When exactly did the Fire-type start to rise in-game?

mertyville

mertyville

Seeing how Volt-Ikazuki's focused on type balancing by how Game Freak tried nerving Psychic types, I want to look from the other perspective that always intruiged me by looking how much the Fire-type improved over the years from becoming a joke of a time in RBY to almost a must have type on any team be it competitvely or in-game. Like DP having no Fire Types memes aren't for show, the games feel like they are made that you need a Fire type and every playthrough myself I have to pick Chimchar despite me being annoyed by the fact they added another Fire/Fighting type.
Sure, you can say Charmander isn't awful because there is a literal forest to put into flames just so Charmander can get quick experience to overwhelm Brock with Charmeleon's Ember but that's as far it goes.

1. Fire finally resists Ice and also having actual targets of that type to hit Super Effective with except Jynx.
2. Higher distribution of Fire Type moves (you don't have to just rely on Ember and Flamethrower)
3. Steel-type Pokemon exist and over time become more prominent in-game *cough* Diamond *cough* Pearl *cough*
4. Prominent Fire-type moves have become far more accessable to teach your Pokemon like Fire Blast in HGSS or Flamethrower in RSE.
5. Resisting the newest Type Fairy

Funny how many SV Fire Types are just insanely good especially with the stone evolution mechanics changing allowing you to get Arcanine with all its good moves thanks to the move relearn mechanic.
 
Fire is quite the Type when it comes to analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. It usually doesn’t have that many Pokémon to pick from in the older regions, and in newer games it definitely has more on average but even this is largely because of regional PokéDex sizes increasing significantly starting in Black & White 2.

By this point I think most of us would agree that Fire is a somewhat underwhelming Type in the Kanto games, especially in the original games where there exists a noticeable disparity between the available options. Charmander and Growlithe benefit in later generations from high Special Attack, Flareon somehow gets worse than it was here, Moltres’s movepool is laughably bad for Legendary standards, and Vulpix is solid but is version exclusive and mainly benefits from Gen 1 mechanics and cheese. That just leaves Magmar, who’s available relatively late and isn’t anything spectacular until Johto anyway. Speaking of Johto and Magmar, one would think the Type’s fortunes would be better here than in Kanto, but only Magmar and Cyndaquil are really going to be seeing consistent usage on a higher number of in-game teams and as good as those two getting ThunderPunch is, Typhlosion arrives pretty late by Johto standards and Magmar’s base stats are still just decent. Not bad, by any means, just decent.

Surprisingly I think I have to give it to Hoenn for this one, which surprised me because of the infamous amount of water all over the place in this region. Both Champions aren’t very strong matchups for Fire-Types either, not even Steven thanks to the fossils and Claydol, and only Blaziken is a safe matchup into Aggron. So why do I say this? Aside from the underwhelming Magcargo, Hoenn’s roster of fully-evolved Fire-Types is pretty solid, actually. Blaziken is decent in Gen 3 but incredibly strong in the remakes, Camerupt has one of the best Type combinations in the game and tends to play well into anything that’s not a Water-Type in the lategame, Ninetales is back from the first two generations and is probably better than its Pokémon Silver iteration, and Torkoal is a decent mid-game pick that would have benefited heavily from getting Drought in the remakes instead of in Sun & Moon. I wouldn’t say this is a game breaking roster or anything, but this helped set the standard for future PokéDexes having a decent Fire-Type selection going forward. Remember, the title of this thread is when did this start, and while Hoenn is absolutely not the Fire-Type’s best region, it’s the reason we had the Fire/Fighting starters at all and gave the series something to build on for games where I can actually say Fire is among the best Types in the game.

As far as what that peak actually is, Kalos seems like it would be the obvious pick due to good raw type matchups, but there’s a pretty steep drop-off eventually between the earlygame and lategame Fire-Types in terms of how viable each group is overall. That is to say, you won’t have much reason to use any of the later options over Fennekin, Fletchinder, or Charmander, as well as that event Torchic if you played back when the game first came out. Galar also feels like a strong pick in Pokémon Shield specifically where the Water-Type gym is your only real challenge for a good while due to the Rock-Type Gym in Sword being Ice-Type here, though both versions do share losses against Raihan’s Gym fight and Nessa’s Champion Cup rematch during the endgame.
 
I think for a lot of types the answer to this question would (boringly) be the same: Gen II.

