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.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 beSnow only ended the idea of the best Ice-type being a Water-type with Ice Beam. Now it's Alolatails.
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.
The real best Ice-type now is both a Water-type with Ice Beam and an Ice-type
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.
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.
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.
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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).
Hypothetical, but how unbalanced would things be if electric WAS super effective against Steel?
Since steel conducts electricity I have always wondered why this wasn’t a thing.
Since steel conducts electricity I have always wondered why this wasn’t a thing.
While I think freeze dry is an interesting move, I don't really like it as a method for buffing a type. If the move is too widely distributed, then essentially it's just a change to the type chart. There's not a huge practical difference between every ice type getting freeze dry and making water weak to ice. Give it too limited of a distribution and you're not really buffing that type, you're buffing a few mons of that type.
You do make a good point about steel punishing so many of these underpowered types. Ironically the only type I think makes thematic sense to be SE against steel, that being electric, is already a decent type that doesn't need the help. I think psychic could justifiably be taken off steel's resists, it doesn't make sense that it would be able to resist essentially mental magic, it's called the steel type, not the tin foil type.
Another idea would be to give pokemon of these weaker types widespread access to coverage of types that can threaten steels. Essentially take the relationship the water type has with ice beam and bring that to other types. Tons of psychics get Focus Blast, which is inconsistent, maybe give wider access to aura sphere or maybe even a stronger 100% accuracy move that's not widely available to non-psychics. Call it focus hit. Rock already sort of has this with earthquake, maybe make that even more widespread. Poison could paired with fire thematically. Ice types could get more and better ground or fighting coverage, depending on which made the most sense with the mon. Bug and grass could also pair with ground, though maybe not the bugs that fly, which would also improve both of their fire and rock matchups too. For normal, tbh I'm fine with it staying as is. There has to be a worst type and I'd be completely comfortable with normal being that type.
Here's a more radical idea, one that I'm not necessarily backing, just throwing it out there. Make steel have the special property of taking 2/3 damage from resisted types instead of half.
We already know that Electric (along with Water) being super effective against Steel was already floated by GF, thanks to the leak of the Spaceworld 97 demo of Gold and Silver. Presumably they saw the results of Nintendo Cup, released that Gen 1’s existing type chart was incredibly unbalanced, and pivoted to make Steel (along with Dark) more effective anti-meta types, nerfing the big dogs in Psychic and Normal while elevating the joke types in Fighting and Fire.
As for how it’d shape up nowadays… I’m not sure if it’d be broken per se but I certainly don’t think Electric warrants such a buff. A weaker type could use the assistance more.
The thing about an Electric buff to me is that it would make Ground even more prevalent and I wouldn't say most of the lower-end types have great matchups into Ground either. Even Ice and Bug, which should have the advantage, run into the fact that much like the standard Ice threat is a Water-type with Ice Beam, the standard Rock threat is a Ground-type with Rock Slide. There's Grass, but it'd be losing further relevance as an answer to Water if Electric gets better.
nerfing steel sounds like a bad idea to me, having so many resists condensed into one type is healthy for the game and makes defensive play easier. my only grief with steel is that its supposed to be weak offensively but then there's a lot of steels who are just extremely powerful sweepers anyways and even run their supposed weak stab lol.
Steel kinda gained an offensive benefit in Gen 6 by being one of the few types that hits Fairy super effectively. I think that's the main reason why it even gets used offensively at all nowadays.
Yeah as a whole its concept is that it's the blanket defensive type but is a rather bad offensive type. Before Fairy-type became a thing I remember that Steel was for the most part such a poor offensive type that many Steel-types wouldn't even use Steel-type attacks because the type was just shit offensively. The ones that did use their Steel-type STAB ran their Steel STAB for more gimmicky reasons, like Scizor having Technician STAB Bullet Punch as powerful priority or Jirachi having Serene Grace Iron Head which in tandem with paralysis has a high flinch chance+paralysis rate rendering the target immobile for most turns, so even if the attack itself was weak, you could repeatedly wear down an opponent while they spend many turns doing nothing. But those were largely exceptions, not the rule.
Nowadays it does have offensive value because of the Fairy-type, which is quite a strong type nowadays.
Yeah as a whole its concept is that it's the blanket defensive type but is a rather bad offensive type. Before Fairy-type became a thing I remember that Steel was for the most part such a poor offensive type that many Steel-types wouldn't even use Steel-type attacks because the type was just shit offensively. The ones that did use their Steel-type STAB ran their Steel STAB for more gimmicky reasons, like Scizor having Technician STAB Bullet Punch as powerful priority or Jirachi having Serene Grace Iron Head which in tandem with paralysis has a high flinch chance+paralysis rate rendering the target immobile for most turns, so even if the attack itself was weak, you could repeatedly wear down an opponent while they spend many turns doing nothing. But those were largely exceptions, not the rule.
Nowadays it does have offensive value because of the Fairy-type, which is quite a strong type nowadays.
I personally put the Eras like this
Gen 1-2: Pokémania Era, when the series had it's explosive start and was pretty much a household name right off the get go.
Gen 3-5: Stigmatized Era, when the popularity of the series dwindled down, and the stereotypical audience for the series was schoolkids and nerds.
Gen 6-8 (up to SwSh + DLC): The Revival Era, when the series became a household name again thanks to GO, and tried to experiment with new concepts, Imo the Golden Age/Series Peak.
Gens 8-Now (starting at BDSP): Modern Era, when the hype of the previous era died down. This was also when the games started to feel rushed to fans.
My main problem with separating eras like this is that not only is it subjective (plenty of people think gen 6 or gen 7 is when pokemon got "bad") but its also just kinda not matched by reality. sv is second place for the best sold pokemon games of all time, only beaten by the Impossible To Beat gen 1 games and has broken tradition of the second release on a console doing worse than the first. Pokemon IS hype now
"This is when the hype died down" usually just corresponds to whatever specific time period the person making that statement got older and aged out of the primary demographic.
Personally, if I was to apply that argument to one generation specifically, it'd be gen 3. For one, that was the first "dexit." Link trading from past games was eliminated, and initially there was no legitimate way to access the entire roster in Ruby/Sapphire. The shift in art style also drew a lot of "everything is overdesigned now" and "this looks like Digimon" complaints. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it was consensus opinion, but it wasn't uncommon to hear sentiment along the lines of "the Pokemon fad is over."