Pokemon game discussion

Yeah grass is a defensively leaning type. Look at all the support moves it gets: massive. Shame about the weaknesses :/ I think starters are a special case, personally. Might as well add 'and most grass types are based on lizards' if you only consider starters.

Also Absol. But neither Absol nor Linoone are actually fairies (and Linoone isn't really notable since the coverage isn't particularly jaw dropping. It is on Absol though).

Phew, my current breeding project is nearing it's end, already have a 5IV one.
This is quite relaxing, actually.
Talonflame+O-Power=huge timesave

I'm quite surprised someone *coughEoincough* hadn't yet made a Breeding Thread.

What would be the point? Might as well make a breathing thread. It's a given. Plus there's my PokeProject thread which has gone unused as of late for that stuff.

Also I'm against dead-ended threads on principle.
HEY GET YOUR SORRY BUM BACK INTO THE POKE PROJECTS THREAD

d_what wrote:Yeah grass is a defensively leaning type. Look at all the support moves it gets: massive. Shame about the weaknesses :/ I think starters are a special case, personally. Might as well add 'and most grass types are based on lizards' if you only consider starters.

Grass is just a terrible type. It's resisted by seven types and weak to 5. It's support moves are plentiful but mostly bad.
It is quite possibly the worst type.

wait there's a breeding o-power?

bug type is worse it only has three weaknesses to five but its stats are so much lower and its moves are so much weaker

i made a bug type team in leaf green and it rocked hard

in fact, i still have that team and i have yet to finish the game. i have to get on that soon.

kotakun wrote:bug type is worse it only has three weaknesses to five but its stats are so much lower and its moves are so much weaker

I wouldn't say the stat argument is valid. Many Bug Pokemon are bad because of low stats but that has nothing to do with the type itself.
As for moves, not really? Bug types get Megahorn which is identical to Power Whip and Bug Buzz which matches Energy Ball. The only powerful moves Grass has over Bug are Solarbeam (which sucks 90% of the time), Wood Hammer and Petal Blizzard (poorly distributed).

They are both pretty terrible types though. Idk why GF boosted Ghost and Dark when Grass, Bug, Ice and Psychic were lacking so much more.

Wait, since when is Psychic lacking?

Well, Psychic at least had its time in the limelight, and it's still fairly dangerous, so I can see why Game Freak didn't boost it. I'm not sure I'd argue that Dark got a buff since it also got a brand-new weakness. Ice definitely could have used something more, defensively speaking, and Grass and Bug could just use some more options, period.

base stats should count though think about it if we were to create another type of pokemon that functioned equally to normal but the average pokemon was ten points weaker then normal beats the other type despite everything else being the same
grass can win worst defensive type but offensively bug has it by a long shot grass is actually near average offensively but bug is barely stronger defensively and thus is weaker overall by a large margin
no prizes for guessing best defensive type hint it is almost one and a half standard deviations above average

Rock?

No you fool, it's obviously Ghost. They are immune to TWO types! How freaking OP is that?

^nope he's right, psychic sucks. Weak to a lot of common things, no useful resistances that aren't covered by things better suited to the job (fairy cough cough) and likewise no super effective against- that isn't done as easily as another type. (Consider ghost-fighting or dark-fairy coverage: there's no appropriate psychic-xxxxxx type combo.) Psychic sucks and has done for a while.
Luckily there are a lot of psychic Pokémon and Game Freak has managed to makes ones decent enough to use.

Also IMO Grass > Bug offensively, and possibly defensively since its resistances (like psychic) are better done by types other than bug. Plus it gets more support as well as a broader selection of Pokemon. And combos with Steel better than Bug did

Ice is a glass cannon and honestly should remain that way. Not sure how I'd feel about ice => fairy; that's a pretty damning weakness.

I wonder if there's gonna be a Fairy/Dragon in Z.

Hanky Panky wrote:wait there's a breeding o-power?

There's a hatching one. You can get it when you maxed out your stylishness in one of Lumiose's cafés.

OverlordJ wrote:Wait, since when is Psychic lacking?

Hits 2 things SE vs 2 types NVE and 1 Immune
Hit SE by 3 types and only resists 2
That's an unfacourable ratio both defensively and offensively. That can sometimes be made up for with sheer SE coverage or useful immunities, but Psychic lacks both.

Imo Psychic should have also gained the ability to hit through Steel. It never really made sense to begin with, and Steel would then still resist half of all types.

kotakun wrote:base stats should count though think about it if we were to create another type of pokemon that functioned equally to normal but the average pokemon was ten points weaker then normal beats the other type despite everything else being the same
grass can win worst defensive type but offensively bug has it by a long shot grass is actually near average offensively but bug is barely stronger defensively and thus is weaker overall by a large margin
no prizes for guessing best defensive type hint it is almost one and a half standard deviations above average

But you aren't comparing types when you do that, you're comparing Pokemon. Of course good grass mons are better than bad bugs, but so are good bugs. Bug has "low" stats because of all the early game bugs like Butterfree skewing the averages down, but if you think think that's a valid means to gauge the value of the type itself then I can only say that I think you're wrong.
Your example of "a normal but with worse mons" isn't a useful thought experiment. A better one would be: If two Pokemon are essentially identical except for their type, which is better? I think if it was Bug it would be (marginally) better than Grass due to having 2 fewer weaknesses.
If I were to argue the other way, I would point to Grass superior number of resistances, or perhaps the actual types that it resists/hits SE.

okay so i reran the simulation giving both of them average attack defense and move power and the final result is that grass type wins 72.90 to 72.87 so its close but bug is still worse

kotakun wrote:okay so i reran the simulation giving both of them average attack defense and move power and the final result is that grass type wins 72.90 to 72.87 so its close but bug is still worse

72 what? What are these simulations? This requires elaboration.

