What in the world happened to Focus Punch usage?

Focus Punch was a popular move in Gen 3, but now I don’t see it anywhere outside of a few Mega Mawile sets and SubSeed Poison Heal Breloom. I don’t see ant nerfs that it got, Stealth Rock was introduced, and notable targets like Blissey and Skarmory remained.

Pleaselog inorregisterto add a comment.

It’s simple: It’s not worth it anymore. To safely set up Focus Punch, you either have to read a switch or use Substitute against a mon that can’t break it. The thing is, if you read wrong, you’ve pretty much just wasted a turn and taken damage. Moves such as Close Combat, High Jump Kick, Superpower, etc. are much better because you can click them and know you will actually get to do the move. Sure, Focus Punch is stronger than all of those moves (150 BP compared to CC/Superpower’s 120 and HJK’s 130), but it’s not really worth it because of how reliant on predictions it is. It’s not used because you can’t just click it when you need a Fighting move. Imagine if your Fighting-type is in a 1v1 against, say, Corviknight, who is at low enough HP that CC will kill, but you have no other moves that can kill it, plus you know Brave Bird will obliterate you. Would you rather be running Focus Punch, in which case you lose because it will always fail, or CC, in which case you win? It’s simple.