Unpopular opinions

[Sugarbear]

Freeze should've been replaced with Frostbite after Legends Arceus. That status was so much more balanced (Freeze has always been bullshit), it made sense flavour wise, and it would've given us the opportunity to have a move that just induces Frostbite a la Will o Wisp. We could've also had a Freeze Orb, giving Guts users an easier time since even if they lose their ability somehow they still don't get their Attack reduced.

Drowsy could be interesting too, though it would need some tweaking from its Legends Arceus incarnation.

XY are my least favourite mainline Pokemon games. To this day I couldn't name one gym leader or one location from it, and mega evolution was a decent idea but in game it was completely broken. While it did save some otherwise unviable Pokemon (Mawile, Kangaskhan and Pinsir come to mind), honestly I would've preferred them just having regular evolutions. Apart from the awesome champion theme, I can't recall any music from that game either off the top of my head.

 

[ant4456]

Freeze should've been replaced with Frostbite after Legends Arceus. That status was so much more balanced (Freeze has always been bullshit), it made sense flavour wise, and it would've given us the opportunity to have a move that just induces Frostbite a la Will o Wisp. We could've also had a Freeze Orb, giving Guts users an easier time since even if they lose their ability somehow they still don't get their Attack reduced.

Drowsy could be interesting too, though it would need some tweaking from its Legends Arceus incarnation.

XY are my least favourite mainline Pokemon games. To this day I couldn't name one gym leader or one location from it, and mega evolution was a decent idea but in game it was completely broken. While it did save some otherwise unviable Pokemon (Mawile, Kangaskhan and Pinsir come to mind), honestly I would've preferred them just having regular evolutions. Apart from the awesome champion theme, I can't recall any music from that game either off the top of my head.

Frostbite would make the game literally trash. Wisp can already make many MUs a 5v6, now you're gonna add moves to make that for the other side of the offensive spectrum?

 

[Ironmage]

Freeze should've been replaced with Frostbite after Legends Arceus. That status was so much more balanced (Freeze has always been bullshit), it made sense flavour wise, and it would've given us the opportunity to have a move that just induces Frostbite a la Will o Wisp. We could've also had a Freeze Orb, giving Guts users an easier time since even if they lose their ability somehow they still don't get their Attack reduced.

Drowsy could be interesting too, though it would need some tweaking from its Legends Arceus incarnation.

The likely Will-o-Wisp equivalent is the main thing that keeps me from being enthusiastic about Frostbite. Burn is more often seen out of a Ghost type than an actual Fire type because the latter is rarely defensive enough to personally care about the attack drop and Ice mons already struggle with being overshadowed by other types carrying Ice moves. How symmetric answers to physical and special moves should be is probably also worth a discussion on its own.

I do think they should experiment with a persistent status that reduces defenses, but I also feel that there's too much built on Sleep to change it easily. Maybe that's what Frostbite should do instead of dropping SpA?

 

[Despicable]

Ariados is a pretty cool guy.

 

[Axiemeister]

I do think they should experiment with a persistent status that reduces defenses, but I also feel that there's too much built on Sleep to change it easily. Maybe that's what Frostbite should do instead of dropping SpA?

i do think it's a great idea to have frostbite reducing defenses and maybe even a chance of not moving like paralysis - it would justify the condition being much rarer than the others without it being basically a KO as it now

 

[Empress]

The Fairy-type is completely unnecessary and incredibly overpowered.

 

[Mova]

I welcome Fairy from a flavor standpoint, but I remember it being busted in XY/ORAS and SM. It's calmed down nowadays, though.

 

[Coronis]

I welcome Fairy from a flavor standpoint, but I remember it being busted in XY/ORAS and SM. It's calmed down nowadays, though.

Yeah adding a new type was never going to be easy, I always expected teething issues.

 

[pika pal]

Fairy isn't even teething issues. Its design encompasses all the worst aspects of how Gamefreak tries to handle balance, especially when Dark and Steel in 1-2 was a very reasonable pair of additions at the time.

