Before I start this list, I’d like to make an apology. As implied at the end of my last list, I had a list on performers planned earlier, but for reasons similar to the pyromancers list, I decided to postpone it for another day.
Good thing I have other scripts in the works.
Hello, everyone! Gokuzard here, and recently, I played Pokémon Scarlet. Let’s get this out of the way. Scarlet & Violet should’ve been delayed for at least a year. If it wasn’t for all the glitches and performance issues, they could’ve been 2 of, if not the best games in the series.
Aside from the decades-long dream of a fully open-world Pokémon game, you can have Pokémon go off and beat up wild Pokémon, Pokémon variants from the ancient past and distant future, one of the best rosters of new Pokémon, a story I actually gave a $h!t about for the first time since vanilla gen 7, and my favorite gimmick this side of Megas! Sadly, I don’t feel prepared to make a list on any of those at least until I play the DLC, but at least Terastalization is tied to today’s list.
Many RPGs implement an element system, but Pokémon made it one of the cornerstones of the entire battle system. It alone gives the series’ battling a lot more depth than just “spam strong attacks until the other Pokémon is dead.” Granted, there are other components that make it as deep as it is today, but types have been in since day 1, and you don’t see Gym Leaders basing their teams on the same item or the same Ability.
So today, we’re counting down slightly more than half of that. Well, technically not. There’s Shadow, Stellar and glitch types, but we’re not counting those.
No running away now, ’cause we’re probably gonna fight after this. Someone might want to after seeing my picks. These are my Top 10 Pokémon Types!
Number 10
Just starting and we already have genwunner PTSD.
Once this list turned into a top 10, I knew the first entry would be pretty strong. I was debating on putting Fairy on here, but it’s pretty thematic, for both the premonition thing and the being strong thing, that I start with Psychics.
10 of the original 15 types are themed around the forces of nature. Ya know, fire, water, air, earth and everything in between. Meanwhile, we have these guys using nothing but their brain, and being among the strongest. Just ask RBY vets.
Back in gen 1, Psychics bent the spoon that is the meta to breaking point! Stupid status moves, stupid Special stat, and stupid matchup chart because gen 1 Bug moves were $h!t, gen 1 only had the fixed-damage Night Shade for Ghosts, which the braniacs were accidentally immune to, mind you, and Dark wouldn’t be made until gen 2! Though, I guess it’s kinda thematically appropriate. It’s like how the reason we as humans rose to the top of the food chain is using big science brains to invent $h!t.
And if you use that brain for a bit, you see what Game Freak was cooking when they fixed this matchup chart. Bugs, Ghosts and the Dark are common phobias, which, ya know, sets an alarm off in your brain, we made robots to do everything boring for us AND NOT ART OR WRITING, we invented cures for diseases (at least some of them,) and the brainiacs beat the brawniacs easily.
Meanwhile, the moveset for this type is the kind of $h!t we’ve seen from people who get superpowers from their brains. Either that or just weird $h!t. Hypnosis, mind reading, barrier projection, energy reflection, speed boosting, clearing their minds, eating dreams, energy projection, premonition, gravity manipulation, stopping item effects, trading items, trading stats, meditation, reversing turn order, priority-blocking terrain, and opening their mind’s eye to hit the one type that’s immune to it.
Oh, and these average are kinda jacked. Surprisingly high average Attack, slightly higher Special Defense and triple digit average Special Attack! Then again, it kinda makes sense, since this is the type of choice for nearly ¼ of all Megas and over ¼ of all Legendaries.
But the reason Psychic is at the bottom of the list is that a lot of these guys are just ok. I mean, you have Indeedee, Meowstic, Hypno, Chimecho, Grumpig, Bruxish, Musharna, Claydol, Bronzong, and F**KING UNOWN! WHY DOES IT EXIST?!
On the other hand, there are plenty of great Psychics. You’ve got Alakazam, Lugia, Slowking, Espeon, Metagross, Gardevoir, Gallade, Deoxys, Necrozma, Calyrex and, of course, the Mews.
