Unpopular opinions

[Heatranator]

In my post above I mentioned that Grass and Psychic are the only Types that have a losing record both offensively and defensively. Ironically, part of what made Gen 1 Psychic so dominant for so long was that it remains the only Type in any Type chart to have a WINNING record both offensively and defensively, even if just barely. The thing is with both Grass and Psychic, though, is that I would argue they’re at their strongest as utility Types rather than dedicated offensive or defensive use. Tera Grass is one of the best defensive Tera Types in the game in my opinion but that’s only specifically as a Tera Type, and outside of Teal Mask Ogerpon being one of the weaker forms, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen someone run a Tera Psychic Pokémon on the OU ladder.

Utility, though? Things are noticeably better, and unfortunately held back by the rises of Ghost and to a lesser extent Dark’s offensive spread. Two of the best utility moves in the game, Spore and post-buff Teleport, are these Types. The Terrains may have been nerfed, sure, but gradual healing and especially priority blocking are both excellent tools to have. Moves you mentioned like Psychic Noise and Future Sight thrive off of their respective utility, and Grass and healing and healing have always gone together nicely.

Psychic’s Problems from the perspective of an uneducated guy who has this as one his top three favorite types alongside water and poison:

• Weak to common attacks like U-Turn and Knock Off (and Pursuit prior to Gen 8)
• Poor matchup spreads offensively and defensively
• Several prominent nerfs over various generations
• Not nearly as many new Poison-Types added in newer generations, specifically compared to Gen 1
• Fairy gives Psychic competition for the role of Fighting check
• Generally low base power attacks with more emphasis on utility
• Low amount of parity between top-tier Pokémon of this Type

IDT grass is bad. Definitely lower tier, but the utility is what makes it stand out (also having a winning mu against water and ground, two great types, is really good).

1) Majority of its resists are low value (Bug, Grass, and Itself are 3/5)
2) It is not only weak to a top tier offensive type, but a common and top tier offensive coverage type, which undermines its defensive profile even more than it looks like
3) Dreadful physical attack options. 80% "accurate" mainstream option, and some don't even get that. Stone Edge has amazing coverage to justify that, Gunk Shot doesn't.
4) Hitting one good type does not mean it has replacement-level offensive coverage. By this logic, Bug (Dark) and Grass (Water; Ground) have good coverage. Five resists/immune (including to three of the best types in the game) and two SE is still a bad profile, even when one of the SE is a good type.
5) Having an immunity against Poison, and it being the best defensive type in a game, makes the type a lot less safe to click on offense in general.

Resisting bug IDT is too low value, but sure. However, resisting fairy and fighting is big. Fighting is a pretty good type but fairy is prob top three minimum.
Yes, it's weak to ground, but that's really its only weakness. And secondary typings such as grass and flying are really good pairings with it because of that.
Gunk shot's main thing is that 30% poison rate, which means typings such as ground still don't like switching in. And sludge bomb is just a really good special attacking option.
While poisons offensive coverage isn't amazing, hitting fairy does raise it up a bit.
A big thing I think people are overlooking is the utility of poison. Toxic is a incredibly dominant move and toxic spikes can define entire tiers at times and shut down complete playstyles if they don't have an absorber (which hey, is poison types, so another point for poison)

Poison is the definition of mid tier typing, yes it's not going to wow you with powerful attacks or insane defensive merits like steel, but it does decently in both. Combine that with the utility it provides, and I cannot put it low tier, it's just way better then typings such as ice (which yes, is pretty great offensively, but flounders incredibly hard defensively and even offensively struggles decently hard against top tier types such as steel, fire and water if no freeze dry).

 

[Frostbiyt]

I'll grant that bug has good utility in its offensive moves, but it is mostly propped up by U-turn, a move whose bug typing is usually incidental. Not a lot of pokemon run bug moves for coverage. The biggest thing that bug has going for it offensively is giving STAB to U-turn. While its SE spread is unique, it's just not very good. Bug's defensive properties are done better by Flying, Poison, and even Grass, with Flying being nearly a strict upgrade.

I also agree that Poison is underrated, it is definitely a mid-tier type. The combination of a decent defensive spread, immunity to toxic/poison, and access to moves that have a high chance of spreading poison make it a really solid type for bulky mons.

My list, off the top of my head:
S: Steel, Fairy
A: Water, Ground, Dark
B: Fire, Ghost, Dragon, Electric
C: Flying, Poison, Fighting, Grass
D: Normal, Psychic
F: Bug, Rock, Ice
These are ordered within each tier from best to to worst.

