The most Underpowered type?

[Squirtkipfan01]

What do you personally think is the most underpowered type in general? Im thinking bug. Tons of weaknesses, mostly relegated to early game catches, easily out classed.

 

[Devalue]

What do you personally think is the most underpowered type in general? Im thinking bug. Tons of weaknesses, mostly relegated to early game catches, easily out classed.

Moved your thread from Pokemon General. Asked a question dealing with game mechanics. Belongs in Pokemon Gaming Central.

Edit: Was indecisive. Merged it with one thread initially. Made it its own thread again. Currently readding the poll. Stuck the poll back in.

 

[Devalue]

Voted for Ice. Fares okay on offense, generally when paired with other attacking moves (like Electric). Gets demolished on defense. Suffers from four weaknesses (Fire, Fighting, Rock, and Steel). Resists only one type: itself. Makes it really hard to bring in.

 

[Zeostar]

Rock often seems to be more of a liability when paired with another type.

 

[Sweet Serenity]

Voted for Ice. Fares okay on offense, generally when paired with other attacking moves (like Electric). Gets demolished on defense. Suffers from four weaknesses (Fire, Fighting, Rock, and Steel). Resists only one type: itself. Makes it really hard to bring in.

Ice-type is actually really good on offense, not just okay. Alone, Ice-type covers 28% of all types offensively, including type combinations, which is the most coverage out of every other type alone. Rock-type is an extremely close second, which can cover 27% of all types offensively. However, what also makes Ice-type great offensively isn't just its offensive coverage, but also the fact that it can take down Dragon-types, which is a great defensive type, and has a priority attacking move in Ice Shard that many Ice-type Pokémon can learn. That's why it's best to use an Ice-type as a revenge killer rather than a switch-in. Many Ice-type moves also have a chance to freeze too, which is the coldest status condition in the game. I do, however, agree that Ice-type is really bad defensively though.

To answer the question though, I would have to agree with the topic starter. Alone, Bug-type is probably the most underpowered type. The Bug-type has the lowest base stat total of all types, several common weaknesses, and their moves are resisted by many common types as well. However, this doesn't mean that many good Bug-types don't exist and it can actually be good when paired with another type. For example, Bug/Water-type is probably the best combination for Bug-type because Water-type removes almost all Bug-type's weaknesses and gives it coverage against Fire-types and Rock-types. Bug-types are interesting for their ability to take down Psychic and Dark-types though.

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

A very good point indeed, but i feel like thats kinda also their point. High offense but a defense consisting of, well, ice. Good pick regardless

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

Bugs arent COMPLETELY hopeless(id be shooting the scyther line doing so) its just feels like they got the shortest end of the stick. You often find them early and soon after probably find something that can just outright replace them, with preference being the only thing keeping them their after(if even). Rocks are pretty good overall, i just think most are lame design wise lol

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

Dont you dare point that leaf at a rock/water

 

[Drayton]

I would vote Ice or Grass, both have much weakness in defensively and in offense ice have medicore coverage, while grass have modest amount of coverage at their disposal. Let's get that much into detail

Grass/Water - Little weakness, little resistance (not that fragile), have good offense towards some type
Grass/Psychic - Rather nasty weak to lots of things now, thought nasty with bug-type. Though offensively good covarge.
Grass/Dark - feel same with on the defensive side. Still good offensive at best.
Grass/Ghost - bit nasty with 4 weakness, OK covarge.

Ice/Rock still worse and yet takes a beating from fighting and steel type. Really good coverage
Ice/Water bit fair defensively, good coverage
Ice/Psychic is always to frail to battle having much weakness bit fair coverage

There is a thing when you want to play them as you need to be really careful what your opponent about to do with them especially though ice is pretty soild on special defense, they're frail on physical attackers so getting punched by a karate chop isn't pretty for them

 

[Devalue]

Ice-type is actually really good on offense, not just okay. Alone, Ice-type covers 28% of all types offensively, including type combinations, which is the most coverage out of every other type alone. Rock-type is an extremely close second, which can cover 27% of all types offensively. However, what also makes Ice-type great offensively isn't just its offensive coverage, but also the fact that it can take down Dragon-types, which is a great defensive type, and has a priority attacking move in Ice Shard that many Ice-type Pokémon can learn. That's why it's best to use an Ice-type as a revenge killer rather than a switch-in. Many Ice-type moves also have a chance to freeze too, which is the coldest status condition in the game. I do, however, agree that Ice-type is really bad defensively though.

Fair point on coverage. Only looked at total super-effectives (4) versus not very effectives (also 4). Hardly looks special in that less-informed light.

