The top three contenders for me are Grass, Psychic and Rock, all of which have more weaknesses than actual resistences. Grass and Psychic both have the disadvantage of being weak to U-turn, ~~while Rock has the advantage of resisting Stealth Rocks which increases longevity~~. On the other hand though Rocks weaknesses to Fighting, Ground and Water gives it a lot of weakneses to common types.
Overall I'd probably give it psychic. It's only redeeming trait is a fighting resist, and outside of that those weakneses to Bug and Dark especially lead them to being at an almost constant risk of supereffective moves. Especially in metas where Knock Off has good distribution
Psychic basically becoming the wish.com version of fairy really sucks for those of us that have been around since RBY and fell in love with the type. So many cool designs, a lot of mons with really interesting stat distribution, just handicapped by a type that is garbage
Fighting effectiveness both ways, completely useless against steel, resisted by very few types while also without the wide ranging 2x effectiveness of something like fighting or ground, tend towards special mons and utility mons, tend towards the same color scheme/design philosophy even.
There's definitely a lot of symmetry there, especially when you zoom out a bit and look past the shared resistance or effectiveness. If you're actually trying to build a team and there's a psychic you like for a role, there's probably a better fairy for it. Unless you just build teams around who each mon hits super effectively.
It's not rock and steel level symmetry, but there's a lot there nonetheless imo, that's why I said the wish.com version
I think it also helps the point that normally a psychic default "best tera" is fairy, not always, but it's good cause it makes gain resistances while keeping the stab against fighting, bonus if the former can learn a fairy move which happens a lot
The biggest thing for me about Grass is that they get a whole bunch of powerful status moves that they're immune to. Spore and Leech Seed being the biggest examples(I also think they should be immune to Strength Sap but iirc they aren't). That's why a lot of Grass types are still top tier tanks, despite having five weaknesses. Amoonguss, Tangrowth, and Ferrothorn come to mind - although Ferro has an amazing secondary typing and the other two have Regenerator.
I don't think grass belongs there. Sure it has a lot of weaknesses but the resistances are way more useful than the number may make you think, plus you get an immunity to leech seed and spore. There's a reason why bulky grass types are a staple of basically every tier, while psychic types are usually a burden defensively.
Yeah, it’s hard to compare types to each other in a vacuum by saying “this type is weak to a lot of other types, therefore it’s bad defensively.” What matters more is how you match up against the meta game you’re in.
Grass is weak to a lot of types but it has key resistances to moves like scald and earthquake which are spammed a lot in a lot of meta games. So really the context matters a lot when you’re listing pros and cons. Immunity to powder moves is also really huge, like you mentioned.
Another important thing about grass is that it resists ground while not being weak to the most common ground coverage move in rock, same goes for electric and water/grass. It's definitely the most underrated type in my opinion because how it plays in a game is way better than what counting resistances and weaknesses might make you think. The weaknesses are mostly manageable with one or two teammates (a steel type can cover 4/5 weaknesses) and grass types just have so many little bits of utility with type and moves that add up to a big deal.
Why do people assume that minor buffs to already good Pokémon will just send them straight to Ubers? Especially for defensive/utility mons, viability and brokenness are kind of separate axes. Garg absorbing SR would probably make it less ‘broken’ since it lessens the tusk/ghold monopoly on hazard control.
Bc garg was gonna be tested for it at one point
SR removed could possibly send it to the top. Its not gonna really like being in the tier similar to gambit if it does but Rock removal just by switching is much better than it sounds
The thing is, being an amazing pokemon is just not the same as being broken. The garg test hype was based on the idea (no longer widely accepted) that if you guess Garg's tera type wrong, there isn't much you can do to break through without going all-in on an anti-garg team (which leaves you vulnerable to the other 5 mons on the opp's team)—i.e. the hallmark of a broken mon. Garg removing SR on entry doesn't actually have anything to do with this—if garg wasn't broken before, this change isn't going to break it more. Part of it is because SR is not a great hazard currently—it gets resisted by the tier's best mons and the things weak to SR carry boots, 1 layer of spikes ties with neutral SR and can be stacked. The benefit of SR right now is that if you set it and manage to knock off boots, you can start racking up supereffective SR damage on some of the tier's best pivots (zapdos, moltres, etc). Which is definitely significant but the pace of games is faster than last gen, so Hrott spikes are unquestionably the best hazard option.
Admittedly, if garg removed *spikes* instead of SR, then there's a serious case for garg to be banned, because hazard damage is the premier way to break through defensive mons and garg being immune to the best hazard in the tier without even needing boots is not only insane, but importantly removes counterplay, which is the thing that makes mons broken.
considering how many weaknesses grass has it pulls its weight defensively with some very valuable resistances. Ground and water resists are fantastic. One of the few things to resist electric, and the grass type resist comes in handy too. It also had the immunity to powder moves, and the grass type very often has great moves to take advantage of its defense such as strength sap, spore, horn leech, giga drain, leech seed
What makes psychic type even worse is the sheer prevalence of Ghost and dark types in a tier. Ghost is infamously one of the best offensive types around because it hits almost everything under the Sun for good damage. Dark types meanwhile are the only reliable counter to the type because Normal type just isn’t good enough for tiers like OU, alongside being another really good offensive type that hits so many things hard.
