Have to say, this ruleset makes almost every additive metagame ineligible for OMOTM. The exact same problems exist with everything from STABmons and AAA to Offstat and Stat Exchange. In all of these the user has to figure out how to play the format. Moves in STABmons/abilities in AAA even still show up as illegal, how is that intuitive?. If a new user hasn't decided to ladder with a standard team and get paired with someone that knows how it works and that person explains it to them, if they ask in the Other Metas room, or if they search on Smogon, of course they won't know how to play it.
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Type Control (Playable on Aqua and Pandora)
- Thread starter Adrian Marin
- Start date
For the last time, they have to figure out the RULES of the format, not HOW TO MAKE A TEAM FOR IT.
Anyway, I'm not putting a format where you have to use nicknames to do something as a ladder. End of story.
While I'm going to stay neutral on the subject on whether this metagame should be eligible or not for Other Metagame of the Month. I just want to note that people shouldn't be discouraged from playing when it isn't able to become OMotM. 90% of the Metagames won't ever be OMotM, however (nearly) all of them can still be immense fun. As long as you like the format and can keep finding fun things to use, it's good to play right? If you want someone new to play against you can introduce the metagame to a friend of yours or ask someone to make a new team. And on which server it's implemented doesn't really matter as long as you can have fun playing the metagame.
Actually, potentially Type Control could just give an error message when you attempted to ladder of 'This Pokemon does not have their types defined in their nickname' in the same way that you can get error messages about illegal movepools, Abilities, etc.
An interesting point is that one can potentially take the Normal Scrappy Pokemon and make them Fighting Scrappy Pokemon for an overall better effect. (Pangoro is currently the only natural Scrappy Fighting type) Miltank (Hammer Arm, Brick Break, Power Up Punch), Kangaskhan (Drain Punch, Power Up Punch, Hammer Arm...), and Exploud (Brick Break, Hammer Arm, Focus Blast, Circle Throw, and others besides!) are unfortunately the only new options in this regard: Swellow and Stoutland have little or no Fighting moves at all (Stoutland has Rock Smash, yay), and Pangoro was already Fighting type. Even so, Miltank, Kangaskhan, Exploud, and even Pangoro (Since you can escape the double Fairy weakness) might see use for punishing Ghost/Normal, Ghost/Dark, and Ghost/Steel, all of which are solid defensive types.
Some thoughts about types broadly.
Normal: Normal/Ghost is a solid defensive type with only one weakness barring Scrappy and is actually surprisingly good offensively: only Dark/Rock, Dark/Steel, and Normal/Ghost can consistently resist both of its STABs, and only the mirror match isn't doubly weak to Fighting. Normal is also noteworthy for providing STAB to a number of really, really good moves, such as Extreme Speed and Boomburst. For Pokemon lacking such moves though, Normal/Ghost is probably the only reason to bother being part Normal at all. Blissey/Eviolite Chansey is probably perfectly happy to trade a vulnerability to 120 BP physical moves for a vulnerability to no more than just about 100 BP (Knock Off removing an item) moves.
Rock: With 5 weaknesses and only 4 resistances, Rock is an awful defensive type, especially since two of its weaknesses overlap with Steel's weaknesses, so plenty of Pokemon are prepared to break you completely incidentally. I'd hesitate to even take Rock for STAB on Rock moves, in all honesty. The main argument in Rock's favor is that Sandstorm's Special Defense boost can be invaluable, whether to cover up a bad Special Defense stat or to exaggerate an already excellent one. (Eviolite Chansey or Assault Vest Goodra, part Rock, in Sand. Yikes) In particular, Rock is vulnerable to Mach Punch, Vacuum Wave, Aqua Jet, and Bullet Punch, putting even fast Pokemon in a position to regret taking Rock type. I'm particularly thinking of Aerodactyl here, who has more STAB reason to keep its Rock typing than its Flying typing, but is probably better off running Crunch or some such, particularly Mega Aerodactyl with its Tough Claws not helping any Rock moves anyway. Even Rock's offensive characteristics are somewhat less desirable: it smashes Bug, but Bug is probably going to be rare in the meta, even if Bug Pokemon see lots of use. Same thing with Ice, which leaves its utility against Flying and Fire. If I were to run Ground/Fighting Regirock (Which I might try if the meta sees more play) I would certainly give it Rock Slide or Stone Edge for any Flying types, but otherwise? I dunno. In particular, I don't think there's anything particularly clever you can do with an Ability/type combo to get around the problem of how bad Rock is defensively, like you can with some other types.
Ground: Still an excellent offensive type, particularly since it's the only thing effective on Electric. Defensively it's nothing amazing, but there's worse out there. As has been said previously, Ground/Fire on a Pokemon with Water Absorb, Storm Drain, or Dry Skin is only weak to Ground, which is both an excellent defensive combination and another reason to describe Ground as a useful offensive type and it's even an excellent offensive type combo if you've got the STABs, so Ground certainly has some potential.
Steel: The premiere defensive type of course, and it throws in immunity to Toxic while you're at it. By itself justifies Ground, Fighting, and Fire STABs just to have consistent STAB super-effective damage on anything that feels like going Steel. Offensively Steel is still bad and is made worse in a meta where Pokemon can choose their types: Rock and Ice are unlikely to be selected as defensive types by most Pokemon, and anything electing to be Fairy can cover it up by being part Fire, part Water, part Electric, or even... part Steel, which covers up both of Fairy's weaknesses in one go. Since all the Fairy/resists Steel type combinations are actually good as defensive combinations and offensive combinations (Except Fairy/Steel isn't good offensively) Steel is actually pretty unlikely to be something you want to take to get Steel STAB, especially since most Steel moves are less than thrilling. Fire/Steel is a fantastic type combination in conjunction with Levitate, having only two weaknesses and immunity to both damaging major status elements, not to mention Sandstorm.
Bug: Defensively awful and offensively not much better. Bug/Steel is still noteworthy for having only one weakness: Fire, which you can cover with Flashfire. Offensively Bug is one of three types good against Dark, but the other two are both better types overall. It's also one of three types good against Psychic, but the other two are, again, overall better, which leaves it utility against Grass. Fire, Poison, Flying, and Ice all do that job just as well and only Ice isn't overall better defensively. yeah, Bug is almost never worth taking unless you specifically want the Bug/Steel combination. Vulnerability to Stealth Rock is basically the final nail in the coffin.
Ice: The worst defensive type in the game, I'd hesitate to take it even for a Hail team, given you can always take the various Snow Cloak, Ice Body, etc Pokemon and give them better type combinations while retaining Hail immunity. Ice is a good type offensively, but that's more an argument for using it as coverage for your STABs, and in any event the argument is weakened when Pokemon are generally going to avoid taking double-weaknesses unless they can cover them with an Ability. There is no Ability to be immune to Ice, so even a STAB Ice Mold Breaker Pokemon is not particularly appealing. (There is Thick Fat)
Grass: What I said about Bug, except: Grass is one of only two types Water is vulnerable to, and the other fails against Ground. Ground/Water is in fact vulnerable to Grass alone while otherwise having a solid array of resistances and a useful immunity that cannot be bypassed. On the other hand Ground/Water types will probably be stuff like Sap Sipper Goodra running Aqua Tail and Earthquake so how likely you are to actually care (Unless you're Mold Breaker) is another matter. Grass also has access to some nifty type combinations that are synergistic both offensively and defensively, such as Grass/Fire. And of course Grass renders you immune to powder moves, most notably Spore. I wouldn't casually commit to Grass as a type, but if Grass has no utility at top-level play I'll be shocked.
Water: Only two weaknesses, one of which you can be immune to with no ability to bypass it and the other type is less than thrilling in its offensive capacity. Very nice. Combine it with Dragon to have only two weaknesses, or with Ground on a Sap Sipper to have no weaknesses, or with Flying with Lighting Rod/Volt Absorb/Motor Drive to have your only weakness be the mediocre Rock type. Water/Fire is also really good both offensively and defensively, and Water/Grass is only weak to Bug and Poison, which are both not great offensively and Bug in particular is probably going to be extremely unpopular. Offensively Water is of course very solid, with only three types that resist it, one of which is itself, at which point Ice covers its other resistances. Water/Ice/Electric is very difficult to reliably wall, though anything with Ability-based Electric immunity can just pick to be pure Water, or Water/type that doesn't interact with those three. (Such as Fairy)
Fire: A great type almost in spite of itself, Fire provides immunity to Burns for any physical attacker that wants it (This can be worth it even if you have no Fire moves!), resists six different types to its three weaknesses (Though the resistances are weighted towards sub-par types like Bug), and is not only good at offense generally but is in particular one of three types that hits Steel super effectively. It's vulnerable to Stealth Rock, but you can just combine it with types that resist to balance it out, and they're often good pairings anyway, at least with the right Ability. (eg the previously described Ground/Fire with Water immunity Ability) Overall I'd avoid Fire if you don't care about Burns, actively welcome Burns (Guts/Facade), and/or have no good STABs for it, but for a Pokemon with at least BP 75 Fire moves it can be worth consideration. Iron Fist Fire typed Hitmonchan maybe?
Electric: A fantastic defensive type with only one weakness and immunity to Paralysis plus useful offensive qualities, albeit Ground can wall it consistently. Make any random Levitator into a pure Electric for no weaknesses. Honestly, there's not much to say, other than the fact that you can explore all the Electric/type combinations Game Freak hasn't touched or hasn't really touched. (Rotom barely counts)
Flying: Don't use pure Flying. Remember, barring Gravity and similar (And being Roosted, admittedly, but what if you decide to make a Flying type out of something that heals itself some other way?), Flying/Electric is the same thing but better, including throwing in immunity to Paralysis. Flying is in an odd position because it's a useful type combination (Immunity to Spikes and stuff), but with important disadvantages (Vulnerable to Electric, vulnerable to Stealth Rock, pairing it with Ground to reduce both is a double Ice weakness...), and then it's all sort of trivialized because Flying moves of any quality are ridiculously rare outside of natively Flying-typed Pokemon. Blaziken, Empoleon, Volcarona, Whimsicott, Mewtwo, Suicune, Scizor, Leavanny, Samurott, technically Mega Charizard X, and of course Smeargle are the only Pokemon that can learn any of Drill Peck, Air Slash, Hurricane, or Brave Bird that aren't natively Flying type. Since Flying's best characteristics are replicated but mostly better by the Ability Levitate, and going for unusual Flying STAB has limited opportunities, probably most Pokemon that aren't Flying in the first place (And a lot of them that are, like Landorus and Aerodactyl!) won't be given Flying type by most players, particularly since one of Flying's more useful characteristics is not true in this meta. (The ability to hit Shedinja) Though do note that Roserade and Mr. Mime can always use Technician-boosted Hidden Power Flying for effectively a 90 BP Flying move. (As can other Technicians, but the rest have mediocre or terrible Special Attack)
Dragon: Oddly enough, Dragon is actually improved by the meta. Ice loses most of its reasons to be appealing, which means your Dragon can usually settle for fearing only other Dragons and Fairies. Not only that, but Dragon/Steel is not vulnerable to any of Dragon's weaknesses while having STAB super effective potential on Fairies, and is in fact only vulnerable to Fighting and Ground. The only thing that walls Dragon/Steel offensively is Steel that isn't paired with Dragon, Ice, Rock, or Fairy. (... and Wonder Guard) Dragon is of course a fairly lacking offensive type nowadays, but Dragon may be worth selecting for its defensive qualities anyway, potentially even on Pokemon that lack Dragon moves. (I'm running a Dragon/Steel Ferrothorn right now, for instance. It's surprisingly decent)
Fairy: Only weak to two types, and it can cover both of those weaknesses by pairing up with Steel. Unfortunately, Poison's immunity to Toxic, and Steel being a fantastic defensive typing in general, mean that Fairy's two weaknesses (Or at least its Steel weakness) are liable to be quite common in practice. By a similar token, Fairy is going to struggle offensively since Steel is going to be common and quite possibly Fire and Poison too! Addressing all of these at once is also difficult: Fairy/Steel has its STABs resisted by Steel all by itself, let alone Fire/Steel which doubly resists both, Fairy/Fire is consistently walled by Fire, Fairy/Fighting is consistently walled by Poison... in short, Fairy, for all that it's a really great type in normal play with a lot of powerful representatives, is actually underpowered in its offensive presence and has no particularly amazing defensive utilities or combinations. Fairy/Steel with Levitate only has one weakness, for instance, but several other options exist to achieve the same basic effect (Or trump it) but with more secondary benefits, such as immunity to Burn, difficulty being Paralyzed, immunity to Spore, etc. It doesn't help Smeargle is the only way to get Moon Blast and Play Rough on the same Pokemon, meaning a given Pokemon usually only has one good Fairy STAB option on one statline, even if it has the stats to otherwise go either way.
Dark: A great type all around, though the weakness to Fighting, which is also good against Steel, hurts a bit. Particularly notable in this meta for the fact that Normal/Ghost is unafraid of everything else. It's somewhat unfortunate that it doesn't synergize well with Steel. On the other hand it combines well with...
Poison: Dark/Poison with an Air Balloon has no weaknesses, so say hi to Dark/Poison Air Balloon Shedinja. It's also immune to Toxic, which is one of the more common ways to take out Shedinja. Dark/Poison Levitators are of course a broader, less gimmicky way to achieve a complete lack of weakness, and again, provides immunity to Toxic. (Dark/Poison Cresselia could be interesting, with - accuracy Toxics of its own) In general Poison is actually a very good Defensive type, even with sharing one of Steel's weaknesses, since it's only vulnerable to two things (Both of which you can be immune to by type) while having several resistances and immunity to Toxic/absorbing Toxic Spikes if grounded, not to mention the ability to use Black Sludge to heal yourself while punishing Trick/Switcheroo attempts. Really, Poison's main problem is that it's a terrible offensive type with no really flat-out-amazing moves. Even that can be gotten around to some extent or another: Nidoking, Nidoqueen, and Landorus-Incarnate all provide Sheer Force boosted Sludge Wave, which is in the vicinity of being a 120 BP move with no disadvantage.
Fighting: The only weakness Steel has that Abilities can't cover, and in fact Scrappy can block using Ghost to cover it, Fighting is important for that alone. It also resists Stealth Rock, it's only weaknesses are the unimpressive Fairy, Psychic, and Flying types (So you might consider using one or more of those for the inevitable Fighting types on the enemy's team), and it has the interesting quirk that combining it with Steel gives you a Fighting type with none of Fighting's weaknesses. All of Steel's weaknesses, mind, but the point is a Pokemon expecting to counter a Fighting typing may be in for a surprise if it hasn't planned for Fighting/Steel in specific. Good Fighting moves are also extremely widespread, so there are tons of Pokemon that might give Fighting a shot just for that aspect, such as Superpower Contrary Malamar, Close Combat Staraptor, etc.
Ghost: Offensively overlaps heavily with Dark, only it's harder to resist but possible to be immune, while it's really great defensively, except that it's weak to the useful Dark type. Keep in mind that you cannot trap Ghosts: Ghost-typing a Pokemon may be useful if you have reason to be concerned about it becoming trapped by Arena Trap, Magnet Pull, or Shadow Tag. (Or partial trapping moves like Magma Storm!) Shadow Ball is an extremely common move for Pokemon to have and providing STAB for it can be a boost to their coverage (I'm running Mega Gardevoir as Fairy/Ghost because Shadow Ball is better coverage for Fairy than Psychic is) so a lot of Pokemon might consider running as Ghost. Ghost can be particularly useful to Choiced sets that would hate to be trapped by something immune to their locked move.
An interesting point is that one can potentially take the Normal Scrappy Pokemon and make them Fighting Scrappy Pokemon for an overall better effect. (Pangoro is currently the only natural Scrappy Fighting type) Miltank (Hammer Arm, Brick Break, Power Up Punch), Kangaskhan (Drain Punch, Power Up Punch, Hammer Arm...), and Exploud (Brick Break, Hammer Arm, Focus Blast, Circle Throw, and others besides!) are unfortunately the only new options in this regard: Swellow and Stoutland have little or no Fighting moves at all (Stoutland has Rock Smash, yay), and Pangoro was already Fighting type. Even so, Miltank, Kangaskhan, Exploud, and even Pangoro (Since you can escape the double Fairy weakness) might see use for punishing Ghost/Normal, Ghost/Dark, and Ghost/Steel, all of which are solid defensive types.
Some thoughts about types broadly.
Normal: Normal/Ghost is a solid defensive type with only one weakness barring Scrappy and is actually surprisingly good offensively: only Dark/Rock, Dark/Steel, and Normal/Ghost can consistently resist both of its STABs, and only the mirror match isn't doubly weak to Fighting. Normal is also noteworthy for providing STAB to a number of really, really good moves, such as Extreme Speed and Boomburst. For Pokemon lacking such moves though, Normal/Ghost is probably the only reason to bother being part Normal at all. Blissey/Eviolite Chansey is probably perfectly happy to trade a vulnerability to 120 BP physical moves for a vulnerability to no more than just about 100 BP (Knock Off removing an item) moves.
Rock: With 5 weaknesses and only 4 resistances, Rock is an awful defensive type, especially since two of its weaknesses overlap with Steel's weaknesses, so plenty of Pokemon are prepared to break you completely incidentally. I'd hesitate to even take Rock for STAB on Rock moves, in all honesty. The main argument in Rock's favor is that Sandstorm's Special Defense boost can be invaluable, whether to cover up a bad Special Defense stat or to exaggerate an already excellent one. (Eviolite Chansey or Assault Vest Goodra, part Rock, in Sand. Yikes) In particular, Rock is vulnerable to Mach Punch, Vacuum Wave, Aqua Jet, and Bullet Punch, putting even fast Pokemon in a position to regret taking Rock type. I'm particularly thinking of Aerodactyl here, who has more STAB reason to keep its Rock typing than its Flying typing, but is probably better off running Crunch or some such, particularly Mega Aerodactyl with its Tough Claws not helping any Rock moves anyway. Even Rock's offensive characteristics are somewhat less desirable: it smashes Bug, but Bug is probably going to be rare in the meta, even if Bug Pokemon see lots of use. Same thing with Ice, which leaves its utility against Flying and Fire. If I were to run Ground/Fighting Regirock (Which I might try if the meta sees more play) I would certainly give it Rock Slide or Stone Edge for any Flying types, but otherwise? I dunno. In particular, I don't think there's anything particularly clever you can do with an Ability/type combo to get around the problem of how bad Rock is defensively, like you can with some other types.
Ground: Still an excellent offensive type, particularly since it's the only thing effective on Electric. Defensively it's nothing amazing, but there's worse out there. As has been said previously, Ground/Fire on a Pokemon with Water Absorb, Storm Drain, or Dry Skin is only weak to Ground, which is both an excellent defensive combination and another reason to describe Ground as a useful offensive type and it's even an excellent offensive type combo if you've got the STABs, so Ground certainly has some potential.
Steel: The premiere defensive type of course, and it throws in immunity to Toxic while you're at it. By itself justifies Ground, Fighting, and Fire STABs just to have consistent STAB super-effective damage on anything that feels like going Steel. Offensively Steel is still bad and is made worse in a meta where Pokemon can choose their types: Rock and Ice are unlikely to be selected as defensive types by most Pokemon, and anything electing to be Fairy can cover it up by being part Fire, part Water, part Electric, or even... part Steel, which covers up both of Fairy's weaknesses in one go. Since all the Fairy/resists Steel type combinations are actually good as defensive combinations and offensive combinations (Except Fairy/Steel isn't good offensively) Steel is actually pretty unlikely to be something you want to take to get Steel STAB, especially since most Steel moves are less than thrilling. Fire/Steel is a fantastic type combination in conjunction with Levitate, having only two weaknesses and immunity to both damaging major status elements, not to mention Sandstorm.