I’m just glad we’ve long since abandoned the days that Psychics demolished everything. Seriously, did the gen 1 balance team get hypnotized into making them broken?!
Number 9
Ya know, after remembering the one-sided war on gen 1 Psychics, I think I’m gonna have to crack open a cold one.
A younger me would be RAGING right now! Back when I was a kid, Ice was my second-favorite behind another type later. Nowadays, though, I can’t hold it as high, seeing all the cracks.
In many other systems, Ice is often my favorite element behind (redacted.) But I’ve already talked about cryomancers. Pokémon, though, made Ice a mixed bag that you put on a wound, instead of the power of the Great White North.
But let’s look at the positives first. Ice is probably one of the best, albeit least safe, types in the game when it comes to pure offense, choking the Ground, denying plants’ growth, making Dragons and birds quote Adventures of Sonic Robotnik, and with Freeze-Dry, making Water, the most common type in the game, join the latter!
You can also throw some tactics around, with hailstorms pre-gen 9, and the slightly less useful snowstorms in gen 9, you can cause chip damage every turn and buff Defense, respectively, as well as guaranteeing Blizzards will hit, and throwing out Aurora Veils to act as combined Reflects and Light Screens.
There’s also stat resetting with Haze, stat nerf prevention with Mist, terrain deletion with Ice Spinner, Speed nerfs in Icy Wind, guaranteed crits with Frost Breath, and freezing with nearly anything else! I mean, you don’t get frozen often, but MAN, is it annoying when it happens to you?! Unless you have physical Fire moves. Also, it has a triple-digit average Attack stat, for some reason.
But the Ice sits in the middle of the road because it’s basically a glass cannon. It may destroy like half the roster, but about a third of it breaks the Ice like the smoothest talker in existence! It gets picked by iron and Rock, gets Rocky montaged by Fighting, melts faster than real-world glaciers if literally everyone got into NFTs and AI, is resisted by Water, for whatever reason, and resists nothing but itself!
It especially sucks since most of the Pokémon are great. Ice is the rarest type, but it’s the near opposite of Water in terms of quality over quantity. There’s Mamoswine, Weavile, Regice, Vanilluxe, Avalugg, Eiscue, Lapras, Alolan Ninetales, Alolan Sandslash, Galarian Darmanitan, Abomasnow, Articuno, Frosmoth, Crabominable, Cetitan, Beartic, Baxcalibur, Glaceon and Froslass.
So while I didn’t put them sub-zero, I had to sacrifice the higher spot I wanted for those as cold as Ice.
Number 8
And now to piss off a younger me even more.
Yeah, back in the day, I was one of the MANY people who was not fond of the Bug type. To be fair, the dislike wasn’t completely unjustified. Nowadays, it doesn’t bug me that much.
Can I speak, please?
Back in gen 1, this type was debatably the worst. All but 2 gen 1 Bugs were meh at best, neither of the good Bugs had any Bug moves, there were only 3 damage-dealing Bug moves, all of which were $h!t (remember, Leech Life was base 20 power before gen 7,) and Beedrill, who, ya know, is part Poison and therefore is weak to Psychic, was the only Bug who could learn 2 of them at the time! This is another reason Psychics dominated gen 1.
However, in the type yearbook, Bug would be voted most improved. Aside from the better Bugs introduced in the next 8 generations, gen 2 added Fury Cutter and Megahorn, gen 3 added Tail Glow and Silver Wind, gen 4 added Bug Buzz, X-Scissor and U-Turn, gen 5 added Quiver Dance, and gen 7 added Lunge. These moves DEFINITELY helped the young grasshoppers become less $h!tty.
Though what the f**k are some of these resistances? Why do they resist Fighting and Ground? On that note, why do Fighting and Fairy resist it? That mutual resistance thing confuses me so much. The other offensive strengths and the defensive weaknesses make sense, though, considering birds eat them, Rocks crush them and Fire melts them, meanwhile they eat Grass and make half of humanity inexplicably piss themselves. Also, Kamen Rider reference, apparently.