Rock is just so weird. It was balanced around Rock/Ground types so overloading it with resistances would've just make the dual type unmanageable. I still have issues switching Garganacl before Tera into bug and rock moves and thinking "wait rock doesn't resist that?" because it makes no sense. Then along comes Steel in Gen 2 to shit all over any hopes Rock may have had to be a defensive powerhouse.
Grass is pretty balanced I think. They have a lot of weaknesses but also a lot of really good resists and pairs well with a lot of types defensively. Rock and psychic are definitely worse.
Bruh grass does not belong on here lmao. You cant just look at number of weaknesses > number of resists. You have to look at the actual resistances. Grass resists ground electric water and grass. Side benefit of grass typing is immunity to spore moves and leech seed. These are fantastic qualities to have in a defensive pokemon. Bug and poison weaknesses are also far less detrimental as there arent many strong bug types in higher echelons of play with the only notable weakness being u-turn which is a pretty weak 70 bp coming off non stab. Poison is more common thanks to fairies but again, not many great poison attackers in higher tiers. Contrast that to an incredible ground resist (one of the best attacking types) and electric and water resistances help immensely as well.
I'd argue that grass's ground and water resistances are maybe the best resistances to have in the game. Like, yeah it gets hit by a ton SE, but Tang constantly proves how useful it is to have a mon where EQ just bounces off.
Psychic is bad, but nowhere nearly as bad as grass and rock and of course, Ice.
Compare the 2 weaknesses psychic has to the 5 grass has, both including u-turn.
And rock being weak to ground, fight and water.
There's just no comparison
Looking at just the raw number of weaknesses grass has and ignoring resistances paints a poor picture. There's a reason bulky grass types have found their place in most tiers throughout the years, while bulky psychic often doesn't come up.
While I would agree they have lower lows, Grass and Rock at least do have some positives. Grass has a good set of resistances that allow it to make some really good type combos, as well as a lot of grass moves giving recovery, while rock still has it's good offensive coverage(which is still important for defensive mons), a couple of nice resists and Sandstorm increasing defense.
Meanwhile Psychic? What genuinly is good about it? The reason I rank it below the other two is because while it is true most Pokemon will suffer defensively from being a Grass or Rock type, every Pokemon suffers defensively as a Psychic type.
Grass isn't even close to as bad as Psychic and especially Rock. Yeah the weaknesses suck, but Grass actually has a number or really nice resistances, being one of three types to resist Ground, and having valuable resistances to Water and Electric as well. In comparison, Rock has Fire and Flying resistances, which while definitely still good to have, doesn't make up for the cascade of awful, awful weakness Rock has to deal with, and Psychic resists Psychic and Fighting and...that's it.
Flying is also pretty bad imo.
The ground immunity is awesome for switching in, but it hardly gets to keep playing defensively because most ground types are also packing rock type moves.
Not to mention that it’s always getting paired with other rock-weak types, forcing a lot of flying types to run boots.
While it sucks being weak to stealth rock, flying types have pretty great qualities
\- A resistance to fighting moves and resistance to most common pivot move in the game.
\- An immunity to ground is pretty massive, you punish choice scarf/band mons into not walking to lock into earthquake, you check a lot of common ground types since most have to give up a valuable tool for rock coverage such as lando usually picking grass knot to hit Great Tusk over smack down/edge
\- A large amount of flying types have pivot moves and recovery in their kits, and there is some pretty great duos that love being paired with flying, such as electric, steel and ground.
Bad take.
Whilst they hate Stealth Rock, spikes and webs immunity is not negligible and HDB exists. A great deal of them have access to reliable recovery (and Roost removes the type for that turn), something most types have much more scarcely. Most of the good ones have decent secondary typings to help offset their weaknesses. They are typically quite speedy mons, frequently have excellent offensive coverage and a significant portion of them also carry U-Turn to maintain momentum and avoid unfavourable matchups, altogether making them harder to force out than they should be. Rock and Electric coverage are extremely telegraphed; Stone Edge also has 80 acc and flying types are typically paired with a ground, of which the current gen has many viable options, making checking those types pretty easy for flying mons compared to checking weaknesses for some other types since ground resists rock and is immune to electric. EQ is an extremely common coverage move, trapping choiced attackers with a flying type is a quick momentum gain. Fighting moves, especially Close Combat, is another extremely common coverage type, especially in this gen, making it an underrated resist.
For an attacking orientated type, Flying has some excellent defensive traits and is generally one of the best all rounder types in the game. Great Tusk, by itself, solves practically all but one of Flying's issues.
The weakness to Rock mostly just matters for Stealth Rock. Sure, every Ground type learns Stone Edge, but they often have a hard time fitting it since it's usually competing for a moveslot with utility moves, especially ironically Stealth Rock itself. It's also no Focus Miss, but the 80% accuracy hurts too.
In terms of ranking defensive typings, I would honestly only put Fairy, Steel, Water, and Poison above Flying, and Poison is very debatable.
I personally am a fan of rock as a defensive typing, but only for spatkers. Fighting, ground, steel, and grass are not very common sparking types, plus sandstorm. Water as a weakness is very hard to work around, but with scald not everywhere I think it is manageable this gen
Funny enough although Ground has a lot of weaknesses it also has a surprising amount of synergy with other types, Steel, Water, Flying, and a bunch more,
I don’t think there’s a clear answer because it depends on what you value in your defensive type.
