Hidden Type

Would Dark/Steel/Ghost be any good on bisharp? getting rid of that Fighting weakness would be neat, but Knock off being neutral is kinda upsetting
 
Odd thought: add Grass typing to your Grass counters. Spore immunity, Leech Seed immunity, other Powder moves immunity. It even adds another tier of Grass resistance. Not necessarily a good idea in all cases, but a broad principle worth keeping in mind.
 
The Immortal said:
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/pandora-hiddentype-1098213

had a battle with macrarazy, flying heatran saved my ass vs fighting pinsir. and i learnt ice shard > ice punch on weavile.

i'll be on if anyone wants to battle.

edit: another battle http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/pandora-hiddentype-1098557
edit2: rematch http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/pandora-hiddentype-1098772
Click to expand...

Neat, that. I guess we're still looking at an OU-ish meta. I'd like to make my first team with something from the lower tiers. Let's see.

Yellow Cheese Ghost is infact a good addition to Bisharp, but if you're not using it as a sweeper but just for that neat STAB Knock off, Flying will do.

Ghoul King If you bring out a counter, the Grass mon will switch anyway. If you have no oher type to add your Grass counter, then maybe Grass is worth it. Oherwise, it's best to always analyze which type addition will greatly benefit your team.
 
Last edited:
If you bring out a counter, the Grass mon will switch anyway. If you have no oher type to add your Grass counter, then maybe Grass is worth it. Oherwise, it's best to always analyze which type addition will greatly benefit your team.
Click to expand...

Switch in on a predicted Spore from Subpunch Breloom. A normal counter will generally be asleep, and potentially in real danger of being Focus Punched out of existence before it wakes up. In general, the value would be switching in on a predicted Spore (Or other powder move) and not being affected.

Some stuff.

Hidden Type is Toxicroak's dream meta: at last it can be the Poison/Fighting/Dark type it always knew it was! Not only will it finally get STAB on Knock Off/Sucker Punch, but adding Dark to Poison/Fighting eliminates the double weakness to Psychic with the only notable trade-off being that it gains a weakness to Fairy. The resistance to Ghost and double resistance to Dark is pretty nice too.

Attaching Dark to a Ghost is often going to be pretty useful, with the only notable bad point being that it adds a Fairy weakness. For Gengar, it just straight up eliminates its Psychic, Dark, and Ghost vulnerabilities without opening up any new ones!

For Whimsicott, probably its best option is to add Steel: it completely eliminates its double weakness to Poison, as well as covering up its weaknesses to Flying, Steel, and Ice, with the only real trade-off being that its weakness to Fire becomes a double weakness. Anything else that helps cover the Poison weakness has its own problems: Poison typing adds a Psychic weakness and only reduces the Poison weakness, Ground gives it a double Ice weakness while only reducing the Poison weakness, and Rock gives it a double Steel weakness, though it at least also covers up the Flying weakness.

Sableye adding Poison would shuffle away from a Fairy weakness to a Ground weakness. Eeeeh. It does also make it immune to Toxic and give it perfectly accurate Toxic itself, though. Alternatively, you could add Fire, gaining a weakness to Water, Rock, and Ground... no thanks. Or you could add Steel, gaining a Ground and Fire weakness. (And also making Scrappy Fighting moves doubly super effective, ouch) I'd rather use Poison myself.

Tyrantrum can add any of its Strong Jaws-benefiting types! Unfortunately, those options are: double Fairy weakness, double Ground weakness, other double Ground weakness, double Fighting AND Steel weakness, and other other double Ground weakness. (Dark, Fire, Electric, Ice, Poison, respectively) Ugh.

Mega Aerodactyl can add STAB to Iron Head or Crunch, which both benefit from Tough Claws. Adding Dark makes it weak to Fighting and Fairy, but that's pretty OK. Adding Steel also adds a Fighting weakness, and otherwise adds no real disadvantage. Meanwhile, it covers up the Ice, Steel, and Rock weaknesses. Nice.