The average base stat total, though, is $h!t. The lowest average base stat total of any type, in fact. This makes sense, considering how many bad Bugs there are; Butterfree, the Wurmple line, Vivillon, Parasect, Venomoth, Ledian, Ariados, Masquerain, and the f**king Burmy line come to mind!
There may be a lot of $h!t, but then there’s Ninjask, Pinsir, Yanmega, Golisopod, Heracross, Vikavolt, Buzzwole, Armaldo, Centiskorch, Araquanid, Frosmoth, Lokix, the Scyther line and pretty much every gen 5 Bug.
So while the Bugs were easy to squish in gen 1, nowadays, it’s… slightly more like the proportional monsters that real life bugs are.
Number 7
You know the 4 classical elements of many mythologies? Ya know, water, earth, fire and air. The ones in the Avatar cycle. It figures that Pokémon would have types for each.
While fire, air and water only have one type each (unless you count Ice,) earth got 3, oddly enough. You have Rock for stones and minerals and $h!t, Ground for mud, sand, dirt and… well, the ground, and Steel for metals, obviously.
Sadly, only one of those got on my list. Rock has too many weaknesses for my list, and Steel is sometimes a bit too tanky for my tastes, but the Ground type’s offenses hit hard enough to get on my list.
Ya know, the extremes of each kind of type effectiveness is kinda interesting to me. We have one type that’s immune to 2, one type that resists 10, 2 types that are weak to 5, 2 types that are resisted by 7, and then there’s the types that have the most offensive strengths.
5 f**king types break against the Ground! The Rocks and metal get crushed, the flames get put out by dirt, diseases get cured by medicine made from minerals (wouldn’t that make more sense for Rock?) and electricity gets completely choked by the Ground! Honestly, being the Achilles’ heel of the otherwise mostly safe lightning spam is one of the most fun things about this type.
On the other hand, plants grow out of it, Water erodes it, Ice covers it, and birds fly over it. Also, bugs resist it, for some reason. I don’t know why. If you needed something else to resist Ground so it doesn’t destroy half the universe before Levitate and Air Balloons were introduced, why not, ya know, HAVE ICE RESIST IT?!
Not that much variety in the moveset, though. It’s, like, 75% “I hit good,” but I have little problem going unga bunga. But if you do, you can lower speed with Bulldoze, trap Pokémon with Sand Tomb, throw Spikes on the other side, or annoy tf out of people with Sand Attack and Mud Slap. Ya know, in rulesets where that’s legal.
Though another reason I like going head empty with Ground is because of these fat physical stats. Both of them are average triple digits. Not much special, and dummy slow, but did you expect anything else from a roster like this? Barring Pallosand and Bloodmoon Ursaluna, all of this type’s heavy hitters either mostly hit physically or hit well with both types. I ain’t complaining, though.
You’ve got Marowak, Groudon, Excadrill, Mudsdale, Sandaconda, Donphan, Nidoking, Flygon, Steelix, Torterra, Swampert, Garchomp, Hippowdon, Rhyperior, Gliscor, Landorus, Ursaluna, Krookodile and Golurk.
So I wouldn’t recommend sleeping on the Ground. This ain’t the Stone Age, after all.
Number 6
Nah, step into the present! We in the age of technology now! And ya know what powers that technology?!
I had to give a spot to Electric. It’s the type of the series’ mascot, after all. Then again, that series’ mascot is often carried by “Rat’s gotta win unless it’s a regional tournament,” and is still stupid in every Smash game, so maybe I should retract that statement. Not retracting this spot on the list, though.
First off, look at this type chart. You’d think that 2 strengths, 3 things that resist it, and one thing that’s immune to it isn’t that good, but considering it resists the mostly safe bird spam while frying them, and the most common type conducts it, suddenly, having only 2 things weak to it doesn’t sound so bad, especially with only one weakness!
Take a guess what stats are highest on average. HP and defenses? Nah, that ain’t right. In contrast to the physical tanks of the last entry, Electric types are generally Special sweepers, being the runner-ups for fastest type in the game.
And aside from shocking and paralyzing things, you can charge up while raising Special Defense, attack while raising Special Attack, float above the one weakness, and have your own terrain that prevents sleeping while buffing Electric moves!
