Competitive Pokemon History - Delibird Quiz

Answer: Have a chance to cause a random amount of damage to or heal the target

Present's function in battle would be simplified in future generations. However, in the second generation, the move was a rather bizarre enigma. If the move is successful (which it would be unless targeting a Ghost type, or if it somehow missed), it dealt damage or heals the target.

That's the simple part. For the complex part, there is a 102/256 chance for 40 power, 76/256 chance for 80 power, 26/256 chance for 120 power, or 52/256 chance to heal the target by 1/4 of its maximum HP, rounded down. If the move dealt damage, it uses an abnormal version of the damage formula by substituting certain values. The user's Attack stat is replaced with ten times the effectiveness of this move against the target, the target's Defense stat would be replaced with the index number of the user's secondary type, and the user's level was replaced with the index number of the target's secondary type. If the target didn't not have a secondary type, its primary type would be used. The index numbers for each type are Normal: 0, Fighting: 1, Flying: 2, Poison: 3, Ground: 4, Rock: 5, Bug: 7, Steel: 9, Fire: 20, Water: 21, Grass: 22, Electric: 23, Psychic: 24, Ice: 25, Dragon: 26, Dark: 27. If at any point a division by 0 would happen in the damage formula, it divides by 1 instead.

To sum it up in a way that maybe about more than 5% of the quiz taking populace would understand- it either healed the target, or dealt damage based on some extremely complex scaling system. Sadly, its volatility combined with the fact that it could end up just healing the target made it rather unusable in competitive play.

Answer: Rapid Spin + Spikes in conjunction was illegal for Delibird to run

Rapid Spin is an egg move that second generation Delibird will always have access to. However, Spikes was issued to Delibird as a part of a promotional "Gotta Catch 'Em All" event based around weekly giveaways from the New York Pokémon Center in the year 2001. Every week, this now-defunct organization would distribute exclusive move or shiny Pokémon that could only be acquired in this way. In the 27th week, Delibird with Spikes was on the docket. Unfortunately, as receiving Delibird in this way meant you couldn't be breeding it, you could not acquire Rapid Spin on this Delibird. This meant that the player had to choose between Spikes and Rapid Spin, as Delibird could not possibly learn the two moves on the same moveset.

All of this being said, even if Delibird could've learned the two moves in conjunction, it doesn't take a trained eye to find that Delibird was never going to make much noise in standard play. Its stats were just beyond pathetic, with its highest being a below average base 75 for Speed. It hit like a wet paper towel and took hits like a piece of glass.

In standard play, Delibird was absurdly outclassed by Forretress, Cloyster and Starmie as a Rapid Spinner. It was also outclassed by Forretress and even Qwilfish as a Spikes user, and the latter itself was generally a useless gimmick in standard play to begin with. With pathetic attacking power and no bulk to speak of, Delibird was clearly best being left on the bench for second generation standard play.

In second generation UnderUsed, there was a well documented lack of viable Spikes users in the tier that overall deteriorated the usefulness of a Rapid Spinner. Seeing as how Delibird's access to Spikes did nothing to change that perception, it should be rather clear how Delibird fared in UU. The fact that, as an Ice type, Delibird could not even come close to checking Nidoqueen, the queen of the tier, was just sad. Getting brushed aside by Electabuzz, Haunter and even Scyther was also no good.

In NeverUsed, a tier which was somewhat of a joke at the time, Delibird could... exist, somewhat. It actually checked Yanma, who was a potent threat, and in here, its access to Spikes or Rapid Spin could prove useful. The only thing holding it back is the fact that one could about count the serious second generation NU players on one hand, meaning Delibird by no means gained any sort of notoriety within its time in second generation NU.

Overall, Delibird was clearly created to be a novel, funny, Pokémon who many will likely remembered from a couple of minigames in "Pokémon Stadium 2". It doesn't take a professional to tell you that Delibird was almost definitely not designed to be sweeping entire teams, or anything remotely close to that.

Answer: Hustle

Hustle gives the user a free +1 to Attack at the expense of cutting every single one of their moves by 15% accuracy. Thanks to Delibird's access to a STAB Aerial Ace, it had one move that could benefit from this boost at absolutely zero expense, since Aerial Ace had a guaranteed hit rate. By putting on a Choice Band, a Hustle boosted Aerial Ace could at least sort of hit the opponent decently hard-ish. Because Flying gets good neutral coverage, that meant that Delibird could generally strike a target with acceptable power.

Unfortunately, Delibird was nowhere close to even touching standard play legitimacy. Skarmory, Tyranitar and Metagross are small list of threats which resisted Aerial Ace and walled Delibird to kingdom come. Additionally, even threats which did not resist Aerial Ace, such as Regice and Gyarados, could easily take a couple of Aerial Aces, boost in front of Delibird's face and prepare for a sweep, or just destroy Delibird with an attack in response. Delibird's extremely poor stats did it no good in this tier.

In UnderUsed, Delibird might have been okay were it not for the specific threats in the tier. While checking Gligar was an incredibly useful trait for a Choice Banded Pokémon, getting hard walled and destroyed by Lunatone and Solrock and losing easily to Blastoise one-on-one was not. Delibird also came with the drawback of being extremely predictable, due to the fact that it really only had two semi useful moves in Aerial Ace along with Ice Beam to hit the aforementioned Gligar. This meant that any Steel or Rock type in the game could just sit in front of Delibird and do whatever they wanted to it. It wasn't totally unusable, but it was far from a typical trainer's first choice for a team.