• Fairy's Offensive profile. All 3 resistances it includes are weak to Ground, and 1 isn't even a good defensive type because of Stealth Rock and (possibly literally) 400 Water types. I always have concerns about "two move perfection" in coverage and GF made another one despite the defensive profile of Fairy ostensibly being about fixing some such combinations like Dark/Fighting and Dragon/Ground or Fire.
• Which brings me to Defensive Profile.
  • Fairy literally only has two weaknesses, Poison and Steel. In theory this was to improve the offensive output of these types; in practice, it benefits Poison types running the type neutrally and kneecaps anyone else because their offensive coverage outside this type isn't good, but you need to deal with Fairies now.
  • The resist profile also seems tailor made to deal with the types troubling the Meta at the time, but then there's little to no flavorful type match-ups alongside those. Why are the Fair Folk resistant to Dark Types (Evil Type in JP) when most stories they're mischievous if not evil-themselves as tricksters? Why does Fire resist them but not deal SE damage in return? And personal peeve is the Bug resistance because shit on that type some more I guess
• Flavorwise the type is used in a boring manner. It just kind gets tossed around to things that are cute and in some cases vaguely magical. Why are Comfey and Florges pure Fairy despite clearly working plants into their biology compared to Whimsicott as a retro case? Why is Dedenne a Fairy when it just looks like every Pika-clone ever? Why is Hoopa, based on a Genie/Djinn, one of the most infamously tricksy magical beings in pop-cultural fiction, a Psychic Type instead of Fairy?

It hits bad points from me on all 3 categories I look at a type through, essentially turning into the type it was supposed to suppress (Dragon) instead of rebalancing things like Dark and Steel managed in their debut Gens, while having unfun and sometimes incoherent theming.

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

I think Fairy's defensive profile is fine in a vacuum, it's intentionally trying to buff the two worst offensive types and nerf the strongest ones. The issue is that Poison and Steel still have two shortcomings that need to be addressed to boost their offensive potential: the first is stronger, more reliable moves, and the other is more good offensive Poison and Steel-types. Both types are well known for having a pretty strong defensive profile but a weak offensive profile, and most of the good Poison and Steel-types are designed as walls and support mons (prime examples being the infamous Ferrothorn and Toxapex). Meanwhile both types don't exactly have a lot of strong reliable offensive moves. Their most "reliable" physical moves are Poison Jab and Iron Head which are a modest 80 BP, and 100+ BP moves like Gunk Shot and Iron Tail are inaccurate. On the special side, Poison fortunately has Sludge Bomb/Wave, while Flash Cannon is okay as a Steel move, but typical Fairies tend to have a high Special Defense.

That creates some issues as far as using Poison and Steel as coverage is concerned but as far as STAB, there aren't a lot of good offensively oriented Poison or Steel-types out there which compounds the perceived issue. If there were, Fairies as a whole wouldn't be as strong in the grand overall environment. The list of good offensive Steels basically boils down to...Scizor, and not much else, Poison even less so.

Fairy's offensive profile is pretty strong but its perfect synergy with Ground is usually rarely able to be used by most Fairies themselves, and it's often rare to actually want to use Fairy moves as coverage on things that do use Ground moves. It's more prominent this gen because of Terastal but that's a different story.

Honestly I don't think Fairy is necessarily overpowered in a vacuum, it's just that the specific aspects it wants to address have more things and shortcomings that need to be covered. The type feels overpowered because it's given to a lot of good Pokemon with really good skillsets to use the type well, and having a strong roster of very good Pokemon elevates it.

Flavorwise, I've said it before, but it's only had four generations to really establish itself and there's still much more room to do more with it in the future. We're already starting to see some pretty cool Fairy designs in recent years with Hatterene, Grimmsnarl, and Tinkaton, and the most recent two generations have been pretty damn fun with Fairy designs. I'm sure we'll see more out there Fairy-types in the future.

