High Tier Scrappy / Pokémon

Mega Rayquaza, the Pokémon so overpowered it got banned from a ban list.^note This wouldn't even be the last and only time this happened, as both of Zacian's formes would follow one or two generations later.

"Generation 5 began with several former Ubers dropping into OU, [Shaymin-Sky] among them and history was made. It wasn't that Skymin was immediately banned for being too fast, too strong, and too good an abuser of Serene Grace. It was that it was so despised that not a single person voted for it to stay in the tier. Absolutely everyone wanted it gone. And usually, even cases that seem incredibly obvious have a few dissenters, so it speaks to just how universally infuriating Skymin's Air Slash antics were."

— False Swipe Gaming, "How GOOD was Shaymin ACTUALLY?"

With over 1,000 mons (and counting) in existence, it's impossible for Pokémon to keep an ideal balance as what would be possible in other role-playing games. It's also worth noting that what works in the single player campaign may not work when playing competitively with other people or the post-game battle facilities, and vice-versa. Below are the many species that frequently give players the shaft.

For Generation IX's own page (including both Singles and Doubles), go here. For Pokémon that get the shaft from players, check here.

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Types in General

With eighteen types in the game, each of which can be combined with the other, how these types interact is a critical part of Pokémon. A lot of these types have more favorable matchups than most, get applied to particularly good moves, or are on Pokémon with great or diverse stats to make the type a threat.

Across all generations

• Water is the biggest scrappy of the starter Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors for being difficult to answer, both offensively and defensively. They have very good defenses, with four resistances (to Fire, Water itself, Ice and Steel) and only two weaknesses to Grass and Electric; this is part of what defines the popular archetype of the "bulky Water-type", and it's thus one of the best and most popular types to Terastallize into in Scarlet/Violet. However, they are no slouch on offense either, being strong against common attacking types in Fire, Ground and Rock^note The only Fire-types not weak to Water are Reshiram, Volcanion (neither of which will see use in most official formats), Turtonator, Mega Charizard X, and Scovillain, and are only resisted by Water itself, Grass and Dragon. Nearly all Water-types can learn Ice-type moves to counter the latter two, so ironically, the most effective defense against a Water-type is another Water-type. Rain further bolsters the type's power by 50%, making non-STAB moves basically gain STAB, and STAB moves become hydrogen nukes. And most damning of all is that the majority of them has access to Scald^*An 80 base power move with 100% accuracy and a 30% chance to burn targets, whose spammability is made worse by how Fire, the only type naturally immune to burns, still takes significant damage from it. To hit the nail in the coffin, Water is the most common type in the game, with well over 100 Pokémon possessing the type; thus, many of the type's mons tend to be commonplace in every single tier, even the lower ones. Unfortunately for some, Water hasn't received any notable nerf up until Gen IX, where the first half removed Scald... before getting brought back as part of The Teal Mask DLC (though with a drastically cut distribution^note It's only learnable by a handful of Pokemon such as Walking Wake and Alomomola), so chances are it will remain one of the best types in the game.
• Ground has always been a great offensive type. It is super-effective against five types, and notably grants STAB on Earthquake^*A 100 base power, 100% accuracy move with 10 PP, which can even inflict double damage on opponents who used Dig, with its only notable drawback being the possibility of hitting the attacker's partner; by contrast, it is only resisted by Grass and the mediocre Bug, with Flying being completely immune to it, while most Ground-types can learn a Rock-type move to at least hit Bug and Flying types super-effectively. However, Ground is still useful defensively; while it is weak to three specially based types (Grass, Water, and Ice), they resist Poison and Rock (the latter of which is especially useful) and are immune to Electric (including the dreaded Thunder Wave); they can also usually escape their weaknesses through their secondary types. Combine this with the rise of the Sandstorm weather condition (which they are also immune to), and you've got one annoying type to face; there has been at least one strong, viable and usually omnipresent Ground-type in every single generation of OU, with Gen IX being a notorious example of this due to the tier's sheer number of viable Ground-types, to the point they outclassed each other at one point^note In the beginning, Great Tusk powercrept Landorus-Therian due to his nerfs and Garchomp due to its lower power and less specialized stats; by The Teal Mask, Gliscor outperformed all three (as well as Ting-Lu and Clodsire) and got banned after a suspect test, while Garchomp dropped to UU; by The Indigo Disk, Great Tusk is back to omnipresence, with Landorus-Therian following close after moveset adaptations, and Gliscor being unbanned and dealing with a less welcome metagame.. Thankfully, between the Flying-type, the very common Levitate Ability, and the item Air Balloon, there are quite a few ways to dodge Ground-type attacks.
• Ghost has been decently strong ever since Gen IV, but various changes to the game in following generations have resulted in them entering scrappy territory. It's the only type with two immunities, to Normal and Fighting, while also resisting Bug and Poison, and being weak only to Ghost itself and Dark. While offensively it only hits Psychic and, again, itself, only the mediocre Normal is immune to it while only Dark resists it; as of Gen VI, the Steel-type lost its resistance to Ghost in Gen VI. Since all these three types are weak to Fighting, they're also easily countered by either running Fighting moves on the Ghost-types, or partnering them with other Pokémon with Fighting-type coverage. This, however, was nothing compared to Gen VIII, which saw the removal of Pursuit; previously one of the best moves to put Psychic- and Ghost-type Pokémon in check, the loss of this move resulted in Ghost becoming one of the best offensive types in the game. The early Gen VIII metagame was dominated by strong offense-oriented Ghost-types, and the DLCs only worsened the situation, with the Isle of Armor giving physical Ghost-types a new move to abuse in Poltergeist^*A 110 base power, 90% accuracy physical move that works only if the target has a held item, which considering every Pokémon in competitive holds one..., and the Crown Tundra releasing Shadow Rider Calyrex and the related Pokémon Spectrier. Gen IX would further dial it up with many Pokémon losing access to Knock Off^note Its omnipresence in competitive play isn't just limited to removing items, but also for coverage against Ghost up until The Teal Mask DLC, the introduction of various powerful Ghost-type Pokémon, and the offensive Normal-types they're immune to finally receiving competitive prevalence again (though it's worth noting this also hinders Ghost, as it's easier to switch into their moves). In bulk, this amounts to a contender for one of the best types in the franchise since Gen VI, with many players thinking that Ghost types need to be nerfed in some way, as there aren't enough types that resist them.
• Dark, at first, looks more balanced than many of the others in this folder; defensively, they're weak to Fighting, Bug and Fairy (since Gen VI), but resist itself and Ghost and are immune to Psychic, already making the type quite useful despite its mediocre amount of resistances; while offensively, it has the same super-effective coverage as Ghost (thus perfectly countering both Ghost and Psychic), and despite not being very effective against Fighting, itself and Fairy (and before Gen VI, Steel in lieu of Fairy), they lack types immune to them, which is a significant perk Ghost doesn't have. However, what actually pushes Dark into scrappydom isn't the type's core design, but rather the extreme utility the type's moves have, by virtue of their various unique benefits. While the moves Pursuit^*A 40 base power physical move that doubles in power to 80 if it hits the opponent as they switch out and Crunch^*An 80 base power physical move that has a 20% chance to lower the opponent's Defense by -1 (before the Physical/Special split, it instead lowered Sp. Def.) were a small, if effective start, and Sucker Punch^*A 70 (80 before Gen VII) base power move that enables the user to go first but fails if the target switches out or uses a non-damaging move certainly kept up with the former two moves after the Physical/Special split, the undisputable offender for the most despised move is Knock Off^*A 65 (20 before Gen VI) base power move that removes the target's held item for the remainder of the battle, and increases in power by 1.5x if the opponent was holding a removable item (it doesn't increase in power if the item was a Mega Stone, Z-Crystal, or a Plate/Memory if the target is Arceus/Silvally). These moves make physical Dark-type Pokémon omnipresent since Gen VI after the nerf to Steel's resistances, even with the presence of the newly introduced Fairy-type; plus, Knock Off's wide availability means it will be ran by any mon that can learn the move, already limiting Psychic-type mons even more. Though Game Freak has noticed how prevalent Dark has become, with the type receiving both buffs and nerfs in every generation since Gen VII, the buffs have proven to outweigh the nerfs: though Sucker Punch's power was reduced since Gen VII, the type is immune to Prankster-boosted status moves in that same generation, and the removal of Mega Stones and Z-Crystals since Gen VIII have drastically buffed Knock Off despite limiting the move from various Pokémon's movesets in Gen IX^note Even with The Teal Mask DLC bringing back the move's availability, it's learned by a more limited amount of mons, not to mention the introduction of astoundingly strong mons like Yveltal,^note which existed since Gen VI, but became so strong in Gen VIII that it was used to counter the absolutely broken Shadow Rider Calyrex in Ubers, Urshifu-Single Strike, Kingambit, Roaring Moon and the Treasures of Ruin. Many players have thus argued that Dark is possibly worse than Ghost, as its lack of immunities equals a very limited amount of answers without getting crippled in some way, while some will counterargue that at least the prevalence of Dark has helped keep other groan-inducing types like Ghost in check. All of this amounts to Dark remaining one of the most commonly seen types — in one form or another, for better or worse.
• Steel has been one of the best types within the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors charts due to the sheer benefits they behold. Steel-types have a whopping 10 resistances^{Gotta list 'em all}Normal, Grass, Ice, Flying, Psychic, Bug, Rock, Dragon, Steel itself and Fairy and a complete immunity to the Poison-type, the poison status condition and Sandstorm damage^note In Generations II-V, they had 11 resistances that included Ghost and Dark, so only five attack types could hit for at least neutral damage as opposed to seven nowadays. Simply pairing the type with another (that's not Ice or Rock) tends to improve that other type; you know Steel is that incredible when it can turn the mediocre Bug-type into one of the best combos in the game, as shown by Pokémon like Scizor. However, mono-Steel is still amazing without a type to pair with, which makes the type a popular type to Terastallize into in Singles formats. These traits make Steel so ideal, common competitive types are often forced to carry coverage or use team support. However, having large defensive capabilities doesn't trade off their potential offensive prowess — while Gen VI did nerf the type a bit defensively by making Ghost and Dark deal neutral damage to it, its usage arguably only improved since the same generation introduced Fairy, a type which Steel is a solid counter to since it simultaneously resists and is super-effective against it. Steel does have some flaws in its weaknesses being three of the best offensive types — Fire, Fighting, and Ground^*A major reason why they're so offensively good is because they're strong against Steel; and being only passable offensively despite no type immunities to it^*Fire, Water, Electric and Steel itself resist it, and aside from Fairy, the other two types it hits are defensively weak Glass Cannon types in Ice and Rock. That said, no one will argue that these flaws are far outweighed by its defensive pros, and it's a common contender for the best type in the franchise, if not the outright best.
• Fairy has, since its introduction in Gen VI, become similar to Water in that it's difficult to respond to the type in general. Defensively, they have three resistances to Fighting, Bug and Dark, and an immunity to Dragon, and only have two weaknesses to the offensively inept Poison and merely passable Steel; much like Water and Steel, this makes it a strong and popular Tera type in Scarlet/Violet. Offensively, they hit Fighting, Dark and Dragon super-effectively (thus almost completely countering these types), are only resisted by Fire, Poison and Steel, and have no types immune to them. Several Fairy-types tend to be strong special attackers with access to strong moves like Moonblast, as well as proper coverage (such as Psychic moves to counter Poison-types); on the other side of the coin, however, physical Fairy Pokémon tend to be strong enough to somehow find themselves in just the right metagames to get rid of the topmost Pokémon there. While the type was likely introduced to balance the previously ridiculous Dragon-type, this created the domino effect of bringing other types down alongside Dragon. It's so telling that even with the presence of Steel-type Pokémon, strong Fairy Pokémon are so common and at the top of viability in every metagame, that the viability of many Fighting-, Bug-, and especially Dragon-types is solely determined by whether or not they have a way to answer them, such as a secondary typing or a coverage move to hit them super-effectively; only Dark manages to escape this list because of the type's traits. It should thus come as no surprise that Fairy is up there with Ghost and Steel as a contender for the best type in the franchise — and for some, the best, with its sheer number of strengths causing some players to call for a Nerf and that it's basically become as obnoxious as the Dragon type once was, with the main counterargument being that many modern Dragon-types are so overtuned that the existence of Fairies is the main or only thing keeping them in check — if it even succeeds at that.

Specific generations

• Normal used to be one of the two kings of Gen I. Unlike in later generations, Normal's lack of interactions in the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors chart was a very good thing: no types outside of Rock or Ghost could resist them, and while they lacked resistances, it was made up for it because its sole weakness, Fighting, was countered by the even more game-breaking Psychic (soundly described below). Offensive Normal-types also had access to a weapon no other type could ever hope to replicate: STAB Hyper Beam^*In Gen I only, the move skipped the recharge turn if it knocked out an opponent, circumventing its impractical side. Even Pokémon that weren't Normal-type would slot in the weaker but still useful Body Slam because Normal's coverage was that good. Among the OU tier's kings were Tauros, Chansey and Snorlax, and if you didn't run at least two of them on your team, you could never hope to win. Gen II drastically nerfed the power of Normal-types by fixing Hyper Beam's recharge turn bug and introducing the Steel-type as well as more Ghost-types, but even then GSC OU's tier king, Snorlax, was there to dominate the metagame. It took until Gen III, when Normal-types would finally start to become overshadowed by other types in viability, for them to start leaning towards the opposite trope.
• Psychic was the other side of the coin in Gen I. The type was able to hit hard every single type in the tier bar itself, with the added bonus of hitting Fighting- and Poison-types, thus invalidating the types' viability. Due to a programming mistake, it was also immune to Ghost^note Though this mattered only for Night Shade anyways, since the only other damaging move, Lick, is horrendously underpowered when it was intended to be weak against it, meaning that the only type that inflicted high damage on Psychic was... Bug?^note Much like Ghost, this barely mattered either due to either terrible weak moves in Leech Life and Twinneedle, or unreliable ones like Pin Missile, along with very weak STAB users. Similarly to Normal, this allowed their best move in Psychic to be spammed to their heart's content, and their lower power compared to Hyper Beam is made up by its chance to drop the Special stat and its users' usually huge Special stat of their own. Players are thus forced to bring Psychic-types of their own to either counter other Psychic Pokémon or sweep, giving birth to what would later be known as "Psychic spam"; among the type's representatives, Alakazam, Exeggutor and Starmie come to mind, as well as the series' original Game-Breaker, Mewtwo (but that goes without saying). It's clear that Gen II's introduction of the Dark- and Steel-types^note The former of which is immune to Psychic, as well as fixing the Ghost-type to now be super-effective against it, were measures taken to nerf the type significantly, and it hasn't seen big resurgences since then, with "Psychic spam" in Gen V^*Thanks to Alakazam, Reuniclus and Latios, Mega Alakazam in Gen VI, and Tapu Lele in Gen VII being the only examples; especially with the introduction of Fairy in Gen VI, many players now believe the type has, much like Normal, become the opposite of what it used to be.
• Dragon became this in Gens IV-V, especially in the latter generation where it was considered arguably the best type in the game. Despite being only super-effective against Dragon itself, it was the least resisted type in the game, as only Steel could hope to face it. It was also excellent defensively, being weak only to Ice and, again, itself, while resisting Fire, Water, Grass and Electric. While the type had a tumultous start in Gen I as it was the only type unable to deal elemental damage to other types (even itself), they started to gain actual attacking moves in later generations and grew stronger from there; by Gen IV, the Physical/Special split was extremely kind to the type, allowing many of the physical Dragons with access to moves like Dragon Claw or the now widely-distributed Outrage to finally exploit their extremely strong qualities, while the special Dragons enjoyed using moves like Dragon Pulse or Draco Meteor. Gen V exacerbated this further, with the introduction of behemoths like Haxorus, Hydreigon, Zekrom and Kyurem^*Specifically the base and Black forms, since Kyurem-White was banned to Ubers, the further buffs to other Dragons like Dragonite, and the unbanning of previously broken Lightning Bruisers in Garchomp, Salamence and Latios; this created an utter outrage in the higher tiers, as without dedicated Steel-types like Skarmory or Ferrothorn, avoiding at least one KO from the resident Dragon-types was incredibly difficult. Gen VI rectified this by introducing the Fairy-type in an attempt to balance it (as described above), and the type's viability has dwindled since then, with many of the newer Dragons making their name through their stats and traits rather than just their typing. Though despite the type itself no longer being hard to counter, most newer prominent Dragon-types are still very threatening^*Most notably Zygarde, Kommo-o, Naganadel, Dracovish, Dragapult, Eternatus, Baxcalibur, Roaring Moon, Koraidon, Miraidon, Walking Wake, Gouging Fire and Raging Bolt, and some of them even deliberately overtuned to the point they would spiral out of control if not for the Fairy-type existing, not that some of them^*Such as Mega Salamence, Naganadel, Dracovish and Baxcalibur, who are banned from OU in every generation where they exist, while Dragapult, Koraidon and Miraidon were banned from their respective National Dex formats due to access to Z-Moves pushing them over the edge didn't do so anyways. All in all, Dragon remains a useful and strong type, just nowhere near as egregious as it was before.
• Flying has always been considered a potent type by the playerbase, but it's on Gen VIII when it reached its tipping point. It's got a crucial immunity to Ground while resisting Grass, Fighting and Bug; the type also automatically deems the Pokémon as "airborne", so it's immune to every grounded effect, like entry hazards (except for Stealth Rock). Since it's almost always paired with another typing, this can also help Flying escape its weaknesses. While its super-effective coverage isn't anything special, Flying is noted for its neutral coverage (similarly to Fairy), hitting every type it resits while only Electric, Rock and Steel resist it, and no Ability grants an immunity to the type^note While Wind Rider does grant an immunity to Hurricane and the Forces of Nature's Secret Arts, Air Slash and every single physical Flying move bypass this Ability. Flying's defensive traits complement its offenses, thus making the type highly versatile at any role, be it for attacking, defending or supporting; though, its weaknesses are relatively common (notably to strong offensive types in Electric, Ice and Rock), and most of their stronger moves tend to be unreliable. This changes when the Pokémon in question Dynamaxes — since official formats are ran as Doubles battles, spread moves^*That is, moves that hit both opponents or benefit both Pokémon on the user's side tend to be the norm, which makes Flying's Max Move, Max Airstream, easy to spam thanks to its lack of immunities, perfect accuracy (compared to Hurricane), no recoil (unlike Brave Bird) and boosting the Speed of everything on the user's side by +1, thus allowing users to turn both Pokémon on their side into unstoppable Lightning Bruisers with minimal setup. It was to the point that almost everything that learned a Flying move started packing one just to Dynamax and gain access to Max Airstream, being weak to the type could outright ruin a Pokémon's viability unless they were exceptionally good (such as Rillaboom and Urshifu), and it caused the viability of certain Flying-type Pokémon such as Charizard to skyrocket. It's thus possible that there exists no G-Max Move that sets up Tailwind, since its Speed-doubling effect synergizes with individual Speed boosts. Notably, this is the only time Flying has been broken, as Gen IX's lack of Dynamax has returned the type to a more stable point.

