>>23318440To be honest power creep had been slowly happening since forever. Fully evolved Pokemon as basics had happened before with SP Pokemon which gave only one prize, but they had relatively low HP. People still complained a lot about them, mainly because there was a whole set of Trainers/Supporters geared towards them and this gave SP Pokemon a big advantage.
But I think the most notorious point was shortly after Black&White Pokemon were introduced in, since they raised the max HP a regular Pokemon would have to around 140 HP and a lot of the attacks dealt higher damage. EX Pokemon were a thing that had happened before during the Ruby/Sapphire era, but back then they were still evolutions and some basics like legendaries. However, a lot of Trainer cards and special energies had restrictions that would prevent them from being used on EX Pokemon, balancing things a bit.
But then during BW they brought EX Pokemon back, Trainers/energies had no restrictions on using with those Pokemon. And things like pic related happened.