Might have hit on the reason for valuing it so low. Used a Pokemon as a revenge killer (...kind of) once ever, and not in a normal Pokemon game. Rarely needs to fight dragons in a normal playthrough either, for that matter.

Always finds the Freeze status disappointing. Cannot recall any Pokemon being frozen for longer than one turn (if that, good or bad) in the past few generations. May be due to simply both the low percentage chance and fainting the enemy first. (Sidenote: Tracked the number of Freezes in a Sword Ice monotype. Happened seven times. Grabbed four of those before the first gym. Never recorded any fights with that occurring, unfortunately.)

 

[Sweet Serenity]

Fair point on coverage. Only looked at total super-effectives (4) versus not very effectives (also 4). Hardly looks special in that less-informed light.

Might have hit on the reason for valuing it so low. Used a Pokemon as a revenge killer (...kind of) once ever, and not in a normal Pokemon game. Rarely needs to fight dragons in a normal playthrough either, for that matter.

Always finds the Freeze status disappointing. Cannot recall any Pokemon being frozen for longer than one turn (if that, good or bad) in the past few generations. May be due to simply both the low percentage chance and fainting the enemy first. (Sidenote: Tracked the number of Freezes in a Sword Ice monotype. Happened seven times. Grabbed four of those before the first gym. Never recorded any fights with that occurring, unfortunately.)

Weavile, for example, is a great revenge killer and great on almost any team really. I recommend using it. I have used Weavile ever since it was introduced (and Sneasel before generation 4). A lot of people mentioned that Cynthia was extremely difficult in BDSP because of her Garchomp. Well, Weavile with Ice Shard completely murders it. As for the freeze status, it's definitely worse than sleep in my opinion. What makes the Frozen status condition so ice cold is that, unlike sleep, you don't have a set amount of turns until you thaw out. Unless you use or get hit by a Fire-type move or Scald, you only have 20% chance of thawing out. It's good that Freeze is the rarest status condition. The funny thing is that whenever one of my Pokémon got frozen, I always lost a battle because of it and never got the chance to thaw out with a Fire-type move or Scald. For this reason and the other reasons I mentioned previously, I'd go as far as to say that Ice-type might arguably be the most broken type in the game.

 

[Corveone]

The Bug type has only three weaknesses, that's not so bad. The problem are Bug type moves.

Ice is essentially the opposite, moves are very helpful against lots of things, but unless you totally need the STAB or want to play with Hail strats, the only thing a Pokémon gains by being Ice type is just more weaknesses.

So most underpowered type all around is probably Grass, offensively it's easily walled by a lot of things, and defensively it has more weaknesses than resistances. Many Grass types also have mediocre stats, or bad stat spreads. They're great for support, but Grass type attackers suffer from so many types resisting them (and usually limited coverage options), and bulky Grass types suffer from their many weaknesses hurting their potential as walls.

Rock is probably around there too. Very poor defensively, and although Rock is a great attacking type, it's held down by the lack of powerful and reliable moves.

I have used Weavile ever since it was introduced (and Sneasel before generation 4). A lot of people mentioned that Cynthia was extremely difficult in BDSP because of her Garchomp. Well, Weavile with Ice Shard completely murders it.

Pretty sure there's some missing info here. Ice Shard won't do that much against a Garchomp holding a Yache Berry, unless the Weavile Swords Danced first, got stat boosts through Baton Pass or something, but with buffs a lot of Pokémon can do it. Or unless something took care of Garchomp's held item first.

 

[Sheep]

Ice. It's very fragile and I feel like the increase in weaknesses does it more harm than good unless you really need an ice type on your team - often not the case and only ever might happen if you want something that's 4x effective against the likes of Dragonite and Flygon. Do love the type a lot, though it can definitely use some more. I do like how effective it is against dragons though, but that has been shining a little less for me since the fairy type was introduced. Sweet Serenity makes a good point, but I still always prefer using ice types that are fast/higher leveled enough to OHKO opponents or ones that have bulkier defense like Dewgong.

Also bug. Many bugs are just....not great. I feel like I struggle the most when using them in a game and always prefer relying on bugs with better secondary typings (Volcarona comes to mind). It's got too many things that resist it.