 

[Adeleine]

Part 2

By comparison, Bug-Types lost a lot of tools on the Nintendo Switch. Heavy-Duty Boots might help against Stealth Rock, which is fair, but it does so at the cost of indirectly nerfing Sticky Web.

I guess. I'd still call it a net positive, since Web is better in OU and Ubers rn than in (pre-HDB) Gen7, and especially because HDB eases U-turn pivoting + many Bugs are 4x SR weak, but it's at least mixed.

The Ultra Beasts got Dexited from Scarlet & Violet and Mega Evolutions aren’t there or in Sword & Shield, so there goes some of the best modern Bug-Types by default.

This isn't a fault of the type itself, and not something I care about when evaluating types.

Volcarona and a buffed Araquanid are entirely carrying the Bug typing in Scarlet & Violet’s meta now,

Nope. Ribombee would be Uber by usage (>7%!). Scizor is OU. Lokix and Slither Wing are UU, and Yanmega is RUBL. Many other Bug-types would be high tier if they weren't Dexited. (As above, I don't hold it against the type that its guys got Dexited.) The type is clearly workable in top-level play.

how several physical Bug-Types either lack or lost good physical boosting moves to match Quiver Dance,

Not correct. Of the 9 fully-evolved Bug-types with over 80 Attack (including Scyther; excluding Forretress), 8 have SD. The sole remaining, Slither Wing, at least has Bulk Up.

Even if it was correct, it doesn't really make sense as a criticism. Tons of types lack good boosting on their guys physically, specially, or both. QD being so good doesn't mean an average situation on the physical end would become a weakness.

Or the fact that Bug, as one of the worst offensive Types in the game, can be taken advantage of in that aspect with common defensive Tera Types that your opponent may already be running for other threats anyways such as Fire, Poison, Steel, or Flying.

Seems believable. I consciously choose to not interact with Tera so like, I don't have a meaningful opinion, but it checks out.

Resisting bug IDT is too low value, but sure. However, resisting fairy and fighting is big. Fighting is a pretty good type but fairy is prob top three minimum.
Yes, it's weak to ground, but that's really its only weakness. And secondary typings such as grass and flying are really good pairings with it because of that.

You're missing the macro-level point that Steel does this better. Steel is a Fairy check that dies to Ground too, but it matches up better against the field. Steel has some other weaknesses, but that's okay, since it pairs with secondary types much better than Poison does (such as Grass and Flying, too... and Bug. And Fairy. Don't forget Dragon and Water. Also Dark and Ghost. And Ground. Also Electric.)

Poison isn't fully outclassed, but it's a bad sign it's fighting so hard in what's supposed to be its niche (Fairy-checking in specific, defense in general).

Toxic is a incredibly dominant move

This is misinformation on the internet. It's just not true. The spotlight Toxic users in singles now are B-rank OU washouts like Toxapex and Clodsire. Nobody's falling head over heels for it anytime soon. Many decent or good mons with Toxic (e.g. Etern, Gliscor, Revavroom, Weezing Galar) like to skip it for other utility moves (like Recover, Knock Off, Shift Gear, WoW resp.). High ladder Gliscor runs Toxic under 1/3rd of the time, it just has better to do, and the other listed guys run Toxic even less.

rock has multiple moves that define metas (stealth rock, rock slide)

Rock has zero moves that define singles, the format that I care about. Stealth Rock is quite good and common but hardly defines the format in a HDB world.

and good pokemon in said category (tyranitar, garganacl) that use the good attributes of rock).

Rock, more than any other type, depends on signature abilities and moves and gimmicks, a crutch which makes me evaluate it pretty poorly. Garg has a tremendously powerful defensive ability and is still a poster child for Terastallization so it can drop Rock's many weaknesses - imagine if it was just a good defensive type to start with! Iron Boulder and Ogerpon needed special signature attacks to not die to Stone Edge misses, and they still both miss OU. Your best Rock-type not depending on a signature is, like, Tyranitar and Arcanine-Hisui, which still need special rare treats (Sand Stream, or Rock Head + STAB Head Smash) to eke out a UU B rank. As I'm hinting, even with all this under-the-counter help, the better Rock-types are still middling, usually milling around in the UU basement or lower. Compare this to Ribombee for Bug, which needed no signature traits to be Ubers "by usage".

