Just to clarify: I'm not saying the Phys/Special Split shouldn't have happened. It's a more intuitive system overall. Just saying that dismissing Gen 3 OU for having no Phys/Special split is a bit short-sighted. The unique mechanics of old Gens make them stand out which is a good thing. Try to appreciate the unique options available, instead of dismissing them for not having the same options as later Gens.

Iron Fellow has 283% usage in the OU ladder but still remains in UUBL. One day I hope the community realizes how strong they are and places them properly

In the arceus game they changed freeze into something that was basically burn but lowers special attack. I wish that became the standard

I think the greater move set variety of earlier gens also stems from the lack of Pokémon. As more Pokémon are introduced, there is less space to be the best as a specific niche. Take snorlax. In gen 2, it could do practically anything and was the best at so many different roles that the question wasn’t “should I use snorlax?” It’s “how do I use my obligatory snorlax.” In Every subsequent gen it has a more specific niche until it became outclassed at everything. Older gens have more variety in movesets, but newer gens have more variety of Pokémon.

I have been vouching for the careful balance of Asymmetry in Pokémon because of how interesting it makes certain Pokémon, and this video perfectly exemplifies that. An example from newer games that made me really sad was Basculegion, who on paper was such an interesting attacker- It’s a Water/Ghost type with Adaptability, boosting it’s already strong STABs, but also has two forms. The male had a much higher Attack stat, while the female had a stronger special attack stat (but not quite as high compared the the attack stat of the male!) When this Pokémon was originally revealed in Legends Arceus, Wave Crash was one of it’s signature moves, and was really interesting- It was a Physical, 75 base power move with recoil, but increased the user’s priority. This on paper sounds like a Water-type Sucker Punch, which is awesome! So you’d want to use it on the male version, but then you notice that in Legends Arceus that the only Ghost moves Basculegion gets us Astonish and Shadow Ball. This, combined with the lower power of Basculegion’s physical attacking options, gives us an interesting option: Using the Female form to become a better special attacker, with options like Hydro Pump and Shadow Ball, since it’s the better user of it’s Ghost Stab, or using the male for the superior attacking Stat and moves like Wave Crash. Or, even more interestingly, using Adaptability in order to use a Mixed Basculegion, such as using Shadow Ball on the Male since Adaptability would make it an interesting option, or running Adaptability Wave Crash on Female for the extra priority. However, with SV’s changes to Basculegion’s movepool and changes to Wave Crash, they gave Baculegion a 120 bp Physical Water Stab that isn’t priority boosted like Sucker Punch, as WELL as Last Respects, arguably the most broken move in the game and a Physical Ghost stab. It almost entirely removes the justification of running Female Basculegion for it’s special attacking stats, since the Male simply outdoes it thanks to a higher Attacking stat and better STAB moves. It’s an upgrade that will make Male Basculegion better, but makes the overall pair of Male and Female Basculegion less interesting of a choice and an unfortunate downgrade to the thought that was put into their differences.

Im glad we got the split, my fav azu finally got a time to shine😍😍

7:29 Going to stop you there, Salamence was still ridiculously versatile after the split; that's why it got banned in gen 4, because you couldn't reliably counter it, with roughly the same amount of options and all of them enhanced: A choice banded now with Outrage, a mix attacker with Draco meteor or bulky dragon dance now with Roost. Gengar is a genuine case of versatility lost and so is for Alakazam, but Salamence got roughly equal.

I actually went thru all the other videos I hadnt watched just to see what in the end happened to Iron Mugulis. The new Iron Fellow now looks terrifying

Iron fellow is very dangerous

DPP's physical special split was arguably less influential than the introduction of a whole bunch of spammable 120pwr moves

Leaf Blade Sceptile definitely isn’t a competitive staple of any sort but whenever I think of the phys/spec split and its downsides it’s always the first one I think of. Your discussion of how the introduction of the split made the game a bit more “linear” in some regards was rlly insightful!! Love whenever you talk abt Gen 3

So basically, to finish the title: "The downside of Pokemon's Physical/Special Split [is Game Freak's incompetence]".

Iron Fellow? As if Iron Mugulis hasn’t done enough damage ;-;

It was interesting to hear about the physical/special split from this perspective, I had always assumed it was just a 100% positive change and therefore I avoided playing the first 3 generations because pokemon sounded worse without the split. Now i'm really interested to try the gen 3 games, it sounds really different but not worse, just different.

