Unpopular opinions

With May, it feels like the redesign kept the same basic elements and colors, but without understanding them, and then built clothes to match. The silhouette is the same, and the colors are the same, but:
Skirt over shorts becomes shorts over shorts
Bandanna tying her hair back becomes a hairband with a bow
Tight polo shirt becomes a tank top over...either another tank top or a sports bra. Which both are unlikely for very different reasons.

And it's not that any of those are bad decisions, or unjustifiable. But they feel more like someone just mimicking the original design and getting it wrong than intentional choices.

Her new shirt actually fits, her shorts could go. They could have kept the bandana over the ribbon though.

The black undershirt is actually surprising since from the back it looks like a sports bra.
 
The one ORAS redesign that bothers me is Tabitha. His old design is just a Magma Grunt with a cape, sure, but that at least shows rank. The tweaks to his new outfit aren't really different enough from the rank-and-file so it comes of as his only distinguishing characteristic is being chubby, especially with his portrait not showing the pattern on the lower part of his jacket.
 
I like fairy, but I'm not sold on it being mandatory for balance. They didn't have to make it.

Dragons naturally tend to be strong(kinda duh,) but the attacking TYPE stinks, with only one Se Target.... who hits you back equally rofl. I mean maybe a slight nerf on dragons/more strong steel options. Or even make fairy just a resist. It seems strange, dragon is now a pretty awful attacking type, bar like STAB DM But that's for bp.

Idk, maybe that's too simple of a look. Since fairy has other type stuff to it than drgn ofc. It probably hurts bug and offensive dark too much, but is practical for buffing fire and hurting fighting both ways and dark defensively.
 
I like fairy, but I'm not sold on it being mandatory for balance. They didn't have to make it.

Dragons naturally tend to be strong(kinda duh,) but the attacking TYPE stinks, with only one Se Target.... who hits you back equally rofl. I mean maybe a slight nerf on dragons/more strong steel options. Or even make fairy just a resist. It seems strange, dragon is now a pretty awful attacking type, bar like STAB DM But that's for bp.

Idk, maybe that's too simple of a look. Since fairy has other type stuff to it than drgn ofc. It probably hurts bug and offensive dark too much, but is practical for buffing fire and hurting fighting both ways and dark defensively.
The big thing is Dragon can afford to only hit itself SE because it has next to no resistances and its users have massive stat totals. Whereas something like Fire is resisted by common defensive Waters, a Dragonite or Salamence with Outrage hit only slightly less hard than some SE moves with lower Base power

252+ Atk Dragonite Outrage vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mew: 220-261 (64.5 - 76.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Tyranitar Crunch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mew: 294-348 (86.2 - 102%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO

The result is a lot of teams could get away with just spamming Dragon attacks to overwhelm the opponent on sheer power without playing the type chart, especially since Dragon's only answer pre-Fairy was Steels that were already fairly expected to cover for (Drag-Mag being a common style).

I agree Fairy is a type with more negative effects than positive, albeit I do think it being a defensive Dragon asset was important. It's kind of a fumbled repeat of Gen 2 introducing Dark and Steel specifically to buff Fighting and nerf Psychic, fumbled because it brought several unnecessary knock on effects (I think it needed one more resistance and/or to be neutral to Bug at minimum)
 
Idk, maybe that's too simple of a look. Since fairy has other type stuff to it than drgn ofc. It probably hurts bug and offensive dark too much, but is practical for buffing fire and hurting fighting both ways and dark defensively.
I'm still annoyed all these years later they decided to nerf Bug with the addition of the Fairy type. I don't think it being resisted by Fairy makes a lot of sense even from the Japanese "Bug type is tokusatsu reference" angle. That leak from a while ago now showed they almost made Bug WEAK to Fairy so they were really on something. I'm not exactly sure why they had the idea of nerfing Bug to begin with in Gen 6, given I don't remember it being that oppressive in Gen 5. It wasn't like Normal in Gen 1 where it being nerfed by Steel made a lot of sense.

