• Our software update is now concluded. You will need to reset your password to log in. In order to do this, you will have to click "Log in" in the top right corner and then "Forgot your password?".
  • Forum moderator applications are now open! Click here for details.
  • Welcome to PokéCommunity! Register now and join one of the best fan communities on the 'net to talk Pokémon and more! We are not affiliated with The Pokémon Company or Nintendo.

Did the dragon type need balancing?

Sopheria

響け〜 響け!
4,904
Posts
10
Years
From what I understand, the Fairy type was introduced to balance out the disproportionately powerful dragon type. But did it really need balancing? I thought the introduction of steel and dark type was a great decision because the psychic type was seriously out of balance in Gen I. But the dragon type...I don't know. The dragon type is really really powerful, but I think it was already balanced by the fact that dragon types are really rare, and they all level up and evolve really slowly, so they're difficult to train. So when you took the effort to raise a dragon type, it was well worth it, because it's such an effective type with lots of resistances and few weaknesses. Now...it seems like they've been severely demoted. But now, what good is it busting your butt to bring a Dratini to level 55 to get a Dragonite, only for it to get it's butt whipped by a fairy O_O?

What do you think? Did the dragon type need balancing? Do you feel that the introduction of the fairy type added any necessary balance? Discuss!
 

FSNW5yiFrXVXqv

Guest
0
Posts
i think it wasnt necessarily an advance towards dragons but rather, a revolution for the weaker types and pokemon. From what I've seen, steel types took a harder blow by having some resistances removed - reducing their ability to tank so effectiely. Dragons, on the other hand, while being weak to a new type could still potentially sweep those pokemon before they get swept by them. Heck, they could even take a full hit without fainting. Dragons are still as powerful as they were; and what we are only seeing here is a new bunch of pokemon taking a stand against them.

Competitively speaking, I just hope anyone doesn't have a full team of dragons. Even gods fall, as they say.
 

KittenKoder

I Am No One Else
311
Posts
10
Years
Dragons are not that rare, they really haven't been for a long time. Consider the moves for the types though, fairy types are more effect moves, few damage moves, and thus add more strategy to the battles again, something that was starting to fade. So fairy balances out dragon in more ways than just damage.
 
12,284
Posts
11
Years
  • Seen Oct 22, 2023
Most types generally have three to four weaknesses. Ground is super-effective against water, grass, and ice; ice-types are weak against fire, fighting, rock, and steel; and steel has weaknesses against fighting-, fire-, and ground-types. Dragon-type Pokémon, on the other hand, only had two weaknesses. It was super-effective against ice and dragon itself. To make dragon a little less overpowered, one of the best ways was to make it weak against another type. To be honest, I'm happy with their decision. Dragon Pokémon may be slightly uncommon compared to the rest, but that definitely isn't a good reason to make them stronger (even a bit). d:
 
Last edited:

27thColt

The Collector
114
Posts
11
Years
  • Seen Sep 3, 2023
Well, yeah. Like the previous have stated, Dragon types aren't rare nowadays, so a Fairy type was necessary. Pretty much many dragon types have or been in three stages or are legendaries. Fairy type pretty much balanced the Steel, Dragon, Poison, and Dark types. Dragon and Steel became to offensive and defensive respectively. Steel actually had two of it's resistances taken out (dark and ghost) and replaced with Fairy. Dark and Poison became kind of stayed the same because Steel is no longer resistant to it, but it is weak to Fairy. In order to make Fairy the nest Dragon, they made it so Steel was super effective on it. What makes this new type more interesting is that pokemon that were rarely used now stand a chance to people who carry these Dragons.
 
5,616
Posts
13
Years
  • Age 35
  • Seen May 15, 2023
To make dragon a little less overpowered, they needed to make it weak to another type.

No they didn't. There were a number of better ideas that could have been done to weaken the Dragons that already exist and that includes making Ice a more viable battle type rather than leaving it as a useless brittle type that people would rather sacrifice the STAB they could have in favor for more type coverage.

Fairy Type was a horrible addition that only brings 1 positive to the competitive field and that's an increase to Poison type's powers. Though this added strength means absolutely nothing as the Pokemon are still pathetically weak.

Dark and Fighting didn't need more weaknesses. Bug didn't need to be resisted by another type, and Dragon certainly didn't need another weakness or immunity against them. Steel should still resist Ghost and Dark since it still plays with the mythos that Fairy Types carry since Steel/Iron/Metal has always been a sign of holy weapon against creatures of magic and shadow.

All Gamefreak needed to do was give better move coverage to older Pokemon, changed the stats as they did do in X and Y but to a higher level to make the weaker ones that were in need of a competitive boost a viable power against the Pokemon that were on the top.

That brings in to the overall complaint. People keep *****ing about how stale and drab the battles were, but then they'd use all the same tactics that everyone else used, wouldn't even try to come up with more counters to try and change the teams, or do anything worth merit other than open their mouths and complain about why they can't win because everyone used the same things, no one had an original thought, or they were just to lazy to do any work to try and change the battle scene.

