CAP 21 CAP 21 - Part 1 - Concept Assessment

[HeaLnDeaL]

Welcome to CAP 21 and let's finally get the discussion going! Here's the concept that we've voted in and that we'll discussing here and throughout the project:

Name: Typing Underdog

General Description: A Pokémon which utilizes an undervalued typing to its full potential, by playing towards both its strengths and weaknesses.

Justification: Each typing possesses a unique set of characteristics, causing all of them to perform very differently in various aspects of battle. However, not every typing has been granted the opportunity to display this potential, being forced into suboptimal roles by virtue of stats, ability and movepool, and therefore often being labelled as “bad”.
This concept aims to do a detailed analysis on the primary function of such a typing along with its potentially unexplored capabilities, by creating a Pokémon that that emphasizes the typing’s most prominent traits and utilizes them effectively.
This approach will not only allow us to widen our understanding on the unique niche and preferred playstyle of the typing, but will also give us additional insight on the mechanics that lead to success and failure of the typing when comparing CAP to the wielders in the lower tiers.

Questions to be answered:

• What are the most important traits the Pokémon gains from the chosen typing, both positive and negative?
• Is quality or quantity of weaknesses/resistances/immunities more relevant to the chosen typing? What does this mean for the way it is played?
• How significant is the niche provided by the typing in OU? Are there any striking flaws in the typing that can’t be played around and prevent the Pokémon from performing reliably?
• How reliant is the typing on stats, ability and movepool in order to succeed in OU?
• Are the unique characteristics granted by the typing enough to set the Pokemon apart, or does it face strong competition for its role from Pokémon of other types?
• Is there any distinct playstyle that suits the chosen typing the best? Or can the same typing be utilized in an entirely different approach to similar success?
• How important is a type’s versatility for its overall success?
• Is a single Pokémon capable of portraying most relevant aspects of the entire type?

Guidelines:
1) Pay close attention to the Topic Leader during this discussion. His job is to keep us focused and to bring insight.
2) Do not poll jump. Poll jumping is a serious offense in these threads, and you can get infracted for it. Poll jumping is when you discuss something that should be discussed in the future, like specifying a CAP's stats or typing. You're allowed to hint at such things to conclude a point or to provide an example, but do not centralize your post on a poll jump. Poll jumping hurts the focus of early threads and can cause us to go off on a tangent. If you're not sure if you're poll jumping or not, err on the side of caution and don't post it.

Our topic leader, jas61292, will start off this thread with his opening thoughts. Make absolutely certain that you use his post as a starting point for your discussion to follow. Continue to pay attention to his posts as he begins to guide the community through the chosen topic! It's very important that we are discussing with each other under the TL's guidance, and not talk *over* each other! Posts will be deleted accordingly!

 

[jas61292]

Hey everyone. So, as you can see, this concept is really all about typing, so it would pretty much be impossible to have any reasonable concept assessment without talking about types. But, at the same time, I don't want this discussion to encroach too much on the typing discussion. So, rather than having people simply talk about what combinations they think work with this concept I'd like people to discuss individual types themselves and what each of their high and low points.

While we do not have a type yet, I think the points that the concepts first question try and get at is a great thing to look at here. To reword it a bit for the purposes of the current conversation: What are the most important traits of the 18 different Pokemon typings, both positive and negative, AND are there Pokemon in OU that exemplify these traits? Traits can be anything from STAB moves to resistance sets, so long as it is specific to the type.

Now, I do not want people to go through each type and make a list here. Rather, I would like people to go for prominent examples, especially in cases where there are not Pokemon in OU to exemplify the traits.

When we choose our typing later on, we very well may not be going with a mono-typed Pokemon. However, the traits of a dual typing are largely a combination of those of the base form. So, while this discussion may not set a very specific direction like we sometimes do in this stage, by figuring out what the notable traits are of each type, we will know how to approach the rest of the project once our typing is chosen. Furthermore, while this discussion may not be for choosing types, we can certainly use this kind of analysis to figure out what kinds of types should definitely not be in the running.

I don't really have much else to add at this point, but I will try and bring up some more discussion points once we get some good responses here. So lets get this project's discussions started.

EDIT: See post #8

 

[NumberCruncher]

So let's start with obvious examples.

Fire types are immune to burn. This makes it hard for the opponent to punish physical sweeps with burn. Part of what lets Talonflame get away with boosting effects is that the opponent can't burn away all the buffs it gives itself. Fire types are, however, weak to the most common burn move, which is Scald. It's also weak to Stealth Rocks, and the Ground type moves used by most setters of Stealth Rocks, which means Fire types have a harder time coming down in the late game.

Poison types are immune to Poison. Many Poison types in lower tiers like Dragalge and Nidoking function as wallbreakers both to keep walls from chipping and for super-effective STAB coverage on Fairies. Gengar preforms a similar job in OU, being a decent stallbreaker. Ground weakness is undesirable in the current metagame, but Poison STAB is highly desirable.

 

[Mova]

Electric-types are immune to paralysis. Most viable Electric types in OU already have great Speed, such as Mega Manectric and Raikou. They also have access to Volt Switch, which allows them to switch out after dealing damage. The Ground weakness is once again undesirable, but we have to make do with it. Not sure how great Electric STAB is by itself. Other notable examples of Electric-types include Rotom-W and Zapdos, which are immune to Ground.

 

[Bramblestein]

Ice Types really function best offensively, Ice is a great offensive STAB to have hitting 3 important types super effectively (Dragon, Ground, and Flying). Throw Freeze Dry into the mix and it can hit Water too. A weakness to Stealth Rock and the common attacking types Fighting and Fire, as well as Bullet Punch makes Ice a poor typing defensively especially when considering it only resists itself. Weavile exemplifies the Ice Type perfectly in OU, being fast and strong enough to be a huge threat as a Revenge Killer, Pursuit Trapper, or Cleaner depending on what your team needs.

