Competitive Pokemon History - Gyarados Quiz

Answer: Versatile movepool full of decent options

In a time where most Pokémon knew maybe four or five decent moves if they were lucky, Gyarados had a lot more versatility. While its standard moveset was usually Blizzard or Surf/Thunderbolt/Hyper Beam/Body Slam, it had a number of other genuinely good options as alternatives to these three. Hydro Pump was a bit of a roll of the dice to use instead of Surf, but was a lot stronger and thereby a viable choice to boot. Fire Blast had burn potential and offered a stronger hit against Articuno than Thunderbolt did. Gyarados could try out a neat Substitute + 3 Attacks moveset to take advantage of the numerous switches it forced; this let it use risky moves like Hydro Pump and Thunder with a lot less risk, and usually a lot more reward. Finally, Gyarados could even run Leer to put Chansey and Tauros into OHKO range with Hyper Beam; either forcing them to switch, or stay in and die. Simply put, Gyarados was the one Pokémon not named Mew (and became alone when Mew was banned) that had a large amount of tricks up its sleeve, giving it a strong start to its competitive career in standard play.

Answer: Steelix

Steelix and Gyarados were thick as thieves in second generation standard play- they resisted every single thing that the other was weak to. Most notably, Steelix was totally immune to Electric moves which would obliterate Gyarados. In return, Gyarados effortlessly switched in on Earthquake, which hit Steelix super effectively. They had a lot more synergy than just that, however, and together, could essentially form a core to check the entirety of the meta with. Dragonite wasn't quite as appreciated as a partner for Steelix, as it couldn't threaten opposing Ground and Fire types as adequately as Gyarados could.

Aside from this, Dragonite could do everything Gyarados could do, but better. In order to justify Gyarados' placement on a team, the player had to run Steelix in tandem with it. Either way, Gyarados was still a pretty solid Pokémon on its own, with the same great movepool and stats that let it succeed in the previous generation.

Answer: Specially offensive sweeping

Gyarados' Base 60 Special attack was masked, at first, by its ability to run a special attack on the side, such as Thunder, to overcome Skarmory, so that it could sweep or wallbreak with its physical move(s). However, an entire set dedicated to special attacking is gimmicky and, once revealed, turns into a liability rather than an asset, as it is easily dealt with. Still, Gyarados could run Dragon Dance, two physically offensive moves, and then throw on Fire Blast or Thunder to deal with Steelix or Skarmory, it just couldn't use a special attack as anything more than an accessory.

Answer: Zapdos

Gyarados had something up its sleeve that could allow it to beat mostly anything else one-on-one... Except for Zapdos, who was having none of that. Zapdos could switch in whenever it wanted, it could easily take a single hit from Gyarados, even after a Dragon Dance or Choice Band boost, and it would promptly serve up a piping hot dish of fried Gyarados with its strong Thunderbolts.

As Zapdos was extremely common in the tier, and there was limited counterplay to Gyarados cleaning up teams, some might say that trainers around the game came to enjoy this dish.

Answer: Stone Edge

With Stone Edge, Gyarados could reliably 2HKO Zapdos (barring a very untimely miss), and if it had a Dragon Dance or Choice Band boost and could get Stealth Rock on Zapdos' end of the field, it would flat out OHKO. That said, Zapdos and other Electrics were still able to easily check Gyarados, though Zapdos had to think twice now before just blindly switching in, especially with Stealth Rock on the field.

Predictably, Stone Edge became very common on Gyarados. Aside from Zapdos, it was Gyarados' strongest hit against Dragonite and opposing Gyarados, which were huge threats in the meta worth covering.

Answer: New ability

Gyarados gained access to Moxie, which meshed perfectly with its access to Dragon Dance and excellent physically offensive capabilities. With Moxie giving a +1 to Gyarados' Attack stat each time it picked up a KO, it was the ultimate, evil recipe to turn a vicious snowball and clean up teams with authority.

As the fifth generation is commonly referred to as the "weather gen", it should be easy to see that the brutally strong Water type Gyarados was a popular pick on rain teams. It made for a great core with Kingdra, Gyarados offering the physical power, Kingdra offering the special power. If things went according to plan, one of them would blow open a hole in the opponent's team which would facilitate the other one pulling off the sweep to end the game.

