i think tossing out fire blasts are rarer if anything. fire blast, standard as it is, is still a surprise move. and there's the fact that it has 8 pp, with on average 1+ miss per game. i think everyone has a couple of games where they maneuvered their skarm long enough to waste all 8. you probably won't be able to do that with steelix however you get the added benefit of exploding in its face. there's no way you can overlook that. but yeah, i guess i didn't exactly compare them on equal footing, but in general 90% of curselax will either DE/BS or curse on the initial turn. odds of random scouting fb are really low.
i think it still depends. ttar is also the only one of the 3 that doesn't guarantee its victory against a favorable snorlax. last poke fb lax/mono lax will still shit on ttar, whereas last poke eq/monolax won't have a great time with either steelix or skarm. this to me outweighs the "one hit wonder" factor, but i can see how it's more subjective.
missy can luck you sure, but missy is pretty rare. only a specific genre of team can run something like missy, it's not exactly a flexible pokemon. i think in general monolax will be stopped by your ttar/steelix/skarm, which pursuitar does little to alleviate, although pursuit chips vs skarm will help with egg pounding on the same target. i will still take fire blast over crunch any day due to it being better at skarm chipping. crunch has some very rare use cases where it's superior imo (last poke lax, better misdreavus coverage).
i think it still depends. ttar is also the only one of the 3 that doesn't guarantee its victory against a favorable snorlax. last poke fb lax/mono lax will still shit on ttar, whereas last poke eq/monolax won't have a great time with either steelix or skarm. this to me outweighs the "one hit wonder" factor, but i can see how it's more subjective.
missy can luck you sure, but missy is pretty rare. only a specific genre of team can run something like missy, it's not exactly a flexible pokemon. i think in general monolax will be stopped by your ttar/steelix/skarm, which pursuitar does little to alleviate, although pursuit chips vs skarm will help with egg pounding on the same target. i will still take fire blast over crunch any day due to it being better at skarm chipping. crunch has some very rare use cases where it's superior imo (last poke lax, better misdreavus coverage).