The Best (And Worst) Types in Pokémon History

[bdt2002]

I've always had this weird fascination with balance changes and matchup disparity in video games, and something I've been thinking about a lot lately is the different Types that Pokémon and their moves have. Not counting the mysterious new Tera "Type" they're adding in the Scarlet & Violet DLC at some point, we've currently got 18 of these bad boys lined up as of the time I'm writing this thread. Discussions about which ones are the best and the worst are nothing new by this point, but I want to spice things up a bit. When I say "History" in the title of this thread, the first thing that comes to mind is probably the different generations of these games, and you'd be... half right. While I'm still interested in the things most people already know, like how Psychic-Types were at the top of the type matchup chart in Gen 1 for example, I want to bring attention to how we can stretch the word "History" to mean a couple different things, including but not limited to:

• Different tiering policies in the various generations of competitive play
• Different metagames as they've developed between the generations
• The overall and/or average viability of all Pokémon available of a specific Type
• Factors for in-game playthroughs that might help certain Types thrive
• Favorable type matchups across the generations in different regions

I'll start off this discussion with a particular favorite of mine. I want to use this as an example so we can better understand the kind of thing I'm going for with this thread, and how the things that make a good Type are vastly different in single player and multiplayer respectively. Happy posting, everyone, and with that being said, my example... Flying-Types are kind of freaking broken in Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon. Like, dangerously broken.



In the original Sun & Moon, Flying-Types were pretty average across the board both in terms of matchup spread against major story battles and the list of available Pokémon. I wouldn't blame someone for thinking that Flying-Types got a little bit worse overall in the Ultra games on account of the Fighting-Type Elite Four member being replaced with a Steel-Type user, but this could not be further from the truth for two reasons. First, the Pokémon themselves. One of only two naturally dual-typed first-stage Starter Pokémon in history returns with Rowlet, and the rest of Melemele Island has no shortage of incredible Flying-Type options such as Pikipek, Zubat, Noibat (provided there's a better Noibat in a trade on Akala), Wingull (this is on top of the Drizzle buff btw), Oricorio, Delibird for the purpose of earlygame, and Spearow just to name the obvious ones. But none of those aside from maybe Oricorio even come close to the absolute monster that Hawlucha is in this game, easily earning its honor as one of the best in-game Pokémon in the entire series. The other islands give you access to even more options I haven't even mentioned yet, as well as some new winning matchups against various bosses like Totem Araquanid and Totem Ribombee.

The biggest reason for their dominance in this game largely comes down to the other of the two reasons I mentioned that often goes ignored. The Flyinium Z-Crystal was locked behind a Machamp Shove obstacle in the original Sun & Moon games, meaning that the player wouldn't have access to this until much later in the game. Here in the Ultra games, however, this is no longer a thing, similar to that one Strength boulder in Wayward Cave over in Sinnoh. Your Flying-Types not only immediately have access to this as soon as you reach Ten Carat Hill now, which is a massive buff in its own right, but to make things even crazier they moved TM19 Roost all the way from the Malie City Poké Mart in the original Sun & Moon games to Route 3 in the Ultra games. So not only do you have access to incredible secondary Type diversity to help leverage bad matchups, not only do you have access to STAB moves eclipsing 100 Base Power before you reach Akala Island, not only do you have arguably the best Pokémon in the game as well as a natural Flying-Type starter option... but you even get free recovery too without having to go very far to look for it. Have I convinced you yet how stupid these guys are?

 

[QuentinQuonce]

I have a similar line of thought when it comes to unused or under-utilised type combinations that would break the game had they existed sooner (or in another form). A lot of the examples I can bring to mind involve the Dragon-type, so I'll look at three particular combinations.

Dragon/Fighting

Starting with this one because it's the most stark example to me of something that could have been utterly broken at one point. I've always been half-convinced we could possibly have seen a Dragon/Fighting Pokemon earlier than we eventually got one, had it not been for the fact that both types became so dominant in the DS years.

Gen IV and V both paired a lot of types with Dragon for the first time - Steel, Dark, Electric, Fire, Ice, Ghost. When you look at all the combinations that existed already (Flying, Water, Psychic, Ground), on paper a Dragon/Fighting Pokemon wouldn't have been too unthinkable. But practically speaking it could have been a nightmare. Fighting was an extraordinarily good type in Gen IV and in Gen V - the latter in particular - and Dragon of course has always been strong. Imagine adding a powerful Dragon/Fighting Pokemon to Gen V's competitive scene. It picks up weaknesses to Psychic and Flying in exchange for no longer being afraid of Ice-types, but it would wreck a lot of the Steel-types who normally wall Dragons and have ways to hit Ghosts a lot of fellow Fighting-types don't.

