History GameBreaker / Pokemon

* Its impossible to talk about gamebreaker in gen 5 without mentioning this mon. Doryuzuu is a very interesting case of gamebreaking. For starter it has attack comparable to salamence and have ground/steel typing. This means he has earthquake as comparable as [[OlympusMon Groudon's]] Earthquake, in fact if calculated it's defference is just about 4%. Also while his speed is sub-par at best at 88 base speed in sandstorm it DOUBLED outspeeding nearly everything you will ever face even when they are using choice scarf !!! Its attacking movepool is nice too at least having Rock Slide,X-Scissor,etc but he also get Swords Dance and alternative move in form of Rapid Spin. Also he has a high HP to offset his pitiful defense. In term of item choice you need to have RIGHT counter at the RIGHT time. If you rely on Hippowdon but he carry baloon ? gg If he uses Life Orb to KO your Counter ? gg. This thing basicaly force most team to carry Priority Super effective attack or Bulky counter to stand a chance or even better a weather changer ([[StoneWall if only hippowdon and Tyranitar isnt so Bulky)]]. [[Itgotworse Even worse]] most of those counter is defeated by Gyarados (yes THAT [[MagikarpPower Gyarados]] which he has near perfect synergy against. The most insulting fact about Doryuzuu is however the fact that its size is so small (0.70 meter tall) clearly smaller than other Gamebreaking mon !! He is not known as [[TengenToppaGurrenLagann Simole the Digger]]

* Its impossible to talk about gamebreaker in gen 5 without mentioning this mon. Doryuzuu is a very interesting case of gamebreaking. For starter it has attack comparable to salamence and have ground/steel typing. This means he has earthquake as comparable as [[OlympusMon Groudon's]] Earthquake, in fact if calculated it's defference is just about 4%. Also while his speed is sub-par at best at 88 base speed in sandstorm it DOUBLED outspeeding nearly everything you will ever face even when they are using choice scarf !!!
Its attacking movepool is nice too at least having Rock Slide,X-Scissor,etc but he also get Swords Dance and alternative move in form of Rapid Spin. Also he has a high HP to offset his pitiful defense. In term of item choice you need to have RIGHT counter at the RIGHT time. If you rely on Hippowdon but he carry baloon ? gg If he uses Life Orb to KO your Counter ? gg. This thing basicaly force most team to carry Priority Super effective attack or Bulky counter to stand a chance or even better a weather changer ([[StoneWall if only hippowdon and Tyranitar isnt so Bulky)]]. [[Itgotworse Even worse]] most of those counter is defeated by Gyarados (yes THAT [[MagikarpPower Gyarados]] which he has near perfect synergy against. The most insulting fact about Doryuzuu is however the fact that its size is so small (0.70 meter tall) clearly smaller than other Gamebreaking mon !! He is not known as [[TengenToppaGurrenLagann Simole the Digger]]

** The fact that he can be [[ComMons caught on every cave]] and met by waiting for the dirt to rumble doesnt help.

* Its impossible to talk about gamebreaker in gen 5 without mentioning this mon. Doryuzuu is a very interesting case of gamebreaking. For starter it has attack comparable to salamence and have ground/steel typing. This means he has earthquake as comparable as [[OlympusMon Groudon's]] Earthquake, in fact if calculated it's defference is just about 4%. Also while his speed is sub-par at best at 88 base speed in sandstorm it DOUBLED !!!! Its attacking movepool
is nice too at least having Rock Slide,X-Scissor,etc but he also get Swords Dance and alternative move in form of Rapid Spin. Also he has a high HP to offset his pitiful defense.
In term of item choice you need to have RIGHT counter at the RIGHT time. If you rely on Hippowdon but he carry baloon ? gg If he uses Life Orb to KO your Counter ? gg. This thing basicaly force most team to carry Priority Super effective attack or Bulky counter to stand a chance or even better a weather changer ([[StoneWall if only hippowdon and Tyranitar isnt so Bulky)]]. [[Itgotworse Even worse]] most of those counter is defeated by Gyarados (yes THAT [[MagikarpPower Gyarados]] which he has near perfect synergy against. The most insulting fact about Doryuzuu is however the fact that its size is so small (0.70 meter tall) clearly smaller than other Gamebreaking mon !! He is not known as [[TengenToppaGurrenLagann Simole the Digger]]

