Competitive Pokemon History - Magneton & Magnezone Quiz

Answer: Exeggutor

Exeggutor could shrug off anything Magneton tossed at it with ease. Even a critically-hitting Hyper Beam would do around half of its health, leaving Magneton defenseless on the following turn. Whatever Exeggutor switched in on, once it entered play, it could threaten Magneton and its team with Sleep Powder before dealing with the snoozing threat itself or providing a free switch in to a more appropriate teammate.

Golem, Rhydon, Chansey and Venusaur are other examples of Pokemon who could counter Magneton. If using Magneton in UnderUsed, Onix and Graveler also fit the bill.

Answer: New typing

Magneton gained the favor of a new secondary Steel typing to pair with its Electric type. Steel has always been an amazing defensive typing. Sure enough, resisting Grass and being immune to Toxic made it so Magneton was no longer completely helpless against its defensive answers for the most part.

Answer: Hidden Power

Flash Cannon and Gyro Ball had yet to be introduced to the franchise at the time. Zap Cannon, while strong and boasting a 100% paralysis rate, was extremely unreliable with a putrid 50% accuracy, and was always discarded for Thunderbolt and even Thunder.

Hidden Power gave Magneton the means to hit Ground or Grass types quite hard. HP Water ensured Golem and Rhydon, 4x weak to Water, were no longer an issue. Alternatively, HP Ice still hit them decently hard while now providing a harder hit on Grass types.

Answer: Magnet Pull

Magnet Pull is an ability that denies opposing Steel type Pokemon the ability to switch out, essentially trapping them.

Many popular offensive Pokemon, such as Salamence and Gyarados, could be stopped by Skarmory very efficiently. However, if the user was particularly annoyed with or wanted an easier way around the metal bird, Magneton offered the means to achieve this. Magneton could also trap and remove Forretress, who could use a desperation Explosion to put a stop to Salamence or Gyarados if left unchecked. These Steel types are quite passive and incapable of threatening Magneton too much, so it can generally afford to liberally switch in against them to do its job with maximum efficiency.

With the opposing defensive Steel types out of the way, the game could quite possibly be in hand for the Magneton user. At absolute worst, a boosted Salamence could at least inflict heavy damage upon the opponent and put them heavily on the back foot as they yielded momentum to the Magneton user.

Answer: 130

At 130, Magnezone was tied for the highest Special Attack out of anything even slightly viable for standard play at the time. This meant it was ready to inflict some pain all by itself, while also being a deadly enabler of other big threats like Gyarados, Heracross and Roserade.

Answer: 60

A reduction of ten points does seem significant at first. However, Magneton's Speed of 70 isn't exactly blazing to begin with, and Magnezone certainly had the bulk to take anything that wasn't a strong super effective move first if needed. Due to its major gains in offense and bulk, the minor hit to Speed was more than worth it.

Answer: Dragon type Pokemon

The idea was that Dragon was only resisted by Steel at the time, and was otherwise a completely perfect, impossible to resist typing. As Magnezone can trap and eliminate most Steel types from play, the idea was to run an incredibly elementary but doubtlessly potent teambuild of five offensive Dragon types alongside a Magnezone. Once the opposing Skarmory or Ferrothorn had been eliminated, there was essentially nothing to stop Magnezone's teammates from coming in and just spamming their powerful Dragon type attacks to overwhelm the opposing team.

Conveniently, Magnezone resisted Dragon itself and Ice, which both hit Dragon super effectively. So in addition to dealing with Steel types, Magnezone could easily check Ice types. Dragons often came equipped with Fire Blast or Earthquake, so Magnezone couldn't really check them, but it could at least tank a Dragon type attack for a teammate if its job had been done and it was acceptable for it to be sacrificed.

Answer: Analytic

Analytic grants a +1 boost to an Attack if the user moves last. Off of Magnezone's sizable Special Attack, usable bulk and low Speed, this seems like a potentially amazing ability. Sadly, Magnezone was actually growing to be quite outclassed outside of trapping and eliminating Steel types, so removing this niche would generally cause it to be quite unviable.

For awhile, the sentiment of "Oh, I just assume Magnezone had Magnet Pull" could be taken advantage of by clever players, as they could equip it with Analytic to take advantage of this errant presumption. Sadly, this only really worked against inexperienced players. Higher leveled players would be certain to notice Magnezone's higher damage output and discover that it did not have Magnet Pull. They might even be able to 'counter-trick' the opposing player into thinking that they thought the Magnezone had Magnet Pull. From there, using a Skarmory as bait can allow the Skarmory user to welcome a Magnezone switch in, only to simply freely switch Skarmory out into an allied Dugtrio or other Ground type to swiftly eliminate the Magnezone. As such, actually equipping Analytic was highly inadvisable.

Answer: Celesteela

The other three options had some common method of blasting Magnezone into scrap metal. Not Celesteela. Celesteela was very pesky and annoying for most non Fire or Electric types to deal with. Even Fire or Electric type Pokemon were ones Celesteela was never forced to actually confront.

However, Magnezone could force Celesteela to stay in on it, then destroy Celesteela with a couple of strong Thunderbolts. Thus, Magnezone's niche strengthened here.

Answer: Body Press

Body Press is a physically offensive move whose powers is actually determined by the user's Defense, not Attack stat. Magnezone's above average 115 in Defense made it rather potent. At the very least, it could cover most Steel types that Thunderbolt could not, such as Ferrothorn.

If the player was so inclined, running Iron Defense on Magnezone became akin to a Bulk Up on steroids; it could take physical hits far easier, and Body Press' power was amplified as well. It was actually quite conceivable for this set to get out of control, as a passive, trapped Steel type likely does not possess the means to stop Magnezone from getting straight to +6 and threatening a sweep.

Trapping and removing Scizor would become annoying, but the loss of Hidden Power Fire was not felt as hard as it would otherwise have been thanks to Body Press.