Bug: Defensively awful and offensively not much better. Bug/Steel is still noteworthy for having only one weakness: Fire, which you can cover with Flashfire. Offensively Bug is one of three types good against Dark, but the other two are both better types overall. It's also one of three types good against Psychic, but the other two are, again, overall better, which leaves it utility against Grass. Fire, Poison, Flying, and Ice all do that job just as well and only Ice isn't overall better defensively. yeah, Bug is almost never worth taking unless you specifically want the Bug/Steel combination. Vulnerability to Stealth Rock is basically the final nail in the coffin.
Ice: The worst defensive type in the game, I'd hesitate to take it even for a Hail team, given you can always take the various Snow Cloak, Ice Body, etc Pokemon and give them better type combinations while retaining Hail immunity. Ice is a good type offensively, but that's more an argument for using it as coverage for your STABs, and in any event the argument is weakened when Pokemon are generally going to avoid taking double-weaknesses unless they can cover them with an Ability. There is no Ability to be immune to Ice, so even a STAB Ice Mold Breaker Pokemon is not particularly appealing. (There is Thick Fat)
Grass: What I said about Bug, except: Grass is one of only two types Water is vulnerable to, and the other fails against Ground. Ground/Water is in fact vulnerable to Grass alone while otherwise having a solid array of resistances and a useful immunity that cannot be bypassed. On the other hand Ground/Water types will probably be stuff like Sap Sipper Goodra running Aqua Tail and Earthquake so how likely you are to actually care (Unless you're Mold Breaker) is another matter. Grass also has access to some nifty type combinations that are synergistic both offensively and defensively, such as Grass/Fire. And of course Grass renders you immune to powder moves, most notably Spore. I wouldn't casually commit to Grass as a type, but if Grass has no utility at top-level play I'll be shocked.
Water: Only two weaknesses, one of which you can be immune to with no ability to bypass it and the other type is less than thrilling in its offensive capacity. Very nice. Combine it with Dragon to have only two weaknesses, or with Ground on a Sap Sipper to have no weaknesses, or with Flying with Lighting Rod/Volt Absorb/Motor Drive to have your only weakness be the mediocre Rock type. Water/Fire is also really good both offensively and defensively, and Water/Grass is only weak to Bug and Poison, which are both not great offensively and Bug in particular is probably going to be extremely unpopular. Offensively Water is of course very solid, with only three types that resist it, one of which is itself, at which point Ice covers its other resistances. Water/Ice/Electric is very difficult to reliably wall, though anything with Ability-based Electric immunity can just pick to be pure Water, or Water/type that doesn't interact with those three. (Such as Fairy)
Fire: A great type almost in spite of itself, Fire provides immunity to Burns for any physical attacker that wants it (This can be worth it even if you have no Fire moves!), resists six different types to its three weaknesses (Though the resistances are weighted towards sub-par types like Bug), and is not only good at offense generally but is in particular one of three types that hits Steel super effectively. It's vulnerable to Stealth Rock, but you can just combine it with types that resist to balance it out, and they're often good pairings anyway, at least with the right Ability. (eg the previously described Ground/Fire with Water immunity Ability) Overall I'd avoid Fire if you don't care about Burns, actively welcome Burns (Guts/Facade), and/or have no good STABs for it, but for a Pokemon with at least BP 75 Fire moves it can be worth consideration. Iron Fist Fire typed Hitmonchan maybe?
Electric: A fantastic defensive type with only one weakness and immunity to Paralysis plus useful offensive qualities, albeit Ground can wall it consistently. Make any random Levitator into a pure Electric for no weaknesses. Honestly, there's not much to say, other than the fact that you can explore all the Electric/type combinations Game Freak hasn't touched or hasn't really touched. (Rotom barely counts)
Flying: Don't use pure Flying. Remember, barring Gravity and similar (And being Roosted, admittedly, but what if you decide to make a Flying type out of something that heals itself some other way?), Flying/Electric is the same thing but better, including throwing in immunity to Paralysis. Flying is in an odd position because it's a useful type combination (Immunity to Spikes and stuff), but with important disadvantages (Vulnerable to Electric, vulnerable to Stealth Rock, pairing it with Ground to reduce both is a double Ice weakness...), and then it's all sort of trivialized because Flying moves of any quality are ridiculously rare outside of natively Flying-typed Pokemon. Blaziken, Empoleon, Volcarona, Whimsicott, Mewtwo, Suicune, Scizor, Leavanny, Samurott, technically Mega Charizard X, and of course Smeargle are the only Pokemon that can learn any of Drill Peck, Air Slash, Hurricane, or Brave Bird that aren't natively Flying type. Since Flying's best characteristics are replicated but mostly better by the Ability Levitate, and going for unusual Flying STAB has limited opportunities, probably most Pokemon that aren't Flying in the first place (And a lot of them that are, like Landorus and Aerodactyl!) won't be given Flying type by most players, particularly since one of Flying's more useful characteristics is not true in this meta. (The ability to hit Shedinja) Though do note that Roserade and Mr. Mime can always use Technician-boosted Hidden Power Flying for effectively a 90 BP Flying move. (As can other Technicians, but the rest have mediocre or terrible Special Attack)
Dragon: Oddly enough, Dragon is actually improved by the meta. Ice loses most of its reasons to be appealing, which means your Dragon can usually settle for fearing only other Dragons and Fairies. Not only that, but Dragon/Steel is not vulnerable to any of Dragon's weaknesses while having STAB super effective potential on Fairies, and is in fact only vulnerable to Fighting and Ground. The only thing that walls Dragon/Steel offensively is Steel that isn't paired with Dragon, Ice, Rock, or Fairy. (... and Wonder Guard) Dragon is of course a fairly lacking offensive type nowadays, but Dragon may be worth selecting for its defensive qualities anyway, potentially even on Pokemon that lack Dragon moves. (I'm running a Dragon/Steel Ferrothorn right now, for instance. It's surprisingly decent)
Fairy: Only weak to two types, and it can cover both of those weaknesses by pairing up with Steel. Unfortunately, Poison's immunity to Toxic, and Steel being a fantastic defensive typing in general, mean that Fairy's two weaknesses (Or at least its Steel weakness) are liable to be quite common in practice. By a similar token, Fairy is going to struggle offensively since Steel is going to be common and quite possibly Fire and Poison too! Addressing all of these at once is also difficult: Fairy/Steel has its STABs resisted by Steel all by itself, let alone Fire/Steel which doubly resists both, Fairy/Fire is consistently walled by Fire, Fairy/Fighting is consistently walled by Poison... in short, Fairy, for all that it's a really great type in normal play with a lot of powerful representatives, is actually underpowered in its offensive presence and has no particularly amazing defensive utilities or combinations. Fairy/Steel with Levitate only has one weakness, for instance, but several other options exist to achieve the same basic effect (Or trump it) but with more secondary benefits, such as immunity to Burn, difficulty being Paralyzed, immunity to Spore, etc. It doesn't help Smeargle is the only way to get Moon Blast and Play Rough on the same Pokemon, meaning a given Pokemon usually only has one good Fairy STAB option on one statline, even if it has the stats to otherwise go either way.
Dark: A great type all around, though the weakness to Fighting, which is also good against Steel, hurts a bit. Particularly notable in this meta for the fact that Normal/Ghost is unafraid of everything else. It's somewhat unfortunate that it doesn't synergize well with Steel. On the other hand it combines well with...
Poison: Dark/Poison with an Air Balloon has no weaknesses, so say hi to Dark/Poison Air Balloon Shedinja. It's also immune to Toxic, which is one of the more common ways to take out Shedinja. Dark/Poison Levitators are of course a broader, less gimmicky way to achieve a complete lack of weakness, and again, provides immunity to Toxic. (Dark/Poison Cresselia could be interesting, with - accuracy Toxics of its own) In general Poison is actually a very good Defensive type, even with sharing one of Steel's weaknesses, since it's only vulnerable to two things (Both of which you can be immune to by type) while having several resistances and immunity to Toxic/absorbing Toxic Spikes if grounded, not to mention the ability to use Black Sludge to heal yourself while punishing Trick/Switcheroo attempts. Really, Poison's main problem is that it's a terrible offensive type with no really flat-out-amazing moves. Even that can be gotten around to some extent or another: Nidoking, Nidoqueen, and Landorus-Incarnate all provide Sheer Force boosted Sludge Wave, which is in the vicinity of being a 120 BP move with no disadvantage.
Fighting: The only weakness Steel has that Abilities can't cover, and in fact Scrappy can block using Ghost to cover it, Fighting is important for that alone. It also resists Stealth Rock, it's only weaknesses are the unimpressive Fairy, Psychic, and Flying types (So you might consider using one or more of those for the inevitable Fighting types on the enemy's team), and it has the interesting quirk that combining it with Steel gives you a Fighting type with none of Fighting's weaknesses. All of Steel's weaknesses, mind, but the point is a Pokemon expecting to counter a Fighting typing may be in for a surprise if it hasn't planned for Fighting/Steel in specific. Good Fighting moves are also extremely widespread, so there are tons of Pokemon that might give Fighting a shot just for that aspect, such as Superpower Contrary Malamar, Close Combat Staraptor, etc.
Ghost: Offensively overlaps heavily with Dark, only it's harder to resist but possible to be immune, while it's really great defensively, except that it's weak to the useful Dark type. Keep in mind that you cannot trap Ghosts: Ghost-typing a Pokemon may be useful if you have reason to be concerned about it becoming trapped by Arena Trap, Magnet Pull, or Shadow Tag. (Or partial trapping moves like Magma Storm!) Shadow Ball is an extremely common move for Pokemon to have and providing STAB for it can be a boost to their coverage (I'm running Mega Gardevoir as Fairy/Ghost because Shadow Ball is better coverage for Fairy than Psychic is) so a lot of Pokemon might consider running as Ghost. Ghost can be particularly useful to Choiced sets that would hate to be trapped by something immune to their locked move.
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You didn't even mention Psychic. Is it so bad? Let me try.
Psychic: Since Dark and Steel both plan on being popular as per the above synopsis, Psychic might have trouble offensively. However, Poison and Fighting also plan on being popular, and they're two types (the only two) that Psychic actually works well against. Other than the five mentioned types including itself, Psychic hits things neutrally, which can be seen as good or bad. Defensively, Psychic only resists itself and Fighting, which is pretty bad, and has three weaknesses, and while one of them is Bug, the other two are Dork and Ghost, so that's going to happen. The other downsides include moves being generally low-power. On one side, 'mons are going to have Psychic and maybe Psyshock, since they're TMs and so many things can learn them, on the other side, they have just 90 and 80 BP respectively, which pales in comparison to moves that have values like 120. On the previous side, Psyshock has unique utility in letting a Special attacker hit Defence, which is something you can't have otherwise bar Keldeo. Would anything like to have that option as a STAB and hit things neutrally in general, as well as the Fighting/not Steel and Poison/not Dark things? I don't know, I'm not good at this.
Psychic: Since Dark and Steel both plan on being popular as per the above synopsis, Psychic might have trouble offensively. However, Poison and Fighting also plan on being popular, and they're two types (the only two) that Psychic actually works well against. Other than the five mentioned types including itself, Psychic hits things neutrally, which can be seen as good or bad. Defensively, Psychic only resists itself and Fighting, which is pretty bad, and has three weaknesses, and while one of them is Bug, the other two are Dork and Ghost, so that's going to happen. The other downsides include moves being generally low-power. On one side, 'mons are going to have Psychic and maybe Psyshock, since they're TMs and so many things can learn them, on the other side, they have just 90 and 80 BP respectively, which pales in comparison to moves that have values like 120. On the previous side, Psyshock has unique utility in letting a Special attacker hit Defence, which is something you can't have otherwise bar Keldeo. Would anything like to have that option as a STAB and hit things neutrally in general, as well as the Fighting/not Steel and Poison/not Dark things? I don't know, I'm not good at this.
Yes I completely forgot about Psychic, and yes that is probably a commentary on how bad it is. There are numerous Pokemon where I find myself thinking they'd be better off swapping their Psychic typing for something else...
The main thing I'd add to what you said though is that A: Psychic is the only type other than Flying that does genuinely super effective damage on a Grass/Poison with Thick Fat, which can potentially include Pokemon other than Venusaur and B: Ground is the only other type that hits Poison super effectively. The latter point being somewhat underwhelming given that it's possible to be immune to both types and it's easier/there's more options to consistently bypass immunity to Ground than immunity to Psychic.
It doesn't help that Steel no longer resists Dark or Ghost. Back in the day Psychic/Steel is very like Ghost/Steel in terms of being really good actually, except you couldn't land super effective Fighting moves ever on Psychic/Steel where Ghost/Steel can be hit by Fighting with Scrappy etc, so it had some appeal.
The main thing I'd add to what you said though is that A: Psychic is the only type other than Flying that does genuinely super effective damage on a Grass/Poison with Thick Fat, which can potentially include Pokemon other than Venusaur and B: Ground is the only other type that hits Poison super effectively. The latter point being somewhat underwhelming given that it's possible to be immune to both types and it's easier/there's more options to consistently bypass immunity to Ground than immunity to Psychic.
It doesn't help that Steel no longer resists Dark or Ghost. Back in the day Psychic/Steel is very like Ghost/Steel in terms of being really good actually, except you couldn't land super effective Fighting moves ever on Psychic/Steel where Ghost/Steel can be hit by Fighting with Scrappy etc, so it had some appeal.
I liked your comment just because of the avatar reference n_n .
Also, muh porygon ;~;
But in all seroiusness, poryZ is a monster and as much as i love it i wouldn't be surprised if it actually got banned. I mean it 3hko's chansey after a single nasty plot iirc. However porygonZ is not all that threatening until it sets up it barely does anything to most stall teams until it sets up and setting up isn't all that easy with all the bulky and stronk pokes who can now easily resist it's stabs. For example - a lightning rod ice resist mon mentioned here would make my poryz cri and if i was into rage quitting i'd definitely ragequit. That's the thing about type control, anything can happen.
Weird type combos make the metagame really hard to run offense in imo so having a reliable thing to do decent damage is a good thing. But that's just me.
Also, i have no idea where the discussion i suggested could take place ._.
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Fire Or Water/Normal Or Dark are all decent offensive STAB combos, and when combined with Lightning Rod or another similar ability, they can completely shut down the BoltBeamBall coverage from PZ, perhaps even turning it into setup fodder.
look at you thinking outside the pokéball!
Porygon-Z without a Choice Scarf is easily outrun by a ton of things, meaning if you spend a turn on Nasty Plot they can easily be switching in something, and then Porygon-Z is fragile and has no priority of its own (And Vacuum Wave is the only one it would get much use out of anyway) so the switch-in is very likely to be able to OHKO you or force you to switch, having accomplished nothing. When I thought people were talking about Scarfed Porygon-Z I didn't say much because I've been menaced by that in STABmons and other metas and it really can be scary, but non-Scarfed Porygon-Z is not a real threat. Changing types can probably make it more useful, but it won't fix its underlying problems of being not fast enough, and not tough enough to not care that it isn't fast enough.
Greninja (Or Kecleon), if you use it for Protean, is probably best off being a type combination that protects it from hazards: Fighting/Steel, Fighting/Ground, or Steel/Ground are all doubly resistant to Stealth Rock and two of them are immune to Toxic Spikes, while Flying/Steel, Flying/Ground, or Flying/Fighting are all standard to Stealth Rock and immune to Spikes and Toxic Spikes. Or you could make it Ground/Poison, Fighting/Poison, or maybe Steel/Poison (I'm not clear if Steel/Poison would still clear Toxic Spikes) to be resistant to Stealth Rock and clear Toxic Spikes. Or I guess you can give it a typing that best helps it switch in on whatever your team overall struggles most against.
Clefable running Fairy/Fire and Fairy/Steel can get STABs on both of them, though in Steel's case it doesn't get them both on the same offensive stat. (Moon Blast and Meteor Mash vs Fire Blast or Flamethrower and Moon Blast)
Also that Ground/Fighting Regirock I was proposing before? I've found myself running Smack Down and it actually being useful, instead of Rock Slide or Stone Edge. Bringing things into reach of my STAB Earthquake is fantastic, particularly since there's a lot of temptation to make Pokemon with double Ground weaknesses but Levitate.
Greninja (Or Kecleon), if you use it for Protean, is probably best off being a type combination that protects it from hazards: Fighting/Steel, Fighting/Ground, or Steel/Ground are all doubly resistant to Stealth Rock and two of them are immune to Toxic Spikes, while Flying/Steel, Flying/Ground, or Flying/Fighting are all standard to Stealth Rock and immune to Spikes and Toxic Spikes. Or you could make it Ground/Poison, Fighting/Poison, or maybe Steel/Poison (I'm not clear if Steel/Poison would still clear Toxic Spikes) to be resistant to Stealth Rock and clear Toxic Spikes. Or I guess you can give it a typing that best helps it switch in on whatever your team overall struggles most against.
Clefable running Fairy/Fire and Fairy/Steel can get STABs on both of them, though in Steel's case it doesn't get them both on the same offensive stat. (Moon Blast and Meteor Mash vs Fire Blast or Flamethrower and Moon Blast)
Also that Ground/Fighting Regirock I was proposing before? I've found myself running Smack Down and it actually being useful, instead of Rock Slide or Stone Edge. Bringing things into reach of my STAB Earthquake is fantastic, particularly since there's a lot of temptation to make Pokemon with double Ground weaknesses but Levitate.
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You have somewhat of a point with the speed issues of PZ, but specs and set up are much stronger sets due to the metagame being much faster. They are just as vulnerable to faster pokemon from offense teams, though.
My point is that I find it highly unlikely that the Nasty Plot version justifies banning Porygon-Z. Maybe Suspecting it, but even that is a bit eyebrow-raising to me. There are just too many ways to potentially counter it because its statline is awkward and attempts to work around this introduce their only problems, such as how Agility+Nasty Plot leaves you with only two move slots for attacks that the enemy may well be able to completely wall, Nasty Plot boost or no. Not even getting into the potential to utilize Unaware Pokemon with type combinations Porygon-Z struggles with, the fact that Dragonite's Multiscale lets it laugh off a single hit just fine and now it doesn't have to worry about a double weakness to overcome Multiscale, etc.
Whereas the Scarf version being really powerful would be something I could believe is sufficiently difficult to counter as to justify giving serious discussion to the possibility of banning it.
Whereas the Scarf version being really powerful would be something I could believe is sufficiently difficult to counter as to justify giving serious discussion to the possibility of banning it.
Trick can be used to cripple Chansey however.
If you use both Chansey and Blissey, you can counter almost every Porygon-Z because even if one is tricked a Specs or Scarf, they other one is still usable and Porygon-Z likely has no boosting move if it is a Choice variant. I also have some replays showing Porygon-Z not being very useful against more offensive teams. One is a setup variant which gets helplessly swept by my Tyrantrum and the other is a Scarf variant which fails to revenge kill my Mega Gyarados. I might elaborate more on why I don't think P-Z should be banned, but I don't think it is as unstoppable as some make it out to be.
