For a while, pokebank had been updated to support Sun and Moon, and by now all 802(?) of the cast are in circulation. They also added a feature that lets you transfer pokemon from the virtual console Red, Blue, and Yellow games. Unfortunately these are the first generation versions of said games... and they didn't bother fixing anything. I mean sure, you don't need to split special into two stats or anything I guess, but the same bugs in stat calculations, malfunctioning moves, and glitch pokemon still apply. So from the very moment these games have been connected to Sun and Moon, the players of Red and Blue have been sending in all the custom made Mews they could ever want. And getting free Mewnium Z's for their efforts. Byootifal.

Well on the bright side, at least Mew isn't as ridiculous a pokemon as it was in gen 1. Over the course of time, with each generation that passed, new changes have occurred that alter the way each pokemon can be played. Apparently in gen 2, the... eugh... meta for battling was STALLING. I can now see why gen wunners became a thing... seriously how would you feel if you just got online to test a new team and for the first three battles you ran into teams with just Umbreons, Chanseys, Shuckles, etc...

But yeah, factors like new typing match-ups, items, move functions, newly available pokemon, and general game mechanics all play a part in knocking pokemon all around the place in terms of use. Like when Blissey became available, there was no reason to use Chansey instead, but when gen 5 introduced eviolite, many pokemon that still had an evolution available were kept un-evolved in order to have more defenses, like Doublade, Porygon-2, even Scyther was viable over Scizor in some ways. But there are some cases in which some pokemon may be TOO good. With the ever rising popularity of tiers, rulesets, and people who will call you the biggest dumb*** in the world for using anything under UU (and at least someone will call you out anyways for using a pokemon THEY wouldn't use, even if it's "top-tier"), the producers of pokemon have started making even more changes than ever before. With, the advent of gen 7, we saw more changes than we're used to, upgrading the stats of pre-existing pokemon, altering abilities, and nerfing a lot of status conditions in one way or another. Not freeze though, no one cared about freeze before anyways...

This all got me thinking, over the course of time, how many pokemon have been altered for better or worse by things like the special split, the advent of physical and special moves, and generally alterations to themselves as a whole? Of course, there are some obvious places to look, like in terms of new evolutions and mega forms, but while examining various pokemon, I noticed some who got the short end of the stick more than others. Here are 4 specific pokemon I found that got nerfed, but either it was too hard a nerf, or they really didn't need it in the first place.

Starting off with some recent alterations, we have Talonflame. Now for a long while, we've been having generic, uninspired birds thrusted into our faces. Before gen 6, the best of the lot was probably good old Staraptor, a very combative bird pokemon from Sinnoh with access to intimidate, close combat, and FRICKEN ENDEAVOR AND QUICK ATTACK. I curse your very name Barry. Back then, Staraptor seemed like a sign that we'd get better birds to work with. Then we got Unfeazant. However, as we lost hope, gen 6 came along, adding Talonflame, and later on, Mega Pidgeot. Cause gen 1 honor. Talonflame was, at the time, the best "early bird pokemon" you could hope for. Sure, it was fire and flying, and the night is dark and full of stealth rocks, but Talonflame was an expert in its field, tearing apart choice targets. Now it does have flame body, which can be useful in some cases, but we already had easy access to scald. Nah, what really drew us to Talonflame was its hidden ability, gale wings. Every flying move in Talonflame's arsenal was given priority, making it great at dispatching things soon. However, just because it was powerful, didn't mean it was neccesarily OP. It had a rather limited move pool, and its best moves were flare blitz and brave bird, which deal considerable recoil damage to itself. Besides that, it had U-turn and occasionally steel wing, good for rock types and fairies. Generally, it was pretty singleminded in this regard, easy to predict, and if you gave it a life orb, it would last an even smaller amount of time in exchange for more reliable KO's. Then we got news of gen 7 changes... and the nerf to gale wings. Now, gale wings only works if Talonflame has FULL HEALTH. GameFreak, you actually enjoy seeing people cry over arena traps? And even if you don't lose half your health from stealth rocks, now the only move that can really exploit this is acrobatics. This means sacrificing the use of a held item, (an item besides life orb of course), and once you lose ANY health at all, it's gone. So at this point, Talonflame retired from the world, hardly to be used again........ while the freaking pelican abomination got stat buffed and drizzle.

