I remember a long time ago reading that the Gold/Silver meta had Hidden Power banned on Raikou and Zapdos, however, I cannot find any resources as to how different the meta was changed beyond Ampharos having a larger presence in the meta before HP was unbanned. How much of an impact would be made on OU if Hidden Power were banned on them again today? What Pokemon were higher or lower in usage during the HP ban?
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OU What the GSC meta was like before Hidden Power was legal on the legendaries?
- Thread starter AlolanToaster
- Start date
Here's a discussion about it from 2013.
Without Hidden Power, Zapdos and Raikou have a harder time dealing with their counters.
Without Hidden Power, Zapdos and Raikou have a harder time dealing with their counters.
Zapdos and Raikou would run sub-par coverage options. I think Raikou would mainly run Crunch or skip out on the coverage altogether. I honestly don't remember for Zapdos. Stuff like Nidoking, Steelix, Marowak and Rhydon would have been better counters whereas there's no reason at all to use niche options like Quagsire. By proxy I think Gengar's ability to bait Raikou for an Explosion would be hindered.
I was just genuinely curious how the meta was different with the electrics only being able to rely on subpar coverage like Crunch and Drill Peck
Rhydon's the only exception where Crunch is notably better, Drill Peck is not even a terrible coverage move. It's actually a borderline 2HKO on Eggy, where Hidden Power doesn't even with Spikes, plus it pressures the occasional Blissey and hits Snorlax on the switch almost as hard as Tbolt.
Ampharos never had any serious presence in OU regardless of time period. Raikou and Zapdos were obviously worse but still good, I don't recall much in the way of significant differences in the makeup of the metagame back in the day other than Blissey used to be significantly more popular than in modern times (which is actually a point in favor of running Drill Peck on Zapdos).
Ampharos never had any serious presence in OU regardless of time period. Raikou and Zapdos were obviously worse but still good, I don't recall much in the way of significant differences in the makeup of the metagame back in the day other than Blissey used to be significantly more popular than in modern times (which is actually a point in favor of running Drill Peck on Zapdos).
Thanks so much on the insight! I didnt think a whole lot would have been different but I also could find very few resources outside of just saying "HP was banned at one point" on them, so I appreciate this a lot!
Ho-Oh also didn't have Hidden Power Flying which was a decent move for it, it caused good damage, had many PPs and pressured Blissey.
Does anyone know if the unbanning of HP legends led to a decline in the use/viability of joltwak teams?
It is hard to compare because people don't play the game in the same way, people have a much better knowledge of the metagame and the mentality has changed a lot, but that's normal because at the peak of GSC in Netbattle (with HP legends banned) GSC was around 7 years old. The 20th anniversary of Gold and Silver games in Japan was 2 days ago, and in those 20 years the community knows a lot more and the metagame has been developed a lot more.
MrE gave a very good example in Blissey, and how its usage was much bigger before the HP legends ban when Blissey would prefer facing a HP Zapdos rather a Drill Peck Zapdos. If we were judging metagame changes based only on HP Zapdos being allowed, Blissey usage would have increased, when the reality says Blissey usage has dropped a lot over the years.
And now to answer your question about what the metagame would look like if we banned HP legends again, and this is purely theorical, I think that Zapdos usage would drop a lot, and the usage of grounds would rise a lot, especially Marowak and Nidoking. We would start seeing more defensive teams with BDLax + SD Marowak + Heal Bell, or with Nidoking, since both Nidoking and Marowak can now completely wall electrics. That would also mean that explosion teams in general would probably be less effective. Raikou would miss HP, but Crunch is still a very good attack that can still hit Egg hard and can get some key Sp Def drops and would still have a big usage in defensive teams, although it would have a lower usage since some of the stalls would be replacing the Raikou with a ground like Marowak to have a greater breaking potential.
Nidoking and Marowak both are not resistant to Zapdos' Drill Peck. They don't take exactly take a ton of damage, of course, but it's not like they're nigh-immune like Steelix and Golem/Rhydon and I'm not sure how much Zapdos or even Raikou's presence even drops. They're probably still threats #2 and #3 in the metagame, so I think the resistant mons get more of a boost especially Steelix because of Crunch resistance and Toxic immunity (although Nidoking at least shares the latter). Eggy takes a slight hit because Drill Peck and Crunch hit harder than HP Ice. Not convinced there's that much of a shakeup in the metagame.