Clawitzer and Mega Blastoise can add STAB to their Mega Launcher boosted moves. Water/Dragon is of course a classic choice, Water/Dark isn't terrible, and Water/Steel has its good points.
 
Ghoul King said:
Switch in on a predicted Spore from Subpunch Breloom. A normal counter will generally be asleep, and potentially in real danger of being Focus Punched out of existence before it wakes up. In general, the value would be switching in on a predicted Spore (Or other powder move) and not being affected.

Some stuff.

Hidden Type is Toxicroak's dream meta: at last it can be the Poison/Fighting/Dark type it always knew it was! Not only will it finally get STAB on Knock Off/Sucker Punch, but adding Dark to Poison/Fighting eliminates the double weakness to Psychic with the only notable trade-off being that it gains a weakness to Fairy. The resistance to Ghost and double resistance to Dark is pretty nice too.

Attaching Dark to a Ghost is often going to be pretty useful, with the only notable bad point being that it adds a Fairy weakness. For Gengar, it just straight up eliminates its Psychic, Dark, and Ghost vulnerabilities without opening up any new ones!

For Whimsicott, probably its best option is to add Steel: it completely eliminates its double weakness to Poison, as well as covering up its weaknesses to Flying, Steel, and Ice, with the only real trade-off being that its weakness to Fire becomes a double weakness. Anything else that helps cover the Poison weakness has its own problems: Poison typing adds a Psychic weakness and only reduces the Poison weakness, Ground gives it a double Ice weakness while only reducing the Poison weakness, and Rock gives it a double Steel weakness, though it at least also covers up the Flying weakness.

Sableye adding Poison would shuffle away from a Fairy weakness to a Ground weakness. Eeeeh. It does also make it immune to Toxic and give it perfectly accurate Toxic itself, though. Alternatively, you could add Fire, gaining a weakness to Water, Rock, and Ground... no thanks. Or you could add Steel, gaining a Ground and Fire weakness. (And also making Scrappy Fighting moves doubly super effective, ouch) I'd rather use Poison myself.

Tyrantrum can add any of its Strong Jaws-benefiting types! Unfortunately, those options are: double Fairy weakness, double Ground weakness, other double Ground weakness, double Fighting AND Steel weakness, and other other double Ground weakness. (Dark, Fire, Electric, Ice, Poison, respectively) Ugh.

Mega Aerodactyl can add STAB to Iron Head or Crunch, which both benefit from Tough Claws. Adding Dark makes it weak to Fighting and Fairy, but that's pretty OK. Adding Steel also adds a Fighting weakness, and otherwise adds no real disadvantage. Meanwhile, it covers up the Ice, Steel, and Rock weaknesses. Nice.

Clawitzer and Mega Blastoise can add STAB to their Mega Launcher boosted moves. Water/Dragon is of course a classic choice, Water/Dark isn't terrible, and Water/Steel has its good points.
Click to expand...
Or water/fighting
 
You could add Normal type to Azelf, Gigalith, Metagross and Genesect for horrifically powerful EXPLOSIONS!

252+ Atk Choice Band Gigalith Explosion vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Mew: 496-585 (122.7 - 144.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+1 252+ Atk Choice Band Genesect Explosion vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Mew: 684-805 (169.3 - 199.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO

BOOM! Hahahahahaha!


I just realised that Hidden Power Normal isn't a thing, so you can't do this.
I'm so disappointed right now...
 
Yeah, HP Normal and HP Fairy are a no-go. Too bad.

Neat little analysis by Ghoul King . There are so many potential Stall mons. Then again, sometimes we all tend to under-estimate the STAB multiplier. Something like a Mega Pinsir firing off a STAB CC will punch a hole even on resisted hits.
 
Fire/Flying/Rock Mega-Charizard-Y. Cuts it's SR weakness down to 25% along with cutting its weakness to rock quite a bit. It makes it's weakness to water unbearable, not that it matters when you have Drought + Solar beam. Ancient Power is more useable now (take a moment to think of the uses for AP on Megazard Y, I use it ingame and it does it's job very well). Not only that but all it does negatively for Charizard is it makes Steel/Fighting hit Neutrally, along with the water problem i mentioned. Ground would hit for x4 damage but Flying is a cool guy.