And aside from Pincurchin and the 50 billion Pikachu clones that aren’t Pawmot, there aren’t too many Electric Pokémon I dislike. Highlights include Zapdos, Ampharos, Manectric, Eelectross, Xurkitree, Toxtricity, Electivire, Raikou, Jolteon, Zebstrika, Regieleki, Thundurus, Zekrom, Luxray, Rotom, Magnezone, Galvantula and Tapu Koko.
Now if only one of these could power your electricity so you wouldn’t have to pay for it. Then again, realistically, a $h!tton of Pokémon could slaughter someone just by existing, so probably not.
Number 5
As I said, gen 1 Psychics were STUPID broken, and one of the reasons was the matchup chart. Bug moves were $h!t, all the one Ghost had was Night Shade, and the only things that resisted Psychics were other Psychics! Yeah, the meta needed to be balanced. So how did Game Freak do that?
Take it away, Mermaid Man!
I’m not even kidding! Pretty much everything about the Dark type screams villainous! Heck, its Japanese name is Aku. If your mind pointed to Samurai Jack, you’re only partially right, because that’s the Japanese word for evil!
Fittingly enough, the strengths and weaknesses (minus Bug) play into the evil theming, scaring the brain, putting Ghosts to their eternal rest, and getting their @$$es kicked by the light of Fairies and the punches of shonen protagonists!
Even the moves scream evil; smacking items away, banning items, swapping items, stealing items, throwing items, banning status moves, stealing status moves, ganging up on mfs, harshly lowering Special Defense, sharply raising Special Attack, stupid high priority, banning spamming, bonus damage when switching, even turning Attack stats and stat buffs against the other Pokémon!
Surprisingly, this type’s highest stat is Attack. Triple digit average, and everything else is low-mid 80s. Would’ve been better if Dark was Physical pre-gen 4. The point is balancing the Special-based Psychics, and aside from Houndoom, a lot of pre-gen 4 Dark types had high Attack.
Speaking of, the Pokémon tie the evil theming in a malicious bow. There’s Houndoom, Honchkrow, Absol, Spiritomb, Zoroark, Obstagoon, Sableye, Kingambit, Hydreigon, Guzzlord, Tyranitar, Shiftry, Cacturne, Sharpedo, Crawdaunt, Drapion, Greninja, Grimmsnarl, Scrafty, Umbreon, Galarian Moltres, Weavile, the Ruinous Quartet, Unbound Hoopa, and, of course, Darkrai.
Would’ve been funnier if it were one spot lower, but I’m not doing that just for a joke. Hey, don’t bring up the favorite games list! Third Strike being number 37 actually was just a coincidence!
Number 4
So we go from the evil type to the spooky type. I thought Halloween was in 5 months.
Ya know how I said Bug was debatably the worst type in gen 1? Now that I think about it, Ghost might’ve been up there, if just for the entire point of it backfiring. Not only was there only one Ghost move, which only did damage equal to the user’s level, someone at Game Freak accidentally made it not work on Psychics at all instead of being super effective! Oh, and the one Ghost line at the time is part Poison! Thanks, gen 1!
This was fixed in gen 2, but aside from Banette, what didn’t help any pre-gen 4 Ghost was that their type was physical, for some reason. Why?! Phasing through $h!t doesn’t seem very physical to me!
And if Ghosts were physical, explain why Fighting can’t hit it, and why neither Normal nor Ghost can hit each other! Eh, whatever. Anyway, while I was confused at Ghosts being weak to themselves back in the day, only other spirits can see or hear each other, so I guess it makes sense. Dark also kinda makes sense in the way of being so evil that even spirits fear them.
The moves definitely play into the poltergeist and fear theming too. Confusion, licking to inflict paralysis, forcing opponents into nightmares, phasing in and out of the spirit world, having items hit the wielder, extra damage on anything with a status condition, taking murderers down to the Nether Realm with them, and even cutting HP in half to curse the opponent!
