Best HM moves

From the days when HMs were required to get around, which HM did you consider the most useful?

Waterfall to me was the best HM. It was made for my friend Gyarados, since there aren't as many physical type water moves as there should be. This one's 80 base power, 100% accuracy and 20% chance to flinch. I felt adding this HM was a more reliable option than Aqua Tail, and I'm glad that Waterfall has now been incorporated into Gyarados' learnset by level up.

On a special attacker Surf's also quite good, 90 base power and 100% accuracy. Like with earthquake you can do damage to multiple opponents at once in a double or triple battle. You have to put some thought into who you pair with a surf user, but you can also use that it hits your allies to your advantage. Lapras, Goodra and Quagsire are some Pokemon I have raised that like being splashed with the waves of surf because they can have water absorb and hydration as their abilities.

Bonus question: Which HM was the least useful?

Surf and Waterfall are the ones that come to mind as being solid moves in battle too.

Fly and Dive being two-turn moves makes them not amazing. Strength and Rock Climb aren't bad, but not really standout moves either. Cut and Rock Smash are rather weak.

Defog is not particularly great in normal play but has significant use in competitive, being one of two moves (unless I'm forgetting something) that remove entry hazards, even if it does remove the ones you've set too.

Definitely Surf and Waterfall, as you said they are great moves that I would gladly teach to any of my water types.
The less obvious one for me is Strength since it's 100% accurate and has a very good 80 base power. I gladly teach it to my Pokemon as a strong neutral coverage option. I also like to use Normal types on my teams a lot more than most people so having a strong STAB Strength on Pokemon like Tauros, Stoutland, Furret and many others is always nice.

The least useful is either Cut or Defog, Defog for obvious reasons since it doesn't do damage but if we are going for the damaging moves then Cut since it's more common than Defog and it isn't very strong but to make it even worse it isn't even 100% accurate.

The usefulness of HMs is heavily dependent on what generation they are in. For example I'd say that every HM except for Cut is useful in gen 1 in some way. A lot of it comes down to how limited movepools where in that generation. Few Pokemon had access to Drill Peck and Sky Attack so using Fly, which also made you untouchable for a round, was justifiable. Surf is good in general. Strength is good due to stronger attacks like Double Edge und Hyper Beam being hard to come by and Return/Frustration not existing. Flash is really useful for catching legendaries especially in gen 1 with opponents having infinite PP on their moves, but even in later generations it's a good option for that use.

In gen 2 we got Waterfall as another good HM that stayed consistently useful. Another good one is Defog, at least after they added the hazard removal effect.

There are some moves I think are very situational but can find some niche use like Dive to outsmart some enemies (and Fly for the same reason), Rock Climb and Whirlpool. Rock Smash isn't all too great but at least has that defense drop effect. Cut got shafted very hard which is a shame since its premise of being this secret sword technique makes it sound pretty good. But its low power and 95% accuracy makes it look like a joke, especially when you consider Tackle and Scratch existing, as well.

I only really use Surf, Strength and Waterfall in battle, other HM moves aren't really that good. Rock Climb would be better without its 85% accuracy.

Surf and Strength, and I actually did use Fly when my flyers lacked any other decent flying moves. Strength was always a strong move on Pokémon that get STAB from it.

Least useful... ugh, why did Cut and Flash have to be a thing ; ; At least Rock Smash had a niche for me, like taking down Wattson's steel types and lowering their accuracy, when I had nothing else.

I'd have to say Surf is the best HM because I'd go out of my way to teach it to a Pokemon for its moveset and not its out of battle capabilities. Though I often hear people say Strength isn't good when it's been that one move I'll teach to some physical attacker if I just don't have it on them already. I think it can be learned by more than you'd first expect, and 80 power is on the high side for HMs.

In terms of least useful, it's probably a cheap shot but the fact you can go through any Pokemon game without ever requiring Flash is just funny to me. In theory, it's useless as an HM.

Surf, Waterfall, Fly, Strength, and Rock Climb.

Surf is pretty obvious, it's very powerful and can hit the entire field in a double/triple battle, can't go without it. Waterfall can cause the opponent to flinch, which I like. Fly makes it easy to avoid an attack for one turn, so I always actually liked using it in battle. Strength can be pretty powerful in a pinch, and Rock Climb can confuse the enemy. Too bad it didn't last long!

...Also Flash gets a special mention because it reduced accuracy. But, it lost its hm status when gen iv rolled in, so.

As for least useful? Cut didn't have any secondary effect, making it pretty useless. Rock Smash is only really useful early game in battle. Whirlpool is also garbage, I also found Defog to be a waste of time and stopped even bothering to try and get in later playthroughs of gen IV, thank god that HM never came back!

HM Rock Smash,

First of all, I like its name and it sounded total devatsation for rock pokemon cause my fire pokemon were scared of rock pokemon.

Then comes

HM Surf

I also like this HM cuz this helped me landing one hit KO to opponent. The surf Animation was also a reason that i like this HM.

*comes into thread to answer Surf and Waterfall*

*sees that literally everyone has that as their answer too*

uhhh well i guess not as many mentioned Fly and Strength yet so i'll go with those as well? Dive's pretty underrated tbh considering it's literally just a Water-type Fly, with 100 accuracy instead of 95. something i'll gladly sacrifice 10 base damage for.

going to say Rock Climb, here! not only is it stronger in base power than Strength, but it also has a pretty ok chance of confusing the opponent, too. c: if nothing else, it'd be a nice filler normal-type move for Pokemon that have a spare slot for it.

Surf & strength were pretty strong moves.

As for least useful: Flash. I never used it other than to light up an occasional dark cave. Which was just for convenience anyway.

For me it would have to be Fly, I mean it speaks for itself you fly which would be uber cool if flying on a Pokémon irl like Charizard, Salamance, or even Rayquaza, and the least useful HM would have to be flash I mean has anyone ever heard of a flashlight. lel

Surf and Waterfall are ideally strongest HM moves and surf have much usefulness to get over to places.
I say flash, there is very small number location needing them, but only areas that more focus on the progress than being sided, also cut is not powerful and very least useful because trees are more for shortcuts and containing items so cut might be on this list of my cliche of HMS that is useless.

In Gen 1-3 Surf was the the best thing period. It was the only HM that was actually good in battle, and an infinite use move with 95 BP that you could teach to every Water Pokémon you had, something you couldn't do with Thunderbolt, Flamethrower, etc. In Gen 4, Waterfall was the second best for being the best alternative for physical Water types.

They both seem outclassed by Scald and Liquidation nowadays (at least for bulky and/or not very fast Water types)

Surf, Fly, Strength + Waterfall are my favourites. Dig + Headbutt were somewhat decent. Rock Smash, Flash + Cut would be decent rookie moves. Defog + Whirlpool.....uuuugh!!!