Is it really the worst, though? Flying type chansey seems pretty horrid, as SR weakness isn't very useful. Heck, any type not named ghost, fairy, or psychic seems to outright hurt it. CHansey works well because it has great bulk and only one weakness to be potentially exploited, not its amazing defensive resistances.
...? Flying type Chansey at least gets protection from Fighting and immunity to Ground, which can potentially give it an edge against some powerful Special attackers or allow it to stay in a turn and put in work against a Physical attacker. Ghost is probably
better than Flying for Chansey, but Flying has its utility, especially since Spikes is honestly a lot more useful than Stealth Rock most of the time, in Type Reflector, so immunity to Spikes (and Toxic Spikes, I guess) is actually pretty nice.
A Poison Chansey still has a limited pool of weaknesses -and to types that have lower peak BP!- and gets Toxic immunity/perfectly accurate Toxic, which, while not
necessary to Chansey -Heal Bell and Natural Cure means Toxic isn't
horrible to it- can still allow it to last longer in a face-off.
There's lots of potential utility to other typings. The main flaw is that it will share weaknesses with the rest of your team, which is a different issue from whether the typing actually hurts Chansey or not.
As far as this goes, however, that's probably true. Still, normal Clefable is pretty much completely superior to plain fairy, and the same can be said for Cresselia. Norma; mostly lacks variety of options on a stall team, not in the quality of the options.
Lacking variety is a problem very much worth commentary. Limited options means greater ability for opposing teams to plan for your team's existence. I've
never had to modify my Ghost team to account for something a Normal team did since I adjusted my team for Mega Lopunny, because they just don't have many particularly good options.
As for scrappy thing, Pangoro is another option.
Sure, but either you're using it as basically Bad Mega Lopunny (The loss in Speed is hugely hurtful), or you're using it
alongside Mega Lopunny and your team is even more repetitive, exacerbating matchup problems.
Mega Latias is a water switchin, you'd have to be an idiot or desperate to bring your manaphy in manually. (this is particularly relevant as MLatias is probably the one pokemon on a steel team fairy doesn't struggle with. You cant bring it in on manaphy, either, for the same reason outlined in that calc- it needs to be at +2 to wall, and if it comes in on manaphy it doesn't get that chance. My point, however, (and I explained it badly I'm sure) was that with three mons Fairy covers basically every team not named steel, and so can devote the rest to not autolosing.
No, it only needs to be at +2 to wall if Manaphy is running Dazzling Gleam
and uses Tail Glow as Mega Latias is switching in
and we're talking
merely bulky Mega Latias.
+6 252 SpA Manaphy Dazzling Gleam vs. +1 248 HP / 252+ SpD Mega Latias: 157-186 (43.2 - 51.2%) -- 5.5% chance to 2HKO
Specially Defensive Steel Mega Latias is able to switch in, Calm Mind once, and there you go, you just Calm Mind a second time while they attack and now you're set, barring a crit.
I think I get what you're trying to say about team construction, but I'm not sure it's really accurate.
I sincerely doubt Jurachi would be used as a special attacker, an I myself do and have not. Support jirachi is also an option, but it, too, is mediocre anywhere except on a stall team compared to scarfrachi, who can revenge kill and flinchax far more reliably.
Moon Blast is a 60% chance of lowering the enemy's Special Attack. In Calm Mind wars, Fairy Jirachi will easily win outside of extreme bad luck, and 95 BP with 24 PP is nothing to scoff at. It actually hits hard enough that it can break Chansey if it's allowed to reach +6. (Unless Chansey has a resistant type, obviously) Even against offense, Jirachi is bulky enough to take a hit and retaliate hard. Even Steel types aren't necessarily all that great of switch-ins to it, as Thunderbolt and Shadow Ball hit neutrally.
Scarf Jirachi is handicapped against Stall, relying on Trick to contribute in a meaningful way. Physically Defensive Skarmory, among other examples, can literally just rely on Leftovers to do away with the fear of Iron Head flinch kills. Your Fairy STAB is also depressingly prone to missing, in addition to being weaker than Moon Blast and having a less reliable side effect, while,
again, your options for Moon Blast are much rarer than your options for Play Rough -Scarf Absol will hit harder and Dark/Fairy is
better coverage than Steel/Fairy. If you're primarily using it as a revenger, Absol will tend to perform better, especially since it can use Knock Off to at least contribute
something against walls. Fairy Jirachi's fantastic defensive typing isn't hugely useful to the role of revenger, beyond protecting it from priority. (Which... I guess it's better protected from Ice Shard than Absol? And Extreme Speed, which might be useful if you're not carrying a good Ghost. Absol gets a double resistance to Sucker Punch, though)
Dragon adds a lot to defensive teams, though, especially since it partners well with both fairy and steel (obviously, and they can be found on those teams as well, but hey). Dragons are obviously better followers sinc a lot of what makes them good is their high BST, but don't underestimate the utility of adding a dragon type to, say, clefable, or maybe heatran. Offensively it helps a bunch of mons like serperior, gyarados, heliolisk, lanot, swampert... it just doesn't stop. Its also has a ton of great leaders like garchomp and dragonite.