If I had to guess why it's because of U-Turn? If that's the case it would make sense I guess but I never liked the widespreadness of U-Turn, mostly used by non bug types. Feels like it would be a more unique thing for them if you had to specifically use a Bug pokemon to be able to U-Turn, like how most users of Volt Switch are Electric types.
 
I'm still annoyed all these years later they decided to nerf Bug with the addition of the Fairy type. I don't think it being resisted by Fairy makes a lot of sense even from the Japanese "Bug type is tokusatsu reference" angle. That leak from a while ago now showed they almost made Bug WEAK to Fairy so they were really on something. I'm not exactly sure why they had the idea of nerfing Bug to begin with in Gen 6, given I don't remember it being that oppressive in Gen 5. It wasn't like Normal in Gen 1 where it being nerfed by Steel made a lot of sense.

If I had to guess why it's because of U-Turn? If that's the case it would make sense I guess but I never liked the widespreadness of U-Turn, mostly used by non bug types. Feels like it would be a more unique thing for them if you had to specifically use a Bug pokemon to be able to U-Turn, like how most users of Volt Switch are Electric types.
U-Turn was made Bug type because the Japanese word for a u-turn contains the word for dragonfly. Volt Switch and Flip Turn were intentionally made as Electric and Water moves, U-Turn is Bug purely for pun reasons.
 
U-Turn was made Bug type because the Japanese word for a u-turn contains the word for dragonfly. Volt Switch and Flip Turn were intentionally made as Electric and Water moves, U-Turn is Bug purely for pun reasons.
The nitpicky thing about it is that Yanma and Yanmega, the dragonfly Pokémon, doesn’t have a high enough Attack, though U-Turn being a pivoting move makes up for it, granted.

I can imagine more pun-based moves like “Mantis Fists” or something like that to allow more new moves ideas.
 
The big thing is Dragon can afford to only hit itself SE because it has next to no resistances and its users have massive stat totals. Whereas something like Fire is resisted by common defensive Waters, a Dragonite or Salamence with Outrage hit only slightly less hard than some SE moves with lower Base power

252+ Atk Dragonite Outrage vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mew: 220-261 (64.5 - 76.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Tyranitar Crunch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mew: 294-348 (86.2 - 102%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO

The result is a lot of teams could get away with just spamming Dragon attacks to overwhelm the opponent on sheer power without playing the type chart, especially since Dragon's only answer pre-Fairy was Steels that were already fairly expected to cover for (Drag-Mag being a common style).

I agree Fairy is a type with more negative effects than positive, albeit I do think it being a defensive Dragon asset was important. It's kind of a fumbled repeat of Gen 2 introducing Dark and Steel specifically to buff Fighting and nerf Psychic, fumbled because it brought several unnecessary knock on effects (I think it needed one more resistance and/or to be neutral to Bug at minimum)

Defensively I think Fairy did a pretty good job overall, the immunity to dragon was the easiest solution. To many people forget that it was so easy to break past steel types back in the days, and steel types are common enough that using them to then break past Fairies would lead to a repeat of Dragmag.
What I can't excuse is the resistance to Bug types because of U-turn, giving another resistance for Fire types, and completely replacing Psychic for a lot of people teams as the Fighting type destroyer all while getting Dark types at the same time. Bug and Psychic are already the two worst types in the game, they really didn't need to gimp those two more
 
I don't really agree with the idea that Psychic is one of the worst types when Game Freak clearly keeps giving them good tools like Psyshock/Psychic Noise, their own terrain, and a bunch of awesome mons. Meanwhile, you can barely count the number of good Bugs on one hand, and the only move of note they really have is U-turn. I'd rather put Ice in the "among the worst" category because it's consistently supplanted by Water existing.
 
I don't really agree with the idea that Psychic is one of the worst types when Game Freak clearly keeps giving them good tools like Psyshock/Psychic Noise, their own terrain, and a bunch of awesome mons. Meanwhile, you can barely count the number of good Bugs on one hand, and the only move of note they really have is U-turn. I'd rather put Ice in the "among the worst" category because it's consistently supplanted by Water existing.
Ice's downside compared to Water is its abysmal defensive profile, and I would argue Psychic's defensive profile is nearly as bad in a close second-to-last place. Being weak to both U-turn and Knock Off is horrendous.
 
