How GOOD were Onix & Steelix ACTUALLY? - History of Onix & Steelix in Competitive Pokemon (Gens 1-6)

[Music] hey everyone this week we've got a pokemon that got absolutely shafted in the anime I mean seriously this this is some bullsh that's right it's onyx Brock's trusty rock snake Pokemon uses for battling and sometimes also as a staircase Brock's onyx is really the only memory I have of Onyx and steelix I just thought it was cool-looking but hey at least another gym leader has one right I can't even imagine if you were an actual 10 year old going out for your first gym battle and saw this thing staring you down yikes it wasn't really that scary how good were onyx and steelix actually and in this video we'll be going over these competitive formats look at that defense set that's higher than scar Mary's it's too bad every other stat it has is laughably bad the 35 HP means that the defense that is pretty negligible and for the longest time I was under the impression that onyx could at least fight back like I thought it was one of those bulky and powerful but slow type Pokemon like right on and golem but it turns out that it's a tag is actually only 45 and it has 70 speed I guess the idea was that it moved fast because it was a snake 70 is pretty mediocre but I thought I'd be much lower anyway it's move fool was actually not that bad with the trusted combination of rockslide and earthquake force stab damage and explosion for a good chunk even better it had vine which in general would could potentially mean a dead Pokemon potentially is important though with an attacks that's so bad it couldn't even one-hit ko alakazam with explosion and it took a long time to whittle down an opponent and hope bind it and miss its best bet was to switch in on electric moves and then try to do some stab damage or cheese paralyze mons with bind but even if this thing didn't loose it every single overused Pokemon it's just straight-up worse than golem in every way and under user loss of practically every grass and water type for obvious reasons and fun fact I have fond memories of using hydro pump on onyx in Pokemon Stadium watching a fall apart as it got completely obliterated and that's probably pretty dark and I should get myself checked but anyways underused and smug in but you know there's only two tiers for that and gt-r in Nintendo club with no analysis available so yeah it sounds like onyx was at the bottom of the barrel luckily onyx got a shiny new upgrade thanks to its evolution from medical steelix has even more defense now reaching the absolutely ridiculous number of 200 in addition it got buffed in every area except speed where it actually lost 40 points but hey it didn't really need that anyways unlike Scyther onyx immediately was lost to the reaches of the lord cure so we won't talk about it anymore goodbye onyx steelix resist normal moves and is immune to electric and if you've been paying attention to our other gen 2 vids you know that that lines up pretty well with the gen 2 meta given its top 3 threats as with a large portion of the premier gen 2 pokemon steelix is using one of the two big sets of curse and rest stock in this case curse in fact being so slow actually work to steal ices advantage because it moved that such a glacial pace it could phase out other phasors cursors and perished rappers like mischievous with roar despite its fearsome visage steelix his attack was still pretty mediocre earthquake was taken for stab and if you really wanted more of a threat you could take rock slider body slam what explosion was the far more common option because it was guaranteed to blow almost anything up for reference and on boosted explosion did 84 to 94 percent to the Snorlax this was partially why steelix appreciated spike support so much it allowed it to pick up important chaos but also gave it a little bit of momentum when phasing as opposed to just roaring continuously but although steelix was no longer four times weak to water it still hated it because of its garbage special defense water types especially bulky ones like Vaporeon sweet cone and cloister gave steelix flashbacks of Blastoise hydro pumps it also exchanged its fire type resistance for a weakness and while earthquake was pretty dangerous for most fire type Pokemon that carried fire moves gave it trouble especially Zapdos and Dragon Knight who dodged EQ completely finally since Neelix's HP was still not what you would hope for in a wall certain physical attackers could punch through it even with this juggernaut defense like marowak and machamp with super effective hits but with all that said steelix was still solidly overused and you can't over rate the usefulness of having a defensive pivot especially one that has a good matchup against the meta game's top threats and also one that can explode on anything bar ghost types steelix didn't really gain much from gen 3's 30 and Rockhead were both useless abilities for the most part but his new set switched quite a bit curse was never too great on seelix in the first place so it started using either toxic hidden power rock rest or explosion alongside the holdovers of earthquake and roars Felix's lack of an offensive presence still hurt but it can opt to at least inconvenience the opposing team with toxic this had nice synergy with the stab as steel and poison types who could avoid poison were vulnerable to earthquake except for Skarmory in keeping with the last generation and had good top-tier matchups able to switch in on both Metagross and Tyranitar and reliably beat them and it won't anything that it resisted very well that said its poor attack is really coming back to bite it to the extent that there was a choice band set aiming to fix it's bad offense honestly though you still just had a slow tank that couldn't do anything too bulky water types if you use that with its only advantage being it was easy to switch it what's more the most common physical defensive Montgomery and fortress from the gated steelix is EQ toxic combo with their secondary typing and even cloister mainly shrugged it off if it didn't get poisoned leaving them all free to set up spikes and steel axes face it wasn't bad with 200 defense and a steel typing we're still great assets to have but the lack of attack really hurt and it felt a borderline steelix appreciated access to stealth rocks in Gen 4 but that was about all it liked with no real support moves to its name steelix was just a steadfast wall once again and skarmory and fortress his ability to threaten offensively set up spikes and in scar berries case heal meant they outclassed it entirely in like the addition of gyro ball which you use quite well thanks to its lumbering pace but it's attacks that still left so much to be desired it's one saving grace was explosion enjoying one last generation of having the opponent's defense before the bomb went off but it was so slow and weak to special attacks that it was easy to take out keep in mind that the physical special split meant there were now potential special ground and fighting type options to ruin seelix as day as well it could stop wrote him in its tracks thanks to its favorable typing but he Tran and meta girls for better offensive steel types and fortress and skarmory were better defensive steel types seelix was really caught in an unfortunate middle ground with not enough support moves to be a helpful wall and not enough attack to be a good tank and so it fell to underused Gen 5 gates ceilings one nice new option sheer force which gave it some more attack but the two things I always mention about Gen 5 are the weather and the fighting types and steelix most definitely did not like either of those except for sand rain was everywhere and overused and every fighting type destroyed steelix by this point it could maybe go on Santee's but at this point why not use it powered on or Skarmory or really any other steel or ground type and of course Ferrothorn did steelix his job of pure walling far better even able to provide support with leech seed and do damage apparently down and rarely use steelix is terrifying but yeah that's in rarely use which isn't that great sorry seelix now we really had a hard time finding anything on steelix but luckily cybertron was nice enough to show us one notable times Felix made a decent placing in VGC 2013 a Dib got 10th place at the US Nationals and on his team the 6th member was a shear force Neelix known as the full metal steelix Adam needed a sixth member with an electric immunity to cover Gyarados something with earthquake that can have a variety of physical attacks and was bulky enough to fight latias and trip from teams while also being able to resist bug because of trickery miss Cavalier steelix spent all of those specific requirements and combo dwell with his Gyarados especially because of intimidate combined with the fact that steelix had the second-highest defense of the game this was especially absurd because even a Jolly Terrence close to combat was only a three hit ko on it in a dibs words it was apparently a bulkier version of extra job that could be used in trick room since steelix was slow you can read more about this in the article in the description below because it's really interesting but basically a youth sheer force to power up its ice fang and iron head attacks in order to do a bit more damage and then hit everything else with earthquake while on a team with foreground immunities so yeah interesting stuff and in Gen 6 whoa look at that mega I have to admit those crystal shards and rotating shards of steel look pretty freakin cool and they gave mega steel it's all the stats that had been yearning for so so long specifically 30 special defense 40 more attack and even more defense bringing it up to a behemoth 230 also I got sand force now if this were just a normal pokémon maybe we could see some use with those additional 100 points of stats Mei Casillas could actually finally do damage and it always got up stealth rocks sand force didn't matter that much because it was still so slow but that looks promising right the issue is why you steelix for your mega when you have these guaranteed rocks for nice but there are other options for that like Landers tee and then you had your pick of the litter for a ton of other threatening mega evolutions even Megas that did its job better like mega aggron or mega Garchomp so the steel excite was a nice shiny bauble for steelix putting mega steelix and borderline too but ultimately all it was oh yeah and regulars Felix went all the way down to never use sheets if that's where this thing ended up imagine of onyx never evolved and as for VGC yeah I still couldn't find notable placings of teens with mega steelix on them nor could I find use of stats I just found this article on nugget bridge talking about steel types and how mega steelix is underrated but it's week two a lot of popular Pokemon and VC 2015 like Taraki on Charizard y and talonflame and thus is in the back of a lot of players Minds when picking trick room sweepers steel types or mega so yeah rip mega steelix and VGC and that's it so in conclusion Onix was outclassed and while steelix in his debut started out well because of meta matchups and amazing stats it never really got anything as the generations went on in order to move it out of the weird middle ground of not having enough support moves or power to commit itself either way to doing one thing maybe if mega steelix had come through a few generations earlier it would have made a difference but even that breath of life was more like a guess thanks so much for watching everyone and as always if you liked the video and you want to see more be sure to subscribe to false light gaming for more weekly Pokemon content and of course as I always say comment on what pokemon you want to see next also thank you so much to our patrons for continued supporter of our videos and also thank you to all for watching alright that's all I got peace out everyone