I'd mention the Rock-types that needed gimmicks to be Ubers viable but there aren't any Rock-types that are Ubers viable. It and Grass share that demerit.

I'll grant that bug has good utility in its offensive moves, but it is mostly propped up by U-turn, a move whose bug typing is usually incidental.

It isn't. Sticky Web, Quiver Dance, and First Impression would like a word. And Bug beating a top-tier type in Dark. There are just plenty of great and solid Bug-types (many of which are Dexited, no fault of the type), which proves they can definitely do stuff one way or another.

 

[Frostbiyt]

It isn't. Sticky Web, Quiver Dance, and First Impression would like a word. And Bug beating a top-tier type in Dark. There are just plenty of great and solid Bug-types (many of which are Dexited, no fault of the type), which proves they can definitely do stuff one way or another.

Personally I don't really consider moves like QD and sticky web when evaluating a type, since those moves' typing is 100% flavor. And yeah, First Impression is an excellent move, but how many pokemon get it? Literally every type has great mons, most types have more than bug does, now and in previous gens.

I'd also like to make a distinction between evaluating whether a type is good vs whether a type has good pokemon. In the latter case, QD and sticky web do matter, since they are mostly only given to Bug types. However, good Bug types are rare compared to most other types. For the former case, I consider whether a pokemon of this type would be better off with a different type, depending on its roll. For bug, the answer to this question would be yes for most pokemon.

 

[Heatranator]

You're missing the macro-level point that Steel does this better. Steel is a Fairy check that dies to Ground too, but it matches up better against the field. Steel has some other weaknesses, but that's okay, since it pairs with secondary types much better than Poison does (such as Grass and Flying, too... and Bug. And Fairy. Don't forget Dragon and Water. Also Dark and Ghost. And Ground. Also Electric.)

Poison isn't fully outclassed, but it's a bad sign it's fighting so hard in what's supposed to be its niche (Fairy-checking in specific, defense in general).

Yes, steel competes with poison, no doubt about it. But IDT that automatically makes it 'bad' persay. Like, resisting fairy is still really good, being resistant to fighting is also good. Again, middle of the road, its attributes still make it work well, and it doesn't have large flaws other typings like psychic have where there poisitive traits are incredibly singular while the negatives are extremely harsh, with the unique points not being massive.
Also Poison isn't even a bad typing to pair secondary with. (Flying does well, grass does well, fairy does well, dragon does well, ghost does well, dark does exceptionally well, ground does well, fighting does well).
A 'shitty steel' is still a steel in a way. Yes, you probably will want steel more, but if you can't, well, it still does the job very well.

This is misinformation on the internet. It's just not true. The spotlight Toxic users in singles now are B-rank OU washouts like Toxapex and Clodsire. Nobody's falling head over heels for it anytime soon. Many decent or good mons with Toxic (e.g. Etern, Gliscor, Revavroom, Weezing Galar) like to skip it for other utility moves (like Recover, Knock Off, Shift Gear, WoW resp.). High ladder Gliscor runs Toxic under 1/3rd of the time, it just has better to do, and the other listed guys run Toxic even less.

LMFAO what. Toxic's only bad thing rn is that its distribution is kinda shit, look at every prior gen and see how multiple top tiers use it (go back to gen 7/8 and see how many amazing pokemon like heatran, melmetal, landorus etc use it commonly). If you gave toxic to more pokemon, then they will use it a LOT.
Also there are more good/great pokemon that use toxic. Glowking uses its quite often over t-wave, it still is a premier option on defensive gliscor (if we look at the stats, toxic is used even more then spikes). Those are two top tiers that use it on a semi-regular basis. And Toxapex/Clodsire are still somewhat important pokemon on stall. Eternatus in SS used it on a main set and in ND Ubers, it also uses it on a main set. Only time it doesn't use it is in SV ubers, and it probably still works well there.
Let's look at lower tiers even. UU has clodsire and pex ofc. RU has Quagsire and Umbreon use it almost always with some mew using it. NU has bellibolt, breloom, Gligar, Tentacruel use it (overqwil doesn't use it but thats cause it has a sig move that is broken). PU has dudunsparce, amoonguss, some goodra, Skuntank, Glowbro. I could go on but I think you get the point.
The only issue with Toxic, is distribution is kinda ass. And even then, quite a few pokemon that get it still use it.

Rock has zero moves that define singles, the format that I care about. Stealth Rock is quite good and common but hardly defines the format in a HDB world.