That said, I feel like Kommo-o (specifically) would need a stat shakeup to be truly overwhelming in Gen V: its offensive stats are a little below the standard of most of Gen V's OU and it's too slow to compete with a lot of them. But a hypothetical Unovan Kommo-o with its Attack/Defence and Special Attack/Speed swapped around would potentially be devastatingly good.

Dragon/Fire

Off that, let's consider Dragon/Fire. It is and always has been an extremely potent combination thanks to Fire covering Dragon's weakness to Ice and difficulty combating Steel-types, as well as having a useful resistance to Fairy. So how do you hobble such a good typing to ensure it's not massively broken? Well, you can:

• make the first Dragon/Fire Pokemon a legendary - a cover mascot, in fact. That simultaneously makes it a Pokemon everyone will see/use, but also one that can't dominate the game entirely since it can't be used in battle facilities and won't be able to be used in numerous competition formats.
• make the second Dragon/Fire Pokemon a Mega Evolution - a popular and powerful Pokemon, but a temporary form that comes with a severe resource penalty, thus ensuring it's not gamebreaking
• make the third Dragon/Fire Pokemon... Turtonator. I don't think this one really needs explaining.

Okay so that's flippant and somewhat oversimplified, but seriously. Imagine a pseudo-legendary with a Dragon/Fire typing. It'd likely be incredibly overpowered - so it's not surprising that the only non-legendary Pokemon species to permanently have the typing is so underwhelming.

Dragon/Poison

So Gen VI introduces Fairy as an explicit measure to limit Dragon power. Fittingly, it's only weak to Steel and Poison - which made it ironic that we got a Dragon/Poison Pokemon in the same generation we got Fairies.

Or maybe it's not that ironic, since Dragalge was never going to be a serious threat to most Fairy-types. It's painfully slow and has poor HP and unimpressive offenses; I like it a lot, but honestly it makes Goodra look decent.

The only other Dragon/Poison we ever got? Eternatus. Which, yeah, absolutely can smack Fairies around. But it's an Uber so good luck with that.

 

[RocketSurgery]

Dragon/Poison

So Gen VI introduces Fairy as an explicit measure to limit Dragon power. Fittingly, it's only weak to Steel and Poison - which made it ironic that we got a Dragon/Poison Pokemon in the same generation we got Fairies.

Or maybe it's not that ironic, since Dragalge was never going to be a serious threat to most Fairy-types. It's painfully slow and has poor HP and unimpressive offenses; I like it a lot, but honestly it makes Goodra look decent.

The only other Dragon/Poison we ever got? Eternatus. Which, yeah, absolutely can smack Fairies around. But it's an Uber so good luck with that.

Poor forgettable Naganadel :(

(You can't get it till late in USUM, so the overall point still stands)

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Poor forgettable Naganadel :(

View attachment 546352

(You can't get it till late in USUM, so the overall point still stands)

So I legit always forget that Naganadel is part Poison. Shame on me.

But yeah, that one's the exception to my point I guess, it's a pretty decent Fairy-killer.

 

[bdt2002]

Dragon/Fire

Off that, let's consider Dragon/Fire. It is and always has been an extremely potent combination thanks to Fire covering Dragon's weakness to Ice and difficulty combating Steel-types, as well as having a useful resistance to Fairy. So how do you hobble such a good typing to ensure it's not massively broken? Well, you can:

• make the first Dragon/Fire Pokemon a legendary - a cover mascot, in fact. That simultaneously makes it a Pokemon everyone will see/use, but also one that can't dominate the game entirely since it can't be used in battle facilities and won't be able to be used in numerous competition formats.
• make the second Dragon/Fire Pokemon a Mega Evolution - a popular and powerful Pokemon, but a temporary form that comes with a severe resource penalty, thus ensuring it's not gamebreaking
• make the third Dragon/Fire Pokemon... Turtonator. I don't think this one really needs explaining.

Okay so that's flippant and somewhat oversimplified, but seriously. Imagine a pseudo-legendary with a Dragon/Fire typing. It'd likely be incredibly overpowered - so it's not surprising that the only non-legendary Pokemon species to permanently have the typing is so underwhelming.