 

[Just A Seaking]

• Fairy literally only has two weaknesses, Poison and Steel. In theory this was to improve the offensive output of these types; in practice, it benefits Poison types running the type neutrally and kneecaps anyone else because their offensive coverage outside this type isn't good, but you need to deal with Fairies now.

My very strong Type Chart Take™ is that they should have made Poison super-effective against Water. Steel already received the Ghost/Dark nerf at the same time as Fairy being added, so it's not as if pre-existing type match-ups can't be altered - and on all counts, I think it would have been healthy for the game overall. It's thematically a perfect fit, so it wouldn't cause any major confusion or headache trying to wrap your head around the new match-up; of course the type associated with pollution is super-effective against water! Giving the Poison type two major offensive match-ups, while still being checked by the best defensive type in the game in Steel, puts it in a very unique anti-meta position and avoids being too strong or overwhelming. To me, it checks all the boxes for a good change.

Of course, game balance is a very sensitive thing, and it's understandable that GF wouldn't want to rock the boat any more than necessary. Any change you make is going to have a massive ripple effect on the way everything interacts with each other, and some rando on the internet certainly doesn't have a greater claim to understanding game balance than a professional game studio that designed the chart to begin with.

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

My very strong Type Chart Take™ is that they should have made Poison super-effective against Water. Steel already received the Ghost/Dark nerf at the same time as Fairy being added, so it's not as if pre-existing type match-ups can't be altered - and on all counts, I think it would have been healthy for the game overall. It's thematically a perfect fit, so it wouldn't cause any major confusion or headache trying to wrap your head around the new match-up; of course the type associated with pollution is super-effective against water! Giving the Poison type two major offensive match-ups, while still being checked by the best defensive type in the game in Steel, puts it in a very unique anti-meta position and avoids being too strong or overwhelming. To me, it checks all the boxes for a good change.

Of course, game balance is a very sensitive thing, and it's understandable that GF wouldn't want to rock the boat any more than necessary. Any change you make is going to have a massive ripple effect on the way everything interacts with each other, and some rando on the internet certainly doesn't have a greater claim to understanding game balance than a professional game studio that designed the chart to begin with.

This is easily one of the best single changes you could make to the type chart imo. It's intuitive and seems very healthy for overall game balance plus it gives my beloved Empoleon another defensive niche

From an in-game perspective, though, I wonder if the devs have deliberately avoided giving any single type an offensive advantage against more than one starter type? I don't see any particular reason why that would be an issue, but their weaknesses have been kept pretty separate so far.

 

[Ironmage]

I think Fairy's defensive profile is fine in a vacuum, it's intentionally trying to buff the two worst offensive types and nerf the strongest ones. The issue is that Poison and Steel still have two shortcomings that need to be addressed to boost their offensive potential: the first is stronger, more reliable moves, and the other is more good offensive Poison and Steel-types. Both types are well known for having a pretty strong defensive profile but a weak offensive profile, and most of the good Poison and Steel-types are designed as walls and support mons (prime examples being the infamous Ferrothorn and Toxapex). Meanwhile both types don't exactly have a lot of strong reliable offensive moves. Their most "reliable" physical moves are Poison Jab and Iron Head which are a modest 80 BP, and 100+ BP moves like Gunk Shot and Iron Tail are inaccurate. On the special side, Poison fortunately has Sludge Bomb/Wave, while Flash Cannon is okay as a Steel move, but typical Fairies tend to have a high Special Defense.

That creates some issues as far as using Poison and Steel as coverage is concerned but as far as STAB, there aren't a lot of good offensively oriented Poison or Steel-types out there which compounds the perceived issue. If there were, Fairies as a whole wouldn't be as strong in the grand overall environment. The list of good offensive Steels basically boils down to...Scizor, and not much else, Poison even less so.