Outrage Landorus-Therian is dumb. Outrage Gyarados is dumb. Outrage Swampert is dumb. This is not Gen V, and choice-locking is risky even when there aren't Fairies able to shrug off Outrage in specific.
Heliolisk hits harder with Hyper Voice STAB than with Dragon Pulse STAB while also going through Substitutes, and the only upshot is that Dragon Pulse STAB helps against Dragons, in specific. The typing isn't necessarily an improvement from the defensive perspective, either, and Heliolisk's default Ability if you're not running it in Sun (Or Sand, I guess) is Dry Skin, so the Water resistance isn't useful. (The Fire resistance is a little useful, admittedly) It's honestly probably better off with its
base typing, where it's at least got fewer weaknesses.
Serperior is definitely glad to have a second STAB, but honestly it's probably better off on a Fire team with Hidden Power Fire. Or a Ground team with Hidden Power Ground. Or a Steel team for the amazing defensive typing making it harder to just revenge kill it...
Dragon is definitely a perfectly workable team type, I just tend to feel you get better results from running a team carrying Dragons than running a Dragon team carrying non-Dragons, whether you're talking straight offense or a more stall-y team. Less that Dragon is bad and more that it's out-competed, particularly since the type doesn't bring any useful immunities. (eg Steel and Poison's blanket immunity to Toxic provides some ridiculous options for setup 'mons that cannot be dealt with by Toxic)
This is basically false, though. Any mon that swaps out its second type to a useful one (like MMalt, or especially MDos) work, and lopunny isn't the only scrappy fighting type (the best one, yes, but not the only one). Koff is also a very common move on physical attackers in general, and is perfect coverage win non-scrappy normal fighting besides.
A fast, hard-hitting Ghost with Fighting coverage is
extremely threatening to a Normal team that isn't carrying Mega Lopunny.
252 SpA Life Orb Gengar Focus Blast vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Pangoro: 452-533 (114.7 - 135.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO
There goes your second-best Scrappy choice...
Note that Gengar is found on literally every type of team.
Yeah, Knock Off is a common move, but how common is it alongside a good Fighting move? Dexsearching for Close Combat+Knock Off only returns 9 fully evolved abusers, of which only 4 (5, if we count Meloetta-Pirouette, but it has serious flaws) get STAB on Fighting on a Normal team: Machamp, Hariyama, Sawk, and Hitmonlee. (Note that none of these is a particularly amazing Pokemon)
If I dexsearch for Knock Off+Drain Punch... I get a lot of Special attackers, mostly, actually. The only noteworthies are Kecleon, Conkeldurr (Probably the best choice, with Guts Facade), Mienshao, and Pangoro. (And Pangoro has Scrappy, so Knock Off isn't much added value as coverage, which is what we're talking about)
Other Fighting type moves don't really help much -they tend to overlap with those two (eg Mienshao has High Jump Kick), be too weak/crappy (Brick Break, worse options), have horrifying flaws (Superpower weakens your Attack with every strike, limiting it to one-shot-one-kill sort of utility), or are basically irrelevant for miscellaneous reasons. (Blaziken gets High Jump Kick+Knock Off, but it's in Ubers)
So basically you're talking Mega Lopunny, Conkeldurr, Pangoro... maybe Mienshao? (Extra-strong Fake Out could be nice) There's Scrafty if you want STAB on Knock Off instead of on the Fighting move.
That's... not a lot of variety for replacing Mega Lopunny with Perfect Coverage non-Scrappy 'mon.
→ I agree with the fact Dragons in others types are good because the Dragon type is a goo type, but it isn't a reason to put C rank to Dragon type with all powerful new Pokemon they gain (Landorus-T, Serperior, Jirachi, ...)
I still think you underestimated the potential of this type.