Stealth rock absolutely still defines singles, what are we on about? Yes, HDB makes it worse, but every team still uses it because its just that good. And there are a ton of teams that use non HDB mons/strategies, and opt for removal such as tusk, corv and geezing. If "being required on almost every team" is not defining, idk what is at this point.

Rock, more than any other type, depends on signature abilities and moves and gimmicks, a crutch which makes me evaluate it pretty poorly. Garg has a tremendously powerful defensive ability and is still a poster child for Terastallization so it can drop Rock's many weaknesses - imagine if it was just a good defensive type to start with! Iron Boulder and Ogerpon needed special signature attacks to not die to Stone Edge misses, and they still both miss OU. Your best Rock-type not depending on a signature is, like, Tyranitar and Arcanine-Hisui, which still need special rare treats (Sand Stream, or Rock Head + STAB Head Smash) to eke out a UU B rank. As I'm hinting, even with all this under-the-counter help, the better Rock-types are still middling, usually milling around in the UU basement or lower. Compare this to Ribombee for Bug, which needed no signature traits to be Ubers "by usage".

Fair point tbh, but I do not think it is as bad as psychic since mons such as Ttar and Garg (yes, garg commonly tera's to other types, but that initial typing helps it take on mons such as iron moth easily) do use that typing and its attributes, rather then begging to be something else.

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

Gen wunner here. Psychic underpowered? Eh? They still have some of the most powerful mons and moves in competitive play, as well as most Psychic mons having ridiculously broad movesets.

 

[Heatranator]

Gen wunner here. Psychic underpowered? Eh? They still have some of the most powerful mons and moves in competitive play, as well as most Psychic mons having ridiculously broad movesets.

The mons are like, eh? Like, a lot of them are good but not cause they are psychic (besides maybe calyrex shadow rider, and even then it prob would prefer another typing). They usually have to compensate for said typing, glowking would prob love to be anything but a psychic.
The moves aren't really good, future sight, psychic noise and teleport are really only the ones that are 'good', nothing else you really wanna use on a mon despite that. Maybe you add psyshock and stored power cause some mons like darkrai use it, but thats still in the minority.

The typing is just really bad both defensively and offensively. Only resists are fighting (which is a good resist to have), and itself. Meanwhile its weak to bug, dark and ghost, two of those are very important. Offensively its just as bad, only being super effective against 2 types (fighting and poison), while being resisted by itself, steel and a whole immunity in dark types.

Like, when its to the point that Lunala's dex entry in smogdex has psychic stab in OO, and even then says its not usually great, that shows how bad it is.

Yes, in there hayday in Gen 1, psychics were broken cause they had no resists besides themselves and had no weaknesses, but they just kinda fall flat now.

 

[bdt2002]

Part 2

I guess. I'd still call it a net positive, since Web is better in OU and Ubers rn than in (pre-HDB) Gen7, and especially because HDB eases U-turn pivoting + many Bugs are 4x SR weak, but it's at least mixed.


This isn't a fault of the type itself, and not something I care about when evaluating types.


Nope. Ribombee would be Uber by usage (>7%!). Scizor is OU. Lokix and Slither Wing are UU, and Yanmega is RUBL. Many other Bug-types would be high tier if they weren't Dexited. (As above, I don't hold it against the type that its guys got Dexited.) The type is clearly workable in top-level play.


Not correct. Of the 9 fully-evolved Bug-types with over 80 Attack (including Scyther; excluding Forretress), 8 have SD. The sole remaining, Slither Wing, at least has Bulk Up.

Scizor is in OU right now? Huh. Must have been part of whenever the most recent tier shifts happened. I could have sworn Araquanid was the sole OU. I also didn’t realize so many of them got Swords Dance. Overall, I think what I was trying to say was that Dexit took away a lot of the best options of the Pokémon.

