>>40026448>otherwise its a guaranteed loss of your mon with a non-guaranteed loss of an oppts., which usually favors the opptYou're right in terms of raw material but you're in control of the trade and can decide what's worth blowing up on. If I drop a 500 BP Explosion from CB Metagross on Skarmory, yeah I lost more than I gained in terms of raw material but Skarmory eating like 85% opens the door for any number of physical attackers I have in the back. Explosion bait-kills are just tried-and-true Pokemon. In older gens the combination of no Team Preview + lower power level / higher bulk + prevalence of Skarmory/Gengar made it more manageable; it was harder to know what you /should/ blow up on or if they had Gengar/Skarm waiting to bait the Explosion, and even if you successfully got it off your opponent would often still have a few soft checks to whatever you're clearing a path for since most mons could take a hit or two. It made sense to nerf Explosion going into gen 5 because Team Preview removed the scouting factor and general power creep made one good Explosion potentially gamewinning. Like imagine Explosion Lando this gen if it was still effectively 500 BP; you could clearly see what's going to be your Explosion target, probably get the Explosion off, and then wreak havoc with one of the 10 god-tier sweepers this gen has to offer. Hell, the SD + Explosion set would be able to one-shot Skarmory and every Unaware user.
