Gym Type Order

[Devalue]

Noticed something while looking at gyms. Faces some types early on for gyms, and others late.

Early

• Bug (Bugsy 2nd, Burgh 3rd, Viola 1st, Katy 1st)
• Grass (Erika 4th, Gardenia 2nd, Cilan 1st, Ramos 4th, Milo 1st, Brassius 2nd)
• Rock (Brock 1st, Roxanne 1st, Roark 1st, Grant 2nd, Gordie 6th)

Middle

• Electric (Surge 3rd, Wattson 3rd, Volkner 8th, Elesa 4th, Clemont 5th, Iono 3rd)
• Ghost (Morty 4th, Fantina 5th/3rd, Allister 4th, Ryme 6th)
• Fighting (Chuck 5th, Brawly 2nd, Maylene 4th/3rd, Korrina 3rd, Bea 4th,

Late

• Steel (Jasmine 6th, Byron 6th)
• Ice (Pryce 7th, Candice 7th, Brycen 7th, Wulfric 8th, Melony 6th, Grusha 8th)
• Psychic (Sabrina 6th, Tate&Liza 7th, Olympia 7th, Tulip 7th)
• Dragon (Clair 8th, Drayden/Iris 7th/8th, Raihan 8th)

Finds others like Water all over the place.

Guesses a reason for some. Points to late evolutions and lots of resistances for Dragons. Typically peaks in power early for Bug types. Cannot shove tons of Ghosts in your face when your Pokemon may know primarily Normal moves. But...why is Ice so late?

Why do you think Pokemon orders the gyms like this? Or, alternatively, is it just coincidence to see patterns like this with only a few entries each?

 

[Zeostar]

Speaking for Rock Type specifically, it feels like a tutorial typing to learn about type strengths and weaknesses.

Hard to hit physically but crumples quickly when targeted for super effective damage. (especially with so many being paired with ground and given a 4X weakness).

 

[Explorer of Time]

Ice specifically being a late gym is possibly a symptom of Game Freak always putting the player's hometown in the southern parts of their respective regions. And since every Pokemon game so far has been in a region based off the Northern Hemisphere, the places where Ice-types are easily catchable are almost always in the northern part of the map. And most Ice-type gym leaders are near those areas where there are lots of wild Ice-types. (That being said, Wulfric has no excuse being so late. For that matter, Snowbelle City has no excuse being where it is in the first place; it should have had its location swapped with Dendemille Town.)

 

[Sheep]

^Yeah, this makes sense and is what I've assumed too. That actually makes me think though - it would be awesome if we could start closer to a colder area, and face an Ice-type gym earlier on. Would be unique and certainly a lot of fun compared to the usual Rock, Bug, Normal, and Flying types you'd see in the early game. Ice types honestly can't handle themselves well in the later game because of how fragile they tend to be anyway lol, especially at that point when everyone has a strong, established team already.

 

[Delta Crowned Sword]

I feel bug types are given early shot because most of the early wild bug Pokemon are fast evolving and have fast leveling rate. Beedrill is there at level 10 ! Rock and Grass are considered to give some edge to starter Pokemon, as all three of them are weak to starter Pokemon types. If we face some issue, i.e fire vs rock, then the new players were learn that they need a type that shields their fire starters, and so on.


Electric, ghost and poison introduces us with status effects, confusion and passive attacks. Usually Electric types are quicker in many occasions. And these types are not there in late game because we usually get access to dark move in form of bite/crunch and some cheap ground TMs are also there. Do you know another pattern that till gen-IV all starters were capable of learning TM Earthquake ?



Dragon, Steel, Fairy are expected to be late game, as we mostly find them later on, with some exception like Excadrill among few others. Dark Type Gym Leader is rare, and I remember Piers to be only one. But this might be due to abundance of cheap fighting moves on multiple normal type Pokemon. Psychic type in late means the idea is to exploit SpDef, as not many Pokemon are out there who possess higher values in that stat



I also feel Ice type Gym should not be considered in late game, because Ice types are weak against many early game Pokemon, barring Flying and Grass. Although is this tied with late availability of Ice Pokemon or not, can't be said.


According to me, Ground Type and also Fighting type should also be there in late game, considering that it offers best possibility against multiple type, which is only tied with Fighting type. Ground type usually goes unresisted mostly, hence it should be there later on. Ideally, I feel to swap Ice with Fighting and Steel with Ground, or atleast both there in late game.