Dragon/Fire actually has quite a unique distinction as a combination of types that not a lot of combinations throughout history have been able to claim. Prior to the Generation 6 type chart changes, Dragon and Fire was (from what I know) one of only two dual-typed combinations in the entire series that was able to net unresisted coverage against every Pokémon typing in the game. The amount of type combinations that can even compete for this designation is already smaller than you'd expect on account of having to account for Shedinja's Wonder Guard ability, but sure enough, not a single one of the 272 type combinations that could have existed before the introduction of the Fairy-Type were able to resist Dragon and Fire-Type attacks at the same time. Your best bet was to use a Flash Fire Heatran, who packed a Dragon resistance and a de facto Fire immunity simultaneously, but as many Reshiram fans have learned over the years, that's nothing an Earth Power or Focus Blast to the face can't fix for you. Nowadays, however, there's Water/Fairy, Rock/Fairy, and Dragon/Fairy that can all stave off this STAB combination with relative ease, so formats that banned restricted Legendaries never had to deal with the idea of an unrestricted Dragon/Fire Pokémon. Even if Reshiram ever fell to OU in Gen 5, Heatran's still there too, so even that would have been taken care of. Still doesn't mean Reshiram should be unbanned, but it's food for thought.

Unfortunately, any of the positive anti-meta tactics I can list for pre-Gen 6 Dragon/Fire don't apply to the other, far more dangerous of the two dual-typed combinations. Since a certain somebody's profile picture was kind enough to remind me of this, let's talk about the actual best offensive type combination in the game now- Fighting & Ghost.



That's it. Those are the only two Pokémon that have been made for this typing, and they've both been absolutely busted. More importantly, these two being of completely different playstyles proves that the typing has flexibility. Oh, what's that? You're going to make an offensive type combination the likes of which we've never seen but you're going to balance it out by this Pokémon not being very bulky? How about we just throw that idea out the window and make a Pokémon with the same typing who can punish you for even attacking it in the first place? Pre-Gen 6 Dragon and Fire hitting five types for super-effective damage and no resists? How about seven types instead of five, still no resists, two defensive immunities, and an immunity to being trapped, and you don't need to rely on Abilities to succeed?

Oh, but what about Hisuian Zoroark, you ask? Well... Scrappy. That's literally it, that's all I have to say.

 

[khlaylav]

Gyarados and Charizard have Flying typings so as not to unbalance the type chart in Gen 1 by being Fire/Dragon and Water/Dragon, so that's a starting point. Even if the only Dragon move is Dragon Rage, the defensive benefits for each would've been incredible, especially for Gyarados; imagine what was already dangerously strong with no real weakness. Fire/Dragon also puts the kibosh on a Water weakness and would've resisted Electric, though Rock and Ground moves are still a problem.

In terms of in-game, Grass types generally get shafted, but Gen 2 is just nasty. Flying/Bug to start the gyms off then no real advantage until arguably the Fighting gym's Poliwrath, a "nice" Steel, Ice and Dragon gyms to finish things off, then Poison and Dragon at the Elite Four for funsies. Ghost is wildly hostile too since everything has a Poison type for that extra kick to the nuts. Combine that with underwhelming newbies (Meganium is pound for pound probably the worst starter in the series, Sunflora and Jumpluff are just depressing and Bellossom is bad too) and things just aren't fun.

 

[Eeveeto]

In terms of in-game, Grass types generally get shafted, but Gen 2 is just nasty. Flying/Bug to start the gyms off then no real advantage until arguably the Fighting gym's Poliwrath, a "nice" Steel, Ice and Dragon gyms to finish things off, then Poison and Dragon at the Elite Four for funsies. Ghost is wildly hostile too since everything has a Poison type for that extra kick to the nuts. Combine that with underwhelming newbies (Meganium is pound for pound probably the worst starter in the series, Sunflora and Jumpluff are just depressing and Bellossom is bad too) and things just aren't fun.

Not entirely true. Bayleef/Meganium has the best match-up out of the starters vs Miltank and Kingdra, both very dangerous threats to most teams. Ice Gym meanwhile isn,t as dangerous for Grass types as it could have been, since all Pryce Mons are actually weak to Grass and 2 of them don,t hit hard from special side either. Steelix isn,t an automatic L for Meganium either and Bruno can be won too.

Main problem is being very hard to get Sun and Leaf stones, so the rest of Grass types will be unevolved most of the time. Serperior in Unova actually has it worse, having only Ground Gym and maybe Electric Gyms to excel against (Watchog prevents almost any NFE from being good).