Specific Mechanics

Generation V

• Weather effects were introduced in Gen II and existed mostly as a novelty until ramping up through Gen IV, but became the dominant metagame strategy of Gen V as non-legendary Pokémon with abilities that automatically trigger the effects became more widespread. This enabled Pokémon with corresponding types or abilities to become extremely powerful, and few weatherless teams could compete at the highest levels. (Those that did often relied on a fellow High-Tier Scrappy in the form of multiple Dragon types.) As only one weather effect can be in place at a time, taking out an opponent's "weather setter" and/or having ways to cycle in your own are crucial, and the sometimes repetitive nature of the "weather wars" began to grate on sections of the fanbase.
  • The four weather effects and the main Pokémon involved are:
    • Sandstorm - Deals 1/16 damage each turn to non-Rock/Ground/Steel types while increasing the Special Defense of Rock-types by a whopping 50%. Most prominent is Tyranitar, a pseudo-legendary, whose ability Sandstream automatically starts up the effect and, once going, takes full advantage of the Special Defense boost while unleashing its powerful, varied moveset.
    • Rain - While it doesn't come with the passive damage of some of the other types, Rain boosts the Speed of Pokémon with the ability Swift Swim (turning the Pokémon who received it, like Kingdra, into dominant sweepers), increases the damage of Water-type moves by 50%, and cuts the damage done by Fire-type moves in half (leading to Fire-weak types seeing a lot of use on "Rain teams", like the Stone Wall Ferrothorn whose biggest weakness is being 4x to Fire). Perhaps most importantly, it makes certain inaccurate Awesome, but Impractical moves like Thunder and Hurricane have a 100% chance of hitting. Politoed is the only non-Uber Pokémon with the Drizzle ability to trigger it, making the otherwise forgettable frog into one of the generation's most widely used Pokémon.
    • Sun - Has largely the exact opposite effects of Rain, strengthening Fire and weakening Water, but most importantly powers up the typically two-turn Solar Beam so it can be used in one while doubling the boosts from "sun"-based power up moves like Growth. It also just so happens that the only Pokémon with the Drought ability in this gen, Ninetales, can also learn Solar Beam...
    • Hail - Is largely the same as Sandstorm but for Ice-types, with the added advantage of making the powerful Blizzard 100% accurate. It is easily the least used of the four types (certainly owing in part to the Ice-type's status as one of the worst defensive types in the metagame), but has some play as a Highly Specific Counterplay to the other three (especially Sandstorm teams) as they often lack a mean to counter it. Abomasnow's Snow Warning makes it the prime setter of this effect.
  • In response to the dominance of "weather teams", Gen VI heavily Nerfed them, to the point of an outright Obvious Rule Patch. Weather effects triggered by ability will now only last five turns (eight if holding a corresponding weather Rock), the same as if the Pokémon had triggered it via move on the turn it switched in. Without the indefinite weather effects, the power of these teams was heavily reduced in the generations that followed (though it still crops up in some strategies) and the need for setters/counters significantly reduced.

Specific Pokémon — Smogon Singles

Generally, to get an idea of what Pokémon might belong here, look at the Smogon usage rankings. The top ten or so Pokémon in OU (Overused; the highest non-banned tier) tend to be on many teams, and many of them fit this trope.

Generation I

• Venusaur found its fair share of hate in Gen V. Back before the "Weather + Speed Ability" clause^*A team cannot have a weather-summoning Ability and mons with the respective Ability that doubles the Pokémon's Speed under such weather was enacted, Venusaur was a big reason to its existence. Having received Chlorophyll as its Hidden Ability, on top of the newly boosted Growth^*In the sun, this increases both its Attack and Special Attack by two stages, access to Sleep Powder, decent bulk, and a wide offensive movepool, Venusaur could easily run various offensive sets, from special to physical and even mixed ones. Sleep Powder was also already egregious no thanks to the new sleep mechanics, and unlike most Sleep-inducing move users who had slow speed, Venusaur could easily outrun everything, get free turns with Sleep Powder to set up, and sweep with its enhanced offensive stats. Venusaur is the sole reason why the "Weather + Speed Ability" clause went from just "Drizzle + Swift Swim" (more on it in Politoed's entry below) to include "Drought + Chlorophyll", and the discussion for the banning was entirely about how broken it was.
• Clefable, since Gen VI, is easily the poster child for versatile Fairy-types. At first glance, none of its stats particularly stand out (it's got 95/73/90 bulk, average base 95 Special Attack, and a slow 60 base Speed). By digging deeper, however, one can find its Abilities are one half of what's to blame for — Magic Guard^*Prevents all forms of passive damage, which includes stuff like status conditions, entry hazards, recoil (be it from moves that cause it or Life Orb) and weather damage and Unaware^*Ignores the opponent's stat changes when receiving and inflicting damage; it doesn't ignore the Pokémon's own stat boosts. The other half to blame is its gigantic movepool^*Strong STAB in Moonblast; coverage options in the three Fire, Ice, Lightning moves and their stronger variants (Flamethrower and Fire Blast, Thunderbolt and Thunder, Ice Beam and Blizzard), Psychic, Psyshock, Stored Power; boosting moves in Calm Mind, Charge Beam, Cosmic Power and Minimize; recovery in Moonlight, Soft-Boiled and Wish; and miscellaneous support options like Aromatherapy/Heal Bell, Encore, Knock Off, Light Screen/Reflect, Stealth Rock, Thunder Wave, and Teleport., which is most likely a carryover from its days as a Normal-type prior to Gen VI, and lets it make use of its stats and Abilities to their full potential. All of these qualities enable Clefable to run a variety of sets (from offensive, to defensive, to support, etc.). Its initial absence from Gen IX was been met with a sigh of relief... only for it to return in The Teal Mask DLC; despite losing several crucial moves such as Toxic, Teleport, Soft-Boiled, and Heal Bell/Aromatherapy due to HOME's moveset cuts, it's still a highly valuable mon in OU thanks to Magic Guard, especially with how good entry hazard stacking is in Gen IX.
• Dugtrio is easily one of the most controversial OU Pokémon of all time thanks to one Ability: Arena Trap^*Prevents the opponent from switching Pokémon out unless they're part Flying-type, have the Levitate Ability, or are under the effects of Magnet Rise. With this Ability, Dugtrio was already one of the stronger trappers and revenge killers in the franchise thanks to access to STAB Earthquake and blistering 120 Speed, but was never considered unhealthy because of its mediocre 80 base Attack. Gen VII changed that, by buffing its Attack to a more reasonable 100, and this along with the addition of Z-Moves made Dugtrio terrifying. Like Gothitelle in Gen VI, Dugtrio is most often used on stall teams to remove common stallbreakers which, when combined with the re-introduced Mega Sableye, made stall nearly impossible to deal with; unlike Gothitelle, however, Dugtrio's great Speed still made it effective on offensive teams. It was suspected early in the generation, but was able to escape a ban, much to the ire of many players; months later, Arena Trap itself was banned, and both past and subsequent generations also banned the Ability itself, ending Dugtrio's reign of terror in every other tier that isn't Gen III.
• Slowbro became this starting with Gen V for one reason only: Regenerator^*Restores the Pokémon's HP by 1/3 of its max HP when it switches out. Already possessing good longevity thanks to solid 95/110/80 bulk, good Water/Psychic typing and Slack Off, Slowbro became one of the most infamous physically defensive Pokémon starting with Black/White thanks to its new Hidden Ability and also receiving the reviled Scald, with the result being a mon that's capable of tanking hits well, dishing out some noticeable damage in return (since its Sp. Atk. is a very respectable base 100, meaning it's not that passive), and even threatening to burn the opponent. Though it's fairly slow and prone to moving last, and it faces competition from other Pokémon such as Skarmory, Slowbro's better movepool and typing give it an advantage (unlike Skarmory, it takes low damage from Fire and Fighting attacks). Subsequent generations even gave Slowbro more new toys, with Gen VI gifting it a Mega Evolution that's far tankier^*Going from base 110 to an unreasonable 180 physical Defense, though at the cost of swapping Regenerator for the mediocre Shell Armor, which only prevents Critical Hits; while it dropped in usage in Gen VII thanks to Toxapex (described below), the Let's Go games gifted it a move that it could fully abuse come Gen VIII: a newly buffed Teleport^*Once unusable in battles, from Let's Go onward, it works as a Switch-Out Move that has negative priority; this allows it to bring out a frailer, stronger teammate like Dragapult without the risk of said teammate taking a lethal hit, while healing Slowbro up anyways thanks to Regenerator, causing it to rise in usage again. It took until Gen IX for Slowbro to finally slow down in usage, due to the loss of Scald (pre-Teal Mask DLC) and Teleport, while its cousin Slowking, having lived in its shadow in previous generations, took its mantle after receiving its own Secret Art in Chilly Reception.
• Chansey and her evolution, Blissey, have an interesting relationship. They are both premier special walls with the outright highest base HP stats in the game (250 for Chansey and 255 for Blissey, respectively), similarly amazing Special Defense (105 and 135, respectively), a Normal-typing that gives them only one weakness to Fighting, the Natural Cure Ability to shrug off status problems, and a good support movepool, so they always manage to help their team despite their abysmal Defense (a respective 5 and 10) and awful attacking stats (or, in Blissey's case, awful Attack and middling Special Attack). Due to being not too far apart in their important stats, which of the two is considered better varies depending on the generation and the competitive environment. In Gen I, Blissey wasn't around yet, so Chansey alone stood in the way of every Specially-inclined Pokémon, including Mewtwo, and her high 105 Special^note Back in Gen I, the Special stat determined the damage dealt and the damage taken from special attacks made her far from passive, thus being one of the tier's defining Normal-types alongside Tauros and Snorlax. From Gens II-IV, the Special stat split into Sp. Atk. and Sp. Def. massively nerfed Chansey, so Blissey took over as the better special wall in OU, but Chansey still did well in UU. Gens V-VII introduced both Psyshock and Psystrike (Mewtwo's Secret Art), special moves that hit targets on their physical Defense, nerfing the two pink blobs a bit; it also changed the dynamic with the introduction of Eviolite, which effectively gives Chansey better Physical and Special Defense than Blissey in exchange for not being able to hold any other item, while Blissey is the preferred choice in Ubers because she can hold a Shed Shell to switch out anytime she wants to escape trappers like Mega Gengar, Dugtrio, or Gothitelle. In Gen VIII, the removal of Mega Stones/Z-Crystals caused Knock Off to become extremely powerful, while the environment in OU being rife with entry hazards, switch-out moves and trapping strategies ironically made Chansey lean so hard on Eviolite, leading to Blissey's resurgence in both OU and Ubers thanks to her item freedom allowing her to hold Heavy-Duty Boots^*An item that allows its holder to bypass entry hazards free of damage (Spikes and Stealth Rock) or effects (Toxic Spikes and Sticky Web). However, Gen IX severely crippled the pink blobs with general power creep, the loss of their useful moves like Toxic and Wish due to Pokémon HOME, and the nerf to recovery moves; while Blissey still has her niche on stall and temporarily skyrocketed back up to OU from NU with Bloodmoon Ursaluna's introduction in The Teal Mask, Chansey wasn't so lucky (even less so after the afromentioned DLC brought back Knock Off). Though the duo are generally nowhere near the defensive powerhouses they were before, both remain excellent at what they do — amazing defensive anchors that refuse to fold to any special move, to the dismay of every player who has to face them.
• It's impossible to mention Gen I without mentioning Tauros and the iron fist- um, hoof with which it rules the metagame, being one of the tier's defining Normal-types alongside Chansey and Snorlax. What it lacks in Snorlax's power due to just an above average 100 base Attack, it makes up for it with an impressive 110 base Speed that gives it a Critical Hit rate of 21.48%, alongside other traits like Fighting-types being unviable, plus having a decent 70 base Special and a respectable movepool^*STAB Body Slam and Hyper Beam, and coverage in Fire Blast, Blizzard, Thunder and Earthquake. Tauros is thus not only an impressive attacker, but the best cleaner^*A Pokémon whose main role is to Kill Streak (thus, "clean up") a weakened team in the entire tier and one that utilizes many of Gen I's weird mechanics to their full potential. Without paralysis/sleep support, Tauros is still a highly powerful Pokémon to take account of. With paralysis/sleep support, Tauros is a wincon. Gen II would indirectly, yet dramatically, nerf Tauros by account of the Special stat split (reducing its Sp. Atk. from 70 to a laughable 40), fixing Hyper Beam's turn-skipping bug, and making crits chance-based instead of Speed-based; it has since then seen a drop through its tiering run, stopping at NU as of this writing. Still, even to this day, it remains the undisputed king of Gen I (Mewtwo notwithstanding) and a mon you don't trifle with.
• Snorlax had two generations where it reigned over other Pokémon. In Gen I, Snorlax was, alongside Chansey and Tauros, one of the tier's defining Normal-types; what it lacked in Tauros' Speed (and thus critical hit rate) at a godawful base 30, it made up for it with a consistently high base 110 Attack and higher bulk, access to Reflect to further bolster its bulk as well as Self-Destruct, and similar options to those Tauros uses, such as Earthquake and Ice Beam, and thus it fit easily on any team. This, however, was nothing compared to its stint as the king of Gen II; despite the nerf to Hyper Beam, the generation was very kind to Snorlax, gifting it Curse, Belly Drum, Sleep Talk (and many more moves), held items (and thus Leftovers) and the Special split upping its Sp. Def. from base 65 to an amazing 110, which goes well with its gargantuan base 160 HP. This, plus its rich movepool, means Snorlax can run around a dozen sets and run them well. The viability of many special attackers is determined by whether or not they can answer it, and many Pokémon like Machamp, Golem, Gengar, Rhydon, Zapdos, Misdreavus, Skarmory, Steelix and Forretress, see use precisely to help hold Snorlax back. However, the reason why Snorlax has never been banned from OU is that, without it, many agree the tier would be far worse-off, as other Pokémon that are on par with Snorlax would become broken. Gen III no longer allowing for maxed-out stats, nerfing Snorlax's bulk immensely, means it hasn't seen OU stardom since then (despite being in OU in Gens III and IV); that said, to quote Smogon, Snorlax in Gen II is "the single most dominant Pokémon in any OU tier in history".
• Zapdos has managed to remain a viable option in every single generation it's been in. Unlike your archetypical Electric-type, Zapdos avoids the type's general weaknesses thanks to its unique traits: it's an Electric-type that's immune to Ground thanks to being part-Flying, it's a Lightning Bruiser (instead of a Fragile Speedster) due to its 90/85/90 bulk, great base 125 Special Attack, and a good enough movepool^*It has meaningful coverage in Heat Wave, recovery with Roost, Agility to patch its surprisingly average base 100 Speed, and the perk of Electric's typical utility moves, like Thunder Wave. The only thing holding Zapdos back is its Stealth Rock weakness hampering its bulk. Gen V is so far the only one where Zapdos wasn't OU since Thundurus completely outclassed Zapdos offensively^*Thundurus has higher speed, higher base Special Attack in its Therian form, and access to Nasty Plot, and the bird dedicated itself to UU, but once Defog got buffed in Gen VI, Zapdos shot right back up to OU as a much better defensive Pokémon and eclipsed Thundurus in overall utility and viability. Breaking through Zapdos can be surprisingly difficult due to the bird's lack of weaknesses, respectable bulk and recovery, and it can either hit its foes hard enough with its Sp. Atk. and coverage, or just "nope" out of bad matchups thanks to U-turn or Volt Switch. Gens VIII and IX also gave it a resurgence in offensive and/or rain teams thanks to its newfound access to coverage Weather Ball and reliable Flying-type STAB in the powerful Hurricane, the latter of which it ironically lacked unlike Articuno or Moltres until then. In the end, this amounts to a Pokémon that has perfectly stood the test of time, even as power creep continues to rear its ugly head, and a mon that you simply can't ignore whn building a team.
• For several generations, Dragonite coasted along as a solid but not meta-defining Pokémon. While it has awesome mixed attacking stats (134 base Attack and 100 base Special Attack) and solid overall 91/95/100 bulk, its lack of a reliable and powerful STAB and middling 80 Speed left it overshadowed by behemoths such as Salamence and Garchomp, only finding usage in tiers where those two were banned. Gen IV threw it a bone by giving it Roost and giving it back Extreme Speed (in HeartGold/SoulSilver) after Gen III took it away, but Gen V outright blessed it with Multiscale, giving it a way to differentiate itself and compete with or even alongside the other top dogs like Salamence, Garchomp and Kyurem-Black, in subsequent generations. Gen IX, however, elevated it to the skies with the advent of Terastallization, which amended Dragonite's long-standing issues of poor STAB options and allergy to Ice. The most infamous of its sets combines Tera Normal with Extreme Speed to become OU's answer to Extreme Killer Arceus, and even then, that's far from the only Tera type up its sleeve; with Flying it can shoot powerful Tera Blasts, and with Fire it can absorb burns and surprise Steel-types like Corviknight. Dragonite was especially threatening with Shed Tail users such as Orthworm and Cyclizar prior to the move's ban, as thanks to Multiscale it could have its passed Substitute absorb a hit without fading away, letting it set up multiple Dragon Dances.
• Mewtwo, the original Game-Breaker and Olympus Mon in the series. Simply put, there is no true counter to Mewtwo in its original RBY incarnation, and it has a moratorium on every broken mechanic in the Gen I games: Psychic-type gives it great STAB moves and no meaningful weaknesses, for reasons explained above. Stat-wise, its 130 Speed is tied for second-highest in the game^note Highest is Electrode, which can be one-shotted after a single Amnesia boost and has no meaningful offense but Explosion; Jolteon ties with Mewtwo but its strongest attacking move is a pitifully weak Pin Missile, and Aerodactyl also ties but does even worse. and gives it an absurd 25% crit rate, its 154 Special stat is the highest in the game by a wide margin^note For comparison, the Legendary Birds have 125, and Gengar's 130 and Alakazam's 135 are the only ones above that; Mewtwo actually hits the game's cap when boosted a few times and it gets Amnesia to double it^note The Pokémon with the move and the next highest special are Golduck and Slowbro, and both have only 80, 110 Attack means it can run physical coverage^note It lacks any STAB physical moves, but raw stats put it equal with Snorlax, and its lowest stats, 106 HP and 90 Defense, are still pretty darn high^note For reference, this is a bit better than Dragonite's physical bulk, and keep in mind Mewtwo has essentially no elemental weaknesses. What's more, Mewtwo also has a very wide movepool, including a lot of strong attacking moves and reliable healing through Recover, meaning anything that might be able to defeat or at least hold out against one Mewtwo set will lose to another^note Chansey can wall a fully-boosted Mewtwo through Light Screen and hope for a freeze with Ice Beam before Mewtwo procs Special drops through Psychic or its own freeze proc with Ice Beam... if the Mewtwo isn't running Submission, in which case Chansey will crumble quickly. Slowbro can use Amnesia, paralysis, and its favorable typing to wall Mewtwo for a while... if the Mewtwo isn't running Thunderbolt, in which case it gets two-shotted. Physical attackers can wear it down through its weaker Defense, but the strongest physical attack in the game, Snorlax's Self-Destruct, still doesn't one-shot it, and Mewtwo can use Barrier to nullify more common threats like Tauros's Hyper Beam or Rhydon's Earthquake, which still don't do a lot either way. Paralysis-users like Jolteon, Electrode, Exeggutor, and the aforementioned Chansey and Slowbro can try to knock it down a peg, but Mewtwo can swap out Recover for Rest to cure that as well.. The result is that the entire RBY Ubers metagame is almost entirely focused around Mewtwo, with the only reliable counter being a Mewtwo of your own that has the right setup to kill your opponent's Mewtwo (and standard Mewtwo-on-Mewtwo matches usually come down to a lucky freeze with Ice Beam or Blizzard); even its sole fellow Ubers resident Mew struggles to stand up to it in a one-on-one fight. Later generations nerfed it heavily, as the Psychic-type itself was drastically watered down, the Special split and changes to crit mechanics made it frailer and a bit weaker, and many more Pokémon of comparable power showed up — even so, Mewtwo has remained a decent pick in Ubers to this day, even if it's never approached its original dominance.