Ice's downside compared to Water is its abysmal defensive profile, and I would argue Psychic's defensive profile is nearly as bad in a close second-to-last place. Being weak to both U-turn and Knock Off is horrendous.
Heck, Ice at least has a use offensively because it hits so many types at once and has use offensively for Tera-ing because of coverage.

Psychic meanwhile is good for Poison and Fighting, which the omnipresent Ground and Fairy do better, meanwhile outside of Expanding Force nobody really Teras into the Psychic type.
I’d also say the reason Psychic gets a lot of good moves is because it’s such a bad type overall.
 
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I like this pokemon
coalossal.gif

yeah sure it would've been cooler if it were a train but I like rock types, Coalossal is also a cool name

Emboar is my favorite starter :sv/emboar: which I also know is very unpopular but it has never bothered me that it has no neck (its a pig) nor have I ever had a problem with it being fire/fighting
 
My stance on Psychic is that Alakazam kind of broke the type and they never figured out how to fix it. Zam too fast, too powerful offensively, and has too much coverage. And it gets that by dying to a light tap. Which means that any normal offensive psychic-type (Raichu-A, Delphox) is going to be hopelessly outclassed by a psychic from Gen 1. You either give it a broken ability (Espeon, Espathra), or you have to make it bulky. And any bulky Psychic has to compete with Alakazam for a teamslot AND has to deal with everyone running stuff that beats Zam(and also the defensive profile sucks and people hate bulky mons in general).

They can't buff the type without Zam breaking stuff, they can't make interesting complex mons because everyone would rather run Alakazam, and so we're left with stuff like Slowbro or Hatterene as the actual relevant mons of the type. And most of those sorts of bulky mons are themselves broken, because being broken is the only way to handle the problem of being weak to U-Turn etc. But also I don't see a way to fix things. It's a mess.
 
I like this pokemon
coalossal.gif

yeah sure it would've been cooler if it were a train but I like rock types, Coalossal is also a cool name

Emboar is my favorite starter :sv/emboar: which I also know is very unpopular but it has never bothered me that it has no neck (its a pig) nor have I ever had a problem with it being fire/fighting
Coalossal is cool as fuck, hard agree.
Emboar isn't bad, and a lot of the hate from being fire/fighting is due to it being the 3rd gen in a row of it but IDT thats really emboars fault. I would say emboar is middle of the road for starters, not bad, but nothing spectacular.

Anyways, starter tier list. Generally something is ranked due to its final form, though other evos do account a bit. And tbh, even the lower starters aren't bad, they just aren't as good as the higher ones. For example, meganium isn't even bad, i'd say its a pretty good pokemon, just it is worse then every other starter. Also I tried to order it in the tiers, but they aren't 100% accurate.

1757386505877.png
 
My stance on Psychic is that Alakazam kind of broke the type and they never figured out how to fix it. Zam too fast, too powerful offensively, and has too much coverage. And it gets that by dying to a light tap. Which means that any normal offensive psychic-type (Raichu-A, Delphox) is going to be hopelessly outclassed by a psychic from Gen 1. You either give it a broken ability (Espeon, Espathra), or you have to make it bulky. And any bulky Psychic has to compete with Alakazam for a teamslot AND has to deal with everyone running stuff that beats Zam(and also the defensive profile sucks and people hate bulky mons in general).

They can't buff the type without Zam breaking stuff, they can't make interesting complex mons because everyone would rather run Alakazam, and so we're left with stuff like Slowbro or Hatterene as the actual relevant mons of the type. And most of those sorts of bulky mons are themselves broken, because being broken is the only way to handle the problem of being weak to U-Turn etc. But also I don't see a way to fix things. It's a mess.
I feel like it’s a thought too rigid without considering other factors, as well as GF’s utter refusal of severely toning down stats of a broken Pokémon (only happened to a few fringe of Pokémon that got infamy in VGC and nothing more), even with people complaining if this happens. There’s also Starmie and Exeggutor making names in Gen 1 OU because of how ubiquitous Psychic is, not just Alakazam.