Now sure, maybe this nerf WAS intended to be a balancing technique, but this next gen 7 nerf I just can't wrap my head around... you know how Gengar got a new ability? Gengar was always a great pokemon, with its high speed and power to boot. Over the course of all the generations, it has gained access to a vast pool of moves from TM's and move tutors. With levitate on its side, it was immune to normal, fighting, AND ground moves, which would normally do double damage to a poison type. Then it got a mega evolution, and it was just TERRIFYING. Its power was through the fricken roof, and it was SO FAST. That and a certain OTHER factor about mega Gengar made it banned in lots of tournaments. So when gen 7 came along, they decided to nerf Gengar............ but not its mega evolution. Look, the mega evolution was the bad thing about Gengar... yet you didn't even touch it. Instead, Gengar got levitate taken away, and got cursed body. Basically it has a chance of disabling moves... but only if they make direct contact. In other words, bulldoze, magnitude, and of course, earthquake can have a field day against Gengar. And you know what kinds of types have the most direct contact moves? Normal and fighting moves... WHICH IT WAS IMMUNE TO ANYWAYS. Hey, look on the bright side! You can incapacitate the use of priority flying mo- oh wait. Now sure, mega Gengar had ridiculous stats, but what really enforced the bans of its use was its ability. It didn't have levitate, but it DID have shadow tag. Just take a stroll through smogon, and you'll see just about every form of shadow tag is banned. This ability will prevent pokemon from switching out. However, unlike Dugtrio's arena trap (the real Dugtrio not the stupid one we get in Alola), this was a much more widespread ability, and the only things that could get away were other ghost types or pokemon with auto-switching moves. Yet even with this, in the few situations when mega Gengar was legal, you could generally mess with your opponent by presenting a pokemon with a ground move. A regular Gengar would be immune, but if they mega evolved they would be in trouble. Getting rid of REGULAR Gengar's immunity was probably the stupidest way to nerf mega Gengar. What? You expect me to actually put THOUGHT into my use of a mega evolution? Naaaaaah, why WOULDN'T I want to mega evolve!? Oh, mega Gengar is still banned in this battle? Crap.

Of course, not all nerfs were this specific, some pokemon were indirectly nerfed through balancing mechanics that affected a large group of pokemon. However, these last two pokemon weren't really good to begin with. Since gen 1, dual typing has been a novel concept. Combining the effects of two types into one pokemon really diversified the roster of pokemon, making many individuals unique. (I mean, that still didn't stop GameFreak from making 27 normal and flying types) However, even now there are many type combinations that have yet to be implicated. In gen 3, we got an amazing type combo however. Sableye was the first ghost and dark type pokemon. Back from gen 3-5, ghost and dark types were unique in that they had no type weaknesses, and immunities to 3 types. The way ghost and dark types were designed, offensively, they were extremely similar, but defensively they were just about opposites. Anything a ghost type was weak to, dark types resisted, and vice versa. Combined, they retain the immunities of either type, and nullify the other weaknesses and resistances, barring taking half damage from poison types. Now did this make Sableye a good pokemon? Oh heck no. All its stats were terribly low, and the only good methods of using it were for utility, like using its access to knock off, mean look, fake out, confuse ray, and whatever TM's that would help it in this regard. This was made even more redundant later when it gained its second ability, stall, a really awful ability that makes Sableye always attack last. Wai. However, Sableye is not the pokemon I'm talking about. In gen 4, we had another dark ghrost type, AND IT WAS DOWNRIGHT EVIL. Not just because of the fact it was made of exactly 108 evil spirits, but it was so hard to get. First, you talk to some guy to the left of Hearthome City, he gives you an odd keystone. Then, on the next route, you find a crumbling tower, insert the keystone, and restore the tower. THEN, you have to return to the tower after interacting with 32 people in the Sinnoh Underground, and you get a shot at catching Spiritomb. We already know about the astounding typing, but what about the other battle properties? Well it was nothing to special. It was pretty defensive, with good offense to boot, but lower overall health and speed. However, the low speed was offset by shadow sneak and sucker punch, and it had hypnosis with dream eater and nightmare. In gen 5 it got the hidden ability infiltrator, making it more useful. For years, dark and ghost united in harmony, but then everything changed when the fairy nation attacked. Fairy moves were super-effective on dark types... AND DID NORMAL DAMAGE TO GHOSTS. So essentially, they lost what made them so special. You'd think Sableye would be hurt, but in gen 5 it got prankster and started seeing minor use as a saboteur with will-o-wisp. However, GameFreak realized the magnitude of what fairies did to their rules, so to make amends they gave Sableye a ridiculously defensive mega form. With magic bounce. Spiritomb however got NOTHING, and at this point, there were plenty of other pokemon who could do what it could, but better. In fact, as of now, there's nothing special about Spiritomb anymore. You'd think having a very rare pokemon would get you somewhere? Well with Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, there is an easy way to catch Spiritomb with little work. Great. When you give a pokemon less reasons to exist in the main series games than DELIBIRD, you know you've done something wrong.