 

[pika pal]

Dragon/Fire actually has quite a unique distinction as a combination of types that not a lot of combinations throughout history have been able to claim. Prior to the Generation 6 type chart changes, Dragon and Fire was (from what I know) one of only two dual-typed combinations in the entire series that was able to net unresisted coverage against every Pokémon typing in the game. The amount of type combinations that can even compete for this designation is already smaller than you'd expect on account of having to account for Shedinja's Wonder Guard ability, but sure enough, not a single one of the 272 type combinations that could have existed before the introduction of the Fairy-Type were able to resist Dragon and Fire-Type attacks at the same time. Your best bet was to use a Flash Fire Heatran, who packed a Dragon resistance and a de facto Fire immunity simultaneously, but as many Reshiram fans have learned over the years, that's nothing an Earth Power or Focus Blast to the face can't fix for you. Nowadays, however, there's Water/Fairy, Rock/Fairy, and Dragon/Fairy that can all stave off this STAB combination with relative ease, so formats that banned restricted Legendaries never had to deal with the idea of an unrestricted Dragon/Fire Pokémon. Even if Reshiram ever fell to OU in Gen 5, Heatran's still there too, so even that would have been taken care of. Still doesn't mean Reshiram should be unbanned, but it's food for thought.

It's funny to me you mention Reshiram fans on the Heatran matter because Reshiram has the most immediate way for that combo to get through Heatran: Mold Breaker or a Clone to ignore Flash Fire for now neutral damage.


For an answer of my own, it's only appropriate to mention the classic Dragon/Ground combination, which admittedly doesn't have too many members, but look how many of them were massive presences in at least one generation of the Game. The obvious is the unresisted coverage barring Skarmory and Levitating Steel types, but there's also synergy between the typings and their environments if not overall power.

• Flygon is a mid-game available Pokemon in Gen 3, with at least decent stats, a useful ability, and compatibility with a lot of useful moves (the coveted Rockquake Combo for example). The typing even does a lot for it in Gen 3 and 4 thanks to Levitate for Spikes and a resistance to Stealth Rock, coupled with Immunity to Sandstorm damage that defined Gen 3's defensive game. Power creep took its toll on the not min-maxed stats but a major part of that was better Pokemon in one or both of its types so it's hard to argue that aspect being a problem by comparison
• Garchomp speaks for itself, 1-2 time Uber with a stat spread that took until Gen 9 to "catch up" with it, and allowing it to capitalize on the typings having two of the strongest "easy to use" STAB options for Physical attackers in the game. Literally all it's missing is Dragon Dance, which we can see from Scale Shot would do numbers with it. In a way I think Garchomp was the biggest factor in the prevalence of "DragMag" teams, specifically because it could so easily blow through most Steels already with STAB EQ and mixed from Fire Blast for Ferrothorn (or SD EQ), meaning the main Steel to eliminate would be Skarmory and making it a much easier push for specific answers like Magnezone rather than just general "account for Steel" building
• Zygarde didn't have a very remarkable Gen 6 but Gen 7 speaks for itself when they gave it its signature moves. Thousand Arrows is obviously the star by ignoring Ground Immunities, but the typing also gives Zygarde and its bulk a bevy set-up chances to capitalize on, and Thousand Arrows removing immunities shows how hard it is to just stomach neutral hits of this caliber even from a mon with only okay Attack. Managing to earn itself a ban in a Gen infamous for 4 Fairies running the game has to speak for something.

 

[Ernesto]

I think I might be going a bit off-topic but one less talked about type combination that came to mind is Poison/Ground. It's always been a pretty good and unique defensively due to resisting Toxic and Thunder Wave, but offensively it was at its highest in Gen II when it was only resisted by the Zubat line, Aerodactyl, Gligar and Skarmory (only two of those actually being used by ingame bosses). I remember at one point I was looking back at Nidoqueen and Nidoking and thinking how much better they could've been if they learned Sludge Bomb. Sadly they didn't get it so only Arbok, Quagsire, and Dugtrio could feasibly use it + Earthquake.
In Gen III they got it but only in postgame in FRLG, so they had to wait until the Gen II remakes to learn it at a reasonable point. And well, between abilities being introduced meaning a bunch of Levitating mons resisted it and the physical/special split it was a less strong offensive combination, often being dropped in competitive even when they received Sheer Force as a hidden ability in BW. Thankfully the introduction of Fairies it suddenly got another reason to exist and in the past gens they very rarely drop the Poison STAB. Still tho, the Nidos have always been both viable ingame every time they've appeared—which is not often, being relegated to postgame in Gen V, Horde encounters in XY, nonexistant in SM and USUM and only available in DLC in SS) and competitive where they've only been "bad" in the first gen.
And finally, SV gave us a new Poison/Ground In Clodsire and even tho it's not amazing offensively we can say that they haven't missed with that type combination.