 

[boxofkangaroos]

Normal Types have no particular advantage in the metagame, other than their immunity to Ghost, making it a typically mediocre typing. Normal is weak to the common Fighting type, which roams around the OU tier in the form of Mach Punch, Low Kick, Focus Blast, and Superpower, among others. Normal is not too good offensively either, being not very effective against Steel and Rock and not affecting Ghost-types. However there are some strong Normal-type attacks - the main physical and special Normal-type moves are Return and Hyper Voice. The only two Normal-types currently in OU are Mega Lopunny and Chansey, and are only in OU because of their great Normal-Fighting typing and offenses, and incredible bulk, respectively.

 

[escarlata]

Offensively, Grass types are resisted by a whopping 7 types, while only hitting 3 types SE, but the ability to hit Ground and Water are huge assets as typically these are very hard to deal with if unchecked. Grass types typically lack a reliable high BP move, especially on the special side, when Giga Drain is usually used over EBall, and Grass Knot is a liability against Manaphy and Rotom.

Defensively Grass types have a huge amount of common weaknesses, which doesn't look good at first glance. But where grass really shines is in its invaluable resistances to Electric, Water, Ground types. Aside from that, the best defensive Grass types usually have a secondary typing that neutralises a lot of its weaknesses. That along with the fact that Giga Drain heals makes many Grass types surprisingly difficult to take down.

Most notable Grass types in the tier are undoubtedly Serperior, Ferrothorn and Venusaur; the former being able to get by Grass's lack of high BP moves with Contrary, and the latter 2 having really good typing/ability to cut down many of those weaknesses

 

[jas61292]

Ok, let me just stop things for a second. While I appreciate what these first few posts have done, its really not super conducive to discussion. So what I will ask from here on out is, in addition to looking at types and what their inherent benefits and flaws are, I want to add in a few more things to talk about.

This concept talks about not simply working with a bad typing, but rather one that looks bad because its existing examples are Pokemon that really fail to take advantage of the prominent traits of the types. So, while, again, I don't want to turn this into a type discussion before the type discussion, I would look a bit more at examples of this. So, what I will ask here, in addition to what I already asked are these questions:

What are examples of Pokemon with "bad" typings that really fail to take advantage of the typings benefits?
What kinds of roles are these Pokemon fitting in, versus what kinds of roles mesh best with the advantages of their types?
Is there a frequent trend in these kind of Pokemon (such as simply having bad stats, or having good offensive type on a defensive mon), or does it seem that the individual cases are frequently different?

This last question is really key, as it will help us later on no matter what we pick. The better we know how these Pokemon went wrong, the more likely we will be able to make such a Pokemon that does not have the same issues.

 

[Imanalt]

What are examples of Pokemon with "bad" typings that really fail to take advantage of the typings benefits?

Ok i might talk about the rest of your post later, but I just want to address this in terms of examples we should be looking at for this cap. And rather than address it with counter examples like you asked for, I'm more interested in what 'mons basically do what we want this mon to end up looking like, trying to look for any patterns. The first mon that really jumps out to me is Celebi, as grass/psychic has an enormous number of major flaws, primarily being questionable offensively and weak to a huge number of types defensively, including important things like u-turn and pursuit weakness. On paper that typing looks absolutely terrible. But celebi keeps lurking around (although it has faded some from its past strength) being some sort of utility counter, taking advantage of the fact it has good resistances to go along with its huge number of weaknesses to check pokemon like keldeo relatively effectively. On the back of this ability to switch into lots of things, celebi has kept a variety of things it can do, allowing for it to be more difficult to exploit and easier to be able to fit into a specific team as "counter to x dangerous 'mons that provides y for the team."

I'd be curious to see if anyone else can come up with good examples of this as well to try to determine patterns.

 

[Swede]

Aurorus sticks out in my mind as a Pokemon with superb STAB options in Ice and Rock but burdened by only decent attack with the slow speed that prevents it from outspeeding a majority of threats that threaten it with a plethora of super-effective moves against it.

The Rock/Ice typing would not work well as a defensive typing, with its resistances being already covered by the prominent Steel typing. It is worth noting that Aurorus is more than often Choiced in its NU residence, missing out on opportunities to take out Pokemon that do not mind switching into a fairly predictable Rock or Ice move only to regret being the target of the other attack typing. Would a removal of this limitation provide a Pokemon such as Aurorus to fulfill its typings' advantages immediately, provided it received better stats? (Keep in mind that Aurorus is only an example, and to consider other Pokemon that have a flaw preventing it from utilizing offensive presence)

 

[snake]

Rock-Types are known commonly for their sky-high physically defensive and physical attack types. They resist Normal, Flying, Poison, and Fire-Type attacks, most of which (but not all) are physical. However, they are weak to common types that are commonly Special (Water and Grass-Type), and often have a small Special Defense stat. Rock Types are also commonly paired with the Ground type, which does not help. Rock Types' weaknesses to the common Ground, Fighting, and Steel-Types that are more commonly physical attacking types, but even then their high Defense stat sometimes isn't enough to stomach those attacks. They often have no recovery and are very slow. In short, Rock types have high Defense, but do not have the HP or Special Defense to compensate for it, especially without recovery outside of Rest or Leftovers, and are extremely slow. Rock types are also paired with terrible types as well.

Rock offensively is a fantastic type and complements well with Earthquake/Earth Power (which many have access to), forming EdgeQuake coverage. They also get Rock Polish, but most rock types are too slow even after the RP boost.