Generation II

• Azumarill initially debuted as a bulky, but weak and slow Water-type Pokémon, with its awful 50/50 offenses failing to scratch stuff, making it quite mediocre even in-game. It grew steadily stronger with new toys in every generation; Gen III gave it Huge Power, which doubled its current Attack stat, and Gen IV's Physical/Special split was incredibly kind to it since it could now use physical Water moves. However, Gen VI was even kinder to it, with Azumarill gaining an additional Fairy-type and the move Play Rough for STAB, and the changes made for egg moves allow it to have both Aqua Jet and Belly Drum (it previously couldn't have both at the same time). Those two moves combined on top of its Huge Power-doubled Attack let Azumarill terrorize anything and everything if it had just one turn to set up, and With how hard it is to stop Azumarill in this state without priority, it became more common (and hated) in competitive battles. Though it has slowed down in the following generations since then (despite getting Ice Spinner in Gen IX for better coverage than Ice Punch), Azumarill is still highly dangerous, and lending it one single turn to set up will quickly demonstrate why.
• For most of its history, Politoed was a completely unremarkable Water-type Jack of All Stats. However, in Generation V, it became one of the most omnipresent forces in the metagame when it received its Dream World ability: Drizzle, the very same Ability that has made Kyogre the scourge of Ubers. Though it was neither the only regular mon to be a weather-setter (see Tyranitar and Abomasnow) nor the only one to become such via the Dream World (see Ninetales), it didn't take long for players to see why Drizzle was previously limited to Kyogre: a 50% boost to Water attacks was one thing, but then add in how the majority of rain-related abilities (Hydration, Rain Dish and Swift Swim) were used by Water-types (as opposed to most sun-boosting abilities being limited to Grass-types when the weather boosted Fire), meaning that setting it up turned formerly-innocuous Pokémon like Kingdra, Kabutops, and Ludicolo into absolute monsters. While Politoed wasn't anything to write home about, its pure-Water typing, lack of Stealth Rock weakness, surprisingly serviceable bulk, and access to Encore meant that it was much easier to keep it around and able to contribute than Ninetails or Abomasnow. And for an extra kick in the teeth, it even learned Scald. What pushed Politoed into this category, though, was the infamous "Aldaron's Proposal" — at the time, the council monitoring the metagame were intrigued at the possibilities of rain teams in OU, and so rather than banning the frog, they instituted a complex ban of "Drizzle + Swift Swim" on the same team. Though this removed the most broken option available to rain teams, Politoed remained a major threat, and it opened the floodgates to many other similar complex bans and ban proposals that proved controversial in their own right (most notably "Drought + Chlorophyll" and "Sand Stream + Sand Rush"), resulting in bizarre situations like running Sand Rush Excadrill on a rain team to counter sand teams that couldn't use that same strategy. The inability to properly deal with Politoed and the impact it brought is still held as a major reason for the broken state of Gen V's metagame, and an example of why "complex bans" are generally a bad idea. Gen VI, meanwhile, saw a complete reversal of fortune for Politoed, with Drizzle being nerfed to only last five turns, much like Rain Dance; more on it can be read in the franchise's Low-Tier Letdown page.
• Wobbuffet takes Dugtrio's concept of trapping, swaps its offensive presence to a defensive, support-oriented one, and amplifies it with its Ability, Shadow Tag^*Prevents the opponent from switching any Pokémon out; a.k.a. Arena Trap but better. Though Wobbuffet's movepool is terrible in numbers, it has everything it needs to threaten the foe due to a combination of Counter and Mirror Coat, Destiny Bond, Encore, Safeguard and Tickle. The combination of both Counter/Mirror Coat and Wobbuffet's bulk (it has low 58/58 defenses, but a humongous 190 base HP to compensate) means that almost any attack that even grazes it will near-guarantee it to KO its attacker. If at low health, Wobbuffet can also force the opponent into the Sadistic Choice of sacrificing a mon to Destiny Bond, or refusing to attack it at the cost of getting Encore'd to generate free turns for its teammates. The proper definition of a "counter" is that a Pokémon should be able to switch in and out, take the damage/debuff and threaten the opponent hard; problem is, due to Shadow Tag, Wobbuffet has essentially zero counters. Using switch-out moves also tends to be ill-advised, since Wobbuffet can counter that and guarantee the Pokémon that switches in will either take a huge chunk or be KO'd alright^note Unless they happen to be Ghost-type if it uses Counter, or Dark-type if it uses Mirror Coat; and the only two Ghost/Dark Pokémon, Sableye and Spiritomb, tend to be fodder for Wobbuffet. The unhealthy dynamic this causes should come as no surprise that it got Wobbuffet banned to Ubers in Gens III-IV, but that's not the worst part. That would be that, in Gen III only, there was the possibility of facing a stalemate with two Wobbuffets, being unable to KO each other and outhealing the damage and recoil from Struggle through Leftovers. Gen IV fortunately changed Shadow Tag to not affect other Pokémon with it and drastically increased the recoil damage from Struggle. Shadow Tag remains banned in every generation it's been in, with Wobbuffet finally getting unbanned in Gen V after the release of its Hidden Ability Telepathy (which is useless in Singles) and Ghost-types being immune to trapping (including Shadow Tag) from Gen VI and on, both of which thus threw Wobbuffet into the opposite side of the spectrum since its gameplan fails if the opponent can freely switch out.
• Scizor has always had a Bug/Steel typing that only has a 4x weakness to Fire, alongside solid bulk, huge 130 Attack and access to moves like Swords Dance and Pursuit, but was never given much thought since its debut, which changed later in Gen IV through a noticeable slew of buffs each game; Diamond/Pearl gifted it U-turn, Roost and the Ability Technician, the latter of which wasn't that useful... at least not yet, since Platinum handed Scizor a move it wouldn't have dreamed of in Bullet Punch (which it gains STAB on and is boosted by Technician), as well as Knock Off^note Which due to its at the time paltry power, would see use generations later starting in Gen VI and Superpower for coverage through the move tutor; finally, HG/SS later gifted Scizor Bug Bite for Technician-boosted Bug-type STAB through the tutors, too. Ever since then, Scizor has always been a dangerous physical sweeper, hitting stuff like a bullet train (both in speed and power); it's hard to respond to it and requires a lot of smart prediction to take it down, choosing between striking you first with Bullet Punch, or pivoting into a more favorable matchup with U-turn. Gen VI even introduced Mega Scizor, whose function is identical to its regular counterpart, but with noticeably better bulk. Power Creep eventually caught up with Scizor in Gen VIII though, as it lost its Mega Evolution while gaining nothing notable outside of Sand Tomb. Gen IX did introduce Terastallization to further boost its Bullet Punch, it gained Close Combat in lieu of Superpower and The Teal Mask DLC gave it back access to Knock Off, but even that wasn't enough to return it to OU, as it had lost Roost.
• Skarmory has been called the physical equivalent to Chansey and Blissey, and for good reason: it sports an excellent Steel/Flying typing; an unthinkable physical bulk (65/140 base HP and Defense); and a rich support movepool including Roost for recovery, Spikes, Stealth Rock and Whirlwind/Roar to rack up damage incredibly quickly; and since Gen V, Sturdy^*Previously only protecting the user from OHKO moves, it was buffed to act as a built-on Focus Sash, ensuring it can't be OHKO'd without a Pokémon with Mold Breaker. All this together meant that it set the benchmark for Physical walls in Pokémon, one that every Physical wall will have to be compared to; if it says something, it faced competition from Ferrothorn in Gen V, yet its Ground immunity kept it relevant. Even with Gen VII introducing Z-Moves and worthy competition in Celesteela —who shared the exact same typing—, the metal bird still stayed in OU due to being such a splashable choice. Gen VIII finally saw power creep catch up to it with the introduction of Corviknight^*It shares the exact typing and similar physical bulk (98/105 base HP and Defense), but has higher base Special Defense (85, compared to Skarmory's mediocre 70) and U-turn for utility and escaping Magnet Pull, making Skarmory drop to UU; despite this, Skarmory still sees some use (if scarce) in Gen VIII OU due to access to Spikes, Stealth Rock, Sturdy and a stronger Body Press, all of which Corviknight doesn't have. Notably, in Gen IX, Skarmory is widely considered the better of the two due to those specific niches being far better suited for the metagame than Corviknight's tools. It's so good that Pokémon who aren't the biggest deal but happen to have Magnet Pull see usage solely to trap and eliminate Skarmory, which made it start to run Shed Shell simply to escape Magnezone starting in Gen V, a testament to how important these matchups are.
• Tyranitar, the pseudo-legendary introduced in Gen II, has consistently kicked various asses and taken names since its debut. It may be slow, but its amazing Attack rivals that of Dragonite, which is complemented by its great bulk and a superb movepool that lets it remove its checks with the right sets and strategies. While its debut was a great one, it was nowhere near as despised; that came in Gen III where it gained not just Dragon Dance to become a terrifying sweeper, but Sand Stream to set up a permanent sandstorm. Excluding Olympus Mons, it is undoubtedly the best of the stand-alone weather setters, and its weather allowed its teammates like Garchomp and Excadrill to abuse it to wreak havoc in later generations. Even better, from Gen IV and on, Tyranitar's Rock typing means that its Special Defense increases by 50% under a sandstorm, allowing it to function as a physically attacking special tank, and Pursuit becoming a physical move makes it the best Pursuit trapper in the game. In early generations, Tyranitar's sand heavily determined what Pokémon were viable and which ones weren't, and has always had the benefit of canceling Leftovers recovery; thriving in a Tyranitar metagame in Gens III-V consisted of dealing with sandstorm, abusing it, or just clearing it to make room for other weather abusers that are checked just by Tyranitar's presence. Even from Gen VI onward, its standalone traits mean it was affected much less than fellow weather-setters Politoed, Abomasnow, and Ninetales, when weather abilities were nerfed to no longer be permanent, and Tyranitar's STAB Rock attacks even allow it to run over most of the Fairy-types that would normally pose problems to it. It's one of the few Pokémon who sees regular usage in both its base and Mega form, with such impressive showings that it managed to remain in OU in every generation until Gen VIII. Unfortunately, Gen IX proved to be its worst showing yet despite the Teal Mask DLC giving it access to the dreaded Knock Off (complete with STAB) for the first time ever, as the meta proved to be very unkind to it beyond even simple powercreep^*Sand was considered a largely unviable weather early in Gen IX as it lacked any real abusers until the Indigo Disk brought Excadrill back, just about every new OU staple, like Great Tusk or Kingambit happened to counter it hard, and Tyranitar hates using Terastallization due to it depriving it of its Sp. Def boost, or even immunity to its own sandstorm., which pushed it down to residing in UU or even RU. Still, for better or worse, Tyranitar's career has been undeniably successful, to the point fans outright eulogized Tyranitar with various memes when it first fell to UU and then to RU as well.

Generation III

• Blaziken, after two instances where it wasn't able to hang out with the best of the best due to its lacking 80 base Speed, became reviled in Gen V after its Hidden Ability was introduced: Speed Boost. Immediately going from a Pokémon that wasn't fast enough to truly wreak havoc to one of the best sweepers and revenge killers in the entire metagame through a combo with Protect and Swords Dance, Blaziken could outspeed most of the cast as well as hit like a truck with its Fire and Fighting STAB moves, a typing combo regarded as one of the best in the series. Blaziken soon became so overwhelming and reviled, and later made history as the very first starter ever to be banned to Ubers; and even there it was quite decent, too. Gen VI made Blaziken even harder to deal with, as it gained a Mega Evolution that retained Speed Boost and granted it a massive bonus in Attack and Speed^*Though it's important to note that, with a Life Orb, Speed Boost Blaziken did Mega Blaziken's job of being a wall-breaker better at the minor expense of longevity, and it also gained the much-maligned Baton Pass through Egg moves, meaning it could now pass on his stat bonuses to other Pokémon and escape trapping moves and Abilities — it was so bad, both forms of Blaziken were quickbanned to Ubers this time. Gen VIII, however, finally saw power creep build enough speed and catch up to it, by virtue of losing its Mega Evolution and having more natural counters to its Speed Boost sweep shenanigans, so Blaziken was finally unbanned from Ubers, and later dropped to UU where it was swiftly banned to UUBL — on the other hand, Blaziken wasn't bad in the slightest and could actually find a really useful niche in OU, even if it required much more caution than before and was the reason why it didn't make as much usage as it could have. Regardless of such though, it still remained banned to Ubers in National Dex formats.
• Pelipper of all things became this when it gained Drizzle in Generation VII and even though the ability had suffered a nerf in the previous generation, it's still quite strong. In addition to enabling dangerous sweepers similar to Politoed in Gen V (described above in Gen II's folder), it has a fantastic type combination in Water/Flying, giving it several useful resists and letting it abuse always-accurate STAB Hurricanes to hit surprisingly hard. Its main downsides are its lacking speed and being forced to pick between getting hit by Stealth Rock or having shorter periods of Rain due to not being able to carry all the items it wants.
• Kyogre is one of the most long-standing and infamous scourges of Ubers. Its ability Drizzle summons the powerful rain weather, whichs boosts its STAB Water-type moves, most notably Water Spout. Already coming off of its crashing 150 base Special Attack, a pair of Choice Specs just decimates everything in sight like a water jet cutter. Even Dragon-types and fellow Waters weren't safe, as its movepool includes Ice Beam and Thunder respectively to deal with most of its would-be checks. And it isn't a one-trick whale either, as it can easily run defensive sets aiming to boost with Calm Mind, and has decent support options like Thunder Wave and Scald (pre-Gen IX). Kyogre was so dominant up to Gen V that Pokémon that normally wouldn't see use in Ubers, such as Ludicolo, Gastrodon, and Water Absorb Quagsire saw play just to keep it in check. Kyogre's viability did drop somewhat in Gen VI however, as its Drizzle ability saw a nerf to no longer be permanent; though it still ended up a very powerful Pokémon. Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, however, saw Kyogre fail to dominate the tier again, as even though it got a decent Primal form, its eternal rival Groudon got one that was even better, and it could nullify its once-powerful Water attacks thanks to its Desolate Land ability. Of course, Primordial Sea could turn the tide on Primal Groudon when able to get on the field safely, which would force Groudon out almost immediately, so even with its Drizzle ability nerfed, Kyogre was absolutely a threat that you had to prepare for. Its return in Gen VIII without its Primal form saw it dominate the tier once more, though it still had to contend with the old issues of Drizzle and the generally higher power level. Though despite the introduction of Eternatus in Generation VIII and Koraidon and Miraidon in Gen IX, Terastallization into Water has made Kyogre just as dangerous as it was in previous generations, and it doesn't look like it will slow down anytime soon.
• While Groudon was a powerful force before Gen VI, it wasn't the most popular Ubers Pokémon, thanks in no small part to Kyogre being everywhere. However, upon the release of OR/AS, Primal Groudon was introduced and became among the best of the best. It has fantastic stats across the board, a devastating Ground/Fire type combination and an ability that completely negates Water attacks, making it only weak to Ground. This leaves it with few major counters, which means it can better take advantage of its surprisingly large movepool. What makes it so hated is that almost every Ubers team uses it, as it can fit on almost every team (similarly to Landorus-Therian), thanks to the sheer number of roles it can have. Many people called it to be banned to Anything Goes alongside Mega Rayquaza, but nothing came off of it due to a myriad of factors^*It has a lack of reliable recovery and mediocre Speed, banning it might potentially swing open the door for Primal Kyogre to wreak havoc, it's basically helpless against a good Lugia without Stealth Rock, it has no real way to handle Zygarde Complete Form outside of Swords Dance sets, it's vulnerable to Arceus-Ground, weather-centric setups have to worry about Rayquaza cancelling out its Ability and one-shotting it with Surf or Aqua Tail or a Primal Kyogre switching in to override it, Swords Dance setups have to pray that they don't have to deal with Yveltal or Mega Sableye with Foul Play... among other things. Regardless, many fans were still glad that it came back in Sword/Shield without its Primal form.
• Jirachi is, similarly to its Mythical Pokémon partners, a Jack of All Stats that can run any set it so wishes thanks to a combination of balanced stats across the board (with base 100 on each stat), a superb movepool, and its Ability Serene Grace^*Doubles a move's secondary effect's chances to occur. Though its debut generation was great, Gen IV's Physical/Special split and moveset buffs catapulted it into stardom; it gained moves like U-turn, Stealth Rock, Trick and Iron Head, the latter of which is especially egregious since it now had a move to abuse thanks to Serene Grace^*Its respectable 30% chance to flinch was boosted into a 60% chance, above the 50/50, which combined with its access to Thunder Wave or Body Slam^note The former guarantees paralysis but is blocked by Ground-types, the latter has a 60% chance thanks to Serene Grace but is blocked by Ghost-types gave birth to the "Paraflinch" strategy^*Consists of preventing the opponent from attacking through repeatedly causing the opponent to flinch or leaving it fully paralyzed; with both Iron Head and paralysis, the chances to attack are reduced to an infuriating 30%. Jirachi's bulk allows it to thus take a hit, fish for a paralysis, spamming Iron Head, and watch as the opponent curses the player out for not being able to attack. Though this strategy is what has made Jirachi so infamous, it notably still has moves it can abuse such as Ice Punch^*With Serene Grace, its 10% chance to freeze is boosted to 20%, which is otherwise naturally impossible, and due to Jirachi's balanced stats, one still has to account for the possibility of special, defensive, and even Choice Scarf sets. Jirachi is thus a contender for the best Pokémon in Gen IV OU, with the only weaknesses it has being it's only decently fast and it can't run all of its preferred moves to surprise all of its checks and counters. Though subsequent generations' power creep and Steel losing its resistances to Ghost and Dark have ensured its stats and sets aren't as impressive as before, Jirachi remains a great choice across all generations it's been in, to the dismay of any poor soul who has been hax'd by it.