 

[Dive Missile]

i think rock is the worst type mostly because it lacks a strong identity. like, bugs and psychics make up for their middling typing by having a lot of standout moves, ice types have incredible offensive prowess that shore up their weak defenses, normal types tend to have enormous movepools, but rock pokemon tend to just feel like half-hearted attempts at making a tank. dreadnaw and coalossal are good recent examples of this, they just kinda dont have much going on in general and their type doesn't help much. i see a lot of complaints about rock moves being inaccurate but IMO it would actually be pretty cool if game freak committed to rock being a high risk high reward type with strong but inaccurate or high investment moves. head smash and meteor beam are good examples of this but i wish there was more

 

[Bakugames]

its funny: despite sr being a worthless move in vgc, i think the rock type is much better there. its not the best but especially on earlier formats rock types can get good results, and they have decent moves to use still like meteor beam, rock slide and wide guard (though this one is learned more by non rocks lol).

i think my main issue with bug type is that its defensive profile is so bad and offensive one is kinda niche that youre more so using them to be able to use a specific nuke/insane status move than because its a type that brings in something of benefit to your team. we do have exceptions but scizor typing wise is also carried by steel patching up a lot of bugs issues. volcarona imo is a better example of a flat out good bug that can use its bug type effectively, though it needed a lot to be able to do so (broken stat booster, insane stabs and good coverage with amazing bst and a gen 9 bonus of being really good at using tera).

and this may just sound like me saying "good pokemon are good because they have good traits", but what i mean is that i think bug types require a lot more to be able to hit the threshold of "good" to compensate for the type making them worse by default. If you changed the bug type to something else, a lot of them would immediately have more synergy and use and would bump in viability

 

[Linkin Karp]

i think rock is the worst type mostly because it lacks a strong identity. like, bugs and psychics make up for their middling typing by having a lot of standout moves, ice types have incredible offensive prowess that shore up their weak defenses, normal types tend to have enormous movepools, but rock pokemon tend to just feel like half-hearted attempts at making a tank. dreadnaw and coalossal are good recent examples of this, they just kinda dont have much going on in general and their type doesn't help much. i see a lot of complaints about rock moves being inaccurate but IMO it would actually be pretty cool if game freak committed to rock being a high risk high reward type with strong but inaccurate or high investment moves. head smash and meteor beam are good examples of this but i wish there was more

I love Rock as a type, genuinely half my top 50 are Rock-types. It does kind of have an identity, with its insanely strong offense vs weak defense, and the high-risk notion you mentioned (even though I agree there could be more of these moves, and perhaps less Rock Slide where, infamously, every third ADV game's outcome is determined by whether it hits). Stats-wise I'm glad they shifted away from 50/70/9000/10/10/10 in recent generations (with only Stonjourner being a sole embarrassment for the type), I don't think the mismatch is nearly as bad as with Ice. The low speed in particular is a clear part of the type's identity - the quintessential Rock-type to me is Rampardos, another very high-risk high-reward mon, and I wish they made more mons with its approximate stat profile (there aren't any).

What's probably the worst thing about Rock is that every Ground-type is better at being Rock-type than any actual Rock-type. They get allllll the relevant moves which is something that doesn't happen between any two other types, and it is basically mandatory coverage so that the only difference between a Rock-type and a Ground-type is a weaker EQ, a stronger Stone Miss, and a much, much worse defensive typing unless the secondary type is Grass. I'm thinking if Electric and Ice were as thematically related, and every Electric-type got Ice Beam or Icicle Crash + Ice Shard, then nobody in their right mind would keep using Ice-types.

 

[Bakugames]

the biggest issue of rock is that it will forever be linked with ground. they will always share moves, and so whoever has a better type chart profile will almost always be the best type, which currently is ground. i do not think its viable to merge types with 1k pokemon released but i do think that an earth type, even if the more boring and common choice, would have been better than separating the design space into two.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Part of what makes isolating an overall worse type difficult is that there are a lot of ways to evaluate a type, and no type is outright terrible in all of them.

Ground is the best type in my eyes since it's great defensively, as STAB, and as coverage. Using those same categories, the worst overall type is prooobably Psychic? Poor defensively, as STAB it's probably more reliant on support from coverage than any other type, as coverage itself it's pretty mediocre. But then you look at stuff like Calm Mind being near-universal on Psychic-types, Psyshock being extremely valuable as the only* special attack to hit for physical damage, and its requisit Ghost, Fairy, or Fighting coverage being very commonly learned by Psychic-types, and suddenly it's looking kinda scary on offense.

 

[Samtendo09]

Part of what makes isolating an overall worse type difficult is that there are a lot of ways to evaluate a type, and no type is outright terrible in all of them.

Ground is the best type in my eyes since it's great defensively, as STAB, and as coverage. Using those same categories, the worst overall type is prooobably Psychic? Poor defensively, as STAB it's probably more reliant on support from coverage than any other type, as coverage itself it's pretty mediocre. But then you look at stuff like Calm Mind being near-universal on Psychic-types, Psyshock being extremely valuable as the only* special attack to hit for physical damage, and its requisit Ghost, Fairy, or Fighting coverage being very commonly learned by Psychic-types, and suddenly it's looking kinda scary on offense.