Raichu-A and Delphox at least got dual STAB and the latter having a distinct Ability, so those not wanting to use Alakazam for a change may enjoy using them while facing challenges. Plus Alakazam, with or without Mega, is itself victim of power-creep with Legendary Psychics in mind, especially Shadow Calyrex.
 
starter tier list
most of the starters I don't have strong opinions on but I think my top 5 are Emboar, Torterra, Rillaboom, Skeledirge, Feraligatr.

There’s also Starmie and Exeggutor making names in Gen 1 OU because of how ubiquitous Psychic is, not just Alakazam.
I think in the very weird format they had back then as their official format the most used psychic type was Jynx which has always surprised me every time I remember it.

being weak to U-Turn etc.
it's also funny they can't nerf U-Turn because it would buff Scizor
 
My stance on Psychic is that Alakazam kind of broke the type and they never figured out how to fix it. Zam too fast, too powerful offensively, and has too much coverage. And it gets that by dying to a light tap. Which means that any normal offensive psychic-type (Raichu-A, Delphox) is going to be hopelessly outclassed by a psychic from Gen 1. You either give it a broken ability (Espeon, Espathra), or you have to make it bulky. And any bulky Psychic has to compete with Alakazam for a teamslot AND has to deal with everyone running stuff that beats Zam(and also the defensive profile sucks and people hate bulky mons in general).

They can't buff the type without Zam breaking stuff, they can't make interesting complex mons because everyone would rather run Alakazam, and so we're left with stuff like Slowbro or Hatterene as the actual relevant mons of the type. And most of those sorts of bulky mons are themselves broken, because being broken is the only way to handle the problem of being weak to U-Turn etc. But also I don't see a way to fix things. It's a mess.
To add to this, every good Psychic Pokemon I encounter feels like it's good in spite or or with no relevance on the Psychic typing a lot of the time. The only two resistances it gives are itself and Fighting, and given how poor Psychic's Coverage is outside of strong neutral STAB like Alakazam's sweeper Stat Line or Expanding Force in general with a Terrain Boost, how often are you realistically benefiting from that side?

Slowbro appreciates the Close Combat resistance, but is that a good trade for being weak to Dark (Knock Off, Sucker Punch Kingambit), Bug (U-Turn everywhere), and Ghost (it and Slowking could otherwise deal well with Gholdengo or Dragapult, for example). Hatterene is a Fairy/Psychic, and Fairy more or less amounts to "what if we didn't break Psychic's Knees" given its role as Anti-Fighting + Neutral coverage which resisting Psychic's most valuable defensive trait PLUS one of its most significant weaknesses. I'm hard-pressed to think Hatterene would not have been stronger as Pure Fairy.

And now it's too deep-seeded. They made so many Pokemon that are busted for their time with the mediocre traits of Psychic (Mewtwo, Lugia, Cosmog Evos and Necrozma Forms, friggin both Calyrex riders) that if they buff the type, these things risk running wild and making Restricted VGC completely unfun (especially considering the Horses already kind of do) without going in to rebalance THEM, which you know Game Freak and TPC aren't gonna spend the time on even in this hypothetical.
 
Honestly it’s pretty reasonable for Psychic-Type to be in the position it’s in. It’s always been a weird type, since it doesn’t “fit” the two main categories of type. Most types are either elemental (fire, ice, water, electric, etc.) or physical characteristics (rock, bug, grass, dragon, ghost, etc.) or occasionally both (flying). The others that don’t really fit either — Dark and Fairy — are later additions than Psychic where its identity had already been formed.

Psychic-Type is basically Normal-Type except abnormal. These are mons that don’t fit either of the above categories, but can do ooooh psychic powers ! Bend a spoon ! Use the undescriptive attack Psychic to hit hard all, y’know, psychicly!