Fairy's offensive profile is pretty strong but its perfect synergy with Ground is usually rarely able to be used by most Fairies themselves, and it's often rare to actually want to use Fairy moves as coverage on things that do use Ground moves. It's more prominent this gen because of Terastal but that's a different story.

Honestly I don't think Fairy is necessarily overpowered in a vacuum, it's just that the specific aspects it wants to address have more things and shortcomings that need to be covered. The type feels overpowered because it's given to a lot of good Pokemon with really good skillsets to use the type well, and having a strong roster of very good Pokemon elevates it.

Flavorwise, I've said it before, but it's only had four generations to really establish itself and there's still much more room to do more with it in the future. We're already starting to see some pretty cool Fairy designs in recent years with Hatterene, Grimmsnarl, and Tinkaton, and the most recent two generations have been pretty damn fun with Fairy designs. I'm sure we'll see more out there Fairy-types in the future.

I can't help but feel that Fairy's design of being anti-meta doesn't play well with Dexit. It needs enough mons around to both create a standard meta and have options to subvert it. Want an offensive Poison to break through? Shame you can't take Beedrill-mega, Nidoking, or Nihilego in gen 9. Want to still use Steel's great defensive profile without stacking weaknesses to an already good offensive type in Ground? There are only three Steel/Flying mons in existence, you better hope every game has at least one.

 

[ant4456]

Fairy Type is fucking awesome. It's my favorite type.

It's also not even the best type competitively, at best it's 2nd place.

 

[Worldie]

Fairy type is so overpowered that currently VGC features *1* used fairy type (which happens to have one of the most minmaxed stats in Pokemon history) and OU features 4 (2 of which being defensive), meanwhile 8 Dragon types several of which get constantly called as banworthy and noone seems to think Dragon typing is op.

Smogon posters and realizing Fairy type is fine and it's just GameFreak having the tendency to release overtuned fairy type pokemon Challenge (difficulty: impossible)

Smogon posters and not pretending to play checkers instead of Pokemon Challenge (difficulty also impossible)

Call me when Aromatisse is banned to Ubers for being a fairy type.

 

[Eriorguez]

Fairy is great, but, personally, I'd have made Ice resist it, rather than Fire. And yeah, Water being weak to Poison could be great. Sorry Azumarill.

 

[The Ferret Father]

Terastalization is the best battle gimmick
Change
my
mind

 

[pika pal]

Fairy type is so overpowered that currently VGC features *1* used fairy type (which happens to have one of the most minmaxed stats in Pokemon history) and OU features 4 (2 of which being defensive), meanwhile 8 Dragon types several of which get constantly called as banworthy and noone seems to think Dragon typing is op.

Smogon posters and realizing Fairy type is fine and it's just GameFreak having the tendency to release overtuned fairy type pokemon Challenge (difficulty: impossible)

Smogon posters and not pretending to play checkers instead of Pokemon Challenge (difficulty also impossible)

Call me when Aromatisse is banned to Ubers for being a fairy type.

Fairy as a typing can be skewed in its strength and also attached to Pokemon with kits that aren't collectively strong to drag it down. These aren't mutually exclusive evaluations. Here's another look: How frequently can you find a Pokemon that is worse off for having a Fairy Typing?

 

[Worldie]

Fairy as a typing can be skewed in its strength and also attached to Pokemon with kits that aren't collectively strong to drag it down. These aren't mutually exclusive evaluations. Here's another look: How frequently can you find a Pokemon that is worse off for having a Fairy Typing?

As often as how often you can find a pokemon that's worse off adding water type. If it's stacking weaknesses

See things like Rillaboom being significantly better than Tapu Bulu, not just because it has more tools, but because despite having better stats the fairy type only adds more weaknesses without adding any significant resist (most dragons nowadays dont even run a dragon stab other than Meteor or busted signatures).