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/pandora-typecontrol-1057584
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/pandora-typecontrol-1064733
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/pandora-typecontrol-1057584
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/pandora-typecontrol-1064733
Bug / Steel (Landorus) (M) @ Choice Band / Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Iron Tail
- U-turn
- Rock Slide
- Knock Off
This Lando-I is supposed to soften walls using its powerful U-turns, hit fairies with SF boosted Iron Tails and Knock Off Chanseys and other blobs. I think CB fits this set better since only 2 moves are affected by SF, and you really want to be spamming U-turn as much as possible.
Ghost / Electric (Latias) (F) @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Shadow Ball
- Thunderbolt
- Roost / Defog
- Hidden Power [Fire] / Grass Knot
Ghost / Electric with Levitate (Gen 4 Rotom) is an interesting type combo that I haven't actually seen much. Although it falls prey to all the Mold Breaker EQ and Dark spam, I think it has potential. It hard walls Special Landorus without Gravity and it can spinblock and beat Water / Ground Avalugg.
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Iron Tail
- U-turn
- Rock Slide
- Knock Off
This Lando-I is supposed to soften walls using its powerful U-turns, hit fairies with SF boosted Iron Tails and Knock Off Chanseys and other blobs. I think CB fits this set better since only 2 moves are affected by SF, and you really want to be spamming U-turn as much as possible.
Ghost / Electric (Latias) (F) @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Shadow Ball
- Thunderbolt
- Roost / Defog
- Hidden Power [Fire] / Grass Knot
Ghost / Electric with Levitate (Gen 4 Rotom) is an interesting type combo that I haven't actually seen much. Although it falls prey to all the Mold Breaker EQ and Dark spam, I think it has potential. It hard walls Special Landorus without Gravity and it can spinblock and beat Water / Ground Avalugg.
The problem with both examples is that the former will obviously not be stopped by NP Porygon-Z, and the latter works as a revenge killer; Mega Gyarados wasn't weaken prior to Porygon-Z's attack, which was the reason why Porygon-Z was unable to defeat it. I'm also thinking of suspecting Landorus, as it can use physical sets and special sets incredibly well, and has very few good counters. I haven't played these days, so I would like to know your thoughts regarding Landorus.
I would really prefer to hold off on even Suspecting anything. The possibilities in this meta are so crazy that it's really difficult to pin down whether something is actually too good, and in particular there's going to be tons of gems that most people won't think to try out until they see it being used by someone else. Like most Other Metas people are currently just taking top OU Pokemon, adapting them to the Other Meta (In this case giving them more useful typing, often not even exploring unusual move choices), and then playing basically as they would in standard OU. So there's a lot of potential gems that people just flat out are not trying or even thinking of the possibility of their existence, because they laugh (Sometimes literally) at the idea of using that Pokemon. In Tier Shift I literally had a match (Kinda wish I'd thought to save the replay now) where my team was mostly NU Pokemon, with a couple of RU, and my opponent (And his cheerleaders) were laughing in disbelief up until it became clear I was going to win. Never mind that Tier Shift's entire point is to make the lower tier Pokemon better. This kind of thinking is so pervasive that it takes much longer than it could for Other Metas to find their actual best options, work out that some of the obvious greats are actually not that great (The Smash competitive community initially thought Marth was much better than the other characters in Brawl, and it eventually became clear that, though a very good character yes, the main thing was that he was much less changed from Melee than most characters and so involved less of a learning curve for old pros), etc.
And now to follow up on my claims that a lot of Psychic types would rather be something other than Psychic.
It's worth noting that, unless you either care about Psychic resistance (But don't want to be Steel or Dark) or are concerned about Scrappy Fighting moves, Ghost is basically Psychic+ as a defensive typing. Since Ghost is also overall better as an offensive type and many, many Psychics gets Shadow Ball (Which admittedly is slightly weaker than the move Psychic) this often doubles as a boost to their offensive performance!
Also: At least read about Sigilyph. Oh god Sigilyph.
And now to follow up on my claims that a lot of Psychic types would rather be something other than Psychic.
It's worth noting that, unless you either care about Psychic resistance (But don't want to be Steel or Dark) or are concerned about Scrappy Fighting moves, Ghost is basically Psychic+ as a defensive typing. Since Ghost is also overall better as an offensive type and many, many Psychics gets Shadow Ball (Which admittedly is slightly weaker than the move Psychic) this often doubles as a boost to their offensive performance!
Also: At least read about Sigilyph. Oh god Sigilyph.
Medicham: Fighting/Steel gives you a Fighting type with none of Fighting's weaknesses and also gives Medicham STAB on its Bullet Punches. Or you could be Fighting/Fire for Burn immunity and run Fire Punch. Fighting/Electric for STAB on Thunderpunch is less notable, but has fewer weaknesses than Fighting/Fire. In any event Medicham rarely has reason to use the awful Psycho Cut or Zen Headbutt anyway, and thus is unlikely to miss its Psychic typing.
Gallade: Same typing as Medicham, but a very different movepool. Fighting/Ghost stands out in particular, because Gallade is fond of running Shadow Sneak anyway. Alternatively if you want a double weakness to Flying you can go for STAB on the amazing Leaf Blade alongside Close Combat, or you could go for Night Slash for a double weakness to Fairy... it also gets the mediocre Thunderpunch, so Electric has some appeal. Mostly Fighting/Ghost seems like Gallade's best option, or maybe Dark/Poison running Night Slash and Poison Jab, using Close Combat for coverage.
Metagross: Steel/Ground doubly resists Stealth Rock, provides STAB Meteor Mash and Earthquake, and regardless of what Steelix may have led you to believe is actually a pretty good defensive typing overall. Steel/Ghost is a great defensive typing and prevents the enemy from trapping it in the deal, even with Magnet Pull. I often don't even bother to give Metagross Zen Headbutt, so the STAB loss from being a Ghost is worth the ability to turn High Jump Kick into a 100% chance of 50% health lost, since the STAB wasn't being used in the first place! It's somewhat unfortunate that it's only Ghost move is Shadow Ball, though. Another option would be Flying/Steel, which is an excellent defensive type and provides STAB on Aerial Ace, which Metagross does actually use at times.
Bronzong: Similar overall logic as Metagross, but replace Meteor Mash with Gyro Ball (Or Iron Head I guess) and cackle at how little hazards mean to you. Alternatively you can go for Steel/Fire and ignore your newfound double Ground weakness while being immune to Burns, but Brongong lacks Fire moves... it's also worth noting that Bronzong's unique Heatproof, though less effective than Flashfire, will still reduce Bug/Steel's double weakness to Fire down to single-weakness damage. Or you could just go for Earthquake STAB, incidentally laughing at hazards. Or Normal for Explosion STAB. For a Special-oriented Bronzong I'd probably just stick with Ghost/Steel.
Jirachi: With a good array of Electric moves, Dazzling Gleam, and U-Turn, arguments can be made for several different type combinations. Physical Jirachi should probably avoid going Ghost, lacking any physical Ghost moves, particularly since it can always U-Turn out if trapped, and Special Jirachi would be foolish to run as Steel/Electric (Double weakness to Ground, no Levitate), but Special Jirachi could potentially run as Fairy/Steel, Electric/Fairy, Ghost/Electric, Ghost/Fairy... physical Jirachi might consider Bug-typing for U-Turn STAB. Maybe.
Azelf: Make it Normal for Explosion STAB. Add Electric for a nearly free addition of resistance to Electric, Flying, and Steel, not to mention Paralysis, and it even gets Thunderbolt and Thunder. Alternatively you could render it virtually immune to entry hazards I guess. Its movepool also includes good Fire moves, Acrobatics (Though being part-Flying would be a bit redundant with Levitate), the Elemental Punches and Knock Off, and even Iron Tail if you're fine with missing.
Uxie and Mesprit: I have no idea what these two normally contribute in actual teams. (I've seen Mesprit like one time in a ladder battle in any meta ever, and it fainted having accomplished nothing) There's always making them pure Electric for no weaknesses, I guess. In any event I'd assume Uxie would want a wall-y type combination, and given it has Levitate Dark/Poison is probably its best bet.
Celebi and Exeggutor: Assuming you want to keep the Grass typing (And there's good reason to do so), if nothing else Ghost is a solid alternative to Psychic, escaping the double weakness to Bug. (And in fact rendering them neutral to Bug) I think they both get Shadow Ball, too. Exeggutor also gets Sludge Bomb and, interestingly, Curse. Celebi also gets Charge Beam, Dazzling Gleam, and Earth Power, and Ground/Fairy is actually really good coverage and a non-terrible defensive type combination.
Mew: Dark/Poison is the main one I've seen and is probably one of the better possibilities for Mew, leaving it with one weakness, providing immunity to Toxic, and it even gets Dark Pulse for a general purpose STAB move. If you want STABs... well... gosh. It can do a LOT of stuff. Go see for yourself!
Mewtwo: One of the only Pokemon that would probably prefer to remain Psychic, given its access to the excellent Psystrike. You could always use it as a non-STAB coverage move, instead. Psychic/Fighting is probably the most immediately useful type combination, for Aura Sphere STAB. Its worth keeping in mind that Mewtwo has an enormous array of moves, including Thunderbolt, Thunder, Flamethrower, Fire Blast, Solar Beam, Energy Ball, and a bunch of physical moves for Mega Mewtwo X to play with, including Earthquake, so Mewtwo can be a competent version of a wide variety of type combinations!
Deoxys: In Normal or Attack Forme, I'd probably make it Normal/Psychic, Fighting/Psychic, or Normal/Fighting, (For STAB on Extreme Speed, Psycho Boost, or Superpower) though there's probably clever possibilities I'm overlooking. Defense Forme is probably better off with a defensive type combination, such as Dark/Poison or some part Steel combination. (It gets Gyro Ball, keep in mind) Speed Forme tends to be more utility oriented in the first place, so it cares less about achieving STAB. Not sure.
Slowbro/Slowking: I can actually see leaving them alone, assuming you use them. Water/Ghost is not so straightforward an improvement for a Pokemon that actually cares about getting in real damage with its Psyshocks.
Jynx: Fairy/Ghost running Shadow Ball and Draining Kiss? It has Dry Skin, but lacks the movepool to seriously abuse rain, and in fact its movepool is largely Ice moves with a decent array of Psychic moves. Ghost/Ice isn't the worst typing in the world, but seriously, Ice is an awful defensive type and not even that appealing offensively in this meta. A gimmicky build would be Ground/Fire with Dry Skin, though its best STAB for that is Hidden Power of one of them. It doesn't help its case any that its Special Attack is around twice its Attack and yet its movepool is strongly weighted towards physical options: it could run as Fighting reasonably well if its Attack wasn't awful. It does get Energy Ball, so Ghost/Grass?
Cresselia: An obvious pick is Fairy for STAB on Moonblast, and Fairy actually is a solid defensive type, but my personal pick is to ignore STAB outright in favor of Steel/Fire for immunity to damaging status effects and being overall very difficult to hurt. I hesitate to say Toxic is a good move for such a set, because so many things will be part Steel, though. Mostly the idea is to survive and Calm Mind up. If you do want dual-STAB, Fairy/Ghost with Moon Blast and Shadow Ball is proably your best bet, being moves it actually has, an OK type combination defensively, and a good one offensively. (Steel/Normal, Fire/Normal, or Poison/Normal are the only type combinations that resist-or-better Fairy and Ghost at the same time, and they're all bad type combinations)
Reuniclus: Grass/Ghost for STAB on Energy Ball and Shadow Ball? DON'T make it Psychic/Ghost though: that way lies double weaknesses to Ghost and Dark, which is horrible. Even for a faster Pokemon, there's always Shadow Sneak and Sucker Punch to ruin your day. I suppose you could be Ghost/Fighting for STAB on Shadow Ball and Focus Blast? Ghost/Electric has some potential for a rain team: it gets Thunder, though not Thunderbolt. It can even set its own rain!
Xatu: With access to Magic Bounce, Xatu doesn't need to concern itself with immunity to statuses per se. Ground would be better assurance for protection against Paralysis by virtue of making you immune to everything that inflicts Paralysis incidentally other than Tri Attack, for instance. Xatu should instead concern itself with being defensively solid and/or having good STABs. (It gets Steel Wing, for reference) As usual, swapping out Psychic for Ghost (And Psychic for Shadow Ball) is a fairly straightforward overall improvement. (Minor loss to damage output, mind) It has Stored Power, though, so it might instead be worth running as Psychic as the end-goal of a Baton Pass, though Espeon seems an overall better choice for that. An odd point is that it gets Solarbeam: one could potentially run it as part-Grass on a Sun team.
Espeon: Espeon's biggest concern is that its movepool sucks. Its overall best STAB type combination offensively is Psychic/Ghost, and that's horrifyingly bad defensively. Remove its Psychic movepool, and it has... not a lot. To be fair, one of its best tricks is to have stuff Baton Pass to it and then it Stored Powers everything to death, so it might be best off remaining Psychic and instead taking either Steel (Broad defensive applicability) or Fairy. (Covers up its weaknesses to Bug and Dark, albeit not Ghost) Or just remaining pure Psychic outright!
Meloetta: What happens when it uses Relic Song, anyway? Does it replace its second type with Fighting, period, or switch to Normal/Fighting, period, or does its type remain the same but its statline changes? Even just running it in Aria Forme and ignoring all that, it gets Thunder and Thunderbolt, Shadow Ball, Energy Ball, Dazzling Gleam, and a few noteworthy moves like Charge Beam. Ghost/Electric Meloetta?
Beeheeyem: Pure Ghost? Ghost/Dark? I dunno. Beeheeyem has worse things than its typing hampering it.
Musharna: As far as I can tell this thing is basically a bad Reuniclus. Um. What I said about Reuniclus?
Victini: My first impulse is to say Fire/Electric for STAB Fusion Bolt alongside STAB V-Create, but that has a double weakness Victini can't cover up. If you're willing to take the risk, it's flexible and lethal... and completely walled by Ground+Flash Fire Pokemon... Bug/Fire for U-Turn STAB is doubly weak to Rock... Bug/Electric is actually pretty decent but loses the STAB on V-Create... Victini has to make hard decisions, is what I'm saying. There's some other interesting things one could do for a Special Victini, particularly in a Sun team where it could run as Fire/Grass: it has Solar Beam!
Gardevoir: Fairy/Ghost seems the overall best option to me (And in particular a fairly straight improvement over Psychic/Fairy Gardevoir/Mega Gardveoir), though it has a few Electric moves so Fairy/Electric has some potential. I have difficulty imagining any other combinations being particularly appealing, barring something odd like a bulky Wish-passing Gardevoir that doesn't care overly much about STAB.
Lugia: If you want Aeroblast and Psycho Boost (It gets it through Gale of Darkness' Shadow Lugia) than you should probably stick with Psychic/Flying. Otherwise there's tons of options for helping it wall, including that Flying/Steel keeps its primary STAB while being an excellent defensive type.
Alakazam: Dark/Fairy for STAB on Dark Pulse and Dazzling Gleam seems Alakazam's overall best possibility, given its movepool and how bad various other STAB-supporting type combinations are. (Psychic/Ghost is doubly weak to Ghost and Dark, Fairy/Grass is doubly weak to Poison, Psychic/Grass is doubly weak to Bug as is Dark/Grass, Fighting/Dark is doubly weak to Fairy...) I'm sorry, I'm an idiot and don't know why I thought Alakazam got Dark Pulse. Ghost/Fairy with Shadow Ball and Dazzling Gleam is what I should've said.
Claydol: A Special Claydol can just go Ground/Ghost with Earth Power and Shadow Ball, but Claydol is equally good at physical as Special and Earthquake is harder hitting. The obvious thing to do is give yourself STAB on Rock Slide/Stone Edge, and then die horribly to random Water and Grass moves. Saner options include going part Steel and grabbing Gyro Ball, or part Normal for Explosion STAB. (Though I've never seen anyone use Exploding Claydol in competitive play myself) Given it has Calm Mind it's probably better off going Special in practice, where it's worth noting that it gets Dazzling Gleam (Ground/Fairy is good coverage), Solar Beam (Grass is somewhat redundant with Levitate mind) and Charge Beam. (Electric/Ground could be neat)
Malamar: The obvious route is Fighting/Dark, but that just means trading a double weakness to Bug for a double weakness to Fairy, which is a much more terrible thing to be having. (Other than U-Turn being a horrible thing to be doubly weak to) Oddly enough it might be worth running it as Fighting/Rock, as Rock Slide is one of its best moves after Superpower, and it at least adds no double weaknesses and in fact covers Fighting's vulnerability to Flying. It actually gets Pluck, which isn't amazing, but would vaguely justify Fighting/Flying, which is also a non-terrible type combination.
Girafarig: Normal/Ghost is one nasty option for it, since it gets Shadow Ball naturally. It's also one of several Pokemon with Sap Sipper, so a Water/Ground edition could be worth running, maybe. (It has no Water moves, though) A physical edition that's part Dark is another good option, given its Crunch access. It also gets Earthquake, Thunderbolt, and Thunder, so Dark/Ground for a physical set or Electric/Ghost for a Special set has some potential.
Mr. Mime: Pick a wall-y type combination and run Filter on it, basically. Ghost/Fairy is, as usual, a fairly straightforward improvement, but Steel/Fairy is probably more useful for Toxic immunity and a zillion resistances. If for some reason you care about getting STAB in specific and dislike something about Ghost/Fairy or Steel/Fairy, it gets Thunder, Thunderbolt, Solar Beam, Energy Ball, Focus Blast, Charge Beam, and a bunch of Physical moves you should never ever use because it only has 45 Attack to its 100 Special Attack.
Gothitelle: Trap enemies, then take them down. Steel or Poison are obvious choices for Toxic immunity (And Poison ensures your own Toxic will hit, if you want to use Toxic), Dark is useful to provide resistance to those pesky Ghosts that can switch out anytime they want... Dark/Poison is probably one of its best possibilities, overall.
Hypno: Its Special movepool is depressingly limited and leads to unfavorable comparisons to Alakazam (And probably non-Psychic Pokemon, for that matter), but its physical Attack is equal to its Special Attack and it has a pretty decent physical movepool, including all the elemental punches. A Fire/Fighting Hypno (With Brick Break, or maybe Power Up Punch) could have some potential, though overall it's probably just a bad Hitmonchan at that point. It does get different Abilities, but Insomnia is the main one of any note to me, and if Spore is less popular because random things are Grass-typed and yet actually good Pokemon, then Insomnia isn't that great.
Chimecho: Unless there's something amazing in its movepool I'm unaware of, Chimecho has to compete with all the other Psychic Levitators, and now also all the non-Psychic Levitators too. Hooray. I don't expect to see this seriously used competitively.
Wobbuffet: Doesn't care about STABs at all, and doesn't care about being Burned, other than the damage taken. Does care about being hit with Toxic: make it part Poison or part Steel. It can't trap Ghost types, so avoid being vulnerable to them: Poison/Dark would make more sense than Steel/Dark with its double weakness to Fighting. Main reason I can see to deviate from this is if you're concerned about how everybody is going to be carrying Ground, Fire, and Fighting moves anyway, in which case an off-beat type combination that isn't vulnerable to those might be worth exploring. Flying/Poison resists one of those and is immune to the other while still satisfying Toxic immunity.
