Unpopular opinions

[Ironmage]

Opinion that's apparently pretty unpopular:

Fighting and Ground are going to be major offensive types because of moves with both high power and high distribution regardless of what the current biggest defensive type is. As such, if a type is going to be a defensive powerhouse while being weak to both, it needs a large number of resistances to back that up. We all point to Rock as failing for this reason, why do we apparently want to repeat this with Steel?

 

[ant4456]

Hey fellow chatters, remember when people were demanding ice types to get a defensive buff, they got it in gen 9, and broke several bulky ice type that suddently now could live hits? And that's not even a type chart change, it was simply making a weather give them 50% defense, meaning they're taking approximately some neutral hits when they were weak before.

I don't agree with this logic. I do not see more Pokemon going to Ubers as a sign that there is a problem in the type chart first of all, and Ice Type is still a pretty bad type, it just got another tool. Also what do you mean several? It's basically just Baxcalibur. Kyurem is going to get banned, but it was also banned last generation.

It's also literally not a type chart change.

To say that we can't change the type chart when Game Freak literally does and has in very stupid ways and the game still functioned is ridiculous. The status quo of types changing is not a bad thing. Also, just because some types will always be weaker does not mean that Psychic type should remain extremely terrible. Nothing you've said is convincing to me at all.

 

[Worldie]

It's also literally not a type chart change.

I think you misunderstood what I said.

I said that a minor change as "temporary removing a weakness" already pushes mons over the edge. Imagine completely removing a type weakness.

You always have to consider how you're altering the entire cast of Pokemon, even the ones that use moves of that type as coverage.
It's not as simple as "hey now psychic types can hit steel with stab". It also means every pokemon that gets a Psychic coverage (hint, a lot do) can now hit steel types with coverage whereas they were walled by it before.
It's not as simple as "give a ice type a resist", because now all these ice types that were let down by that resist suddently are bumped up in power and the pokemon that were strong for countering them are not anymore.

TLDR: the game is too complicated at this point to change even a single attribute of a type without fucking everything up and ending up playing a completely different game. A single change has a snowball effect on almost the entire roster, and you risk ending up in a situation that was more broken than before.

If you needed a example, you can just see what the simple existance of Fairy types did to the game. Adding a type that is immune to Dragon made one of the best types of the game suddently one of the worst that's mostly carried by just its pokemon having good stats, because the array of resistances it had means nothing if they cannot click their stab. The only reason that this generation has in both Showdown and VGC the presence of so many Dragon Types is the basic non-existance of Fairy types that can stop their stab.

Take Psychic, which you guys are so obsessed about right now. Have you ever heard what VGC players think about Psyspam currently? They hate it because it's a cheese strat that boils literally to "do you have way to tank psychic hits y/n". And you want to give it *more tools*? You want to make Steel types no longer able to stop Expanding Force? Or you want to make Rock Slide spam even more stupid by making Steel no longer resist Rock, removing one of the very few safe types against it?

Ya'll keep forgetting this game is not "just OU". There's not just these 40 or so pokemon in it. This game has over 1000 Pokemon. A single change to a mechanic does way more than "make Aurorus better".

 

[Axiemeister]

Fighting and Ground are going to be major offensive types because of moves with both high power and high distribution regardless of what the current biggest defensive type is. As such, if a type is going to be a defensive powerhouse while being weak to both, it needs a large number of resistances to back that up. We all point to Rock as failing for this reason, why do we apparently want to repeat this with Steel?

well, first of all, rock has five weaknesses as opposed to three, and one of them is to the most common type of the games in terms of mon numbers. also, let's be real, steel losing resistance to psychic would be akin to it being neutral to electric at most. it's not a type being contained solely by being resisted by steel like, say, pre-fairy dragon. i don't know at which point taking resistances from steel would tangibly make it a bad type, but losing only psychic certainly isn't that point.

but mainly, types are much more inherent and immutable than moves are. yes, fighting and ground have widely distributed, powerful moves, but the moves can change or be distributed differently. which has been a subject in this thread already, btw - close combat is way too strong and its drawback too small to be as distributed as it is (and, maybe unpopular, but i don't think earthquake is very balanced either).

also, you are underselling how useful ground is offensively outside of earthquake - it's one of the two types that has more super effective than NVE/ineffective hits and it nails steel. thousand arrows single handedly broke zygarde, which was barely UU material without it, because it bypasses the one typing keeping ground type... grounded (heehee).