*** Not to mention this thing is the most complained pokemon in generation 5 surpassing even the [[Fannickname Land Shark]]. In fact, it is admitted by most to be the most threatening pokemon in the current generation. See [[http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3085222#post3085222 This]]

*** Not to mention this thing is the most complained pokemon in generation 5 surpassing even the [[Fannickname Land Shark]]. In fact, it is admitted by most to be the most threatening pokemon in the current generation. See [[this http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3085222#post3085222]]

In term of item choice you need to have RIGHT counter at the RIGHT time. If you rely on Hippowdon but he carry baloon ? gg If he uses Life Orb to KO your Counter ? gg. This thing basicaly force most team to carry Priority Super effective attack or Bulky counter to stand a chance or even better a weather changer ([[StoneWall if only hippowdon and Tyranitar isnt so Bulky)]]. [[Itgotworse Even worse]] most of those counter is defeated by Gyarados (yes THAT [[MagikarpPower Gyarados]] which he has near perfect synergy against. The most insulting fact about Doryuzuu is however the fact that its size is so small (0.70 meter tall) clearly smaller than other Gamebreaking mon !! He is not known as [[TengenToppaGurrenLagan Simole the Digger]]
for nothing guys. He has a [[TengenToppaGurrenLagannDrill that creates the metagame]]
* The fact that he can be [[ComMons caught on every cave]] and met by waiting for the dirt to rumble doesnt help

* [[RuleOfThree Third time's the charm]] in gen 5 with another mon. Sazandra is the new pseudo-legendary in town with a dark and dragon typing with levitate as an ability. It has an insane resist pool with fire, grass, water, electric, ghost, dark and immunity to psychic and ground. People have complained that [[LightningBruiser Salamence]] was tough but this thing has more defenses, no X4 weak, 2 points less speed, above average attack, better Stab combo and 10 points higher in special attack with moves like crunch, flamethower, surf, earthquake, draco meteor, cheer up [[OhCrap (boosts attack and special attack by one stage)]] and U-Turn. This thing [[MagikarpPower takes forever to get]] but it makes Shibibirru and Shinpora look like nothing.

* [[RuleOfThree Third time's the charm]] in gen 5 with another mon. Sazandra is the new pseudo-legendary in town with a dark and dragon typing with levitate as an ability. It has an insane resist pool with fire, grass, water, electric, ghost, dark and immunity to psychic and ground. People have complained that [[LightningBruiser Salamence]] was tough but this thing has more defenses, no X4 weak, 2 points less speed, above average attack, better Stab combo and 10 points higher in special attack with moves like crunch, flamethower, surf, earthquake, draco meteor, cheer up [[OhCrap (boosts attack and special attack by one stage)]] and [[MetalSlime U-Turn]]. This thing [[MagikarpPower takes forever to get]] but it makes Shibibirru and Shinpora look like nothing.

* Third time's the charm in gen 5 with another mon. Sazandra is the new pseudo-legendary in town with a dark and dragon typing with levitate as an ability. It has an insane resist pool with fire, grass, water, electric, ghost, dark and immunity to psychic and ground. People have complained that salamence was tough but this thing has more defenses, no X4 weak, 2 points less speed, above average attack, better Stab combo and 10 points higher in special attack with moves like crunch, flamethower, surf, earthquake, draco meteor, cheer up (boosts attack and special attack by one stage) and U-Turn. This thing takes forever to get but it makes Shibibirru and Shinpora look like nothing.