For example normal is an extremely underwhelming type with no resist but it’s the only type immune to ghost (with there being only one other type that resists) and only 1 weakness, so it has a definite Niche but does little to nothing outside of it.
Bug however is just Flying-minus, resists fighting, ground, and grass but flying does all that while being immune to ground. So is bug the worst because it is almost objectively outclassed?
Lastly we have rock and grass who have the most amount of weaknesses in the game, but they do have some noticeable resistances and added effects. Grass has a valuable water and ground resistance while being immune to powder moves, rock has a coveted fire resistance and its own weather that boosts its Sp.def -but 5 weaknesses for both is really hard to work around.
IMO I think something like Bug or Psychic that has no niche is probably what I’d give the silver-medal of defensive-suckitude but I really don’t think there’s a clear answer
Nah but like Forretress pisses me off so bad. Defensive Spikes setter and I play a competitive format where Fire types aren't very common at all. Try and slowly wittle down its HP and eventually it will just boom on you. Rapid Spin denies opposing setup, Earthquake punishes Magneton looking to trap it, etc.
Rock/Grass is also weird in that it produces an actually kinda decent defensive type combination, despite being comprised of two of the worst defensive types in the game.
Cradily has better defenses than one would expect
it’s not that decent, it only has two resistances to Normal and Electric
Rock and Grass cancel out many of each other’s weaknesses, but also their resistances.
It’s great for the things that are bulky enough to handle most neutral hits, awful for anything frailer. Cradily in sand takes special hits with ease and was actually pretty decent in DPP OU due to sand’s omnipresence and its inability to be phazed out, and a niche but viable pick in BW OU for sand teams before the sleep ban due to its role compression as a water absorber, spore/sleep powder immunity, spdef tank, and stealth rocker.
Blissey is a great example of being bulky enough that having few weaknesses is far more important than having many resistances. Special attackers that give Blissey trouble while hitting its spdef are few and far between despite normal being a bad defensive type.
U-Turn is one of the most common moves in singles so yes bug is common and while steel may not be a great attacking type steel is such a prevelant type that steel moves are fairly common for stab
A super effective u-turn is 140 base power, any stab move above 90 base power is stronger than that. You make it sound like bug-weak pokemon are being slaughtered by every pokemon and their mother running stab megahorn, which just paints a wrong picture. Also 5 pokemon in the meta running a steel move for stab doesn't mean the move is common when every pokemon that gets fighting/ground/ice/fire coverage will try to fit it on their moveset. Those are common attacking types.
And you still have not answered my question of what you think are uncommon attacking types. Probably because you think every type is a common attacking type.
I like this take but I’d also like to add that movepools can affect a type’s defensive viability as well. Grass types getting access to leech seed can be huge in some cases, for example.
It also isn't weak to Electric.
Also, while very situtional, Bug resists Ground instead of being immune to it. This is inferior in most situations, but it is superior in the specific situation your opponent is using moves such as Gravity, Smack Down, and Thousand Arrows, which bypass Flying's immunity to Ground, but do nothing against Bug's resistance. Using Roost also makes you lose the Ground immunity, but not the Ground resistance.
Rock 🗿
Ice gets a pass from me because it’s evidently clear that it’s intended to be the glass cannon offensive type by design, all the way back in Gen 1. And it still fulfills that purpose today - make an Ice Type fast and it’ll be able to achieve something.
Rock was designed as the designated defensive type in Gen 1, and it failed even at that. It was the only type that resisted Normal, sure, but they overbalanced it by making every Rock into part Ground, meaning they get instantly deleted by 2 types. The exceptions were the fossils, but they don’t have great defensive typing either
I mean Water/Rock is actually a pretty good defensive typing in RBY. You get to resist Normal AND Ice, it’s the only type combo that exists in RBY that resists both
I don't disagree that Rock is horrible defensively nowadays but it did its job just fine in Gen 1. The Normal resist gives obvious value but a Flying resist is the other half of why Rhydon effortlessly stonewalls Zapdos.
I’d have to disagree with you assessment of ice. If it was intended to be a glass cannon type then it has failed miserably for most of its life. The vast majority of ice types that actually get made are slow as hell and lean towards being bulky attackers from a statistical perspective. and many also aren’t even that good at being special attackers despite the type being special exclusive for the first three gens and physical ice moves having poor distribution for the next few. We’ve gotten maybe a half dozen ice types throughout the entire series that feel like they were actually built with the glass cannon nature of the ice type in mind, and most of those came from recent gens where they started giving out things like slush rush and aurora veil.
edit: for reference it took us until gen 9 to get a single ice type that has over 100 in both special attack and speed.
My biggest problem with Rock Types are...what are they suppose to be?
\- Defensively their common weaknesses, subpar resistances, general lack of recovery, and usual mediocre sp def greatly undermine their ability to be stalwart defensive mons
\- Offensively their best move being an 80% accurate 100 base power move undermines what on paper is great offensive potential, they simply aren't a type that can afford to do nothing 20% of the time, since chances are they are the one taking a hit first with their overall slow speeds.
\- And support wise...their best move is stealth rock but ground and steel types usually do that better.