The sinister 6 of pokemon is becoming a reality Mugulis, gholdengo, spidops, garganacl, iron fellow and maybe a 6th member soon?

As someone who use to play competitive I'm glad you made this. People get so into elitist mindsets nowadays. The physical special split was a near universal improvement, but I agree that it came at a cost. Likewise Gen 3 is also my favorite meta, Im not a fan of how power crept the series became over time. Pokemon don't always need STAB to succeed.

There are two points that I think are missing from this discussion: (1) Universal access to STAB drastically increased the power level of the game. A mon like Gengar's strongest move was 95 Thunderbolt, now 120 Shadow Ball. Salamence 100 Earthquake, now 180 Outrage. Gen 4's physical/special split was the single largest instance of power creep in the game's history, made even worse by the introduction of several high base power moves like Close Combat and Brave Bird. (2) A lot of mons had a powerful "coverage" stat, and were balanced around it. It's wrong to look at Gen 3 Crawdaunt as a physical attacker with no STAB. It's a special attacker with a high physical attack to leverage coverage options like Sludge Bomb or Aerial Ace. A lot of mons were designed with this logic, and then broke when the phys/spec split came. Crawdaunt turned from a special attacker with mixed coverage options, to a Knock Off bot with no diversity of sets at all. This has broadly been the case for most gen 1-3 mons that transitioned to gen 4 sadly. I agree that the split was necessary, but it was also handled very carelessly, to the extent where I think the games might now be worse overall for it. I do believe that Gen 4 is the gen that did the most damage to the games' balance, and we're still living with the repercussions of it. If you play old gens, it doesn't feel like you're constantly on the verge of getting swept. Things don't die as quickly.

I will say, the physical/special split was very much a net positive. Far more Pokemon became more interesting to use than ones that became less interesting, it made intuitive sense, and it allowed for the design of viable Pokemon in the future to become much more creative. Imagine something like Weavile, Gholdengo, or Sandy Shocks without the split. All of them take massive hits in usefulness. And the example with Gengar, that guy is still capable of running a lot of different sets. Scarf, Specs, Nasty Plot, Substitute, Will-O-Wisp + Hex, etc. There's still a lot of room to mold Gengar into whatever your team needs, even if there's a lot of crossover with moves it commonly runs

Nevermind pokemon like Sneasel/Weaville that got to use its stab moves now that their typing doesn't contradict their stat distribution. Also, losing levitate was worse for Gengar than losing ice punch.

I only got into comp in Gen 5, so I've been playing catch-up on stuff like this with creators such as BKC. It's fascinating to see these intricacies & how Pokemon has changed as a game. You mentioned the split simplifying the game, and I think we're starting to see more attempts at simplification; moveset resets upon transfer to SV (esp. with scald/knock), newer pokemon having more deliberately limited movesets since SWSH (e.g Eleki, Spectrier) etc. For all the variety and intricacies in new Pokemon and moves we get, it makes me wonder how much we've given up in exchange.

Counterpoint 1: having entire metagames warped around individual, extremely flexible mon's is almost precisely the issue people have have with Lando-T or Mew from Gen 1/2/3/4. Counterpoint 2: they clearly *did* care about competitive pokemon in some capacity - after all, 2008 VGS was the first World Championship for the core games... and it was DPPt. Which was right after the Phys/Special split. (That's admittedly Doubles, but changing Doubles mechanics without changing Singles mechanics would be really weird)

While it's true that perhaps the variety in moveset might have been diminished by the split, it's still a net positive imo, becuase without it, too many mons would not be as useful: imagine if Fairy was a special-only type, you can kiss all physical attackers goodbye

We must not let iron fellow into OU or the world ends 😔

The thing I like about the Phys/Spec split was something I don’t think you mentioned deeply enough- design options. Pre-gen 4, an offensive, physical Psychic type would simply not be as viable as a special one on paper, because Psychic was a special type, and Psychic would gain additional damage off of their stab boosts they could more effectively use. It just wasn’t a good design option. Now, though, any type can function under any category, and that means that originally unviable type/stat distributions could become useful. It allowed for GF to design things like truly Physical Water types like Crawdaunt, and truly Special Normal types like Porygon-Z. I think the design implementation of that has made for more interesting Pokémon.