That did not stopped several Pokémon from being worse just by not only having a poor defensive type, but is too slow to sweep, and too fast for Trick Room teams.

Ice at least is a strong STAB and coverage, but it also ended up being too rigid as if one want to have a viable Ice-type, you’ll end up with only fast, frail or semi-frail sweepers. Snow’s Defense boost isn’t enough, and yet Aurora Veil ended up as overcompensating and benefit Hyper Offense even more than it benefitted Ice-type as a whole.

Rock suffered arguably worse because while it’s solid coverage, they don’t benefit STAB as much as a vast majority of Rock-type with a base power higher than 50 suffered from lower than 100% accuracy. Rock Slide only sees use in VGC because of the big 30% Flinch chance, and even then, it isn’t the most consistent Rock-type move around. The only thing going for it is Stealth Rock. Sandstorm boost on Special Defense isn’t enough for Rock’s defensive woes either.

I won’t lump Psychic and Bug into those two because at the very least, Psychic is backed up with numerous Legendary Pokémon, PsySpam (and Psychic Terrain blocking priority), Future Sight and Teleport, while Bug has lots of really good moves like (the too ubiquitous) U-Turn, Lunge, First Impression and Sticky Web. They also don’t suffer with perpetually amount of slow Pokémon despite lacking defensive values (or in Bug’s case, has nasty double weaknesses potentials), unlike Ice and Rock which are the biggest victims of mismatched concepts.

 

[Sonikku A]

Bug really should be buffed defensively + not be resisted by Fairy. Basically a more utility oriented Steel

(Posts this for the millionth time)

 

[DrPumpkinz]

That did not stopped several Pokémon from being worse just by not only having a poor defensive type, but is too slow to sweep, and too fast for Trick Room teams.

Ice at least is a strong STAB and coverage, but it also ended up being too rigid as if one want to have a viable Ice-type, you’ll end up with only fast, frail or semi-frail sweepers. Snow’s Defense boost isn’t enough, and yet Aurora Veil ended up as overcompensating and benefit Hyper Offense even more than it benefitted Ice-type as a whole.

Rock suffered arguably worse because while it’s solid coverage, they don’t benefit STAB as much as a vast majority of Rock-type with a base power higher than 50 suffered from lower than 100% accuracy. Rock Slide only sees use in VGC because of the big 30% Flinch chance, and even then, it isn’t the most consistent Rock-type move around. The only thing going for it is Stealth Rock. Sandstorm boost on Special Defense isn’t enough for Rock’s defensive woes either.

I won’t lump Psychic and Bug into those two because at the very least, Psychic is backed up with numerous Legendary Pokémon, PsySpam (and Psychic Terrain blocking priority), Future Sight and Teleport, while Bug has lots of really good moves like (the too ubiquitous) U-Turn, Lunge, First Impression and Sticky Web. They also don’t suffer with perpetually amount of slow Pokémon despite lacking defensive values (or in Bug’s case, has nasty double weaknesses potentials), unlike Ice and Rock which are the biggest victims of mismatched concepts.

I just can't in good conscience count Ice among the worst types when it's easily among the top 4 coverage types, and the only reason the top is a 4 and not a 2 is that Ground, Fighting, and Fire are all there for similar reasons.

Rock... hmmm

 

[Sonikku A]

Honestly kinda funny how Water took a hit this Gen cuz of the Paradoxes, weather war for said paradoxes, and cover legends. Same for reduced Scald distribution

It's not bad, but huh

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

i think rock is the worst type mostly because it lacks a strong identity. like, bugs and psychics make up for their middling typing by having a lot of standout moves, ice types have incredible offensive prowess that shore up their weak defenses, normal types tend to have enormous movepools, but rock pokemon tend to just feel like half-hearted attempts at making a tank. dreadnaw and coalossal are good recent examples of this, they just kinda dont have much going on in general and their type doesn't help much. i see a lot of complaints about rock moves being inaccurate but IMO it would actually be pretty cool if game freak committed to rock being a high risk high reward type with strong but inaccurate or high investment moves. head smash and meteor beam are good examples of this but i wish there was more

Right now, Rock is literally Ice with a physical bias. Down to the weather defensive buff being the thing supposed to save it, but it hardly helps.