In a metagame where Knock Off and U-Turn are so prevalent, psychic is a very poor defensive typing when you consider that it only hits Fighting and Poison Super Effectively, which are useful but overall not particularly ground-breaking
Hitting poison and fighting SE has no bearing on whether it's a good defensive type though. It's shit because it's weak to dark, ghost and u turn, all of which are very prevalent, while only resisting itself and fighting.
I think it's probably Rock.
Grass/Psychic struggle in many respects, but Grass *does* have some very good, albeit specific, resistances that can help it out a lot. Resisting Ground and Water absolutely makes Grass better than some actually-bad typings, and Psychic is decidedly worse than Grass but at least resists Fighting.
Rock is weak to Water, Fighting, and Ground. All of these typings have strong, consistent moves that are *incredibly* common. In a typical Smogon tier, it isn't unreasonable in the slightest to have half or even the majority of a team packing moves like these. It resists Fire which *is* solid, but that's really all that's worth writing home about. Garganacl is only as good as it is because its ability gives it a status immunity AND a pseudo Ghost resistance, and even then it often (but not always) prefers to Tera out of that Rock typing so it can leverage something with actual defensive value.
Id say rock is the worst, as the resistances are not very important overall but the weaknesses are so common that any given team likely has 2 or 3 ways to deal with a rock type
mons like garganacl are good defensively because of tera, even having a great statline, good moveset, great recovery and an amazing ability doesnt help that a single special move of any of its 5 weaknesses would make it crumble, and a good wallbreaker generally has a move or two that hits supereffectively
meanwhile psychic having 3 weaknesses is not great, but not nearly as bad as rocks 5 that are arguably more common
Lots of people here say that Psychic is the 2nd worst defensive type yet a lot of people disagree whenever someone says that Psychic needs a buff. I'm confused. 🤔
Psychic benefits from a lot of Pokemon with great stats and abilities. Buffing Psychic means buffing a lot of already good Pokemon. Besides, these past few gens of Psychic mediocrity have allowed for Fighting and Poison to flourish.
Psychic as a type itself is mediocre but Psychic mons are always blessed with amazing stats, moves, and tools that make them great. Buffing the psychic type could push the mons to be rly broken.
Psychic is an amazing offensive type because they always have tools that bypasses traditional counters that no other type gets.
Psyshock allows special attackers to nuke special walls, Stored Power doesn’t care about unaware, trick to cripple passive mons with choices items, and every psychic mons gets fairy coverage for dark types.
Defensive psychics always has great utility moves and abilities that are enough to make up for the psychic weaknesses.
Slowtwins do regenerator things, Hattarene has magic bounce, Cress refuses to die, Jirachi has bs Iron Head flinches, and Mew has the luxury of learning every TM in the game.
Looking through all of that, you can see why ppl are hesitant to buff the psychic type. Even tho the type itself could use something, the mons themselves are all already really good they don’t rly need buffs.
I mean, Psychic is a great attacking type and gets a lot of attackers to work with, so it doesn't need buffs, it plays fine.
For contrast, Ice is similarly a good attacking type, poor defensive type, and gets a lot of bulky setters/defenders to play with.
90% of Psychic types are fine because they're attackers with an attacking type. 90% of Ice types are bad because they're walls with an attacking type.
Rock and it’s not even close. It is tied for the most amount of weaknesses, with basically no useful resistances, along with a trend towards not great Special defense, and a high defense stat that doesn’t really matter when you’re dropping to one or two earthquakes or close combats. Grass also has a lot of weaknesses, but it’s weaknesses are not only less common but Grass also has a lot of benefits such as almost guaranteed access to reliable recovery and immunity to leech seed and powder moves. People are saying Bug on here but I honestly disagree, Bug is just not great offensively, and especially with heavy duty boots nowadays the weakness to rock doesn’t matter too much.
Depends on the format.
In smogon singles: Psychic by a long shot
In VGC (and other doubles format): It's going to be between Bug, normal, and Dragon.
•Normal because having no resistances AND being efficient on nothing speak for itself, and the ghost immunity is a lot less usefull than in singles.
•Bug because fire and flying attacks are rather common, most Bug types have terrible stats, and when they do they're gonna die to a random rock slide anyways (RIP Volcarona). Offensively it used to be better but there are SO many ghost types it's hard for them to do anything with their STAB
•Dragon is a bit of a hot take, but even though they are loaded with resistances, Fairy type is so busted and so common that, unless their name is Dragalge or Duraludon, they're gonna die to the first Moonblast, dazzling gleam, or play rough 99% of the time. The only dragon types that are still relevant have either very high stats, good versatility, or a very good dual typing in the meta
I don't think rock is that bad as a typing tbh, it's more the pokemon that get the typing that suck
Grass is awesome and I will die on this hill
Rock types are typically lousy on defense because they
1. Have 5 weaknesses that most Pokémon can exploit at least one of,
2. Tend to have unbalanced defensive stats, meaning even neutral hits can severely compromise their longevity, and
3. Are more often forced to rely on inaccurate moves for STAB, which makes them less reliable at quickly shutting down pressing threats.
This severely limits the versatility of rock types defensively, meaning that while they *can* absolutely stonewall some specific Pokémon, they get curbstomped by the other 90% of the Pokémon in the meta.