In NeverUsed, Delibird was usable. It still suffered from problems with the overall meta, as it couldn't deal with top tier threat Flareon at all. However, being an even stronger check to Yanma than the previous generation was useful, and hitting decently hard in general was nice. Common balanced teams didn't usually have much that could safely switch into the combo of Choice Band, Hustle boosted Aerial Ace and Ice Beam, meaning Delibird was a functional wallbreaker. When Pupitar began to rise in popularity to answer Flareon, Delibird was again negatively impacted by the state of the overall meta, as Pupitar could easily check it. Thanks to Ice Beam, Pupitar was a shaky switch in, so Delibird was not countered by it at least.

Ultimately, this was probably the best Delibird ever actually got in competitive play. That's not good.

Answer: Stealth Rock

The fact that Delibird is totally immune to both Spikes and Sticky Web is completely overshadowed by its crippling 4x weakness to Stealth Rock. This means that, barring Leftovers or some other form of healing, Delibird would only be able to come onto the field to Rapid Spin Stealth Rock away once, before a second switch in to the entry hazard would KO it instantly due to losing 50% of its health from the entry hazard. Because Delibird has a horrible matchup against Steel and Rock types, as well as a generally poor matchup against Ground types, it also cannot keep Stealth Rock off the field anyway, as whatever set the entry hazard can easily switch in to just put it back up after Delibird removes it. Because there are numerous other Spinners with nowhere near those crippling weaknesses, Delibird was easily the most pathetic Rapid Spinner out of any metagame it could be used in.

The existence of Stealth Rock overall completely squashed any chance Delibird had of making an impact in a tier higher than NeverUsed. Even there, Delibird was outclassed as an Ice type attacker by Jynx, as a physical Flying type sweeper or wallbreaker by the king of the tier in Charizard, and was easily hard countered by Rock and Steel types roaming around frequently, like Regirock and Metang. Even in NU, Delibird was now just about totally unusuable.

Answer: Insomnia

As far as the competitive scene goes, Insomnia is... the same exact thing, functionally, as Vital Spirit, which Delibird already had. Well, if there's one thing Delibird as a gift giving Pokémon should go by, it's the thought that counts, right?

Insomnia actually did fulfill a useful niche for Delibird, by preventing it from crying itself to sleep at night over how worthless it became in the competitive scene. Seeing as how Delibird needs to constantly stay awake to continue checking its Naughty and Nice lists, we can't have it getting away from doing that, can we?

Answer: It could finally run Rapid Spin and Spikes on the same moveset

In the sixth generation, Spikes became a new egg move for Delibird, finally allowing it to run Rapid Spin and Spikes on the same moveset.

Sadly, the expression "a day late and a dollar short" surely applies here. It's not fair, Delibird isn't late when it delivers all of its goodies to the children around the Pokémon world, so why would it receive that same treatment? Fate is truly cruel.

In the new lowest tier, PartiallyUsed, Delibird was only even slightly viable as a suicide entry hazard-setting lead. In that regard, it was outclassed by Smeargle, Shuckle, Golem, Glalie and frankly, even Leavanny was a consistently better option. In the lead matchup, Delibird was hard countered by Crustle, Misdreavus, Golem to an extent and Smeargle. Its only slight claim to fame was that only Smeargle had access to both Rapid Spin and Spikes on the same moveset, and often never ran the combination due to its expansive movepool. That expansive movepool is also why just running Smeargle instead, who also had access to Spore, Sticky Web and Stealth Rock amongst other moves, was the optimal choice.

Answer: It was Untiered

Delibird was bestowed with the most dubious honor the franchise could give it: it was not even seeing enough usage to be PartiallyUsed by usage statistics. Therefore, Delibird found itself as a completely Untiered Pokémon. To give an idea of what that means, here's the description for Pokémon finding themselves as Untiered, offered by Smogon's Strategy Battledex:

"Untiered is a list of all Pokémon that are not relevant (i.e., do not have above 3.41% usage) or viable in PU and is not a playable tier. Generally, the use of Untiered Pokémon in a competitive metagame is strongly discouraged."

All of that applies to Delibird, unfortunately.

Answer: Drill Peck

A fairly random move for Delibird to learn, it was not a move that ever saw serious competitive use. Of course, Delibird itself never really saw serious competitive use at this point, but it was not like gaining access to Drill Peck ever had much of a chance to change that.

Answer: Icy Terrain

Considering that Icy Terrain is not an actual move, that was the correct choice. While Delibird's slightly more colorful moveset might make it seem like it could have the teeniest of tiny breaths of life on an extremely gimmicky Hail based team, the truth is that its horrible stats hold it back from contributing to any team in a serious metagame.

Answer: Fake Out

Fake Out, a move Delibird gained in the sixth generation, is an interesting utility move that Delibird unfortunately cannot make any sort of use of due to its extremely bad stats. Of course, Fake Out is even more useful in doubles, a format Delibird has no business seeing serious use in.