Also Zoroark is pretty much satan here. The mind games you could play with your opponent...
 
Last edited:
Lennon1398 said:
Fire/Flying/Rock Mega-Charizard-Y. Cuts it's SR weakness down to 25% along with cutting its weakness to rock quite a bit. It makes it's weakness to water unbearable, not that it matters when you have Drought + Solar beam. Ancient Power is more useable now (take a moment to think of the uses for AP on Megazard Y, I use it ingame and it does it's job very well). Not only that but all it does negatively for Charizard is it makes Steel/Fighting hit Neutrally, along with the water problem i mentioned. Ground would hit for x4 damage but Flying is a cool guy.

Also Zoroark is pretty much satan here. The mind games you could play with your opponent...
Click to expand...
Rock does does not resist rock :[

I think that adding Fighting would be better, giving you STAB Focus blast adn ofc reducing SR weakness. While it does make you weak to flying Spam, Card-Z could never survive a band BB from Bravest burd anyways
 
Yellow Cheese said:
Rock does does not resist rock :[

I think that adding Fighting would be better, giving you STAB Focus blast adn ofc reducing SR weakness. While it does make you weak to flying Spam, Card-Z could never survive a band BB from Bravest burd anyways
Click to expand...
ROCK DOESN'T RESIST ROCK? WHAT?
 
DinaIsha said:
Yeah, HP Normal and HP Fairy are a no-go. Too bad.

Neat little analysis by Ghoul King . There are so many potential Stall mons. Then again, sometimes we all tend to under-estimate the STAB multiplier. Something like a Mega Pinsir firing off a STAB CC will punch a hole even on resisted hits.
Click to expand...

I'm tending to focus on defensive advantage over offensive advantage because the math favors cutting out weaknesses over gaining STAB: 50% damage taken is a bigger modification than 50% more damage dealt. STAB is of course certainly worth exploring, particularly for Pokemon with outstanding attacks that are nonetheless off-type, who may well find themselves jumping from a 3HKO to a 2HKO (Which is huge against switch-ins) or even a 2HKO to a 1HKO, but the only time cutting the damage you take from an attack in half isn't doubling the number of hits to KO you with it is if the base damage was 200% or more in the first place, which almost never happens without extreme boosting of the sort that is difficult to arrange, or as a result of picking on a double weakness, which can potentially be reduced to no damage in certain cases. (eg Toxicroak will basically never survive a Psychic move... and then you add Dark type and it's immune)

Whereas a 50% boost to damage requires manually crunching numbers and working out hypothetical scenarios to figure out: does STAB mean you can outpace Eviolite Chansey's Softboiled recovery pace? Does STAB mean you go from a 2HKO to a 1HKO on (name a Pokemon)? So it's a lot easier to say 'hey eliminating this weakness is always awesome and useful' whereas adding STAB to a move needs to jump past crucial breakpoints (Outpacing the target's ability to heal, reducing how many moves it takes to KO the target) to be a noticeable boost.

This doesn't necessarily mean the meta is more stall-y, just that the benefits to stall are easier to identify readily.

Some more specific examples.

Hydreigon with Poison picks up no new weaknesses, but reduces its Fairy vulnerability and eliminates its Fighting and Bug vulnerability. It's nifty.

Fairy/Fire Clefable is fairly good and throws people. It's got the movepool and all.

Gardevoir adding Electric is one of its only particularly notable things, but it's actually pretty good, providing resistance to Talonflame's Brave Birds, removing the Steel weakness, adding STAB to its Electric moves, and throwing in resistance to Electric which is nice.
 
Last edited:
Mega Gardevoir would be better off with Steel: Removing 2 of its weaknesses in Poison (Immunity) and Steel, while giving it weaknesses to Fire and Ground. But it gains a lot more resistances for a good measure.

I'm beginning to notice that Electric/Flying/Steel Zapdos, Physically invested, is a better Skarmory, being able to take hits and still Attack with STAB TBolts (Plus it's a lot quicker). It's only weak to Fire, which should be easily covered by something else. And as already mentioned by Ghoul King , Dragon/Flying/Steel Dragonite is going to be great. I can just see it.