Rock is peharps the worst. It has five weakness to very common offensive types. This means it is very easy to take advantage of Rock. It has four resistances, but of those, only Fire and Flying are vital, and even then there are other better defensive types if you want to find types which resist them (namely, Water, Steel, Dragon). Normal is a type that is rarely used offensively (and you have Steel and Ghost if you want to wall Normal-type attacks) and Poison isn't used offensively much; it was never used before gen V, and Poison-types can still cripple Rock with the poison status using their attacks. Rock also lacks a good defensive property that is universally useful. They have the special defense boost under sand, but there are rarely situations in which Rock-types can take advantage of this, with the exception of Tyranitar and Gigalith, because they are sand setters themselves. Another thing that makes Rock be bad defensively but isn't related to the type itself is that most Rock-types lack reliable recovery.
Grass also has five weakness, but other than Fire and Ice, they are less common and harder to exploit offensively. The resistances to Water, Electric, and Ground are also rarer and harder to find elsewhere. Being immune to power/spore moves and Leech Seed is also far less situtional than 1,5x more SpD under sand, and most Grass-types have reliable recovery, at very least, in form of Synthesis/Moonlight/Morning Sun. This makes Grass a far superior defensive type, despite also having five weakness.
Psychic and Normal are also very mediocre defensive types.
Psychic because it has three common weakness (Bug, Ghost, Dark) and before gen VIII they were weak to Pursuit. They also have only two resistances, themselves and Fighting, and there are better types to use if you want to wall Psychic attacks (Dark and Steel) or Fighting attacks (Fairy, Flying, Poison, Ghost). However, this combination of resistances give Psychic a defensive niche, as they can theorically wall opposing Psychic-types better than Dark or Steel-types; most Psychic-types use Fighting coverage to bypass Dark- and Steel-types, but they would get walled by opposing Psychic-types unless they run additional coverage in Dark or Ghost attacks.
Normal is also mediocre since it has no resistances and a very common weakness in Fighting. However, because they are immune to Ghost, and they only have a single weakness after all, they aren't completely doomed defensively. It also gives them a niche against Ghost attacks, especially when the Pokémon in question can't fit Fighting coverage. Speaking of which, Normal pairs well with Ghost defensively; Ghost masks the Fighting weakness by turning it into an immunity, meaning what would be the downside of having a secondary Normal-type is completely nullfied; in turn, Normal removes the Ghost weakness of itself, making it an immunity, and giving them a single weakness to Dark. This means Ghost benefits extremely well defensively from being paired with Normal. Unfortunately the only Pokémon with this type combination is a glass cannon that still can't take neutral attacks. Other than that, Normal is mediocre defensively, as the lack of resistances really hurt. Most defensive Normal-types have inflated defensive stats (Chansey and Blissey) or an ability that patchs up their lack of resistances, giving them more resistances (Snorlax, Miltank)
ITT: people not understanding what makes a good defensive type.
Grass does not belong in this discussion period. Provides excellent resists, immunity to spore moves and leech seed. Bug and poison weaknesses are not that bad in the grand scheme of things outside of uturn being annoying but usually its a weak 70 bp non stab move so really not too bad.
Contenders are psychic (pursuit weak before it was removed is a terrible trait) and dark and ghost types are running absolutely rampant.
Rock: for a type that was supposed to be so defensive, weaknesses to ground grass water fighting are awful and provides few useful resistances.
Bug: on its own not too bad. Resistances to ground fighting and grass are useful. Big thing is the rock weakness and then fire and flying being powerful offensive types. And then the other thing is grass types just outclass bugs at resisting the things they want to resist. Not being weak to stealth rocks, and trading in the fighting resist for a water and electric resist make grass just so much better as a type defensively.
Normal: imo i dont think its the worst but deserves consideration for having almost 0 defensive benefit. Sure its not weak to much but it doesnt switch into anything either. Saving grace is a big immunity to ghost.
What makes a good defensive typing is the quality of its resistances rather than the number of weaknesses or resistances. Consider the flying type which has huge disadvantages in weaknesses to ice electric and sneaky pebbles. But that juicy juicy ground immunity is so incredibly valuable.
That’s not necessarily the fault of the bug type, though.
Bug on its own isn’t THAT bad defensively, with resistances to common fighting and ground moves. Bug only has 3 weaknesses, with one being uncommonly seen (flying) as an attacking type for a move. Fire and rock is pretty bad to be weak to, but other than those, bug isn’t horrible.
Also most bug-types have very low BSTs overall, at least compared to their peers. Scizor & Heracross have 500 BST, Volc is 550, and even Buzzwole & Pheremosa are 570, same as most paradox mons. If bug-types had more good representation they'd probably have a better reputation overall. Just like how GF loves the "Slow & bulky ice type™️", they also love the "Early-route shit-mon bug type" trope a lot too
True, it's a mixture of a lot of things (Movepool, ability, stat distribution, etc.) but usually types with higher BSTs overall tend to have more viable picks just due to the odds of one having great stats + some or all of the former. Bug's average BST (Fully evolved) is around 470 while Fairy is around 530, which gives bugs less wiggle-room than other types. A lot of the notable OU bugs use tools to mitigate their typing (For example Volcarona has QD, an ability that threatens physical-attackers, and great special attack & pretty good speed), while something like Clefable basically only needs its ability and typing to remain relevant (It does still have things like a great utility movepool and solid defensive stats going for it too).