Snow only ended the idea of the best Ice-type being a Water-type with Ice Beam. Now it's Alolatails.

The buff is nice, but when you have to manually set it, and it's 5 turns unless you burn your item slot to turn it to 8? It's not moving the needle.

its funny: despite sr being a worthless move in vgc, i think the rock type is much better there. its not the best but especially on earlier formats rock types can get good results, and they have decent moves to use still like meteor beam, rock slide and wide guard (though this one is learned more by non rocks lol).

Because SR is trash in VGC.

Sneaky Pebble has finally done what Steel couldn't. Make Rock obsolete for good.
Think about it, especially in gens without Boots. Being weak to Rock was a massive hit to a mon's viability, and a 4x weakness was essentially a death sentence.

That made those metas shy away from mons weak to Rock, which made its offensive value go down. What about defense though? Rock has always had very bulky physical mons...

This is what the average Rock mon has to offer. Slow offense with great coverage, but a crippling defensive type, especially since your opponent is usually attacking first. Rock barely worked as a defensive type in Gen 1 because Steel didn't exist, so it was the premier option for handling Normal offense. It was still very, very exploitable.

Once Steel was introduced though?

Comparing it to Ice makes it look even worse, because you're at least getting good offensive value out of its hits, and they got moves like Aurora Veil, Avalanche, Freeze-Dry, and more importantly, widely-distributed priority in Ice Shard.

Accelerock is a signature move on a mon that's already fast to begin with. Meanwhile, Rock has accuracy issues. The one move that I'd say makes waves would be Head Smash. Head Smash on mons with Rock Head is a nuke button that's pretty much exclusive to Rock-types.

Rock is a strong contender for worst type in the game rn.

The only underpowered type is Psychic. They have some things like psychic noise and future sight, but every other type is better by a decent amount (poison is amazing defensively once you look past the ground weakness and many useful status moves, rock has multiple moves that define metas (stealth rock, rock slide) and good pokemon in said category (tyranitar, garganacl) that use the good attributes of rock).
If you really think about it, psychic is really just something that most mons that have it try to overcome. Really the only mons that like the typing are the fairy/psychic types, and even then stuff like the dark neutrality are a downside.

Psychics are just a victim of the nerfs they took.

They'll never be truly unviable because a lot of them still get to hit hard and fast with their STAB. For example, as lackluster Espeon is in 2025, it's still clicking Psychic or something like it off 130 SpA/110 Spe. That will never be truly bad.

Gen 4 really twisted the knife on them when it comes to competitive viability though. Being weak to Ghost is awful because it's the strongest neutral-type since Steel got nerfed, Dark has been one of the best types in the game since Gen 6 or 7, everything runs Knock Off, and speaking of moves everyone has on their teams, being weak to U-Turn is pretty awful too.

It's been getting some tools to play with, like Expanding Force, Psychic Terrain, Psyshock, and Psychic Noise, but it is what it is, somebody gotta lose in a game. Psychic can definitely make a comeback when GF stops buffing its opps and direct competition. Fairy was awful for Psychic too.

 

[Dive Missile]

Snow only ended the idea of the best Ice-type being a Water-type with Ice Beam. Now it's Alolatails.

this is a crazy thing to say, alolatails isn't even a top 5 ice type. i really don't get how the idea of a water type with ice beam being better was ever true given just how strong spamming stab moves tends to be

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

this is a crazy thing to say, alolatails isn't even a top 5 ice type. i really don't get how the idea of a water type with ice beam being better was ever true given just how strong spamming stab moves tends to be

Easy. Ice as a type used to be so much of a drawback and a hassle in team building that people just slapped Ice Beam on their Water-type and called it a day.

Alolatails got massively buffed as the best Snow Warning mon. Aurora Veil is one of the best support moves in the game and it patches up its low SpA with Blizzard not missing, so you actually get to use Ice *because* its Ice. The defensive buff it gets is that good.

 

[Dusk Mage Necrozma]

The real best Ice-type now is both a Water-type with Ice Beam and an Ice-type

 

[pika pal]

Easy. Ice as a type used to be so much of a drawback and a hassle in team building that people just slapped Ice Beam on their Water-type and called it a day.

Alolatails got massively buffed as the best Snow Warning mon. Aurora Veil is one of the best support moves in the game and it patches up its low SpA with Blizzard not missing, so you actually get to use Ice *because* its Ice. The defensive buff it gets is that good.