 

[Corveone]

I believe some gym types work better for specific moments in the game:

Grass and Rock: Early
These are the only two types with five weaknesses, so they're more suitable for an early game challenge as the player's options are more limited. Compared to other types, a late game Grass or Rock gym would be probably quite easier to exploit. Grass is also weak offensively, being resisted by a lot of types. Grass type Pokémon usually have access to interesting and potentially threatening strategies (especially in double battles), problem is the AI might just not have the brain to use that efficiently.

Bug: Early
Just like Grass, it's weak offensively and (especially in the late game) very easy to resist. Many Bug types also trade overall strength for quicker evolution so they'd normally have a better chance to shine in the early game.

Water: Late
Only two weaknesses, with plenty of Water type Pokémon that can counter either Grass or Electric, and even some that can counter both (Kingdra, Ludicolo). No wonder Water is arguably the best type for a monotype run. Sorry Misty, but Water as first or second gym is a total waste.

Electric: Late
Same as Water, but only one weakness, can be a pretty difficult gym to deal with, unless you're a certain Kanto leader and have no way to stop a Dig/Magnitude spamming Dugtrio...

Dragon: Late
Although they aren't as hard in terms of defensive match-ups since the addition of the Fairy type, Dragons have on average mugh higher BST, but also tend to evolve later (so basically the opposite to Bugs). Since many Dragons have even legendary-like stats they're more suitable for a very late game gym, even though Dragon type moves themselves are still pretty garbage.

Ice: Should be Mid.
Allways gets treated like some kind of 'boss' type, but having so many 7th/8th Ice gyms makes no sense. It's just awful defensively and in the late game the players will allways have options to fight Ice everywhere.

Steel: Late
A difficult type to deal with thanks to its many resistances. Let's not even talk about the games where they even resisted Ghost and Dark...

Psychic and Ghost: Mid-Late
Although they aren't necessarily a hard type to deal with, they have access to many fancy moves and weird strategies that fit better in a late game gym.

Flying: Mid-Late
Not particularly difficult to fight on its own, but Flying is a very versatile type that can be combined with literally everything and catch players off guard in multiple ways. High potential for an interesting late game gym.

Fire, Fighting, Poison, Ground, Normal, Dark and Fairy: seem balanced enough that they would work better somewhere in the mid-game, not too early, but not too late either.

 

[ReKoil]

Ice has been mishandled by GF from the start, sadly.
They keep making most of them slow and/or bulky, while it's a pure offense type. They should be making them fast and hard hitting instead.
In it's current state I'd say it probably fits best in the gym 4-6 area. Definitely not early game as physical attacks that aren't super effective will barely do any damage, like my Alolan Sandshrew showed in Scarlet; the early game Pokemon could only hurt it if they hit it specially or if they could hit for one of it's x 4 weaknesses (which shouldn't even be a thing imo).

I can see Ice type working as a late game gym, though. It could be a late game gym if they made more speedy hard hitting mons.
Weavile, Galarian Darmanitan, Iron Bundle & Chien-Pao are all very fast Pokemon that hit really hard and show what Ice types should be like offensively imo. Imagine facing a gym with nothing but hard hitting speed demons of Ice types. Better hope you got a fast mon or they will knock your entire team down.

 

[CoolKid575]

Rock/Grass gyms are typically placed in the early game because they have many weaknesses that make them good tutorials for newer players (I can't beat Brock with just my Pikachu, I guess I'll have to grab a fighting type) while types like Dragon have less weaknesses/more powerful Pokemon that make them a bigger challenge. Ice is the odd one out as it's not particularly hard to deal with. But I think that can be explained by the map design. Most winter themed towns in Pokemon tend to be in hard to reach locations like the top of mountains, or at the end of long windy routes with ice puzzles strewn throughout; so it makes sense that they'd be among the final gyms.

 

[Setsuna]

I've always liked the idea of Rock gyms being early on because it's a great way to teach a new player that they can't just use Tackle on everything they come across and the different types have good use, while (usually) not making your starter choice invalid. Grass and Water are both good options and most games either just have your Fire starter evolve into a Fighting type or have some sort of option to deal with Rock types such as catching a Bellsprout or something.

Steel, Dragon, and Psychic for late-game gyms is also cool since the first two have lots of resistances to common types and higher level Psychic types can typically deal lots of damage. The only idea I have as to why Ice is commonly so late is to counteract the idea that you could just catch whatever region's big Dragon-type, be it the box legendary or the pseudo-legendary and just try to tear through the rest of the game with it but... I feel like you really have to squint to agree with that one. It's the best I've got though, haha.