Meowstic: This meta might finally give a reason to use female Meowstic. For male Meowstic you're a Prankster, go for a wall-y type like Dark/Poison, done. Female Meowstic has over male Meowstic Stored Power, Signal Beam, Magical Leaf, Me First... and then everything else it should have over male they both get out of TMs, like Shadow Ball and Charge Beam. Even so, female Meowstic with Competitive, Stored Power, and some good secondary typing (NOT GHOST) has some potential. It gets Thunderbolt, Dark Pulse (... yay double Bug weakness...) and Energy Ball... yeah OK it's probably not seeing use. Sad.
Sigilyph: It's got Dazzling Gleam, Shadow Ball, Solar Beam, Dark Pulse, Flash Cannon, Energy Ball, Charge Beam, Heat Wave, Signal Beam, Ice Beam... it'd be one of the more competent Ghost/Steel options out there, or you could run it as Dark/Fire, or Fire/Grass or... it's got a lot of options. And it gets Magic Guard or Tinted Lens! Tinted Lens with Calm Mind could potentially be a very solid sweeper, difficult to wall. Make it Psychic/Fairy with Stored Power and Dazzling Gleam, and there's literally no way to actually resist it with Tinted Lens: if you're Psychic/Steel, it hits you for effectively neutral Dazzling Gleam, if you're part Dark to be immune to Stored Power you can't be resistant to Dazzling Gleam before Tinted Lens, and if you're Fire/Steel to be doubly resistant to Fairy and resistant to Psychic, Stored Power is effectively neutral because Tinted Lens. Oh god. Or it could be Psychic/Steel for a better type combination overall that has basically just as hard to wall: Dark/type can't be doubly resistant to Steel, while Psychic/Steel is only singly resistant to Steel, and anything that doubly resists Steel doesn't resist Psychic at all or is part Steel and only does so one stage. AND this monster gets Roost! AND it can run various other combinations that are just as good with Tinted Lens!
Swoobat: AAAA ANOTHER STORED POWER USER BUT WITH SIMPLE OH GOD. If you're going to go the Stored Power route it's best options are its native Psychic/Flying or Psychic/Fire with Heat Wave. Alternatively you could ignore Stored Power (Or use it as coverage) and make it Fire/Grass with Heat Wave and Giga Drain to make your little fragile made-of-glass-do-not-sneeze-on Pokemon vaguely difficult to kill. Or a vaguely tanky type combination and ignore Stored Power STAB outright like going Dark/Poison for one weakness, but that dramatically slows down the Stored Power gain rate and in the case of Dark/Poison it has no STAB moves as backup.
Starmie: One of the only Pokemon I might argue giving Rock typing, as it's one of the best Power Gem users in the entire game (If not THE best Power Gem User, period), and the value of Power Gem is difficult to place given that most people will assume that Special Rock is not something they have to worry about. The main problem is that every good STAB type combination it has involving Rock has one or more double weaknesses. In any event it also gets Thunderbolt, Thunder, Flash Cannon (!), Dazzling Gleam, and Ice Beam and Blizzard meh. Oddly enough, it does not have Shadow Ball, meaning it cannot substitute Ghost in for Psychic particularly competently. On the other hand, Water/Steel and Water/Electric are both quite good defensive type combinations, and Water/Fairy too for that matter.
Grumpig: Another decent Power Gem user, but nowhere near as fast, and making it part Rock seems an odd thing to do when its overall best Ability is Thick Fat. Other than that it has basically the usual set of Special moves that you've seen me layout for various other Psychic types, which unfortunately doesn't lend itself to anything interesting with Thick Fat. I suppose you could be Rock/Grass and only really fear Fighting and Steel AKA possibly the two most common types in this metagame?
Solrock:... my first impulse was to say 'hooray it can get STAB on its Fire moves!' but then I actually looked, and all its Fire moves are Special while its Attack is about double its Special Attack. I dunno, it could run Ground/Steel with Earthquake and Iron Head? It's too fast to really use Gyro Ball, even though it has it. Ground/Flying with Earthquake and Acrobatics and Smack Down is another thing it could do but that's a double weakness to Ice... Flying/Rock with Rock Slide and Acrobatics?... oh man Solrock is just terrible.
Lunatone: Still a terrible Pokemon, but actually has a better alignment in its stats and movepool. Just don't make it part Rock, it's best special Rock is Ancient Power and its Attack is garbage. It gets Moonblast though! Plus Earth Power, Ice Beam, Signal Beam, Shadow Ball, Blizzard, Charge Beam... it could run a competent Ground/Fairy with Earth Power and Moonblast build, which is really unusual and Fairy and Ground are quite good together: everything that resists Fairy is vulnerable to Ground, leaving only Levitating and Flying version of Poison, Steel, and Fire to wall the combination. Add in Electric and suddenly they have to Levitate or have an Ability that makes them immune to Electric. This probably isn't enough to salvage it (Its stats are still awful and it lacks important move options: for some ungodly reason it doesn't get Moonlight, or indeed any healing at all), but it IS the only Pokemon that gets both Moonblast and Earth Power. (Celebi, Mew, CLaydol, Shaymin, and Probopass can all do Dazzling Gleam and Earth Power instead) The equivalent effect for physical (Play Rough and Earthquake) is slightly more common: Donphan, Granbull, and Ursaring can all do that.
Latios and Latias: Ghost/Dragon is a good defensive typing, and gives STAB Shadow Ball. On the other hand, Psyshock is important because people frequently bring in Special walls on the Latis. On the other hand, if people run Poison/Dark Blissey/Eviolite Chansey as standard, Psyshock loses most of its appeal and I go back to insisting Ghost/Dragon with Shadow Ball over Psyshock is a fairly flat improvement. Their Special movepools and even their Physical movepools (But their Attack is a a fair bit lower than their Special Attack) are actually quite diverse: Dragon/Water running Surf is another potentially viable option, and punishes Fire/Steel trying to be immune to damaging status ailments.
Zen Darmanitan: why would you even plan around using this thing unless the meta allows it as a standalone
Unown: Not that anybody's going to use them, but hey, you can give them STAB on any Hidden Power except Normal or Fairy because those don't exist hooray!
Gallade: Same typing as Medicham, but a very different movepool. Fighting/Ghost stands out in particular, because Gallade is fond of running Shadow Sneak anyway. Alternatively if you want a double weakness to Flying you can go for STAB on the amazing Leaf Blade alongside Close Combat, or you could go for Night Slash for a double weakness to Fairy... it also gets the mediocre Thunderpunch, so Electric has some appeal. Mostly Fighting/Ghost seems like Gallade's best option, or maybe Dark/Poison running Night Slash and Poison Jab, using Close Combat for coverage.
Metagross: Steel/Ground doubly resists Stealth Rock, provides STAB Meteor Mash and Earthquake, and regardless of what Steelix may have led you to believe is actually a pretty good defensive typing overall. Steel/Ghost is a great defensive typing and prevents the enemy from trapping it in the deal, even with Magnet Pull. I often don't even bother to give Metagross Zen Headbutt, so the STAB loss from being a Ghost is worth the ability to turn High Jump Kick into a 100% chance of 50% health lost, since the STAB wasn't being used in the first place! It's somewhat unfortunate that it's only Ghost move is Shadow Ball, though. Another option would be Flying/Steel, which is an excellent defensive type and provides STAB on Aerial Ace, which Metagross does actually use at times.
Bronzong: Similar overall logic as Metagross, but replace Meteor Mash with Gyro Ball (Or Iron Head I guess) and cackle at how little hazards mean to you. Alternatively you can go for Steel/Fire and ignore your newfound double Ground weakness while being immune to Burns, but Brongong lacks Fire moves... it's also worth noting that Bronzong's unique Heatproof, though less effective than Flashfire, will still reduce Bug/Steel's double weakness to Fire down to single-weakness damage. Or you could just go for Earthquake STAB, incidentally laughing at hazards. Or Normal for Explosion STAB. For a Special-oriented Bronzong I'd probably just stick with Ghost/Steel.
Jirachi: With a good array of Electric moves, Dazzling Gleam, and U-Turn, arguments can be made for several different type combinations. Physical Jirachi should probably avoid going Ghost, lacking any physical Ghost moves, particularly since it can always U-Turn out if trapped, and Special Jirachi would be foolish to run as Steel/Electric (Double weakness to Ground, no Levitate), but Special Jirachi could potentially run as Fairy/Steel, Electric/Fairy, Ghost/Electric, Ghost/Fairy... physical Jirachi might consider Bug-typing for U-Turn STAB. Maybe.
Azelf: Make it Normal for Explosion STAB. Add Electric for a nearly free addition of resistance to Electric, Flying, and Steel, not to mention Paralysis, and it even gets Thunderbolt and Thunder. Alternatively you could render it virtually immune to entry hazards I guess. Its movepool also includes good Fire moves, Acrobatics (Though being part-Flying would be a bit redundant with Levitate), the Elemental Punches and Knock Off, and even Iron Tail if you're fine with missing.
Uxie and Mesprit: I have no idea what these two normally contribute in actual teams. (I've seen Mesprit like one time in a ladder battle in any meta ever, and it fainted having accomplished nothing) There's always making them pure Electric for no weaknesses, I guess. In any event I'd assume Uxie would want a wall-y type combination, and given it has Levitate Dark/Poison is probably its best bet.
Celebi and Exeggutor: Assuming you want to keep the Grass typing (And there's good reason to do so), if nothing else Ghost is a solid alternative to Psychic, escaping the double weakness to Bug. (And in fact rendering them neutral to Bug) I think they both get Shadow Ball, too. Exeggutor also gets Sludge Bomb and, interestingly, Curse. Celebi also gets Charge Beam, Dazzling Gleam, and Earth Power, and Ground/Fairy is actually really good coverage and a non-terrible defensive type combination.
Mew: Dark/Poison is the main one I've seen and is probably one of the better possibilities for Mew, leaving it with one weakness, providing immunity to Toxic, and it even gets Dark Pulse for a general purpose STAB move. If you want STABs... well... gosh. It can do a LOT of stuff. Go see for yourself!
Mewtwo: One of the only Pokemon that would probably prefer to remain Psychic, given its access to the excellent Psystrike. You could always use it as a non-STAB coverage move, instead. Psychic/Fighting is probably the most immediately useful type combination, for Aura Sphere STAB. Its worth keeping in mind that Mewtwo has an enormous array of moves, including Thunderbolt, Thunder, Flamethrower, Fire Blast, Solar Beam, Energy Ball, and a bunch of physical moves for Mega Mewtwo X to play with, including Earthquake, so Mewtwo can be a competent version of a wide variety of type combinations!
Deoxys: In Normal or Attack Forme, I'd probably make it Normal/Psychic, Fighting/Psychic, or Normal/Fighting, (For STAB on Extreme Speed, Psycho Boost, or Superpower) though there's probably clever possibilities I'm overlooking. Defense Forme is probably better off with a defensive type combination, such as Dark/Poison or some part Steel combination. (It gets Gyro Ball, keep in mind) Speed Forme tends to be more utility oriented in the first place, so it cares less about achieving STAB. Not sure.
Slowbro/Slowking: I can actually see leaving them alone, assuming you use them. Water/Ghost is not so straightforward an improvement for a Pokemon that actually cares about getting in real damage with its Psyshocks.
Jynx: Fairy/Ghost running Shadow Ball and Draining Kiss? It has Dry Skin, but lacks the movepool to seriously abuse rain, and in fact its movepool is largely Ice moves with a decent array of Psychic moves. Ghost/Ice isn't the worst typing in the world, but seriously, Ice is an awful defensive type and not even that appealing offensively in this meta. A gimmicky build would be Ground/Fire with Dry Skin, though its best STAB for that is Hidden Power of one of them. It doesn't help its case any that its Special Attack is around twice its Attack and yet its movepool is strongly weighted towards physical options: it could run as Fighting reasonably well if its Attack wasn't awful. It does get Energy Ball, so Ghost/Grass?
Cresselia: An obvious pick is Fairy for STAB on Moonblast, and Fairy actually is a solid defensive type, but my personal pick is to ignore STAB outright in favor of Steel/Fire for immunity to damaging status effects and being overall very difficult to hurt. I hesitate to say Toxic is a good move for such a set, because so many things will be part Steel, though. Mostly the idea is to survive and Calm Mind up. If you do want dual-STAB, Fairy/Ghost with Moon Blast and Shadow Ball is proably your best bet, being moves it actually has, an OK type combination defensively, and a good one offensively. (Steel/Normal, Fire/Normal, or Poison/Normal are the only type combinations that resist-or-better Fairy and Ghost at the same time, and they're all bad type combinations)
Reuniclus: Grass/Ghost for STAB on Energy Ball and Shadow Ball? DON'T make it Psychic/Ghost though: that way lies double weaknesses to Ghost and Dark, which is horrible. Even for a faster Pokemon, there's always Shadow Sneak and Sucker Punch to ruin your day. I suppose you could be Ghost/Fighting for STAB on Shadow Ball and Focus Blast? Ghost/Electric has some potential for a rain team: it gets Thunder, though not Thunderbolt. It can even set its own rain!
Xatu: With access to Magic Bounce, Xatu doesn't need to concern itself with immunity to statuses per se. Ground would be better assurance for protection against Paralysis by virtue of making you immune to everything that inflicts Paralysis incidentally other than Tri Attack, for instance. Xatu should instead concern itself with being defensively solid and/or having good STABs. (It gets Steel Wing, for reference) As usual, swapping out Psychic for Ghost (And Psychic for Shadow Ball) is a fairly straightforward overall improvement. (Minor loss to damage output, mind) It has Stored Power, though, so it might instead be worth running as Psychic as the end-goal of a Baton Pass, though Espeon seems an overall better choice for that. An odd point is that it gets Solarbeam: one could potentially run it as part-Grass on a Sun team.
Espeon: Espeon's biggest concern is that its movepool sucks. Its overall best STAB type combination offensively is Psychic/Ghost, and that's horrifyingly bad defensively. Remove its Psychic movepool, and it has... not a lot. To be fair, one of its best tricks is to have stuff Baton Pass to it and then it Stored Powers everything to death, so it might be best off remaining Psychic and instead taking either Steel (Broad defensive applicability) or Fairy. (Covers up its weaknesses to Bug and Dark, albeit not Ghost) Or just remaining pure Psychic outright!
Meloetta: What happens when it uses Relic Song, anyway? Does it replace its second type with Fighting, period, or switch to Normal/Fighting, period, or does its type remain the same but its statline changes? Even just running it in Aria Forme and ignoring all that, it gets Thunder and Thunderbolt, Shadow Ball, Energy Ball, Dazzling Gleam, and a few noteworthy moves like Charge Beam. Ghost/Electric Meloetta?
Beeheeyem: Pure Ghost? Ghost/Dark? I dunno. Beeheeyem has worse things than its typing hampering it.
Musharna: As far as I can tell this thing is basically a bad Reuniclus. Um. What I said about Reuniclus?
Victini: My first impulse is to say Fire/Electric for STAB Fusion Bolt alongside STAB V-Create, but that has a double weakness Victini can't cover up. If you're willing to take the risk, it's flexible and lethal... and completely walled by Ground+Flash Fire Pokemon... Bug/Fire for U-Turn STAB is doubly weak to Rock... Bug/Electric is actually pretty decent but loses the STAB on V-Create... Victini has to make hard decisions, is what I'm saying. There's some other interesting things one could do for a Special Victini, particularly in a Sun team where it could run as Fire/Grass: it has Solar Beam!
Gardevoir: Fairy/Ghost seems the overall best option to me (And in particular a fairly straight improvement over Psychic/Fairy Gardevoir/Mega Gardveoir), though it has a few Electric moves so Fairy/Electric has some potential. I have difficulty imagining any other combinations being particularly appealing, barring something odd like a bulky Wish-passing Gardevoir that doesn't care overly much about STAB.
Lugia: If you want Aeroblast and Psycho Boost (It gets it through Gale of Darkness' Shadow Lugia) than you should probably stick with Psychic/Flying. Otherwise there's tons of options for helping it wall, including that Flying/Steel keeps its primary STAB while being an excellent defensive type.
Alakazam:
Claydol: A Special Claydol can just go Ground/Ghost with Earth Power and Shadow Ball, but Claydol is equally good at physical as Special and Earthquake is harder hitting. The obvious thing to do is give yourself STAB on Rock Slide/Stone Edge, and then die horribly to random Water and Grass moves. Saner options include going part Steel and grabbing Gyro Ball, or part Normal for Explosion STAB. (Though I've never seen anyone use Exploding Claydol in competitive play myself) Given it has Calm Mind it's probably better off going Special in practice, where it's worth noting that it gets Dazzling Gleam (Ground/Fairy is good coverage), Solar Beam (Grass is somewhat redundant with Levitate mind) and Charge Beam. (Electric/Ground could be neat)
Malamar: The obvious route is Fighting/Dark, but that just means trading a double weakness to Bug for a double weakness to Fairy, which is a much more terrible thing to be having. (Other than U-Turn being a horrible thing to be doubly weak to) Oddly enough it might be worth running it as Fighting/Rock, as Rock Slide is one of its best moves after Superpower, and it at least adds no double weaknesses and in fact covers Fighting's vulnerability to Flying. It actually gets Pluck, which isn't amazing, but would vaguely justify Fighting/Flying, which is also a non-terrible type combination.
Girafarig: Normal/Ghost is one nasty option for it, since it gets Shadow Ball naturally. It's also one of several Pokemon with Sap Sipper, so a Water/Ground edition could be worth running, maybe. (It has no Water moves, though) A physical edition that's part Dark is another good option, given its Crunch access. It also gets Earthquake, Thunderbolt, and Thunder, so Dark/Ground for a physical set or Electric/Ghost for a Special set has some potential.
Mr. Mime: Pick a wall-y type combination and run Filter on it, basically. Ghost/Fairy is, as usual, a fairly straightforward improvement, but Steel/Fairy is probably more useful for Toxic immunity and a zillion resistances. If for some reason you care about getting STAB in specific and dislike something about Ghost/Fairy or Steel/Fairy, it gets Thunder, Thunderbolt, Solar Beam, Energy Ball, Focus Blast, Charge Beam, and a bunch of Physical moves you should never ever use because it only has 45 Attack to its 100 Special Attack.
Gothitelle: Trap enemies, then take them down. Steel or Poison are obvious choices for Toxic immunity (And Poison ensures your own Toxic will hit, if you want to use Toxic), Dark is useful to provide resistance to those pesky Ghosts that can switch out anytime they want... Dark/Poison is probably one of its best possibilities, overall.
Hypno: Its Special movepool is depressingly limited and leads to unfavorable comparisons to Alakazam (And probably non-Psychic Pokemon, for that matter), but its physical Attack is equal to its Special Attack and it has a pretty decent physical movepool, including all the elemental punches. A Fire/Fighting Hypno (With Brick Break, or maybe Power Up Punch) could have some potential, though overall it's probably just a bad Hitmonchan at that point. It does get different Abilities, but Insomnia is the main one of any note to me, and if Spore is less popular because random things are Grass-typed and yet actually good Pokemon, then Insomnia isn't that great.
Chimecho: Unless there's something amazing in its movepool I'm unaware of, Chimecho has to compete with all the other Psychic Levitators, and now also all the non-Psychic Levitators too. Hooray. I don't expect to see this seriously used competitively.
