It depends on the player, but typically the approach in GSC is that things have to be actually broken / have a significant impact on the game to get banned. Berserk gene is only broken in theory bc: 1) OU is bulky, and the best abusers are either too weak at plus 2 (Aero, dug), or slow and easily revenge killed (champ, tar), 2) OU has a lot of phazing moves being clicked, so there is a high probability that it comes out before its ready, and 3) the confusion lasts until it switches out, and is passed with bpass.Alright, so I know this thread has been pretty inactive, but while I’m on a bit of a posting roll tonight, I wanted to stop by here and talk about something and simply ask… how has this thing not been banned yet?
You’re probably looking at that sprite and thinking I’ve completely lost it. All I’m doing is Mewtwo’s GSC sprite as a placeholder picture for what I’m actually interested in. For those unaware, GSC is the only generation to have a rare and RNG-focused held item simply known as the Berserk Gene, and the best way I can describe this is that it’s basically like using the move Swagger… on yourself.
In a generation with no way other than other held items to immediately manually cure confusion status.
You can probably see where this is going.
RNG-focused strategies have been despised for a long time now, and the move Swagger is no different. What the Berserk Gene allows you to do is gain that same +2 Attack boost and place yourself at the mercy of the RNG of the game. This can result in one of two things. One- your Pokémon knocks itself out before it cures itself of confusion or could do something like use Baton Pass. Or two, you successfully use your moves through confusion and/or cure yourself early with good RNG and proceed to break the game wide open. This is less of a situation of the item being overpowered because of just how high the opportunity cost of wanting to use it actually is and more of a situation where I am genuinely shocked more people haven’t mentioned this in some of GSC’s previous discussions about randomness in major tournaments and the like. The Berserk Gene practically feels like the definition of “uncompetitive” in the most literal way possible, and the last thing I want to see is someone try and sweep entire teams in bracket with real money on the line with a Substitute + Protect Aerodactyl set that, mind you, doesn’t even have Rock Slide legally in GSC (shut up, Lance, freaking cheater).
That's all to say that its pretty bad in OU, and can't steal games, so it isn"t banned. In lower tiers there may be more of an argument though - in GSCPL berserk gene won 2/2 times, once in nu, once in uu iirc (bfm vs bee, and dawn vs the muks).