Because of that it’s not got a lot of instinctive type interactions that necessarily track. It probably could resist and/or be super effective against Normal, and they didn’t go for that, but that would also harm Normal a lot so fair enough. For all the others… what does using “Psychic” on a flame, or an ocean, or a plant, or a rock, etc. really do? Psychic is so undefined as a concept or element that it wouldn’t do anything. Being Psychic isn’t real, it’s just being vaguely special. That extends up to current day. Psychic Fangs is just Bite but Psychic, Psyshock is just Psychic but shocking(?), Psycho Boost is just Psychic but it, ironically, lowers your own stats (so not boost then).

When you take that into account, Psychic as a type pretty much sucking due to lack of meaningful interactions tracks, it’s much like Normal-Type in that way. But Psychic-Type is meant to be more special than Normal-Type, so give Psychic Pokémon some higher stats on average and pat yourself on the back, you’ve got a realised type concept. I think it’s why the vast majority of Psychic-Type Pokémon are mammalian. Obviously there’s some exceptions, just like Normal-Type has some exceptions (such as God or dragons except old), but on the bulk these are supposed to be real life everyday animals that are just turned into Pokémon with maybe like one or two fantastical components added to them. Gen I only had Psychic-Type mammals and a tree (and a clone of one of those mammals but it’s still a cat). Mimes are mammals too.
 
Psyshock is just Psychic but shocking(?)
Psyshock is condensing psychic energy into physical matter and then hitting the opponent with it. How this is different enough from Psycho Cut to be run off special attack and not physical is unclear. Even more unclear is how Esper Wing is different enough from Psycho Cut to be an entirely different move category as opposed to Psyshock's weird in-between.
 
Psyshock is condensing psychic energy into physical matter and then hitting the opponent with it. How this is different enough from Psycho Cut to be run off special attack and not physical is unclear. Even more unclear is how Esper Wing is different enough from Psycho Cut to be an entirely different move category as opposed to Psyshock's weird in-between.
Psycho Cut is basically like Slash and the like, an elemental extension of the claws or other sharp body part but still governed by physical strength. Most special Psychic moves are generally depicted as telekinesis acting on the target, Psyshock meanwhile is claimed to be the Pokémon materializing an odd psychic wave, so I guess the difference would be that it's physical Psychic energy that is then thrown at the target?

Esper Wing has never appeared in the anime, but the animation in the games is basically just Air Cutter with a pink glow, and it doesn't make contact, so I don't think it really is anything like Psycho Cut?
 
Psychic-Type is basically Normal-Type except abnormal. These are mons that don’t fit either of the above categories, but can do ooooh psychic powers ! Bend a spoon ! Use the undescriptive attack Psychic to hit hard all, y’know, psychicly!
Psychic pokemon are either literal psychics or aliens, they harness the power of space and/or their mind

so it bothers me that Moonblast is a Fairy-type move rather than being Psychic-type because Psychic-type is supposed to be the celestial type. Not only did Fairy steal the anti-Fighting niche but they also are randomly infringing on the Space theme.

It’s always been a weird type, since it doesn’t “fit” the two main categories of type. Most types are either elemental
It's essentially the Magic type, and "Magic" or "Arcane" or whatever synonym they use is usually depicted as an element in other rpgs. Fairy is now the second Magic type but it's both magic and not, Game Freak can't really decide. Like half of Fairy is faes and the other half is just pink cute things.

Clefable is kind of the perfect example to me of how Fairy is a very contrived type they mostly invented for balance reasons. Psychic type was somewhat weird in Gen 1 because they took it rather literally with like one space alien in Gen 1 (Staryu/Starmie). Then later they went more all in on the whole Space Alien = Psychic thing in Gen 3 especially. At that point I think Clefable should've been Psychic and probably would have been if they had introduced it then rather than it being a Gen 1 pokemon. If you look at a list of Fairy types Clefable oddly stands out other than it being Pink (when color isn't supposed to be what type something is 100% of the time or Luxray would be Dark lol) At the very least I think Clefable should be like Gardevoir line and be Fairy/Psychic but when they added new types they didn't want to replace anything other than Normal.
 
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