Looking at OU, there are two Rock types (Diancie and Tyranitar); looking at BL, there is one (Terrakion); looking at UU (bear with me here), there are two (Aerodactyl and Aggron). What do all of these have in common? Each of them patch up the holes that the other Rock types can't. Diancie has Fairy-Type coverage and high speed (once it mega-evolves). Tyranitar has Sand Stream which patches up his Special Defense and has the odd 61 speed stat for a scarf set if needed. Terrakion has excellent 108 speed and high power moves to boot. Mega-Aerodactyl hits an insane speed tier, but lacks powerful moves to take advantage of Tough Claws. Aggron just flat out gets rid of its Rock-Type with it Mega-Evolves.

In addition, many Rock-Types' abilities (excluding those on the mons stated above) are not the best, besides maybe sturdy. I still think the reason why they gave Sturdy the buff in Gen 5 was so that most rock types could actually tank a hit and so that Graveler live on 1HP and explode.

When I think "Rock-Type", I think of something like Rhyperior. Its super physically bulky, has a high HP stat, and Solid Rock but doesn't have reliable recovery or good special defense. Gigalith also comes to mind, with the same problems only with worse stats/abilities. Probopass has excellent Defense and Special Defense, but a terrible HP Stat. Rampardos has super high Attack and...eh... Sudowoodo has mediocre Special Defense and HP along with its Defense. Regirock...honestly I know it's mediocre, but on paper it looks pretty great stat-wise. Not sure what happened with it. The Water/Rock types are faster, but not fast enought to outpace Electric-Types that destory their crappy Special Defensive stat with Thunderbolt or Volt Switch. Archeops is cursed with Defeatist. The list goes on, but the classic Rock types form a pattern of being lackluster and mediocre due to bad secondary typing, lackluster HP or Special Defense, and terrible speed.

 

[Elite Lord Sigma]

Another example that comes to mind is Froslass. Ice/Ghost has excellent offensive coverage, being resisted by only nine fully evolved Pokemon in the entire game. However, 110 base Speed is not enough to salvage Froslass' mediocre base 80 Special Attack and plethora of weaknesses to common offensive types, consigning it to a primary role as a suicide hazards/Destiny Bond lead.

In contrast, it would be remiss not to mention another CAP who had a similar concept: Mollux. On paper, Fire/Poison's 4x Ground weakness and weaknesses to Water and Rock would make Mollux seem like an ill-advised choice for a team slot. However, Mollux remains a very useful Pokemon in the CAP metagame thanks to some key characteristics. Base 131 Special Attack allows Mollux to hit hard with its STAB moves, while base 76 Speed is just enough to make a Scarf set viable. Choice Scarf allows Mollux to function as a potent revenge killer; very few Pokemon that don't resist Fire will appreciate taking a full-power Eruption. Mollux also can use Thunderbolt to deal with many Water-types that would otherwise wall it, and most of those Water-types can do little in return thanks to Dry Skin. Fire/Poison also happens to have a 4x resistance to Fairy. Combined with good 95/105 special bulk and access to Recover, Mollux's typing renders most opposing Fairies completely impotent. Of course, it would be silly to do Fire/Poison again for a concept like this, but Mollux's exploitable weaknesses are clearly far surpassed by its strengths.

 

[WhiteDMist]

Not too familiar with OU, so take this with a grain of salt, as I only really keep up with OU sporadically.

Normal-types are likely one of the most difficult types to make use of, fitting the undervalued aspect very well. Looking at the OU Viability Rankings, most Normal-types have a second typing as well, with the exception of Chansey and Blissey. Looking at most Normal-types for trends, they statwise have no set pattern: some have high defensive power, others high offensive power, and then there are those in the middle of the road. Movepool-wise, most Normal-types have colorful movepools, and usually have a range of different coverage types. The most successful Normal-types seem to have a highly specialized stat spread and movepool, namely Chansey and Blissey. Chansey is used more due to better physical bulk with Eviolite, and just barely adequate offensive presence (Blissey has slightly more power, but worse physical bulk, which is more problematic when its main focus is bulk). Even then, Chansey only just barely covers its weak spots in poor offensive capabilities and physical bulk, but it does cover them. Meanwhile, Normal-types that take the middle of the road in stats tend to get ignored for more specialized types. With no offensive advantages and a type that is actually immune to Normal-moves, there isn't too much of a reason to use Normal attacks outside of STAB; colorful movepools partially make up for this, especially if the Normal-type in question has a secondary type as well, giving the move STAB. Looking at the Viability Rankings, dual type Normals tend to have a secondary type that beats Steel-types, who resist Normal moves; otherwise, they at least have a coverage move to deal with Steel-types. Defensively, having only an immunity to the rare Ghost moves (and only the offensive ones, as Normal-typing doesn't protect against Ghost support moves) means that Normal-types rely on defensive stats and movepool to provide a decent niche.

The way I see it, Normal-typing's main flaw is the fact that the middle of the road options lack any niche that cannot be fulfilled better by Pokemon of other types, as the average offense and defense combined has no desirable attribute. The specialized Normal-types all have several flaws, and how they fare in OU depends on how well they attempt to cover these flaws. Why is this important? Because Normal-typing provides so little incentive, that people tend to look at other typings that provide an actual offensive/defensive/support niche. Generalists are not too effective because they get spread too thin, and the Normal-type is a generalist type. The concept asks "Are the unique characteristics granted by the typing enough to set the Pokemon apart, or does it face strong competition for its role from Pokémon of other types?" It's hard to see Normal-typing work without a secondary type, but the general capabilities might be a great pairing with a type that is more specialized: think of Normal-typing as filler material.