Also, Rotom-W can be Water/Electric/Steel, not only becoming a better wall with only 1 Weakness (No Mold Breaker Earthquake pls), but actually be proud to be a Washing Machine made of Steel. Seriously, this thing will be good, having access to WilOWisp, and running the common ChestoRest set.
 
I'd still rather go with Electric Gardevoir for the Electric STAB, myself. Immunity to paralysis is important to a Pokemon that often lives or dies by its speed, while Poison (The status condition) and Sandstorm immunity rarely matter because most things either switch out on Mega Gardevoir or inflict egregious damage. Wearing it down doesn't generally happen.

Also, here's a replay in which I basically solo a team with Steel Dragonite. Even though it gets Burned almost at the beginning of the match. http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/pandora-hiddentype-1110405

Shedinja

First and foremost: Stealth Rock, hurting itself in its Confusion, Nightmare, Curse, Destiny Bond, Perish Song, and Mold Breaker are the only things Shedinja cannot add a type to render itself immune to that normally kill it.

Secondly: there is exactly one reason why Shedinja is sad that it can't add Normal and Fairy: if it is unaffected by Ghost, it must have added Dark and thus be vulnerable to Fairy, while if it is unaffected by Dark it must have either added Fighting or Dark, and thus be vulnerable to Fairy again. This lack of ambiguity hurts it a little.

Fire: Removes the weakness to Fire, adds a weakness to Water, renders Shedinja immune to Burn. Pretty nice, nothing amazing.

Flying: Immunity to Spikes and Toxic Spikes, adds weaknesses to Electric and Ice, no new resistances. Also makes Shedinja immune to damage from Sky Drop, but that's not much payoff.

Water: Removes the weakness to Fire, adds a weakness to Electric. Eeeh.

Rock: Removes the weakness to Flying and Fire, adds in a weakness to Water and Steel, throws in Sandstorm immunity. Pretty nifty.

Electric: Removes the weakness to Flying, renders it immune to Paralysis. Eeeeh.

Poison: Adds a weakness to Psychic, renders it immune to Toxic and causes it to absorb Toxic Spikes. It may advertise itself explicitly, which is bad.

Steel: Removes the weakness to Flying and Rock, renders it immune to Toxic, Toxic Spikes, and Sandstorm damage, and has no disadvantage. Very nice.

Dark: Removes the weakness to Dark and Ghost, adds a weakness to Fairy. Notable as the only way for Shedinja to remove its Ghost weakness.

Ground: Removes the Rock weakness, adds a Water weakness, renders it immune to Sandstorm damage. A bad Steel, and arguably worse than adding Rock.

Psychic: No advantages, no disadvantages. What's the point?

Dragon: Removes the Fire weakness, adds a weakness to Fairy, Dragon, and Ice. Uh, no.

Ice: Adds a weakness to Steel, renders it immune to Hail. Not as bad as you might expect, but not good either.

Fighting: Removes the weakness to Dark and Rock, adds a weakness to Fairy and Psychic. On the face of it not that good, and hurt by sharing a weakness with Dark, but combined with Safety Goggles it can genuinely confuse your opponent: turn 1, Tyranitar attacks with Rock Slide! Shedinja is not affected, and then is unaffected by the Sandstorm! Your opponent assumes Ground or Steel, and turn 2 attacks with Crunch, and it also doesn't work. Just being able to completely wall a Tyranitar that lacks Aerial Ace is pretty nice for something that normally hates Tyranitar.

Fairy types

Since you can't add Fairy type to Pokemon in Hidden Type, the first thing I'll cover comprehensively is Fairy-typed Pokemon themselves, since there's no either/or cases of running a Fairy/whatever and adding yadda vs running a whatever/yadda and adding Fairy like you can with other types.