Strangely, the average stats are kinda balanced. Everything besides HP and Speed averages between high 80s and high 90s, with average HP and Speed both being high 70s. Kinda expected Special Attack to be ginormous, but whatever.
Anyway, a lot of these fill the inanimate object role, and in these cases, since ghosts take over whatever they want, it makes sense, at least more than Pokéball thrown at energy pulse! Possessed puppets, possessed appliances, possessed chandeliers, possessed swords, possessed coffins, possessed trees, possessed sandcastles, possessed seaweed on anchors, possessed teacups, possessed… tumbleweed? Why not?
And several of the ones that don’t possess things aren’t bad either. Gengar, Mismagius, Dusknoir, Giratina, Marshadow, Houndstone, Froslass, Gholdengo, Golurk, Basculegion, Ceruledge, Hisuian Zoroark, Cursola, Annihilape and Mimikyu.
And given how dark these Pokédex entries often get, you’re probably in for a scare. One that’s a bit 2spooky4u.
Oh, shut up!
Number 3
If I’m being honest, there’s a pretty big gap between the top 3 and the rest of the list. It was pretty hard deciding which types to put on the lower spots, but I knew my top 3 from second 1. But before I give out the bronze medal, I have to ask one very important question.
What’s the point of a fight if you’re not gonna have fun with it?
Kicking off the top 3 is the type that just punches and kicks $h!t. As I said at the start of the list, most of the original 15 types were mostly based on the natural elements. So putting in gymbros sounds like a stupid idea. And admittedly, in gen 1, it kinda was.
Since Steel and Dark didn’t exist yet, that left the punchy bois with only 3 offensive strengths, on top of 4 offensive resistances and a type that’s completely immune to it. Luckily, alongside nerfing the brainiacs, gen 2’s new types indirectly buffed the brawniacs.
Nowadays, Fighters are tied with Ground for the most types that are weak to it, Chris Redfielding Rocks, testing their might against Steel, breaking the Ice, bullying Normies and vanquishing Darkness using the power of God and anime! And while I don’t get Flying, and get Fairy only slightly more; punching light does nothing to it, I guess, I understand the weakness to Psychic, since brains beat brawn.
The stat chart is pretty much what you’d expect. Most of them are meh, Special Attack is trash, but guess what type has the highest average Attack stat? Even the overall Attack stat is average triple digits, but for fully evolved Pokémon, it’s shonen protagonist tier!
I’m hardly even kidding! Look at these moves! Bootleg Jojo reference, bootleg Kamehameha, bootleg Spirit Bomb (that works about as well,) bootleg Shoryuken, bootleg Tatsumaki, literal barrier breaking, and on that note, about half of the attacking moves have some added effect; Attack buffs, self-healing, dual-type attacks, hitting hard enough to guarantee confusion, paralysis infliction, weight-based damage, double damage if you get hit, stat change ignorance, more damage with less HP, mixing Sucker Punch with Fake Out, double damage on sleeping targets, even more damage based on your Defense! Heck, you even have stuff like Octolock, No Retreat, Quick Guard and Victory Dance for actual status moves!
And then there’s the roster. I love pretty much all of them (except maybe Virision and Sneasler.) And for my favorites, we have Machamp, Sirfetch’d, Annihilape, the Hitmons, Hariyama, Mienshao, Crabominable, Grapploct, Falinks, Urshifu, Galarian Zapdos, Paldean Tauros, Medicham, Hawlucha, Marshadow, Koraidon, Blaziken, Infernape, Heracross, Gallade, Hisuian Decidueye, Bewear, Kommo-O, and Gok- I mean Lucario!
Now I’m craving some Pokkén. Hey, Game Freak, can we get another Pokémon fighting game? Imagine one made by Arcsys. That’d go CRAZY!
Number 2
The hardest part of this list was deciding the runner up. Numbers 2 and 3 are borderline equal to me. But we’d get nowhere if I made this a tie, so I have to decide.
So fittingly enough, Dragon ends up getting the penultimate spot on this list!
No Fus-Roh-Duh Dragons get high on my list! Dragons are awesome! May or may not have a list on them coming later, but for now, let’s talk about Dragon type Pokémon.
