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Weakest type?

What is the weakest Pokémon type?


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This is kind of straightforward. I posted a poll. What do you think is the weakest type? This can be offensively, defensively or by some other parameter.
Note: I did not include Fairy, Water, Dragon, Steel, Ground, or Dark types, as they are generally considered the best types, and I wanted to keep the poll at least a little concise.
 
Bug, without a shadow of a doubt since Fairies entered the scene. Ice has great offensive capabilities, including a decent priority move, but Bug's only competitively-relevant feature is the existence of U-Turn. I'd go so far as to say that many dual-typed species would be better off dropping Bug typing and the slew of horrible weaknesses that come with it.
 
This is going to hurt, since almost all the types that I am going to mention as the weakest are some of my favorites:

1. Bug type: I love Bug types, but in my opinion it's the weakest type.
2. Rock type: Well, this is my least favorite type, so it doesn't hurt much :ROFLMAO:.
3. Grass type: This is the one that hurts the most, it's my third favorite type and most of the starters I choose are from this type.
4. Ice type: It hurts too, many Pokémon that I love are from this type.
 
Ice seems really weak for some reason even though it's strong against many types. Also the Bug type - even though it's strong against Psychic and Dark I rarely ever rely on it to fight those types because of better alternatives.

I’ve actually been using a lot of Bug types in recent games (well, at least half Bug type). Centiscorch has rarely left my main party in SWSH, Scoliopede has been used for most of a Unova playthrough, and Armaldo was a powerhouse in my last ORAS playthrough.

It’s still one of the weakest types overall, but they’ve gotten some potent boosts in the last couple of generations (plus, Dark type has become so common).

For me, Ice is still one of the weakest/worst typings. They’re either fragile and easily taken out by moves any halfway decent team will have (especially if they’re dual-typed), or they’re bulky but slow; and again, usually taken out by common moves.

To compound matters, they tend to be available later in the game, and some of their better moves are available to non-Ice types long before you reach them. You’ll usually have both Ice and Fairy moves to combat Grass and Dragon, on Pokémon that are better in battle.
 
Normal type attacks aren't strong against any type so by process of elimination that's the weakest type. Heck I can't think of any Normal typed attack that I use regularly other than maybe Facade in Gen 3.
Normal types might not have a super effective moves, but they only have one weakness and one immunity, so they’re pretty great defensively. Facade is pretty good, but a max Return does 102 damage. Add in STAB, and you have a 100 accuracy, 125 damage attack with no charge up or cool down. The move itself has made a mark on competitive. There are also a multitude of strong Normal types, like Snorlax, M-Lopunny, and Oranguru.

I would say Ice is the weakest. Even though they seems to be designed with a glass cannon approach, with one resistance and a bunch of strengths, most of them are really slow and can’t take advantage of those strengths.
 
Flying type is pretty weak IMO especially now with fairies. Flying is strong against Fighting, Bug and Grass but now with Fairy (and many fairy/psychic types) you don't really need to carry a flying type move or Pokemon to deal with Fighting types. And so many teams pack at least one fire or ice type move so that covers bug and grass (and bug and grass don't get a lot of late game/competitive) battle time. And now with later gens giving us substitutes for the FLY HM there is less of need in game to have to carry a flying type on your team.

Also flying is weak to rock, ice and electric which are all common moves to see on teams. Not to mention stealth rock really hurts flying types defensively. Add to the fact that the majority of flying types are dual typed and you get a lot of potential for 4x weakness (Bug/Flying, Grass/Flying, Fire/Flying, Water/Flying, Dragon/Flying).
 
I actually rate Flying very highly in competitive circles, not least because it hits a large amount of types for solid neutral damage and the types that usually keep in it check aren't actually that hard for it to deal with - Steel and Rock-types hate taking on moves like Heat Wave and Close Combat (if they even resist Flying in the first instance - some of the best Steel-types pack a secondary typing that reduces it down to just a neutrality) and Electric-types are often so fragile it isn't particular hard to brute-force a way through them.