First and foremost, Steel is of course unmatched as an addition for the fact that it covers both of Fairy's weaknesses, giving you a Fairy-typed Pokemon that cannot be counter by Fairy counters per se. For dual-typed Fairies it's not necessarily that clear-cut, however, such as how Carbink and Diancie will remain weak to Steel and weren't weak to Poison in the first place, and now they're weak to Fighting and doubly weak to Ground!

Clefable: Has the movepool to pull off Fairy/Electric, Fairy/Fire, Fairy/Psychic, Fairy/Ice (Don't do it, it's doubly weak to Steel and offensively redundant), Fairy/Bug, and this is just its Special options. Physically it's actually even more diverse, with really good stuff like Drain Punch and Meteor Mash... except it has no good Physical Fairy move. A Fairy/Steel Clefable could still be an interesting mixed attacker, or a good wall if that's the most important thing to you. A Calm Mind Clefable running Stored Power might actually prefer Fairy/Steel to Fairy/Psychic!

Slurpuff: Slurpuff's real problem is that its best stratagem is all-out physical offense while its physical movepool sucks. Since Normal is also impossible to add in this meta, it can't even give itself STAB on Return/Frustration. Special-oriented sets running Calm Mind exist, but they're nothing great. Hidden Type can give those sets a leg up with STAB on Flamethrower or similar, but it's not capable of solving the core problem. Too bad.

Granbull: Adding Dark is the obvious way to go, and Fairy/Dark is actually a quite nice type combination defensively and offensively. A quirky Fairy/Dragon running Outrage is also a possibility, a Fairy/Ground running Earthquake is quite good (Everything that resists Fairy is vulnerable to Ground), it can run Fairy/Fighting quite competently with Close Combat (Not to mention Power Up Punch), it can run any of the Fangs or Punches and Fairy/Fire is actually a quite good type combination... it can even kind of run Fairy/Steel with Iron Tail. Fairy/Rock is also possible, but awful, don't do it. Granbull is quite diverse, and will benefit hugely from the fact that the enemy can't assume you must be one of two or three or just the one possible viable additions.

Florges: The most obvious thing to do is of course to add Grass, making it actually benefit from its own Ability and moves that benefit Grass types. It even has Energy Ball etc. It's also about the only thing it can do of any note, lacking a movepool to do much else. Unfortunate, given that Fairy/Grass is doubly weak to Poison, and this means the primary value of any alternative is to punish the enemy for assuming that it's Fairy/Grass, which itself has the best option being Fairy/Steel, and both of those are Fire vulnerable...

Aromatisse: It can make good use of adding Psychic, and Fairy/Psychic is a good combination in its own right (See: Mega Gardevoir), but it can also pull off Fairy/Electric, which swaps out the Steel weakness for a Ground weakness, or Fairy/Steel running Flash Cannon (Fairy supremacy fighter!), or Fairy/Grass but really go with Florges if you want to do that. It's quite nice, actually.

Sylveon: Honestly, Fairy/Ghost is about as good as it gets for STABs and covers up the Poison weakness in exchange for acquiring a Ghost weakness. It also gets Stored Power, Psyshock, and Synchronoise, but Psychic is a mediocre offensive synergy with Fairy, being a pair walled by Steel 100% reliably. Since you can't add Normal, it can't even run a non-Pixilate version with Moonblast and something like Trump Card.

Xerneas: Dark, Grass, Bug, Rock, Outrage for Dragon for a physical Xerneas. (why) Special Xerneas can add Psychic, Electric, Steel, and also has Grass Knot and Focus Blast. I'd probably go Steel myself and never look back.

Now we're getting into the dual-types, who are much more complicated and interesting. Let's start with by far the most notable one...