According to your video, gengar literally only lost ice punch while getting stab shadowball and a strong move in focus miss, which is still arguably better than focus punch. Fire punch was less useful since you already had perfect coverage in ice/electric combo, which is the reason it is not featured in smogon's analysis. And in gen 6 steel got nerfed, so ghost stab was better than ever making it the new unresisted combination, and poison was suddenly useful thanks to the new fairy type. I'd argue that the split was definitely favorable for gengar.

So I sort of agree, with a caveat. The lessening of options is definitely an occurrence, but isn't the fault of the split, but rather due to game freaks poor choices when it comes to updating movesets and making sure their choices aren't limiting options(such as removing gengars coverage, or stealth rock being atrocious for balance). So I do think that the phys spec split is definitely more nuanced than many say, that nuance is definitely not the changes fault, but rather the fault of GF implementing it poorly.

prior to the split ghost was an attack based type when ghost types are primarily special attackers, and dark was a special type with solely attack based Pokémon. That’s how little thought goes into the system when considering the intentions of the developers.

I think this might be the first video on KZfaq of the NEGATIVE aspects of the split. I've always fixated on all the positive aspects as Gyarados is my favorite Pokemon and benefits greatly from the split. However, I was aware of the loss of the elemental punches from Gengar and Alakazam as a negative to their coverage. Nice seeing more aspects fleshed out. 11/10 as Iron Fellow has returned.

i would argue that for many of the Pokemon that suffered from the split, just as many became viable. While a single Pokemon like Gengar may have had more variety in its movesets, others like Sneasel were totally unviable pre-split (and Weavile would have been too if it released pre-split). Gengar was good because it was fast, had a Normal immunity, and had high enough SpAtk to not care about having a STAB move. Other Pokemon weren't so lucky. I believe the split gives the devs more flexibility in designing Pokemon for competitive use. They could just as easily not have given Gengar Shadow Ball and have it forced to use other moves for coverage. Would it be worse? Definitely, but the split allows them to make balancing decisions in this manner that they couldn't pre-split. I'm happy to have more individual Pokemon be viable even if it means those individuals have less variety in their sets. That's just my personal belief though.

Meanwhile Flareon didn't have any coverage _or_ STAB... And still doesn't really have any physical coverage or STAB.

This feels like nitpicking that his favorite Gengar wasnt his super-effective wild card, and pursuit now not being an exceptional case. After the split I'd say that more moves can be exceptional cases like pursuit.

I think using gengar as an example is disingenuous. Do you honestly think gar would be top tier OU in ddp without shadow ball and focus blast? What gave gar it’s colorful move set originally was the ability to run a variety of evs for thinks like pursuit, mence hp flying, zapdos t bolt, etc. in gen 4 it can’t do that because of rocks, physical pursuit, and an overall power level increase. If gengar did not change at all going into gen 4 I think it would have dropped to uu. I do agree that the split made set variety overall less diverse.

super cool video. I love the exploration of what was lost in the transition to physical/special split which is not something I had considered before

I can't deny that I miss some Pokémon having more coverage in their sets, but I think that the logistical flaws that the pre physical/special split moves had meant it really was only a matter of time before they finally changed how moves worked. Although I'd love to see how they'd have designed Pokémon from the very beginning with the desire to keep the types of moves correlating with the type of attack, possibly using more/different damage multipliers since not all Pokémon get useful moves of their STAB types. Imagining a world where instead/om top of STAB you have Physical/Special Attack Bonus, where using a move that matched your higher offensive base stat got a bonus of 1.2×

In Gen 3, dragon claw (which is considered "special", meaning it uses your Special Attack to calculate your resulting damage. BUT dragon claw comes in contact as well...meaning it touches your opponent physically. Therefore opponents with flame body ability still have the 30% chance to cause you burn status when you use dragon claw even if it's special!

I LOVED the split, but I think the biggest problem with it that you touched on was the lack of additional corresponding moves. The Electric type imo suffers from this the worst on the physical side while Rock suffers just as much on the special side

How much moveset variety loss comes from nerfs and how much comes from the moveset itself being genuinely good in a new environment? Had the split not happened, gen 4 Gengar would have been running Sucker Punch or Dark Pulse instead of Shadow ball on every set to nail weakened Latias and Celebi. And even if Gengar had received Flamethrower and Ice beam in gen 4 as compensation for losing the punches as viable options it would still be discouraged from running them because stronger fire-types like Heatran would now exist.