Wobbuffet: Doesn't care about STABs at all, and doesn't care about being Burned, other than the damage taken. Does care about being hit with Toxic: make it part Poison or part Steel. It can't trap Ghost types, so avoid being vulnerable to them: Poison/Dark would make more sense than Steel/Dark with its double weakness to Fighting. Main reason I can see to deviate from this is if you're concerned about how everybody is going to be carrying Ground, Fire, and Fighting moves anyway, in which case an off-beat type combination that isn't vulnerable to those might be worth exploring. Flying/Poison resists one of those and is immune to the other while still satisfying Toxic immunity.
Meowstic: This meta might finally give a reason to use female Meowstic. For male Meowstic you're a Prankster, go for a wall-y type like Dark/Poison, done. Female Meowstic has over male Meowstic Stored Power, Signal Beam, Magical Leaf, Me First... and then everything else it should have over male they both get out of TMs, like Shadow Ball and Charge Beam. Even so, female Meowstic with Competitive, Stored Power, and some good secondary typing (NOT GHOST) has some potential. It gets Thunderbolt, Dark Pulse (... yay double Bug weakness...) and Energy Ball... yeah OK it's probably not seeing use. Sad.
Sigilyph: It's got Dazzling Gleam, Shadow Ball, Solar Beam, Dark Pulse, Flash Cannon, Energy Ball, Charge Beam, Heat Wave, Signal Beam, Ice Beam... it'd be one of the more competent Ghost/Steel options out there, or you could run it as Dark/Fire, or Fire/Grass or... it's got a lot of options. And it gets Magic Guard or Tinted Lens! Tinted Lens with Calm Mind could potentially be a very solid sweeper, difficult to wall. Make it Psychic/Fairy with Stored Power and Dazzling Gleam, and there's literally no way to actually resist it with Tinted Lens: if you're Psychic/Steel, it hits you for effectively neutral Dazzling Gleam, if you're part Dark to be immune to Stored Power you can't be resistant to Dazzling Gleam before Tinted Lens, and if you're Fire/Steel to be doubly resistant to Fairy and resistant to Psychic, Stored Power is effectively neutral because Tinted Lens. Oh god. Or it could be Psychic/Steel for a better type combination overall that has basically just as hard to wall: Dark/type can't be doubly resistant to Steel, while Psychic/Steel is only singly resistant to Steel, and anything that doubly resists Steel doesn't resist Psychic at all or is part Steel and only does so one stage. AND this monster gets Roost! AND it can run various other combinations that are just as good with Tinted Lens!
Swoobat: AAAA ANOTHER STORED POWER USER BUT WITH SIMPLE OH GOD. If you're going to go the Stored Power route it's best options are its native Psychic/Flying or Psychic/Fire with Heat Wave. Alternatively you could ignore Stored Power (Or use it as coverage) and make it Fire/Grass with Heat Wave and Giga Drain to make your little fragile made-of-glass-do-not-sneeze-on Pokemon vaguely difficult to kill. Or a vaguely tanky type combination and ignore Stored Power STAB outright like going Dark/Poison for one weakness, but that dramatically slows down the Stored Power gain rate and in the case of Dark/Poison it has no STAB moves as backup.
Starmie: One of the only Pokemon I might argue giving Rock typing, as it's one of the best Power Gem users in the entire game (If not THE best Power Gem User, period), and the value of Power Gem is difficult to place given that most people will assume that Special Rock is not something they have to worry about. The main problem is that every good STAB type combination it has involving Rock has one or more double weaknesses. In any event it also gets Thunderbolt, Thunder, Flash Cannon (!), Dazzling Gleam, and Ice Beam and Blizzard meh. Oddly enough, it does not have Shadow Ball, meaning it cannot substitute Ghost in for Psychic particularly competently. On the other hand, Water/Steel and Water/Electric are both quite good defensive type combinations, and Water/Fairy too for that matter.
Grumpig: Another decent Power Gem user, but nowhere near as fast, and making it part Rock seems an odd thing to do when its overall best Ability is Thick Fat. Other than that it has basically the usual set of Special moves that you've seen me layout for various other Psychic types, which unfortunately doesn't lend itself to anything interesting with Thick Fat. I suppose you could be Rock/Grass and only really fear Fighting and Steel AKA possibly the two most common types in this metagame?
Solrock:... my first impulse was to say 'hooray it can get STAB on its Fire moves!' but then I actually looked, and all its Fire moves are Special while its Attack is about double its Special Attack. I dunno, it could run Ground/Steel with Earthquake and Iron Head? It's too fast to really use Gyro Ball, even though it has it. Ground/Flying with Earthquake and Acrobatics and Smack Down is another thing it could do but that's a double weakness to Ice... Flying/Rock with Rock Slide and Acrobatics?... oh man Solrock is just terrible.
Lunatone: Still a terrible Pokemon, but actually has a better alignment in its stats and movepool. Just don't make it part Rock, it's best special Rock is Ancient Power and its Attack is garbage. It gets Moonblast though! Plus Earth Power, Ice Beam, Signal Beam, Shadow Ball, Blizzard, Charge Beam... it could run a competent Ground/Fairy with Earth Power and Moonblast build, which is really unusual and Fairy and Ground are quite good together: everything that resists Fairy is vulnerable to Ground, leaving only Levitating and Flying version of Poison, Steel, and Fire to wall the combination. Add in Electric and suddenly they have to Levitate or have an Ability that makes them immune to Electric. This probably isn't enough to salvage it (Its stats are still awful and it lacks important move options: for some ungodly reason it doesn't get Moonlight, or indeed any healing at all), but it IS the only Pokemon that gets both Moonblast and Earth Power. (Celebi, Mew, CLaydol, Shaymin, and Probopass can all do Dazzling Gleam and Earth Power instead) The equivalent effect for physical (Play Rough and Earthquake) is slightly more common: Donphan, Granbull, and Ursaring can all do that.
Latios and Latias: Ghost/Dragon is a good defensive typing, and gives STAB Shadow Ball. On the other hand, Psyshock is important because people frequently bring in Special walls on the Latis. On the other hand, if people run Poison/Dark Blissey/Eviolite Chansey as standard, Psyshock loses most of its appeal and I go back to insisting Ghost/Dragon with Shadow Ball over Psyshock is a fairly flat improvement. Their Special movepools and even their Physical movepools (But their Attack is a a fair bit lower than their Special Attack) are actually quite diverse: Dragon/Water running Surf is another potentially viable option, and punishes Fire/Steel trying to be immune to damaging status ailments.
Zen Darmanitan: why would you even plan around using this thing unless the meta allows it as a standalone
Unown: Not that anybody's going to use them, but hey, you can give them STAB on any Hidden Power except Normal or Fairy because those don't exist hooray!
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So after a ton of testing, i'm completely convinced that Porygon-Z deserves the banhammer; however, i'm not banning it until I receive reasonable arguments why it's not unhealthy, so please object if necessary.
One word, Fairy Salamence*
Steel/Fairy (Salamence) @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 16 Def / 240 SpD
Careful Nature
- Toxic
- Wish/Roost
- Protect
- Dragon Tail/Roar/Taunt
Salamence is a quite bulky wall that you might not expect, tanking most hits, atleast a 2HKO. Toxic is for putting opponents on a timer and could stall them out with Roost in conjunction with Protect. Wish is to heal your team and setup on your opponents. Dragon Tail or Roar is to phaze out on setup sweepers like Nasty Plot Porygon-Z,... Taunt could be used to shut down other walls like Chansey or Blissey from setting up or stalling.
*lol ur english sux
Steel/Fairy (Salamence) @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 16 Def / 240 SpD
Careful Nature
- Toxic
- Wish/Roost
- Protect
- Dragon Tail/Roar/Taunt
Salamence is a quite bulky wall that you might not expect, tanking most hits, atleast a 2HKO. Toxic is for putting opponents on a timer and could stall them out with Roost in conjunction with Protect. Wish is to heal your team and setup on your opponents. Dragon Tail or Roar is to phaze out on setup sweepers like Nasty Plot Porygon-Z,... Taunt could be used to shut down other walls like Chansey or Blissey from setting up or stalling.
252+ SpA Choice Specs Adaptability Porygon-Z (Electric/Ice) Thunderbolt vs. 252 HP / 240+ SpD Salamence (Steel/Fairy): 280-330 (71 - 83.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Adaptability Porygon-Z (Electric/Ice) Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 240+ SpD Salamence (Steel/Fairy): 93-110 (23.6 - 27.9%) -- 86.5% chance to 4HKO
-1 252 Atk Gliscor (Normal/Ghost) Facade (140 BP) vs. 252 HP / 16 Def Salamence (Steel/Fairy): 72-85 (18.2 - 21.5%) -- possible 5HKO
-1 252+ Atk Heracross (Ground/Fighting) Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 16 Def Salamence (Steel/Fairy): 276-326 (70 - 82.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Adaptability Porygon-Z (Electric/Ice) Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 240+ SpD Salamence (Steel/Fairy): 93-110 (23.6 - 27.9%) -- 86.5% chance to 4HKO
-1 252 Atk Gliscor (Normal/Ghost) Facade (140 BP) vs. 252 HP / 16 Def Salamence (Steel/Fairy): 72-85 (18.2 - 21.5%) -- possible 5HKO
-1 252+ Atk Heracross (Ground/Fighting) Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 16 Def Salamence (Steel/Fairy): 276-326 (70 - 82.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
*lol ur english sux
canno
formerly The Reptile
Do you hate stall? Use this then!
Dark/Fire (Charizard) @ Charizardite X
Ability: Blaze
EVs: 76 HP / 252 Atk / 180 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Crunch
- Flare Blitz / Fire Punch
- Roost / ThunderPunch / Earthquake
- Dragon Dance
I have become Death, destroyer of worlds
So Zard X can run Dark / Fire to not only become an edgelord but also tear apart common defensive typings. A common thing people do is add for defensive mons Ghost- (there's no single type that resists both Fire- and Dark- ), Steel- (see my comment about Ghost), and Fairy- (usually not paired with something that resists Fire, although I bet I'll start seeing more Water / Fairy mons now ;p ). The EVs are not set in stone (in fact I was using the standard OU spread with a Jolly Nature because I'm dum, but it still did worked really well), but essentially it gives you enough speed to outpace 252 Timid Porygon-Z and other mons that try to outpace timid porygon-z by hitting 308 speed (A good example is 200+ Haxorus). The rest is invested in HP for more bulk and to dampen the blow from Flare Blitz. Crunch and Flare Blitz are your main STABs, as these rip apart Pokemon. Roost is to keep healthy, but you can run ThunderPunch if Water/Fairy starts being a popular thing. You could put EQ in there to hit Fire-types that resist Dark, or even shit like Heatran. It's a good option, but I think just pairing ZardX up with Haxorus or some other Ground-type Mold Breaker is better. Still, it is an option to consider. The final move is Dragon Dance, which is what makes Zard so spooky. Not a lot of things can take boosted ZardX's STABs without a resists.
Dark/Fire (Charizard) @ Charizardite X
Ability: Blaze
EVs: 76 HP / 252 Atk / 180 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Crunch
- Flare Blitz / Fire Punch
- Roost / ThunderPunch / Earthquake
- Dragon Dance
I have become Death, destroyer of worlds
So Zard X can run Dark / Fire to not only become an edgelord but also tear apart common defensive typings. A common thing people do is add for defensive mons Ghost- (there's no single type that resists both Fire- and Dark- ), Steel- (see my comment about Ghost), and Fairy- (usually not paired with something that resists Fire, although I bet I'll start seeing more Water / Fairy mons now ;p ). The EVs are not set in stone (in fact I was using the standard OU spread with a Jolly Nature because I'm dum, but it still did worked really well), but essentially it gives you enough speed to outpace 252 Timid Porygon-Z and other mons that try to outpace timid porygon-z by hitting 308 speed (A good example is 200+ Haxorus). The rest is invested in HP for more bulk and to dampen the blow from Flare Blitz. Crunch and Flare Blitz are your main STABs, as these rip apart Pokemon. Roost is to keep healthy, but you can run ThunderPunch if Water/Fairy starts being a popular thing. You could put EQ in there to hit Fire-types that resist Dark, or even shit like Heatran. It's a good option, but I think just pairing ZardX up with Haxorus or some other Ground-type Mold Breaker is better. Still, it is an option to consider. The final move is Dragon Dance, which is what makes Zard so spooky. Not a lot of things can take boosted ZardX's STABs without a resists.
I might have something to say about Porygon-Z tomorrow, but for the moment I'm a little too sick to do heavy thinking. Rather, let me unload some stuff I've been writing for the past few days.
I've already alluded to this, but High Jump Kick is a lot riskier in this meta, since anything may randomly turn out to be Ghost type with no warning that they have a Ghost to switch in on your High Jump Kick. Careful with it.
Rototiller! Bibarel, Cacturne, Crustle, Excadrill, Dugtrio, Steelix, Diggersby, Linoone, Lopunny, Parasect, Rhyperior, Sandslash, and Watchog all get it, and normally only Cacturne and Parasect actually benefit from it themselves. Alas, in singles play it's basically just Work Up, and most of these Pokemon don't have reason to care, but in a doubles version of Type Control this could be really really cool.
Sap Sippers
Azumarill: Its best is Bulldoze or Dig for Ground physical STAB, and really it's probably better off with Huge Power than some gimmicky no weaknesses build.
Bouffalant: Earthquake! Surf! Mud Shot! 40 Special Attack!!!
Goodra: It gets Aqua Tail and Earthquake, and has decent enough stats to use them both.
Girafarig: No Water moves at all, not even Surf. It does get Earthquake though.
Gogoat: Earthquake and Surf and the stats to theoretically mix them. It also gets Bulk Up, Milk Drink, Synthesis, and Leech Seed which is quite nice for a no-weakness Pokemon that probably wants to run bulky over speed and offense investment.
Sawsbuck: Nuffin.
Stantler: Gets Earthquake, but no Water moves.
Miltank: Gets Earthquake and Surf, yaaaay. 40 Special Attack double yaaay.
Zebstrika: No Ground or Water moves at all, alas.
tldr version: Goodra and maybe Gogoat can run no-weakness Ground/Water with competent STABs. Everything else can't.
Poison Types
Poison is a great defensive type, with its most notable problem being its weakness to Ground is shared with Steel and its immunity to Toxic is... shared with Steel. Nonetheless, Poison is a really terrible offensive type, so there are Poison types that will appreciate being able to drop their Poison typing for something packing more punch.
Something worth commentary before I begin: I would normally make some statement about how, if you want Poison for its offensive properties, you'd probably rather upgrade to Steel because it does the most valuable part of Poison -super effective against Fairies- more reliably than Poison, since Steel/Fairy is straight-up immune. I will not be recommending that for Poison types though, because barring Arceus, no Poison type gets Iron Head or Flash Cannon, only three get Gyro Ball (One of which is Scolipede, who is far too fast for that to make any sense as an option), leaving only a few mediocre Steel moves available to any Poison types at all. (Toxicroak gets Bullet Punch, and is entirely alone among Poison-typed Pokemon in this regard) As such, even though Steel is arguably a fairly direct improvement offensively over Poison in one crucial regard, the implementation of this principle is impossible and thus irrelevant. Unless you consider Iron Tail or Steel Wing to be worth using on the Pokemon that get them?...
I've already alluded to this, but High Jump Kick is a lot riskier in this meta, since anything may randomly turn out to be Ghost type with no warning that they have a Ghost to switch in on your High Jump Kick. Careful with it.
Rototiller! Bibarel, Cacturne, Crustle, Excadrill, Dugtrio, Steelix, Diggersby, Linoone, Lopunny, Parasect, Rhyperior, Sandslash, and Watchog all get it, and normally only Cacturne and Parasect actually benefit from it themselves. Alas, in singles play it's basically just Work Up, and most of these Pokemon don't have reason to care, but in a doubles version of Type Control this could be really really cool.
Sap Sippers
Azumarill: Its best is Bulldoze or Dig for Ground physical STAB, and really it's probably better off with Huge Power than some gimmicky no weaknesses build.
Bouffalant: Earthquake! Surf! Mud Shot! 40 Special Attack!!!
Goodra: It gets Aqua Tail and Earthquake, and has decent enough stats to use them both.
Girafarig: No Water moves at all, not even Surf. It does get Earthquake though.
Gogoat: Earthquake and Surf and the stats to theoretically mix them. It also gets Bulk Up, Milk Drink, Synthesis, and Leech Seed which is quite nice for a no-weakness Pokemon that probably wants to run bulky over speed and offense investment.
Sawsbuck: Nuffin.
Stantler: Gets Earthquake, but no Water moves.
Miltank: Gets Earthquake and Surf, yaaaay. 40 Special Attack double yaaay.
Zebstrika: No Ground or Water moves at all, alas.
tldr version: Goodra and maybe Gogoat can run no-weakness Ground/Water with competent STABs. Everything else can't.
Poison Types
Poison is a great defensive type, with its most notable problem being its weakness to Ground is shared with Steel and its immunity to Toxic is... shared with Steel. Nonetheless, Poison is a really terrible offensive type, so there are Poison types that will appreciate being able to drop their Poison typing for something packing more punch.
Something worth commentary before I begin: I would normally make some statement about how, if you want Poison for its offensive properties, you'd probably rather upgrade to Steel because it does the most valuable part of Poison -super effective against Fairies- more reliably than Poison, since Steel/Fairy is straight-up immune. I will not be recommending that for Poison types though, because barring Arceus, no Poison type gets Iron Head or Flash Cannon, only three get Gyro Ball (One of which is Scolipede, who is far too fast for that to make any sense as an option), leaving only a few mediocre Steel moves available to any Poison types at all. (Toxicroak gets Bullet Punch, and is entirely alone among Poison-typed Pokemon in this regard) As such, even though Steel is arguably a fairly direct improvement offensively over Poison in one crucial regard, the implementation of this principle is impossible and thus irrelevant. Unless you consider Iron Tail or Steel Wing to be worth using on the Pokemon that get them?...
Arbok: Ultimately Arbok's biggest problem is that it has an awful statline and its Abilities are nowhere near good enough to redeem it, but if you want to give it a shot, probably its best option is either Poison/Dark running Gunk Shot alongside Sucker Punch or Crunch, or Ground/Dark with Earthquake and the same. It also has the elemental Fangs, but they're not strong and it doesn't get Strong Jaw or whatever, so they're probably better used as coverage.
Muk: Finally Muk can actually use its decent Attack stat properly! Fighting for Brick Break, Fire for Fire Punch, eerrr Normal for Explosion?... it could go for Ghost to get STAB on Shadow Sneak, that'd be nice. (Or go Ghost for Curse!) It has physical Dark moves, but Thief/Payback is about as good as it gets... god, Muk has this really excellent Special movepool and its Special Attack is not only much worse than its Attack but also just not high enough to be worth it... Rock for Rock Slide?... It's probably better off just doing the usual Dark/Poison and trying to wall, and at that point it's, what, a bad Mew?
Weezing: It's easy to forget because Weezing almost always runs Special movepools, but its Attack is actually slightly higher than its Special Attack. It could potentially be run as part Steel using Gyro Ball, or part Rock for STAB on Rollout I guess, or by far most notably it could be part Normal for STAB Explosion! Nonetheless, its Special movepool is vastly superior to its physical movepool, and offers Electric, Fire, Ghost, and Dark options. The most straightforward thing would be to go Dark/Poison or Electric/Dark for no immunities and STAB on good moves, but Electric/Fire is a more exotic option, and part Ghost for Shadow Ball has its uses.