Wigglytuff: The only Pokemon in the game (Azurill doesn't count) that has both inaccessible types naturally! Normal/Fairy isn't even that bad of a type combination defensively, since Fairy covers up the Fighting weakness. Between Competitive and a somewhat higher Special Attack, it's probably best off focusing on its Special movepool. Frisk is cool, but not amazing most of the time, and Cute Charm is Garbodor. Nonetheless, it actually has a really really good physical movepool, so don't forget it entirely! As always, adding Electric covers up the Steel weakness, but Wigglytuff has the unique (There's no Ghost/Fairy yet) option of becoming a Normal/Fairy/Ghost, whose only weakness is Steel, and it actually has Shadow Ball too! I would not add Ice, since it brings in its Fighting weakness, makes it doubly weak to Steel, and throws in the Rock weakness too, with of course no real defensive advantage. It can add Psychic, which actually adds no weaknesses while throwing in resistance to Psychic and FIghting, though in exchange you no longer resist Bug and Dark, and of course there's Fire though it has no stand-out advantages in that regard. It also gets Focus Blast, which is notable for breaking through Steel types, but defensively there's no real synergy. Physically it gets all the elemental punches, assorted Fighting moves, Knock Off, Gyro Ball, Wild Charge, Rollout, Power Up Punch... it's diverse. And there's more I can't be bothered to list out too!

Togekiss: Adding Fighting for Aura Sphere is an obvious choice, and it removes the Rock weakness, though it's somewhat awkward gaining a Fairy weakness, Flying weakness and a Psychic weakness, especially given how many Psychic and Flying types can outspeed Togekiss. It can add Psychic for Psychic, with the only downside being a Ghost weakness (You're even still outright resistant to Bug), or it can go Ghost for Shadow Ball to cover up its Poison weakness in exchange for a Ghost weakness but providing some offensive coverage. Fairy/Flying/Fire Togekiss has some potential, though I have to wince at the double weakness to Stealth Rock, but it does remove the Steel and Ice weaknesses and providing offensive coverage for Steel types. It can add Grass, but I wouldn't do that, given that it's a double weakness to Ice and Poison. Lastly, it can add Bug for Signal Beam, which is another double Rock weakness, leaves you severely walled by Steel types (Hi Heatran, particularly Flying Heatran who is triply resistant to Signal Beam), and is just not impressive. Another odd possibility to consider is adding Ground: you would be outright using Hidden Power Ground if you wanted STAB and have a double weakness to Ice, but it removes the weakness to Rock/Stealth Rock, removes the Poison weakness, and replaces a weakness to Electric with immunity, leaving you only weak to Steel and (Doubly) Ice. It's even nearly perfect offensive coverage. (Still walled by Flying Heatran)

Mawile: The obvious thing to do is add Dark for Sucker Punch coverage. It makes you vulnerable to Fighting and covers no weaknesses, but hey, who cares, you super-kill everything with Sucker Punch. It has all the Fangs, but they're all problematic to add STAB to (Double Ground weakness, double Ground weakness, double Ground weakness, and a Fighting/Steel weakness with no advantages whatsoever), it gets several Fighting moves which actually adds no weaknesses but requires you deviate from the Sucker Punch/Iron Head/Play Rough/Swords Dance set, and it's got Rock moves but Steel/Fairy/Rock is adding a weakness to Steel, a weakness to Fighting, a weakness to Water, doubling the weakness to Ground, and for what? You're not vulnerable to Fire, yay? In general, trying to cover up both Fire and Ground weaknesses isn't going anywhere: Grass and Bug both cover up the Ground weakness but in exchange double the Fire weakness, Fire doubles the Ground weakness while covering the Fire weakness (And I already covered Rock), which basically leaves Flying (Adds an Electric weakness but renders you immune to Ground), Water (Which also adds an Electric weakness but covers up the Fire weakness), and Dragon. (Which covers up the Fire weakness with no new weaknesss, actually, basically invalidating Water, and in fact provides resistance to Electric and Water!) Overall I'd probably just add Dark, but Dragon and Flying are better defensive improvements. (Flying in particular makes a switch in on a Ground move completely safe, and Mega Mawile very much appreciates new freedom to switch in, lacking real recovery, not even Leftovers)

Klefki: Basically everything I said about Mawile, only the logic for adding Dark is Foul Play STAB. Also, it lacks the Fangs and any Fighting moves and thus any motivation to run those sub-optimal builds. So, add Dark, Dragon, or Flying, the end?