** Attacks that hit the entire room are usually game breakers, i.e. Earthquake. Who cares if you wipe out your teammates (Or, maybe not, considering the hit radius is ONLY an entire room and teammates in corridors are safe) if you can curbstomp an entire Monster House? Or, for even more mileage, you can link Earthquake with an ability like Protect. Wipe them out, then defend yourself! The worst part is, a single Pokémon can have a multi-hit ranged move, a defensive move, and a room-clearing move, and will likely not find much use for any of their moves because that Pokemon will likely be stat-grinded enough from feeding it Gummis that it's generic attack one-hit KOs anything that's not a boss.

Note that if you there's an easy way for another player to counter this, it's not really a game breaker. [[ArtificialStupidity The AI barely counts]].

* The only Pokémon who comes even remotely to the level of controversy that Wobbuffet brought was the Pokémon Garchomp. It's easily the most powerful non-legendary Pokémon ever created. It possesses an excellent attack, one of the best possible offensive typings in the game (as there are only two Pokémon (Bronzong with the ability Levitate and Skarmory) who can resist both Dragon and Ground moves (which Garchomp gets STAB on), both of which are weak to Fire attacks which Garchomp can also use), very good speed, and decent defenses for an offensive Pokémon.
** The most popular item for Garchomp was Yache Berry. It cuts the effectiveness of Ice type attacks, Garchomp's only major weakness. This allowed it to get a Swords Dance off and practically guaranteed one or two deaths before Garchomp goes down.

**** Which is also why nearly all Dragon-types have a secondary type that gives them a quadruple weakness to Ice. Dialga and Palkia (no Ice-type weakness) can't be used in the Battle Frontiers at all.
**** Which ties into the reason why Chompy got KickedUpstairs into ubers; in its heyday, it reduced practical diversity to the point where nearly every team that stood a chance was forced into something like this; Garchomp/Garchomp counter 1/Garchomp counter 2/Counter-counter 1/Counter-counter 2/filler.

** Due to a programming oversight (No pokémon in the first games was given a gender except for the main character), moves that caused the Infatuation status (Attract and the ability Cute Charm, at that time) were absurdly powerful, basically being a nigh-effortless way to ensure that enemies almost never got a chance to attack you. Not to mention the UnfortunateImplications of [[HoYay making]] [[FoeYay everybody]] [[AnythingThatMoves fall]] [[EveryoneIsBi in love]] [[SuddenlySexuality with you]]...
** Due to the special properties of the pokémon Castform and its signature move Weather Ball, a single Castform could do enough damage to kill any non-boss pokémon in a single hit at low-to-middling levels, and at high levels, could even do the same to any boss pokémon that didn't resist Fire or Water. This was only minorly {{Nerf}}ed in the ''Explorers'' games; Castform now has a 'size' of 4, meaning only one can be on a party and at the expense of another pokémon, but most normal dungeons don't need more than the single Castform at one time anyway.
** Upon maxing their IQ (the PMD equivalent of 'Happiness', boosted by eating Gummi items), Pokémon learned the ability "Super Mobile", which allowed them to travel over water, lava, clouds, and even allowed them to bash through walls to make their own path with absolutely no penalty. In a {{Roguelike}} game, this naturally causes most of the difficulty to soar right out the window. In the ''Explorers'' games, this ability was severely restricted to a single legendary Pokemon, Palkia, whom you can only obtain ''after'' the game's storyline, making it more of a BraggingRightsReward.