Generation IV

• Garchomp, the pseudo-legendary of Gen IV, is a major offender for this trope. In its debut generation, its excellent 130 base Attack, very convenient Speed stat of 102 (described as "trolly" due to it just barely outpacing the ubiquitous 100 Speed tier), brilliant coverage in just Outrage/Earthquake, and surprisingly good 108/95/85 bulk made it a Lightning Bruiser that completely dominated the metagame, becoming one of the few regular Pokémon to be banned to the Uber tier, alongside Wobbuffet (and later Salamence); it is so powerful, in fact, it even dominated Ubers, ranking close to Dialga, Palkia and Giratina in effectiveness. After Gen V brought in a general increase in power and Speed in the OU tier as well as several more solid counters for Garchomp, it was unbanned from Ubers, only to immediately become disliked again due to its Sand Veil Ability^*Boosts the Pokémon's evasion by ~20% during sandstorm making it the only pseudo-legendary who could abuse the weather. There was a long discussion on Smogon whether to ban Sand Veil or not, concluding with the introduction of "Evasion Abilities Clause"^*No longer in effect in Gen VII in Singles, which disallows it and Snow Cloak. Regardless, Garchomp's Hidden Ability of Rough Skin let it be balanced enough for OU, and it's been a consistent Pokémon there in every generation since — even with the introduction of Fairy-types, it can just click Earthquake and delete them from its sight, and it has gained new toys on subsequent generations^*Gen VI gave it a Mega Evolution that's slower but far bulkier, Gen VIII took away its Mega Evolution (which it didn't really need) and gifted it Scale Shot, and Gen IX gave it the reviled Spikes as well as Thunder Fang, the latter of which scares off both Corviknight and Enamorus.. Gen IX seemed to have finally marked the end of its dominance though, having a rollercoaster of a run that, after power creep and many answers brought by everywhere in the game^*Dragapult, Great Tusk, Baxcalibur and Roaring Moon from the base game, Enamorus from HOME, the return of Gliscor in The Teal Mask, and Gouging Fire and the return of Skarmory in The Indigo Disk it was left mostly outclassed despite recovering Scale Shot in The Teal Mask, ending in it dropping to UU... where it quickly proved itself problematic for the tier, causing it to get banned to UUBL, and only dropping back to UU due to The Indigo Disk's power creep only to get banned again. Regardless, nobody will forget Garchomp's long run as one of the most successful Pokémon in competitive, to the point fans outright eulogized the land shark with various memes when it first fell to UU.
• Weavile started out humbly before temporarily dropping a bit, then scaling back the ranks after Gen V. A Dark/Ice typing and highly respectable base 120 Attack and 125 Speed stats make up for its unimpressive 70/65/85 defenses, making it a good Fragile Speedster. However, its typing leaves it weak to entry hazards (such as, of course, Stealth Rock), and its STAB moves in Night Slash and Ice Punch have low base power, so it hit weaker than it looks; it still managed to stay in OU in Gen IV thanks to access to Pursuit, Ice Shard and Swords Dance, though. Subsequent generations gifted it various other moves, such as Knock Off and Low Kick in Platinum (the former of which it later made amazing use of in OU come Gen VI), Icicle Crash in X/Y^note Though it should be noted that the Icicle Crash/Knock Off combo would only become legal in OR/AS, and Throat Chop in Gen VII, while it was still able to defend itself from Fairy-types with moves like Poison Jab or Iron Tail. This was nothing compared to Gen VIII, however; despite losing Pursuit, Weavile received two critical buffs that skyrocketed its viability: Heavy-Duty Boots and Triple Axel (through the Isle of Armor's tutor moves). With an alleviated longevity, a much stronger move to abuse^*Its multi-hit move even allows it to bypass Substitute than Icicle Crash or Icicle Spear (the latter of which it also gained in Sw/Sh), as well as its other aforementioned moves, Weavile was scary to go against, and it dominated OU despite the presence of threats like Landorus-Therian and Dragapult (which it threatens anyways). Even with the loss of Knock Off and Triple Axel in the unofficial BD/SP format, the reverse power creep (due to the smaller Dex) combined with its high Speed, power and moves cemented it as a threat once more. Gen IX initially nerfed Weavile immensely due to losing Icicle Spear, Knock Off, Throat Chop and Triple Axel... until both The Teal Mask and The Indigo Disk DLCs brought all of those moves back^note It received Icicle Spear and Knock Off in Teal Mask, and Throat Chop and Triple Axel in Indigo Disk; though it rose back to OU, the significant power creep brought by both the base game and the DLCs means that it is no longer the terror it was in Gen VIII, though many agree it's in a much better spot than it was at the start of the generation, since the loss of its valuable moves had initially dropped it to RU despite the ban of Chien-Pao.
• Gliscor already had a good start in Gen IV thanks to its excellent Ground/Flying-type and all-around balanced stats, with decent base 95 Attack and Speed, as well as a good 75/125 physical bulk complemented by its great movepool, making Gliscor apt for any kind of role, be it offensive or defensive. However, it was taken to a new height with its Hidden Ability, Poison Heal^*When poisoned, the user is healed for 1/8 of its maximum HP instead of taking damage. This leaves crippling Gliscor with poison out of the picture and, equipped with a Toxic Orb, gives it longevity that most Pokémon would be envious of, especially with Roost and Protect. Thus, meaningfully harming Gliscor is an exercise in frustration as it either makes progress utility-wise or sets up for a sweep, with the few solutions being to hit its mediocre base 75 Sp. Def., use either a Water or Ice move on it, or remove its Toxic Orb as it switches in for the first time in battle (easier said than done). Even with the existence of Landorus-Therian to give it competition, Gliscor's longevity and pseudo-immunity to status conditions prevents it from being outclassed at all. Its omission from Gen VIII and subsequent return in The Teal Mask DLC has even seen it become more obnoxious than ever to deal with; while Gliscor lost Defog and Roost, it gained the reviled Spikes and Toxic Spikes, being an excellent use of the latter due to threatening the Poison-types that would remove the poison spikes with Earthquake, while the loss of Roost is made up by how quickly it heals with Poison Heal anyway. Not only does this make Gliscor one of OU's flagship defensive Ground-types, but for the first time in its history, it found itself as the best Pokémon in OU, even dethroning Lando-T since Gliscor has the edge with the moves the former lacks in Gen IX, such as Knock Off and Toxic. It says a lot when, in a rare feat for a mainly defensive Pokémon, Gliscor got suspect tested and banned, only being unbanned and retested coming the release of The Indigo Disk DLC due to the expanded Pokédex.
• Rotom's Wash Form is disliked by many players because of one small, but significant change: from Gen V onward, it became an Electric/Water type Pokémon instead of retaining its Electric/Ghost type. Its Ability Levitate makes Rotom immune to Ground-type attacks, and thanks to its typing, Rotom-Wash has only a single weakness to Grass. It also happens to be a versatile pivot thanks to its all-around great 50/107/107 bulk along with several amazing moves like Volt Switch, Hydro Pump and two forms of status inflicting moves in Thunder Wave and Will-O-Wisp. All of this results in Rotom-Wash being incredibly common in competitive battles, both in Singles and Doubles. Gen VIII saw it be temporarily dethroned as the best form with the addition of Nasty Plot and Heavy-Duty Boots helping its Heat Form immensely, causing Rotom-Heat to rise to OU for the first time (albeit briefly) and dropping Rotom-Wash to UU; nevertheless, with the advent of Gen IX, it has reclaimed its infamous place in OU once more, to the chagrin of many.
• Manaphy is an interesting case. Much like other Mythicals like Mew and Jirachi, Manaphy's stats are all base 100 across the board. But combined with its mono-Water typing and its Ability Hydration^*Heals the user's status conditions under rain, Manaphy is able to abuse its bulk and Rest under rain to heal itself back to full without worrying about sleep, reliably running sets such as Calm Mind or Tail Glow with minimal offensive move usage, such as Surf. While Manaphy started off in Ubers at first in its debut, Gen V surprisingly let it start in OU, where it abused Politoed's permanent rain thanks to Drizzle as well as the newly received Scald and a buffed Tail Glow^*Previously raised Sp. Atk. +2 levels, from Gen V onward it raises it +3 levels, eclipsing Nasty Plot, which got it suspect tested and banned to Ubers again; though even in both generations, it was still an impressive force of nature, being one of the very few mons that could reliably answer Darkrai's Dark Void as long as Kyogre's rain was in effect, which was very often considering its dominance. Gen VI's nerf to weather abilities to no longer be permanent saw it drop to OU once again, where despite suffering from four-moveslot syndrome it's still very strong in every generation it's been in, especially in Gen VII given rain's resurgence thanks to Pelipper (soundly described above). Gen IX in particular saw Manaphy get buffed significantly, as not only did Terastallization greatly improve its standard Tail Glow sets, but it also got a new signature boosting move in Take Heart, a version of Calm Mind with the added benefit of curing any status conditions, allowing Manaphy to be both an incredibly powerful and unpredictable wallbreaker.
• Shaymin, much like Manaphy above, looks underwhelming at first glance with none of its stats going past base 100. From Platinum onward, however, that becomes moot when it changes forms through a Gracidea into its Sky Forme. In this form, Shaymin has a fantastic base 127 Speed, a great 120 Special Attack stat, and the Ability Serene Grace, which affects its moves in Air Slash^*A 75 base power, Flying-type move with a 30% chance to flinch and its signature move, Seed Flare^*A Grass-type move with a 120 base power and 40% chance to lower the target's Sp. Def. by two stages and makes it incredibly annoying to deal with. By using Substitute and Leech Seed together (in what's known as "SubSeed"), Shaymin-Sky slowly wears at the opposition behind its substitute while abusing Air Slash for easy flinches, or worse, using Seed Flare to outright eliminate the target or drop the Special Defense of even bulky special walls like Blissey and later Eviolite Chansey, who can't even destroy its Substitute in one hit^note The pink blobs generally use Seismic Toss for direct damage, but the move's maximum damage is 100 HP, just 1 HP shy of breaking Shaymin's 101 HP substitutes. Combined with the surprise factor of Choice Specs and Choice Scarf sets, Shaymin-Sky remains a mon that absolutely dominates in OU whenever tested. It's so bad, Shaymin-Sky gained in earlier generations the dubious honor of being one of the few Pokémon to get unanimously banned from OU.
• Arceus has been a consistent and powerful cornerstone of Ubers ever since It descended onto the metagame, but among Its many sets, one particular variant gained more notoriety than the others: The so-called "Extreme Killer". After a couple of Swords Dance boosts, Its Extreme Speed attack can OHKO most Pokémon in the game except for a few such as Giratina and Lugia, Pokémon which Arceus can still dispose of since It's faster than them and usually carries super-effective moves with Its counters in mind. The kicker is that the Ubers tier itself is a ban list; nothing stood out enough be banned from the tier until Mega Rayquaza came along. Even with Marshadow keeping It in check in Gen VII, this Arceus is still terrifying to face. Gen IV later revisited Arceus and booted It into AG^*The second Ubers ban thanks to the aformentioned Mega Rayquaza setting the precedent due to the dominance of Extreme Killer and because Arceus could run about a dozen other sets anyway to surprise potential counters thanks to Multitype. While this ban is never repeated for Arceus again, Arceus as a whole, let alone Its Extreme Killer set, continues to be a massive threat in every metagame Its been in, showing exactly why It's the God of all Pokemon.

Generation V

• Serperior had very humble beginnings as the worst starter in its debut generation, both in-game and competitively, thanks to its mono-Grass typing, poor offensive stats besides a great 113 base Speed, and very limited movepool. However, Generation VI bestowed it with its Hidden Ability, Contrary^*Stat changes are reversed, with stat buffs lowering stats instead of raising it, and vice-versa for stat debuffs, which changed its Leaf Storm from a Dangerous Forbidden Technique to an amazing, extremely powerful Grass-type STAB that would let it sharply boost its Sp. Atk. with every use. This has caused the grass snake to skyrocket to OU in every generation since when it's existed, where it's been quite good but never game-breaking. However, that changed in Gen IX with the introduction of the Stellar Tera Type. Normally, the Stellar type changes Tera Blast into another Dangerous Forbidden Technique, hitting everything for at least powerful neutral damage while lowering the user's Attack and Sp. Atk stats after use; this stat debuff does not ignore Contrary, meaning Serperior can abuse Stellar Tera Blast as another boosting move and as the ultimate coverage move alongside Leaf Storm, making it threatening to the point of possible brokenness. To make things worse, it also has Glare, which synergizes with its Speed to allow it to cripple most common threats, and unlike the more common Thunder Wave, it is fully accurate and can be used against Ground-types such as Great Tusk and Ting-Lu. All of this combines with its serviceable 75/95/95 bulk, and thus makes Serperior a monster, with some players even calling for it to be banned, a far cry from its origins as one of the weakest first partner Pokémon in the series.
• Gothitelle became this as soon as its Hidden Ability, Shadow Tag, was made available. Similarly to Wobbuffet, the inability to switch out traditionally without U-turn, Volt Switch or Baton Pass (which is banned in most Singles formats) makes it hard to take down; unlike Wobbuffet, however, Gothitelle trades bulk for speed, actual offensive presence and versatility beyond taking hits and dying. Letting Gothitelle trap and use Taunt on a slow defensive Pokémon can be very dangerous considering its access to the Calm Mind + Stored Power combo; plus, it will never put itself on a position where it traps Toxapex or any Dark-type first, and even the latter have trouble contesting it due to its coverage. Gothitelle's main issue is being susceptible to Knock Off due to its lack of recovery, but since it's still getting rid of the Pokémon it's supposed to beat, those are just minor issues rather than actual problems, leaving only Sableye (both its base and Mega forms) as its only true counter. Thus, Gothitelle's opressive presence contributes to one of the reasons Shadow Tag remains banned in every single generation.
• Ferrothorn is notorious in competitive scenes for being ridiculously annoying to deal with and being awfully common. For starters, Ferrothorn's amazing defensive typing in Grass/Steel and its notoriously high 74/131/116 bulk makes it very hard to KO. Its ability, Iron Barbs, will hurt any Pokémon that uses a contact move on it, and it can stack with Rocky Helmet for over 1/4 max HP of contact damage, which discourages most physical attackers. Ferrothorn can also learn several useful supporting moves such as Leech Seed, Stealth Rock, Spikes, Thunder Wave, Toxic and Knock Off. It is not that passive of a Pokémon in the slightest either, as its decent 94 base Attack lets it launch off powerful STAB Power Whip and Gyro Ball. With all of this in mind, Ferrothorn can easily be customized to the team's needs. Need a hazard setter that can take more than one hit? Want a sturdy wall that will rarely fold to attacks (similarly to Skarmory) but can hit hard? Perhaps utility in the form of item removal or status condition spreading? Ferrothorn can do that and more, all for the cost of a single teamslot. It does have flaws, such as being extremely weak to Fire-type, being ridiculously slow, and lacking recovery outside of Leech Seed, but its numerous benefits outweigh said flaws, leading it to be a common contender in every metagame it finds itself in. However, there is a large camp of players who actually like Ferrothorn for its ability to compress utility and defensive roles so well, filling holes in their teams and helping keeping strong threats in check.
• Volcarona is the exception to the usual rule that Bug Pokémon tend to be Low Tier Letdowns. It combines great 85/105 special bulk with decent Speed (base 100) and amazing 135 Special Attack, combined with its Flame Body Ability synergizing with its bulk, and a great movepool in both offense and support, including access to the extremely powerful Quiver Dance and its Secret Art, Fiery Dance. It's still a very polarized Pokémon, since its weaknesses include a mediocre Bug/Fire typing that grants it nice STAB coverage, but also a 4x weakness to Rock and weaknesses to common Flying and Water attacks, making it incredibly hard to switch in. Other weaknesses include a severe allergy to entry hazards and having four moveslot syndrome — it needs coverage to break through certain Pokémon that wall it^*It wants Hurricane for Keldeo, Hidden Power Ground for Heatran, Giga Drain for the resident bulky Water mons, Psychic for Toxapex..., and even if it slots an option, it will be always be walled by at least one mon. This has led to Volcarona's reputation as the "matchup moth" of OU, leading games to essentially being decided at team preview; as an example, if one was running a Rain team, or happened to have the correct checks against Volcarona's chosen coverage move, Volcarona would be dead weight, but if not, Volcarona would demolish that team if it ever found even a single opening. It was a very contentious Pokémon in its first few generations, with some even clamoring for its ban, and while it did become more manageable during Gens VI-VII, Gen VIII's introduction of Heavy-Duty Boots finally allowed it to bypass entry hazards, sparking these very same arguments once again. Gen IX's introduction of Terastallization made it even worse, finally letting it invert its weaknesses and bad matchups on the fly^*Tera Ground with Tera Blast blows past Fire-types like Heatran post-HOME, Tera Grass turns its Water weakness into a resistance and boosts Giga Drain's power, Tera Water is a balanced typing that also fills in its coverage gaps; while it finds itself unable to patch all of its weaknesses in one type, all of this got to the point where, after being on the radar numerous times across multiple generations, it finally got (quick)banned to Ubers in this generation due to its overwhelming power. The fact Volcarona has managed to be even more viable than both of its Paradox counterparts^*Slither Wing has a middling Speed stat, and Iron Moth has worse Defense, and more damningly lacks Quiver Dance is a testament to the Sun Pokémon's power and ability to stand the test of time. While it was brought back to OU with the release of The Indigo Disk, Volcarona has been retested again and was banned back to Ubers.
• Landorus-Therian, since his debut, has been one of the feared kings of Complacent Gaming Syndrome in Pokémon, infamously getting better with each new game no matter how much the landscape changes around him. He has the Ground/Flying typing that has made Gliscor so successful, and his monstrous 145 base Attack stat is close to things like regular Groudon and Normal Forme Deoxys, letting him hit hard with STAB Earthquake. He has a massive and wide movepool full of powerful offensive and defensive options^*To narrow it down to his most notable ones: Bulk Up, Defog, Earthquake, Explosion, Knock Off, Rock Polish, Stone Edge, Superpower, Swords Dance, Toxic, and even U-turn, and pushing this further is Lando-T's Intimidate Ability; combined with U-turn, he can constantly switch out of dangerous situations, continually chipping at the opponent's health and lowering their offense at the same time, and also escaping his otherwise problematic Water and 4x Ice weaknesses. All these traits make Lando-T extremely versatile, capable of running offensive, defensive, utility and pivot sets. The result is a Pokémon with the highest usage in the competitive scene, and even with power creep catching up to Lando-T sometimes^*With notable offensive Water- and Ice-types that can check him such as Ash-Greninja, Urshifu-Rapid Strike and Triple Axel Weavile, he never missed a beat. He's even a usable choice in Ubers! Quite possibly the biggest problem Lando-T faces is his inability to run every set he wants to, thus suffering from four-moveslot syndrome and making several of his earlier sets more niche or even obsolete, often relegating him to be more of a utility role compressor. All other reception to the Pokédex in Sword/Shield aside, some players let out a sigh of relief that Landorus was finally gone... and then let out a collective groan when the DLC announced him back, especially since the removal of Hidden Power means it's no longer possible to strike his Achilles' Heel. However, his return to Gen IX has finally seen Landorus get struck with a deluge of lost moves post-HOME, including many of his most useful tools^{Most notably...}Defog, Explosion/Self-Destruct, Knock Off, Rock Polish, Superpower and Toxic, so while he's still a useful offensive threat and pivot, he has finally taken a backseat in favor of his Paldean equivalent in Great Tusk, and the Teal Mask reintroducing a now-buffed Gliscor left Lando-T barely hanging onto OU after the first month post-DLC. Even before then, however, there is a large camp of players who actually appreciate Lando-T for filling so many holes in their teams and keeping strong threats from being broken, especially as more and more power creep has been introduced over the years.
• For several generations, Kyurem’s base form was a Pokémon that always fell short of greatness. While it was regularly able to carve out a niche in OU, thanks to its great overall stats, strong special STABs alongside good coverage in Earth Power and Focus Blast, and reliable recovery in Roost, its typing came with several major weaknesses that often left it overshadowed by other offensive Dragon-types. Then came Gen VIII, which offered Kyurem a whole platter of buffs that led it to quickly become a top-tier threat. The addition of Freeze-Dry to Kyurem’s movepool gave it an Ice STAB that threatened common Water-type switch-ins, which paired incredibly well with Earth Power to provide perfect neutral coverage. Kyurem also benefitted greatly from Heavy-Duty Boots removing its debilitating Stealth Rock weaknesses, which when combined with its good bulk and access to Substitute and Roost gave it great longevity for such an offensively threatening Pokémon. It even got access to Dragon Dance and Icicle Spear as well, allowing it to run a bulky physical sweeper set that could beat many of the checks to its specially offensive sets by PP stalling them using its Pressure ability. Kyurem eventually developed such a stranglehold over the tier that it ended up being suspected and banned. It was later allowed back into OU in Gen IX when it returned in The Indigo Disk DLC, and while did suffer a major blow in the form of losing Roost, access to Terastallization and the addition of Scale Shot and Loaded Dice for physical sets meant it quickly lept to the top of the metagame once again. It eventually became the first Pokémon to be suspected following the DLC's release, and ended up only barely avoiding another ban, with the pro-ban vote only being 2% short of the necessary 60% supermajority.
• Genesect, Pokémon's answer to the T-900, doesn't look overwhelming at first. It's got masterful mixed 120/120 attacking stats, but average base 99 Speed, one point short of the coveted 100 Speed tier, and decent but not amazing 71/95/95 bulk. Its Speed issues, however, are solved by equipping it with a Choice Scarf, which allows it to abuse its numerous caveats, including a deep offensive movepool^*Iron Head, Flash Cannon, Bug Buzz and the ever-reliable U-turn for STAB; rich coverage options in Flamethrower, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt, Energy Ball and Extreme Speed; and Shift Gear to boost and its Ability, Download^*Raises the user's Attack or Sp. Atk. depending on the current opponent's lowest defensive stat. The result is a Pokémon that can utilize its attacking stats to the fullest, outspeeding and laying the hurt on everything in the metagame whenever Genesect is tested, and even pivot around its worse matchups thanks to U-turn and its high Attack, preserving momentum. Essentially, Genesect is the original "Protean" Pokémon, with the added bonus that instead of just gaining pseudo-STAB on its coverage, it also boosts its own STAB moves. Because of how hard Genesect hits and how hard it is to take down as a result, it has been banned to Ubers in every generation it's been allowed in OU; unfortunately, despite being an outstanding option in Gen V thanks to its strengths, power creep in Ubers come Gen VI, combined with its horrible bulk for Legendary standards, has ensured that while it's too good for OU, it's no longer good enough for Ubers.