 

[bdt2002]

Not only do I think changing the type chart would be the Pokémon equivalent of opening up Pandora’s box, but I also think these changes are a bit too hypothetical for my liking. Yes, there’s still some disparity between the best and worst Types, but we’re in age where generational power creep has developed so much that Pokémon can be overpowered and/or broken even with poor offensive or defensive typing. Are there things that could be changed about the type chart? Probably, but it stands to reason that stronger game balance could be achieved by addressing the things that are actually breaking these Pokémon in the first place. The problem is, there’s no set definition for what makes a Pokémon truly overpowered or underpowered, especially not for the sake of a community like this with several unofficial competitive metagames that have wildly different rules than what you might see more often in the actual games.

Case in point- the Steel-Type is so good not only because of its many resistances, but also because of factors like a Toxic immunity, immunity to Samdstorm, and a Stealth Rock resistance. How often do those things show up in single player, though? Or in officially licensed VGC formats? Conversely, I personally think Grass is the worst single Type in the game (or at least tied for the spot with Normal and Bug), but that hasn’t stopped Grass-Types from tearing it up in modern metagames with consistent results, regardless of their less consistent single player results.

 

[Axiemeister]

i mean i will be upfront in that i don't care if anything i want changed in the games fucks up vgc because gamefreak itself doesn't care about balancing it so i don't either lol. i care about the in-game experience first (in which those issues can easily be made relevant, specially if you want to play efficiently), and the actually maintained and cared for metagames of smogon second.

 

[ant4456]

I don't agree with any of this mentality.

Players will adapt. The balance will adapt.

I am not some "Pokemon is the GOAT!!! Love the status quo!!!" person, I play tons of alternatives to Pokemon, such as other monster collection games. No, the game will not shit itself is Steel does not wall almost everything in the game. Because nothing could.

Nothing is truly """broken""" in competitive Pokemon beyond a metagame level unless it disrupts the mechanics of the game. Hell, if you had a type that is literally super effective against every type in the game, if you could Toxic it, get hazard damage on it, use moves to lower its damage output and items like Sash to combat it, the core mechanics of competitive Pokemon would still be at play.

Would variety be ass? Sure, but that doesn't make the game "broken". Metas like CHALK were not broken, they were fine because they were playable.

So from my perspective where even that would not break the game, the idea of "omg how will we fight a bad type if Steel doesn't resist it" is funny. If Psyspam is broken in VGC, they will adapt, as they have every time. Psychic being a top tier type wouldn't break the game, it'd just change the status quo of what is on top. The status quo balance is not good, or bad, it's just what exists. It's what you're used to.

If you want to see "Psychic Type but Steel doesn't resist it", just look at Ghost. While you use Psyspam as an example of brokenness, Ghosts are just Psychic Type but better. You can say Psychic has things such as Psychic Terrain, but any type change will be accompanied by a new entire game where you could nerf Psychic Terrain.

This isn't some impossible game design task. It's literally never been. You bring up 1000 Pokemon, but that isn't even true anymore. Even if it was, you say "it's not like everything is just OU, there is other tiers"

First of all, VGC is way easier to balance. Inherently. Because you always have the ability of double targeting a Pokemon making it less viable. Mega Rayquaza is still insane, but even if it can 1v1 almost every Pokemon by sheer speed and DPS, you have a second Pokemon that can attack it on the turn. That isn't to diminish that Mega Ray is pretty broken, but to say that it is inherently easier to play around threats in VGC.

Secondly, if you are implying lower tiers Smogon: who cares? They can just ban broken Pokemon and continue as normal. It'd literally be fine. In the status quo already, we acknowledge that Pokemon is an extremely busted game, with tons of things that should be banned.

So actually: Yes, there really isn't that many Pokemon to take account of.

 

[pika pal]

I think you misunderstood what I said.

I said that a minor change as "temporary removing a weakness" already pushes mons over the edge. Imagine completely removing a type weakness.

You always have to consider how you're altering the entire cast of Pokemon, even the ones that use moves of that type as coverage.
It's not as simple as "hey now psychic types can hit steel with stab". It also means every pokemon that gets a Psychic coverage (hint, a lot do) can now hit steel types with coverage whereas they were walled by it before.
It's not as simple as "give a ice type a resist", because now all these ice types that were let down by that resist suddently are bumped up in power and the pokemon that were strong for countering them are not anymore.