Defensively, Flying got a huge leg up this generation with Heavy-Duty Boots and still boasts resistance or outright immunity to two of the best offensive moves going - Close Combat and Earthquake. Roost is probably one of the most widely-distributed recovery options in the game, and Defog is one of the most important support moves. I believe I'm right in saying that Flying is the most represented type in OU at the moment.
 
So something I was wondering right.

Why is Ice weak to Rock and Steel? Like, if anything, Ice actually causes Rock and Steel to break faster (Not outright immediately but just faster/easier) yet it is weak to both?

Like Fire and Fighting I understand but these 2 are a bit weird. (Other than brute forcing I suppose? But still, Steel and Rock should at least be 1x or 2x weak to Ice too.)

Also wondering why Dragon is weak to Ice other than Gen 1 Balancing for the type.
 
I've almost never found myself using bug or poison types in the games. Both types just come off to me as those weak types you run into in the beginning of the game which are effectively useless. Like when you get a poison type, they're all about status effects and their attacks do so little damage. I don't have the patience for that.
 
I've almost never found myself using bug or poison types in the games. Both types just come off to me as those weak types you run into in the beginning of the game which are effectively useless. Like when you get a poison type, they're all about status effects and their attacks do so little damage. I don't have the patience for that.

This was definitely the case with Poison in Gens past, when it only really had the occasional smattering of defensive utility (Weezing was pretty amazing with Levitate, and Crobat had some absurd resistances), but now I'd say Poison is second-tier. This isn't just because of how it interacts with Fairies, but because it got several ridiculous new species with great abilities, including Amoonguss, Toxapaex, Toxtricity, Naganadel, Nihilego, Alolan Muk, Galarian Weezing, Slowbro and Slowking - the potential was always there but locked away under poor stat distributions. I recently won a small monotype tourney 8-0 with a Poison team, including against Psychic and Steel.
 
as someone who, at the time of this post, has an ice-type pokemon as her avatar... i'd have to go with ice.

look, ice type moves are great. but my biggest qualm are the pokemon themselves. for whatever reason, game freak designs ice types in a really weird way whereas they're given awkward stat spreads and movesets that just don't make them good. usually, ice types are good when they're paired with other types (see, weavile, kyurem, mamoswine, cloyster, the list goes on). there are some that are good on their own (vanilluxe i believe), but the vast majority are designed defensively when ice is a poor defensive type and would thrive more on offensively-designed ice types... but alas, that's not the current reality. ><

sucks because ice is such a cool type and there's a lot of potential for more amazing pokemon that can take advantage of its offensiveness, but alas.
 
They try to make all the types equally valid from a lore standpoint. Mechanically, it depends on how you want to look at it, whether it's from an offensive standpoint or defensive. I decided to analyze them on defensive abilities, and 3 of the types have one more weakness than they do resistances or immunities: Rock, Grass, and Psychic. None have more than that. I wasn't going to, but for the sake of argument, I also analyzed offensive capabilities. Two types have 4 more resistances than they are super effective. They are Grass and Bug. Again, there are none that have more than that. Combined, it is clear why Grass by itself is an unfavorable type.

I would prefer to not see any type as being any more or less capable than the others.
 
I'd say Grass; super effective against only 3 Types while 7 Types resist it, and many dual Grass-Types have double weaknesses.
 
Bug, Ice and Grass are the types that seem like the weakest. Bug especially because so many common Pokemon early in the games are Bug types that evolve fast.
 
Overall I say it's Ice. Offensively its good but it usually doesn't matter when most Ice types are slow and have the worst defensive matchups around. They are also much worse for in-game casual runs than Bug or Grass since they arrive latter than almost every other type and have almost no utility since their movepools are usually bad and Water has easy access to ice moves on top of being easy to find. At least Bug and Grass can be useful sometimes for in-game stuff like catching Pokemon.
 
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