>>58072038>Ignoring not fully evolved pokemon because, duhWhy, because you've never played Little Cup? It's a format dating back to Stadium 2.
>Houndoom has always been a shitmonHoundoom was one as one of the best pursuit trappers in the 2D era. Tyranitar, and eventually Scizor may have been better, but Houndoom allows you to free up a vital TTar set and nearly blank Gengar in gen 3 thanks to flash fire's will-o-wisp immunity and early bird's ability to check hypnosis. It has very specific roles, but it performs them very well. In gen 4, it's a powerful nasty plot sweeper in UU, one of the greatest metagames of all time, that can also act as a lethal lure to bulky water types if it has a passho berry. Its pursuit game also becomes even stronger thanks to sucker punch creating dangerous 50/50s scenarios.
>Arcanine has been pretty good, it's hisuian form is much more of a gimmickIt's widely agreed upon that Hisuian Arcanine is a straight upgrade over the original in both singles and doubles for STAB head smash and rock slide respectively. Fire/rock type's bad defensive typing is heavily mitigated by terastilization, often into grass.
>eviolite MagmarIt's used as a bulky fire type with follow me in VGC. It was very good in Regulation H.
It's heavily speculated that Heatran was originally going to be the second pseudo in gen 4 as a direct sequel to Metagross, but the pre evos were cut due to the games' many complications during development. There were still hints to this in the final release as Heatran was not only treated as a semi-rare pokemon in the ashime (which was planned years in advance back then), was the only legendary in the game to have a 50% gender ratio, and most importantly, explains DP's infamous lack of fire types as if a major fire type line was cut from the game 