Are Flying-types still a must?

[mertyville]

Flying-types, like Water-types, have been able to find a spot on an average in-game team. Points speaking for them are:
1. Being an early encounter with the regional birds (secondary starter?)
2. Able to learn the HM move Fly
3. Always being capable to have 2 STAB moves (Who has ever used Tornadus in-game?)
4. Resisting/overwhelming 2 common early game types in Bug and Grass

However, as generations pass, Fly has become obsolete with other methods of fast travel, being able to access a viarity of Pokemon at almost any point of the game etc.
Generally as an offensive type Flying has become better with significantly stronger offensive options. Their immunity against Ground also comes in handy as well as being able to resist Fighting. Any Type has a type combination with Flying, however, not all of them are equally accessable. The most common type combination with Flying I can think of is obviously Normal and Bug, but for individual Types I think of the most common type combination of Dragon being also Flying.
Even without the ability to learn Fly, few Flying-types that find spots on teams like Gyarados or Butterfree.
The huge range of Flying-types to catch make it no surprise that they cover likely some of the worst Pokemon as well as the best Pokemon for ingame runs like Beautifly being easily one of the worst but Rayquaza easily being the best choice in Emerald.

What do you think? Are Flying-types still as relevant as they used to?

 

[Castersvarog]

I’ve really stopped using Flying types ingame starting from Gen 7 onwards for the reasons you listed; you needed a flying type, a physical one specifically, to learn Fly and be actually usable. And it’s easier to always have a permanent member who can learn the attack instead of an HM slave like with Rock Smash, Cut, etc.

But Since then, thanks to the free fast travel from Gen 7 onwards Flying types have been the one type I rarely bring along anymore, not helped by the fact that Flying type moves effectively peak at Aerial Ace until endgame with Brave Bird (which has its own annoyances via Recoil) because Drill Peck is a joke and Dual Wingbeat doesn’t exist until DLC was a thing.

As a type though, they also have kind of fallen off in a way ingame. Bug and Grass types are relevant during the first 1/4 of the game at best. But basically vanish unless you’re Aaron or Alder.
And Fighting types have a new weakness in Fairy types who are very common choices or with a Psychic type who are pretty reliable for ingame because of the inevitable Poison type hordes from the (not)-evil teams.

 

[Karxrida]

Flying has always been in a super weird spot.

The type is pretty awesome offensively as seen in competitive, but very few games in the series give you a good Flying-type that's also available at a reasonable point. I think I can count the number of standout Flying-types that come online early on one hand.

There's also the issue of the move selection for STAB being awkward. The strongest options usually have some sort of major drawback or catch (low accuracy, recoil, charge turn, cannot hold an item, etc.), and the type's strongest no-drawback move, the physical 80 BP Drill Peck, has shockingly low distribution. Special Attackers have access to the more widely available Air Slash, but that is slightly lacking in power at 75 BP and suffers from 95% accuracy for some reason. Some Flying-types don't even get functional STAB depending on the game (e.g. early gen Bugs, Gyarados outside of Hidden Power lottery), which makes their typing only really valuable for the Ground immunity.

In a lot of pre-Gen 7 games it feels like you only grabbed a Flying-type to be a Fly bot, or you put Fly on a Special Attacker that can't even use it very well but had a free moveslot. In later games you'd only grabbed one if it's good I guess. I didn't think I even used a Flying-type in SV at any point, but some of the options seemed fine?

 

[mertyville]

Fly really carry a lot of Flying Types. Just for HM purposes the ones that really stand out to get most use were probably Farfetched, Aerodactyl and if you could have gotten it earlier Tropius. Didn't see many grind Charizard to turn it into an HM slave.
The earliest Gens really had it pretty easy since your moveslots were pretty much free due to the awful selection of moves Pokemon could learn. Usually Normal + STAB and if you lucky 1 coverage move, not talking about Water Pokemon.
Generally I think something like Pidgey was fine to get through Kanto while in Johto your options are so dire, even some of the worst options look like A-tier Pokemon.
Ignoring Flying STAB, since the primary STAB of Flying Pokemon were different, which kinda made up for having their best option be Wing Attack or 70 Base Power Fly.