** Also, several IQ skills on the right IQ groups to boost HP, PP, and other stats could be further combined with Three-Star "Exclusive Items" that buffed a particular Pokèmon each (generally giving them Absorption against a type they're usually weak against, or putting them in permanent LightScreen/Reflect status).Not only, the effects of those items are ''shared among all Pokèmon belonging to the same evolutionary branch!''So for instance, Pokèmon like Gallade, Hitmonchan, Vileplume or Politoed could not only gain the buffs of their former evolutions, but also those of their counterpart(s), for a total of 4 buffs.And the Eevee family...
*** Also, while in the ''Rescue Team'' titles you had to combine specific items to net one, usually not even resulting in what you exactly wanted, in ''Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky'' you can look up the item you're looking for in the shop, and swap ''any exclusive items'' you want to get rid of for the one you want, basically turning any Pokèmon with a broad enough "family", through IQ grinding and item gathering, into an InfinityPlusOneSword !
*** Want to top '''even''' this?Then bring along also the two-star equivalent of the Exclusive Item to get an even bigger stat boost, make your 'mon binge on stat-rising items like Life Seed and Iron, and keep in mind that some of the rarest Exclusive Items affect ''all the 'mons of a same Type''.Pair it with a double-type, and...you know the drill.
** Multi-Hit attacks (BulletSeed, Fury Swipes/Attack, Pin Missle). Due to the damage calculation in the Mystery Dungeon games being much different than the mainstream titles, these move actually hit as hard as most other attacks ''per hit''. The brokenness comes from the fact that the STAB bonus from the mainstream titles is also implemented in the Mystery Dungeon games, meaning with the right pokemon (A Treecko with BulletSeed and the Concentrator skill for instance), this can be quite lethal.
*** Speaking of BulletSeed. Because of how damage mechanics work, it can perform up to five ranged attacks, each of which deal a great deal of damage by themselves. And if you happen to KO to 'mon in front of you? It ''keeps attacking'' the ones behind it until you either run out of moves or targets.
** Attacks that hit the entire room are usually game breakers, i.e. Earthquake. Who cares if you wipe out your teammates (Or, maybe not, considering the hit radius is ONLY an entire room and teammates in corridors are safe) if you can curbstomp an entire Monster House? Or, for even more mileage, you can link Earthquake with an ability like Protect. Wipe them out, then defend yourself! The worst part is, a single pokemon can have a multi-hit ranged move, a defensive move, and a room-clearing move, and will likely not find much use for any of their moves because that Pokemon will likely be stat-grinded enough from feeding it Gummis that it's generic attack one hit kills anything that's not a boss.

* Metagame aside, a simple way to kill any challenge the games can offer is by getting a Pokémon with average stats and some variety in its offensive moves and train only that Pokémon. Not far from the beginning of your journey, that pokémon will be way higher leveled than even Gym Leaders' mons, to the point that your weaknesses won't matter anymore since all battles will follow like "Enemy sent out X! Your Pokémon used Move! Enemy's X fainted!"

*** And that's why you should have revives on hand.
* Pokémon Gold and Silver introduced Spikes, a neat little move that lays a pointy trap on the opponent's side of the field. Each use increased the 'level' of spikes up to 3, at which point foes that switch in take 25% of their maximum health in damage. Of course, it's not too bad when it takes 3 turns to set up and can be completely removed with Rapid Spin, right? Well, generation 4 comes around, and there's a new version in town: Stealth Rock. Unlike Spikes, SR takes a single turn to set up. A truly ridiculous number of mons learned it, including ultra-fast mons like Azelf and Aerodactyl. But the biggest thing was that the damage taken from switching it was determined by the user's type. Normally, 1/8th HP damage is taken, the same as a level 1 Spikes, but if the victim is weak to Rock, the damage is increased to 25%. If the user has two types, and both are weak to rock, it loses half of it's maximum HP every time it switches in. Think about that for a second. One use, and every Fire, Bug, Ice and Flying type in the entire game is at a massive disadvantage. It's gotten to the point where Pokemon with respectable power such as Charizard, Magmortar, Togekiss, Weavile and Zapdos find themselves between "somewhat uncommon" (Togekiss) and "completely unusable" (Charizard), simply because of this one move. It's not just the hardcore StopHavingFunGuys either; practically the entire fanbase agrees that Stealth Rock is beyond every other move in the game.
** Virtually the entire metagame for gen 4 was built around Stealth Rock's ubiquitous use. In a game franchise with literally ''hundreds'' of other moves and a bajillion potential combinations of movesets, abilities, and tactics, this is the one that you absolutely '''must''' have a mitigating strategy for. That is how ridiculous it is.