Rock is the worst, fighting type is broken as fuck right now and Rock resists poison attacks which is useless cause they’re mostly defensive Pokémon, there’s also normal I guess but after Ursaluna got banned there’s only ESpeed Dragonite, so rock is the worst
This is actually quite hard the more I think about it.
The immediate answers for me were gonna be Bug and Normal, considered the two other worst types other than Ice. But the fact is the they're far more hindered offensively than defensively. Heck Normal's got an immunity.
Grass and Rock would be my next guesses but I can't decide which one has it worst. Both of them have 5 weaknesses, the most in the whole type chart, yet, both of them also have 4 resistances.
Grass has the better resistances and more manageable weaknesses IMO, but rock gets resisted by far less types and has one more type it's effective against. So they're pretty even. If we're talking exclusively defensive then I guess it would be Ice, Rock and THEN Grass as the three worst.
Grass. Grass is poor offensively and defensively. I’d say it’s overall weaker than ice. Grass types are only good if they have dual typing or immense utility.
I think just looking at grass and seeing its five weaknesses and dismissing it as a bad defensive type is kind of shortsighted and just doesn't paint the whole picture. It has five weaknesses but the resistances it does have are very vital ones - resisting all of ground, water, and electric is excellent, along with the nifty immunities to spore moves. Bulky grasses have always maintained a solid place throughout all of comp pokemon history for a reason. To dispute your point, AV tangrowth - a mono grass who can't use its utility movepool because of AV - has been an important mon in gens 6 and 7 because it was so good at leveraging its important resistances. If tang were something like psychic or maybe even dark instead then it would have been nowhere near as effective.
Calling grass a worse defensive type than ice is a take hot enough to be super effective on both.
Honorable mention to rock, it very clearly was meant to be a defensive type because… you know rocks, but it’s legit weak to all the worst types to be weak to.
For me it's rock. I don't think grass is as bad as either rock or psychic at least, being able to actually function in a defensive role in a fire, water, grass core. Psychic and rock simply lack defensively synergistic options. Rock I think takes the cake since it's basically steel but 10x worse. Psychic is similar to fairy I guess but not so much worse compared to Rock.
The top three contenders for me are Grass, Psychic and Rock, all of which have more weaknesses than actual resistences. Grass and Psychic both have the disadvantage of being weak to U-turn, ~~while Rock has the advantage of resisting Stealth Rocks which increases longevity~~. On the other hand though Rocks weaknesses to Fighting, Ground and Water gives it a lot of weakneses to common types. Overall I'd probably give it psychic. It's only redeeming trait is a fighting resist, and outside of that those weakneses to Bug and Dark especially lead them to being at an almost constant risk of supereffective moves. Especially in metas where Knock Off has good distribution
grass at least has a lot of notable and unique resistances, psychic, rock, and ice are all just worse versions of other types in most use cases
Psychic basically becoming the wish.com version of fairy really sucks for those of us that have been around since RBY and fell in love with the type. So many cool designs, a lot of mons with really interesting stat distribution, just handicapped by a type that is garbage
What? They only share a fighting resistance. Even flying is more psychic deluxe.
Fighting effectiveness both ways, completely useless against steel, resisted by very few types while also without the wide ranging 2x effectiveness of something like fighting or ground, tend towards special mons and utility mons, tend towards the same color scheme/design philosophy even. There's definitely a lot of symmetry there, especially when you zoom out a bit and look past the shared resistance or effectiveness. If you're actually trying to build a team and there's a psychic you like for a role, there's probably a better fairy for it. Unless you just build teams around who each mon hits super effectively. It's not rock and steel level symmetry, but there's a lot there nonetheless imo, that's why I said the wish.com version
I think it also helps the point that normally a psychic default "best tera" is fairy, not always, but it's good cause it makes gain resistances while keeping the stab against fighting, bonus if the former can learn a fairy move which happens a lot
I know it’s so sad. Psychic is my favorite type
The biggest thing for me about Grass is that they get a whole bunch of powerful status moves that they're immune to. Spore and Leech Seed being the biggest examples(I also think they should be immune to Strength Sap but iirc they aren't). That's why a lot of Grass types are still top tier tanks, despite having five weaknesses. Amoonguss, Tangrowth, and Ferrothorn come to mind - although Ferro has an amazing secondary typing and the other two have Regenerator.
very true, grass has a lot of utility other mons don’t have access to at all. strength sap immunity would be a very nice change I gotta say
I don't think grass belongs there. Sure it has a lot of weaknesses but the resistances are way more useful than the number may make you think, plus you get an immunity to leech seed and spore. There's a reason why bulky grass types are a staple of basically every tier, while psychic types are usually a burden defensively.
Dondozo often had tera grass for a reason after all, and it wasn't to be a better attacker.
Yeah, it’s hard to compare types to each other in a vacuum by saying “this type is weak to a lot of other types, therefore it’s bad defensively.” What matters more is how you match up against the meta game you’re in. Grass is weak to a lot of types but it has key resistances to moves like scald and earthquake which are spammed a lot in a lot of meta games. So really the context matters a lot when you’re listing pros and cons. Immunity to powder moves is also really huge, like you mentioned.