Hide

Pros:
- Few types resist Normal moves
- A variety of support moves and generally large movepools
- Few type weaknesses to pick on
- Decently high powered moves

Cons:
- Lack of advantageous offensive/defensive attributes
- Too generalized to be worthwhile
- Specialized Normals tend to have gaping weaknesses that make them liabilities
- Best ones tend to have both power and bulk, walking a fine line between "very good" and "too good"

To make the most of Normal-typing on its own is a herculean effort, as the most effective Normal-types usually have a unique niche that few/no other Pokemon can attempt (the Chansey line, Kecleon, even M-Kanga, though less relevant now). That uniqueness is their defining "role", though that is a stretch to say so.

 

[Fire Blast]

Ok, so I think one thing to be considered with 'unique' aspects of types are the moves they get. For instance, I think Normal is a very powerful but underutilized type because although Normal doesn't hit for Super Effective damage, it has powerful Neutral coverage, which makes it very similar to Dragon types. In fact, Normal types have access to powerful STAB moves as well such as Return, Double-Edge and Boomburst. I think the main thing that separates Dragons from Normals is the fact that Dragons tend to have better stats. I think that there is a lot of potential in making a Normal type pokemon that is able to abuse its STABs and Neutral coverage, especially if the coverage can be assisted with things like Fighting moves, Ground moves, and Scrappy.

This brings me to my second point, which is that another potential route for this concept is looking at types that always tend to certain stat biases. For instance, someone mention the combination of Rock and Ice, which is a very potent offensive combo, but lacks Pokemon that have the speed to compensate for Defensive weaknesses. I think that there are many types that have potential to overcome their weaknesses by finding a place on Pokemon with different stat biases than normal.

A while back, I looked at typing data for the OU metagame and I ran some analyses on the data. The results can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...rgSt_nyjEfQrUdQnafkzvnmExpc/edit#gid=29028107
The data came from August 2015, looking at the OU usage states and the OU moveset stats to determine ability and move data. Let me know if you have any questions about how to interpret the data.

Looking at the stats from here, we can start to affirm some of the ideas that already popped up and see some new patterns. For instance, many of the weak defensive typings include Ice because of its many weaknesses. However, many of the strong offensive typings also include Ice. Therefore, we can see that Ice is very weak defensively but offensively, as we probably already knew. At the bottom of the defensive typings list is also Fire/Rock, which has a high offensive rating. Currently, the only Rock/Fire pokemon is Macargo, who is slow and defensively oriented. I think Fire/Rock has the potential to be a good typing because it has good offensive coverage while also being immune to burn. Another notable typing is Fire/Electric, which is interesting because it is immune to both Burn and Paralysis, the two statuses most commonly used to cripple sweepers. Right now, Rotom-H is the only Pokemon with the typing, but it is not a sweeper that can abuse this trait.

 

[Deck Knight]

As far as identifying trends with Pokemon and where they went wrong, I can think of two Pokemon that operate on very similar lines whose typing has potential that is not well-utilized, as the Concept recommends: Camerupt and Magcargo.

Camerupt has fewer flaws. It has excellent damage output to match a great offensive type, but it doesn't have the speed to back it up and its defenses are mediocre. It's Mega actually exacerbated the problem by making it even slower. How scary would have a Mega Camerupt that had 60 Spe and could outrun large portions of the metagame with a single Rock Polish been compared to the bulkier, ridiculously powerful (ala Sheer Force) Mega that only works effectively under Trick Room? Actual typing metrics considered, Fire/Ground makes many Volt Switch users quake in their boots, doesn't have fire's worst drawback of an SR weakness, and packs key resistances to Bug, Electric (Immunity), Fairy, Fire, Poison, and Steel.

Magcargo has an amazing offensive type with a few key resistances balanced by a lot of weaknesses. Like Camerupt, it has this great offensive typing but it gets annihilated before it can even move. Its bulk is also deceptively low because of its low HP stat. But lets discuss Fire/Rock in this context - with a stat spread like Tyranitar's you could have a Pokemon with excellent special resistance in Sandstorm, that also could not be burned. If, like Heatran, you could patch up one of its most severe typing flaws with an ability before Mega-Evolving to a more offense-oriented ability, you could capitalize on Fire/Rocks huge SE hitting list - and while Power Gem kind of lacks for Special Offense, physically you can't get better than STAB Flare Blitz and Head Smash / Stone Edge. Defensively of course you have the litany of bad weaknesses (Water, Ground, Rock, Fighting) but specialized resistances to bug, fairy, fire, flying, ice, normal, and poison could definitely be worked with.

 

[Empress]

Something that just came to my mind is regular Kyurem. It fits Jas's question of a mon that fails to take advantage of its typing and it fits Imanalt's example of a Pokemon that makes use of it. Let's look at why.

Kyurem answers Jas's question because it's got the typing to be a solid offensive Pokemon but fails to do well offensively. That Ice typing would be great offensively due to its wide coverage, nailing the likes of dominant threats such as Landorus-T, Serperior, and Thundurus. Being Dragon-type also means a strong Draco Meteor that attains neutral coverage on much of the metagame. However, a variety of things hold it back offensively, such as its poor stat distribution. While Kyurem's undoubtedly a hard hitter, it still lacks the raw offensive stats and very high Base Power moves (at least for its Ice typing; lol Blizzard) that other raw wallbreakers have access to, such as Mega Gardevoir, Mega Medicham, Hoopa-U, and Kyurem-B. Also, Dragon can be redundant offensively alongside Ice at times. Not to mention that Kyurem's average Speed often means that it'll move last before it gets a chance to use its powerful attacks, and when it's Scarfed it just doesn't hit hard enough at times. Even if Kyurem didn't live in the shadow of big brother Kyurem-B, I'm not sure it would make much of a splash as either a wallbreaker or a Scarfer in OU.