They could have weakened the power of Dragon attacks, given Ice a defensive boost and given them resistance to Dragon, as well as redistribute the high end Dragon's stats to give them less effective damage, though that seems a bit out of the way as they are supposed to be powerful.

Though even on official tournaments, the high placing players barely even used dragon types on their teams with an exception to 3 pokemon in general as all I usually saw repeating was Garchomp and the Lati-twins.

You'd have occasional dragons show up, same reoccuring ones, over and over in the lower ranks, but the higher teams had more team strategy than simply relying on a Dragon type to push them through.

Fairies are pretty much on the same level as Poison and Ice stat wise. They aren't much better than the two, are both just as brittle and easy to take out, even with resisted defenses, unless they are Carbink and Klefki who both seem to be illegitimate children of Shuckle with better HP.

Best attackers (Non-Legend) seem to be Togekiss and Azumarill. Gardevoir is nice but needs her Mega for some battles otherwise she's about as frail as she was in the past with a common weakness to Steel, a comical weakness to a type she's been strong against for 4 generations, and keeps her Ghost Weakness, while now taking neutral damage from Bug and Dark, but can still take severe damage from a Dark type attack.

They were an unneeded change to the game, but not an unwanted one. They could have done so much more without the need to add another weakness, though that still is not going to stop Dragon Types since they can just swipe a lot of fairies to the side with altered moveset to include Steel and or Poison attacks. Some can do just as much damage with Earthquake alone and wouldn't even need Steel/Poison attacks.

Dragon's weren't overpowered, just overused. Their prowess is grossly exaggerated otherwise Lance and Drake would have been impossible to beat even in game without the use of Dragon Types yourself.

/rant
 

Nah

15,926
Posts
10
Years
  • Age 31
  • Seen today
I think that Game Freak was overestimating Dragons when they said that Fairy type was introduced to deal with them. Dragons aren't that hard to kill; I should know, they're my favorite type. Look at some of the most commonly used Dragons(ignoring the new ones and the uber ones): Dragonite, Salamence, Garchomp, Hydreigon, Haxorus. The first 3 can easily be killed with an Ice attack. That's half the reason why I have a Mamoswine with Ice Shard, to quickly dispatch those 3. Hydreigon is weak to common Fighting attacks, and Haxorus is frail. I don't mind Fairy being supereffective against Dragon, but why the hell does it have to be IMMUNE to Dragon attacks? They should've just made it resist Dragon moves.

Fortunately, Fairy isn't OP like I feared it would be. So I will still put a Dragon on each of my teams.

In regards to the type chart changes, I don't understand why they said Dragon was OP, but then didn't give Electric (the only type with one weakness) another weakness, and why they took away Steel's resistance to Ghost, which makes it so only 1 type resists Ghost: Dark (creating a similar situation to how only Steel used to resist Dragon). Ok, Normal's immune to Ghost, but how many Normal types are used in competitive play?
 

FSNW5yiFrXVXqv

Guest
0
Posts
I don't mind Fairy being supereffective against Dragon, but why the hell does it have to be IMMUNE to Dragon attacks? They should've just made it resist Dragon moves.
As you've mentioned, fairy isn't as OP as it seemed at first. Without the dragon immunity, they would only be live bait in the current meta -- competitively speaking. Certainly even worse than most Ice pokemon.
 
5,616
Posts
13
Years
  • Age 35
  • Seen May 15, 2023
As you've mentioned, fairy isn't as OP as it seemed at first. Without the dragon immunity, they would only be live bait in the current meta -- competitively speaking. Certainly even worse than most Ice pokemon.

As it stands, only a handful of Fairy types "AREN'T" live bait even with their immunity. As I said earlier most of them can still easily be taken out by Dragons with slightly altered move sets. Garchomp doesn't even have to change his set as one Earthquake from his is enough to bury about half if not more of the Fairy types in one hit.
 

KittenKoder

I Am No One Else
311
Posts
10
Years
I think Fairy type hurt Dark and Fighting types more than it did Dragon types.

A funny thing that a lot of people seem to forget. ;)

Fairy is not about balancing out just dragon types, as I said, based on the move sets and abilities, it's more to balance out everything and draw players into more strategic play.

Also, Clefairy demanded there needed to be a fairy type, and no one wants her to get her bigger brother, now do you?
 
28
Posts
10
Years
  • Age 33
  • Seen Jun 8, 2014
I don't think Dragons needed balancing. Many of them already have 4x weakness to ice, and in my oponion Dragons should be pretty OP since... well, they're dragons! It just doesn't make sense to me that a flower would be able to one-shot a Hydreigon.
 

FSNW5yiFrXVXqv

Guest
0
Posts
As it stands, only a handful of Fairy types "AREN'T" live bait even with their immunity. As I said earlier most of them can still easily be taken out by Dragons with slightly altered move sets. Garchomp doesn't even have to change his set as one Earthquake from his is enough to bury about half if not more of the Fairy types in one hit.
Don't be mistaken. I am aware of what you've written, it makes perfect sense. I am also aware of what are/what aren't "capable" in the current meta. I'm not only talking about the OU meta here (not implying that you are), but the entire competitive meta in general.