* In the Gameboy Color version of the Pokemon Trading Card Game, faithful to the original game, had hundreds of cards that relied on a coin flip. For example, the ''Poke' Ball'' card allows a player to search his deck for any mon and put it into their hand, but only if a coin flip comes up heads. This was not in itself unbalanced, but the problem came when the game's coin flipping system was '''not randomized'''. A player with a good sense of timing could earn a favorable result on '''every coinflip'''. This made cards like [[http://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/b/b1/Vileplume_Jungle_15.jpg Vileplume]] and [[http://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/b/bc/Kangaskhan_Jungle_5.jpg Kangaskhan]] able to destroy an opponent in just a few turns.
* In official tournaments for the ''[[{{Pokemon}} Pokémon]]'' games, the use of insanely-powerful Pokémon (which are dubbed "ubers") is almost invariably banned. Most of the ubers are intentionally overpowered (most of the [[OlympusMons unique legendary Pokemon]] fall under this category, since they serve as an [[SNKBoss ultimate challenge]] for those going for HundredPercentCompletion), but a few aren't. Some of these Pokémon (namely Wobbuffet) have very few learnable moves, but through a combination of special abilities and high endurance can guarantee that at least one of its opponents will go down before it does.

*** That's because tiers are [[{{Understatement}} entirely decided]] [[BrokenBase by the fans]]. That they haven't banned Legendary pokémon (and Wobbuffet) from Wi-Fi play like they have from the Battle Frontiers in the later games, however...
** Wobbuffets were banned for good reason at least. Imagine this: two trainers both send out Wobbuffets. Both of them are equipped with Leftovers (a common equip for the high-HP, low defense Wobbuffet before Wob was banned). Neither one can attack on its own except for Struggle (and remember, Wob also has rock-bottom attack power), and last but not least, neither one can switch out thanks to Shadow Tag. Literally, a battle no one can win. The only way for either Wobbuffet to triumph is to get like 30 critical hits in a row.
*** Thankfully, in Diamond and Pearl, it was changed so that anything with Shadow Tag could switch out from something else with Shadow Tag. This gets rid of the dreaded Wobbuffet vs. Wobbuffet scenario, and also allows anything with Trace (an ability which copies the opponent's ability (just Porygon2 and Gardevoir)) to get away as well. Struggle was also changed drastically; the recoil is now 25% of the user's maximum HP, rather than a percentage of the damage done. It's still entirely possible to get stalled out in RSE/FRLG though.
**** And that's not the biggest reason why Wobbuffet is considered Uber. Wobuffet has near the best HP in the game (around 528 is the standard for a lv 100 Wobbuffet), but it only learns seven useful moves: Counter, Mirror Coat, Safeguard, and Destiny Bond. Counter and Mirror Coat return an opponent's move at double damage (not double strength, but double the damage it did to Wobbuffet), but you have to predict whether it's going to be physical (Counter) or special (Mirror Coat). Safeguard makes Wobbuffet and its team immune to Status Effects for 5 turns, and Destiny Bond kills Wobbuffet's attacker along with it if it dies the turn it uses it. Not so bad, but then Ruby and Sapphire introduced Wynaut, Wobbuffet's baby form, which added three new moves to its movepool, one of which really turned Wobbuffet into a Game Breaker: Encore, a move that forces the opponent to repeat their last attack 4-8 times in a row. This means that a trainer using Wobbuffet doesn't need to guess with Mirror Coat or Counter; they can just lock an opponent into one move and continually use (or switch into) the appropriate counter. With Safeguard, no status effects work for 5 turns, the aforementioned Leftovers could keep Wobby on its feet almost indefinitely, and with Shadow Tag, the opponent couldn't even switch out to try something else. And even if you manage to send in something that can take Wobbuffet down, Wobbuffet ''can'' switch out, unlike his opponent. All of this makes Wobbuffet one of the four non-legendaries on the uber list. And note that one of the others is Wobbuffet's pre-evolved form.