Conversely, Kyurem fits Imanalt's example in a defensive role, as its more common (and viable) role is that of a defensive SubRoost user. In theory, that typing looks terrible for a defensive Pokemon just because it has the word "Ice" in it. But part of why it can still hold its own is because that Dragon typing gives Kyurem key resistances to Water, Electric, and Grass as well as a neutrality to Fire. Because of this, it can still tank hits from and switch into the likes of Mega Manectric, Mega Gyarados, and Choice-locked Pokemon locked into less-than-ideal moves, such as Keldeo using Hydro Pump and Victini using Bolt Strike. If Kyurem had just an Ice typing, it couldn't do that, obviously. That same Ice typing helps it in other ways, though, as it gives a defensive Pokemon a good STAB type to make use of, so it's not a sitting duck after all. It also removes the Ice weakness that plagues so many Dragons, which, while not nearly as important, is still a nice perk to have.

So there you have it. TL;DR version: Kyurem's typing makes it look solid offensively, but it fails to take advantage of that because a lot of things hold it back in that department, while its typing appears shitty defensively but is actually quite strong.

EDIT: Perhaps I should have been more clear. While it's true that Kyurem's bulk allows it to take the role of a wall in the first place, even the bulkiest of walls can fail to do their jobs correctly if their defensive typing doesn't cut it. In Kyurem's case, its Dragon / Ice typing helps it more than it hurts it on defense.

 

[NumberCruncher]

Rock-Types are known commonly for their sky-high physically defensive and physical attack types. They resist Normal, Flying, Poison, and Fire-Type attacks, most of which (but not all) are physical. However, they are weak to common types that are commonly Special (Water and Grass-Type), and often have a small Special Defense stat. Rock Types are also commonly paired with the Ground type, which does not help. Rock Types' weaknesses to the common Ground, Fighting, and Steel-Types that are more commonly physical attacking types, but even then their high Defense stat sometimes isn't enough to stomach those attacks. They often have no recovery and are very slow. In short, Rock types have high Defense, but do not have the HP or Special Defense to compensate for it, especially without recovery outside of Rest or Leftovers, and are extremely slow. Rock types are also paired with terrible types as well.

Rock offensively is a fantastic type and complements well with Earthquake/Earth Power (which many have access to), forming EdgeQuake coverage. They also get Rock Polish, but most rock types are too slow even after the RP boost.

Looking at OU, there are two Rock types (Diancie and Tyranitar); looking at BL, there is one (Terrakion); looking at UU (bear with me here), there are two (Aerodactyl and Aggron). What do all of these have in common? Each of them patch up the holes that the other Rock types can't. Diancie has Fairy-Type coverage and high speed (once it mega-evolves). Tyranitar has Sand Stream which patches up his Special Defense and has the odd 61 speed stat for a scarf set if needed. Terrakion has excellent 108 speed and high power moves to boot. Mega-Aerodactyl hits an insane speed tier, but lacks powerful moves to take advantage of Tough Claws. Aggron just flat out gets rid of its Rock-Type with it Mega-Evolves.

In addition, many Rock-Types' abilities (excluding those on the mons stated above) are not the best, besides maybe sturdy. I still think the reason why they gave Sturdy the buff in Gen 5 was so that most rock types could actually tank a hit and so that Graveler live on 1HP and explode.

When I think "Rock-Type", I think of something like Rhyperior. Its super physically bulky, has a high HP stat, and Solid Rock but doesn't have reliable recovery or good special defense. Gigalith also comes to mind, with the same problems only with worse stats/abilities. Probopass has excellent Defense and Special Defense, but a terrible HP Stat. Rampardos has super high Attack and...eh... Sudowoodo has mediocre Special Defense and HP along with its Defense. Regirock...honestly I know it's mediocre, but on paper it looks pretty great stat-wise. Not sure what happened with it. The Water/Rock types are faster, but not fast enought to outpace Electric-Types that destory their crappy Special Defensive stat with Thunderbolt or Volt Switch. Archeops is cursed with Defeatist. The list goes on, but the classic Rock types form a pattern of being lackluster and mediocre due to bad secondary typing, lackluster HP or Special Defense, and terrible speed.

I'd actually argue that it would be interesting to look at one of the Rock-type you didn't look at, Cradily. On paper, Cradily seems to have it made. It's only weaknesses are Ice, Fighting, Bug, and Steel, and it's Rock STAB is super effective against two of those types. The only non-Steel Pokemon that resist its STAB are Toxicroak and Breloom, neither of which has very remarkable defensive stats. It has Earthquake to get rid of the surprisingly short list of Steel types that actually resist both Rock and Grass, as well as Croak. Then you move over to his stats and see exactly where everything went wrong. It's Speed is awful. It's offense is awful. It's defense is passable, but hardly breath-taking. And that's not saying anything about Cradily's complete lack of a movepool. A Rock/Grass pokemon could be a very convincing stallbreaker or even sweeper.

 

[Ignus]

hehe this is my favorite topic ever

When talking about typing, it becomes much, much easier to understand what makes a type "good" or "bad" by separating them into offensive and defensive typings. Here's a list of things that I, personally, think make up a solid offensive or defensive type.

A dual or single type is good offensively when:

• It's STAB(s) hit a large portion of the Metagame for super effective or neutral damage.
• The STAB(s) have access to moves with high "turn efficiency*"
• Immunities or 4x Resists that allow for switch-ins despite frailness

*If you don't know what I mean by turn efficiency, think of it this way: If dealing 50% of my opponent's HP or switching both have a turn efficiency of 1, using U-turn and dealing 50% of the opponents HP would be an efficiency of 2.