On another note, I find it pretty funny that when Breloom was introduced it was the first Grass/Fighting, the only combination in existance to this day that resists all of Fire's weaknesses, which would mean it'd be an excellent partner for the Fire starter, right? Oh right, it also became part Fighting so they were both weak to Psychic and Flying. Still tho, Shroomish wasn't a terrible choice for a Grass-type because it was the strongest against the rival fight in route 110 and even after evolving it was better than Oddish which also shared those weaknesses but didn't resist Ground. Surprisingly Breloom didn't get many chances to shine outside of the remakes, being postgame in Gens IV and V, available in the Friend Safari in XY and unobtainable in Gens VII and VIII outside of BDSP. It was made available once again in SV where I'm guessing it's a pretty good partner for Fuecoco, especially the Tera Raid ones.
There have been other Grass/Fighting mons since but they've remained pretty rare, being a legendary (), a starter ( and ) and a regional variant () so it's clear that Breloom is the poster child for that combination. And well, everyone knows how strong it's always been in competitive due to Spore and broken abilities in Poison Heal and Technician.

 

[bdt2002]

Switching gears for a bit, now that we've had some time to talk about some of Pokémon's best type combinations, I want to take a moment and think about some of the exact opposite. We can always go back to talking about either side of the spectrum whenever you'd like, of course, but in my opinion it just feels a bit wrong to talk about one side without mentioning the other.

As far as singular types go, most people would say that the "worst" ones would be some combination of Grass and Bug for how many types resist each of them and Normal for its lack of positive offensive matchups against any other type. While better than these three on offense, the Ice-Type's infamous "only resisting itself" also deserves a mention, on top of the fact that it and Bug also share a weakness to Stealth Rock, arguably the most ubiquitous move in Singles history. As one might expect, stacking some of these types on top of each other can lead to some pretty... mediocre results. Combinations with 4x weaknesses such as Grass/Ice and Rock/Ice immediately come to mind as being nothing but a detriment to Pokémon that lack the base stats to properly utilize these typings, and a hypothetical Ice/Normal Pokémon would have... maybe the worst defensive profile in history? It's certainly tough to say, but when your only benefit compared to other Normal-Types is that you're an Ice-Type that's immune to Ghost, is that really worth three extra weaknesses and the sole Ice resistance?

Another type I want to mention that I didn't know was this bad before doing research for this thread is the modern Psychic-Type, which speaks for itself in how mediocre it feels compared to the (quite literally) broken type it was in the Generation 1 games. Ice may only have one resistance and four weaknesses, and Normal may only have one immunity, one weakness, and no resistances, but if I'm being honest, Psychic isn't that far behind these two for the honor of worst defensive type in the game, only having two resistances and no immunities. On offense, Psychic is better than Normal but worse than Ice, only hitting two types for super-effective damage while being either resisted or blocked by three. Notably, the combination of Ice and Psychic only has two resistances, five different weaknesses, and no immunities. You want to know what those two resistances are for?

...Ice and Psychic. I can't emphasize enough how aside from gaining a winning matchup instead of Fighting instead of the losing one most Ice-Types have, adding Psychic is purely a downgrade outside of that one matchup. Your dual STAB is still walled by Steel-Types, too, even if Psychic-Type moves can hit some of Ice's resists for neutral damage like Fire, Water and opposing Ice. It honestly makes me wonder if there's any typing in the game that strictly outclasses another combination in all aspects, i.e. a hypothetical "useless" typing.

 

[Perfect Shadow]

It honestly makes me wonder if there's any typing in the game that strictly outclasses another combination in all aspects, i.e. a hypothetical "useless" typing.

As far as I can see Electric/Flying outclasses pure Flying unless using Roost or the immunity to Ground is somehow bypassed.

 

[bdt2002]

As far as I can see Electric/Flying outclasses pure Flying unless using Roost or the immunity to Ground is somehow bypassed.

In all honesty, you might be right about this. You lose your Electric weakness while gaining no extra weaknesses in return but do keep your Ice and Rock weaknesses, and you also gain resistances to Flying and Steel while keeping your Ground immunity and resistances to Grass, Fighting, and Bug. Electric/Flying also seems to be a sole upgrade over pure Flying with no downgrades, as you can now hit Rock and Steel-Types for neutral damage with your Electric STAB as opposed to your Flying STAB being resisted by those types. All of a sudden I have a much stronger appreciation for this typing and for Thousand Arrows. Neat stuff.