Fairy type is definitely a good type, there is no doubt in it, but it's not "overpowered" in any way. Rather the type happens to have many more minmaxed mons than other ones

The only type that can be argued to be op just off the type chart is steel (which even got nerfed at some point), and even that one has combinations that would be better off without it (like steel/ice and steel/rock)

 

[pika pal]

As often as how often you can find a pokemon that's worse off adding water type. If it's stacking weaknesses

See things like Rillaboom being significantly better than Tapu Bulu, not just because it has more tools, but because despite having better stats the fairy type only adds more weaknesses without adding any significant resist (most dragons nowadays dont even run a dragon stab other than Meteor or busted signatures).

I would debate this specific example. Tapu Bulu's inferiority stems from lacking Grassy Glide, Knock Off, and U-Turn as very significant moves on Rillaboom, but the Fairy typing adds very significant resistances to Bug (U-Turn common to neutralize), Fighting, and Dark regardless of the Dragon Immunity's relevance (neither takes Poison well and Steel offense is not a common tool). This goes back to my point that the additional Fairy typing is not what makes Tapu Bulu an inferior choice: if you shored up other flaws I pointed out like Grassy Glide priority, Knock Off to push progress, or even a unique "missing" thing in not having a Fairy STAB, Tapu Bulu would easily be competing with or overtaking Rillaboom, especially because it lets it punish Grass's Dragon concern. You also can't brush off the Dragon STAB because most don't run one "other than Meteor or busted Signatures" when I dare you to name a Special Dragon that DOESN'T want a 140 BP move to nuke things mostly-neutral; for Signatures, okay they're signatures. Still very strong Dragon moves you have to be able to survive getting hit by. Does Flying not deserve discussion as a strong attack type because its most reliable moves are Recoil Brave Bird, Hurricane, and Signatures like Dragon Ascent?

If you're going to talk min-maxed users, Salamence and Garchomp pop out for pre-Fairy Dragons, and after it there's Dragapult, Archaludon, Roaring Moon, and the Beast Paradoxes. You cannot point to Fairy having min-maxed users to downplay the value of the type itself over Dragon. Fairies that claim at most goes to Legendaries-and-alik like Xerneas, Zacian, Tapu Lele (and part of that is Psychic Terrain for its other STAB), Iron Valiant, and Flutter Mane (for whom half the burden is on its Ghost typing as well offensively and, in VGC, Defensively).

 

[Worldie]

I would debate this specific example. Tapu Bulu's inferiority stems from lacking Grassy Glide, Knock Off, and U-Turn as very significant moves on Rillaboom, but the Fairy typing adds very significant resistances to Bug (U-Turn common to neutralize), Fighting, and Dark regardless of the Dragon Immunity's relevance (neither takes Poison well and Steel offense is not a common tool). This goes back to my point that the additional Fairy typing is not what makes Tapu Bulu an inferior choice: if you shored up other flaws I pointed out like Grassy Glide priority, Knock Off to push progress, or even a unique "missing" thing in not having a Fairy STAB, Tapu Bulu would easily be competing with or overtaking Rillaboom, especially because it lets it punish Grass's Dragon concern. You also can't brush off the Dragon STAB because most don't run one "other than Meteor or busted Signatures" when I dare you to name a Special Dragon that DOESN'T want a 140 BP move to nuke things mostly-neutral; for Signatures, okay they're signatures. Still very strong Dragon moves you have to be able to survive getting hit by. Does Flying not deserve discussion as a strong attack type because its most reliable moves are Recoil Brave Bird, Hurricane, and Signatures like Dragon Ascent?

If you're going to talk min-maxed users, Salamence and Garchomp pop out for pre-Fairy Dragons, and after it there's Dragapult, Archaludon, Roaring Moon, and the Beast Paradoxes. You cannot point to Fairy having min-maxed users to downplay the value of the type itself over Dragon. Fairies that claim at most goes to Legendaries-and-alik like Xerneas, Zacian, Tapu Lele (and part of that is Psychic Terrain for its other STAB), Iron Valiant, and Flutter Mane (for whom half the burden is on its Ghost typing as well offensively and, in VGC, Defensively).

