boosting all of its stats and changing its type to something better
Porygon2 arguably overshadowed its evolution ever since it got Eviolite, but Porygon-Z definitely came into its own with Z-Conversion.
That's probably be more difficult because Porygon-2 and Z are very different in their playstyles. One's a wall, the other's a special attacker.
Porygon2 is a Great Wall with eviolite and porygon z with z conversion is pretty good. Probably seperate videos since they play pretty different roles
How Good was Kingdra Actually? This dragon is quite epic!
Agree as kingdra is my favorite pokemon.
I use Kingdra as my mascot on my RUclips channel. I am an unofficial news reporter for an online Pokemon MMO known as "PokeMMO." If you want, I can link you the website: pokemmo.eu/
Kingdra has great stats and typing, but is held back by an awful movepool. It just cannot keep up with it's fellow dragons.
Kingdra can be ran in several different ways even with its poor movepool. You can run it as a Dragon Dancer for physical coverage or a rain dance for that swift swim ability. There might be few more ways to run it that I am not aware of, but do not underestimate this epic seahorse.
Kingdra is definetly not bad. It's just outclassed. Rain is the place where it can shine, but even then there are better rain sweepers.
Ah the pre corviknight days
How GOOD was Empoleon ACTUALLY?
Go for the other steel bird
Within the main adventure, I always find Skarmory infuriating to deal with if I don't have a fire type. I never know what's effective.
Gen 3
Skarmory: Will I have spike support?
Trainer: What? Are you kidding? You ARE the support, son!
Let's do gen 3! History of Gardevoir
Dugtrio? Would be cool to see how Arena Trap affected past gens
Matheus Castello lol, by past gens, it started in gen 3
The only reason a PU Pokemon is Uber, it two hits KO primal Groudon, and with Focus sash and reversal, it can. Deal massive damage to anything that doesn't have priority, even priority since it gets Sucker Punch and with its blazing speed, only a few Ubers can outpace you
Take arena trap out, insta PU, although sand force with something like Hippo or Tyranitar makes so your Earthquake demolishes with ease
It's isn't good at all actually. It's hp, defense are quite garbage and it's speed was good but not great and it's attack is just mediocre. So overall there are better superior ground type mons to use over it. Including Rhyperior.
I am a huge fan you really help me with competitive Pokemon and help me one day enter VGC :)
Slowbro please!
Bronzong please. The reason why trickroom teams are often so great.
Doing a play though of Pokemon Crystal and was looking for a good Moveset to use on Skarmory and this was really helpful and great to watch!
How GOOD was "THE ROCK" Type ACTUALLY?
Fucking amazing offensively. Stealth Rock revolutionized competitive play and made some Pokemon completely irrelevant just by existing. Also, if you combine every pokemon type, it would only have one weakness - a 2x weakness to Rock. The reason why there are no powerful 100% accurate Rock moves is due to it being far too powerful offensively.
Defensively it's terrible lol.
Unless your name is Tyranitar then the typing and all its representatives are shit. All of its offensive moves are dog shit, good luck trying to hit that Stone Edge when you need it to win the game
Stealth Rock is god tho, probably the best move besides Knock Off and U-Turn for single battles
It dosen't matter what you think!
Do Crobat next plz
(9:24) This is an interesting inversion. Normally, the Pokemon highlighted is somewhat bad in singles, but has a unique use in doubles. This makes the Pokemon a good pick in high tier singles play.
Milotic next please :D
Phobic Tribe I predict that it’s near perfect in Gen III, making a fantastic counter to most special attackers, and checking Tyranitar and Salamence well. But a lack of buffs in Gen IV reduced its usefulness, and the poor sea snake has been dropping in the tiers since, especially with a limited movepool.
Phobic Tribe Milotic ❤️❤️❤️
Some eevee action would be niiiceeee
wow I remember being a fan of skarmory back in the pokemon gold days. it really makes me happy to see how great it is!
How good was Golbat/Crobat? Please, Crobat is my favorite Pokémon!
PK Co. Yeah I have good memories with my Crobat
PK Co. it came out
ThatKid__ he appeared on the beginning, and it came out today, the comment was a week ag9
PK - C
You. Son. Of. A. Woman.
Can you do Jolteon next?
Braeden. Inc yeah, I'd like jolteom
When I type a pokemon name you're the top result! Congrats!
The History of Magneton
Bass. Exe definitely!