Generation VI — Normal Pokémon

• Greninja certainly has ire against it, courtesy of its quick Speed and rich movepool that enables the frog to do most things it wants. With not one but two forms, one of these introduced in Gen VII, players using Greninja are able to play a sadistic guessing game as to what kind of Greninja is being run. Guess incorrectly and it can either change its type or become even more powerful. Both forms are described below:
  • Regular Greninja was reviled for its ludicrous Speed of 122 — it's fast enough to outpace most Pokémon, and it has good 95/103 offenses and a wide array of attacking options, but what earns its hate is the Protean Ability. Since Protean means Greninja gains STAB (same-type attack bonus) on every attack, it's usually hitting surprisingly harder than one would expect; on top of that, Greninja's Speed lets it abuse Protean to avoid weaknesses^ExampleUsing Spikes to turn into a Ground-type to surprise Electric-types or Shadow Sneak to surprise Fighting-types and play defensive mindgames with opponents to circumvent its low 72/67/71 bulk. Fighting Greninja is playing a fixed shell game, as anything it can't KO, it simply gains momentum for its team by switching out thanks to U-turn. Although it was considered very powerful, it was never deemed banworthy — that changed in Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, where move tutors blessed Greninja with many more options, most infamously Gunk Shot^*A 120 base power Poison-type move with 80% accuracy and 30% chance to poison the target. It may run off of Greninja's lower Attack stat, but thanks to Protean it still let it surprise opposing Grass- and Fairy-types and turn Greninja resistant to all its original weaknesses except Electric. All of the tools it got, as well as its Speed and power, finally caused enough of a stir to result in a successful ban from OU. It was unbanned in Gen VII, where thanks to power and speed creep it wasn't even the best Pokémon in the metagame, but it still made excellent usage of Z-Moves. It wasn't until Gen IX when the Protean nerf and general power creep finally caught up to the frog, with its demotion to UU bringing happiness to many... and then great irritation to those same players when it came back to OU in part due to the below...
  • Ash-Greninja is a Mega Evolution-like Super Mode triggered by a special Greninja's Ability, Battle Bond. Of course, to activate the Ability, Greninja has to obtain a KO by itself, which means it must overcome the opponent with its base form's offenses and no Protean to boost them, but once it activates, forget about it. Ash-Greninja is drastically stronger in both offenses (going from a reasonable 95/103 to a killer 145/153) and is even faster (from 122 Speed to 132), surpassing even base Kyogre in power and Tapu Koko in Speed. No Pokémon in the OU metagame ever want to switch into Ash-Greninja in fear of its mindlessly powerful Hydro Pump, outside of bulky Water- and Grass-types, and with Choice Specs, even those are eventually overwhelmed, so the only way to beat it is by outspeeding with a Choice Scarf or with priority... except, Greninja's Water Shuriken is a priority move, and it was buffed to be a Special move on top of hitting reasonably hard as Ash-Greninja^ExplanationThe move starts off with 15 base power and a chance to hit 2-5 times; as Ash-Greninja, it has 20 base power and hits 3 times. Quite possibly its biggest weakness was it needed to transform to be this powerful, and even once it did, it kept its base form's frailty as none of its defenses increase upon transformation, but when you're this fast, that's not much to worry about. Many clamored for its ban, but nothing ever came off of it. Gen IX seemed to utterly murder Battle Bond by retconning out the transformation, removing the boost to Water Shuriken and instead just giving Greninja a stat boost to its Attack, Sp. Atk. and Speed, and only once per battle at that, a nerf that led even many of Ash-Greninja's detractors to grieve its viability, thinking that GAME FREAK took things too far. But even in this state, Battle Bond Greninja was able to take back its place in OU, and it wasn't until the Indigo Disk DLC where Greninja finally fell back to UU, Battle Bond and all.
• Talonflame instantly sparked discussions thanks to its hidden Ability, Gale Wings^*It gives +1 priority to Flying-type moves. Otherwise plagued with a mediocre base 81 Attack, Talonflame can circumvent this with the high-powered Brave Bird^*A 120 base power, 100% accuracy Flying-type move that inflicts recoil, move which Staraptor was famous for in Gens IV-V. This, of course, would lead the earlier players to spam Brave Bird (especially equipped with a Choice Band), earning Talonflame the Fan Nickname of "the Brave Bird". The move's usage made it very hard to check thanks to said move's coverage and lack of immunities, causing the less experienced playerbase to decry the move as broken. Of course, this is far from the only set Talonflame can run, as its Fire/Flying typing lets it use other moves like Flare Blitz, Will-O-Wisp and Roost, and it's even the first regional bird to learn both Bulk Up and Swords Dance, while also learning U-turn like most of them. And if you think you could outspeed it if you knew it wasn't going to click Brave Bird, its blazing base 126 Speed would make you reconsider it. It did have some flaws, such as its Fire/Flying typing giving it a crippling 4x weakness to Rock (thus being allergic to Stealth Rock, in a repeat of Charizard), and combined with its relatively low Attack stat means it's walled by some strong physically defensive Pokémon like Tyranitar or Rhyperior; nevertheless, Talonflame thus became infamous for being such a dominant force in Gen VI OU as a powerful revenge killer and sweeper, able to fit on various dedicated teams. Gen VII, however, assassinated Gale Wings by making it activate only if the user has full HP, marking an end to the Brave Bird's shenanigans with... well, Gale Wings' boosted Brave Bird, and thus its OU dominance. It hasn't seen usage in OU since then, though its other traits have fortunately (or unfortunately?) kept it usable in lower tiers, especially with Gen VIII introducing Heavy-Duty Boots.
• Aegislash frequently came under fire in Gens VI-VII. It has one of the best defensive typings in the game in Steel/Ghost^{How good?}4 weaknesses in Fire, Ground, Ghost and Dark; hit neutrally by Water and Electric; 3 immunities to Normal, Fighting and Poison; resists everything else (especially a 4x resistance to Bug) and the Ability Stance Change, which lets it switch its outstanding 150/150 defenses into offenses by attacking the target, and back to its defenses via its Secret Art, King's Shield^*A semi-clone of Protect that protects Aegislash from damage (but not status moves) and harshly reduces the Attack of Pokémon who tried to attack it. With such offensive stats, you had no idea from what side Aegislash would hit on, and if you guessed correctly, trying to fight it boiled down to being caught in an endless cycle of Aegislash protecting itself while it cuts you down with very damaging attacks. Aegislash had such a stranglehold over the early Gen VI metagame that it was eventually banned by the playerbase from OU^*With a close 62% pro-ban of the voting process; even so, fan response was mixed, as some agreed to the ban, others thought it was out of line and that Aegislash wasn't as much of a game-breaker as other Pokémon so much as a necessary evil. Defenders would soon switch their stance on it, however, as Gen VII's introduction of Z-Moves made Aegislash impossible to answer, and Aegislash was quickbanned from OU in four days. Game Freak seems to have noticed the hate, as Gen VIII nerfed its defenses by 10 points each, giving it the dishonor of being the first (and only non-legendary as of this writing) Pokémon to have its base stats lowered in between generations. Because of this and King's Shield being nerfed to only lower the opponent's Attack by one stage instead of two, Aegislash was unbanned, though since power creep also caught up to it, it dropped to UU (before it was considered too overwhelming there and subsequently banned after a whopping ''four'' suspect tests after the ''Crown Tundra'' DLC); despite this, no veteran will forget its past stints as one of the strongest Pokémon ever.
• Hawlucha, for as beloved as it is, still earned some disdain from competitive players. After a quiet debut generation, it later became one of the most dangerous sweepers in Gen VII thanks to the Terrain Seed items^*Upon switching into their corresponding terrain, they boost the Pokémon's Defense (Electric and Grassy Seed)/Sp. Def (Psychic and Misty Seed). Aside from boosting its staying power, they also activate Hawlucha's Unburden Ability^*Doubles the Pokémon's Speed if its item is consumed or lost, and with Swords Dance, it becomes a Lightning Bruiser that can demolish teams with High Jump Kick/Close Combat and Acrobatics and even heal itself with Roost. Gen VII saw it use an Electric Seed the most, letting Tapu Koko easily switch out with either Volt Switch or U-turn to bring Hawlucha in safely on predicted switches; Grassy Seed later become another option in Gen VIII with the help of Rillaboom's Grassy Surge and U-turn. While Hawlucha cannot afford to switch out since it will lose both the defensive boost and the Unburden boost, its benefits mostly outweigh that one glaring flaw. The "KokoLucha" and "RillaLucha" strategy, as it became known among the playerbase, drew the ire of competitive players of all levels; ladder players spammed them to no end, and while it was seldom used at the highest level because good players would never put themselves in a position to lose to Hawlucha with a stronger team, the strategy was still incredibly effective for how easy it was to use.
• On the surface, Klefki seems like a Joke Character, except it's anything but. While its stats aren't something to write home about^*Average 57/90/80 bulk, mediocre 80/80 offenses, below-average 75 base Speed, it has Prankster as its Ability and an amazing Steel/Fairy type combination, widely considered to be the best defensive typing in the game^{How good?}2 weaknesses in Fire and Ground; hit neutrally by Water, Electric, Fighting, Ghost and Steel; 2 immunities to Poison and Dragon; resists everything else (especially a 4x resistance to Bug). With a library of support moves it can use^*Defog, Its Secret Art Fairy Lock, Magnet Rise, Safeguard, Spikes, Substitute, Swagger, Switcheroo, Thunder Wave, Torment, Toxic, etc., Klefki is surprisingly very annoying. In fact, it actually had a niche in Ubers of all places in Gens VI-VII, being a reliable counter to Xerneas, of all mons. Oh, and thanks to its Swagger, Thunder Wave and Foul Play antics, it is one of the infamous culprits behind the Swagger ban back in Gen VI (the other being Thundurus Incarnate). It fell out of this status in Gen VII due to the nerfs to confusion, Swagger, and Prankster, more or less removing what made it so hated.
• Xerneas instantly became one of the best Pokémon in Ubers on debut thanks to its signature move, Geomancy; after a charging turn, it sharply raises its Special Attack, Special Defense, and Speed. Equipped with a Power Herb and Fairy Aura Ability^*The power of Fairy-type attacks is boosted by 30%, and Xerneas happens to be Fairy-type, Xerneas has free reign to demolish an entire party without too much effort. While there are several ways to deal with its Geomancy before it can act^*Most notably Taunt to prevent it from using Geomancy, Haze and Clear Smog to remove its boosts or Roar and Whirlwind to force it to switch and wasting its Power Herb (although it can use Ingrain prevent phazing altogether), Xerneas can still pull off tricks up its sleeves through a combination of a varied movepool, its all-around excellent attacking stats and its very good 126/95/98 bulk. Despite Gen VII introducing actual Fairy-type competition (the Tapus and Magearna), the introduction of Z-moves made Xerneas even better, giving Xerneas a nuke through Z-Moonblast, or a stat omniboost that amounts to +3 stages in Sp. Atk. Sp. Def. and Speed through Z-Geomancy. Gen VIII, however, knocked Xerneas down a peg through a combination of the removal of Z-moves, the introduction of powerful threats like Eternatus, and new moves gained by other mons creating power creep within the tier itself; while still good, Xerneas is nowhere near as ridiculous as before.
• Yveltal, Xerneas' counterpart, was always a good Pokémon but absolutely skyrocketed in Gen VIII Ubers, where it basically became the Landorus-T of the tier. Thanks to its excellent movepool including coveted moves such as Defog, Sucker Punch, Knock Off, U-turn, Roost and Oblivion Wing, Yveltal was an extremely versatile Pokémon that could fill any role its team required, with its Dark Aura ability making its excellent Dark-type attacks even stronger. But what secured its place in the metagame was the prevalence of Shadow Rider Calyrex; due to Terastallization not existing at the time, Yveltal could act as a hard counter to Shadow Rider Calyrex since it had no way to answer to it other than the weak Draining Kiss. As such, Yveltal was widely seen as a necessary evil that was needed to keep Shadow Rider Calyrex from getting out of hand, despite the Character Select Forcing that ensued. Complacent Gaming Syndrome set in and Yveltal became one of the "big three" Pokémon seen on nearly every Ubers team along with Dusk Mane Necrozma and Eternatus, with the destructive bird itself becoming the #1 most used Pokémon in the tier from that point forwards. Its omnipresence also put a dent in the viability of any Pokémon weak to Dark unless it had standout traits to make up for its losing matchup against the Feathered Fiend, most notably with Shadow Rider Calyrex and Lunala hanging on to viability^note Shadow Rider Calyrex is a High-Tier Scrappy in its own right that only Yveltal could keep in check, while Lunala was still helped greatly by its Shadow Shield ability while Mewtwo, Giratina and especially Lugia languished. When Dynamax was still allowed in Ubers (and in Anything Goes), it also benefited from STAB Max Airstream making it even more dangerous as a sweeper despite being threatened by Shadow Rider Calyrex's Max Starfall.
• Zygarde was previously a fairly unremarkable Pokémon in Gen VI, but two of its forms became infamous when Gen VII rolled around.
  • Its 50% Forme, after a quiet debut generation monitoring OU from UUBL, turned from "Diet Garchomp" thanks to access to one of two previously unreleased Secret Arts — Thousand Arrows, a Ground-type move which circumvents Flying-types' immunity to Ground and even hits both opponents in Doubles, meaning that only Grass- and Bug-types can resist it. Thousand Arrows was such a versatile move that it opened up Zygarde's other three moveslots to be able to do anything it wanted. It also has access to Extreme Speed, coverage moves such as Iron Tail, Glare, Toxic, and Dragon Dance or Coil to boost. All of these options combined with its high bulk allowing for a greater margin of error, meant that Zygarde could not be consistently checked because it was impossible to prepare for all of its sets. It eventually got suspect tested, and the result was a ban.
  • Its Complete Forme is even worse. While its Power Construct Ability requires Zygarde's health to deplete to half, the payoff is a transformation with an immense HP increase, such that to give one an idea of its power, it was able to resist what would've been a One-Hit Kill when hit on its Achilles' Heel by certain Pokémon's STAB Ice Beam (like Protean Greninja). Sure, the result is a Stone Wall, but with access to the aforementioned boosting moves and Thousand Arrows, who cares? The Power Construct Ability would unsurprisingly be quickbanned to Ubers.
• Hoopa Unbound, despite having mediocre Speed, an awful 60 base Defense and a 4x vulnerability to Bug (meaning U-turns that land on it are a guaranteed KO), makes up for that with ungodly 160/170 offenses, good Special Defense, and access to strong moves and coverage on both offensive sides. With the right item, literally nothing in the OR/AS OU tier could switch in without getting at least 2HKO'd, and there was no reliable way to tell if Hoopa would run a physical or special set. Even with its flaws, that didn't Hoopa it from getting a lot of flack, especially from Stall players. Hoopa was eventually confined to the realm of Ubers following a suspect test, only being unbanned from OU in Gen VII due to the defensive power creep increase, reliable bulky counters such as Magearna, and the emergence of faster threats such as Tapu Koko. Its return in Gen IX, with the overall power creep, ultimately led it to fall to UU.

Generation VI — Mega Evolutions

Multiple Mega Evolutions have been hit with this, as their power levels greatly exceed that of the average Pokémon.

• Mega Gengar, while possessing impressive stat boosts, is mainly despised for revolving around no-win situations as its core concept. Its biggest change was the fact that it got Shadow Tag; coupled with its amazing movepool, a good Mega Gengar will always come out on top. Its various coverage options (including the dreaded Perish Trap strategy) allow the user to tailor it to trap specific Pokémon with a near-perfect success rate and even use Destiny Bond to kill whatever tries to revenge kill it or worse, opening holes for the rest of the team to sweep since the opponent's wall is now gone. Its case got so bad, it was tested for banning from Smogon's Ubers tier, but was somehow able to avoid the ban-hammer; given how lenient Smogon tends to be with Ubers (since it is a "just for fun, anything goes" tier to begin with, at least pre-Mega Rayquaza who's described below), the fact that they were considering a complete ban on Gengarite altogether says volumes about how ridiculously abusive Mega Gengar is. Escaping the ban, Mega Gengar is still widely considered one of the best Pokémon in the tier, especially given that the other trappers (Dugtrio, Wobbuffet, Gothitelle and its pre-evolution Gothorita) have severe weaknesses and lacking versatility compare to Mega Gengar, and many Mega Gengars pack Shadow Ball to outspeed (since it was the fastest Ghost type in the entire game until Shadow Rider Calyrex was released) and wreck any Ghost-types (who are immune to Shadow Tag) who may be sent out to deal with it.
• Mega Kangaskhan. Upon Mega Evolving, her stats are boosted enough to be a Lightning Bruiser, and with her incredibly diverse movepool, enemies are left struggling to counter Confusion Fu. Her ability, Parental Bond, causes almost every damage-dealing attack to hit twice, with the second hit dealing half damage. In practice, this means that Substitute, Focus Sash, and Sturdy are all useless against Mega Kangaskhan, and any attack with a secondary effect (e.g., Power-Up Punch's boost to the user's Attack) would activate the secondary effect twice. Eventually, Smogon banned Mega Kangaskhan from OU. Pokémon Sun and Moon lowered the damage on Parental Bond's second hit from half to a fourth, but even that didn't do much to knock Mega Kangaskhan down; her access to Seismic Toss pushed her over the edge^*Since Seismic Toss is a fixed damage move, burn and Intimidate don't affect its damage output at all to be banned again from OU, and it has not been unbanned since then.
• Mega Mawile is a shining example of what happens when a Mighty Glacier has way too much going for it. Thanks to Huge Power, it has the single highest Attack stat in the game^*Huge Power doubles a fully invested Attack stat from 339 to 678, which is equivalent to a 260 base Attack stat, far and away much higher than 105, it can crush just about anything, and its Steel/Fairy typing means it has no problem coming in; coupled with its solid bulk, it can be annoyingly difficult to kill, and even despite its low 50 base Speed it has access to Sucker Punch to circumvent that. It's got a very rich offensive movepool, so anyone dealing with it essentially must play a game of Russian roulette; failing to predict what move it'll use will result in the death of at least a third of their team at best, and a Total Party Kill at worst. Mega Gengar and Mega Kangaskhan may be more egregious, but Mega Mawile was still banned to Ubers in Gen VI — it was that much of a pain in the ass. It, however, struggled a lot in Gen VI Ubers, being walled by everything in the tier and especially Primal Groudon, plus being a Mega means that its opportunity cost isn't worth it compared to other excellent Megas like Gengar or Salamence. Power creep eventually saw Mega Mawile unbanned in Gen VII.
• Mega Sableye is, in a rare list of them, one of the few defensive Pokémon to ever warrant a ban consideration, and one of the even fewer to be banned. Its mediocre 75/65 defensive stats are increased by an insane amount (to 125/115) at the cost of its Speed. Its ability, Magic Bounce, reflects most of its opponent's status moves back to them. Like its base form, Mega Sableye is weak to only the Fairy-type, and it learns several excellent support moves, making Mega Sableye a perfect staller. In addition, regular Sableye can mix it up before Mega Evolving with its Prankster Ability, which allows Mega Sableye to patch its Speed by using a status move with priority. Eventually, Mega Sableye was banned in its second suspect test, though said ban technically didn't last at all given it was banned when Gen VII was arriving, and the power creep was enough to unban it from Ubers in Sun/Moon.
• Mega Salamence is a ridiculously scary Lightning Bruiser. Its Defense and Speed stats get noticeable boosts, making it even bulkier than Skarmory, except it's way faster. Its Aerilate Ability^*It turns Normal-type moves into Flying-type and gives them a 30% power boost before STAB, which it shares with Mega Pinsir, goes perfectly with its extreme 145/125 offensive stats, to say nothing of its access to Dragon Dance and Roost. Its only measurable flaws are a 4x weakness to Ice and a Stealth Rock weakness, but that doesn't stop Mega Salamence from tearing anything apart, and it was quite obviously quickbanned from OU by Smogon^*It was even banned from Doubles OU in Gen VI, but the Aerilate nerf and power creep led to its unban in Gen VII; but even in Ubers, it's still a horrifying offensive threat (even after the Aerilate nerf in Gen VII); following Mega Rayquaza's ban to AG (described in this folder), it is considered the second best Mega Evolution, after Mega Gengar.
• Mega Metagross is a retroactive example. Metagross gets a boost to its Attack stat (from an already awesome 135 to 145) and both defenses (from 130/90 physical/special defenses to 150/110), a crazy boost to its Speed (from 70 to 110), and the Tough Claws Ability ^*Every contact move gets a 30% power boost, and considering most of Metagross' moves make contact.... This adds to Metagross' already huge movepool, allowing it to pick its checks and counters and making it an insane offensive threat that's commonly seen in many teams. While it suffers from four moveslot syndrome, scouting its moves is not an easy task, to say less of its sheer power eventually overwhelming its would-be counters anyways. Mega Metagross narrowly avoided a ban in Gen VI, and the metagame adapted to it in response, but Gen VII made it even stronger, with a change to Mega Evolution mechanics^*Increases and decreases in Speed are immediately applied instead of having to wait a turn, shifts in the metagame^*A decrease in status and priority, and a shift towards slower, bulkier offense, as well as the Tapu's terrain abilities for it to abuse; this led to another suspect test, and Mega Metagross was given the boot to Ubers.
• Mega Rayquaza is arguably one of the crowning examples in this entire page. Take the already powerful Rayquaza and boost all of its stats, with its increased Speed turning it from a Glass Cannon into the Lightning Bruiser to end all Lightning Bruisers; then combine that with Rayquaza's already extensive offensive movepool and access to Dragon Dance to further up its offenses, and no immovable object can put the brakes on such unstoppable force. In addition, Mega Rayquaza gains the Ability Delta Stream, which not only cancels all weather effects present on the battlefield but it also removes the weaknesses of the Flying-type; therefore, Mega Rayquaza's Dragon/Flying-type applies offensively and for defensive resistances, but it's a mono-Dragon-type when it comes to defensive weaknesses^*Basically, with Delta Stream, its 4x Achilles' Heel to Ice becomes a simple weakness to the level of Dragon and Fairy, it loses its Rock weakness (though Stealth Rock activates before Delta Stream does, so it still takes a decent chunk of damage), and it gains an Electric resistance. But what truly makes Mega Rayquaza broken beyond the rating scale is that Rayquaza doesn't require a Mega Stone to mega evolve, instead only requiring its signature move, Dragon Ascent; this means Mega Rayquaza bypasses the Necessary Drawback other Mega Evolutions have, and this allows it to hold any item. Mega Rayquaza is so utterly powerful that it holds the dubious honor of being the first Pokémon ever to be banned from Ubers by Smogon, and a new tier called "Anything Goes" with most of the clauses removed was created just for it, with this tier also including many other Pokémon that would follow in its stead and are also described in this page.
• Mega Lopunny, while not quite as egregious of an example as others in this folder, still falls into this category. Prior to OR/AS, Lopunny was pretty much a worthless Pokémon, but these games gave it a Mega Evolution that gains an additional Fighting-type (one of the best offensive types in the game), a gigantic increase in its base Attack (from a bad 76 to a muscular 136) as well as more Speed (from 105 to 135) because why not, and the Ability Scrappy^*It allows Normal- and Fighting-type moves to hit Ghost-types, thus no-selling Ghost's own No-Sell to these types (how appropriate); the latter means it has an unresisted STAB combination, which running from its awesome Attack means it hits like a ton of bricks, and with its Speed, frail offensive Pokémon rarely pose a threat to it. This led to Mega Lopunny becoming the most splashable Mega Evolution in teams, skyrocketing its use to one of the most used Pokémon in the OU tiers in Gens VI-VII. Though a few players did ask for a Mega Lopunny suspect test, nothing came off of it (unlike the other examples in this folder) due to its weaknesses — it can be walled by different defensive threats (not named Ferrothorn or Mega Sableye), it's vulnerable to contact effects like Rough Skin, Static or Rocky Helmet, and its average 65/94/96 defenses make it easy to revenge kill. Still, without the right tools to handle it, this once Low-Tier Letdown is a dangerous threat.
• Mega Lucario became hated for embodying the negative aspects of Attack! Attack! Attack! Compared to base Lucario, Mega Lucario's Speed goes from an average base 90 to a great 112^*That's faster than the Eon duo (Latias and Latios), its balanced 110/115 offenses elevate to a frightening 145/140, and it gains the Adaptability Ability^*Moves that gain STAB (Same attack-type bonus) have 2x as much power instead of 1.5x on top of that. Playing against Mega Lucario thus goes like this: you guess the set that it's running, and act accordingly. If you guess right, the fact it retains its base form's fragility makes it easy to kill; if you guess wrong, at least two or three members of your team will go down after trying to bring it down, and a Total Party Kill is not inconceivable. With the ability to run physical, special, or mixed sets equally well and your lack of anything other than intuition and educated (if lucky) guesses to go by as to what it's running, Mega Lucario will always have an unhealthy innate advantage. It was banned to Ubers for these reasons, where it at least is more manageable, but still carves out enough of a niche to see use in some team styles like hyper offense. It is also worth noting that Mega Lucario's suspect test ended with the largest ever pro-ban percentage of voters in the site's history, with an astronomical 94% voting for a ban.