You're not saying anything wrong, but you're kinda proving my point: most of the value of the Fairy Types isnt just "they're fairy types", is how stacked they are with both good typing AND good moves / ability / stats.

Purely being a fairy type doesn't make a mon good. As I said, call me when Aromatisse is sent to Ubers due to being a fairy type. Most good fairy types would still be good without the fairy typing. Xerneas would still be a godtier pokemon if it was pure Normal. Zacian would still be insane if it was Bug type. Tapu Koko would still be strong if it was pure Electric.
There's definitely cases where being fairy is *part* of why a pokemon is good, es speaking of Tapus, Tapu Lele wouldn't be anywhere as strong if it wasnt part fairy letting it actually face Dark types instead of being murdered by them. But being "part fairy" never was the breaking point.

There is a massive difference between being "good" and being "op". No single type is op in pokemon. Otherwise, if say... a mechanic was introduced that lets you change typing on a whim, everyone would run Fairy type right?
https://x.com/VGCdata/status/1746967515866058773?s=20
Hint: it isnt. If you take out Flutter Mane, which mainly uses it for the 2x stab value, it would be far down compared to Water (which is also inflated by Ogerpon), Grass and Ghost.


Fairy types just happen to have a higher amount of min-maxed or optimized pokemon than the other type. That's the limit of it. The type is not op, easily proved by the atrocious lack of Fairy types used in either competitive settings currently.

 

[pika pal]

You're not saying anything wrong, but you're kinda proving my point: most of the value of the Fairy Types isnt just "they're fairy types", is how stacked they are with both good typing AND good moves / ability / stats.

Purely being a fairy type doesn't make a mon good. As I said, call me when Aromatisse is sent to Ubers due to being a fairy type. Most good fairy types would still be good without the fairy typing. Xerneas would still be a godtier pokemon if it was pure Normal. Zacian would still be insane if it was Bug type. Tapu Koko would still be strong if it was pure Electric.
There's definitely cases where being fairy is *part* of why a pokemon is good, es speaking of Tapus, Tapu Lele wouldn't be anywhere as strong if it wasnt part fairy letting it actually face Dark types instead of being murdered by them. But being "part fairy" never was the breaking point.

There is a massive difference between being "good" and being "op". No single type is op in pokemon. Otherwise, if say... a mechanic was introduced that lets you change typing on a whim, everyone would run Fairy type right?
https://x.com/VGCdata/status/1746967515866058773?s=20
Hint: it isnt. If you take out Flutter Mane, which mainly uses it for the 2x stab value, it would be far down compared to Water, Grass and Ghost.
Water type is op if anything, not Fairy.

Fairy types just happen to have a higher amount of min-maxed or optimized pokemon than the other type. That's the limit of it. The type is not op.

Xerneas and Tapu Koko I could debate but Zacian DEFINITELY thrives on its Fairy typing because they min-maxed its offensive profile so hard that a Neutral typing with only 1 Coverage move needed is plenty for it to blow through things, while being one of the best dual typings in the game (so Fairy is just as intrinsic as Steel to Crowned).

And you seem to be missing my actual point: I said

Its design encompasses all the worst aspects of how Gamefreak tries to handle balance

This is not me saying the type is strictly overpowered on its own to the point that being a Fairy automatically makes something OP, and that's inadvertently arguing with a strawman if your responses treat that as the position being dealt with. My point was that Fairy's design was lazy and didn't think about how to design or balance its attributes beyond the surface aspects of "weaken these types and empower these" when those match-ups carry significantly more problem.

With that said I WOULD still argue Fairy is one of the strongest vacuum types in that it is one of the hardest types for a Pokemon to be given and not be better with it than without it.