Fire in Gen I is underwhelming for sure, but the introduction of Steel in Gen II makes Fire coverage a lot more attractive. There's also the fact that almost every Fire-type Pokemon in the game was improved in general by the transition: some got a bump to their stats due to the Special split, and while in Gen I most Fire-type species are limited to Fire and Normal moves and not much else in GSC everyone gets a welcome movepool expansion - it's not gamebreaking in most cases, but it's enough that you can actually put together a workable moveset and for some species it means they can actually hit the types they're weak to.

That's not to mention the introduction of sunny weather - not as useful as it would later be once Abilities were introduced, but certainly a benefit - and there's also Gen II's added resistance to Ice moves which, while hardly gamebreaking, certainly doesn't hurt to have. Gen II didn't make Fire the best type, but it made it a lot better.

I'd actually be really interested in a discussion along the lines of "how good is each type in each generation" as I think there's some notable and observeable fluctuation. Fire IMO declines from Gen II to Gen III (it's overall a rather poor type in that generation) but gets better in other generations on the whole - off the cuff I'd say one could say the same of Dark.

Exceptions to the "most types got better in Gen II" generalisation: Bug (it improved somewhat with the introduction of Heracross and Megahorn, but one good Pokemon and one good move are hardly enough to constitute a "rise"), Fighting (it took until Gen IV for it to become a generally worthwhile type, and then truly peaked in Gen V), Water (already very good and that largely didn't change), Psychic (as discussed elsewhere, basically the only type to decline from I>II), and Ice (took a few more generations and a lot of buffs to become a serious contender).
 
QuentinQuonce said:
I think for a lot of types the answer to this question would (boringly) be the same: Gen II.

Fire in Gen I is underwhelming for sure, but the introduction of Steel in Gen II makes Fire coverage a lot more attractive. There's also the fact that almost every Fire-type Pokemon in the game was improved in general by the transition: some got a bump to their stats due to the Special split, and while in Gen I most Fire-type species are limited to Fire and Normal moves and not much else in GSC everyone gets a welcome movepool expansion - it's not gamebreaking in most cases, but it's enough that you can actually put together a workable moveset and for some species it means they can actually hit the types they're weak to.
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For the sake of in-game playthroughs, I don’t think level up movepools were that good for Fire-Types until at least Ruby & Sapphire at the earliest, and the type coverage additions aren’t as universal as you might think- Hidden Power is great for competitive, sure, but it’s notoriously hard to make full use of in single player, ThunderPunch is, for all intents and purposes, a GSC exclusive outside of any games the punches appear with Shard tutors in, and SolarBeam is most Fire-Type’s best option but requires a turn to set up Sun. Don’t get me wrong, Gen 2 and Johto specifically was a big step up for these guys, but the buffs are definitely more felt in multiplayer. Stealth Rock is almost never used by NPCs, Ice-Types always being late and checked by more than just Fire-Types, and the fact that Water is so omnipresent in every region is the cherry on top.

Comparing this to Hoenn, which has more (reasonable) options of what to use, has newly added or moved around TMs, and even a handful of matchup wins you might not expect right away (for example, every Fire-Type available before Norman has a way to beat him), and the ease of use of the Fire typing is what’s more apparent even in this more hostile environment when the buffs came earlier and the Type arguably got worse or stayed the same.

Edit: So apparently Slugma doesn’t evolve until Level 38 for some reason, so there goes half of that idea. For context, I was going to say Magcargo wins against Norman and goes 3-2 against Winona, but nooooo we can’t have nice things, apparently. Gah, this thing is bad.

QuentinQuonce said:
I'd actually be really interested in a discussion along the lines of "how good is each type in each generation" as I think there's some notable and observeable fluctuation. Fire IMO declines from Gen II to Gen III (it's overall a rather poor type in that generation) but gets better in other generations on the whole - off the cuff I'd say one could say the same of Dark.

Exceptions to the "most types got better in Gen II" generalisation: Bug (it improved somewhat with the introduction of Heracross and Megahorn, but one good Pokemon and one good move are hardly enough to constitute a "rise"), Fighting (it took until Gen IV for it to become a generally worthwhile type, and then truly peaked in Gen V), Water (already very good and that largely didn't change), Psychic (as discussed elsewhere, basically the only type to decline from I>II), and Ice (took a few more generations and a lot of buffs to become a serious contender).
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I kid you not, I actually just made something along these lines last night. I’d love to start this discussion if I may be allowed to give a helping hand. In the meantime, I think there’s actually three Types that got worse after the original games. You mentioned the obvious one, Psychic, but Grass took a massive hit in GSC with most of the returning cast losing Special stat points and their movepools being nerfed overall (note that Giga Drain’s TM is in Kanto, so you can’t use it for Johto). My third pick for one that got worse in GSC is Ice, albeit not as significantly as Psychic got hit since Ice Punch at least became a TM here.
 