** In the first generation of games the entire Psychic type was entirely overpowered, as they only had a weakness to types of attack that did below average damage even after being doubled, and they were only learnable by Pokémon with a weakness to Psychic type attacks (and due to a bug, one of those types actually didn't affect Psychic-type at all, rather than do double damage). Both Mewtwo and Alakazam were horribly unbalanced, with great speed, and ungodly Special and a Mewtwo on your team basically guaranteed a win due to Amnesia then boosting Special, which counted as what is now Special Attack and Special Defense, and even in the later, more balanced generation Mewtwo is still Uber (while Alakazam is not used much). In the second, Game Freak added two new types, Steel (which resists Psychic) and Dark (which is immune), to counter the psychic advantage, though Mewtwo himself is still one tough bastard (it has a powerful Fighting type move (Fighting is Super-Effective against both those types)).
*** The psychic advantage was made worse by the fact that the stat Special governed both Special Attack and Special Defense. This meant that Pokémon with high Special, such as Psychics, were much more useful than Pokémon with low Special, such as Fighting. This was fixed by separating them.
*** And also by the fact that in generation one, the most common type was the psychic-weak poison, with 33, just narrowly beating out the ever-common water type (32 of the gen-1 Pokémon.) In later games, poison fell to the back so far that it was tough to remember why Psychic was ever such a power type to begin with.
*** The Psychics have been getting less and less powerful every generation, as each generation creates more ways to counter its game-breaker status. For example, more and more pure ghost or pure bug types have popped up, more ghost, bug, and dark type-moves are appearing, and types weak to psychics have combined with types strong against psychics. Also, an Alakazam with Thunderpunch, Fire Punch, and Ice Punch could take out almost any enemy it wouldn't be able to before, what with its high special attack. Not so in Gen IV now that moves themselves and not move types are physical/special.

** And then came the [[FanNickname Atmacune]] (Suicune with Curse/Rest/Return/Roar) moveset. Not only does it crush everything except ghosts, but Roar forces Snorlax to flee AND (due to its programming) causes enemy attempts to Roar or Whirlwind Suicune away ALSO fail. There's a reason why Curse went from "used by everyone" in generation two to "used by almost nobody" in generations three and four...
** As of the 4th gen games, the [[FanNickname Curselax]] strategy has become significantly weaker and more difficult to use effectively thanks to the physical/special split (although it can now use physical Crunch (to hit ghosts) and Fire Punch (to hit steels). It's still somewhat viable though, but a lot of powerful physical moves can 2/3HKO it if the attacker switches in on its first Curse, and Pokémon such as Skarmory have access to Whirlwind and Roar to make it switch out.

* Pokémon Gold and Silver introduced Spikes, a neat little move that lays a pointy trap on the opponent's side of the field. Each use increased the 'level' of spikes up to 3, at which point foes that switch in take 25% of their maximum health in damage. Of course, it's not too bad when it takes 3 turns to set up and can be completely removed with Rapid Spin, right? Well, generation 4 comes around, and there's a new version in town: Stealth Rock. Unlike Spikes, SR takes a single turn to set up. A truly ridiculous number of mons learned it, including ultra-fast mons like Azelf and Aerodactyl. But the biggest thing was that the damage taken from switching it was determined by the user's type. Normally, 1/6th HP damage is taken, the same as a level 1 Spikes, but if the victim is weak to Rock, the damage is increased to 25%. If the user has two types, and both are weak to rock, it loses half of it's maximum HP every time it switches in. Think about that for a second. One use, and every Fire, Bug, Ice and Flying type in the entire game is at a massive disadvantage. It's gotten to the point where Pokemon with respectable power such as Charizard, Magmortar, Togekiss, Weavile and Zapdos find themselves between "somewhat uncommon" (Togekiss) and "completely unusable" (Charizard), simply because of this one move. It's not just the hardcore StopHavingFunGuys either; practically the entire fanbase agrees that Stealth Rock is beyond every other move in the game.

