Okay, 24hrs is over and with that we've got our final slate. You can find the reasonings for changes later in this post.
Dark/Flying
Fire/Psychic
Grass/Flying
Grass/Water
Poison/Flying
Steel/Electric
Steel/Fighting
Dark/Flying: This typing is one of the strongest here offensively, especially with Tinted Lens. Both Dark and Flying are powerful in their own right, but being able to seriously dent common Dark-type resists like Clefable and Flying-type answers like Tapu Koko makes this typing all the more potent. Defensively, this typing offers a Ghost-type resist which is at an all-time high for usefulness in the metagame due to Dragapult, while offering other key defensive traits like a Dark-type resist and immunities to Ground and Psychic.
Fire/Psychic: Between factors like a powerful dual-STAB combo, being able to hit fat pivots like Toxapex super-effectively, threatening the host of omnipresent bulky Steel-types, and useful resistances to Fairy, Psychic, and Fire, this typing is an incredibly strong option that still maintains certain checks like Heatran to balance it all out. Our unremovable item also lessens the power of opposing super-effective Knock Off, meaning that certain users of the move that would otherwise be able to threaten us out will now have much more to fear.
Grass/Flying: This typing's defensive profile allows it to potentially answer seriously threatening wallbreakers like Urshifu-R while also having an immensely positive matchup against common Ground-type pivots in the metagame. Offensively this combination can face difficulty from the likes of Corviknight and Heatran, but Flying-type's strength as a Tinted Lens abuser is still as powerful as ever, especially when backed up by the list of great utility options that Grass-types can provide like Leech Seed and ever-useful status moves.
Grass/Water: This combination is exceptionally balanced; neither typing is immensely strong offensively, but they go quite well together as Water can deal with traditional Grass-type answers and Grass alleviates a weakness to Electric-types while providing other useful resistances to types like Ground. Furthermore, Tinted Lens helps this typing power through the bulky Grass-types that it would otherwise face trouble from, ultimately all leading to a typing which has clearly defined switch-in opportunities and defensive uses while hardly being useless on the offensive side of things.
Poison/Flying: This typing's defensive and offensive utility is quite strange, but in a fantastic way; this typing is a deceptively good answer to Ground-types as it has an immunity to Toxic and Earthquake, while also possessing three other 4x resistances to Grass, Bug, and Fighting. Offensively, this typing really appreciates Tinted Lens in powering through Steel-types, with Poison also having a lot of baked-in utility in its STABs that have a chance to poison its foes.
Steel/Electric: Coming in with one of the largest amount of resistances in the game and strong offensive coverage to boot, this typing has the defensive prowess offered by Steel combined with the offensive nature of Electric to really get the best of both worlds. This typing has the great strengths of being able to hit prominent fat Regenerator pivots super-effectively, being able to spread status and attack at the same time, and benefiting significantly from Tinted Lens in matchups against common Electric-types, all while preserving a safe amount of clearly defined checks like Equilibra to stop things from getting out of control.
Steel/Fighting: Here we have another take on the classic "Steel + great offensive type" combination; this duo essentially aims to get the most out of its Tinted Lens boosted Fighting-type moves while having the great resists of Steel-type to always fall back on, with Steel additionally helping to target the bulky Fairy-types when Tinted Lens doesn't seem to cut it. Having essentially an ideal matchup against physical attackers like Weavile and Rillaboom leaves us with no doubt about finding switch-in opportunities to wallbreak or provide utility, and a 4x resistance to Stealth Rock and a Toxic immunity are just great perks as well.
Here are the individual changes:
========
No more fairy types
Steel/fairy is a legit absurd typing. We have seen Pokemon like Magearna reap the insane benefits of this combination before, and imagining something analogous to that being able to spam TL boosted moonblasts does not sound good. This is only furthered by the fact that we'd be introducing two Pokemon with these types into the meta instead of just one. I don't think it's a safe choice for us.
Water/fairy was initially a compromise between having a water type on the slate, representing fairy types because they were incredibly popular during submissions, while also having a slightly less nutty option than steel/fairy for those who wanted a fairy type but maybe one that was a little less strong (although water fairy is still sorta nutty in its own ways). Ultimately this type still had a host of issues, perhaps the most notable of which being that this typing tries to compete with Tapu Fini - a famously versatile Pokemon - which I don't see boding well for us. Ultimately this one just missed the mark, which was made clear from how much pushback it got.
There were no other fairy types slated because every fairy submission was either dangerously strong or fairly controversial. I think that on any level, a fairy type with TL is scary territory to walk into, and the other fairy types that were closest to making the slate just didn't see quite enough support for me to feel good about putting them on here.
Grass/water > Grass/poison
While was initially very confident about the placement of grass/poison in the pre slate, it didn't really line up with the other options I ended up going with. I couldn't justify slating both and having three grass types, so water/grass was picked as it gave an opportunity for a water type to win out and also got a ton of support in this last 24hr period.
Steel/fighting > fire/fighting + ice/fighting
Both of the fighting types on the pre slate got a bunch of heat. Ice/fighting is just not a balanced typing and raised concerns for our defensive viability + the design space for our other forme, and the reception for fire/fighting seemed to be largely unenthusiastic as well. Steel/fighting gives another solid steel type pick while presenting an offensively and defensively balanced option for those who still want to pursue fighting types as a primary option for us.
Addition of grass/flying and poison/flying
Both typings got a bunch of support which I was super happy to see! They could be great options for us, but I was unsure on public opinion until the discussion following the pre slate. I initially struggled to choose between them so I settled on both, as each got lots of support while still being fairly unique from one another. This admittedly leaves me with three flying types on a seven option slate, but because of how unique each option is and because flying types are historically some of the strongest abusers of TL, I still feel alright about the choice.
Why stuff wasn't slated:
========
Fairy-types
Already got into this, but essentially - a) essentially unpunishable moonblasts are fear b) similarly, many fairy type submissions were just incredibly strong as a whole c) a lot of submissions were very controversial, both to myself and to the public d) the types that weren't controversial were only that way because they saw somewhat limited discussion
Bug/steel + psychic/steel
Bug/steel came under fire as it competes a good deal with scizor (similar to water/fairy's problem with fini), and I do worry that the defensive nature of this typing sorta constrains options for our alternate forme. Psychic/steel was suggested to replace steel/fairy, and while I wouldn't have minded that at all, ultimately it just didn't cleanly fit with the lineup of other options that I wanted to slate, as well as getting a bit of pushback at points and seeing pretty scare discussion in general.
========
This final slate is very different from the pre slate so apologies if you think it's any worse; however, I feel pretty confident about each option and I think it reflects the wants of the community accurately as well. Sending this off to
Wulfanator for approval, and then to the polls!