Swalot: Its Abilities are bad, its stats are nothing exceptional, and even though its stats are vaguely adequate to support both physical offense and Special offense, its best non-Poison moves are the elemental punches, Giga Drain, and Seed Bomb. If you're running it as Grass/Poison I have to wonder why you don't just use one of the various decent, existing Grass/Poisons, and if you're not running it as Grass/Poison I have to wonder why you're running it at all. Unfortunate.
Seviper: Oddly enough, Seviper has 100 in both offense stats. It's always going to be slow and fragile, and neither Infiltrator nor Shed Skin help much with that, but it does get Coil, Earthquake, Flamethrower, Dragon Tail, Dark Pulse, X-Scissor, Night Slash, Switcheroo, Sucker Punch, Aqua Tail, Knock Off, Giga Drain and, if you care, Iron Tail. You could run it with a Scarf and Switcheroo for surprise outspeeds, you could run it as an odd mixed sweeper, and just attaching Dark type to power up Sucker Punch goes a long way to redeeming it. It's no Bisharp, unfortunately, but Bisharp can't be a competent mixed sweeper with Sucker Punch. Coil goes nicely with Sucker Punch, too, and Bisharp lacks that too. I don't expect to see Seviper anyway, but it has more potential than I'd imagined.
Garbodor: A decently diverse Special movepool attached to... 65 Special Attack. Um. Yeah. Its physical movepool is much worse. Other than Poison moves, it's got Drain Punch, Seed Bomb, Self-Destruct, Rock Blast and Rollout. Also Smack Down for some reason. That's about it. What, Rock/Fighting? Fighting/Grass and wonder why you're not just using Breloom? Rock/Normal for a double Fighting weakness? Why would you do this to yourself don't use Garbodor its Abilities are all Garbodor themselves just don't use it.
Nidoking: Just swapping out Poison for Electric represents a fairly straightforward improvement to most Nidoking builds. You could alternatively go for STAB on Shadow Ball, Flamethrower, Surf, or Dragon Pulse. Its stats are slightly weighted towards physical, for all that Sheer Force means it pretty much always wants to go Special, but let's look at that anyway: Shadow Claw, Fire Punch, Thunderpunch, Ice Punch, Sucker Punch, Superpower, Aqua Tail, Outrage, Iron Tail, Stone Edge, Brick Break, Head Smash... main problem is that that only the elemental punches and Iron Tail actually benefit from Sheer Force, and since it gets Ice Beam, Thunderbolt/Thunder, and Flamethrower/Fire Blast, its Special offense will still easily outpower its physical, unless for some reason you want to run Head Smash and Superpower in specific, neither of which benefits from Sheer Force and has big disadvantages besides. Mostly I'd probably run it as Electric/Ground, though Ground/Ghost or Electric/Ghost might be nice for immunity to Fighting. Maybe.
Nidoqueen: I can't imagine why, but Nidoqueen can get Crunch and Nidoking cannot. Same for Poison Fang, but Sheer Force Poison Fang is just stupid. Also Pursuit, but no Sheer Force benefit. Nidoqueen is actually better than Nidoking at the physical offense angle, as what I'm getting at, in spite of having a slightly more defensive stat distribution than Nidoking. As neat as a Dark/something Nidoqueen as contrasted against Electric/Ground Nidoking is as a mental image, Nidoqueen just does not add enough good Sheer Force-boosted moves that it's liable to establish a niche over Nidoking, alas. But if you're going to try, Dark/type with Crunch is the way to go. It could go Dark/Poison with Crunch and Poison Jab and a Fighting move for coverage and some status move I guess?
Crobat: Crobat is odd. Its physical attack is higher than its Special Attack by a decent amount, but its movepool is strongly weighted towards Special moves, including Giga Drain, Air Slash, Dark Pulse, Shadow Ball, Sludge Bomb, Heat Wave, and also Ominous Wind and Twister if you care. Physically it does get Brave Bird, Acrobatics, Steel Wing (Flying/Steel Crobat?), X-Scissor and U-Turn, Sky Attack, Zen Headbutt, and Pursuit. This is tricky. Flying/Dark is a solid type combination with no double weaknesses, or it could go for the quirky Grass/Fire with Giga Drain and Heat Wave. Flying/Steel is also a good type combination, but Steel Wing is not a great move. As always I'd hesitate to go for any part Bug combination, unless you just want to Choice Band U-Turn all day long... and even then you have a Stealth Rock weakness doing that, which is obviously sub-optimal, and Steel is Crobat's only STAB that reduces vulnerability to Stealth Rock, which leads to a double weakness to Fire and your off-STAB is a bad move and just ugh stick with other combinations.
Skuntank: Dark/Fairy with Crunch and Sucker Punch and Play Rough! Or it could be Ghost/Fairy with Shadow Claw for a drop in power, I guess. It has several Fire moves, but they're all Special, and its physical Attack is better than its Special Attack, and really, Dark/Fairy is actually a nice type combination not many Pokemon can pull off. (Granbull, Ursaring, Mawile, Stoutland, and Mightyena are the only other Pokemon that get both Crunch and Play Rough, nothing gets both Dark Pulse and Moon Blast, and only Banette, Gengar, Jellicent, Mew, Mismagius, Sableye, and Sigilyph get both Dark Pulse and Dazzling Gleam) I guess you could make it Ghost/Fire or Dark/Fire or something and be depressed at how Chandelure outdoes it as-is.
Drapion: Ground for Earthquake could be good, or it could run Water for Aqua Tail, I guess. Honestly, Drapion is probably best off sticking to Dark/Poison, particularly if it wants to do Focus Energy+Sniper, since it has Cross Poison and Night Slash and Slash is its only other boosted crit-chance move. Not much to say.
Toxicroak: Would love to be Dark for its many, many Dark moves, including Sucker Punch, Knock Off, Dark Pulse... Dark/Poison or Dark/Fighting are obvious enough (Though the latter is, as always, doubly weak to Fairy), but there's also Ground for Earthquake, Steel for Bullet Punch, Electric for Thunderpunch... it's really too bad it doesn't get Fire Punch, because it gets Dry Skin. (Also too bad it doesn't get Water moves) Even so, a Dry Skin Ground/Dark or Ground/Fighting could be good.
Dragalge: Obviously obvious: Dragon/Water. More easily overlooked is that it has good Electric moves, and it even has Play Rough. Its Special Attack is better than its physical Attack, but it's mostly that it has Nasty Plot and overall better Special access than physical access that weights it in the direction of Special, so you could potentially pull off an off-beat Fairy-typed Dragalge. Given it has Poison Touch a physical Dragalge has good reason to avoid being part-Poison: it's redundant. Overall Dragon/Water or Electric/Water are probably Dragalge's best options, running Poison Point. (Or Adaptability once its released)
Venusaur: People have run Earthquake on Venusaur at times. It also gets Weather Ball, so you could run it as Grass/Fire in the sun. Unfortunately, it can't have both Weather Ball and Chlorophyll at the same time: they're mutually exclusive, alas. It can also get Outrage and Knock Off? Overall Venusaur has little motivation to move away from Grass/Poison, actually. It's a decent type combination, it fits its movepool and particularly its movepool's synergy with its statline well... other than a non-Chlorophyll sun Venusaur using Weather Ball preferring the Fire STAB, it's probably best off remaining as is.
Beedrill: Haahahahahah oh god no. I guess you could make it Dark and... um... no, seriously, its movepool sucks. Its type sucks. Its Abilities don't help. Forget it don't use it.
Vileplume: Um. It gets Dazzling Gleam, but Fairy/Grass is doubly weak to Poison... er.... it gets Drain Punch but why would you do that... gosh, Vileplume doesn't really get anything out of deviating from Grass/Poison.
Venomoth: Shield Dust and Tinted Lens are both really good Abilities, Venomoth's statline is actually respectable, and it gets Quiver Dance. It's just that Bug/Poison is painfully redundant as an offensive type combination and not all that great defensively either. Here Venomoth has a chance to maybe shine! Just swapping out Bug Buzz for Energy Ball (Or Solar Beam in a sun team!) and Bug for Grass is already an overall improvement, but it also gets Psychic, Giga Drain, Ominous Wind... um... Air Cutter... honestly, Venomoth's other problem is its movepool is walled badly by Steel, and Ominous Wind is the only thing that helps at all in its entire movepool. So it's probably still not going to see use, alas. You could try Ghost/Grass, see how well it does? To be fair, Tinted Lens helps bypass the problem a bit.
Victreebel: FIRE/GRASS WITH SOLAR BEAM AND WEATHER BALL AND CHLOROPHYLL GOD YES. It also could get some use out of Dark typing, having Knock Off and Sucker Punch, but I have difficulty imagining the payoff being sufficient to justify it, particularly since Grass/Dark is doubly weak to Bug and that's just bad.
Tentacruel: Giga Drain? Dazzling Gleam? It does get Knock Off and Swords Dance, while its Attack is only slightly lower than its Special Attack, so maybe a physically oriented Dark/Water? Scald is in part for Burns, so it doesn't necessarily care about STAB on that: maybe a Grass/Poison wall?... there's not really any standout options...
Gengar; Dark Pulse, Thunderbolt/Thunder, Psychic, Energy Ball, Dazzling Gleam... and a bunch of physical moves it has little use for. If nothing else, Electric/Ghost with Levitate is overall an improvement over Poison/Ghost with Levitate. It's not like Gengar hates being Poisoned in the first place, unless you're trying to do Perish Trap or something and that's not OU-legal anyway. Dark/Poison for no weaknesses of course, or Dark/Electric for weak to Fighting Bug and Fairy but a better offensive combination but vulnerable to being Poisoned... Dark/Electric has the advantage of resisting Sucker Punch, and indeed also Bullet Punch and Shadow Sneak. On the other hand, it's vulnerable to Mach Punch/Vacuum Wave. Dark/Ghost is sub-optimal offensively, but has no priority weaknesses... Gengar has options.
Amoongus: I guess you could make it Dark/Poison with intent to get STAB on Foul Play?... it doesn't really have good non-Poison non-Grass move options...
Ariados: Shadow Sneak! Sucker Punch! Night Slash and Pursuit! Sniper! Bounce and Foul Play! Run it as Dark/Ghost is what I'm saying, toss out a Sticky Web, abuse priority. It's still not a great Pokemon, but it at least appreciates the option to use these fairly good moves. Also its Special movepool includes other OK stuff but its Special Attack is 2/3rds its Attack and it doesn't have anything really useful like Sucker Punch in Special.
Qwilfish: The good news: it has a fairly diverse movepool. The bad news: it is strongly physically weighted and the only notable physical non-STABs it has are Explosion and Rollout. Not much cause to change its typing. Not much cause to use the thing.
Dustox: It's a bad Venomoth except... it gets Shadow Ball! No seriously that's the only good news. Don't use it. Use Venomoth, and probably cry.
Roserade: Shadow Ball, Dazzling Gleam, Extrasensory, and Weather Ball are it for notable moves. (It doesn't even have many options for Technician use) Grass/Ghost? Grass/Fire with Weather Ball in the sun? Grass/Rock with Weather Ball in Sandstorm? Nothing really exceptional stands out, at least not when Victreebel exists.
Scolipede: Ground for Earthquake, Fighting for Superpower, Water for Aqua Tail... Dark for Pursuit?.... overall Bug/Ground is probably it's best choice, with Rock Slide for coverage against Flying types, unless of course it's all about the Baton Pass in which case it's better off having immunity to status ailments and/or resistance to hazards. But for a Scolipede intent on sweeping, Ground/Bug with Earthquake/Megahorn/Rock Slide/Swords Dance is probably its overall best set.
Muk: Finally Muk can actually use its decent Attack stat properly! Fighting for Brick Break, Fire for Fire Punch, eerrr Normal for Explosion?... it could go for Ghost to get STAB on Shadow Sneak, that'd be nice. (Or go Ghost for Curse!) It has physical Dark moves, but Thief/Payback is about as good as it gets... god, Muk has this really excellent Special movepool and its Special Attack is not only much worse than its Attack but also just not high enough to be worth it... Rock for Rock Slide?... It's probably better off just doing the usual Dark/Poison and trying to wall, and at that point it's, what, a bad Mew?
Weezing: It's easy to forget because Weezing almost always runs Special movepools, but its Attack is actually slightly higher than its Special Attack. It could potentially be run as part Steel using Gyro Ball, or part Rock for STAB on Rollout I guess, or by far most notably it could be part Normal for STAB Explosion! Nonetheless, its Special movepool is vastly superior to its physical movepool, and offers Electric, Fire, Ghost, and Dark options. The most straightforward thing would be to go Dark/Poison or Electric/Dark for no immunities and STAB on good moves, but Electric/Fire is a more exotic option, and part Ghost for Shadow Ball has its uses.
Swalot: Its Abilities are bad, its stats are nothing exceptional, and even though its stats are vaguely adequate to support both physical offense and Special offense, its best non-Poison moves are the elemental punches, Giga Drain, and Seed Bomb. If you're running it as Grass/Poison I have to wonder why you don't just use one of the various decent, existing Grass/Poisons, and if you're not running it as Grass/Poison I have to wonder why you're running it at all. Unfortunate.
Seviper: Oddly enough, Seviper has 100 in both offense stats. It's always going to be slow and fragile, and neither Infiltrator nor Shed Skin help much with that, but it does get Coil, Earthquake, Flamethrower, Dragon Tail, Dark Pulse, X-Scissor, Night Slash, Switcheroo, Sucker Punch, Aqua Tail, Knock Off, Giga Drain and, if you care, Iron Tail. You could run it with a Scarf and Switcheroo for surprise outspeeds, you could run it as an odd mixed sweeper, and just attaching Dark type to power up Sucker Punch goes a long way to redeeming it. It's no Bisharp, unfortunately, but Bisharp can't be a competent mixed sweeper with Sucker Punch. Coil goes nicely with Sucker Punch, too, and Bisharp lacks that too. I don't expect to see Seviper anyway, but it has more potential than I'd imagined.
Garbodor: A decently diverse Special movepool attached to... 65 Special Attack. Um. Yeah. Its physical movepool is much worse. Other than Poison moves, it's got Drain Punch, Seed Bomb, Self-Destruct, Rock Blast and Rollout. Also Smack Down for some reason. That's about it. What, Rock/Fighting? Fighting/Grass and wonder why you're not just using Breloom? Rock/Normal for a double Fighting weakness? Why would you do this to yourself don't use Garbodor its Abilities are all Garbodor themselves just don't use it.
Nidoking: Just swapping out Poison for Electric represents a fairly straightforward improvement to most Nidoking builds. You could alternatively go for STAB on Shadow Ball, Flamethrower, Surf, or Dragon Pulse. Its stats are slightly weighted towards physical, for all that Sheer Force means it pretty much always wants to go Special, but let's look at that anyway: Shadow Claw, Fire Punch, Thunderpunch, Ice Punch, Sucker Punch, Superpower, Aqua Tail, Outrage, Iron Tail, Stone Edge, Brick Break, Head Smash... main problem is that that only the elemental punches and Iron Tail actually benefit from Sheer Force, and since it gets Ice Beam, Thunderbolt/Thunder, and Flamethrower/Fire Blast, its Special offense will still easily outpower its physical, unless for some reason you want to run Head Smash and Superpower in specific, neither of which benefits from Sheer Force and has big disadvantages besides. Mostly I'd probably run it as Electric/Ground, though Ground/Ghost or Electric/Ghost might be nice for immunity to Fighting. Maybe.
Nidoqueen: I can't imagine why, but Nidoqueen can get Crunch and Nidoking cannot. Same for Poison Fang, but Sheer Force Poison Fang is just stupid. Also Pursuit, but no Sheer Force benefit. Nidoqueen is actually better than Nidoking at the physical offense angle, as what I'm getting at, in spite of having a slightly more defensive stat distribution than Nidoking. As neat as a Dark/something Nidoqueen as contrasted against Electric/Ground Nidoking is as a mental image, Nidoqueen just does not add enough good Sheer Force-boosted moves that it's liable to establish a niche over Nidoking, alas. But if you're going to try, Dark/type with Crunch is the way to go. It could go Dark/Poison with Crunch and Poison Jab and a Fighting move for coverage and some status move I guess?
Crobat: Crobat is odd. Its physical attack is higher than its Special Attack by a decent amount, but its movepool is strongly weighted towards Special moves, including Giga Drain, Air Slash, Dark Pulse, Shadow Ball, Sludge Bomb, Heat Wave, and also Ominous Wind and Twister if you care. Physically it does get Brave Bird, Acrobatics, Steel Wing (Flying/Steel Crobat?), X-Scissor and U-Turn, Sky Attack, Zen Headbutt, and Pursuit. This is tricky. Flying/Dark is a solid type combination with no double weaknesses, or it could go for the quirky Grass/Fire with Giga Drain and Heat Wave. Flying/Steel is also a good type combination, but Steel Wing is not a great move. As always I'd hesitate to go for any part Bug combination, unless you just want to Choice Band U-Turn all day long... and even then you have a Stealth Rock weakness doing that, which is obviously sub-optimal, and Steel is Crobat's only STAB that reduces vulnerability to Stealth Rock, which leads to a double weakness to Fire and your off-STAB is a bad move and just ugh stick with other combinations.
Skuntank: Dark/Fairy with Crunch and Sucker Punch and Play Rough! Or it could be Ghost/Fairy with Shadow Claw for a drop in power, I guess. It has several Fire moves, but they're all Special, and its physical Attack is better than its Special Attack, and really, Dark/Fairy is actually a nice type combination not many Pokemon can pull off. (Granbull, Ursaring, Mawile, Stoutland, and Mightyena are the only other Pokemon that get both Crunch and Play Rough, nothing gets both Dark Pulse and Moon Blast, and only Banette, Gengar, Jellicent, Mew, Mismagius, Sableye, and Sigilyph get both Dark Pulse and Dazzling Gleam) I guess you could make it Ghost/Fire or Dark/Fire or something and be depressed at how Chandelure outdoes it as-is.
Drapion: Ground for Earthquake could be good, or it could run Water for Aqua Tail, I guess. Honestly, Drapion is probably best off sticking to Dark/Poison, particularly if it wants to do Focus Energy+Sniper, since it has Cross Poison and Night Slash and Slash is its only other boosted crit-chance move. Not much to say.
Toxicroak: Would love to be Dark for its many, many Dark moves, including Sucker Punch, Knock Off, Dark Pulse... Dark/Poison or Dark/Fighting are obvious enough (Though the latter is, as always, doubly weak to Fairy), but there's also Ground for Earthquake, Steel for Bullet Punch, Electric for Thunderpunch... it's really too bad it doesn't get Fire Punch, because it gets Dry Skin. (Also too bad it doesn't get Water moves) Even so, a Dry Skin Ground/Dark or Ground/Fighting could be good.