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bdt2002 said:
For the sake of in-game playthroughs, I don’t think level up movepools were that good for Fire-Types until at least Ruby & Sapphire at the earliest
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Mmm, largely depends on the Fire-type. Hoenn counterbalances slightly better movesets with the fact that Fire-types generally aren't available until well into the midgame if you don't choose Torchic; as you note, Slugma is hard to raise and Torkoal's moveset is far from stellar. Numel is the only one with a really great natural movepool.

Growlithe, for instance, absolutely can get by with Bite and Ember for much of GSC's earlygame and gets Take Down at level 26 which is a little on the late side for Johto, but still a pretty powerful move to get so early. Cyndaquil/Quilava, too, does more or less fine with Ember and Quick Attack until it gets Flame Wheel. For in-game playthroughs I don't think you can ignore TMs; Headbutt is basically mandatory on any physical attacker in GSC.

But I'm trying to take more of a rounded view: in-game playthroughs are one metric by which you could judge a type's improvement, but not the be-all and end-all. For instance: how does the type stack up compared to previous generations? Did it receive any significant buffs or tools which change the overall way it plays? Dragonite is pretty dominating in an in-game playthrough of GSC, but would you really say Dragon improved considerably in Gen II? Not really, by my judgement: there aren't enough species of that type for Dragon moves to be worthwhile coverage, as opposed to later generations, and even if there had been none of the newly-introduced moves were particularly widespread (with two-thirds of those being too weak to merit serious consideration).

I'd agree that Fires are generally more reasonable to use in Hoenn, but as a type I would say it performs worse overall - Hoenn is full of Water-types, and both Rock and Ground moves are far more widespread than they previously were.

bdt2002 said:
I kid you not, I actually just made something along these lines last night. I’d love to start this discussion if I may be allowed to give a helping hand.
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Sure. A little digging has unearthed this thread, which should prove interesting reading.

bdt2002 said:
In the meantime, I think there’s actually three Types that got worse after the original games. You mentioned the obvious one, Psychic, but Grass took a massive hit in GSC with most of the returning cast losing Special stat points and their movepools being nerfed overall (note that Giga Drain’s TM is in Kanto, so you can’t use it for Johto).
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I think it's hard to make the case for any other type than Psychic getting significantly worse from Gen I>II. You're right that several Grass Pokemon took hits in the shift but Grass overall isn't really a stellar type in either Gen I or II (Gen III is where I think it significantly improved); it's just that Johto is more punishing to Grass-types than Kanto is which I think influences the perception of it as a poor type in Gen II. Most Grass-types don't have significantly altered movesets from RBY to GSC: a couple, like Paras, actually expand their options, and Exeggcute learns Leech Seed significantly earlier than it does in RBY, accounting for it being available much earlier than it was in Kanto.

bdt2002 said:
My third pick for one that got worse in GSC is Ice, albeit not as significantly as Psychic got hit since Ice Punch at least became a TM here.
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Yeah, you might be onto something with Ice. In large part that's probably because it has a lot of mechanical advantages that weren't ironed out in Gen I, though I do think that its relative merits in Gen I are largely due to it piggybacking on the strengths of other types - barring Articuno, all Ice-types are either part-Water or part-Psychic.

Though with that said I'm unsure if it's that much worse in Gen II. Steel exists now, sure, but Steel-type moves are fairly uncommon and most Ice-types being part-Water makes those matchups generally more even. Thinking about later generations, I'd say it's broadly the case that Ice stayed more or less in the same place while the types it was weak to got better (Fighting, Steel, and Rock are all far better than they were). It's interesting to note that while Fighting became a much better coverage move in Gen II compared to I, Fighting moves in general are rarer - Submission is no longer a TM, and nearly all of the other offensive moves are only learned by a handful of Pokemon each. Dynamicpunch is of course a TM, but too unreliable to see common usage. I've always found this quite curious.
 
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One thing that did a lot of good for Fire types in Gen 3 was just how insanely early you get Overheat. When your best Fire type moves by that point are Ember, Overheat is such a massive jump in damage; it’s crazy.
But yeah, I agree with Fire starting to pick up during Gen 2 because of the Ice type nerfs and Steel type being so tanky physically that Fire ends up being the best counter.
From there, they just kept getting better and better every Gen afterwards because of more moves and better availability at the perfect time like in Gen 5 and 7 (minus DP but even then Rapidash can at least do something).