TLDR: the game is too complicated at this point to change even a single attribute of a type without fucking everything up and ending up playing a completely different game. A single change has a snowball effect on almost the entire roster, and you risk ending up in a situation that was more broken than before.

If you needed a example, you can just see what the simple existance of Fairy types did to the game. Adding a type that is immune to Dragon made one of the best types of the game suddently one of the worst that's mostly carried by just its pokemon having good stats, because the array of resistances it had means nothing if they cannot click their stab. The only reason that this generation has in both Showdown and VGC the presence of so many Dragon Types is the basic non-existance of Fairy types that can stop their stab.

Take Psychic, which you guys are so obsessed about right now. Have you ever heard what VGC players think about Psyspam currently? They hate it because it's a cheese strat that boils literally to "do you have way to tank psychic hits y/n". And you want to give it *more tools*? You want to make Steel types no longer able to stop Expanding Force? Or you want to make Rock Slide spam even more stupid by making Steel no longer resist Rock, removing one of the very few safe types against it?

Ya'll keep forgetting this game is not "just OU". There's not just these 40 or so pokemon in it. This game has over 1000 Pokemon. A single change to a mechanic does way more than "make Aurorus better".

I don't think the Snow or Psyspam comparisons are fair if the argument is about the Type chart rather than something like "better designed mons" or the call for new moves. Yes, Snow is a temporary buff, but it's also FAR more wide-reaching in that window than adding 1 resistance would be. It's 5 turns of on-average 9 extra resistances (18 types cut in half because Phys only because I don't want to do a full roster check for this one small point) in a game where even as designed, 1-2 extra turns has been enough for a mon to run away with things since 2010.

Baxcalibur is the only Pokemon who was definitively banned with Snow cited, and if you're going to argue Dragon is "one of the worst that's mostly carried by just its Pokemon having good stats," you can't ignore this argument being relevant to Baxcalibur as a very bulky Dragon with several set-up options that it was exploiting even BEFORE Snow was in the game. The other two banned Ice Types got the boot because they were min-maxed around Ice's 10/10 Offense and 2/10 Defense attributes while carrying not-widely-available tools like Freeze Dry (I agree that "turn a resist into a Weakness" moves are not a concept to use for fixing the type chart) and Sword of Ruin (literally just a recoil-less Life Orb for the purposes of damage calculation on Chien-Pao). Snowscape is just continuing their approach that we saw with Avalugg of "if we throw enough numbers this approach has to work eventually," and this time they just threw a particularly absurd number (and if anything it only proves that still isn't working because it broke ONE Pokemon who had a myriad of of specific/exclusive perks). The point there goes back to Ice is such a binary type that the mon designs can only effectively do one thing (Offensive powerhouse) and tools to let them try other roles either don't suffice or break them hard.

And Psyspam is based specifically on Doubles/VGC making Expanding Force and Psychic Terrain disproportionately stronger on aspects that don't strictly relate to the Type Chart. Consider comparison to Rising Voltage, with which it shares 1 Immunity, the same number of SE targets, and Psychic has 1 less Resistance to hit.

• Expanding Force is based on if the USER is grounded, taking one avenue of mitigation or counterplay out of the opponent's hand by default like Ballon and Levitate to avoid grounding for Rising Voltage. EF only has one condition to fulfill to gain every benefit of the move (user is grounded) to become 120 BP before STAB, the Terrain Boost, AND the Spread aspect.
• Electric Terrain Setting is non-existent pending the Restricted format of VGC allowing Miraidon. Psychic Terrain has 2 viable setters, one being Indeedee with a better statline than Pincurchin for a Surge, and the other Farigiraf who already carries several other anti-Meta Elements beyond Manual Psychic Terrain such as Armor Tail for Fake Out Protection and Trick Room synergy.
• Psychic Terrain is massively beneficial in VGC even beyond Psyspam because of the aforementioned Priority blocking, which would make it a considerable Support effect on top of the already extreme power it grants EF. By comparison, Rising Voltage is just a strong-but-less-reliable ST nuke and Grassy Glide's Priority is strong but not reliable enough on anyone besides Rillaboom itself as a standalone rather than the basis of a full team.
• This all ignoring the fact Expanding Force is on dozens of mons via TM while Rising Voltage is exclusive to Raging Bolt (who unrelated leans heavily on a Priority move that Psychic Terrain stops hard).