The homogenization of Pokémon, that is the funny trade off of the physical/special split, it makes you a bit nostalgic of the times when using Hidden Power as physical move was a thing; at least Hitmonchan can finally use the moves that were apparently designed to be used by him. And well, things like this are why I appreciate Scald becoming a signature move. Scald is such a overloaded move, to the point that any Pokémon that doesn't have it is strictly worse as a water type. Scald gives you just enough damage to be threating (80) and secondary effect that is extremely punishing thanks to it's high chance. Scald technically is filling the same philosophy as Lava Plume or Discharge with it's chance, but Scald isn't only strictly better because, unlike Lava Plume or Discharge, it doesn't have safe switch-ins, it's also a move that you can throw completely unpunished 99% of the time; and also, that this move exists in like a million Pokémon compared with Lava Plume and Discharge.

My first game was Crystal on the Gameboy color. I loved using Alakazam and Gengar with ice punch. But when the elemental punches became physical, I didn't really complain, despite using them a lot beforehand. They're punches, after all, for Pokemon like Hitmonchan. Who is a physical fighting type. Those punches being special was probably never intended and was simply an accidental aspect of lacking a physical/special split. I think the issue here is NOT the physical/special split. The issue here is: why can't Alakazam and Gengar have ice beam or blizzard since they lost ice punch? I think your issue is the lack of replacement moves, so to speak. If they could use ice beam in gen 4 onwards, then you wouldn't complain about losing ice punch. The lack of replacement moves is why you miss ice punch. But something else that you seem to have forgotten is that in gen 2, when shadow ball was created, there were only 2 ghost families: the Gengar line and then Misdreavus. Gen 3 introduced some new ghosts. But as a whole, they might not have been common enough to warrant using stab ghost moves. Teams could run dark moves if needed to handle ghost and psychic enemy Pokemon. Lacking stab shadow ball meant less in gen 2, obviously. Gen 3 had more ghosts but it still didn't matter as much. But gen 4-6 introduced a bunch of new powerful ghost types that really wanted to use their stab moves for coverage: the legendary Giratina, Rotom (pre alt forms), Chandelure, Aegislash, just to name a few prominent Pokemon. I think your issue here is the lack of variety. You like variety. In your opinion, using stab moves is less variety, too predictable, and thus a negative. But for many people, a LOT of Pokemon sucked because they unfairly lacked a stab move for their attack or special typing. I think you would be fine with more variety but sadly, not every Pokemon is Mew: not every Pokemon has a move pool with 100 options. So yes, that means less variety inherently. And it means using the best moves available to a Pokemon in their move pool - which is almost always the stab coverage plus whatever moves complement their physical or special set.

I believe that the phys/spec split was necessary to make the metagame more inclusive, because the lack of strong stab moves for a lot of pokémon made the gameplay less dynamic and more focused on stall, with most of the damage being dealt through stuff like toxic, hazards and, in gen 3, sandstorm, which in turn, made offensive pokémon without good stab, like sneasel or togetic, a lot worse.

But atleast gengar can use ghost type moves now¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

All of this boils down to “it makes you think more” but I think having intuitive gameplay makes it far more interesting. There’s nothing more frustrating than a great pokemon like gengar who simply cannot get stab. And it can also lead to situations where a pokemon is great against certain types offensively but not defensively and vice versa and personally it just creates a very frustrating experience

“I could make a whole deep dive video exploring gen 3 gengar and all its options” PLEASE DO PLEASE DO PLEASE DO PLEASE DO

Gengar coverage options that are now Special: Dazzling Gleam Energy Ball Psychic Thunderbolt Icy Wind So it only really lost Fire and a stronger Ice attack. But it gained Fairy and a Mega.

Spamming physical Hyper Beam in the first 3 gens is one of my favorite things to do.

Something else that could be mentioned about the physical/special split is how it changed how a lot of defensive Pokémon functioned. For example, Regice could be a very powerful special wall when positioned correctly. You could even set up rain to resist fire type attacks and get coverage with Thunder and HP Water. So long as you knew not to leave it out against mons with decent fighting, rock, or steel attacks it can be really tough to take out. But nowadays it’s barely worth a glance because you can hit it physically with any type, plus the addition of strong physical fighting and rock moves.