Of all the mythical creatures in legends, Dragons were the only one with their own type before Fairies existed. Now that I think about it, I’m half surprised yokai didn’t get their own type, but I dunno what you’d call that in English. The Demon type wouldn’t fly well with those obnoxious anti-fun Christians that already hate Pokémon for whatever reason.
Anyway, with how many roles the winged reptiles have played in literature; wish granting, omniscient, immortal, protectors, destroyers, dark lord’s pets, apocalypses on wings, etc, it makes sense to base an entire type on them. And MAN, does this type live up to… some of that power!
Despite only being super effective against itself, Dragons are among the best offensive types in the game! Only one type resists it and even though Fairies are immune to it, they generally have coverage to deal with both. I mean, dragons do usually breathe fire and maybe those claws and teeth have gotten nasty-@$$ $h!t in them.
Alongside that, with its chokehold on both box mascots and pseudo-legendaries, Dragons have the highest average HP, the highest average Special Attack, and the highest average base stat total overall!
Honestly, though, STAB has a similar problem to Ground. Signature moves aside, it’s mostly raw power and not much else. Barely any status moves either, and the 3 it does have are mostly based on adding more power. Not a big problem for me, though. I love going in with raw power.
What put Dragon above Fighting is the roster. I love every Dragon. Yes, even Druddigon, Tatsugiri and the apples. And a lot of the best are in my top 75! Dragonite, Salamence, Haxorus, Regidrago, Latios, the Creation Trio, the Tao Trio, Garchomp, Kommo-o, Dragapult, Koraidon, Hydreigon, Eternatus, Ultra Necrozma, and don’t even get me started on Rayquaza!
Well, only one type left, and I knew the top spot from second 1.
Number 1
I just now realized we haven’t had a starter type yet, unless you count Electric (which I don’t.) So let’s fix that.
I’m not gonna act like this was a hard decision. Grass has too many weaknesses, and Water being the most common type is a bit too much of a double-edged sword for the top spot.
So send your best Avatar, because everything changes when the Fire Nation attacks!
Ironic that the heat rose to the top. Let’s just make it funnier and say the Dragons breathed it there. I’m no arsonist irl, but in games, it’s a WHOLE ‘nother story. That story started with Pokémon.
Let’s start with that matchup chart. 5 winning matchups, 4 losing matchups, and each of them make at least some sense. Plants and insects get burned to death, Ice gets melted stupidly easily, metal get melted with enough heat, and I guess Fire is a source of light, so Fairy makes sense if you think of it like that. Meanwhile, Rocks, Water and dirt all put out flames easily.
And thankfully, it’s not 100% offense either, with burning being the poison status but with an Attack debuff on top of that. Quoting Flame Hyenard is fun when it’s not badly voiced. But if you do want to go full offense, you can go all Sunny D for a 50% damage boost, on top of cutting Water damage in half! There’s actually, like, half a dozen moves or Abilities that buff Fire moves.
And aside from that, you have Flame Charge to boost Speed, Heat Crash to use weight to your advantage, Incinerate to burn Berries, and Mystical Fire to lower Special Attack, alongside the raw damage moves. Most of which also burn things. Which is helped by the decently high offensive stats.
The real Fire comes from the Pokémon themselves! I love every one of them, from Charmander to Chi-Yu. Yes, that includes Simisear. There were only 3 times when I didn’t pick the Fire starter, and I could be here for a WHILE saying my favorites!
To keep it brief, Arcanine, Ninetales, Entei, Magmortar, Ho-Oh, Rapidash, Blaziken, Infernape, Incineroar, Skeledirge, Darmanitan, Cinderace, Armorouge, Ceruledge, Alolan Marowak, Primal Groudon, Blacephalon, Volcarona, Houndoom, Victini, Reshiram, Chandelure, Salazzle, and the Mon, the myth, the starter, #ZardGang for life!
Nothing keeps you warmer than anything that generates heat, but play with that fire too much, and you’ll get roasted!
This has been Gokuzard. Keep your soul burning.
