>>55610629>>55610603To be honest, I was just assuming they were banking on players not knowing steel was weak to fire yet, and water is probably more damaging than fire to Steelix due to how common it is,even before the physical special split. Though I have no idea if they ever revealed the type interaction chart of steel and dark yet before Gold released.
Gen 2 is also the timeline where steel was a new type discovered rather than it always existing like in future gens, so most humans in the Pokemon world probably didn't fully understand it yet.