Considering that Game Freak went out of their way to remove Levitate from Gengar in later generations in exchange for Cursed Body, something tells me that they were completely fine with it losing the elemental punches going from gen 3 -> gen 4.

We also have to consider that getting 5-6 desired ivs for that hidden power type coverage and power was difficult to accomplish in the actual game, hence it was generally never used.

Everything you said in this video is how I felt for a very long time. Thank you for wording it so well!

Iron Fellow: Direct Marketing - I invented that. You will see it.

another thing the split impacted was more defensive pokemon, like bulky waters are only weak to special moves thus making the high damage threats you could face a lot more predictable, you wouldn't see some random electric coverage that scared you from a pure physical attacker.

In my times, gyarados had fisical flying stab with HP flying 👴

Iron mugulis was just primal Kyogre in a mug costume. This time iron fellow is origin dialga under a clever disguise

The pre-split mechanics are something I've come to appreciate as I've played GSC OU. Would love to see a 'best-of-both-worlds' approach in future games. E.g. why not make the punches work off of the higher attacking stat of the user?

Cant believe 62.1% of viewers would put themselves at risk of Iron Fellow.. 😢

I haven't seen Gengar fighting the same Mon this much since resetting Red

i feel like the old moveset wipe of gen 9 could be a really interesting thing to talk about, especially if it stays the same even when Home rolls around also can iron fellow beat iron mugulis?

I think Gen 3 really is the generation to showcase how positive and negative the split was cause some Pokémon in Gen 3 were designed with the mechanics of Gen 3 in mind like Banette and Sceptile. Shadow Ball being Banette’s strongest stab and Sceptile having access to a special dark type move and special dragon claw was very helpful for it. A lot of Pokémon had the benefits of varied movepool and good variety in its coverage that were stripped away during the split. Banette now has to use Shadow Claw as a stab move instead of Shadow Ball and Sceptile now has to deal with a very middling coverage spread of Dragon and Grass moves. It’s honestly fascinating how they chose to design Pokémon that would be better with the split and Pokémon that would be hurt by the same split in the same generation

Typhlosion losing good Thunderpunch coverage was a pretty big deal, but I've learned to make up for it by using Solar Beam and having good support Pokemon with Drought. Modern problems require modern solutions, and I'm not gonna drop my boy.

I think power creep had just as much to do with cutting down on variety as the damage split. Every gen they've gotta come up with new moves and filling in the types without chunky stab moves is a no brained. By gen 5 almost every type had a viable move whether atk or spatk and almost every mon had requisite access to them. Save for some clearly intentional exceptions. Thus did the induced demand for moveset variety dropped off a cliff.

Move Idea: Flashback Room (removes the physical/special split for 5 turns, Fairy-type moves become special).

I think the real issue we can see here is that Game Freak has never put too much though into balancing the games for any metagame. Not even their actual competitive doubles. So they rarely think about giving interesting tools to their creatures, but rather mostly think about giving them moves that fit their design and lore, even if the combat utility is not ideal, to say the least. There are ton of Pokémon that just have awful movesets, and this has always been the case. And with each passing generation and gradual increase of Pokémon to choose from, it is now impossible to properly balance. I feel like Gen 3 was just lucky and got the perfect mix of variety and limitations to breed a very unique metagame compared to most other generations, but while the phys/spec pre-split definitely helped it greatly, I doubt we would have seen similar results in future generations if the split got delayed for some reason. (Also I think the lack of the split in a casual playthrough is 99% a negative and the game as a casual experience would have been miles better if the split was implemented since Gen 3)

True. More straightforward is not always better. I do like the idea of attack types "leaning" one way or the other, via having better or worse base power moves. So, thunderbolt vs thunderpunch making Electric a "special" type even after gen 4, or return vs hyper voice making normal a "physical" type, etc. I feel like offensive mixed attackers are almost a lost art at this point, lol.

One of your best videos in a while, Jimothy. I look forward to them every day . Here's hoping Iron Jugulus is brought to justice

I think one of the biggest example is the ghost type in general, where the only physical ghost stab outside of Shadow Claw and Shadow sneak were added was poltergeist, which was only introduced in Gen 8.