Hytheter, you do realize that Steel was basically introduced to help nerf Psychic, right? Basically every change introduced in Gen II that wasn't bug fixes or gender/breeding related was meant to knock Psychics down a peg. I won't deny that Psychic is nowhere near as strong as it once was, but it's far from terrible.

cephalopodAscendant wrote:Hytheter, you do realize that Steel was basically introduced to help nerf Psychic, right? Basically every change introduced in Gen II that wasn't bug fixes or gender/breeding related was meant to knock Psychics down a peg. I won't deny that Psychic is nowhere near as strong as it once was, but it's far from terrible.

There were also hold items but yeah. Both Steal and Dark were mainly introduced to help nerf Psychic.

To be fair though, a big issue in gen one was also useful attacks. Since Psychic was only weak to bugs (it was supposed to be weak to ghost too but they messed that up, nobody cared since the only damaging ghost move was lick, so yeah...) and bugs had no good moves, Psychic had basically no weaknesses. Add to that that they usually had pretty great stats and one of the best attacks AND the fact that gen one had a huge number of poison types and there is no surprise why they needed to nerf it.

Even now I still freak out when the opponent has the Psychic move. It's very potent.

I'm  firmly with Hyth on this. Dividing types between great, good, average and bad, psychic falls squarely within the bad category.

Controversial: where Ice, Dark and Rock fall on this scale.

Well, if you only do it mathematically...

Psychic: 2 Super effective hits, 2 not very effectiove hits and 1 uneffective hit; 2 Resistances and 3 Weaknesses

Dark: 2 Super effective hits, 3 not very effective hits; 1 Immunity, 2 Resistances and 3 Weaknesses

Offensivly, Dark is barely better then Psychic, defensivly they are a bit better since they have an immunity.

If Psychic is bad then Dark is average at best.

Ice: 4 Supper effective hits and 4 not very effective hits; 1 Resistance and 4 Weaknesses

Ice is slightly better offensivly then psychic but more of a gamble. Ice is definitely weaker defensivly.

If Psychic is bad, so is Ice.

Rock: 4 Super effective hits and 3 not very effective hits;  4 Resistances and 5 Weaknesses

Rock is the best offensive type out of the four. Defensivly, it's a bit of a gamble but it isn't much worse then Dark.

Overall, Rock is the best type.

So yeah, there you have it, if raw math is all you care about, that's your answer. Meanwhile, I'll agree with tinning, Psychic is still scary, even if it's main scare comes from bad gen one memories.

You can't just do it with set values. Super effective against Water is far more important than super effective against Poison and should be treated accordingly. Plus each type tries to fill a niche, that also should be looked at, as well at how it fares in a meta and against competition, and the support it has.

Imagine a world where each type has 300 different Pokemon to its name, all of them powerful, unique and with loads of cool abilities and type combos, with typical move- and varied stat- distribution. Which types prove to be the best? Etc etc.
(Steel. Steel steel, steel steel steel, ghost steel steel.)

Okay, by that logic, if we know which type is the best defense, any type that hits it supereffectivly is the best offense.

Steel is weak to Fight Fire and Ground. Given that Steel is usually better at physical defense and Fire is usually a great Special attack, Fire would be our obvious choice. Now, if Steel combos with a type that resists fire (Dragon Fire Rock or Water) we'd best use a dual type. Fire/Ground would seem like the better choice, since it hits both Steel/Fire as well as Steel/Rock DOUBLE effectvily, however, it'd give us a double weakness to Steel/Water types Water attacks and could get us in trouble if any of them are Levitating or something like that. Luckily, the only Steeltype with Levitate is Bonzor and its evolution. Who can also have Heatproof. So they'll be immune to one of our moves but not the other. In other words, if Steel is the best defensive type, Fire/Ground is the best offensive type.

EDIT:

Of course, if Fire/Ground is the best offensive type, ten the best defensive type would be one that counters it.

Which would be Water/Flying.

Which in turn is obviously doubly weak to Electric type attacks.

So yeah...

EDIT EDIT:

Okay, following that logic, the most offensive Pokemon is Electivire, with Flamethrower, Earthqake and Thunderbolt. Plus make it hold a balloon or something.

There, I solved Pokemon, are you happy now?



EDIT EDIT EDIT:

I suppose you could use it's last move for Magnet Rise but I prefer to use it on Psychic, just to annoy you