Generation VII

• While Alolan Ninetales had always been viewed as a strong Pokemon since its introduction, it wasn't until its return in The Teal Mask in Gen IX that players have begun to loathe it. Thanks to the change of hail to snow, A-Ninetales has its Defense boosted by 50% when Snow's up, allowing it to easily set-up Aurora Veil and instantly halve any damage from the opponent's attacks for the next 8 turns with Light Clay, then switch out without the worry of chip damage that hail would provide. This especially proved to be a deadly combination with Baxcalibur, who would become a Nigh-Invulnerable behemoth thanks to the stacking Defense buffs, and would essentially have free reign to set-up and destroy the opposition. Within just days, people were already calling for it (or at least the Light Clay) to be banned; ultimately, however Baxcalibur received the boot due to already proving to be a terror before A-Ninetales' return (when it became its biggest benefactor), while A-Ninetales is held back by its 81 Special Attack even with its powerful Blizzard. Still, the large indirect buffs it has received still make A-Ninetales despised, as in a twist, it still easily enables hyper offense teams and obscene setup sweepers thanks to Aurora Veil.
• Toxapex is perhaps one of the most hated High-Tier Scrappies ever in competitive play, notorious for being one of the most annoying Stone Wall Pokémon to deal with. It's difficult to even come close to OHKOing Toxapex because its 50/152/142 defenses are absurdly high, it has access to Recover to Heal Thyself, and its Poison/Water typing gives it only three weaknesses (Ground, Psychic, and Electric). All of its weaknesses, however, happen to have a type that's immune to their attacks (Flying, Dark, and Ground respectively), meaning that it's ridiculously easy to generate free turns for its teammates to switch in; this synergizes horrifyingly well with its Regenerator Ability too, which makes it even more of a hassle to put it in checkmate. The cherry on top is Toxapex's access to support options like Knock Off, Toxic Spikes, Scald and Haze^*Eliminates every stat change, and the latter two means that it's difficult to set up a Status Buff move against Toxapex without doing that beforehand. With these traits, Toxapex was singlehandedly responsible for destroying the viability of many wallbreakers from past generations, forcing popular Pokémon like Azumarill, Keldeo, and Mega Charizard Y out of the high-level metagame due to how much of a stop it was to their conventional sets, and nothing ever came out of the clamor for its ban. After an infamously successful debut, Toxapex continued its reign of terror in Gen VIII, being arguably even worse to deal with there because the absence of Mega Evolutions and Z-Moves means less moves it's KO'd by and more items to remove via Knock Off. Gen IX, however, would nerf Toxapex hard, removing its useful tools (namely Scald and Knock Off, which it cannot even learn in the Teal Mask DLC despite being brought back), losing vital teammates such as Ferrothorn, and suffering a universal nerf to recovery moves; while it has managed to stay in OU during the first year of the metagame due to adaptations in its moveset and item choices (such as an Assault Vest set emerging), it's nowhere near the defensive nightmare it once was. And as of February 2024, it has dropped to UU, something inconceivable in earlier generations. Regardless, it speaks volumes to how this single Pokémon revitalized the now memetic claims that Smogon loves "big stall".
• Gen VII is infamous for introducing four dominating forces in the competitive scene, the guardian deities (also known as the Tapu). In addition to having high overall stats by virtue being Legendary Pokémon, they also have the "Surge" Abilities that instantly summon a certain terrain upon switching in, resulting in the terrains going from barely used gimmicks to a crucial part to the metagame. In addition, their presence as Fairy-types shook up the dominating status of many Dragon-types in the top tiers, even pushing Hydreigon and the Eon duo Latias and Latios, out of OU. While Tapu Bulu and Tapu Fini aren't that disliked, their other two fellows aren't so lucky.
  • Tapu Koko is blessed with an extremely high Speed stat of 130 (that's as fast as former OU star, Aerodactyl), already making it Too Fast to Stop. Its Electric Surge ability summons Electric Terrain, which amplifies the power of Electric-type attacks^*50% in Gens VI-VII, 30% from Gen VIII onward and prevents grounded Pokémon from falling asleep. Its solid defensive typing also allows it to safely switch into many different attacks despite its below-average 70/85/75 bulk, and it can use U-turn or a boosted Volt Switch to avoid bad matchups. Surprisingly, Koko often utilizes special sets rather than physical ones, this in part due to a lack of reliable physical moves^*Wild Charge is infamous for its recoil damage offsetting its decently high power, and while it has Roost, it doesn't find as many chances to use it, and in spite of its respectable 110 base Attack stat being higher than its average 95 Special Attack and its low power options like Dazzling Gleam. In a way, Tapu Koko is the original Regieleki, its Ability powering up its Electric attacks to high levels and letting it deal with most kinds of Pokémon, and even supporting others like Hawlucha for the ever-famous "KokoLucha" strategy. While Koko suffers from its aforementioned disappointing bulk, a lack of moves to deal with things that resist its devastating Electric-type attacks, and in Gen VIII onward, a nerf to a terrains' power boost, it's still proven to be an extremely powerful and almost omnipresent threat in the metagame.
  • Tapu Lele's Psychic Surge summons the new Psychic Terrain, which gives grounded Pokémon a power boost to their Psychic-type attacks^*again, 50% in Gens VI-VII, 30% from Gen VIII onward and makes them unable to use priority moves. Additionally, Lele packs a blaster 130 Special Attack stat that will send anyone into a world of pain; Dark-types don't even want to switch in because of Lele's partial Fairy typing. Thanks to its Psychic Terrain, other Psychic-types such as Mega Alakazam and Reuniclus even found revitalization after several generations of being overshadowed by other types, allowing for some "Psychic spam" strategies every now and then. Lele is balanced off by having a poor base 75 Defense stat and its merely decent 95 Speed, but even the latter can be solved with Choice Scarf.
• Some of the Ultra Beasts fall into this category:
  • Before Gen VIII introduced Corviknight, UB-04 Blaster, a.k.a. Celesteela, is a notorious Steel/Flying Mighty Glacier who competed with Skarmory for a teamslot and had similar physical bulk^*97/103 base HP and Defense, compared to Skarmory's 65/140, but has three things that help it stand out and even outclass the steel bird a bit. First off, it's one of the very few non-Grass-type Pokémon that has Leech Seed; combined with its excellent defensive type combination and great bulk, Celesteela can take advantage of Leech Seed to its fullest. Second of all, since it's tied for the heaviest Pokémon, its STAB Heavy Slam will do full damage to most Pokémon unless they resist Steel. Third and last, unlike other Ultra Beasts, most of Celesteela's stats are even, with its physical and special stats all above base 100 (which also makes it specially bulkier than Skarmory^*97/101 base HP and Sp. Def., much higher than Skarmory's paltry 65/70). This makes Celesteela extremely versatile in battle and its stats can be tweaked so that Beast Boost can raise any of those stats. Outlasting Celesteela to KO it with a sufficiently strong attack is a difficult task in an out of itself, especially when what you're dealing is an offensive upgrade over, again, Skarmory.
  • UB-04 Blade, a.k.a. Kartana, is one of the most notorious examples of Min-Maxing in Pokémon history; the main thing that stands out about it is its godlike base 181 Attack, currently the highest of any non-transformed Pokémon in the series, backed by a solid base 109 Speed. It even has Swords Dance and Beast Boost to boost its Attack even further beyond, as well as a decent amount of coverage thanks to moves like Sacred Sword and Knock Off. It has the Grass/Steel typing that has also made Ferrothorn famous, so Kartana can find plenty of opportunities to set up and start sweeping, especially given its surprisingly high base 131 Defense stat (which salvages its otherwise mediocre 59 base HP). Curiously enough, Kartana is so strong in fact, it can even intentionally opt to lower its Attack via an Elite Tweak to cause Beast Boost to raise its Speed instead^*This can be done by running a Timid nature, no Attack investment, and Attack/Speed IVs (Individual Value) of 19/31, which while coming at a huge expense of power, makes Kartana even more difficult to stop. In short, its blend of extreme power and good speed means you can never be so sure about what item it may be holding, and a wrong prediction can equal a lost party member. Kartana does easily fall to any special attack due to its egregious 59/31 special bulk, and it has a 4x weakness to Fire, but if left unchecked, Kartana is more than twice as capable of punching- um, cutting holes on teams, leaving but massive destruction.
  • UB Stinger, a.k.a. Naganadel, differentiates itself from other Dragon-types by boasting a Dragon/Poison typing, which isn't anything new but means it's one of the very few Dragons not to be threatened by Fairy-types, instead threatening them itself. With high 127/121 Special Attack and Speed stats, access to powerful STAB options in Sludge Wave and Draco Meteor, Nasty Plot to boost, Flamethrower and Fire Blast for coverage against Steel, and its Ability Beast Boost to snowball either its Sp. Atk. or Speed (depending on what it specializes in) with each successive KO, Naganadel is capable of dishing fast and hard hits to everything not named Heatran or Tyranitar... until you slot in a Dragonium Z, which doesn't lower its offenses unlike Draco Meteor and hits even harder, thus becoming truly impossible to stop. Its main weakness is its frail 73/73/73 defenses, making it easy to revenge kill or pick off with powerful priority, but that's about it. In a matter of days, Naganadel found itself quickbanned to Ubers, where it was quite decent there, too.
• While Dawn Wings Necrozma floundered in regular Ubers for the first few generations of its existence, the creation of the Ubers UU tier finally gave it a home where it could thrive... and thrive it did. It has excellent bulk on both sides of the spectrum and a phenomenal base 157 Special Attack stat, which it can further amplify with either Calm Mind or Power Herb + Meteor Beam. While its 78 Speed is rather middling, it can make up for this with Trick Room, either as an abuser or setter. It also has several excellent coverage options, namely Earth Power to hit Steel-types. Aside from its Speed, Dawn Wings Necrozma primarily struggles with a poor Psychic/Ghost typing... which it can alleviate with Terastallization, and it can run a large number of viable Tera types (including, but not limited to, Fairy, Dark, Ground, and Steel). Dawn Wings Necrozma would eventually get banned from Ubers UU, but would later be unbanned following the addition of several stronger threats to the tier, including Lunala, who almost strictly outclasses it. While the Prism Pokémon's status as a threat remains in question, its reign of terror will not be forgotten by veteran Ubers UU players.
• Magearna has thrice defined itself as a frightening threat in OU. It's a Steel/Fairy type, one of the best defensive typings in the game, and packs solid all-around 80/115/115 bulk. As for its offensive capabilities, it packsa high base 130 Special Attack and a fantastic ability in Soul-Heart, which raises its Sp. Atk. every time a Pokémon faints. Its movepool is equally good, with a powerful signature move in Fleur Cannon^*A Fairy-type Overheat clone whose downside (-2 Sp. Atk. stages) is amended by Soul-Heart, as well as great coverage moves like Ice Beam, Aura Sphere and Volt Switch^*Which also helps Magearna to escape trappers not named Dugtrio (pre-Arena Trap's ban). It's quite slow, yes, but it has two options to outspeed opponents in the form of Shift Gear and Trick Room. The result is a great pivot, tank and/or sweeper capable of tearing unprepared teams to shreds or bring in its monstrous teammates in pristine condition to force out its check. Magearna gained several new toys when it was added to Gen VIII, namely Stored Power, which was immensely powerful when combined with Calm Mind and Shift Gear. It eventually became too overwhelming for OU, and was banned to Ubers shortly after its release. It would be retested in the Crown Tundra update for Sw/Sh and Gen IX post-HOME... only to get quickbanned twice again; the first after a player's survey showed overwhelming support for its ban, and the second thanks to Terastallization plus its newfound utility as a Trick Room setter making it more groan-inducing than ever. In the end, Magearna found itself as the single best Pokémon in Gen IX's unofficial UUbers tier as it started to gain traction and popularity, becoming its "role-compressing Pokémon" similar to Landorus-Therian in previous OU formats.
• Marshadow has good reasons to why it was swiftly banished to Ubers within four days of being available in OU. It packs a ridiculously high 125 base Speed and an impressive 125 Attack stat that's compounded by its Technician Ability, the same one that made Scizor a household name. It's a Fighting/Ghost-type, so at the time no Pokémon resisted/was immune to both of its STAB^note Hisuian Zoroark wouldn't become a thing until Gen VIII, and even then it was only made available until Gen IX, technically two generations later. Marshadow also packs dangerous moves such as Spectral Thief^*A move that steals stat boosts from the opponent before attacking, quite devastating in a format where setting up is very common and its Z-move version, Soul-Stealing 7-Star Strike, as well as Close Combat, Shadow Sneak^*Boosted by Technician, and even coverage with the elemental punches and Rock Tomb. Not to mention Marshadow happens to be quite bulky for something that is fast and hits incredibly hard (it's got 90/80/90 Defenses), making revenge killing it quite difficult without Spectral Thief; with it, Marshadow is effectively impossible to revenge kill, as unless you have a Normal-type, it'll just plow through a Substitute and copy whatever setup you've done, then pulverize you. Marshadow hasn't seen the light of OU ever since; of course, even in Ubers, Marshadow has found success in the tier as a notorious Ghost-type Glass Cannon for the same reasons it briefly terrorized OU — to demonstrate how dangerous it is, Arceus without a Plate dropped a bit in its viability in Gen VII, solely due to Marshadow's presence^*Arceus must hold a Chople Berry instead of the usual Silk Scarf or a Life Orb, thus weakening its Extreme Killer set for the sake of not getting KO'd by a Low Kick or Close Combat headed its way. Meanwhile, in Gen VIII, Marshadow was, along with Yveltal, one of the only things that kept Shadow Rider Calyrex from being banned from Ubers, as a boosted Shadow Sneak was a guaranteed OHKO and Marshadow was an enormously strong Pokemon in general that people used with or without Shadow Rider Calyrex in the picture.