Dragalge: Obviously obvious: Dragon/Water. More easily overlooked is that it has good Electric moves, and it even has Play Rough. Its Special Attack is better than its physical Attack, but it's mostly that it has Nasty Plot and overall better Special access than physical access that weights it in the direction of Special, so you could potentially pull off an off-beat Fairy-typed Dragalge. Given it has Poison Touch a physical Dragalge has good reason to avoid being part-Poison: it's redundant. Overall Dragon/Water or Electric/Water are probably Dragalge's best options, running Poison Point. (Or Adaptability once its released)
Venusaur: People have run Earthquake on Venusaur at times. It also gets Weather Ball, so you could run it as Grass/Fire in the sun. Unfortunately, it can't have both Weather Ball and Chlorophyll at the same time: they're mutually exclusive, alas. It can also get Outrage and Knock Off? Overall Venusaur has little motivation to move away from Grass/Poison, actually. It's a decent type combination, it fits its movepool and particularly its movepool's synergy with its statline well... other than a non-Chlorophyll sun Venusaur using Weather Ball preferring the Fire STAB, it's probably best off remaining as is.
Beedrill: Haahahahahah oh god no. I guess you could make it Dark and... um... no, seriously, its movepool sucks. Its type sucks. Its Abilities don't help. Forget it don't use it.
Vileplume: Um. It gets Dazzling Gleam, but Fairy/Grass is doubly weak to Poison... er.... it gets Drain Punch but why would you do that... gosh, Vileplume doesn't really get anything out of deviating from Grass/Poison.
Venomoth: Shield Dust and Tinted Lens are both really good Abilities, Venomoth's statline is actually respectable, and it gets Quiver Dance. It's just that Bug/Poison is painfully redundant as an offensive type combination and not all that great defensively either. Here Venomoth has a chance to maybe shine! Just swapping out Bug Buzz for Energy Ball (Or Solar Beam in a sun team!) and Bug for Grass is already an overall improvement, but it also gets Psychic, Giga Drain, Ominous Wind... um... Air Cutter... honestly, Venomoth's other problem is its movepool is walled badly by Steel, and Ominous Wind is the only thing that helps at all in its entire movepool. So it's probably still not going to see use, alas. You could try Ghost/Grass, see how well it does? To be fair, Tinted Lens helps bypass the problem a bit.
Victreebel: FIRE/GRASS WITH SOLAR BEAM AND WEATHER BALL AND CHLOROPHYLL GOD YES. It also could get some use out of Dark typing, having Knock Off and Sucker Punch, but I have difficulty imagining the payoff being sufficient to justify it, particularly since Grass/Dark is doubly weak to Bug and that's just bad.
Tentacruel: Giga Drain? Dazzling Gleam? It does get Knock Off and Swords Dance, while its Attack is only slightly lower than its Special Attack, so maybe a physically oriented Dark/Water? Scald is in part for Burns, so it doesn't necessarily care about STAB on that: maybe a Grass/Poison wall?... there's not really any standout options...
Gengar; Dark Pulse, Thunderbolt/Thunder, Psychic, Energy Ball, Dazzling Gleam... and a bunch of physical moves it has little use for. If nothing else, Electric/Ghost with Levitate is overall an improvement over Poison/Ghost with Levitate. It's not like Gengar hates being Poisoned in the first place, unless you're trying to do Perish Trap or something and that's not OU-legal anyway. Dark/Poison for no weaknesses of course, or Dark/Electric for weak to Fighting Bug and Fairy but a better offensive combination but vulnerable to being Poisoned... Dark/Electric has the advantage of resisting Sucker Punch, and indeed also Bullet Punch and Shadow Sneak. On the other hand, it's vulnerable to Mach Punch/Vacuum Wave. Dark/Ghost is sub-optimal offensively, but has no priority weaknesses... Gengar has options.
Amoongus: I guess you could make it Dark/Poison with intent to get STAB on Foul Play?... it doesn't really have good non-Poison non-Grass move options...
Ariados: Shadow Sneak! Sucker Punch! Night Slash and Pursuit! Sniper! Bounce and Foul Play! Run it as Dark/Ghost is what I'm saying, toss out a Sticky Web, abuse priority. It's still not a great Pokemon, but it at least appreciates the option to use these fairly good moves. Also its Special movepool includes other OK stuff but its Special Attack is 2/3rds its Attack and it doesn't have anything really useful like Sucker Punch in Special.
Qwilfish: The good news: it has a fairly diverse movepool. The bad news: it is strongly physically weighted and the only notable physical non-STABs it has are Explosion and Rollout. Not much cause to change its typing. Not much cause to use the thing.
Dustox: It's a bad Venomoth except... it gets Shadow Ball! No seriously that's the only good news. Don't use it. Use Venomoth, and probably cry.
Roserade: Shadow Ball, Dazzling Gleam, Extrasensory, and Weather Ball are it for notable moves. (It doesn't even have many options for Technician use) Grass/Ghost? Grass/Fire with Weather Ball in the sun? Grass/Rock with Weather Ball in Sandstorm? Nothing really exceptional stands out, at least not when Victreebel exists.
Scolipede: Ground for Earthquake, Fighting for Superpower, Water for Aqua Tail... Dark for Pursuit?.... overall Bug/Ground is probably it's best choice, with Rock Slide for coverage against Flying types, unless of course it's all about the Baton Pass in which case it's better off having immunity to status ailments and/or resistance to hazards. But for a Scolipede intent on sweeping, Ground/Bug with Earthquake/Megahorn/Rock Slide/Swords Dance is probably its overall best set.
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It gets Dazzling Gleam and Technician Round too, so no matter what typing it chooses, it gets a reliable move.
Interesting that Roserade is a Pokemon that can genuinely pull off any one type, at least vaguely competently. Not many actually can.
Calcing out a Ghost/Electric Porygon-Z attacking a bulky Ground/Water Goodra, I was surprised to see that one Nasty Plot gives it a reliable OHKO with Shadow Ball. Goodra will whack it in one hit with an Earthquake, no boost, but you can't actually switch in Goodra onto Porygon-Z, unless you're like Scarfed or Assault Vested. That's genuinely concerning. I still would like to know how the many, many faster-than-Porygon-Z Pokemon perform against it, but this is already somewhat ominous.
Having noticed that the Grass/Poisons tended to have difficulty ranging out from their default typing got me curious how many other Grass types have that problem, so I'll be doing them too. I will of course be skipping the part Poison and part Psychic ones.
Let's talk about Pokemon that can run Water immunity. Fire/Ground typing with Water immunity is only weak to Ground, and is a good offensive combination actually. I've already talked before about Toxicroak, Jynx, and Parasect, none of whom can fully pull it off... what about the rest of them?
Calcing out a Ghost/Electric Porygon-Z attacking a bulky Ground/Water Goodra, I was surprised to see that one Nasty Plot gives it a reliable OHKO with Shadow Ball. Goodra will whack it in one hit with an Earthquake, no boost, but you can't actually switch in Goodra onto Porygon-Z, unless you're like Scarfed or Assault Vested. That's genuinely concerning. I still would like to know how the many, many faster-than-Porygon-Z Pokemon perform against it, but this is already somewhat ominous.
Having noticed that the Grass/Poisons tended to have difficulty ranging out from their default typing got me curious how many other Grass types have that problem, so I'll be doing them too. I will of course be skipping the part Poison and part Psychic ones.
Bellosom: Sludge Bomb, Dazzling Gleam... er.... Drain Punch... to be fair, its Attack is only slightly lower than its Special Attack but... it's not got much in the way of options.
Breloom: Oddly enough, Fighting/Grass is probably its best option. In any event do not make it Poison or Steel if you want to use Poison Heal. It does also get Thunderpunch and Iron Tail. Fighting/Electric Breloom? Only weaknesses are Psychic, Fairy, and Ground at that point, and offensively they have some synergy.
Virizion: Zen Headbutt, Bounce, and Aerial Ace are literally all its non-STAB non-Normal offensive moves. Psychic/Fighting is an OK typing, and Fighting/Flying is actually pretty decent, but Virizion's real problem is having a dumb statblock and there's no major gems in its movepool to save the day,
Tangrowth: Knock Off, Earthquake, Brick Break, Sludge Bomb, Payback, Focus Blast, Poison Jab, and Rock Slide. It is actually slightly higher in Special Attack than Attack, contrary to expectations, but overall Ground/Dark seems one of its best options.
Meganium: It's actually only one point weaker in Attack than Special Attack. Meanwhile, it gets Earthquake, Dragon Tail, Outrage, Iron Tail and... er... Fury Cutter?... no seriously, these physical moves are all its non-Grass attacking moves of any competency. This is somewhat unfortunate, given that every single combination you can produce out of these except Dragon/Steel has at least one double weakness. Alternatively, you can focus on a supporting role and give it typing appropriate to that. Or... just not use it. Too bad.
Sunflora: Sludge Bomb, Curse, interestingly enough Earth Power... well... you could make it Ground/Poison? Or make it part Ghost to put a Curse on people?... Sunflora is bad.
Sceptile: Once Mega Sceptile is a thing, keep in mind the possibility to Water/Flying for Lightningrod abuse. Moves-wise, Sceptile has Pursuit, Night Slash, X-Scissor, Dragon Claw, Earthquake, Brick Break, Acrobatics, Crunch, Rock Slide, Thunderpunch, Outrage, Dragon Pulse, Drain Punch, and Iron Tail. Keep in mind that while Sceptile's Special Attack is higher than its Attack, it's a manageable difference. While a lot of these would be a bad combination with grass-typing, producing one or more double weaknesses (Rock/Grass is the only one of these that doesn't), that's OK because you can just ignore its Grass typing (Maybe use Leaf Blade as a coverage move) and instead make it Dragon/Steel, or Ground/Steel, or Ground/Electric, or Electric/Dark, or... it has a lot of potential!
Shiftry: Shadow Ball, Brick Break, Focus Blast, Rock Slide, X-Scissor, Power Up Punch, Extrasensory, a surprisingly large number of weak, Special wind-themed moves like Ominous Wind, Twister, and Icy Wind... oh, and you could make it Normal typed for STAB Explosion and Fake Out, of course. Normal/Ghost could be pretty good, or Grass/Ghost as a fairly solid side-grade that abandons the Bug double weakness. None of its other possibilities are really exceptional, though.
Cacturne: Poison Jab, Power Up Punch, Belch, Venoshock I guess, Thunderpunch, Superpower, and Drain Punch all stand out. It's too bad it doesn't have anything that synergizes well with Water Absorb. It should probably hold onto its Dark typing to keep STAB on its Sucker Punch, because its speed is bad and its durability is bad too, which makes it difficult to take advantage of its theoretically solid offenses. Poison/Dark? Electric/Dark?...
Cherrim: Dazzling Gleam, and, um, Rollout? I suddenly understand why nobody uses Cherrim. This is awful.
Carnivine: Crunch, Sludge Bomb, Thief, Payback, Knock Off, Bug Bite... er... Wring Out?... Grass/Dark isn't the worst type in the world, but it's doubly weak to Bug and Carnivine isn't getting any pay-off from Levitate. Unless you're in an Inverse Type Control match? Is that even a thing? Nor can it pull off Dark/Poison except as a specifically mixed attacker, which would otherwise be a great combination with its Levitate. You could run it as a more defensive Dark/Poison with no weaknesses, but that's relying on its comparatively weak defensive stats.
Leafeon: Last Resort, Trump Card, Knock Off and... er... Iron Tail?... basically, you could run it as Grass/Normal to power up its unusual and unusually powerful Normal moves... it's... bad.
Shaymin/Shaymin-Sky: Psychic, Dazzling Gleam, Earth Power of course... that's about it. Grass/Ground? You'd still have a double weakness to Ice, but there's some appeal. Or you could go Fairy/Ground and have no double weaknesses.
Serperior: Dragon Tail, Dragon Pulse, Iron Tail, Pursuit, Aqua Tail, Knock Off, Iron Tail and Outrage. Keep in mind Serperior has equal Attack to Special Attack, so a Water/Dragon or a Water/Dark physical build could be good. It's too bad that even once Contrary is released unless it gets new tutor options it's only Special options will be Grass moves and Dragon Pulse.
Simisage: Acrobatics, Shadow Claw, Crunch, Gunk Shot, Iron Tail, Knock Off and Superpower! Dark/Flying, Flying/Fighting, Dark/Poison, Flying/Steel... it's got some nice options. Might salvage it?
Lilligant: Unless you want to count Dream Eater, it's all Grass, all the Grasstime.
Maractus: Sucker Punch, Poison Jab... um... Pin Missile, Aerial Ace... Hyper Voice?... and Drain Punch and Knock Off. It's Special-oriented in stats, but not so strongly that a physical edition couldn't work. Uuuh. Dark/Poison running Sucker Punch, Poison Jab, Drain Punch and a support move?
Gogoat: I've already covered that it can do a mixed attacker Water/Ground with Sap Sipper build, but what are its other options? It's also got Payback, Brick Break, and Wild Charge. (Add Electric straight-up to be pretty flatly improved!) Yup. That's it. I... would probably skip on Gogoat, given its best option is to be a bad Goodra.
Jumpluff: Weirdly enough, it gets Fairy Wind. Honestly, Jumpluff's offensive stats are so bad the thing to do is probably to give it a more defensible type combination like Dark/Ghost, Dark/Poison, Steel/Dragon, whatever, and just ignore its STAB options. Even aside from the fact that it has no strong non-Grass non-Flying attack moves anyway.
Tropius: Earthquake, Steel Wing, Curse and Dragon Dance (!!), Outrage, and Dragon Pulse. It's only slightly better at Special Attack than it is at physical Attack, and meanwhile Swords Dance, Curse, and Dragon Dance are all available vs no Special boosting options. And it gets Leaf Blade which is quite the nice move. Ground/Dragon unfortunately is still doubly weak to Ice, and that's bad for a Pokemon that wants to be able to Harvest-wall, so Dragon/Steel using Earthquake or Leaf Blade for coverage (Or both, ignoring Steel Wing) might be its best bet.
Torterra: Crunch, Superpower, Iron Head, Outrage... run it as Ground/Dark, or Ground/Steel, or Steel/Dragon with Earthquake for coverage, or Ground/Fighting if Superpower works for you, or Steel/Fighting or Dragon/Fighting if you like powerful moves with major disadvantages for your STABs. It's pretty nice actually. Keep Leech Seed!
Abomasnow: Earthquake, Shadow Ball, Brick Break, Focus Blast, Outrage, and Iron Tail. If you don't want to run it as an Ice type, keep in mind you can replace Snow Warning with Soundproof. (You're out of luck if you want to use a non-Ice Mega Abomasnow: suck it up, and use Blizzard) Ice/Dragon Mega Abomasnow could be interesting. Really, just about anything is a better type combination than Grass/Ice. Ice/Ground works OK for Mamoswine, so maybe that?
Whimsicott: Whimsicott isn't a big attacker Pokemon anyway, so the primary concern should be useful defensive typing, such as Steel/Flying, Dark/Poison, etc. Nonetheless, notable moves include Hurricane, Shadow Ball, Knock Off and U-Turn. Keep in mind that it has access to Prankster Cotton Guard, normally held back by the fact that Grass/Fairy is an awful typing. Dark/Poison is only weak to Ground, and most Ground attackers are physically hitting you, so Cotton Guard Dark/Poison might be fairly competent.
Chesnaught: Dragon Claw, Earthquake, Shadow Claw, Payback, Gyro Ball, Stone Edge, and Poison Jab. It's worth noting that Bulletproof can let it get away with stuff like having a Ghost weakness (Most of the time, Ghost=Shadow Ball) or, oddly enough, a Grass weakness. (Many notable Grass moves are affected by Bulletproof) Ultimately most of the moves Bulletproof blocks are sufficiently narrow representatives of their types that otherwise it's probably ill-advised to select typing based on this aspect... but, for instance, making it Ground/Ghost with Earthquake and Shadow Claw, it would only really consistently fear Water, Dark, and Ice moves, and it has the movepool for it. In terms of just movepool though, I'd probably run either Fighting/Ground or Fighting/Steel.
Ferrothorn: It has Curse, Normal typing it for Explosion has appeal, it has Payback which is great for how slow it is, Shadow Claw, Poison Jab, and Knock Off. Plus a surprisingly decent Special movepool it lacks the stats to really take advantage of. The most obvious route is Dark/Poison, which plays nicely with its desire to wall you and kill you with Iron Barbs and possibly a Rocky Helmet too.
Parasect: Cross Poison, Brick Break, Pursuit, Knock Off, and not much else stands out, considering how strongly oriented towards Attack it is. The most obviously possibility is Dark/Poison. It's too bad it doesn't get anything to really abuse its Dry Skin with. Keep in mind it's one of the rare Spore users.
Ludicolo: Oddly enough, it learns all the Elemental Punches, as well as Zen Headbutt, and Drain Punch. It's stronger by a decent margin at Special than Physical, but barring Ice Beam/Blizzard, it has no notable off-type Special moves. There's some weird things you could do with Electric/Fighting physical Ludicolo or the like, basically.
Cradily: Earthquake, Sludge Wave, Sludge Bomb, Curse, and Earth Power. It has Storm Drain, so I would love to recommend a Ground/Rock variant (Either Earthquake/Rock Slide or Earth Power/Ancient Power), but that's still doubly weak to Grass, and Cradily is not a Pokemon that likes switching out too often. A Ground/Fire variant would have no notable STAB available for the Fire end, but you could run it with Hidden Power Fire, Storm Drain, and Earth Power. Cradily is enough of a wall-y Pokemon that this could be acceptable, or even dropping Hidden Power Fire outright.
Wormadam-Grass: An odd case. Keep in mind Wormadam's different forms have different movepools and even different statlines! (Sandy Cloak has the best Attack and Defense, Plant Cloak the best Special Attack and Special Defense, and Trash Cloak is balanced ie crappy) Also, Overcoat blocks damaging weather and powder moves, so typing it Grass, Ground, Steel, or Ice for those reasons is not needed. All three types have Psychic, Shadow Ball, and Sucker Punch as notable off-type-for-them moves. Additionally, Trash Cloak has Gunk Shot and Sandy Cloak has Rock Blast. Otherwise, their differences in movepool are on-STAB moves like Sandy Cloak having Earth Power and Earthquake. Basically, pick Plant Cloak if you want a Special Wormadam, unless you want Earth Power or Flash Cannon unfortunately, pick Sandy Cloak if you want a physical Wormadam, and pick Trash Cloak if you want Steel moves or Gunk Shot.
Rotom-Mow: Keep in mind that the only difference for the purpose of Type Control between the Rotom Formes (Other than the base forme being worst) is that Heat gets Overheat, Fridge gets Blizzard, Mow gets Leaf Storm, Wash gets Hydro Pump, and Fan gets Air Slash. As such, which forme you pick should be about which of those moves you want, unless you want none of them in which case pick your favorite graphic, maybe one of the less-competitively used ones like Fan. Having said all that, an obvious thing to do is to revert to its base forme's Ghost/Electric typing, which it has plenty of STAB options for. Alternatively, it gets Dark Pulse, Signal Beam, and Sucker Punch for notable attacking moves. It could pull off Dark/Bug, or Bug/Electric, or Dark/Electric. Overall I'd probably stick with Electric typing though.
Leavanny: Two of Leavanny's Abilities are notable here: Chlorophyll, and Overcoat. The latter means it can go in Sand or Hail teams just fine, and doesn't need its Grass typing for Spore immunity, while the former makes it a lightning fast physical attacker in Sun. In any event, it gets Shadow Claw, Aerial Ace, Steel Wing, Poison Jab, Knock Off, and a few Special moves that it's probably not worth trying to go for. It could pull off yet another Dark/Poison Pokemon, or Ghost/Dark for more redundant offenses, or you could make it Grass/Poison (Which really is an OK type combination) or Bug/Poison, or Bug/Dark. I dunno if it would be viable, but it is at least possible for it to escape its awful native typing with its double weakness to both Flying and Fire.