Psyspam with all these traits retained in equally accessible/synergistic manner (i.e. Viable Field Effect and same move power behavior) would probably be this strong on any type besides Pure Normal (strictly due to not hitting the 60% common Flutter Mane). If anything this is a case of Gamefreak not caring about what they throw around for move kits and is further evidence they need to think about their balance for any attempted Esport venture. It's even possible they did this assuming Psychic had unremarkable performance and could get away with trying stronger stuff (Cresselia is encumbered by its Psychic typing, not synergizing with it).

 

[Worldie]

pika pal my examples were simply scenarios where a "simple change" snowballs exponentially, that is what i'm referring with snowball effect. Touching a single piece of the balance has consequences elsewhere. In this case people were talking about "letting psychic hit steel normally", or "let steel not resist rock", and I pointed how shortsighted that was, because sure in a vacuum it's innocuous, until you actually get the whole picture and it isn't anymore.
Same goes for the whole Snow thing, sure in a vacuum letting Ice types getting a defense boost in their weather is nothing particularly amazing and doesn't really fix much, but once put in practice, it made a few pokemon way stronger to the point of getting considered "overpowered", while doing literally nothing for all the other ice types. Because once more, "in a vacuum" doesn't work with how big the Pokemon roster is.

i mean i will be upfront in that i don't care if anything i want changed in the games fucks up vgc because gamefreak itself doesn't care about balancing it so i don't either lol

This is a blatant lie by the way, a terrible attitude and one of the main reasons for which i tend to be denigratory toward the general smogon posterbase. (and honestly, most of internet anyway)

GameFreaks definitely cares about balance, otherwise they'd not even bother buffing/nerfing pokemon between generations.
Whenever they do a good or bad job at it, it's up to debate, but saying "they don't care" is just a toxic, entitled attitude we could very well go without.
If "you" (not you specifically, any smogon poster) think you're better than GameFreaks at balancing a videogame, by all means show me your gaming design degree, I am waiting.

It's like the whole part where everyone apparently was a 3d graphic engineer when SwSh released, and everyone could program a 3d model in mere minutes, and produces atrocities like the good old Larpas

 

[CPU]

It's like the whole part where everyone apparently was a 3d graphic engineer when SwSh released, and everyone could program a 3d model in mere minutes, and produces atrocities like the good old Larpas

Unironically i'd love a Pokémon game where the models were stylized like this

 

[Samtendo09]

This is a blatant lie by the way, a terrible attitude and one of the main reasons for which i tend to be denigratory toward the general smogon posterbase. (and honestly, most of internet anyway)

GameFreaks definitely cares about balance, otherwise they'd not even bother buffing/nerfing pokemon between generations.
Whenever they do a good or bad job at it, it's up to debate, but saying "they don't care" is just a toxic, entitled attitude we could very well go without.
If "you" (not you specifically, any smogon poster) think you're better than GameFreaks at balancing a videogame, by all means show me your gaming design degree, I am waiting.

It's like the whole part where everyone apparently was a 3d graphic engineer when SwSh released, and everyone could program a 3d model in mere minutes, and produces atrocities like the good old Larpas

Just because Game Freak have a gaming design degree doesn’t mean they are doing good job in the long run. Even back in the first Generation, they imposed themselves short three-year schedule which explains the lots of glitches in Gen 1, and such a short three-year schedule doesn’t give them a lot of playtesting.

I also think that too many people tend to be too closeminded to balance changes no matter the intention, and while you got a point on requiring a closer look on balancing rather than on a vacuum, we can’t really theorize how “Psychic neutral on Steel” would run in practice until we put it into practice.

I agree on saying that GF don’t care about balance is a lie, but the power creep, especially Gen 9, and the fact that they nerf so few overpowered Pokémon, didn’t bothered to rearrange the stat distribution of OP Gen 9 mons within SV since the Treasure of Ruins’ small stat nerf in a Day 1 patch, and gave Swords Dance to Urshifu despite being an oppressive presence in VGC, do tell me that they are doing a very poor job on balancing so far, and it doesn’t look like this will change anytime soon.

It’s too little significant nerfs at the moment, and VGC, despite having diversity of viable Pokémon, do run risk of returning to the hated Gen 6 era due to Flutter Mane. And it might get to even closer level once the Restricted allowed, Shadow Rider Calyrex and, in Trick Room teams, Ice Rider Calyrex. If not more hated due to potential Pay-2-Win issues with Urshifu and a few Legends: Arceus mons like Ursaluna still not available without transfer.