Also speaking of the low base power of the Flying moves, isn't it kinda funny that Lugia gets a 100 Base Power STAB while it has 90 base attack and base special attack? Kinda feels like they did not want to make good moves for that Type at the time. It took Gen 4 for Brave Bird to be a thing.

 

[bdt2002]

(Screenshot taken from Pokémon Showdown on my phone via Home Screen shortcut)

I’ve mentioned this a few other times on this site, but this cool little thing I’ve dubbed “The Smeargle Test” is a way I can see what moves are considered “viable moves or not”. There’s a few different factors that determine which category a move is placed into for Smeargle on Pokémon Showdown, but the general idea is, the best moves of any given Type or category are going to be the ones that are more recommended for use. Pretty simple stuff.

I show you this screenshot because Flying-Types do have moves… the problem is, most of the best ones are either status moves, signature moves, or have fairly limited distribution like Drill Peck. The appeal of Fly has generally always been its fast travel utility, as you’d expect, but in most situations using a different Flying-Type attack will give you more base power per turn than Fly does over its two-turn duration. In-game opponents not being known for switching their Pokémon as well as Fly’s base power buff in Gen 4 make it so physical Flying-Types that do get the move will generally still have something they can do, but on the special side, yeah, there is a pretty limited amount of stronger options. Air Slash and Hurricane are probably your only “best bets” here, and both of these tend to come either later in a playthrough or too late to be considered for the main story in the case of some Hurricane users. Most other Types at least have some form of power progression you can observe with moves available at any given point, but what often sets the good Flying-Types apart from the great ones is their access to the stronger STAB options. You’ll hardly see anyone want to use Pidgeot over Fearow or Dodrio in Gen 1, for example, not just because of their better Attack and Speed but because Pidgeot can’t learn Drill Peck. In fact, Fly is actually one of the few Flying-Type moves this thing CAN get.



One pair of games has stood out to me over time for its seemingly intended fix to an issue with the original games. Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon removed the Machamp Shove requirement from Sun & Moon to access the Flyinium Z and this is a big reason why I think Flying-Types feel so much better to use here even though Fly is no longer a required HM and you even lose a winning matchup (Hala 2) in favor of Molayne replacing him. Having reliable, earlier access to strong STAB is just that valuable. You even get to look past things like Hurricane’s accuracy or Fly’s charge turn!

 

[mertyville]

There aren't many situations you need Flying STAB in Gen 1 and likely FRLG since most the relevant targets are dealt with STAB Normal. So generally I think the Pidgey line is ok but indeed outclassed by Spearow-line.
Gen 5 really helped with Accrobatics and Archeops being probably the best user for ingame is a win for the Flying-type lobby.
Just from my memory and experience I feel Gen 5 might be the peak of Flying-type offense for in-game at least. In BW you have Archeops and in White 2 you have Braviary which can learn Bravebird and you catch it at lv25 every Monday.

 

[Hugin]

Thing with the flying type is that it's solid enough to not be worth complaining about in-game, but weak enough for the flaws to be annoying. And I don't think that has changed much over the course of the series. Immunity to ground is great, but the rest of the defensive type chart sucks. You generally have access to a passable STAB(Air Slash, Fly) early on, but never get anything better(Brave Bird and Hurricane are miserable to spam). Offensively it's great, except against extremely common Rock/Electric/Steel types. Fly was mandatory for 6 generations, and can be learned by most flying types(except any Flying/Bugs or Gyarados, which are very common team members).

I don't think the type is bad, or poorly-designed(except the movepools). Arguably most types should feel like this. But it is impressive how close this type comes to getting boxed as soon as you get past the second gym without ACTUALLY reaching that point.

 

[Eriorguez]

The issue with flying is that Hurricane and Brave Bird are endgame, and the second best stuff is Air Slash (single target Rock Slide pretty much) and Drill Peck (quite limited distribution and it is a Strenght/Dragon Claw/X-Scissor variant). Dual Wingbeat is also there, but then we go down to Aerial Ace, which is SWIFT.

Still used Kilowattrel in Scarlet FWIW, but that was doubling as an electric.