by Magnus0 » Sun Jan 01, 2017 3:59 pm
Are we going to cover balance changes too? like type resistances and such?
The pokemon games are fairly well balanced competitively, most types have their uses, be it offensively or defensively. However, there are a couple of types that can be considered OP or UP compared to other types.
The three types with the least amount of flaws and the most amount of positive traits are fairy, steel and water. Pokemon of those three types are incredibly easy to put on your team because they offer a large amount of resistances and only a few weaknesses that are generally not hard to cover up. Steel especially offers many resistances, and water and fairy offer solid offensive coverage. Ghost and Dragon come close because both types have only two other types that resist their attacks.
The types that are generally considered as 'bad' or 'lackluster' are Ice (the most UP type in the game), grass, normal, bug and psychic. Ice is nice offensively, but absolutely horrid defensively. Ice types offer only one resistance, so they are very hard to put on your team. Grass types have some good traits, but they have so many weaknesses and so many types resist grass that pokemon of the grass type often have trouble earning a spot on your team. The bug type is very similar to grass in that regard, but it also doesn't help that bug types generally have really bad stats. Psychic was once the most OP type in the game, but since the introduction of dark and steel types it has suffered. Psychic is OK offensively and not very impressive defensively. Normal is just really meh, not really bad, not really good, just meh. The type has almost no interaction with other types, so a normal type has to have other assets than it's typing to be worth using on your team.
If we are going to do balance changes to balance our dex around, these would be my suggestions:
- Ice gets a resistance to both water and fairy. It makes little sense that spraying water at an ice type does neutral damage, but freezing up water with an ice attack is not very effective. It's basically the same thing (ice is still water). Ice getting a resistance to fairy is purely based on balance.
with two extra resistances to good offensive typing, Ice types finally get some room to breath. They get more switch-in opportunities, and defensively oriented ice types like articuno and avalugg can finally put their good bulk to use. (for reference, Articuno was in the PU tier before SuMo, where the worst of the worst pokemon reside, while combusken and fletchinder where in NU and RU respectively).
- flying loses it's super-effectiveness against grass. I never really understood why flying was super effective against grass in the first place, I mean, most birds don't eat plants, and the ones that do (berries, fruits, etc.) are actually doing the plant a favor by spreading it's seeds.
This is more of a buff to grass than a nerf to flying. Flying has amazing neutral coverage anyway, even with this small nerf, but grass gets more switch-in opportunities. Most grass types are defensive, so losing a weakness definitely helps their staying power.
- fairy loses its resistance to bug. This is mostly due to balance, there are literally six other types that resist bug already so there's no reason why fairy should have a resistance against bug too.
Bug probably continues to be lackluster offensively, but fairy at least gets another (small) nerf.
- bug gets a resistance to ghost. bugs are simple creatures, they are not bothered by scary ghost terrorizing their thoughts.
Ghost is very hard to cover, because only the rare dark type and the lackluster normal type resist it. Giving bug a resistance to such a good offensive type makes it a little more appealing to put a bug on your team.
Maybe it's a bit too much of a hassle to discuss about balance changes for this project, but it would be nice to have a more balanced type chart to work with. What do y'all think?
I HAVE CHORTLES!