Sawsbuck: Megahorn, Wild Charge, Bounce, and several Special moves it lacks the Special Attack to care. Bug/Electric is actually a decent type combination. Or I guess you could go Electric/Flying...
Trevenant: One possibility is to de-Ghost it and run it as a Curse user for the stat gains. It actually has Earthquake, plus less notably Poison Jab. Overall it's probably best off either staying its default combination or going Ghost/Ground, unless you want to use Curse for stat gains in which case Ground/Poison is probably its best bet. Keep in mind that with Harvest+Curse, it can potentially survive for quite a while! Ground/Poison has the additional advantage of letting it ignore Toxic, which is particularly relevant for a Curse-for-stats build that wants to stay in.
Gourgeist: Something to keep in mind is that Gourgeist's Attack goes up with its size, but its Special Attack is not affected. For a Small Gourgeist its Special Attack isn't that much lower than its Attack, actually. Explosion, Gyro Ball, and Flame Charge are the main physical moves that leap out at me, and it's worth noting that Gourgeist's physical Ghost options are terrible: Shadow Sneak or Phantom Force is basically it. Grass/Fire or Grass/Normal could be good for a Small Gourgeist, while a Super Gourgeist is probably best off taking Steel for Gyro Ball, and perhaps holding onto its Ghost typing to avoid problematic double weaknesses. A Special-oriented Gourgeist has access to Psychic, Flamethrower, Fire Blast, Sludge Bomb, Incinerate, Focus Blast, Charge Beam, and Dark Pulse, so a Small Gourgeist running itself as a weak Special sweeper has a lot of options. Unfortunately, Calm Mind or Nasty Plot or whatever to really try to overcome how low its Special Attack actually is.
Breloom: Oddly enough, Fighting/Grass is probably its best option. In any event do not make it Poison or Steel if you want to use Poison Heal. It does also get Thunderpunch and Iron Tail. Fighting/Electric Breloom? Only weaknesses are Psychic, Fairy, and Ground at that point, and offensively they have some synergy.
Virizion: Zen Headbutt, Bounce, and Aerial Ace are literally all its non-STAB non-Normal offensive moves. Psychic/Fighting is an OK typing, and Fighting/Flying is actually pretty decent, but Virizion's real problem is having a dumb statblock and there's no major gems in its movepool to save the day,
Tangrowth: Knock Off, Earthquake, Brick Break, Sludge Bomb, Payback, Focus Blast, Poison Jab, and Rock Slide. It is actually slightly higher in Special Attack than Attack, contrary to expectations, but overall Ground/Dark seems one of its best options.
Meganium: It's actually only one point weaker in Attack than Special Attack. Meanwhile, it gets Earthquake, Dragon Tail, Outrage, Iron Tail and... er... Fury Cutter?... no seriously, these physical moves are all its non-Grass attacking moves of any competency. This is somewhat unfortunate, given that every single combination you can produce out of these except Dragon/Steel has at least one double weakness. Alternatively, you can focus on a supporting role and give it typing appropriate to that. Or... just not use it. Too bad.
Sunflora: Sludge Bomb, Curse, interestingly enough Earth Power... well... you could make it Ground/Poison? Or make it part Ghost to put a Curse on people?... Sunflora is bad.
Sceptile: Once Mega Sceptile is a thing, keep in mind the possibility to Water/Flying for Lightningrod abuse. Moves-wise, Sceptile has Pursuit, Night Slash, X-Scissor, Dragon Claw, Earthquake, Brick Break, Acrobatics, Crunch, Rock Slide, Thunderpunch, Outrage, Dragon Pulse, Drain Punch, and Iron Tail. Keep in mind that while Sceptile's Special Attack is higher than its Attack, it's a manageable difference. While a lot of these would be a bad combination with grass-typing, producing one or more double weaknesses (Rock/Grass is the only one of these that doesn't), that's OK because you can just ignore its Grass typing (Maybe use Leaf Blade as a coverage move) and instead make it Dragon/Steel, or Ground/Steel, or Ground/Electric, or Electric/Dark, or... it has a lot of potential!
Shiftry: Shadow Ball, Brick Break, Focus Blast, Rock Slide, X-Scissor, Power Up Punch, Extrasensory, a surprisingly large number of weak, Special wind-themed moves like Ominous Wind, Twister, and Icy Wind... oh, and you could make it Normal typed for STAB Explosion and Fake Out, of course. Normal/Ghost could be pretty good, or Grass/Ghost as a fairly solid side-grade that abandons the Bug double weakness. None of its other possibilities are really exceptional, though.
Cacturne: Poison Jab, Power Up Punch, Belch, Venoshock I guess, Thunderpunch, Superpower, and Drain Punch all stand out. It's too bad it doesn't have anything that synergizes well with Water Absorb. It should probably hold onto its Dark typing to keep STAB on its Sucker Punch, because its speed is bad and its durability is bad too, which makes it difficult to take advantage of its theoretically solid offenses. Poison/Dark? Electric/Dark?...
Cherrim: Dazzling Gleam, and, um, Rollout? I suddenly understand why nobody uses Cherrim. This is awful.
Carnivine: Crunch, Sludge Bomb, Thief, Payback, Knock Off, Bug Bite... er... Wring Out?... Grass/Dark isn't the worst type in the world, but it's doubly weak to Bug and Carnivine isn't getting any pay-off from Levitate. Unless you're in an Inverse Type Control match? Is that even a thing? Nor can it pull off Dark/Poison except as a specifically mixed attacker, which would otherwise be a great combination with its Levitate. You could run it as a more defensive Dark/Poison with no weaknesses, but that's relying on its comparatively weak defensive stats.
Leafeon: Last Resort, Trump Card, Knock Off and... er... Iron Tail?... basically, you could run it as Grass/Normal to power up its unusual and unusually powerful Normal moves... it's... bad.
Shaymin/Shaymin-Sky: Psychic, Dazzling Gleam, Earth Power of course... that's about it. Grass/Ground? You'd still have a double weakness to Ice, but there's some appeal. Or you could go Fairy/Ground and have no double weaknesses.
Serperior: Dragon Tail, Dragon Pulse, Iron Tail, Pursuit, Aqua Tail, Knock Off, Iron Tail and Outrage. Keep in mind Serperior has equal Attack to Special Attack, so a Water/Dragon or a Water/Dark physical build could be good. It's too bad that even once Contrary is released unless it gets new tutor options it's only Special options will be Grass moves and Dragon Pulse.
Simisage: Acrobatics, Shadow Claw, Crunch, Gunk Shot, Iron Tail, Knock Off and Superpower! Dark/Flying, Flying/Fighting, Dark/Poison, Flying/Steel... it's got some nice options. Might salvage it?
Lilligant: Unless you want to count Dream Eater, it's all Grass, all the Grasstime.
Maractus: Sucker Punch, Poison Jab... um... Pin Missile, Aerial Ace... Hyper Voice?... and Drain Punch and Knock Off. It's Special-oriented in stats, but not so strongly that a physical edition couldn't work. Uuuh. Dark/Poison running Sucker Punch, Poison Jab, Drain Punch and a support move?
Gogoat: I've already covered that it can do a mixed attacker Water/Ground with Sap Sipper build, but what are its other options? It's also got Payback, Brick Break, and Wild Charge. (Add Electric straight-up to be pretty flatly improved!) Yup. That's it. I... would probably skip on Gogoat, given its best option is to be a bad Goodra.
Jumpluff: Weirdly enough, it gets Fairy Wind. Honestly, Jumpluff's offensive stats are so bad the thing to do is probably to give it a more defensible type combination like Dark/Ghost, Dark/Poison, Steel/Dragon, whatever, and just ignore its STAB options. Even aside from the fact that it has no strong non-Grass non-Flying attack moves anyway.
Tropius: Earthquake, Steel Wing, Curse and Dragon Dance (!!), Outrage, and Dragon Pulse. It's only slightly better at Special Attack than it is at physical Attack, and meanwhile Swords Dance, Curse, and Dragon Dance are all available vs no Special boosting options. And it gets Leaf Blade which is quite the nice move. Ground/Dragon unfortunately is still doubly weak to Ice, and that's bad for a Pokemon that wants to be able to Harvest-wall, so Dragon/Steel using Earthquake or Leaf Blade for coverage (Or both, ignoring Steel Wing) might be its best bet.
Torterra: Crunch, Superpower, Iron Head, Outrage... run it as Ground/Dark, or Ground/Steel, or Steel/Dragon with Earthquake for coverage, or Ground/Fighting if Superpower works for you, or Steel/Fighting or Dragon/Fighting if you like powerful moves with major disadvantages for your STABs. It's pretty nice actually. Keep Leech Seed!
Abomasnow: Earthquake, Shadow Ball, Brick Break, Focus Blast, Outrage, and Iron Tail. If you don't want to run it as an Ice type, keep in mind you can replace Snow Warning with Soundproof. (You're out of luck if you want to use a non-Ice Mega Abomasnow: suck it up, and use Blizzard) Ice/Dragon Mega Abomasnow could be interesting. Really, just about anything is a better type combination than Grass/Ice. Ice/Ground works OK for Mamoswine, so maybe that?
Whimsicott: Whimsicott isn't a big attacker Pokemon anyway, so the primary concern should be useful defensive typing, such as Steel/Flying, Dark/Poison, etc. Nonetheless, notable moves include Hurricane, Shadow Ball, Knock Off and U-Turn. Keep in mind that it has access to Prankster Cotton Guard, normally held back by the fact that Grass/Fairy is an awful typing. Dark/Poison is only weak to Ground, and most Ground attackers are physically hitting you, so Cotton Guard Dark/Poison might be fairly competent.
Chesnaught: Dragon Claw, Earthquake, Shadow Claw, Payback, Gyro Ball, Stone Edge, and Poison Jab. It's worth noting that Bulletproof can let it get away with stuff like having a Ghost weakness (Most of the time, Ghost=Shadow Ball) or, oddly enough, a Grass weakness. (Many notable Grass moves are affected by Bulletproof) Ultimately most of the moves Bulletproof blocks are sufficiently narrow representatives of their types that otherwise it's probably ill-advised to select typing based on this aspect... but, for instance, making it Ground/Ghost with Earthquake and Shadow Claw, it would only really consistently fear Water, Dark, and Ice moves, and it has the movepool for it. In terms of just movepool though, I'd probably run either Fighting/Ground or Fighting/Steel.
Ferrothorn: It has Curse, Normal typing it for Explosion has appeal, it has Payback which is great for how slow it is, Shadow Claw, Poison Jab, and Knock Off. Plus a surprisingly decent Special movepool it lacks the stats to really take advantage of. The most obvious route is Dark/Poison, which plays nicely with its desire to wall you and kill you with Iron Barbs and possibly a Rocky Helmet too.
Parasect: Cross Poison, Brick Break, Pursuit, Knock Off, and not much else stands out, considering how strongly oriented towards Attack it is. The most obviously possibility is Dark/Poison. It's too bad it doesn't get anything to really abuse its Dry Skin with. Keep in mind it's one of the rare Spore users.
Ludicolo: Oddly enough, it learns all the Elemental Punches, as well as Zen Headbutt, and Drain Punch. It's stronger by a decent margin at Special than Physical, but barring Ice Beam/Blizzard, it has no notable off-type Special moves. There's some weird things you could do with Electric/Fighting physical Ludicolo or the like, basically.
Cradily: Earthquake, Sludge Wave, Sludge Bomb, Curse, and Earth Power. It has Storm Drain, so I would love to recommend a Ground/Rock variant (Either Earthquake/Rock Slide or Earth Power/Ancient Power), but that's still doubly weak to Grass, and Cradily is not a Pokemon that likes switching out too often. A Ground/Fire variant would have no notable STAB available for the Fire end, but you could run it with Hidden Power Fire, Storm Drain, and Earth Power. Cradily is enough of a wall-y Pokemon that this could be acceptable, or even dropping Hidden Power Fire outright.
Wormadam-Grass: An odd case. Keep in mind Wormadam's different forms have different movepools and even different statlines! (Sandy Cloak has the best Attack and Defense, Plant Cloak the best Special Attack and Special Defense, and Trash Cloak is balanced ie crappy) Also, Overcoat blocks damaging weather and powder moves, so typing it Grass, Ground, Steel, or Ice for those reasons is not needed. All three types have Psychic, Shadow Ball, and Sucker Punch as notable off-type-for-them moves. Additionally, Trash Cloak has Gunk Shot and Sandy Cloak has Rock Blast. Otherwise, their differences in movepool are on-STAB moves like Sandy Cloak having Earth Power and Earthquake. Basically, pick Plant Cloak if you want a Special Wormadam, unless you want Earth Power or Flash Cannon unfortunately, pick Sandy Cloak if you want a physical Wormadam, and pick Trash Cloak if you want Steel moves or Gunk Shot.
Rotom-Mow: Keep in mind that the only difference for the purpose of Type Control between the Rotom Formes (Other than the base forme being worst) is that Heat gets Overheat, Fridge gets Blizzard, Mow gets Leaf Storm, Wash gets Hydro Pump, and Fan gets Air Slash. As such, which forme you pick should be about which of those moves you want, unless you want none of them in which case pick your favorite graphic, maybe one of the less-competitively used ones like Fan. Having said all that, an obvious thing to do is to revert to its base forme's Ghost/Electric typing, which it has plenty of STAB options for. Alternatively, it gets Dark Pulse, Signal Beam, and Sucker Punch for notable attacking moves. It could pull off Dark/Bug, or Bug/Electric, or Dark/Electric. Overall I'd probably stick with Electric typing though.
Leavanny: Two of Leavanny's Abilities are notable here: Chlorophyll, and Overcoat. The latter means it can go in Sand or Hail teams just fine, and doesn't need its Grass typing for Spore immunity, while the former makes it a lightning fast physical attacker in Sun. In any event, it gets Shadow Claw, Aerial Ace, Steel Wing, Poison Jab, Knock Off, and a few Special moves that it's probably not worth trying to go for. It could pull off yet another Dark/Poison Pokemon, or Ghost/Dark for more redundant offenses, or you could make it Grass/Poison (Which really is an OK type combination) or Bug/Poison, or Bug/Dark. I dunno if it would be viable, but it is at least possible for it to escape its awful native typing with its double weakness to both Flying and Fire.
Sawsbuck: Megahorn, Wild Charge, Bounce, and several Special moves it lacks the Special Attack to care. Bug/Electric is actually a decent type combination. Or I guess you could go Electric/Flying...
Trevenant: One possibility is to de-Ghost it and run it as a Curse user for the stat gains. It actually has Earthquake, plus less notably Poison Jab. Overall it's probably best off either staying its default combination or going Ghost/Ground, unless you want to use Curse for stat gains in which case Ground/Poison is probably its best bet. Keep in mind that with Harvest+Curse, it can potentially survive for quite a while! Ground/Poison has the additional advantage of letting it ignore Toxic, which is particularly relevant for a Curse-for-stats build that wants to stay in.
Gourgeist: Something to keep in mind is that Gourgeist's Attack goes up with its size, but its Special Attack is not affected. For a Small Gourgeist its Special Attack isn't that much lower than its Attack, actually. Explosion, Gyro Ball, and Flame Charge are the main physical moves that leap out at me, and it's worth noting that Gourgeist's physical Ghost options are terrible: Shadow Sneak or Phantom Force is basically it. Grass/Fire or Grass/Normal could be good for a Small Gourgeist, while a Super Gourgeist is probably best off taking Steel for Gyro Ball, and perhaps holding onto its Ghost typing to avoid problematic double weaknesses. A Special-oriented Gourgeist has access to Psychic, Flamethrower, Fire Blast, Sludge Bomb, Incinerate, Focus Blast, Charge Beam, and Dark Pulse, so a Small Gourgeist running itself as a weak Special sweeper has a lot of options. Unfortunately, Calm Mind or Nasty Plot or whatever to really try to overcome how low its Special Attack actually is.
Let's talk about Pokemon that can run Water immunity. Fire/Ground typing with Water immunity is only weak to Ground, and is a good offensive combination actually. I've already talked before about Toxicroak, Jynx, and Parasect, none of whom can fully pull it off... what about the rest of them?
Heliolisk: No Fire moves, and both its Ground moves are uninspiring and physical besides, when its Special Attack is about double its Attack.
Poliwrath: Earthquake and Mud Bomb, but no Fire moves.
Lapras: Bulldoze and Drill Run. The fact that they're physical is fine, it's Attack and Special Attack are actually identical, but it still has no Fire moves.
Vaporeon: Dig and Mud Slap are as close as it gets to doing this well.
Lanturn: Literally nothing.
Politoed: Has Earthquake, Mud Shot, Mud Bomb, Dig and Bulldoze for what they're worth... no Fire moves. You could run Mud Shot or Mud Bomb with Hidden Power Fire.
Quagsire: It should come as no surprise that it can easily pull off the Ground component, but as usual no Fire. It's physically weighted too, so Hidden Power Fire is ill-advised.
Mantine: It actually gets Earthquake, but it's Attack is awful. It's best Special Ground is... Mud Slap.
Suicune: Unreleased, rendering it kind of irrelevant. Game Freak may yet change their minds! Lacks the movepool to pull this off, in any event.
Seismitoad: Can of course pull off the Ground end of things, but lacks any Fire moves. Another vaguely competent Hidden Power Fire user.
Jellicent: Nothing.
Well, how about Storm Drain examples?
Gastrodon: Can of course pull off the Ground end of things, but Hidden Power Fire is still you're only way of pulling this off.
Lumineon: Will Lumineon finally give us a Pokemon that can really do this? Salvage itself from obscurity? Become a legend in the Type Control meta?
No.
Poliwrath: Earthquake and Mud Bomb, but no Fire moves.
Lapras: Bulldoze and Drill Run. The fact that they're physical is fine, it's Attack and Special Attack are actually identical, but it still has no Fire moves.
Vaporeon: Dig and Mud Slap are as close as it gets to doing this well.
Lanturn: Literally nothing.
Politoed: Has Earthquake, Mud Shot, Mud Bomb, Dig and Bulldoze for what they're worth... no Fire moves. You could run Mud Shot or Mud Bomb with Hidden Power Fire.
Quagsire: It should come as no surprise that it can easily pull off the Ground component, but as usual no Fire. It's physically weighted too, so Hidden Power Fire is ill-advised.
Mantine: It actually gets Earthquake, but it's Attack is awful. It's best Special Ground is... Mud Slap.
Suicune: Unreleased, rendering it kind of irrelevant. Game Freak may yet change their minds! Lacks the movepool to pull this off, in any event.
Seismitoad: Can of course pull off the Ground end of things, but lacks any Fire moves. Another vaguely competent Hidden Power Fire user.
Jellicent: Nothing.
Well, how about Storm Drain examples?
Gastrodon: Can of course pull off the Ground end of things, but Hidden Power Fire is still you're only way of pulling this off.
Lumineon: Will Lumineon finally give us a Pokemon that can really do this? Salvage itself from obscurity? Become a legend in the Type Control meta?
No.
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