@gaditb my choice is based on the combination and i'm not going to make two more polls :)

@gaditb well, strictly speaking, my preference is based on the combination of field effect, battle effect, and pokémon that learn it

@alyssa *votes*
"2 responses."

Ah, yours was my back-up vote. It... I dunno, felt too basic, too universal, to be a Favorite.

@gaditb v reasonable. for me it’s just a confluence of: it’s nice to go new places, i’d still use it often even if it were only usable in battle, and i usually don’t have to contort my teams to fit it in. if they made the level ranges on wild pokémon a little tighter i’d have absolutely zero complaints about it

@gaditb also Surf kind of drags down the other Water-related HMs for me because (except for Waterfall for physical attackers after Gen 3) it's generally a better battle move than them, and having to fit one or two extra water HMs can make things a bit awkward and necessitate splitting the Water HMs across multiple mons.