Do the Johto Starters. You should do all the starters of the next generation before moving on the next.
it's sad that feraligatr is still like 2 points too slow to outspeed mega sceptile after a dragon dance, that could've been cool with the ice punches
I can see it now.
Mega Meganium - Grass/Fairy type - Multiscale
Mega Typhlosion - Fire/Psychic type - Magic Guard
Mega Feraligatr - Water/Dark type - Sheer Force
It would go from "meh" to "That's some OP bullshit!"
On a side note, bulky sword dance Meganium ain't half-bad. Manage to destroy a lot of Garchomps who thought they could one-hit KO a bulky Meganium with poison jab.
It's nice to finally see a pokemon that didn't get shafted in each new gen.
Plz do slowbro
slowbro slowbro slowbro
?
Psychic Slowbro i dont know what he/she means
My favorite bro, Slowbro
Do the others Gen 1 OU originals Jynx, Exeggutor, slowbro, Golem
Good idea. I think he should space them out
”Base 140 defense is nothing to scoff at.” I literally saw it audibly yelled JESUS CHRIST 😆
Let's try a frenzy of eeveelution episodes
How about Crobat?
Im depressed cuz i commented skarmory but still not in the video and im sick
damn bro ur sick
When I first saw this pokemon in that forest of soot I new I had to get it... because ofcourse I couldn't catch it the first time.
Crobat !! Please!!!
How GOOD was Crobat ACTUALLY?
Not as good as I want it to be. It's one of my favorites, but rarely sees usage in any of my competitive teams other than some troll teams where I could fit it in without losing my end game plan.
Ah, Crobat! It is an interesting pokemon. When it came out, Crobat was one of the worst pokemon actually, due to it's awful movepool. However, after that, crobat has stayed relevant. It has been At least UU in every gen, as well as OU and BL, And has switched from physical attacker to special to support to gimmicks, as it has quite the versatility. Even when it was dropped to UU, it still had a unique niche. So all around, i would say Crobat is pretty good!
Epitome of UU in the same way Staraptor is the epitome of BL
I can tell you right now.
In gen 2 Crobat was absolutely nothing but wasted potential. It was so damn fast but its movepool was not that good and it lacked reliable stab moves.
Cro had a good time last year in VGC.
"two too" Actually broke me xD
Do Persian!
Can you do Kangaskhan next please?
Skarmory's always been my favourite
in singles.
Do Ninetales next!
How good was Slowbro or Kingdra
this serie is great
i'm really fond of the melee memes as well
Ah, Skarmory. The Pokémon I tought evolved from Spinda as a kid due to 1 reason:
Sapphire was the first Pokémon game I played, and my basic thinking was: "If one mon appears like 95% of the time and the other only 5%, that rare one must be the evolved form."
a bear evolves into a metal bird? i was a kid once too, but this just sounds ridiculous 😂
@@vinorteza9607 ikr
@@Robin280497 r/kidsarefuckingstupid
How GOOD was Slowbro ACTUALLY?
Yep. My favorite Pokémon ^^. It was a beast when it came to tanking and setting up its traps. Love the bird
how good was magneton/magnezone ACTUALLY?
Eh, Magnezone is Gen 4. Not as much to cover.
he did rhyperior with rhydon and that's gen 4 so you're argument is invalid
Doctor Pokemon Eh, fair. But... he covered two Mons instead of one, therefore covering all gens. Instead of 3.
Evan Zimmer Probably can cover Magneton as well as Magnezone. Like with Rhydon and Rhyperior.
Evan Zimmer Indeed it would
Can you do a holiday ghost special on Mismagius, Dusknoir, and Froslass? They haven't been around for 7 or 6 generations so maybe multiple would fill an episode!
Mah boi Flygon pls :>
Yavis Daaaang
Did done dude
Well, let's go for Crobat next.
I so wanna have one on a Hoenn team, goes great with Swampert!
do Wobbuffet. PLEASE. UU to Ubers to PU, and it's fuckin Wobbuffet
It was actually the first non legendary/mythical Uber XD
Plus it's only not Ubers because Shadow Tag was banned
i want himiko to stab me in the urethra Yeah
And it only went ubers in gen 3 and 4 because shadow tag
Love to see me some Primeape!!
Now I want to see what Mega Skarmory would be like.
Gen 2 starters or eeveelutions. Maybe a gen 1 battling explained part 3?
Slowbro next?
I love using skarmory! After all it is my favorite Pokémon!
Jolteonnnn
Szion Blue tentacruel
How good was my dude slowbrooooooooooo