Other Type Effectiveness in XY

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With now 18 different types in the game, knowledge of what they do and how they affect one another is more important than ever. As shown in the posted type match-up chart, you'll have to approach team building in a whole new way (if not obvious enough).

You could say there have been general conceptions of how the types stand in the metagame. Until now, there haven't been any new types (since GSC) or changes to the match-ups. The "stand-out" types have always been reliable, while others provide handy utility to mix things up.

In my opinion, there has never been a "best" type. While some make very strong cases (if you'd ask me, I'd still say Dragons though, ha), when it comes to down to it, there are too many aspects in the game that affects how they perform.

Before anyone can analyze the types properly this gen, the changes in XY should be considered:

  • The new Fairy type and its match-ups against other types.
  • Dark moves now deal neutral damage to Steel types.
  • Ghost moves now also deal neutral damage to Steel types.
These additions should dramatically change the way we view type effectiveness.

For example, Dragons have been viewed as one of the most prominent threats in the game due to their sheer offensive power. While the typing lacks any super effective coverage, it more than makes up for it by hitting every other type except one (Steel, coincidentally another dominant type) for neutral damage, making it easy to spam its best moves. Now that the Fairy type has arrived, Dragon has to deal with not a resistance, but an immunity. While it still will be a powerhouse, you can no longer go in thinking you "just need to remove one or two Steel Pokemon and end game with Outrage/Draco Meteor, GG." Now different strategies and team building efforts have to be employed to deal with a new type (an interesting defensive one I might add).

Another small example, the Steel type has been known as probably the most resilient type in the game. Its list of resistances has been nothing short of amazing these past few generations. It walls everything and makes a great secondary typing to really screw up some offenses. While it still resists a lot in XY, I think the change between it and Dark/Ghost moves is huge, or at least significant enough to be heavily considered when building cores. Steel Pokemon have been known to provide a lot of utility due to their ability to switch in and take little damage. Off the top of my head, now say, Scizor can't switch in on a predicted Shadow Ball from Gengar. Before, he'd resist the move and threaten the opponent with his utility attacks. Now, without enough health, he can be KO'd outright.


I'd also like to mention, like before, entry hazards should play a significant role in XY. It should be much more furious than ever with the addition of Sticky Web and the buffs to Defog. On one hand, you have Stealth Rock doing what it does along with Spikes, Toxic Spikes, and Sticky Web. Stealth Rock screws several types badly, some can avoid the effects of the other hazards. On the other hand, we now have another way to remove hazards from the field. How much could this affect Flying types (for example)?

What changes could you see regarding how the types stand amongst each other? How are some going to be more effective or less effective than in the past?
 
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It might be worth adding the new perks of types into the OP;

  • Grass types are now immune to "Powder" and "Spore" moves
  • Electric types are now unable to be paralyzed (including Body Slam and Glare)
  • Ghost types are unable to be trapped by moves (and apparently in research, this includes abilities, such as Magnet Pull for Aegislash)
In 5th Gen, I would always try and make sure that I had a Ground type on my team to absorb Thunder Wave, by par the most prevalent paralysis move, and to check steel types. However, with the Steel nerf and new Electric perk, I can see Ground types losing some usesage, with an increase in electric types. Of course, they wouldn't perform in the capacity, since Grounds are usually physical sweepers or tanky supports, while Electrics are predominantly special sweepers. However, when it comes to team building, particulalry for offence, you don't have to run something like Garchomp or Lando, you can run Heliolisk or Rotom-W instead and take advantage of their great resistances (not that Garchomp and Lando-T have poor resistances, they might just be redundant with your core).

Speaking of resistances, Ghost attacks are only walled by Darks, who suffered from the introduction of Fairies and Normals, who aren't particulalry common outside of Blissey. As such, I feel Ghost coverage will be substituted more for Dark coverage, which offers similar neutral and super-effective match-ups, trading the superior added effects of Dark Pulse and Night Slash (maybe not Crunch) for the neutral hits on Fairies provided by Shadow Ball and Shadow Claw.
 
Obviously with the new Fairy- type, depending on their actual popularity, offensive Steel- and Poison- type sets could be on the rise. It'll be interesting to see how this affects things, considering the two types are normally more defensive driven.
 
Fairy/Steel is the new Psy/Steel.

Same weaknesses, Immune to Dragon, 4x Bug resist over neutral, 2x Dark resist over (old) neutral, while losing a resist to steel.
 
I'm also interested to see what this means for Dark as an offensive type. With steel having been nerfed, this now means that dark type revenge killers like Weavile can come in and pursuit trap a lot of steel-types they'd have to otherwise ignore in the past. Fairy pokemon are still an issue but since a majority of dark types are physical attackers, there are very few fairy pokemon that have high amounts of defense as opposed to Steel, which contains tons of pokemon that have brick wall defenses.
 
It might be worth adding the new perks of types into the OP;

  • Grass types are now immune to "Powder" and "Spore" moves
  • Electric types are now unable to be paralyzed (including Body Slam and Glare)
  • Ghost types are unable to be trapped by moves (and apparently in research, this includes abilities, such as Magnet Pull for Aegislash)
The list was only referring to match-ups specifically, but these are definitely significant in the overall topic as well. Are these the only new type bonuses currently known?
 
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