I might argue that Weavile, Chien-Pao, and Baxcalibur are equally strong candidates depending on how one judges this point. The former two are for the obvious point of "Ice works best as a sweeper type" and they're designed so frail that Ice's weaknesses almost fail to change most of their bad match ups from good->bad or bad->worse.

Baxcalibur meanwhile is a rail gun, big nuke dragon not being anything new, but capitalizing on things like a snow buff was genuinely important to its playstyle, to the point some OU teams ran Abomasnow with it before Alolatails dropped and Bax's subsequent OU ban. Even if its main gameplan and coverage was the dragon side, the Ice typing was relevant to Baxcalibur in the sense that its most overpowered usage would not function the same without the typing.

A-Tails is also good, don't get me wrong, but it's the question of if the supportive lynchpin or the big thing it supports is where the credit is due. In Gen 5, compare how Tyranitar has a lot of highly valuable traits on top of being the Sand Setter, vs Politoed who enables incredibly notable Rain teams but is not itself a valuable mon beyond enabling other things on such teams.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

I might argue that Weavile, Chien-Pao, and Baxcalibur are equally strong candidates depending on how one judges this point. The former two are for the obvious point of "Ice works best as a sweeper type" and they're designed so frail that Ice's weaknesses almost fail to change most of their bad match ups from good->bad or bad->worse.

Baxcalibur meanwhile is a rail gun, big nuke dragon not being anything new, but capitalizing on things like a snow buff was genuinely important to its playstyle, to the point some OU teams ran Abomasnow with it before Alolatails dropped and Bax's subsequent OU ban. Even if its main gameplan and coverage was the dragon side, the Ice typing was relevant to Baxcalibur in the sense that its most overpowered usage would not function the same without the typing.

A-Tails is also good, don't get me wrong, but it's the question of if the supportive lynchpin or the big thing it supports is where the credit is due. In Gen 5, compare how Tyranitar has a lot of highly valuable traits on top of being the Sand Setter, vs Politoed who enables incredibly notable Rain teams but is not itself a valuable mon beyond enabling other things on such teams.

Yeah, they're all really good, it really boils down to what is more valuable to a player and their team. In my opinion, Alolatails offers something more unique than "haha, Ice STAB go brrrrrrrrrrr" and really showcases the buffs Ice got as a type, so to me, that's more valuable.

Any of these options (Except Weavile, Chien-Pao is damn near Weavile 2.0) are valid contenders. If we're really going this way, we can mention Ice Rider and Kyurem-W too.

 

[SandVeil10]

Since the types that tend to be rated lower by most of us (Bug, Grass, Ice, Normal, Poison, Psychic and Rock) are all resisted by Steel, a nerf to their common enemy would go some way towards helping with their viability, even if it wouldn't solve their specific issues.

To try and curb Steel's dominance as this ultra-convenient defensive type, it'd be cool if we had Freeze-Dry clones that directly threatened it. Some ideas I had were a Poison-type attack revolving around acid corrosion (kinda wish Corrosion the ability worked like this) a Psychic-type move linked with bending/altering matter, and a Water-type one tied to oxidation through rust (though that may be an excessive buff for Water-types).

By rattling Steel-types and making them have to scout and play around extra types they'd usually not worry about, while limiting those interactions to a handful of slightly weaker attacks, there'd be more of a point in considering non-Steel-types to better cover for certain threats, thus potentially reducing Steel's overall presence / ability to check or counter opposing mons. Certain types that find it especially hard to overcome Steel would also become more potent (imagine Poison-types being able to threaten the likes of Ferrothorn or Magearna with a clean OHKO).

At one point I thought making one of Water or Electric supereffective against Steel would be more impactful right away, but those two types are already really good and don't need a considerable buff like this one. In the case of Electric, I would especially dread the idea of BoltBeam being any better than it already tends to be. I imagine it'd be better to give that kind of specific advantage to underpowered types instead.

 

[Dusk Mage Necrozma]

Any of these options (Except Weavile, Chien-Pao is damn near Weavile 2.0) are valid contenders. If we're really going this way, we can mention Ice Rider and Kyurem-W too.

Well, in terms of raw strength, it's obviously Calyrex-Ice, by virtue of being a 680 BST monster with 165 Attack, two abilities, and a broken Ice STAB. In both singles and doubles (even as a restricted legendary) its viability exceeds that of any other Ice-type (though Chien-Pao does come close).