Azumarill: Adding Ground to a Sap Sipper variant leaves you with no weaknesses! The Huge Power build is overall a lot more powerful, but this is still worth commentary. Alternatively it can run Steel to eliminate the Poison weakness and Grass weakness in exchange for a weakness to Ground, or it can run... not much that appeals. Poison covers up the Poison weakness while adding Psychic and Ground weaknesses, and it has no moves for it, Fighting gives it STAB on some of its moves including Superpower but you add weaknesses to Flying, Psychic, and Fairy without covering up its existing weaknesses... well, Dragon is noteworthy for eliminating the Grass and Electric weaknesses while only adding a Fairy weakness.

Gardevoir: Steel of course trades its Fairy weaknesses for Ground and Fire weaknesses, but it lacks any good STAB to take advantage. Electric swaps the Steel weakness for a Ground weakness and gives it STAB on its Thunderbolts, which can be useful coverage. It might be tempting to add Ghost for STAB Shadow Ball, but it ends up with a double weakness to Ghost. Adding Grass for STAB on Energy Ball would give it a double weakness to Poison, add in Fire, Flying, and Bug weaknesses, and cover up nothing, so avoid that. It could potentially add Fighting for STAB Focus Blast, making it vulnerable to Flying and Fairy and covering no weakness. Eh. There's also adding Bug for STAB Signal Beam, which adds Fire, Flying, and Rock weaknesses without covering up any of its existing weaknesses. Alternatively, focusing entirely on covering its weaknesses, it can add Dark to cover up its weakness to Ghost, gaining a weakness to Fairy and Bug in exchange. Ehhh. It can add Water to cover up its Steel weakness, adding an Electric and Grass weakness. Ow. It can add Fire to cover up its Steel weakness, gaining Water, Rock, and Ground weaknesses, which is just worse than giving it Electric. And it can add Poison to cover up its Poison weakness in exchange for a Ground Weakness. Overall Steel, Poison, and Electric seem its best options, which is somewhat problematic given that they're all weak to Ground. It might be worth adding Flying to your Gardevoir just to mess with people expecting a Ground weakness, for all that it'll add Ice, Rock, and Electric weaknesses without covering its existing ones.

Mr. Mime: Basically what I said about Gardevoir. It even has a similar movepool in regards to STABs!

Whimsicott: Adding Poison reduces it Poison weakness in exchange for a Psychic weakness, which is a decent trade. Adding Steel to eliminate its Poison weakness gives it a double weakness to Fire, though that's actually the only downside. Adding Rock to reduce its Poison weakness gives it a double Steel weakness instead and is just not worth it. Adding Ground to reduce its Poison weakness gives it a double Ice weakness. Adding Ghost to reduce its Poison weakness adds a Ghost weakness, but that's its only downside, and it lets Whimsicott escape entrapment if it cares. Any other type you add will leave it doubly weak to Poison, which is problematic. Ghost, Poison, and Steel all have good points in their favor.

Dedenne: Gosh. Um. It has a terrible movepool, insufficient stats, unimpressive Abilities, and Electric/Fairy doesn't really leap out as having any really awesome synergistic third type to add. If you add Flying it's suddenly weak to Rock and Ice while only covering the Ground weakness, if you add Steel or Poison to cover up the Poison weakness it's doubly weak to Ground, adding Grass makes it doubly weak to Poison, adding Bug removes one weakness while adding two, adding Ground removes the Poison weakness while adding Grass, Water, and Ice... there's just no paths to major improvement.

Diancie: STAB-wise the obvious thing to do is to add Psychic. This adds a weakness to Ghost and does nothing to cover its vulnerabilities. Trying to cover up that tortuous double Steel weakness... Steel will leave it with a double Ground weakness instead. Fire and Electric will also both leave it with a double Ground weakness. Water instead gives it a double Grass weakness. Oh man. Diancie is just screwed. My recommendation: don't use it.

Carbink: Diancie, but with worse stats but good Abilities and a useful movepool. Nothing much to say that I didn't already say with Diancie.
 
Gah. I just noticed I missed Grass in the Shedinja analysis. It's worth noting because it renders Shedinja immune to Leech Seed, and of course also stuff like Spore, and the only weakness it actually adds is Ice.
 