I get that you are so tired of “fans right, company wrong” mentality, but do be mindful that there are some fans or even former fans willing to listen, while with GF, they tend to be too hit-or-miss on making solutions, and even refused to revert the Always-On All EXP Share and even Always-Switch-Battle-Style for in-game.

It’s best to playtest any change to see their impact, I do learn from it. But I also recommand to find a more neutral tone rather than a deliberately overtly agressive one, because there’s a far bigger chance people may not appreciate what you said than if you said it in a more neutral, otherwise you could come off just as disingenuous as those you criticized for.

 

[Mad Ram]

I also think that too many people tend to be too closeminded to balance changes no matter the intention, and while you got a point on requiring a closer look on balancing rather than on a vacuum, we can’t really theorize how “Psychic neutral on Steel” would run in practice until we put it into practice.

Actually we can. Remember Gen 6 Again? There was another change to the type chart that we haven't brought up. Steel no longer resists Dark and Ghost and they instead are neutral. This is the exact same thing we are talking about theoretically with Psychic. We can see what happened to those types and see how those types became. Considering what happened to those types since, I feel it safe to say Psychic neutral on Steel would give it far too much.

 

[CPU]

Actually we can. Remember Gen 6 Again? There was another change to the type chart that we haven't brought up. Steel no longer resists Dark and Ghost and they instead are neutral. This is the exact same thing we are talking about theoretically with Psychic. We can see what happened to those types and see how those types became. Considering what happened to those types since, I feel it safe to say Psychic neutral on Steel would give it far too much.

Dark also got the not-insignificant buff of Knock Off becoming one of the most spammable moves in the series. I think these specific changes were more to impact Steel (as it gained another resist and another type to hit super-effectively in Fairy) than to buff Dark and Ghost directly, though.

 

[Mad Ram]

Dark also got the not-insignificant buff of Knock Off becoming one of the most spammable moves in the series. I think these specific changes were more to impact Steel (as it gained another resist and another type to hit super-effectively in Fairy) than to buff Dark and Ghost directly, though.

Yes, and I do think that limits how well we can compare Dark to it. Ghost on the other hand is perfectly comparable especially it's also checked by Dark types and in fact was the type I was referring to.

Also intent really doesn't matter for comparing it. What we want to see is the effects, so we can judge based on that.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Not only do I think changing the type chart would be the Pokémon equivalent of opening up Pandora’s box, but I also think these changes are a bit too hypothetical for my liking. Yes, there’s still some disparity between the best and worst Types, but we’re in age where generational power creep has developed so much that Pokémon can be overpowered and/or broken even with poor offensive or defensive typing. Are there things that could be changed about the type chart? Probably, but it stands to reason that stronger game balance could be achieved by addressing the things that are actually breaking these Pokémon in the first place. The problem is, there’s no set definition for what makes a Pokémon truly overpowered or underpowered, especially not for the sake of a community like this with several unofficial competitive metagames that have wildly different rules than what you might see more often in the actual games.

Case in point- the Steel-Type is so good not only because of its many resistances, but also because of factors like a Toxic immunity, immunity to Samdstorm, and a Stealth Rock resistance. How often do those things show up in single player, though? Or in officially licensed VGC formats? Conversely, I personally think Grass is the worst single Type in the game (or at least tied for the spot with Normal and Bug), but that hasn’t stopped Grass-Types from tearing it up in modern metagames with consistent results, regardless of their less consistent single player results.

Interested to hear your reasoning for this, because I'm honestly not sure there is a worst type. There are certainly plenty of type combinations that are absolutely horrible and nigh-impossible to salvage (I'm thinking of Grass/Bug, Fire/Rock, and Grass/Dark as immediate examples - ironic that Grass plays a role in two of those) but I'm not sure there's a clear-cut worst type overall.

You can use outside factors like average BST to weigh them up - by which metric Dragon almost certainly wins hands down - but in terms of type advantages and disadvantages Grass is equally as vulnerable as Rock (both have five weaknesses) and offensively it's equally as poor as Bug (both are resisted by seven types). So an equal case could be made for Bug and Rock being the worst type, but then that's not even taking into account Ice's lack of resistances or Normal's lack of advantages. And ironically despite Normal having no advantages I think there's actually a pretty strong argument that Normal is one of the better types overall.