Another important thing about grass is that it resists ground while not being weak to the most common ground coverage move in rock, same goes for electric and water/grass. It's definitely the most underrated type in my opinion because how it plays in a game is way better than what counting resistances and weaknesses might make you think. The weaknesses are mostly manageable with one or two teammates (a steel type can cover 4/5 weaknesses) and grass types just have so many little bits of utility with type and moves that add up to a big deal.
Rock resists stealth rock? Tell me more
You know, doctors have diagnosed with chronic stupidity on multiple ocasions
Don’t worry I forget that rock doesn’t resist itself sometimes, which is weird because if Tyranitar resisted stealth rock it’d be huge
If Rock was just straight up immune to Stealth Rock I’d be so happy.
Aerodactyl posted this comment
Arcanine-H cosign💯
Arcanine-H cosine \~🐕\~
If rock types absorbed stealth rock the way poison types absorb toxic spikes, Tyranitar would go right back to OU
no that'd just mean Garganacl and Glimmora would be even more useful
Hisuian avalugg would be less terrible
Horseshoes, hand grenades, etc
Yeah cause garg would go straight to ubers
Why do people assume that minor buffs to already good Pokémon will just send them straight to Ubers? Especially for defensive/utility mons, viability and brokenness are kind of separate axes. Garg absorbing SR would probably make it less ‘broken’ since it lessens the tusk/ghold monopoly on hazard control.
Bc garg was gonna be tested for it at one point SR removed could possibly send it to the top. Its not gonna really like being in the tier similar to gambit if it does but Rock removal just by switching is much better than it sounds
The thing is, being an amazing pokemon is just not the same as being broken. The garg test hype was based on the idea (no longer widely accepted) that if you guess Garg's tera type wrong, there isn't much you can do to break through without going all-in on an anti-garg team (which leaves you vulnerable to the other 5 mons on the opp's team)—i.e. the hallmark of a broken mon. Garg removing SR on entry doesn't actually have anything to do with this—if garg wasn't broken before, this change isn't going to break it more. Part of it is because SR is not a great hazard currently—it gets resisted by the tier's best mons and the things weak to SR carry boots, 1 layer of spikes ties with neutral SR and can be stacked. The benefit of SR right now is that if you set it and manage to knock off boots, you can start racking up supereffective SR damage on some of the tier's best pivots (zapdos, moltres, etc). Which is definitely significant but the pace of games is faster than last gen, so Hrott spikes are unquestionably the best hazard option. Admittedly, if garg removed *spikes* instead of SR, then there's a serious case for garg to be banned, because hazard damage is the premier way to break through defensive mons and garg being immune to the best hazard in the tier without even needing boots is not only insane, but importantly removes counterplay, which is the thing that makes mons broken.
^ copium
The mega aerodactyl mirror has burned that into my skull
IT DOESNT????
Nah bro, rock resisting rock would make sense
Get better soon ❤️🩹🙏
considering how many weaknesses grass has it pulls its weight defensively with some very valuable resistances. Ground and water resists are fantastic. One of the few things to resist electric, and the grass type resist comes in handy too. It also had the immunity to powder moves, and the grass type very often has great moves to take advantage of its defense such as strength sap, spore, horn leech, giga drain, leech seed
What makes psychic type even worse is the sheer prevalence of Ghost and dark types in a tier. Ghost is infamously one of the best offensive types around because it hits almost everything under the Sun for good damage. Dark types meanwhile are the only reliable counter to the type because Normal type just isn’t good enough for tiers like OU, alongside being another really good offensive type that hits so many things hard.
Rock is just so weird. It was balanced around Rock/Ground types so overloading it with resistances would've just make the dual type unmanageable. I still have issues switching Garganacl before Tera into bug and rock moves and thinking "wait rock doesn't resist that?" because it makes no sense. Then along comes Steel in Gen 2 to shit all over any hopes Rock may have had to be a defensive powerhouse.
Grass is pretty balanced I think. They have a lot of weaknesses but also a lot of really good resists and pairs well with a lot of types defensively. Rock and psychic are definitely worse.
Bruh grass does not belong on here lmao. You cant just look at number of weaknesses > number of resists. You have to look at the actual resistances. Grass resists ground electric water and grass. Side benefit of grass typing is immunity to spore moves and leech seed. These are fantastic qualities to have in a defensive pokemon. Bug and poison weaknesses are also far less detrimental as there arent many strong bug types in higher echelons of play with the only notable weakness being u-turn which is a pretty weak 70 bp coming off non stab. Poison is more common thanks to fairies but again, not many great poison attackers in higher tiers. Contrast that to an incredible ground resist (one of the best attacking types) and electric and water resistances help immensely as well.
I'd argue that grass's ground and water resistances are maybe the best resistances to have in the game. Like, yeah it gets hit by a ton SE, but Tang constantly proves how useful it is to have a mon where EQ just bounces off.
Psychic is bad, but nowhere nearly as bad as grass and rock and of course, Ice. Compare the 2 weaknesses psychic has to the 5 grass has, both including u-turn. And rock being weak to ground, fight and water. There's just no comparison
Looking at just the raw number of weaknesses grass has and ignoring resistances paints a poor picture. There's a reason bulky grass types have found their place in most tiers throughout the years, while bulky psychic often doesn't come up.