*** That works until you get to the Elite Four who will curbstomp you if you try that.

*** That's because tiers are entirely decided by the fans. That they haven't banned Legendary pokémon (and Wobbuffet) from Wi-Fi play like they have from Battle Tower in the later games, however...

**** Another thing is that you can have Wobbuffet use Encore on a non-damage move (Substitute or Swordsdance or whatever). Your opponent can't switch now and must continue with his useless attack. Then you can switch into whatever you like and get a free turn to set up on your own.

* Smeargle, in a way. Put the enemy to sleep with Spore (100% accuracy), then status increase away. Spore, Calm Mind, Calm Mind, Bulk Up, Bulk Up, Baton Pass, win game.

* Metagame aside, a simple way to kill any challenge the games can offer is by getting a pokémon with average stats and some variety in its offensive moves and train only that pokémon. Not far from the beginning of your journey, that pokémon will be way higher leveled than even Gym Leaders' mons, to the point that your weaknesses won't matter anymore since all battles will follow like "Enemy sent out X! Your pokémon used Move! Enemy's X fainted!"

** Attacks that hit the entire room are usually game breakers, ie Earthquake. Who cares if you wipe out your teammates (Or, maybe not, considering the hit radius is ONLY an entire room and teammates in corridors or safe) if you can curbstomp an entire Monster House? Or, for even more mileage, you can link Earthquake with an ability like Protect. Wipe them out, then defend yourselves! The worst part is, a single pokemon can have a multi-hit ranged move, a defensive move, and a room-clearing move.

**** And that's not the biggest reason why Wobbuffet is considered Uber. Wobuffet has near the best HP in the game (around 528 is the standard for a lv 100 Wobbuffet), but it only learns seven useful moves: Counter, Mirror Coat, Safeguard, and Destiny Bond. Counter and Mirror Coat return an opponent's move at double damage (not double strength, but double the damage it did to Wobbuffet), but you have to predict whether it's going to be physical (Counter) or special (Mirror Coat). Safeguard makes Wobbuffet and its team immune to Status Effects for 5 turns, and Destiny Bond kills Wobbuffet's attacker along with it if it dies the turn it uses it. Not so bad, but then Ruby and Sapphire introduced Wynaut, Wobbuffet's baby form, which added three new moves to its movepool, one of which really turned Wobbuffet into a Game Breaker: Encore, a move that forces the opponent to repeat their last attack 4-8 times in a row. This means that a trainer using Wobbuffet doesn't need to guess with Mirror Coat or Counter; they can just lock an opponent into one move and continually use (or switch into) the appropriate counter. With Safeguard, no status effects work for 5 turns, the aforementioned Leftovers could keep Wobby on its feet almost indefinitely, and with Shadow Tag, the opponent couldn't even switch out to try something else. And even if you manage to send in something that can take Wobbuffet down, Wobbuffet ''can'' switch out, unlike his opponent. All of this makes Wobbuffet one of the only two non-legendaries on the uber list. And note that the other one is Wobbuffet's pre-evolved form.

** In the first generation of games the entire Psychic type was entirely overpowered, as they only had a weakness to types of attack that did below average damage even after being doubled, and they were only learnable by Pokémon with a weakness to Psychic type attacks. Both Mewtwo and Alakazam were horribly unbalanced, with great speed, and ungodly Special and a Mewtwo on your team basically guaranteed a win due to Amnesia then boosting Special, which counted as what is now Special Attack and Special Defense, and even in the later, more balanced generation Mewtwo is still Uber (while Alakazam is not used much). In the second, Game Freak added two new types, Steel (which resists Psychic) and Dark (which is immune), to counter the psychic advantage, though Mewtwo himself is still one tough bastard (it has a powerful Fighting type move (Fighting is Super-Effective against both those types)).