 

[Samtendo09]

I don't agree with any of this mentality.

Players will adapt. The balance will adapt.

I am not some "Pokemon is the GOAT!!! Love the status quo!!!" person, I play tons of alternatives to Pokemon, such as other monster collection games. No, the game will not shit itself is Steel does not wall almost everything in the game. Because nothing could.

Nothing is truly """broken""" in competitive Pokemon beyond a metagame level unless it disrupts the mechanics of the game. Hell, if you had a type that is literally super effective against every type in the game, if you could Toxic it, get hazard damage on it, use moves to lower its damage output and items like Sash to combat it, the core mechanics of competitive Pokemon would still be at play.

Would variety be ass? Sure, but that doesn't make the game "broken". Metas like CHALK were not broken, they were fine because they were playable.

So from my perspective where even that would not break the game, the idea of "omg how will we fight a bad type if Steel doesn't resist it" is funny. If Psyspam is broken in VGC, they will adapt, as they have every time. Psychic being a top tier type wouldn't break the game, it'd just change the status quo of what is on top. The status quo balance is not good, or bad, it's just what exists. It's what you're used to.

If you want to see "Psychic Type but Steel doesn't resist it", just look at Ghost. While you use Psyspam as an example of brokenness, Ghosts are just Psychic Type but better. You can say Psychic has things such as Psychic Terrain, but any type change will be accompanied by a new entire game where you could nerf Psychic Terrain.

This isn't some impossible game design task. It's literally never been. You bring up 1000 Pokemon, but that isn't even true anymore. Even if it was, you say "it's not like everything is just OU, there is other tiers"

First of all, VGC is way easier to balance. Inherently. Because you always have the ability of double targeting a Pokemon making it less viable. Mega Rayquaza is still insane, but even if it can 1v1 almost every Pokemon by sheer speed and DPS, you have a second Pokemon that can attack it on the turn. That isn't to diminish that Mega Ray is pretty broken, but to say that it is inherently easier to play around threats in VGC.

Secondly, if you are implying lower tiers Smogon: who cares? They can just ban broken Pokemon and continue as normal. It'd literally be fine. In the status quo already, we acknowledge that Pokemon is an extremely busted game, with tons of things that should be banned.

So actually: Yes, there really isn't that many Pokemon to take account of.

This, I agree so much! But granted, I do think that while I am nowhere as opposing to type chart changes as others are, I still think it is best save it as a last resort rather than first. Like if a new type alone controlled the metagames even more than Steel does, let’s say to the level that Dynamax does, then might as well nerf that type directly.

Gen 9 metagames have a status quo that is already much different than Gen 8, which was different than Gen 7, and so on. We should not be afraid to experiment on any potential change even if the result is less than sastifying, and be more willing to adapt and give criticism instead of staying closeminded to any change just because of the butterfly effect.

And I will say, I feel like some part of the Pokémon community comes off as too closeminded at times. Not just part of the Smogon community, mind you.

 

[Blue glass]

You can use outside factors like average BST to weigh them up - by which metric Dragon almost certainly wins hands down - but in terms of type advantages and disadvantages Grass is equally as vulnerable as Rock (both have five weaknesses) and offensively it's equally as poor as Bug (both are resisted by seven types). So an equal case could be made for Bug and Rock being the worst type, but then that's not even taking into account Ice's lack of resistances or Normal's lack of advantages. And ironically despite Normal having no advantages I think there's actually a pretty strong argument that Normal is one of the better types overall.

Bug has better defenses and Rock has better offenses than Grass at least numbers wise and that should make it worse than them but Grass resists and hit SE Water and Ground, two top tier types, and that makes it more powerful than it would be otherwise.

Psychic is the worst, resisting Poison is not very useful and it resists Fighting, a good to great attacking type, but psychic mons tend to have low def while fighting tend to have high atk. Hitting Poison and Fighting SE is nice but not spetacular. It can't hit dark at all so one can't spam psychic moves and it's weak to u-turn, knock off and ghost and dark, two good to great attacking types. Its only saving grace is the Fighting match-up. At least bug is supposed to be bad.