The Terastal comparison is faulty because Terastalization, like everything else, derives from the whole kit in what it synergizes with, and since the Pokemon were not designed with the types in mind they don't frequently include aspects like this. Incineroar runs Grass because it specifically wants to gain resistances to two of its base type weaknesses (Water from the extremely prevalent Urshifu and Ground) and doesn't have Fairy moves or base offensive options (or even a role) that favors Fairy on those fronts instead. Farigiraf by comparison is an Anti-Meta mon with Utility moves and a good Fairy type option while Fairy actively helps its existing profile. The "gotcha" here is that Terastalization is one-off so a Tera Fairy Incineroar is not a comparable value proposition to a Base Fairy Incineroar-esque Pokemon Kit.

Doubles particularly thrives more on surviving a few big/gotcha hits than Singles where either a single mon might take more turns of mileage from 1 extra survived (see set up sweepers) or long-term Defensive survival holds significantly more value. This warrants mention to me because there are still officially supported Singles formats in-game even outside of Smogon, even if VGC itself is doubles, so they can't totally ignore the way types or mechanics play out in both.

And

Fairy types just happen to have a higher amount of min-maxed or optimized pokemon than the other type. That's the limit of it. The type is not op.

Arguing against this was my whole point of bringing up the 8 Dragons in current OU and history with others like Garchomp. Fairy if anything has an extremely low number of min-maxed Pokemon since most of the Pokemon the typing was added to were "mid-game mid-mons" like Whimsicott and Granbull. Heck even one of the most famous Fairy types is Clefable, who is ANYTHING but min-maxed despite having a very cohesive kit (to the point of being useful in Gen 4 singles before the type's introduction rocketed it even higher). I am receptive to the claim that Fairy type is not "OP" even with my position that it is just poorly designed and "just" better than the majority of standalone types, but you have a much harder case convincing me Fairy type includes more min-maxed Pokemon than the majority of other types like Dragon, Ground, Fighting, maybe even Dark.

 

[Worldie]

. Heck even one of the most famous Fairy types is Clefable, who is ANYTHING but min-maxed despite having a very cohesive kit (to the point of being useful in Gen 4 singles before the type's introduction rocketed it even higher). I am receptive to the claim that Fairy type is not "OP" even with my position that it is just poorly designed and "just" better than the majority of standalone types, but you have a much harder case convincing me Fairy type includes more min-maxed Pokemon than the majority of other types like Dragon, Ground, Fighting, maybe even Dark.

I think Clefable is definitely not the best choice here to prove your point, considering that after it became so good in gen 6, people started using it in previous generations and were like "actually this thing is good even as pure normal type!" since turns out Magic Guard is that good of an abilty in metas with permanent weather and hazard everywhere.

 

[pika pal]

I think Clefable is definitely not the best choice here to prove your point, considering that after it became so good in gen 6, people started using it in previous generations and were like "actually this thing is good even as pure normal type!" since turns out Magic Guard is that good of an abilty in metas with permanent weather and hazard everywhere.

This point only applies to Gen 4 which I already brought up when saying that (I see no suggestion it was stand out in Gen 5 where offense was wild and teams depended most heavily on Weather for specialization). I referenced Clefable to distinguish the point that it is not a min-maxed Fairy given its extremely balance-numbered stat distribution and lack of heavy emphasis on any particular role in movepool as well. Magic Guard can be cited in a gen where it was Signature, but I would reference that Reuniclus, Sigilyph, and Alakazam all see significantly less usage in Gens after they gained the ability but had to compete with a Fairy type Clefable. This is no more of a point in your favor as presented

 

[Coronis]

Xerneas and Tapu Koko I could debate but Zacian DEFINITELY thrives on its Fairy typing because they min-maxed its offensive profile so hard that a Neutral typing with only 1 Coverage move needed is plenty for it to blow through things, while being one of the best dual typings in the game (so Fairy is just as intrinsic as Steel to Crowned).

Not wanting to get involved in this competitive debate cos screw competitive I like ingame but isn’t this exactly what Worldie is saying?