Generation VIII

• Rillaboom became this when its Hidden Ability was released: Grassy Surge. The same Ability that made Tapu Bulu a force to be reckoned with back in Gen VII, Rillaboom became a premier support Pokémon with the lack of the Tapus until the Crown Tundra DLC brought them back, and only got better with the release of the Isle of Armor DLC, as the same update's move tutor gifted it Grassy Glide^*A 55 (70 in Gen VIII) base power Grass-type physical move that gains +1 priority if used during Grassy Terrain. With access to Swords Dance and the power boost from Grassy Terrain on top of it (which bumps up the move's power to 91), anything that doesn't resist Grass is screwed, because they're about to get nailed by a priority move stronger than Extreme Speed working off of a beefy 125 base Attack stat. To say nothing of the support it already gives to its grounded teammates, from the small Leftovers-esque recovery boost at the end of a turn, to making Hawlucha a threat for a spin in the KokoLucha strategy, known as RillaLucha. Rillaboom is no one-trick gorilla either, as its access to coverage in High Horsepower, Knock Off, Superpower and U-turn makes it versatile, too. The Drummer Pokémon was so dominant that, upon the relaase of the Crown Tundra DLC, it power crept Tapu Bulu into UU^Why?Bulu's higher 130 base Attack, larger amount of resistances and immunities, and access to equally powerful coverage in Close Combat, High Horsepower and Stone Edge is all made up by equally nasty weaknesses (including a 4x weakness to Poison), its mediocre 75 Speed stat and the inability to learn Grassy Glide; however, Bulu is still a force to be reckoned with in OU, and in fact does better there than it does in UU despite being outclassed by Rillaboom.. Rillaboom was noticeably nerfed in Gen IX after the HOME update initially removed Grassy Glide, as well as High Horsepower and Superpower from its moveset, and it would drop to UU not long after its release in Scarlet/Violet... only for the Teal Mask DLC to return both Grassy Glide and High Horsepower, sending it back to OU despite the former dropping down from 70 to 55 base power; its Grassy Terrain also proved to be one of the factors that led to Sneasler's ban later in the generation.
• Following hot on the heels of Speed Boost Blaziken and Protean Greninja, Cinderace has made story as another banworthy starter. It's got has a wide variety of physical moves it can use, from its signature attack Pyro Ball^*A physical 120 base power Fire move with 90% accuracy and 10% chance to burn and doesn't make contact to a nice array of coverage^*Gunk Shot, High Jump Kick, Iron Head, Sucker Punch, Zen Headbutt and U-turn, all running off a solid 116 base Attack — and with a base Speed of 119, don't expect much to outrun it very soon. But it's its other signature move, Court Change^*Swaps all field effects on both sides, including screens, entry hazards, pledge effects, Mist, Safeguard and Tailwind which put it on the early Galar metagame map; with it, Cinderace could steal benefitial field effects like screens or Tailwind, and dump every hazard back on the opponent in one move, and the Heavy-Duty Boots it usually holds makes switching in to said hazards insignificant. This was all before it got its Hidden Ability, Libero, aka Protean; with its aforementioned coverage and solid Attack, it's hitting harder than Greninja. Fighting Cinderace is thus, similarly to the frog, playing a fixed match, with one bad prediction signifying lost momentum at best, or a KO'd Pokémon at worst. Cinderace became the third starter ever to get banned to Ubers (where it inverts this trope); like Magearna above, it was briefly re-allowed into OU once the Crown Tundra expansion was released due to the overall higher power level, but was quickbanned once again following a player survey, which showed a large amount of support for its ban. Gen IX greatly nerfed both Protean and Libero, making Cinderace manageable enough for OU; however, it still manages to be quite the threat even with the nerf.
• Dracovish's reputation as the scourge of Gen VIII OU is well-earned. It has access to Fishious Rend^*An 85 base power, 100% accurate move that doubles in power (to a mind-stomping 170 power) if the user moves first before the opponent or when it switches in, which happens to be a biting move and thus is boosted by the Ability Strong Jaw^*Boosts the power of biting moves by 50%; that's equivalent to a Choice Band boost!; Dracovish has access to said Ability, making Fishious Rend hit harder than hard and causing both of its Choice sets to be notoriously difficult to handle. With a Choice Scarf, Dracovish outspeeds every single OU staple save for Dragapult and Zeraora, thus activating Fishious Rend's double power every time; with Choice Band, Dracovish has wallbreaking power that, to put it simple, lets it 2HKO even Ferrothorn and Toxapex with prior entry hazard damage, and anything that doesn't resist it is going down in one hit. Dracovish does have its issues, as it's not particularly fast at 75 base Speed, its only decent base 90 Attack means that its coverage moves don't hit half as hard as Fishious Rend (so it can't do much against Water-immune Pokémon) and its reliance on Choice items means that it is left wide open if it predicts wrong; however, these flaws don't even come close to significantly affecting the carnage this thing can wreak by simply clicking on Fishious Rend. Dracovish's presence in OU forced many extremely specific and niche picks and heavily skewed team composition towards handling it (one Pokémon to wall it, and at least one to revenge kill it). It was eventually suspect tested, and banned to Ubers with a 90% vote in favor of; it goes to show just how much people hated this thing and how unhealthy a presence it was in OU.
• Dragapult is one of the more fearsome pseudo-legendary with its breakneck 142 base Speed, which brought such speed creep to the game that it even forced previous threats that were considered fast, most notably the Eon duo, packing to UU^*And in the case of Latios, he was banned to UUBL, languishing as an outclassed option in the OU metagame outside of "DragMag" teams. Adding to this, Dragapult's colorful movepool^*With options like its Secret Art Dragon Darts, Phantom Force, Shadow Ball, Draco Meteor, Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, Surf, Hex, Thunder Wave, Will-O-Wisp, Dragon Dance, and U-turn can make it difficult to determine just what kind of set Dragapult will be running, and it's got the offensive stats (at 120/100 Attack/Sp. Atk.) to make use of those, too. Its ability Infiltrator also lets it bypass Screens and Substitute with ease. Being introduced in the generation that removed Pursuit also helped it to spam its Ghost-type moves with little consequence. The only things preventing Dragapult from being banned^note Except in the unofficial National Dex format, where it was banned to Ubers due to its ability to abuse Z-Moves are its lack of variety in physical moves despite having higher base Attack, requiring Choice Specs to compensate its average Special Attack, and its passable 88/75/75 bulk making it easy to revenge kill. But Gen IX's Terastallization solves those issues in one fell swoop by letting it switch over to a type that can help conpensate for its so-so bulk (like Steel) and gain an additional STAB move to barrel through its foes. In fact, in Gen IX OU it's one of the most used Pokemon, up there with likes of Kingambit, Great Tusk, Gholdengo and Iron Valiant. It's believed that Game Freak specifically avoided giving Dragapult access to Poltergeist, an amazing physical Ghost-type move (that can only target Pokemon holding items, which everyone does in competitive), to prevent it from tearing the competitive scene in two.
• While regular Darmanitan has been good-to-decent ever since its introduction, some have felt that Galarian Darmanitan (nicknamed "Garmanitan", or "Garm" for short) feels like Game Freak hypercorrecting by making it one of the best Pokémon in the game. As an Ice-type variant of Darmanitan, which already grants it another excellent offensive type, both of Garmanitan's Abilities unlocked hatred towards it; its standard ability, Gorilla Tactics^*It boosts Darmanitan's Attack by 50% but limits it to the first move selected until it switches out or faints is essentially a built-in Choice Band boost, and in fact happens to stack with the actual item for even more raw power with no drawbacks, and considering its asinine 140 base Attack, something is going to get KO'd. Alternatively, it can run a Choice Scarf to boost its already decent 95 Speed, letting it hit like a freight train (both in speed and power). This, combined with its great type coverage (including U-turn and even Flare Blitz), allows it to tear through both defensive and offensive teams, depending on the Choice item it carries. Its hidden Ability, Zen Mode, is drastically better than its Unovan counterpart given the boosts to its Attack^*From base 140 to an ungodly 160 and Speed stats^*From base 95 to a blistering 135, so it can even make use of Belly Drum to immediately activate it on the next turn and destroy everything! Smogon quickly banned the snowman yeti to Ubers, surprising no one.
• Melmetal is another Mythical Pokémon that has made harsh waves in OU. It's an impressively min-maxed Mighty Glacier with respectable 135/143/65 bulk and a destructive base 143 Attack. While it's only Steel-type and has a limited movepool, it's got access to enough options to make it a threat, such as the elemental punches, Earthquake, Thunder Wave and its Secret Art Double Iron Bash^*A 60 base power Steel-type move that has a 30% chance to flinch... per hit, which accumulates to 51%, the former of which is bane of every defensive Pokémon that's slower than it, and which gets boosted by its Iron Fist Ability. Sure, it's balanced out by an awful Speed stat, but considering it's bulky and that very few defensive Pokémon invest in Speed, Melmetal can thus invest on its own to hobble them. With the ability to crumble most walls, and Kill Streak slow teams with help from Thunder Wave (either from it or its teammates), it unsurprisingly got quickbanned to Ubers two days after its availability. It was later retested, managing to remain banned due to the tier remaining unprepared for it; following the release of the Crown Tundra DLC, it was unbanned due to the immense power creep, and remained in OU despite being suspect tested at the very end of the generation, which ironically acrued a very low amount of support for its ban.
• Zacian and Zamazenta hold the distinction of the most skewed, unbalanced boxart legendaries ever designed, with Zamazenta pretty much getting the short end of the stick due to a sheer lack of useful moves, while Zacian got everything it could've wanted and more. Both forms of Zacian fall straight into this category to boot.
  • Crowned Sword Zacian (a.k.a. Zacian-Crowned) takes everything competitive players hated about Mega Mawile and instead adds speed (a lot of speed, in fact) to it. It's got a supersonic base 148 Speed and a groundbreaking 170 Attack stats and its Ability, Intrepid Sword, automatically boosts the latter on switch-in, both letting it start with even higher Attack than that and making Intimidate attempts obsolete. Complementing this, is its phenomenal Fairy/Steel defensive typing and impressive 92/115/115 bulk which, even for an offensive Legendary, gives it plenty of opportunities to switch in. Zacian even has an excellent movepool to back it up^*With moves like Play Rough, Wild Charge, Close Combat, Crunch, Solar Blade, Swords Dance and its Secret Art Behemoth Blade, narrowing its checks and counters further. And in formats where Dynamax is allowed, don't even think about Dynamaxing on it, since it's got Behemoth Blade to counter that, too. While it's a one-trick wolf, truth is, that it doesn't matter when it only needs to Swords Dance once (just in case its Attack and Ability weren't enough for you) to slash even its counters to ribbons, with the two exceptions being Unaware Quagsire or Ditto^*For the latter, since Zacian-Crowned can't hold an item, Ditto just breaks the speed tie with Choice Scarf. After a long time of terrorizing Ubers, Zacian-Crowned was finally banned to AG^*The third Ubers ban since Mega Rayquaza and Gen IV Arceus, to the resounding joy of everyone. Gen IX finally gave Zacian-Crowned some heavy nerfs by reducing its base Attack stat to 150 and changing Intrepid Sword so it only boosts its Attack once per battle, but even after all that, it's still an excellent (albeit more manageable) Pokémon post-HOME.
  • Regular Zacian, while lacking the insane Attack, Speed and Steel typing that gave Zacian-Crowned its defensive profile, can do one thing that its Crowned version can't: holding a different item. With a Choice Band, its Attack is actually even higher than its Crowned version, making it a great wallbreaker; while with a Life Orb, combining it with Swords Dance and its outstanding 138 base Speed made it as much of a threatening setup sweeper as its Crowned version. It still proved to be such a Game-Breaker that it was also banned to AG^*The fourth Ubers ban since Mega Rayquaza, Gen IV Arceus, and Zacian-Crowned. Similar to its Crowned form, regular Zacian saw a nerf in the form of 10 less points of Attack in Gen IX^note Sadly, this led to Zamazenta becoming collateral damage; to stay on theme as its counterpart, Zamazenta suffered comparable nerfs in both forms (-10 Attack in both forms and -5 to both Defense stats in Crowned form and its ability Dauntless Shield activates only once per battle) despite being comparatively worse in competitive play..
  • After its stint as a Memetic Loser for just how much of a Low-Tier Letdown it was in Gen VIII, Crowned Shield Zamazenta was thrown one hell of a bone in Gen IX. Following its nerfed (but still excellent) stats, it was unbanned from OU, which went horribly right — it's clear the tier was not well-equipped to handle it, since its armoured 94/140/140 bulk makes it harder to take down in one hit than even Ferrothorn^*Who's currently not in Scarlet/Violet and Toxapex^*Despite its 152/142 split defenses, its mediocre 50 base HP leads to lower bulk overall. With the new and acclaimed move gain in Body Press, which it gains STAB on, Zamazenta-Crowned became most infamous for its IronPress set^*A set that includes the moves Iron Defense and Body Press, being able to outspeed much of the metagame thanks to its blazing base 128 Speed stat and everything that resisted Body Press would meet a Steel-type Behemoth Bash anyways (or Wild Charge if the opponent was a Toxapex). In a bit more than a week after Pokémon HOME released, Zamazenta-Crowned was thus quickbanned alongside Chien-Pao to Ubers. Zamazenta's base form is still allowed in OU, where it's still a bit controversial to the point of getting suspect tested, though since it managed to escape the ban it's not nearly an egregious of an example.
• Regieleki, in contrast to the other Regis (which border from decent to Low-Tier Letdown), is an absolute menace. Well, not so when introduced in Generation VIII, where its lack of coverage outside of Electric moves made it walled by Ground-types. However, the release of Generation IX gave it Tera Blast, which changes type according to Terastallization and every Pokémon can use. Because of that, Regieleki now has Ground-type coverage in the form of Ice-typed Tera Blast, for a spin in the famed BoltBeam coverage. This was all it needed to be able to destroy nearly everything, thanks to it being the fastest unboosted Pokémon in the game and because its Special Attack, while decent enough on its own, was able to fry any non-Ground type thanks to its ability Transistor^*Boosts the power of Electric moves by 1.5x (Gen VIII)/1.3x (Gen IX). Being able to scout out and adapt to any potential checks to it with Substitute didn't help either. And just in case, for secondary Tera type options, Fairy was also used a bit as well, making it even less predictable. Regieleki thus got an unanimous quickban soon, ending its short reign of terror on OU and becoming one of the fastest Pokémon to ever be banned from OU, available for only twenty-eight hours after its release.
• With the release of the Crown Tundra DLC, Spectrier quickly trotted up the ranks to become the most infamous example of Ghost-types' dominance. Despite its mediocre physical Defense and horrendous offensive movepool lacking in non-Ghost attacks^*With top tier options like... Swift and Uproar?, the Swift Horse Pokémon made its name through its ridiculous base 145 Special Attack and 130 Speed stats and its Grim Neigh Ability that boosts its Special Attack stat with each KO, which lends it to abuse Substitute sets. With access to boosting options like Nasty Plot and Calm Mind, Taunt to prevent status effects and the tried and true Hex + status move combo (Will-O-Wisp, in this case), it was able to dominate other Pokémons, even the Dark-types that should've been resistant to it. Combined with an utter lack of viable Normal-types other than Blissey, Spectrier proved to be too much for the tier, getting quickbanned to Ubers.
• Calyrex, in its base form, is a Low-Tier Letdown through and through despite its access to various forms of support options, but when it teams up with its mounts, Glastrier and Spectrier, it becomes a force of nature no Pokémon is safe from. Though the Ice Rider form has always been a great Pokémon (especially under Trick Room, though its case is more Doubles-oriented), this is nothing compared to its Shadow Rider form. Where to begin...? Surplus base 165 Special Attack and 150 Speed stats? Its Psychic/Ghost typing only stopped cold by Dark-types? Access to a no drawbacks Ghost-type STAB move in its Secret Art, Astral Barrage? Boosting options in Nasty Plot and Calm Mind? Its already innate numerous support moves like Leech Seed, Trick, Encore and, upon changing forms, Taunt? And to top it all off, its As One ability combining both Calyrex's Berry-negating Unnerve and Spectrier's snowballing Grim Neigh for rating scale-breaking damage...? Where do we sign? Unlike Zacian's and Zamazenta's Crowned Forms, it's even able to hold an item, letting it abuse its power to levels even Arceus would be jealous of. Speaking of which, the absence of Arceus in non-National Dex formats means it has no reliable counterplay in Normal-type Pokémon, causing much of the metagame to revolve around Shadow Rider Calyrex. The only real issues it faces are lackluster coverage outside of Draining Kiss, a mediocre physical Defense and an allergy to Ghost and Dark-type moves, the latter two of which, top tier Pokémons like Marshadow and Yveltal are happy to remind it of, thanks to Shadow Sneak and Sucker Punch, respectively. But even with these traits, its case was so bad, even the Ubers council of Smogon suspect tested the Shadow Rider, only narrowly escaping the banhammer. This, however, doesn't hold true in Gen IX where, much like Regieleki in OU, it got quickbanned from Ubers^*The sixth Ubers ban since Mega Rayquaza, Gen IV Arceus, both forms of Zacian and Miraidon (in National Dex only) after Terastallization made Shadow Rider Calyrex even more broken, with the ability to escape its weaknesses and gain the coverage it sorely lacked through Tera Fighting and Fairy finally transforming it into a true Master of All.

Specific Pokémon — Other Formats

VGCs/Official Doubles

Unlike the singles format that Smogon primarily focuses on, the official tournament, VGC (short for Video Game Championship), takes place in doubles battles with their own restrictions ^note Gen VIII allows Dynamax, whereas it's been banned in most Smogon formats, including Doubles OU, but for the most part, all mythical Pokémon are banned by default. As a result, some Pokémon will find themselves more suitable in VGC environments due to their traits, sometimes to the detriment of the VGC playerbase:

• Gigantamax Charizard became a recipient of Complacent Gaming Syndrome in Gen VIII VGC. Used on a number of top- and high-ranking teams, Charizard brings a lot to the table with its STAB on the dreadful Max Airstream and G-Max Wildfire with its devastating Damage Over Time effect on any non-Fire-type foes present on the field for four turns. Gigantamax Charizard even manages to keep up in formats that allow restricted Legendary with its traits of resisting Steel-, Fairy-, and Fighting-type moves to deal with the infamous Zacian-Crowned (the best and most used Pokémon in the format) and synergies nicely with Groudon due to Charizard's Solar Power ability and Fire-type. While Venusaur's and Blastoise's Gigantamax forms have thrived in various different VGC formats, the omnipresence of Zacian has forced Charizard onto many teams as a counter to it, yet due to its Breakout Character popularity, Rule of Cool is also a factor behind its heavy usage.
• Snorlax has become a terrifying force in Gen VII due to several changes. Figy Berry and its variants will activate at 25% or less HP while recovering half of its max HP, meaning they now interact with Gluttony, which will consume them at 50% or less HP instead. Additionally, Snorlax can use Recycle to restore the berry if it's consumed by itself. Also, Snorlax gains High Horsepower, which is more powerful than Earthquake due to the spread damage reduction. With most of the Fighting-types phased out in Gen 7 Doubles, Snorlax has a much easier time setting up with Curse or Belly Drum, and it benefitted greatly from Trick Room with its low speed. Snorlax would eventually be commonly paired up with Gothitelle that traps Pokémon with Shadow Tag, set up Trick Room, and use Heal Pulse on it if Snorlax can't use Recycle in one way or another. The pair also lead to the rise of the Belly Drum variant, which most considered far too overwhelming to handle. While there are ways to prevent and counter, those are easier said than done. The pinch berries would subsquently receive nerfs in Gen VIII as well as the removal of Return, resulting in Snorlax losing its dominance it once had.
• Smeargle, at first glance, looks like the kind of Pokémon that would be cast aside on the other end of this trope with awful stats across the board and incompatibility with TMs, egg moves, and move tutors... except that it doesn't need any of those, since it learns Sketch, a move which allows Smeargle to permanently learn any move in the game (except Chatter and Struggle) and gives it the largest movepool in the entire game, Mew be damned. With so many possible combinations, some of which are literally unable to be replicated by any other Pokémon, Smeargle makes for an absurdly versatile support Pokémon. Though this alone still doesn't push it to this territory, there's one move in its arsenal that does: Dark Void, Darkrai's Secret Art. Unlike Spore (which it makes exclusive use of in Singles), Dark Void can put multiple targets to sleep, and it even has a pretty decent 80% accuracy, higher than Sleep Powder or Hypnosis. As VGCs are always double battles, that led to a 96% chance of at least one of the opposing Pokémon being put to Sleep and a 64% chance of both. For three generations, no consistent counter existed that wasn't overly specialized for Dark Void Smeargle... until Game Freak stepped in and, from Gen VII and on, made Dark Void unusable if Darkrai isn't using it; while this would've only thrown Smeargle into the opposite territory, Dark Void's accuracy was also drastically nerfed to an egregious 50%, making the move useless even in Singles^note Darkrai's status as a Mythical disallows its usage in VGC, unlike Smeargle, which had the unfortunate effect of causing Darkrai, perennial threat in Ubers in Singles, to skydive in its viability. Thank you very much, Smeargle.
• The introduction of Dynamax has turned Togekiss from a good support Pokémon into a versatile unpredictable monster. Its lack of Speed that restricted it to a support role despite its amazing Special Attack was patched by Max Airstream, which allows it to outspeed most of the roster while still supporting its partner without wasting a turn to use Tailwind. That, in turn, elevates its Serene Grace Air Slash flinching combo from a gimmick into a very real chance to flinch opposing Pokémon until they faint. Adding to that is the fact that Togekiss didn't lose any of its support movepool from the last generation and can still viably run them. Finally, the reduction of Fairy types from "Dexit" means that its usual competition for a team slot is absent, leading to its rise to be one of the most ubiquitous Pokémon in the Doubles metagame. The Crowd Tundra DLC bringing back the Tapus have successfully knocked Togekiss down from its dominance.
• Cresselia has been absolutely dominating Doubles ever since Gen 4. Firstly, her absurd 120/120/130 bulk allow her to survive a turn even if both opponents target her with the right EV investment (and switching is much more costly in Doubles since her partner can blast the switch in), coupled with her Levitate ability allowing her to avoid the ever present Earthquake. Cresselia's expansive support movepool has led to her everlasting dominance in Doubles, with several speed control methods that work well with her middling 85 base speed (Icy Wind, Thunder Wave, Trick Room), damage mitigation for her partner (dual Screens, Safeguard, Ally Switch) as well as various utility moves (Helping Hands, Skill Swap, Gravity) and serviceable attack coverage moves that allow her to function if she is Taunted. Her passivity and lack of reliable recovery is more acceptable in Doubles since setup sweepers and entry hazards are much less common and Pinch Berries are good enough for her survivability there. Also, she is not a Restricted Legendary, which has only made her more ubiquitous as she isn't commonly banned in different formats nor competing for the Restricted slot with more offensively oriented Legendaries. Cresselia's Scrappy status reach a fever pitch in 2015 where she was a crucial part of the infamous CHALK^note Cresselia, Heatran, Amoonguss, Landorus-T, (Mega) Kangaskhan composition that made up 6 out of 8 of the VGC 2015 Championship teams. Her usage took a big hit in Gen 7 and 8 with the introduction of the ubiqitous Incineroar and general Power Creep eventually catching up with her. Gen IX gave her a stat nerf, but has buffed her significantly with the addition of Terastallization allows her to switch her mediocre defensive typing to something more useful like Fairy, Poison, Steel or Electric as well as giving her Lunar Blessing, allowing her to further support her team by healing and removing status from both her and her teammates.
• Amoonguss has been one of the more successful Spore users thanks to its great bulk and Regenerator, it's also known as the redirector in VGC with Rage Powder, which Amoonguss is able to capitalize with the aforementioned qualities. Gen V is particularly infamous since the sleep counter resets upon switching out in the generation only and no types can block powder moves. Even with Grass-type granting immunity to powder-based moves and the introduction of Safety Goggles in Gen VI, these didn't deter Amoonguss's performance too significantly and continue to enjoy success, especially on CHALK. Gen VIII would further favor Amoonguss by giving it Pollen Puff, compressing the role of inducing sleep, redirection, and heals its ally with Pollen Puff all at once, a feat that any other Pokemon would be jealous of. Only Smeargle comes close, but it isn't as effecient as a redirector due to its frailty.
• Female Indeedee, with the combination of Follow Me and Psychic Surge stopping all priority attacks against the user's side, meaning there is almost nothing the opponent can do to prevent Indeedee from using Follow Me to redirect moves short of switching to some other Pokémon that can override the terrain while having the other Pokémon use Fake Out on Indeedee. Indeedee's partner gets to use any move it wants free of interference from the opponent. Should Indeedee ever run out of things to do, it can then use Expanding Force that hits both opponents when Psychic Terrain is out. As a result, any double battling team that needs at least one turn to set up will likely have a female Indeedee accompanying along. Even the loss of Expanding Force in Gen IX wasn't enough to stop it, as it just started teaming up with the one Pokemon that has it to keep on being a menace: Armarouge, and an oversight in Tera Raid resulted in Female Indeedee gaining access to Trick Room whereas previously only the male variant could learn this move, players will have to play a guessing game on whether it's going to use Follow Me or Trick Room.
• Incineroar, the Fire Starter of the Alola region, has become one of the most contested Pokémon ever to grace VGC since the release of its hidden ability, Intimidate. It has Fake Out to immediately halt an opposing Pokémon in their tracks while chipping away at the target to make them easier pickings for its ally, Knock Off to remove the foe's held items, U-Turn to safely put an ally in the game thanks to its rather poor speed tier, and most importantly, Intimidate lowers opposing Pokémon's attack every time it jumps back in the front lines and providing much needed protection for its teammates. Its well-rounded stats also help it maintain a fair amount of survivability and lets it push offensively with Flare Blitzes when the time comes to make an assault. Its presence on a team also plays in its favor, as the massive target on its back can be used to divert attention from its ally. Incineroar's fantastic support options also meant that it enjoys high usage even in formats that allowed restricted Legendary Pokémon. Players hoped that Dynamax would at least keep Incineroar in check, but it ends up doing the opposite since it gained Parting Shot, which not only switches the user out but also drops its target's offensive stats by 1 stage each, making it a fantastic tool against Dynamaxed Pokemon in addition to the threat of it switching back in and getting in another round of Intimidate to cushion physical attackers even further. Gen IX made the Mon even more ridiculous as in addition to regifting it Knock Off, it has access to Helping Hand, granting its ally a 50% damage boost at the expense of its own turn. It appears even Gamefreak itself has acknowledged Incineroar's memetic status, as one appears as part of Kieran's team in the Indigo Disk DLC, with both Fake Out and Intimidate.
• Tapu Fini has certainly made a splash in Doubles. The Doubles setting made it much easier for Tapu Fini's ally to benefit from its Misty Surge ability, which makes any grounded Pokémon immune to any status effect and reduces the power of any Dragon-type move by 50%. Not only does that mean that Tapu Fini singlehandedly makes Will-O-Wisp and Thunder Wave less relevant in Doubles, but most of the Pokémon that relied on Dragon-type attacks such as Latios have been phased out as well, much to the dismay of fans of Dragon-types. Additionally, Tapu Fini is one of the better Heal Pulse user out there, giving its partner extra longevity. It's no slouch in the offensive department either, as Tapu Fini packed amazing STAB coverage such as Muddy Water and Moonblast, with Nature's Madness to cut the foe's HP by half or Calm Mind to capitalize on Tapu Fini's excellent defensive profile to set up and make its special attacks more potent. Even in Gen VIII, where the rest of the Tapu have their performance hit by the terrain's Nerf to their power boost and fierce competition from other Pokémon such as Rillaboom and Regieleki, Tapu Fini remains a strong contender in VGC since Misty Terrain didn't receive a nerf.
• Rillaboom, already a great choice in Singles, gives Incineroar a run for its money in this format as well. It possesses many of the traits that make Incineroar successful in VGC, such as Fake Out, U-turn, and Knock Off, with Wood Hammer serving as Rillaboom's hardest-hitting option. In lieu of a dual typing, an immunity to Prankster, and lower special bulk, Rillaboom compensates with its higher power as well as Grassy Surge, letting it both override other kinds of terrains and spam Grassy Glide to hit faster threats such as Landorus and Regieleki. As with Incineroar, Rillaboom holds itself pretty well, even in formats where restricted Legendary Pokémon are allowed due to the aforementioned qualities. Rillaboom eventually returns in Gen IX with the Pokémon HOME update, benefiting greatly from Terastallization as it can eliminate its pesky weaknesses by turning into Water or Fire, and it's even better than ever after The Teal Mask DLC brought back Grassy Glide (albeit nerfed) for it to abuse once more.
• On the surface level, Coalossal appears to be an unassuming gimmicky Pokémon with its Steam Engine ability raising its speed by six stages if Coalossal’s been hit by Fire- and Water-type attacks, the latter is its double weakness. This is where Dynamax and Weakness Policy come into play; Dynamax ensures Coalossal cannot be interrupted by Fake Out and turning it into a Lightning Bruiser with Weakness Policy sharply raising Attack and Special Attack after being hit by a super-effective attack, usually by its ally. On top of all that, its G-Max Volcalith has the nasty effect of damaging any foes that aren't Rock-types for 4 turns. Needless to say, players got tired of having to constantly deal with Coalossal's shenanigans in Gen VIII.
• Urshifu dominates through its Unseen Fist, bypasssing (but not lift) one of the most important move in VGC; Protect. Initially, neither forms see much usage due to both being weak to Max Airstream. However, its Single Strike Style eventually gets the spotlight as one of the best checks to Dynamaxed Metagross since its super-effective Wicked Blow ignores the defense boosts from Max Steelspike, resulting in Urshifu garnering up in usage fast. Meanwhile, Rapid Strike Style establishes itself as one of the best way to demolish Incineroar and Landorus-Therian with its Surging Strikes not bothered by Intimidate on top of both of them being weak to Water-type. Urshifu makes a return in Gen IX with no Dynamax to stop their tracks this time around, allowing them to utilize their Unseen Fist ability to its fullest potential^note Max Guard will still block moves affected by Unseen Fist; requiring their G-Max Moves to negate it but Urshifu doesn't frequently Dynamax. Rapid Strike Style finds itself becoming one of Chien-Pao's best ally since the former gleefully takes advantage of its Swords of Ruin as well as eliminating the latter's checks in return. The presence of Urshifu-Rapid resulting in the formely niche Rocky Helmet in VGC rising in popularity, especially on Amoonguss to combat it. Though sidelined for a time, Urshifu-Single would soon prove to be just as wicked as it did before once it found the opportunity. Despite the Nerf done to Wicked Blow in Gen IX, many felt that it wasn't enough to prevent them from wreaking havoc in VGC again.
• Regieleki was introduced in the Crowd Tundra DLC, and it became a superstar in Doubles. This is mainly thanks to Electroweb coupled with its lighting-fast speed and decent offensive power, which allows Regieleki to instantly drop the foes' speed by one stage, and do a good chunk of damage on top of that. Despite its frailty and barren movepool, the sheer power of Electroweb has solidified it as a potent speed control option in the format. Because of its dominance, Transistor ends up receiving a Nerf in Gen IX as well as introducing Iron Bundle to compete with it.

Pokémon GO

Pokémon GO has some Pokémon which players despise fighting in every league.

Great League

• Azumarill is the most notorious and reviled Pokémon in Great League. Due to the CP cap of 1500 favouring low Attack and high Defense mons, Azumarill ends up being very bulky relative to the rest of the field, with a solid defensive Water / Fairy typing and good coverage against most of the field in its charge moves. Because of this, it's very easy to just slap on a team and get good results, and after months of it dominating the League since it started, people have become sick of seeing it.
• Umbreon. Don't be deceived by the mono Dark typing of its non-Elite moveset, this mon still stands among the elite of the GO Battle League thanks to an impressive and appropriate bulk as well as some of the best Dark type attacks in Snarl, Foul Play and Dark Pulse. It's even capable of overcoming its weaknesses if the player seized the appropriate event or had an Elite TM at hand in order to give it Last Resort.
• Galarian Stunfisk quickly gained a place among the PvP Great League elite thanks to its bulk, Ground/Steel typing, the Mud Shot/Earthquake combo decimating the common Steel type in the Great League, and Rock Slide providing useful coverage. Only Water types (among which is the King of the Great League, Azumarill) seem to pose a threat to it.
• Skarmory sports a powerful Steel/Flying typing which gives it 10 resistances, a decent bulk, and a full STAB-based moveset which includes the devastating Air Slash/Sky Attack combo, the former of which allows it to destroy enemies just with fast attacks.
• Rounding up the top-5 is Altaria. A combination of an appropriate bulk, a powerful Dragon/Flying typing shared with pseudo-legendaries such as Dragonite and Salamence while overpowering both of them, one of the best fast attacks when it comes to charging the Charged Attack in Dragon Breath, and two devastating charged moves in Sky Attack and Dragon Pulse justifies the mon's place atop the creme de la creme even several years after Gen III was released in the game.
• Hypno in the Season 4 Kanto Cup. A combination of good bulk^note 144 ATK, Def 193, STA 198 and a varied moveset that includes the most powerful Ghost type attack in the game (Shadow Ball), the three elemental punches for coverage and shield baiting, one of the best fast attacks of the game in Confusion, and a devastating Fighting type attack in Focus Blast makes it a very dangerous mon. Add to it the lack of good Dark, Ghost and Bug type attackers among the allowed mons,^note the only Dark type attacker that presents a real threat to Hypno is the Alolan Grimer, while in the Ghost side only Alolan Marowak becomes a threat since the Gastly line is vulnerable because of its half-Poison typing; as for the bugs, outside of Beedrill there aren't any real threats and you get an omnipresent mon that becomes the keystone of any team. The only reason why Hypno isn't as present as it was outside of this cup is the presence of real PvP threats such as Umbreon.

Ultra League

• Giratina (Altered Forme) has, for the longest time, ruled the roost of Ultra League. Not the most damaging mon by any stretch of imagination, but its nigh-unrivaled bulk makes it a hard customer to crack and allows it to outlast even its soft counters with a health lead. Prior to the April 2020 move rebalancing, Giratina was actually better than it currently is due to Ancient Power's cheaper energy cost and slightly higher power, on top of the 10% chance of a two-stage Attack and Defense boost. Despite said rebalancing adjusting such moves to cost more energy and do less damage, Giratina nonetheless remains a formidable foe.
• As of the June 2020 rebalancing, Cresselia contends with Giratina for the Ultra League crown. Already sporting better bulk than Giratina due to its lower max CP, and fantastic high-energy gathering Fast Moves in Confusion and Psycho Cut, what propelled her into metagame prominence is a buffed Moonblast, providing widespread coverage with great synergy with either the exclusive Grass Knot or a STAB Future Sight, while also providing a chance to lower an opponent's attack by one stage. The playerbase is generally split on who between Giratina and Cresselia is the more hated of the two.

Master League

• Standing head and shoulders above all others is the emperor of Master League, Dialga. Take the typing excellence of Skarmory, the raw strength of most Dragon-types, and the flexibility of the top tiers from the lower leagues, and you have a monster so powerful that it centralizes competitive play. The Steel/Dragon typing grants surprising staying power for an Attack-driven Pokémon (neutrality to Dragon, Ice, Fire and Fairy and resistances to most other types, with only the two remaining Steel-type weaknesses to threaten it), and its high Attack stat means that: a. its Dragon Breath can keep pace with its counters in damage; and b. its Charge Moves of Iron Head and a choice of either Thunder or Draco Meteor will allow it to leave significant dents on anything. You can count on one hand the number of players that don't bring a Dialga into their party. It's telling that, despite the growing list of countermeasures, Dialga remains one of the most used Pokémon in the metagame.
• Zacian is just as insane as it is in the main game. It has an incredibly quick fast move in the form of Snarl and has the potential to run two moveset variants; they almost always have Close Combat as coverage, but will have either Play Rough or Wild Charge as its other move. While certain movesets can be walled by specific Pokémon, they will be weak to the other. Lining it up with Giratina and expecting the Wild Charge variant? Play Rough will remove 60% of its HP. Ho-oh and guess the wrong variant? Wild Charge will obliterate it. Games with Zacian are basically boiled down to guessing games where one wrong prediction will cause your downfall or waste a shield. It's also a Fairy type, meaning that it has a type advantage against the large amount of Dragons in the league.

Multiple Leagues

• As part of the December 2020 Kalos rollout, Talonflame sported promise as a Great League and Ultra League contender, even more so than its halcyon days in Generation VI of the main games. It came packed with excellent Charge Moves in the form of the Attack-boosting Flame Charge and an immensely-improved Brave Bird, but was held back by middling or outright bad Fast Moves in Fire Spin, Peck and Steel Wing. Then came the Fletchling Community Day in March 2021, blessing it with Incinerate, which improves upon the default Fast Moves in damage and energy generation. Many matchups against its would-be counters suddenly became dicier for the latter, as they would not dare bear the brunt of a Brave Bird coming off of Talonflame's high Attack stat, never mind taking one after an Attack boost or two from Flame Charge. This one exclusive move has transformed Talonflame into a fearsome mon, albeit with a playstyle that takes some finesse, that must be accounted for at all times, lest the opponent be snowballed to death.
• Swampert became this the moment it received Hydro Cannon. An ideal stat spread, and the ability to hit almost anything in the meta for neutral or super-effective damage with the deadly combination of Mud Shot, Hydro Cannon and Earthquake, makes it a threat one must account for. One Hydro Cannon from it can easily take out slightly less than half health from tanky Pokémon with neutral damage, anything weak to water will be unquestionably OHKOed or crippled, and it's perfectly capable of spamming them 2-3 times in a row. This allows it to bruteforce Pokémon who otherwise have an advantage against it, and if it's allowed to load up on energy, it could sweep whole teams very easily before the other side can fire any charged move.
• The Spheal Community Day on January 2022 granted Walrein two exclusive moves: the Fast Move Powder Snow and the Charge Move Icicle Spear. Thanks to these changes, Walrein has elevated itself from total obscurity from the metagame to becoming one of its poster children. It previously lacked a Fast Move that quickly generated energy, and its Charge Moves were too costly (all of them were one bar long in PvP) without being risky or unrewarding. Powder Snow solved the former problem, generating energy at an above-average rate, while Icicle Spear solved the latter, costing the least possible amount of energy for a Charge Move while sporting the base attack power of Weather Ball prior to its nerf. These moves have near-perfect synergy with Walrein's other, more expensive Charge Moves, namely Earthquake, giving it impressive coverage against the rest of the metagame, and creating mind games to really scare its opponent into shielding poorly. With its ideal moveset of Powder Snow and Icicle Spear/Earthquake, it stands toe-to-toe with the likes of Galarian Stunfisk and Azumarill in Great League, Swampert and Giratina in Ultra League, and can even contend with the Master League to a certain extent.

Other/unofficial metagames

Most other metagames don't get too much focus and are more seen as a fun experimentation ground. However, that doesn't mean there aren't a few examples.

• Blissey and Chansey are the two Pokémon that centralize the Balanced Hackmon metagame. With Imposter, the pink blobs became the single most devastating revenge killers/anti sweepers in the game, with their usual passivity being completely removed by their new offensive stats, while still keeping their enormous HP stats. Any Pokémon that was hoping to be viable would have to Imposter-proof their set so that the pink blobs couldn't come in and eviscerate their team. They were also lethal with the ability Innards Out because of said HP stat, which meant that anything that managed to KO it was slaughtered in return. It got so bad that Innards Out was banned from Balanced Hackmons.
• Chandelure, in-game, was a lower-tier and Doubles staple, but in the Dream World metagame, a format that permitted unreleased Dream World abilities, it was public enemy #1 because its Hidden Ability is Shadow Tag (yep, the very same one that made Wobbuffet despised prior to its permanent ban). With its superb offensive Fire/Ghost typing and Choice Scarf to patch up its mediocre 80 base Speed, Chandelure can easily trap any sort of threat and open holes in teams. Or if you want, use Substitute and/or Calm Mind to set up and become a terrifying sweeper/wallbreaker. This version of Chandelure was so hated and powerful, enough to be considered a top pick in Ubers and far outclassed its fellow trappers Dugtrio and Wobbuffet. Since Shadow Tag Chandelure was never released, its potential power thus ends up as a "What If?", but most likely owing to said "What If?", its Hidden Ability was later changed to Infiltrator in Gen VI. Chandelure still sees usage in lower tiers in traditional formats, but its power is still nothing compared to the terror it was in the Dream World metagame.
• For a while, Shedinja was a dominating force in Balanced Hackmons due to its extremely low HP stat. This doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that with 1 HP, the ability Sturdy will always activate, rendering most attacks completely useless. Players took advantage of this by saddling it with Endeavor (which lowers the opponent’s HP until it is equal to the user’s) and a priority move, meaning it was able to dispose of almost anything despite its bad stats. While most sets ran Sturdy, craftier players put a Focus Sash on it and gave it Magic Guard, negating any passive damage (which would otherwise kill it). The only reliable way of getting rid of it was having a Pokémon with either Mold Breaker or one of the Alolan legendaries' Signature Moves (which ignore abilities). The metagame centered around it to the point that it was banned by the time Gen 8 rolled around.
• Even Smogon's Random Battles format has a few Pokémon players despise facing; Tropius is normally quite a weak Pokémon in standard play, with underwhelming stats all around and a weakness-laden typing. However, in Random Battles, it's way stronger than it is in normal play. Due to the format's level handicap mechanic, where Pokémon with a lower BST get set to a higher level to compensate, Tropius's low BST is compensated for by a higher base level, letting it work better as a Jack of All Stats. However, it's the set it often gets which makes players dread facing it: a SubSeed set, which combines Leech Seed to slowly whittle down the foe's HP, Substitute and Protect to block their efforts to knock Tropius out, and Harvest to occasionally regenerate its held Sitrus Berry. Powerful Pokémon can break through Tropius, and ones with a recovery move can outstall it, but if you're not lucky enough to get a team with the Pokémon that can defeat it, or if the other player takes them out before deploying it, you might very well have to just watch as Tropius stalls your team to death.
• Pure Hackmons, throughout its existence, has always been the metagame where everything doable in the game with hacking is allowed; since Eternamax Eternatus was unobtainable legitimately, but technically existed, it was thus allowed in PH. Eternamax Eternatus quickly proved to be one of the most dominant Pokémon a metagame has ever seen. It has an absurd bulk of 255 HP and 250 defense and special defense points as well as immunity to poison, making it nearly impossible to kill, it also had great offensive stats and an amazing speed. It was made even more absurd with the introduction of Neutralizing Gas, which meant Eternamax Eternatus was able to shut down nearly any ability, which prevented most ability-based strategies without getting rid of Neutralizing Gas, which were often the only way it could be killed. The metagame revolved completely around Eternamax Eternatus and the Pokémon that beat it, which was a very small pool, Eternamax Eternatus invalidated nearly all offensive options that weren't specially designed to kill it. It was made even worse after the discovery of the overflow glitch, which meant that with max hp and defense or special defense it would take a single point of damage from any attack on the defence spectrum it’s built around, making Eternamax Eternatus even harder to kill. As a result, Eternamax Eternatus became universally despised among the player base and made the tier, in many eyes, very uncompetitive and unhealthy. Eternamax Eternatus was so dominant that it received a staggering 200% usage ^note if you're wondering how that is even possible, Eternamax Eternatus was so dominant that every single team had two, one for physical hits, one for special. After another two glitches were discovered that made Eternamax even more unkillable, the metagame was deemed unplayable and abandoned, with it only returning in July 2022 after popular demand and also because the Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl version of the Pure Hackmons metagame didn't work out, but it's still considered an uncompetitive novelty.

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