I’d say following gens 2 & 3, I’d say gen 5 did a lot of good for the type, Pansear is available before Pinwheel forest, Darumaka being available right before the 3rd gym, and even the later Litwick can still do great against the Ice gym.
Plus there just being more midgame fire moves beyond Flame Wheel helps to.
 
Ironically, despite it introducing the Steel-type and that alone making Fire way more valuable, I don't think Gen 2 did much to move the needle for in-game. Steel-types are relatively rare opponents, with the only notable encounters being Jasmine, your Rival (whose teams are super weak to Geodude), and Koga's Forretress. Otherwise it's just the random scientist with a Magnemite every once in a while. A Fire-type is probably still worth having, but this is also the game with the Elemental Punch TMs so you can live without one.

Gen 3 is weird because the best Fire-type is Torchic by a landslide, but a major factor in why Torchic is so good is because it becomes Fire/Fighting. The members of the Aron line are the most common Steels in Hoenn, and they're part Rock so they're not even weak to Fire. Additionally, none of the Gym Leaders or Elite Four are super weak to Fire, and the Steven matchup relies on Blaizken's dual STABs to make it worth bringing. Finally, there's direct competition with Mudkip, arguably one of the best starters ever. I honestly never grab a Fire in Hoenn unless it's the remakes since Primal Groudon is busted in Omega Ruby.

Gen 4 is where Fire-types become a majorly important asset. You can't go five feet without stubbing your toe against an enemy Bronzor or Bronzong, and KOing them quickly is a priority so they don't drain your time and resources. A number of important fights are also weak to Fire, including 3 Gyms (4 if you include Maylene's Lucario, which is her ace) and an Elite Four member. Plus E4 member Lucian has a Bronzong and Cynthia always has two mons weak to Fire regardless of version.
 
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Gen 2 is the break point IMO.
In gen 2, you had the early game Fire Punch TM to solve STAB issues. Toss in a bunch of Magnemite, Jasmine's Steelix, and not many waters, and you're pretty happy. Plus there's a reasonable supply of fire-types that you can use(except Houndour). In-game, Sunny Day+Solar Beam is a fun combo for taking care of waters that most Fires get.
Gen 3, early Overheat rocks. Blaziken is a great user of it too, being mixed and fast. But most other fires suck, and the late game is misery.
Gen 4, there's 2 fires to choose from. Not a great showing for the type.
 
I saw it mentioned before so I just wanted to give a small correction: the only Fire-types that get SunnyBeam in Gen 2 are Houndoom, Entei and Ho-oh, most others only got it in gen 4 (except for Rapidash in FRLG, I thought Moltres also got it but apparently not).

Anyway, I agree that Gen 2 was definitely the big point, with Magmar in GS being the best example since it went from an obscure lategame mon no trainer used which wasn't particularly good to appear midgame with instant access to Elemental punches (Quilava could never). Crystal sent it to Mt. Silver for its crimes but at least you could get an early Fire Stone for Arcanine/Flareon—and I guess if you're soft resetting for it you could try getting a shiny Magby from the egg? Seems a lot of work tho.
Gen 3 and 4 were mostly carried by the starters like they said, Camerupt is cool but having to train it in the rainy routes when its best move is Magnitude is just... not nice. It doesn't help that both it and Torkoal (and Magcargo but gl getting it to evolve) will generally be attacking last. Obviously DP's problems are well-known but at least Platinum tries to fix that with Houndour/Magmar/Flareon.
Gen 5 gave us some amazing Fire-types although ingame BW your options are the monkey, Darm and Chandelure. The latter two are really great at least. I never played BW2 but it updates the roster greatly with the stone evos and you can even catch Magby really early in W2.

So I guess the conclusion would be that any game that lets you use Magmar is a good game for Fire-types.
 