My point was, if they were only packed with a type resistance against dragons, a fairy-type pokemon in your team will not help against -literally- anything at all (given it's type advantages and disadvantages). Their existence will just be thrown right off the window. Having that immunity hardly affected the meta's flow, but it did give the inferior new-types a favor - if one free switch/turn in the battle means anything at all, that is.

The sense behind that so-called "balancing" is there. It's not about the dragons, it's about the fairies being severely vulnerable.
 
Last edited:

Boilurn

Scald Pokémon
612
Posts
11
Years
In my opinion, yes. They were one of the best offensive AND defensive typings in the series, and not to mention they always had very high stats. I'm glad that we have the Fairy-type to neutralize them.
 
50,218
Posts
13
Years
In my opinion, yes. They were one of the best offensive AND defensive typings in the series, and not to mention they always had very high stats. I'm glad that we have the Fairy-type to neutralize them.

I do agree with this guy definitely. Dragon-types had very few weaknesses, and they were in fact ones that were difficult to land as well. Ice-type Pokemon are often very heavy on weaknesses and most Dragons learned moves that could counter those Ice-types, plus Dragon-type attacks were often rare to come by but due to the frailty of Ice-types (and the fact most Ice-type moves are often used by Water-types as a coverage move) Dragon was the only true counter, and ever since the Outrage and Draco Meteor spam became prevelant, many had to switch into a Steel-type to ever have any hope of cushioning the damage from said moves.

So, as a result, Dragon became the modern-day Psychic-type. As one knows, Psychic was heavily overpowered in 1st Gen because there was very little that could counter them, so that led to Dark and Steel-types coming in. The competitive metagame became so overcentralized on Dragons, Game Freak had to find a way to nerf them and hence Fairy-type was born, which has a complete immunity to Dragon attacks meaning there will finally be less Outrage spam. Most Fairy-type Pokemon and moves may be more built for support but there's a fair share of strong ones like Gardevoir, Azumarill, Togekiss, Sylveon and Xerneas. And not to mention how awesome Mawile became by now having one of the best defensive type combinations possible, which it shares with newcomer Klefki.

So, my conclusion is that, despite Fairy-types mostly having average base stats, the Dragon-types getting balanced by the Fairy-types was definitely a good move by Game Freak.
 

KittenKoder

I Am No One Else
311
Posts
10
Years
I do agree with this guy definitely. Dragon-types had very few weaknesses, and they were in fact ones that were difficult to land as well. Ice-type Pokemon are often very heavy on weaknesses and most Dragons learned moves that could counter those Ice-types, plus Dragon-type attacks were often rare to come by but due to the frailty of Ice-types (and the fact most Ice-type moves are often used by Water-types as a coverage move) Dragon was the only true counter, and ever since the Outrage and Draco Meteor spam became prevelant, many had to switch into a Steel-type to ever have any hope of cushioning the damage from said moves.

So, as a result, Dragon became the modern-day Psychic-type. As one knows, Psychic was heavily overpowered in 1st Gen because there was very little that could counter them, so that led to Dark and Steel-types coming in. The competitive metagame became so overcentralized on Dragons, Game Freak had to find a way to nerf them and hence Fairy-type was born, which has a complete immunity to Dragon attacks meaning there will finally be less Outrage spam. Most Fairy-type Pokemon and moves may be more built for support but there's a fair share of strong ones like Gardevoir, Azumarill, Togekiss, Sylveon and Xerneas. And not to mention how awesome Mawile became by now having one of the best defensive type combinations possible, which it shares with newcomer Klefki.

So, my conclusion is that, despite Fairy-types mostly having average base stats, the Dragon-types getting balanced by the Fairy-types was definitely a good move by Game Freak.

Later today I will begin the long and tedious quest of breeding a perfect Togekiss, with the new 3D models it looks more like a fairy cloud too. However, Xerneas and Mawile are not that awesome against dragons, though they are useful against other types. But that's because most dragons have two types, and one is a weakness for Xerneas or Mawile.
 
540
Posts
10
Years
I don't think they needed to introduce the Fairy Type to balance out Dragons, as they weren't to much of a threat to begin with (In game). Being you got used to taking them out against Lance in the First Gen. His phrase of "virtually indestructible" still makes me laugh. Yet I do like the concept of a new type simply to add more to the game, especially now that certain Pokemon like Gardevoir and Mawile are now better yet.

I've been playing Pokemon since the original release of the first Gen, as they were my first gameboy games, and I'm just now starting to be able to battle real people, and therefore am learning, just how bad I am at the games. I am yet to win against a RL trainer, haha.
 
98
Posts
15
Years
  • Age 35
  • Seen Aug 1, 2021
The new fairy type was a much needed addition when you really think about it. Dragons needed something other than themselves and Ice that was super effective against them. And the flip side Steel needed something else it was useful against as well. Also Fairy kinda fills in the 'light' type people always used for fakemon, Japanese Fairies have a more Angelic feel than western fairies normally do. So logically it counteracts the dark 'evil' type.
 
Back
Top