Surprisingly, 58 Base speed usually was just fine for in-game. (Sandy has 75, while 'zone has 60) You have a 10% chance of missing with HJK, which turns into 1% with Wide Lens.Whoa whoa, hold your horses. A Pokemon's absence in one version is precisely that - complete absence in one version, not a point against it in the one version where it is available.
Hi Jump Kick is strong indeed, but requires Wide Lens if you don't want to miss, whereas Heracross could hold whatever it wants and hit with perfect accuracy attacks for a while until it gets Megahorn where it might also want to make a choice between accuracy and power/whatever else. Scrafty's phys attack is also just 'good enough', nothing spectacular.
I don't know why you're even sandbagging Heracross's movepool, because few Pokemon have ones as good as his. Close Combat at L34? Bug Bite by tutor, Night Slash by relearner, Dig, Rock Slide, Megahorn?
Heracross doesn't need to evolve to be good, while Scraggy has to wait quite a bit and you catch it pretty far from there. Heracross's speed is also a significant boon, being sufficient to outspeed plenty of in-game trades and OHKO them. Scrafty can indeed take hits with his bulk, but it's best if you don't take hits at all.
And how is Shed Skin better than Guts? Randomly being status'd powers Heracross up, while Shed Skin just cancels out the status. I'd prefer being powered up to nothing happening.
Their availability is about the same, too. Personally, I think Scraggy should get out of top tier because a late evolution and 58 base speed evolved are serious shortcomings in my book.
Lets look at the status ailments for a sec:
Burn: With Guts, raises attack and causes constant damage
Poison: Boosts attack and constant damage with Guts
Paralysis (aka, the most common one): Prevents you from moving half the time while boosting your attack with Guts
Freeze: Rare, but you can't do anything about it other than wait it out.
I really don't feel like dealing with Paralysis, though I'll admit, Guts has its uses. I just feel Shed Skin is superior.
Thing is, if we're arguing about who outclasses who, then Scrafty gets STAB Crunch (does more damage than Night Slash), also gets Rock Slide and Ice Punch.
I'm not saying Hera is bad at all (even if it came across that way). I was more arguing the fact that lolscraftynottoptier. It handles itself really well as soon as you get it...like...you know...Magnemite? It continues handling itself well until it evolves at Level 39, which isn't bad by Unova standards. Consider that Magnemite evolves at 30, yet without Sturdy, it tends to be dead weight (at least compared to Sturdymite) because lots of things like to hit it hard.
Scrafty destroys the game, including basically soloing the E4. You only really need a Scrafty and a Psychic type to beat the E4. He solos Colress, Shauntel, Grimsley (aside from Scrafty), Caitlin, Iris, Zinzolin, Clay, Drayden (provided you have Ice Punch), the Rival, and Burgh. That's pretty much everyone other than Elesa and Skyla. He also destroys most of the regular battles with ease.How good is the Pokemon at KOing enemies? Good? Bad? Middling?
Here's the biggest flaw with your argument though; Black Belt is post game, so no superpowered Close Combat for you.
If we toss Scrafty out the window, then don't forget to toss Magnezone into High tier as well. 130 Base SpAtk is nice, but...you know...Fighting types...Unova is packed with them, and they usually outspeed 'zone. After mid-game, Magnezone doesn't really do much of note. It got famous because it stomps Roxie, but other than that...what does it do? Sure, it's the best Electric type in the game, but as we've seen, that doesn't mean it gets a permenent slot in Top Tier.
tl;dr, 'cross is alright, despite what I said. That's no reason to toss Scrafty into High, though.
Also, Mekkah, my argument was that Arc does best with a mixed pool, because its stats support it going mixed. Darm is a purely physical Pokemon, so it doesn't really...you know...like using Special moves. Crunch and Flamethrower were sufficient for an in-game run. Darm completely outclasses Arcanine in terms of physical power, and it's stupid easy to find. Arc has two things going for it that Darm doesn't have; Intimidate and a Special stat. Seems to me I'd want to take advantage of that yummy Base 100 Special instead of just focusing on Physical when Darm does it so much better.