I'm having fun today

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I made this just now just so I could look at how I think they’ve all been handled. Keep in mind this is just for single player, and ignore any spelling errors I made, lol I already found one. Certain things that make a Type good are not going to be present in single or multiplayer and vice versa. How’d I do?
 
bdt2002 said:
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I made this just now just so I could look at how I think they’ve all been handled. Keep in mind this is just for single player, and ignore any spelling errors I made, lol I already found one. Certain things that make a Type good are not going to be present in single or multiplayer and vice versa. How’d I do?
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I’d say Ice could be changed to got worse over time but improved recently.
In Gen 1 Ice was shockingly pretty alright defensively, Fighting was trash, Rhydon was the best Rock type, and Fire took neutral damage from Ice. Meanwhile Blizzard was just disgustingly good, only having Water and other Ice types resist the move was one of many reasons why it was so good
 
Castersvarog said:
I’d say Ice could be changed to got worse over time but improved recently.
In Gen 1 Ice was shockingly pretty alright defensively, Fighting was trash, Rhydon was the best Rock type, and Fire took neutral damage from Ice. Meanwhile Blizzard was just disgustingly good, only having Water and other Ice types resist the move was one of many reasons why it was so good
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Ice-Types have a history of always showing up relatively late compared to other Types- in fact, they have the second latest Gym order average of any Type after Dragon- and they’re also usually made slow and bulky. The problem with that in both single player and multiplayer is that Ice is meant to be an offensive Type, and most of the time when I use Ice myself it’s as type coverage for a Water-Type. The Sheer Cold immunity almost never comes up in single player, freeze is rare which in turn means the immunity to it is less useful than in Gen 1, and Snow replacing Hail is probably the first significant change the Type’s gotten for single player in a long time but so far it’s only in Hisui and Paldea.
 
Ice-types really benefitted from the Gen 1 mechanics and Fire-types being awful. Freeze immunity was really huge.
Offensively ice remained strong but the defensive properties became worse and Ice-types needed to be made in a different way to get better.

A type I think unironically sucks is Bug. Few Bug-types are good thanks to special properties like U-turn and specific type combination. Do people use Terra Bug?
 
mertyville said:
Ice-types really benefitted from the Gen 1 mechanics and Fire-types being awful. Freeze immunity was really huge.
Offensively ice remained strong but the defensive properties became worse and Ice-types needed to be made in a different way to get better.

A type I think unironically sucks is Bug. Few Bug-types are good thanks to special properties like U-turn and specific type combination. Do people use Terra Bug?
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I'm sure if you search around you'll find a few instances of Tera Bug being used on various Pokemon, Iron Thorns is the one I've seen it suggested on most often. There's pretty much always a scenario in which something can be effective.

edit: Oh yeah, Bug is quite frequently recommended as a Hidden Power type in Gen III competitive as it's a pretty effective type for physical sweepers which need to find a way to hit Psychics/Darks. When I did my six-Unown GSC challenge a while back one of the squad had a Bug-type Hidden Power and was one of the most consistent hitters; as a neutral physical type you could do worse as it hits Water, Normal, Ground, and Electric Pokemon for neutral damage and is super-effective against Grass and Psychic Pokemon, all six of which are pretty common types for NPC opponents to carry.

I've said it before about Bug but discussions about when Bug became better often point to Gen V, when in actuality Gen IV is where the type really started to improve. There's not that many new species but several of the ones introduced were very good in lower tiers of play, while the existing species got a lot better thanks to the introduction of more widespread and powerful attacking options in X-Scissor, Bug Buzz, and U-Turn. Granted, Sinnoh's early-game choice of Wurmple, Kricketot, Burmy, and Combee is not a fun or appealing one which greatly limits how good the type could be in-game (fun fact, I actually wound up using Heracross on my first playthrough of Diamond) but Platinum's addition of Yanma and Scyther makes things a little better. Yanmega's a seriously underrated mon for an in-game playthrough, it's a shame it tends to come quite late in games it's included in (or be locked behind swarms in HGSS's case)
 
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From in-game perspective, it has to be Gen 5.

Gen 2 has Fire Punch... but Quilava doesn,t learn it, so the actual good Fire type is Magmar, since most others are either in Kanto or need a rare stone (outside Crystal, impossible to even get before Kanto).
Gen 3 has a good Starter, but the rest are all very slow or very late (Ninetales), therefore hard to use.
Gen 4 has a good Starter too, but the only other Fire Mon is Rapidash, which is pretty bad.

In Gen 5 the Fire Fight starter is a little worse, since its pretty slow, but still has enough power and unlike Infernape and Blaziken, has bulk. Should you not get a Fire starter, if you get Oshawott, you have the Fire monkey... which is honestly terrible. Fortunately, later in the game you get Darmanitan, which absolutely destroys the game unless you are like me and go in Nuzlocke mode. Chandelure is another decent Mon for in-game runs, as far as I know, in BW2 you can get a Volcarona too. So, lots of options and some of them are quite good. In terms of Gyms, Ground being a thing sucks, but at least the ace is weak to Fire. Rest of the game is not bad for the type.
 
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