A dual or single type is good defensively when:

• The number of weaknesses the typing has are low or are uncommon attacking types (regardless of if they're 4x or 2x. Damage is damage.)
• The number of resistances and immunities are high or the typing resists common attacking types.
• The resistances and immunities are "paired" well. For example, resisting both ice and water (which like, everything uses) is more valuable then resisting ice and steel (which I'm not even sure exists?)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From criteria like this, we can start moving to the next stage. If a type is potentially strong offensively but is in practice never seen, the why becomes obvious. In this situation, we have a defensively built Pokemon with a offensively polarized typing. My favorite example of this is unsurprisingly the Rock/Ground combination; Who have a fully evolved average base speed of around 50, and a whopping 6 weaknesses that come from a large variety of Pokemon. With an electric immunity, solid coverage, and high efficiency moves, the combination is an extremely straightforward example of an offensive type with woefully useless users.

Here's some other examples of offensively polarized types, regardless of capable users:
Ghost / Poison
Dark / Ice
Fire / Rock
Fire / Fighting

On the other end of the spectrum, we can run in to examples of defensively solid types that lack a true users, such as Poison/Dark. Boasting only a single weakness and a typing spread that allows it to potentially single-handedly wall various Psychic types in the tier. Despite this, Poison/Dark actually has below average coverage and has to heavily rely on Knock Off for an efficient attacking move. Despite it being a great defensive type, its only users are Skunktank and Drapion, both of whom set new standards of mediocrity and lack the movepool to properly support a defensive specialization.

Other examples of defensive polarization:
Steel / Psychic (Metagross and Jirachi get by offensively through a combination of surprising utility sheer movepool size)
Steel / Dragon (This would be more obvious if the only example didn't have 120 Att / 150 SpA)
Steel / Flying (sensing a trend here)
Water / Poison
Ghost / Dark (Actually has below average dual STAB coverage, but M-Sableye seems to do whatever it wants regardless)
Normal / -


All I have for now. Yell if you disagree or think of a better way to classify typing then the simple Offensive/Defensive.

 

[escarlata]

Ok i might talk about the rest of your post later, but I just want to address this in terms of examples we should be looking at for this cap. And rather than address it with counter examples like you asked for, I'm more interested in what 'mons basically do what we want this mon to end up looking like, trying to look for any patterns. The first mon that really jumps out to me is Celebi, as grass/psychic has an enormous number of major flaws, primarily being questionable offensively and weak to a huge number of types defensively, including important things like u-turn and pursuit weakness. On paper that typing looks absolutely terrible. But celebi keeps lurking around (although it has faded some from its past strength) being some sort of utility counter, taking advantage of the fact it has good resistances to go along with its huge number of weaknesses to check pokemon like keldeo relatively effectively. On the back of this ability to switch into lots of things, celebi has kept a variety of things it can do, allowing for it to be more difficult to exploit and easier to be able to fit into a specific team as "counter to x dangerous 'mons that provides y for the team."

I'd be curious to see if anyone else can come up with good examples of this as well to try to determine patterns.

I would like to make a contrast in comparison to this. Whimsicott's typing is pretty much everything that Celebi wished to be, having very similar key resistances, and Fairy type granting very crucial resistances to U turn and Knock Off which Celebi would love to have had. What made Celebi so much better than Whimsicott is brutally simple, movepool and stat spread. Celebi has crucial moves like Recover for longevity, and isn't as passive as Whimsicott upon switching into a key resist due to the fact that it can easily BP a boost, and actually has a semidecent offensive stat to take advantage of.

 

[Cretacerus]

Here are a few short thoughts, I'll try to add more over time:


Normal type:

• It has reliable and powerful STAB options both physically (Return) and specially (Boomburst), which means it has the potential of a very consistent damage output against most of the metagame.
• STAB ExtremeSpeed is a very powerful tool which prevents them from being easily revenge killed by opposing priority.
• However, since most teams are naturally prepared for Flying type attacks, they will often inherently have switch ins to Normal type attacks as well.
• Many of those Normal type resists have weaknesses that can easily be exploited with the appropriate coverage move.
• Due to lack of resistances and susceptibility to hazards, Normal types will have a hard time finding switch in opportunities.
• At the same time, they are difficult to force out once on the battle field, due to their sole weakness to fighting.

Especially for the last two reasons, I can see Normal-types as powerful set-up sweepers with the potential to go both physically and specially offensive, and high powered STAB moves which deter even opposing priority users.


Rock type:

• Possesses key resistances to Flying and Fire type attacks.
• However, their inclination to physical offense makes them highly susceptible to Burn status, and takes away much of their potential as premier Fire type switch-ins.
• Their STAB attacks pair extremely well with other powerful attacking types, such as Ground (Earthquake) and Fighting (Close Combat).
• On the other hand, they can't really afford to go defensive due to their exploitable weaknesses to common attacking types (especially Ground, Fighting, Water).
• At the same time, weaknesses to common priority moves in OU (Bullet Punch, Aqua Jet, Mach Punch) make them rather sub-par as set-up sweepers as well.

Rock types would probably have to go an offensive route, and take advantage of their useful resistances to find switch-in opportunities. A specially offensive Rock-type could easily switch in against threatening Fire-types and utilize its amazing offensive coverage despite potential burns. However, weaknesses to common priority moves means that Rock-types often won't be able to go for a clean sweep, forcing them to act more as offensive pivots opposed to set-up sweepers.
Ironically, that kind of role sounds very much like what Stratagem already did, which represents the exact opposite of what you would expect from a traditional Rock type.