I think you're forgetting something important: Not all types are equal. A 4x weakness to Steel is not the same as a 4x weakness to Fighting or Ground. If you don't have an Steel STAB you're unlikely to ever run a Steel Move (and many Steel Types forfeit the move entirely). The only pokemon that have any reason to use a Steel type move are Dragon Types since these have good synergy with their Type and main STAB. Defensive pokemon that have an added steel type are unlikely to use steel moves and other offensive pokemon won't have room for it or will prefer another type of coverage (Fighting types for example don't commonly get any Steel moves to abuse the STAB and even if they do it's too weak to use). The same applies to Grass or Poison. A Defensive pokemon won't use the damaging move, and a Offensive one has better options for coverage.
 
Plenty of Pokemon run Bullet Punch as their only priority move, Steel is good coverage for both Fighting and Dark types since Fairy resists both of them too, and a 4x damage multiplier from any type is dumb to be taking if you don't have to accept it when it can mean the death of you. Most teams are going to have at least one source of Steel damage, given that it's the only type super effective on Fairy that you can't be completely immune to and in general the more useful anti-Fairy offense type, with three super effectives vs four ineffectives, to Poison's two super effectives, four ineffectives and one thing immune outright.

Plus, honestly, Dragonite-with-Steel-and-running-Iron-Head is really really good. You might as well release Shaymin-Sky into OU and declare that a double weakness to Grass is not a big deal in that environment. Flying Heatran is also quite good and has reason to run Flash Cannon, too. It'd be one thing if the meta had no established good quality Steel attackers, then maybe you'd have a point, but there are so no, it's not comparatively minor.
 
Last edited:
As long as Scizor is viable in the meta on focus, you can never scrap off Steel as being minor. If they can't find another good Steel Type to go with, they'll stick to Scizor. Of course, we'd all love seeing variety. In fact, every OM made would reach its full potential by many people choosing a variety of mons. But in reality, there's almost no reason why you wouldn't use Sableye in STABmons or Sturdy Shedinja in BH. We just have to deal with that.
 
i really don't want to nitpick but i can't stand that second example bc sturdy shedinja has like 3 counters per team that it has 0% to overcome, even by hax
but yeah, scizor exists, and though some types are better offensively than others, steel shouldn't be underrated
 
Ghoul King said:
Plenty of Pokemon run Bullet Punch as their only priority move, Steel is good coverage for both Fighting and Dark types since Fairy resists both of them too, and a 4x damage multiplier from any type is dumb to be taking if you don't have to accept it when it can mean the death of you. Most teams are going to have at least one source of Steel damage, given that it's the only type super effective on Fairy that you can't be completely immune to and in general the more useful anti-Fairy offense type, with three super effectives vs four ineffectives, to Poison's two super effectives, four ineffectives and one thing immune outright.

Plus, honestly, Dragonite-with-Steel-and-running-Iron-Head is really really good. You might as well release Shaymin-Sky into OU and declare that a double weakness to Grass is not a big deal in that environment. Flying Heatran is also quite good and has reason to run Flash Cannon, too. It'd be one thing if the meta had no established good quality Steel attackers, then maybe you'd have a point, but there are so no, it's not comparatively minor.
Click to expand...
Only MegaMedicham uses Bullet Punch without having STAB on the move. You want a counter to Scizor? Add Electric to any Flying Type and you're done. Most Fighting Type pokemon don't even have steel moves. Iron Head is exclusive to Cobalion, Terrakion, Emboar, Haryama and Scraggy, and only one of those is good in OU. Iron Tail doesn't fare much better with your choices being Primeape, Brellom, Infernape, and again Emboar and Scrafty. Only Brellom is OU and he's strapped for moves already. And Bullet Punch it's weak even with STAB.

Steel / Dragons I already agree are dangerous but that also makes them much more vulnerable to the bulky ground types they had a hard type beating before (And Groud types can add Water to become resistant to their Steel STAB since Grass is also very uncommon in dragons). Many like Salamence or Lati@s don't get a steel move either.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top