Answer: Yes

While Moxie Gyarados was the talk of the town, its old ability in Intimidate still saw plenty of use. With Fighting types, sun teams and Heatran being around every corner, Gyarados possessed just the right attributes to pull off a nice defensive walling set to check them all, in one singular Pokémon. A simple set of Waterfall/Roar or Dragon Tail/Rest/Sleep Talk gave Gyarados the longevity to match with its good typing. With Intimidate, Gyarados would become even bulkier on the physical side than Skarmory, which is saying quite a lot. Gyarados was also notably far less passive than your average everyday wall, even if a player didn't invest any EVs in its offenses. Waterfall off of Gyarados' meaty base 125 Attack stat is a great quality for a wall to have, and let it check what it needed to both in the long and short term. For those threats Gyarados couldn't quite out-slug, the player's choice of Dragon Tail or Roar would allow Gyarados to force the threat to switch. This was also how Gyarados avoided being bait for Skarmory or Ferrothorn to switch into and freely set up entry hazards.

This set even gained some degree of notoriety in Ubers, as Gyarados could go toe to toe with threats like Rayquaza, Choice Specs Reshiram, Groudon and Heracross. Having Sleep Talk with which to absorb Darkrai's Dark Voids, while risky, was also a neat perk Gyarados had.

Answer: Mold Breaker

Mold Breaker let Mega Gyarados become an impeccable offensive stallbreaker. Where traditional stallbreakers, such as Gliscor, invest a lot into their bulk and run recovery moves, making them somewhat passive before setting up to defeat stall, Mega Gyarados suffers from none of these problems and isn't forced to run recovery. Why? Mold Breaker happened to be a large problem for stall teams, which generally relied on Mega Sableye to defeat anything Chansey or Skarmory couldn't. Using Mold Breaker, Mega Gyarados could bypass Mega Sableye's Magic Bounce to Taunt it, making it useless and turning it into setup fodder for Mega Gyarados. Taunt let Mega Gyarados easily defeat Skarmory, and it naturally steamrolled the specially defensive Chansey as well. Mega Gyarados is often thought of as the Pokémon who prevented Generation six standard play from being completely dominated by stall, as running Mega Gyarados on your team would give you a large advantage over these teams. Aside from this important niche, Mega Gyarados largely did what its base form had always done- wallbreak and sweep with Dragon Dance based sets, aided by its new offensive Dark typing which let it break bulky Psychic types, such as Reuniclus, a lot more easily.

In Ubers, Mega Gyarados retained this niche. Mold Breaker let it bypass Lugia's Multiscale, and because Mega Gyarados was now a Dark type, it greatly threatened Lugia. In fact, the existence of Mega Gyarados largely threw Gen 5 cover legendary Zekrom into obscurity, as Zekrom was only good at breaking Lugia, and pretty much nothing else. Because Mega Sableye, Skarmory and Chansey were still popular picks on Uber stall teams, Mega Gyarados operated against these teams quite similarly to how it did in standard play. It could run into problems against defensive Yveltal or support variants of Primal Groudon depending on its moveset, but these were far from insurmountable threats with the help of teammates. Pokémon like Xerneas could steamroll Yveltal, do heavy damage to Primal Groudon, and greatly appreciated Mega Gyarados eliminating its biggest checks in Lugia and Chansey. Primal Kyogre was under largely the same distinction; together, Mega Gyarados and Primal Kyogre could overwhelm Primal Groudon, and Mega Gyarados could sometimes even turn a sweep with Primal Groudon out of the way.

Gyarados would largely keep this act up in the seventh generation, and largely did not change its sets or dynamic from the sixth.

Answer: Power Whip

Power Whip initially doesn't seem like much, but it hits two very important checks to Gyarados; Rotom-W and bulky Water types. The former functioned as very close to a hard counter to Gyarados since its inception in the fourth generation, resisting its STABs, being immune to Earthquake, and being a hated Electric type, capable of obliterating Gyarados with an Electric move. Power Whip and the new Dynamax mechanics let Gyarados turn the tables on Rotom-W, however; it could Dynamax and use Max Overgrowth to brush Rotom-W aside like a stiff breeze.

It could use its new toy to do this to bulky Water types as well.

Answer: No

Gyarados was OU in every generation until the sixth, where its base form fell to UnderUsed and its Mega form was on UU's banned list. Its base form was amazing in sixth gen UU and still perfectly viable in standard play that generation. In the seventh generation, the introduction of Z Moves pushed its base form over the top in UU, resulting in it getting banned.

Overall, Gyarados has always been an excellent standard play Pokémon, even having brief stints in Ubers from the fifth generation and onward. However, its usage statistics have been in a strange decline since the fifth generation. Perhaps the player populace has grown tired of the blue, monstrous, basilisk-like creature running over teams.