 

[Hugin]

As always, my unpopular opinion is the Dexit didn't go far enough. They needed to do a clean break: Rebalance the type chart, new stats for existing mons, rework available moves, etc. Bring us into SwSh with ~150 mons available that have been rebuilt from the ground up and half that new ones, and then slowly reintroduce existing mons over the course of DLCs and later generations. Instead we got a bunch of stuff eliminated but no improvements because GF refuses to take a break to catch their breath ever. Balance is impossible at this point without a significant rework of everything, and there's far too much stuff to do that sort of rework all at once.

 

[pika pal]

Dark also got the not-insignificant buff of Knock Off becoming one of the most spammable moves in the series. I think these specific changes were more to impact Steel (as it gained another resist and another type to hit super-effectively in Fairy) than to buff Dark and Ghost directly, though.

I think Dark was 2-fold compared to Ghost since Dark gained a new Resist in Fairy that they clearly wanted to have strong defensive presence, so they made it neutral to another prominent Defensive type to balance is

 

[bdt2002]

Interested to hear your reasoning for this, because I'm honestly not sure there is a worst type. There are certainly plenty of type combinations that are absolutely horrible and nigh-impossible to salvage (I'm thinking of Grass/Bug, Fire/Rock, and Grass/Dark as immediate examples - ironic that Grass plays a role in two of those) but I'm not sure there's a clear-cut worst type overall.

You can use outside factors like average BST to weigh them up - by which metric Dragon almost certainly wins hands down - but in terms of type advantages and disadvantages Grass is equally as vulnerable as Rock (both have five weaknesses) and offensively it's equally as poor as Bug (both are resisted by seven types). So an equal case could be made for Bug and Rock being the worst type, but then that's not even taking into account Ice's lack of resistances or Normal's lack of advantages. And ironically despite Normal having no advantages I think there's actually a pretty strong argument that Normal is one of the better types overall.

I was actually wondering when I'd get a chance to talk about this. Just this past year I started working on a cumulative ranking of every Type in the game based on their matchups relative to the others. I understand that many Types have extra bonuses- Rock and Ice have their weather based defensive buffs, Flying-Types are immune to Spikes, Ghost-Types can't be trapped, stuff like that- but for the ranking I made I wasn't taking these or any individual Pokémon into consideration. Not only would this be biased against any Types that don't have added bonuses, but in an effort to be as non-biased as possible, I went into this assuming a pool of 18 Pokémon who are exactly identical to one another in every way except their Type that could only battle each other with attacking moves, all of which would also be on completely even footing with each other.

When all offensive and defensive singular Type matchups are taken into consideration and are ranked by W-L-D (Win-Loss-Draw) Percentage, there were three Types that had the lowest W-L-D percentage. Without draws being considered as worth half the value of a win, the Normal-Type was the obvious candidate for the worst Type relative to the other 17, with zero wins and three losses against Fighting, Rock, and Steel. (Normal and Ghost share their immunities to each other, making this an even matchup between them.) With draws taken into account, however, the Normal-Type's final record comes out to a much more impressive 0-3-14, comparatively speaking at least. This change places Normal in contention with the Grass-Type and the Bug-Type, who coincidentally both finish with a 4-7-6 record, for the dishonor of Pokémon's worst singular Type relative to the others. Out of the tier of three Types sharing the same W-L-D percentage (41.18%), the Grass-Type loses the tiebreaker against the other two nominees on account of a worse head-to-head record against the other Types in its percentage tier- in this case, Bug goes 1-0-1 against Grass and Normal while Normal goes 0-0-2 against Grass and Bug, while Grass goes 0-1-1 against Normal and Bug.

I hope this helps also if anyone's wondering, post-nerf Psychic is actually the fourth worst type in the game just above these three so make of that what you will

 

[Sonikku A]

I remember how I posted my custom type chart here. The TLDR;

-Ice defensively was buffed. Also immune to Dragon
-Steel gains a weakness to Electric, but SE against Dragon
-Rock no longer is resisted by Steel, and resists Electric
-Poison Resists Water, and is SE against Fighting
-Bug gets a bunch of resists. Has Gen 1 tradeback with Poison

This is pre Gen 6 based, so Electrics can still be paralyzed, and Grass don't have powder immunity. Also, no Fairy type

So what happens?