Now the last pokemon I'm talking about, is a pokemon so overhyped, so pointless, so annoying, and so pathetic, just about NO POKEMON FAN can really respect it. They are one, they are many. They are Unown. Now for a second, assume that a reader hasn't played a pokemon game, hasn't collected the cards, and are only familiar with the media. Now, for as long as it was a thing in the story, Unown was portrayed as a pokemon possessing incredible ancient power, knowledge, and a link to the origins of the universe. In the cartoons, and a movie or maybe two, Unown have been shown doing incredible things. In [insert name of the movie with Entei], Unown are responsible for attempting to bring the wishes of a sad young girl to reality. Why? Audino. They create a mirage version of Entei, build a whole fricken castle for the girl, and when the girl wishes to have her own mother, since they can't physically manifest that, they kidnap Ash's mom. Cause who else in the world had a mom they could borrow right? And you people wonder why I hate Ash, he's almost more significant in the pokemon world than Finn in Adventure Time, but in Adventure Time they had plenty of reasons for that. But that's the movie canon, what about the cartoons?

HEY!? DID ASH WIN THE LEAGUE YET!? NO!? ... WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT EEVEE GUY THEY INTRODUCED AT THE LAST ******* MINUTE???

Anyways, Unown lore. Even in the game canon, when Unown are present in the region, they are implied to have some significance to the creation of the world and spreading of language. Was this ever confirmed? Nah, but by the time we've established this we were already forced to catch 26 of them. In order to solve the mystery of the Unown ruins, the game requests that you catch one Unown for each letter of the alphabet. I only bothered to do this in Diamond and Pearl, and the reward? Access to two more Unown shaped like ! and ? and a rare candy. So naturally, I haven't even bothered with doing this in Johto DID I MENTION THAT THERE WERE UNOWN IN EVERY 4TH GEN GAME!?!? You think that the different forms of Unown are special? Every Unown pretty much has the capacity to be the same, regardless of form. In fact it was worse in the trading card games. Ever played the generation two booster pack drinking game? Amass 50 card packs, open them all, and every time you get a variation of Unown, take a shot. They all have the same function, and be it a card collection or PC box, all they really do is take up space. Yep, that's it, cause you'd be crazy to use them in battle. All of their stats are 48, except their offensive stats, which are 72. Here's the kicker, over the 6 generations they have been in, they only have access to ONE move, hidden power. Hidden power will change in power and type depending on the IV's of the pokemon using it. The power could be anywhere from 30-70. Now this would make Unown a nice mixed attacker... until you remember it only learns one freaking move. Then in gen 4, we got physical and special moves, and attack and sp. attack no longer relied on the type of the move. This gave new opportunities to so many pokemon with odd stat distribution. Not Unown though, now you don't even get to decide whether Unown is a physical or special attacker, all hidden powers are special now. That 72 attack? Wasted base stat total. Yep, they made Unown worse over time. Normally hidden power is affected by normalize, giving it more power, but they removed that in gen 5. I mean the only way you could benefit from that was swapping abilities somehow, but I'll count it as a nerf. And in gen 6, hidden power got a static base power of 60. Sure, now the common Unown are better overall, but you can't really make an ideal Unown now... y'know, if Unown was something you wanted to IV breed... heh. Besides, who would even use it to begin with as is? Also fairy types aren't hidden power types yet. Wow, guess GameFreak started hating Unown too. Re-balancing, you are a cruel mistress sometimes.

Talonflame deserved a nerf. Now I think Gale Wings should have worked like an opposite defeatist where the ability is only active when you're above 50% of your health. So you'd have to roost up to get more priority brave birds. Full health is just stupid considering that Talonflame's two best attacks cause recoil damage.

I don't mind that Ghost/Dark has a weakness now. They technically had one before fairy was added as well. If you used foresight on them, followed by a fighting type attack, it would be super effective. I'm pretty sure a pokemon with scrappy hits them for super effective fighting type damage as well. I do hope that spiritomb will get a mega evolution when gen 4 remakes are made.

Unown is pretty s***, but it was never meant to be a powerful pokemon. I think the only purpose they ever filled was getting hippopotas way easier in 4th gen.


But speaking of nerfs, why on earth was Dark Void nuked like that. It's now less accurate than f***ing sing and only one pokemon can even learn the move (two including smeargle). Oh, that pokemon is a legendary that's banned from competitive play. Like seriously, if you can't kill a smeargle then you're just a bad player.