Pre-split also had some nice stability in the sense that it gave some Pokemon a more clear role. Suicune is so good as a Calm Minder in Gen 3 because boosting its SpDef helps it deal with its only two weaknesses. If Breloom suddenly had a physical Grass move in Gen 3, it would have way more trouble.

I think pre physical and special split metas are interesting due to the limitations it has, not the options that were last. I think the the new options to other mons far outweigh the few lost from the physical special split. Limiting Pokémon can make them cool in a different way. But I also think they can still give smart limitations while letting Pokémon still have the physical/special split.

There was always something really cool about the elemental punches being special attacks. Especially in gen 2 where they were provided as tms in goldenrod city as sort of early game STAB options and/or coverage. Speaking of special attacks, I have an idea for an ability that just turns all punching moves into special attacks. It's called phantom limb.

When I first heard about Gen 3's type mechanics, I was stunned. Although I do enjoy the physical / special split in later generations, this video has shown me that Gen 3 competitive still retains its qualities despite the type mechanics. Game mechanics may change over time, but just because it works doesn't mean it does not come with it's negative drawbacks. Gengar having Fire and Ice punch never made sense to me at first. But over time, I just accepted that it did had those moves at one point and it worked out effectively. I also would like to agree with the your point on Dragapult. When a pokemon's moveset is limited, you can be creative with it's move set, which gives it more variety. Thus more usage and fun. Maybe Game Freak might release a mode in the future where it brings back the old type mechanics from Gen 3 and prior. I think that would make things just a bit more fun for the veterans.

I would love to see a modern Pokémon developed PURPOSEFULLY to lack stab and therefore rely on creative loadouts. I could see this working great on a defensive Pokemon where their typing makes way more sense for taking hits instead of dishing out damage

This is a great educational video, hopefully it will get more people to try out Gen 3 OU and eliminate the prejudice from their minds. I think you made some great points and I fully agree with everything you said, in the competitive scene, the split is definitely not a strictly positive change (though I think the good outweighs the bad by a lot), it would definitely be if the game was balanced specifically for singles and doubles rather than around the context of Pokémon themselves, but that's not what Game Freak wants to go for and that's perfectly fine. One thing I'd like to point out is that even the negative aspects you listed are not necessarily strictly negative aspects, for example, giving more set options to certain Pokémon deletes the possible niches some other similiar Pokémon may have, and thus limits the variety of playable Pokémon in the metagame in favor of set variety, which some people might dislike; afterall Gen 3 OU does have a core of good Pokémon known as the "Big 5" and Gengar being highly customizable and adaptable to most scenarios is one of the reasons you can make almost anything work with a team structure based around some or all of these five Pokémon. Also some people might dislike the "guessing game" and mindgames associated with deciphering a Pokémon's set, while it is true that it adds a layer of skill, requiring knowledge of the metagame and understanding of game scenarios, it is also true that the opponent could specifically use a counterintuitive set to bluff and throw you off, making the entire thing up to chance (though this is very rare, I believe). I think gen 4 was the perfect time to introduce the split as with almost 500 Pokémon we really needed a system capable of making them feel more unique and usable. But as I said I agree with pretty much everything you said and I think these are mostly small and barely significant nitpicks, the whole thing is an ultimately subjective matter

Personally I liked that certain types were physical or special. I always had the logic that stuff like fire punch and ice punch is special cause the punch isn’t actually doing the damage it’s the fire covering the fist. I also feel it made the amount of sets that are usable are way more numerous. I find it really fun figuring out wether Ttar is special or physical. I think this is the biggest reason I love it. Basically I agree with everything you said and is one of the numerous reasons why gen 3 is the goat Edit: the physical special split also ruined mixed attackers to a large degree. Mixed attackers are really interesting and made the game more interesting.

Banette is the pokemon who was affected the most by the physical/special split. The complete opposite of Gengar. Losing its benefit from all Ghost moves formerly being physical with its massive attack stat.