Channel: False Swipe Gaming

Views: 1,980,519

Keywords: Pokemon, Pokemon Go, Steelix, Onix, Brock, Jasmine, Metal Coat, Scizor, Pokemon Red, Pokemon Blue, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Black, White, Pokemon X, Pokemon Y, Pokemon Sun, Pokemon Moon, Pokemon Ultra Sun, Pokemon Ultra Moon, How GOOD were Seadra & Kingdra ACTUALLY? - History of Seadra & Kingdra in Competitive Pokemon, Smogon, VGC, False Swipe Gaming, Competitive Pokemon

Id: B4AZlGrr8jk

Length: 10min 26sec (626 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 12 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Symirk]

The False Swipe Gaming analyses has become sort of a Sunday highlight for me. Really good stuff.

[u/TokoWH]

I remember playing Pokemon Stadium 2 as a kid, I would always have Steelix on my rental team because I thought, being a giant metal snake, it was insanely powerful. This is before I realized that appearance does not always mean good stats.

According to the video, I wasn't too far off apparently... In Gen II, at least.

[u/soulfirexp]

Its always really bothered me that onix was as weak as it, A giant rock snake should be able to demolish a building yet stuff like pikachu have more attack than it

[u/TheMajesticMrL]

Mega Steelix is by far one of my favorite Mega designs. It's such a shame that it's not very good...

[u/BloodyStigmata]

Yeah Steelix is pretty bad. But hey, he was on my triples team back in Gen 5 and did amazingly well, so I got a soft spot for it.

[u/PlsWai]

I love these vids but always get sad because the focus is on OU most of the time, and not the tier the mon resides in

[u/S-Rank]

Steelix is my second favorite Pokemon, so thank you for this video!

[u/The_Gaiser]

I frickin love Mega Steelix, sadly it's completely outclassed by Mega Aggron, why didn't they make Mega Flygon instead of two pretty much identical Steel Megas?