Again, I think Dragon is viable, but that you're probably better off running a non-Dragon team carrying Dragons than running a Dragon team carrying non-Dragons. It's not necessarily all that burdensome for a Steel team to have
half its team be made of Dragons, given how well the two types go together, and a Steel team with Dragons means running stuff like the Latis, Garchomp, Dragonite... while a Dragon team running Steel means running Skarmory, Jirachi, Metagross, and Cobalion as some of your best stuff. (Most Steel types aren't actually
primary Steel type, and a number of the exceptions are quite underwhelming, such as Mawile, Registeel, and Klinklang)
Note that Jirachi and Aggron are basically the only primary-Steel Pokemon that actually get to carry a Dragon STAB move on a Dragon team. Steel has much less difficulty finding good Dragons with good Steel moves.
→ Don't see a type doesn't mean the type is bad. The type in itself still have nice Pokemon, they can add more Fairy/Psychic types and Normal/Psychic types now. So, Ghost don't beat this type easily...
Don't have the same amount of new Pokemon doesn't mean a type is bad.
Give me an argument for why you might actually
want to run a Psychic team, as opposed to other types of team.
I was bringing up the likes of Psyshock on non-Psychic types for a reason -if you want Psychic for its defensive properties, Ghost is better. If you want Psychic for its offensive properties, Fairy is probably better. (Especially since a Poison team can basically be assumed to be running a Dark type -the combination is just
too good) Since Ghost/Fairy is possible to achieve on
both of those teams as a fairly competent Pokemon (Did you know Gengar gets Dazzling Gleam and Togekiss gets Shadow Ball?) even Psychic's
combination of offensive value+defensive value tends to be overshadowed.
So I was bringing up Psyshock because STAB on it is one of the only things Psychic actually does that nothing else competes with it on. I mean, then I can get into just carrying a primary Psychic type on a non-Psychic team... but. Well, that's exactly my point: Psychic as a team type probably isn't worth running over the competition.
Are Psychic teams passable? Maybe, I don't know. It doesn't actually matter to my point. The issue is that they're basically inferior -note that Blissey isn't actually
bad in OU, it's just largely
worse than Eviolite Chansey. My suspicion is that Psychic is in that same boat -it isn't necessarily that it's bad, it's that other options tend to beat it out at what it does do well.
If you want still think Ghost one top type, I won't say the inverse as you've reasons and I've mine. Be walled by Ghost team just mean you've bad built your team. That's all.
I don't really follow this as a response to what you quoted.
→ Concerning the Normal explanation: You said Espeed is walled by Ghost and Steel → M-Lopunny is a solution, Lucario is another (Close Combat/Crunch/Espeed/Swords Dance), Entei with Sacred Fire/Espeed is a good wallbreaker (Chandelure in steel type may be 2hKO by Buldoze (Classic move in Monotype for it), ...
The best thing I saw is: Noivern is walled by Chansey. True, but do you really think every teams have Chansey? I don't. This argument isn't very good to my eyes, you just give a counter and say it's walled. Except this counter isn't in all teams, so sorry.
D rank is just ridiculous for this type.
Mega Lopunny doesn't get Extreme Speed, so I'm not sure what your point in bringing it up is. My whole point is that your powerful priority move basically requires you clear out any Ghost types before it starts getting useful -if you have Lucario come in and Swords Dance, Gengar can easily revenge it because it outspeeds you if you're not using a priority move, and it's immune to your primary priority move. So as long as Gengar remains on the team, trying to actually
use your powerful Extreme Speed is of limited utility.
My main point in bringing up Chansey is that Noivern's Boomburst isn't actually capable of breaking Special walls. (Clefable only needs one Calm Mind, with
minimal investment into Special Defense, to hard-wall even Choice Specs Normal Noivern's Boomburst -the "OU Calm Mind+Magic Guard" set in the calc's stats do so consistently) Against pure offense teams it's a good way to grab a kill, but offense teams mostly trend toward low enough bulk that I'd rather have something with better
coverage, as you just don't need so much neutrally effective firepower to deal with them, while Noivern has to deal with "bulky Rock types are my bane". (Tyranitar, say) My
other point is that Noivern is one of the
only Special attackers Normal both notably improves and feels worth actually running. (Well. Wring Out Omastar might be workable? Rock/Normal is painfully weak to priority, though... I'm surprised I haven't seen Wring Out Serperior on a Normal team as yet, honestly. Do people just not realize Wring Out exists?) This makes Normal a bit predictable -if you've got a Special wall capable of taking Noivern on, you're good to go against Normal.
This is all
before you run into the problem that Normal basically auto-loses to a good Ghost team, making it unreliable on the ladder even if I accept the premise that it's a worthwhile team type.