I can’t believe they gave Shuckle’s past paradox form 137 speed and 198 special attack so that it would outspeed and overpower Iron Bundle and Chi-Yu. But it’s another Grass Dark type so at least it’s stuck in UU at the moment

something you could have mentioned is that mixed attackers are very rare as a result of the physical special split. in the past if you wanted to hit certain pokemon you'd need certian types regardless of whether it was your primary attacking stat it used, and you'd sacrifice your main attacking stat to ev to beat key targets. in the modern age of pokemon there is almost no reason to do this, since most mons with two good attack stats has good stab on both sides, so if you want a particular coverage option you just pick that side (e.g. you're not putting moonblast, aura sphere, shadow ball, liquidation on iron valiant no matter how nice that base attack is). you're encouraged by the huge move variety to use a 252/252/4 split on all your attackers unless you're ev-ing defences to tank hits, its another case in pokemon where the more choices you have in theory the less you have in practice, since the majority of options are pointless compared to the best 1%

This is actually really interesting, as someone who started with gen 4, I had always sort of brushed off earlier gens as a kid, but stuff like this helps me realise the nuances that are there to be enjoyed in the old system

Though I can't say I'm wholely convinced with your argument I really appreciate this perspective. I want to add I think the P/S actally helped make pokemon power creep worse. Using your dragaplut example, it not having a strong ghost move to me was intentional in the same way dragons not having strong dragon moves was in previous gens. How dragon types were in game envisioned are innately powerful and rare pokemon and to balance that their moves weren't has hard hitting or had cost. Dragonite didn't have a good flying stab in addition to dragon not having moves that were as spammable as flamethrower because it got all the best moves already. Dragons broke gen 4-5 and part of that was due to a best like garchomp having access to powerful stabs on both ends as well as this godlike movepool.

I can't believe Jimothy would introduce a new villain before the current one was even dealt with

11:40 Because special moves are way less spammable and nasty plot has a worse distribution than swords dance It wouldnt balance things out it would just make special Pokemon useless Same reason why we dont have a speciak intimidate

That's true. Some pokemon did get more boring with the split. For example, in Gen 3, Iron Fellow sometimes ran a choice band physical set, despite its lower attack compared to special attack, because Normal and Steel were physical. It was a nice mix up, since it could also run clam mind effectively. Nowadays, it just uses it's stabs + thunderbolt all the time. Maybe slap a stealth rock on it instead of psychic. Just... plain.

I think the thing people don't realize is that things like burn and intimidate don't need special equilvalents because special has its own unique counter-play such as hard special walls like blissey or assault vest The fact that physical oriented pokemon are still meta in almost any gen means that clearly things like burn and intimidate aren't making them strictly worse than special attackers.

Before the split, alot of nuance actually came into what a good list of moves was on the pokemon. After the split, most default to best stab option for a large majority of matchups, and the variety is a bit more limited. It kinda forces more streamlined designs to be more viable.

From a purely comunicative perspective, the Split was needed since Gen 1 The game needs to make sense, and not have you guessing why you move named Ice PUNCH is a special attack But yeah, the other stuff is rough

Flareon also gets screwed over by the physical/special split. This thing has a base Attack stat of 130, and yet it doesn't get Flare Blitz until X and Y. It gets Fire Fang for STAB and Last Resort, which is a Normal type move in gen 4.

I think shadow claw on Dragapult would be a fine addition to it because I don't think it really invalidates the special set. Shadow claw is only a 70bp move which isn't particularly high. Current special sets could still exist against some threats especially since in general there are more things punishing physical attackers than special ones (such as intimidate, contact triggering abilities/items and burn). Meanwhile physical sets would also have a consistent option. Now something like poltergeist I'd disagree with because 110bp is a lot better and might push dragapult over the edge.

The neatest thing about phys/special split is it allowed for high stats with a drawback. Gengars special attack as an example is actually much lower effectively when it’s hitting neutral because it no longer gets the 1.5X boost from stab. This allows a penalty for neutral hits from a mon with what are on their face very strong stats to be weaker. It also can create much more interesting options for mixed attackers.

I was sad that typhlosion lost the ability to have thunder punch and hidden power ice/Grass upon Gen 4. But man alakazam really got the beating of the century. First the Gen 1 psychic nerf, then it loses the elemental punches, then it gains a mega, then loses that mega, and now isn't even in the game.

The problem is that the Phys/Special split was taken as an oppotunity to min-max the game further, and people have this really bad presumption that they prefer solved games. As if that’s what would make a game fun. As you imply in the video, making the game more symmetrical would only make it more obvious. Such was the case with the split.