Ice type:

• Hits a large amount of the metagame super efectively with its STAB attacks, with Freeze Dry being the move with the by far highest SE coverage yet.
• Ice has amazing synergy with many other strong attacking types, such as Ground, Fighting and Fire.
• The ability Glaciate potentially allows them to fully take advantage of the wide range of useful Normal attacks.
• Has a weather solely dedicated to their type, providing them with a reliable and powerful STAB attack and useful chip damage.
• Lack of resistances, as well as vulnerability to all kinds of entry hazards strongly limits their switch-in opportunities, and prevents them from filling any defensive niche.
• Their large amount of weaknesses to common attacking types including priority means that they are easily forced out, and often can't pull of a clean sweep.

Ice-types definitely require a lot of team support to function effectively, but have the potential to deal some major damage to opposing the cores especially if given the right coverage options. Freeze Dry is definitely a unique move that should be taken advantage of here, since its low base power only really makes it effective in the hands of an Ice-type. While Hail Warning and Glaciate are both very specific and often end up overly defining their wielders, they are still tools that work best on Ice-types and can therefore be used to distinguish them from others.


It should be noted that adding a secondary type can drastically change the amount of weaknesses and resistances a typing has, along with it's susceptibility to entry hazards. That means that a dual typing might excel at roles completely different than the types it's made up from.

 

[LightningLord2]

I want to throw in my two cents about two types that are generally subpar:

Ice is actually really great type to attack with, hitting the common Ground- and Flying-Types super-effectively. It is also strong against Dragon and remains the primary coverage option against them due to most Dragons being x4 weak to ice. It's a little gimped on the physical side, though, as the best STAB options are either inaccurate (Icicle Crash), weak (Ice Shard) or require getting hit (Avalanche). However, being Ice-Type is a massive liability - it's weak to Fire, Fighting, Rock and Steel, with the first two being common coverage options to hit Steel-Types with (and Fire as a brutal spammable offense type too) and Rock is primarily important due to Stealth Rock. There aren't that many Steel-Type attackers, but the ones that exist are very popular and dominant. The defensive weakness is so bad that it pushes a ridiculous 700 BST monster near UU. It's only defensive benefits are resisting itself, being immune to hail damage and freezes.

The only really successful Ice-Type (as in, the Ice Type benefits it rather than holding it back) I see is Mega Abomasnow - this is simply the strategy of spamming Blizzard in hail, though. Weavile can also throw powerful Ice Shards, but I'm not convinced of it being great at its job due to having an Ice-Type. Kyurem-Black is also OU, but the Ice Type is holding it back more than it does good.

Poison is relatively poor not only in competetive play, but also in Pokémon in general - not only do most Poison-Types have rubbish stats, there's not a single Poison-Type legendary in all six generations (Arceus is naturally Normal, it doesn't count). However, the type itself has good potential - For one, there's powerful STAB options in Gunk Shot and Sludge Wave, as well as the rather situational Belch. It hits Grass and Fairy super effectively and is resisted by Ground, Rock, Ghost and itself, being nullfied by Steel. Weak SE coverage but okay neutral coverage. Defensively, it resists Fairy, Fighting, itself and Grass, being weak to only two types (Ground and Psychic). So there's a lot of defensive potential right there. They also can't be poisoned (but still, it's the same with Steel-Types) and eat Toxic Spikes if they land on them.

Only two Poison-Types exist in OU - Gengar doesn't really need the type to be successful despite appreciating the extra targets from STAB Sludge Wave and Mega Venusaur also only gets a meh secondary STAB out of it. So there's a lot to get out of the typing, but its potential is mostly unused.

As an afterword, I feel this concept has been done before not only by Stratagem, but also Mollux.

 

[Imanalt]

So there you have it. TL;DR version: Kyurem's typing makes it look solid offensively, but it fails to take advantage of that because a lot of things hold it back in that department, while its typing appears shitty defensively but is actually quite strong.

Strongly disagree. Kyurem is not good defensively because of its type. Its good defensively because of ridiculously high defensive stats. Its type doesn't give it a niche to carve out, its stats let it wall everything that can't specifically beat it.

-snip-.

I think there's some interesting things to be gained here, but I have a few questions/concerns. First, which weight for stats did you use? The metagame looks pretty different at different strata of the ladder, and so this can make a huge impact (for example it seems torn-t is not being counted here given the 1 weakness for fighting psychic that I'm assuming is talonflame, but torn-t is rightfully a+ rank in ou). Second, your defensive methodology has a pretty major flaw in that adding up weaknesses and resists biases you towards pokemon with few weaknesses, and ignores resists. With your method, a pokemon with no weaknesses and no resists would get the same score as a pokemon with one weakness and two resists (assuming all have equal usage). This is not the best way to be going about it, and I'm curious what the results would be if you multiplied rather than adding the components together so as to weight weaknesses and resists equally. There's also a factor that resisting some but not all of a pokemon's moves can be useful, would it be possible to do something like give a 0.75 multiplier for a typing that resists both stabs of a pokemon but is neutral to its coverage?

I'll post after my exam later today some more direct thoughts on what people have been saying about types, because I feel like a lot of it has been very questionable at best, but I don't have time to flesh out those thoughts now.

 

[noobiess]

I'm pro of doing something with an ice pokemon.

