The History of "Pokemon GO" - Steel Quiz

Answer: Meteor Mash

Meteor Mash is an incredibly powerful two barred move that is relatively fast. With Metagross' great bulk, it will be able to fire this off several times in a raid, as well as use it to take just about any gym defense setup straight to the cleaners. At the time of acquisition, Meteor Mash became the best move in the entire game. It has since been passed numerous times, but it will always at least be incredibly good.

To give an idea: it took all the way until 2024, for Necrozma DuskMane's even more hilariously broken Sunsteel Strike to finally present a Steel type that was better than Metagross. It survived numerous Mega Steels, legendary Steels and a few other Steel based Community Days at the top. That's how good Meteor Mash is!

Answer: Iron Head

Iron Head isn't particularly flashy, but it's solid enough to be relied on. It is Dialga's cheapest Charged move, letting Dialga pressure shields and beat Fairy types that would otherwise stop most Dragon types where they stood.

Answer: Doom Desire

Doom Desire is actually a plainly better move than Meteor Mash in every way. However, Jirachi's stats are middling, far inferior to Metagross and it does not learn a Steel Fast move to pair with Doom Desire. As a result, despite having a better Charged move, Jirachi came nowhere close to seriously competing with Metagross for Steel type dominance.

Answer: Steel type Fast Move

Melmetal's one and only Fast move is Thundershock. Thundershock is actually a great Fast move, but it has no synergy at all with Steel. As a result, Melmetal cannot be used as a proper Steel attacker at all, erasing any chance it had of competing with Metagross in raids. At least it's quite good in PvP, but even here Metagross manages to outclass it completely.

Answer: 230

230, when released, tied Sunsteel Strike with the also debuting Moongeist Beam for the highest base power for a Charged move in the entire game. Plus, Necrozma DuskMane did indeed get a Steel Fast move to pair it with - Metal Claw plainly and simply sucks, but at least it's a synergistic Fast move that lets Necrozma DM's brokenly OP Charged Move put in work.

It was by far good enough to let Necrozma-DM take the Steel type throne with force.

Answer: Fire

Access to Fire Spin for a Fast move and Flamethrower for a Charged move allowed Solgaleo to be a very underwhelming, but technically competent Fire attacker. Its DPS was very low, mostly in part due to Solgaleo not being an actual Fire type and lacking STAB on the moves.

Solgaleo could put together a synergistic STAB Psychic set. However, it got both the worst Psychic Fast move in Zen Headbutt and the worst Psychic Charged move in Psychic Fangs as it's only options for this role. Because of how hilariously terrible these two moves are, Solgaleo would actually do more damage as a Fire attacker than a Psychic one. This left it in a pretty pathetic state as far as PvE goes.

Answer: One

Mega Scizor does greatly fear Fire, which does 4x super effective damage to it. Any even weak Fire move is likely to one shot Mega Scizor on the spot. Other than that, however, Mega Scizor's performance is incredibly consistent. As a Steel type, Mega Scizor is likely to find itself attacking into Fairies, Ice types and Rock types - virtually no important names under these types actually have Fire moves, and many that do are more optimally handled by other types anyway, such as Tyranitar.

As well, some of them have coverage moves that most Steel types would be wary of, but not Mega Scizor.

It is uniquely only neutral to moves such as Close Combat, Focus Blast, Earthquake and Earth Power which would send other Steel types packing pretty easily.

Answer: Heavy Slam

Heavy Slam is a rather ho-hum move, but it does have a respectable base power and a relatively fast damage window, making it very threatening to incoming Fairy types. As such, a player looking to solo this raid would do well to pack answers to such a Machamp; funnily enough, a Psychic attacking Metagross fits the bill perfectly, as it resists Steel and can hit Machamp back hard with strong Psychics. Delphox and Ho-Oh can also work, but they must be careful of Rock Slide in turn.

Answer: Magnet Bomb

Magnet Bomb is a fast and furious three barred move that is very lowly distributed, yet is overall a pretty great move. Despite being a massive magnet, and the final evolved form of an evolution line based entirely around magnet Pokemon, Magnezone was never given access to Magnet Bomb.

Instead, it had to settle for the absolute garbage that was Flash Cannon, letting Magneton pull ahead. Had Magnezone been given a moveset of Metal Sound + Magnet Bomb, it still wouldn't have challenged Metagross' supremacy for the role, but it would've usurped Dialga for the distant runner up spot. With both Metagross and especially Dialga being rare, this would've given the community a much needed, easily accessible and powerful Steel attacker. Alas, such is life.

Answer: Steel Wing

At first, Steel Wing was actually a mediocre move and was outclassed by Skarmory's other option, Air Slash. In 2020, however, Niantic released sweeping changes to a number of different moves, and Steel Wing's subsequent buffs allowed it to pull ahead of Air Slash.