Good video. Yeah, physical/special split was overall a good thing, but it's sad some of the interesting set variety the limitations bringed were lost. Like, toxapex has so much options and things going its way that it's a pretty frustaing/uninteresting pokemom to battle and use for most gens. Specially compared to stuff like swampert in gen 3, which while yes pretty good, it has quite a few limitations that made it interesting to fight and use, such as being vulnerable to spikes, no recovery outside of leftovers, etc

I can tell the passion of this video coming from a genuine Gen 3 OU fan. Much love Jimothy, I've been subbed since the NL videos but this Pokémon content has been top notch

The problem isn't the Phys/Special split, the problem onwards is the POWER of the moves, before gen 4 an atacak over 100 power had most of the times a costly condition to function

Honestly, I loved the physical/special split, I think it was a healthy change and for the better, but it’s still a little sad to see the old system go, it wasn’t bad, the split increased the amount of options overall, but it still hurt some Pokémon, which isn’t the most fun thing, it hurts to see them go, but it was still great to see more Pokémon being able to become way stronger, it’s still kind of bad that they didn’t increase the move pool of Pokémon to give them more variety, Gengar being the prime example of the video

Sounds like the issue is mostly with power creep. You bring up good points. I dont think there is anything inherently wrong with how it workes gen 1-3, game freak just did such an ass job implementing it. Punch moves special? Wack.

I played gen 3 competitive a lot and I have a counterpoints to this video: Skarmbliss That strategy plagued gen 3 OU and every team HAD to have an answer to it which there weren't many of.

You know what I think would be cool? I want an ability that most special attackers would get. This ability would make all of their contact moves special moves, meaning fire punch, double edge, close combat, it’d all be special.

Ok I feel like basically I got what I kinda expected: Mentioning of elemental punches as coverage options (not an issue with the split, alternatives already existed, would've been easy to simply give the likes of BoltBeam to Gengar, or give Shadow Punch to all the mons that used Shadow Ball as physical ghost coverage before) but also Hidden Power, which really should've gotten a physical equivalent all along. I'd also argue that Gengar not having ALL the coverage options it could ever want is honestly a good thing. There SHOULD be an element of "if I pack this option against pokemon A, I then got issues against pokemon B and need over mons to cover that issue", instead of "I'll just use all the coverage to break every possible wall that gets thrown my way at any point". But hey, let's stay with Gengar for a while: Willo is a common tech still today, willo-hex is a viable option in many generations for example. Hypnosis is another case of phys/spec not being the main factor. Sleep over time got gradually nerfed - gen 3 had up to SIX sleep turns, gen 4 had a max of FOUR, later it was even reduced to THREE turns max. Electric and Misty Terrain prevent sleep, another reason not to rely on it if possible. Oh and not to forget the sleep clause, that makes hypnosis even less reliable/sometimes even a dead slot at leats for some time. Destiny Bond also got changed, so it fails if used on consecutive turns. Focus Punch got swapped out for Focus Blast when the split came around, that's not different at all. Ice Punch is simply Ice Beam now, Taunt is still a thing. All in all, Mean Look & Explosion are the only actual differences with no replacement/good reasoning outside of special/physical split, and neither of those 2 was affected by it anyway. I get the idea with the "why no special impacting burn/intimidate", but then, where is the physical version to AV? Where has the physical equivalent to rock types benefitting from sand been for the last 5 generations before gen9 and why did hail lose it's damage part in exchange while rock types get to chip away AND also increase their own special defense?

This is really eye-opening actually. I'm definitely a newer player so the split was something I'm used to it but I think the limitations are really cool, especially in light of new broken pokemon without drawbacks being made all the time. Very good video

Part of the problem is that this isn’t a two way tug of war between singles and doubles where doubles gets an exoskeleton to give it more favor. It’s a three way tug of war with singleplayer. I think that’s part of why I personally find pre split so hard to go back to. When you put a mon on the team you generally want it to have stabs unless it can feasibly get a full support set. Otherwise you might end up with redundancy and more shared weaknesses. Your only saving grace is the game corner at that point to get that super coverage. But tutors are rare. Just putting it out there that the third player is half the problem. As far as the meta goes, I agree that it makes gen 3 interesting as it has less commitment with a team builder.

Yeah Gengar stopped using Fire and Ice Punch due to this. And physical attackers stopped running HP Bug such as Forretress. But it did improve Pokemon like Salamence.

I really wish we had kept Frostbite in Gen 9, more power to ice types and their moves! Also to nerf sleep if a pokémon uses or is hit by an electric move, it immediately wakes up :D