Offensive, ice is a great type. Based on the pokémon showdown rankings 6 of the 20 most used OU pokémon are weak to ice; 9 if you include freeze-dry. No other type does better then 9/20. I looked some futher and saw that 45 pokémon of the top 100 OU pokémon are weak to freeze-dry. That is almost the half, which is immens!
So why are there hardly any offensive ice pokemon in the OU metagame?
I think this is because their isn't a single ice pokémon that has a complementary type/ability that makes possible to overcome a lot of obvious limitations (stealth rock/bullet punch/mach punch/close combat/...).
The only pokémon that comes to mind is froslass, with the immunity against fight moves. But this pokémon still misses power and a good movepool to be viable in OU.
I think it is possible to make a offensive ice pokemon that is viable in OU.

 

[Minnakht]

One Pokemon that exists is Alakazam with its pure Psychic type.
As a Psychic type, Alakazam resists Psychic moves and Fighting moves, while being weak to Dark, Ghost and Bug moves. As itself, Alakazam's stats are excellent Special Attack and a nice 120 Speed, hampered by really low HP and Defense. Due to the type's dearth of resistances, Alakazam has trouble switching in, and is usually used to revenge kill things with a Focus Sash, Magic Guard keeping it from breaking on entry hazards. The Psychic type has two common moves - Psyshock and Psychic. Psyshock has the special effect of hitting normal Defense despite being keyed off the Special Attack stat, while Psychic behaves normally. The moves have 80 and 90 BP respectively, which is good but not amazing, and probably doesn't help Alakazam score KOs.
This, I guess, is my argument for Psychic being a bad typing for Alakazam. I don't know what would be a better one, though.

With only three types Psychic does not hit neutrally or better in itself, Steel and Dark (an immunity), there's plenty of things which can be hit effectively. Similarly, the type has three weaknesses, leading to most hits being taken neutrally.

As a result, a Pokemon that's just a large brick of good stats all around would probably do quite well with the typing, dealing strong neutral hits and taking neutral hits well, but that's true for literally any type and thus rather inane.

 

[WhiteDMist]

I'm pro of doing something with an ice pokemon.

Offensive, ice is a great type. Based on the pokémon showdown rankings 6 of the 20 most used OU pokémon are weak to ice; 9 if you include freeze-dry. No other type does better then 9/20. I looked some futher and saw that 45 pokémon of the top 100 OU pokémon are weak to freeze-dry. That is almost the half, which is immens!
So why are there hardly any offensive ice pokemon in the OU metagame?
I think this is because their isn't a single ice pokémon that has a complementary type/ability that makes possible to overcome a lot of obvious limitations (stealth rock/bullet punch/mach punch/close combat/...).
The only pokémon that comes to mind is froslass, with the immunity against fight moves. But this pokémon still misses power and a good movepool to be viable in OU.
I think it is possible to make a offensive ice pokemon that is viable in OU.

What about Weavile? Kyurem-B?

Another typing that interests me is Grass/Ice, of which the Abomasnow family are the only representatives of. Defensively, Grass-typing has most of the burden, though the Ice-typing does come in handy in neutralizing Grass's Ice weakness; excellent resistances to Water and Electric moves gives such a typing a defensive niche due to such types relying on Ice coverage (Ground and Grass are nice and all, but most STAB users have coverage for Grass-types). Immunity to spore moves, inability to be frozen, and several recovery moves are neat perks. Offensively, Grass/Ice threatens 6 different types, though dual-types alter such details to the point where it's barely worth a mention (it does hit 10 types neutrally). Of more note would be the fact that both types have decent moves on both sides of the offensive spectrum, meaning special variants can mitigate the threat of burn somewhat; Ice priority is a good niche as well, for some Speed control. Support-wise, Grass has many useful support moves, and few other types commonly receive these moves (Spore, Leech Seed, Aromatherapy, Cotton Guard, Stun Spore); Ice has Haze, though Poison and Water types commonly receive these moves, neutralizing the exclusiveness of the move.

Faults include a large amount of weaknesses (7), with a 4x weakness to Fire. Steel-types are difficult to break without Ground or Fire coverage. Such a typing competes with Ferrothorn and Mega-Venusaur, who also boast Water and Electric resistances while having excellent supporting capabilities. To top it all off, a Stealth Rock weakness and vulnerability to all entry hazards weakens any defensive niche heavily.

"What are examples of Pokemon with "bad" typings that really fail to take advantage of the typings benefits?" (Mega-)Abomasnow is the only line that boasts this typing. Before Mega Evolving, Abomasnow has just average offensive power, and below average Speed and bulk. Once it megas, it gains more bulk and offense, at the cost of Speed and items. It doesn't make the most of its defensive typing due to lack of recovery, but its does have good offensive presence with its STABs and coverage. The poor base 30 Speed does it no favors, so Mega-Abomasnow works as a tank (it requires some hazard control to make the most of it). Tanking-wise, being slower than many Steel and Rock types is terrible, while Flying, Fire, and Fighting move are pretty common I believe; it normally has to take an attack first, or force something out. M-Abomasnow doesn't have a lot of support moves, though Leech Seed can be notable. It's Snow Warning ability doesn't make building a team around it very easy, which is also a problem. Better offensive Grass and Ice types exist, and better defensive Grass-types exist, and they all give it too much competition.

"What kinds of roles are these Pokemon fitting in, versus what kinds of roles mesh best with the advantages of their types?" As noted, tank roles are what this typing is confined to. Giga Drain is moderate recovery at best, Leech Seed is limited support, and its too slow to do more than wallbreak.

"Is there a frequent trend in these kind of Pokemon (such as simply having bad stats, or having good offensive type on a defensive mon), or does it seem that the individual cases are frequently different?" Hard to have a trend with just one evolutionary line, but it seems a Grass/Ice typing just has too many weaknesses and Mega-Abomasnow has its own faults outside of the typing (low Speed, average support moves, limited ability) that makes it difficult to fit on a team. Better options exist as well for any role it tries for (wallbreaker and support).