>>33786278A move so powerful that your lead was dedicated to setting it up even if it meant suiciding.
A pokemon with RNG built in its name, where its best moveset was based around scouting for misses.
Normal types rendered completely useless thanks to the split, with the new most powerful type (dragon) having only one type resisting it (steel), which usually can't deal much damage back.
The split and SR in general skewing the risk/reward ration to the point where just clicking your Life Orb/Choice Banded 120 BP move was encouraged because you'd 2HKO things anyway. Out went the days where clicking a Choice Banded Earthquake was a huge risk, now we click Close Combat/Outrage/Draco Meteor and watch things die.
Outside of Garchomp (take note that I'm excluding Salamence here; I'm a Johtoddler so I know very well that strong =/= broken), it was balanced. In the same sense that every other gen was balanced, people adapted.
But its competitive values were heavily deteriorated. Concepts such as prediction, risk and meta awareness went out of the window thanks to how powerful moves and items became. It became much easier to play, opening an ugly window to "luck".
Hell, Garchomp wouldn't be broken if not for how easy it was use it. Garchomp represents everything that I dislike about gen 4: so powerful and easy to use that just playing it on the field instantly puts the opponent under pressure.
Nothing like that ever existed in this game. Even gen 1 Tauros had to be taken care of because it wasn't an one-bull army and just getting paralysed or Hyper Beaming a Golem would completely ruin it.
Gen 5 at least brought us weather wars which had a rather high learning curve, you couldn't just bring out your Politoed and expect to put up a good fight like you did with many gen 4 threats such as Garchomp, Lucario, Salamence, Heracross, Gyarados, etc.
Sorry for the long post, this subject just interests me.