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

Bugs and ice just dont have it off well

 

[Adam Levine]

I have a few contenders:

-Ice is so defensively impotent that I can't help but feel sad for the Ice-types that are actually meant to take hits (and there are WAY MORE than there should be). Literally just give it a resistance to Water and its defensive profile literally doubles, if not triples because of how prominent of a type Water is.
-Rock's defensive profile is also extremely problematic. It doesn't help that so many Rock-types take 4x damage from at least one type, and I don't think the Sandstorm Special Defense buff is enough to salvage it from being mostly a handicap on anything that isn't Tyranitar or Gigalith. Rock's offense is shaky too, on account of the most common attacks being so inaccurate and Power Gem having worse distribution than it should.
(Seriously, my condolences to Hisuian Avalugg. I just feel sorry for the poor thing, no wonder it went extinct.)
-Grass frustrates me, man. The five weaknesses I can excuse because it has some valuable defensive utility like against Electric-, Water- and Ground-types (and I mean this: those are VERY valuable resistances), as well as an immunity to spore moves, but so many types resist Grass that it makes me wonder who at Game Freak has had a long-time grudge with plants. Why did they make so many of the first Pokémon you find in the games resist it?

 

[Palamon]

Why can't we vote multiple options? Missed opportunity. Okay, anyway.

There's a few I'd like to say to this answer.

Bug Pokemon have always been extremely weak and have only recently been made better with stronger additions to the pool of many terrible ones. I feel like Bug Pokemon were really underpowered until the Introduction of the moves X-Scissor and Bug Buzz. As well as there just being a majority that were pretty bad. I can count only a few good Bug types before Generation 5/6, tbh. These Pokemon were: Scizor (but barely), Foretress, Heracross with Guts, Ninjask. Before Generation Five the Bug Type just...yeah. Had so many weak mons that using it was really hard.

Grass is also pretty weak because of how many weaknesses it has and how terrible the type combinations can be for it in general. A lot of Grass type combinations have the most weaknesses out of any type combinations, and that makes me really sad as a fan of Grass types.

Think Poison is a bit underpowered, too. It's only strong against two types: Fairy and Grass. Before Generation six, it was only strong to Grass. Poison honestly needs a bit of a buff in Super Effective damage department.

 

[Adam Levine]

Think Poison is a bit underpowered, too. It's only strong against two types: Fairy and Grass. Before Generation six, it was only strong to Grass. Poison honestly needs a bit of a buff in Super Effective damage department.

If you think about it, though, Psychic and Electric have the same issue. Both are only super-effective against two types, and both also do absolutely no damage to one type each. Psychic is balanced by the lack of types that actually resist it (there are only two, and Dark is immune to it), and Electric is balanced by the fact that Water- and Flying-types are so common. So what exactly is Poison balanced by, considering not three, not four, but five types keeping it in check?

This is purely conjecture, but I think the reason Poison is such a weak type offensively because so many Poison-type attacks have a chance to poison the target. Most notable Poison attacks have a 30% chance to poison, which isn't very small, especially in long, drawn-out battles. I have a feeling its weak overall offense was made to offset the the secondary effects most Poison attacks have, lest Pokémon getting an eighth of their health getting chipped every turn become way too common an occurrence on top of getting hit by an attack. In comparison, most Fire-type moves only have a 10% to burn.

You could, of course, still argue Poison would need an offensive buff, because fishing for poison chances isn't everyone's favorite game to gamble (heck, we could simply lower poison chances if we were to buff the Poison type's offenses). But at least it doesn't inherently suck to be a Poison-type Pokémon.

oh yeah fun fact poison was super effective against bug and vice versa in gen 1 but no one cares about that because poison was awful and there were barely any bug attacks lol

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

Poison definitely has some problems, but i think i always over looked them because there are alot of good looking poisons lol. Ive kinda also noticed that poisons often gets a 2nd typing that UBER cripples it(poor toxicroak)

 

[Sweet Serenity]

Poison definitely has some problems, but i think i always over looked them because there are alot of good looking poisons lol. Ive kinda also noticed that poisons often gets a 2nd typing that UBER cripples it(poor toxicroak)

Poison isn't a bad type, especially beginning with generation VI because of its super effectiveness against the Fairy-type Pokémon, which is typically very strong. Offensively, the Poison-type isn't that good because it only hits 13% of all Pokémon super effectively, which are only Grass and Fairy-types, is resisted by Poison, Ground, Rock, and Ghost-types, and completely ineffective against Steel-types, which is the most commonly used type for defense. It also lacks moves that cause flinching. However, good offensive aspects of the Poison-type nonetheless are its ability to easily inflict the Poison status condition, coverage against Fairy-types, and the move Toxic never missing under any possible circumstance when used by a Poison-type Pokémon. Toxic is a move that is great against Pokémon that stall or defensive walls. Defensively on the other hand, the Poison-type is pretty solid, where it is only weak to Psychic and Ground, resists Fighting, Poison, Bug, Grass, and Fairy-types, is immune to the Poison status, and automatically removes Toxic Spikes on your side of the field upon switching in if grounded. I wouldn't call it underpowered personally.

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

Id call it an extreme type. Its got alot of extremely great things going for and against it