Grass suffers, Flying is weakened, Fire slightly is weakened. Mons like Skarmory suffer a 4x weakness, Dragons are gimped in a way, even if they have fire coverage

Can this be worked around? Sure, if a lot of work is done to rebalance. Grass and Powders are too vital of a unique quality

But ultimately it shakes up the meta too heavily, and I doubt GF can comprehend it for 700+ mons. I barely bothered for my crack hack

 

[Hugin]

...You know, I wonder how much of this endless discussion would stop happening if Pokemon had a reasonable mod scene. Yes, there's romhacks, but mostly for old games, they're not exactly accessible for the average fan, and they usually change a LOT. And something like pet mods on Showdown don't really give players a good overview of how any change would affect things.
But if players could just open NexusMods and download a "Rebalanced Typechart All 18 viable!" or "Every mon gets reliable STAB" fix alongside "Beach fashion V3.0" and "Harder Boss lineup" mods, presumably at some point the fandom would figure out "Oh hey Dragon really doesn't need to be nerfed" or "Bug is fine if you just give it better moves for mid/lategame". But without a good way to test how things play out in a normal game, repeatedly, for a decent number of players, this discussion is going to keep happening.

 

[DreamPrince]

On topic of discussing the type chart, my only fix would make another type resist Ghost. Ghost is one of the best attacking types, and its two weaknesses are weak to Fighting, making Fighting/Ghost nearly unresisted with the exception of one line. There have been very centralizing Ghost types for the last few Gens, examples include Spectrier, Flutter Mane, Annilhape, Gholdengo, Marshadow, Dragapult, Calyrex-S, Mega Gengar, Mimikyu, Ceruledge, Lunala, and Aegislash to name a few ( This list covers VGC, BSS, and Smogon ). I don’t think a new type needs to be added, just another resist that isn’t weak to Fighting or Fairy. I was thinking Bug since Bugs are closely associated to Ghosts since they are both phobias hence the resistance.

 

[bdt2002]

On topic of discussing the type chart, my only fix would make another type resist Ghost. Ghost is one of the best attacking types, and its two weaknesses are weak to Fighting, making Fighting/Ghost nearly unresisted with the exception of one line. There have been very centralizing Ghost types for the last few Gens, examples include Spectrier, Flutter Mane, Annilhape, Gholdengo, Marshadow, Dragapult, Calyrex-S, Mega Gengar, Mimikyu, Ceruledge, Lunala, and Aegislash to name a few ( This list covers VGC, BSS, and Smogon ). I don’t think a new type needs to be added, just another resist that isn’t weak to Fighting or Fairy. I was thinking Bug since Bugs are closely associated to Ghosts since they are both phobias hence the resistance.

Hear me out- Rock resisting Ghost, especially if or when they Dexit the Nacli evolution family in any future generations. Purifying Salt is essentially a Ghost resist plus the status immunity (not to be confused with the immunity to status moves that Gholdengo has), and if you want to take this even further you can have Rock offensively hitting Water and Steel for super-effective damage as a very similar reference to Salt Cure. Unfortunately, I don't exactly see "Salt-Type" ever becoming a thing, but this might be the next best thing.

 

[Ransei]

It's honestly really good that Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were whole games instead of DLC. They came out during a time where whole Pokémon games where cheaper to buy the base version + upper version of than whole games + DLC versions now, despite the latter ending up with noticeably less content and the content not being as much worth the price. Gen 7 also allowed players to migrate their old friends from Sun and Moon into Pokémon Bank to sell Sun or Moon, get some money back, then use the remainder to get Ultra Sun or Ultra Moon. They could've also just got Sun + Ultra Moon or Moon + Ultra Sun and have every Pokémon for the dex bar either Blacephalon or Stakataka. You get two Stakataka or Blacephalon in each version, encouraging you to send one of them through the GTS for the opposite version Ultra Beast.

Another thing to point out is the accessibility. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon being full games at the time allowed for many players who skipped Sun and Moon to just jump into Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon instead of having to play $40 + DLC for what would have essentially been Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, making the full game option cheaper and more accessible in the long run. DLC would've then be inaccessible for newer players to download after the console's online service runs out. USUM being full games saved the preservation of these games, which likely would not be the case for SwSh and SV whenever Nintendo Switch online runs out.

Lastly, Pokémon DLC is a scam. Especially with the way Scarlet and Violet are doing it. They removed basic content (ex: battle facility) and story elements (ex: any remote lore explaining what makes the box arts legendary, the main lore of the game overall) that every previous major mainline series game had as a default. Basic staples of the game every previous entry either had right from the get go or with like 1 free update, just to repackage it as $35 DLC. People are having to pay $95 to get the same levels of content previous entries had for $40, or even $80 combined if you want to take that route.