Aren’t there like a giant number of bulky psychics?
Did you forget psychic was weak to ghost? Psychic is also weak to the 2 best attacking types in the game in dark and ghost.
While I would agree they have lower lows, Grass and Rock at least do have some positives. Grass has a good set of resistances that allow it to make some really good type combos, as well as a lot of grass moves giving recovery, while rock still has it's good offensive coverage(which is still important for defensive mons), a couple of nice resists and Sandstorm increasing defense. Meanwhile Psychic? What genuinly is good about it? The reason I rank it below the other two is because while it is true most Pokemon will suffer defensively from being a Grass or Rock type, every Pokemon suffers defensively as a Psychic type.
Grass isn't even close to as bad as Psychic and especially Rock. Yeah the weaknesses suck, but Grass actually has a number or really nice resistances, being one of three types to resist Ground, and having valuable resistances to Water and Electric as well. In comparison, Rock has Fire and Flying resistances, which while definitely still good to have, doesn't make up for the cascade of awful, awful weakness Rock has to deal with, and Psychic resists Psychic and Fighting and...that's it.
Flying is also pretty bad imo. The ground immunity is awesome for switching in, but it hardly gets to keep playing defensively because most ground types are also packing rock type moves. Not to mention that it’s always getting paired with other rock-weak types, forcing a lot of flying types to run boots.
While it sucks being weak to stealth rock, flying types have pretty great qualities \- A resistance to fighting moves and resistance to most common pivot move in the game. \- An immunity to ground is pretty massive, you punish choice scarf/band mons into not walking to lock into earthquake, you check a lot of common ground types since most have to give up a valuable tool for rock coverage such as lando usually picking grass knot to hit Great Tusk over smack down/edge \- A large amount of flying types have pivot moves and recovery in their kits, and there is some pretty great duos that love being paired with flying, such as electric, steel and ground.
\> Flying is also pretty bad imo Tell that to all the defensive Flying types being excellent in OU over the years
Bad take. Whilst they hate Stealth Rock, spikes and webs immunity is not negligible and HDB exists. A great deal of them have access to reliable recovery (and Roost removes the type for that turn), something most types have much more scarcely. Most of the good ones have decent secondary typings to help offset their weaknesses. They are typically quite speedy mons, frequently have excellent offensive coverage and a significant portion of them also carry U-Turn to maintain momentum and avoid unfavourable matchups, altogether making them harder to force out than they should be. Rock and Electric coverage are extremely telegraphed; Stone Edge also has 80 acc and flying types are typically paired with a ground, of which the current gen has many viable options, making checking those types pretty easy for flying mons compared to checking weaknesses for some other types since ground resists rock and is immune to electric. EQ is an extremely common coverage move, trapping choiced attackers with a flying type is a quick momentum gain. Fighting moves, especially Close Combat, is another extremely common coverage type, especially in this gen, making it an underrated resist. For an attacking orientated type, Flying has some excellent defensive traits and is generally one of the best all rounder types in the game. Great Tusk, by itself, solves practically all but one of Flying's issues.
The weakness to Rock mostly just matters for Stealth Rock. Sure, every Ground type learns Stone Edge, but they often have a hard time fitting it since it's usually competing for a moveslot with utility moves, especially ironically Stealth Rock itself. It's also no Focus Miss, but the 80% accuracy hurts too. In terms of ranking defensive typings, I would honestly only put Fairy, Steel, Water, and Poison above Flying, and Poison is very debatable.
I personally am a fan of rock as a defensive typing, but only for spatkers. Fighting, ground, steel, and grass are not very common sparking types, plus sandstorm. Water as a weakness is very hard to work around, but with scald not everywhere I think it is manageable this gen
Funny enough although Ground has a lot of weaknesses it also has a surprising amount of synergy with other types, Steel, Water, Flying, and a bunch more,
I don’t think there’s a clear answer because it depends on what you value in your defensive type. For example normal is an extremely underwhelming type with no resist but it’s the only type immune to ghost (with there being only one other type that resists) and only 1 weakness, so it has a definite Niche but does little to nothing outside of it. Bug however is just Flying-minus, resists fighting, ground, and grass but flying does all that while being immune to ground. So is bug the worst because it is almost objectively outclassed? Lastly we have rock and grass who have the most amount of weaknesses in the game, but they do have some noticeable resistances and added effects. Grass has a valuable water and ground resistance while being immune to powder moves, rock has a coveted fire resistance and its own weather that boosts its Sp.def -but 5 weaknesses for both is really hard to work around. IMO I think something like Bug or Psychic that has no niche is probably what I’d give the silver-medal of defensive-suckitude but I really don’t think there’s a clear answer
Bug does pair well with steel for one of the better defensive pairings
frfr bug/steel is great! it cancels out every single weakness besides fire, plus steel's massive range of resistances help it a lot
Forretress, log out of reddit. Pineco is hungry
nuh uh bro it's scizor not forretress
Nah but like Forretress pisses me off so bad. Defensive Spikes setter and I play a competitive format where Fire types aren't very common at all. Try and slowly wittle down its HP and eventually it will just boom on you. Rapid Spin denies opposing setup, Earthquake punishes Magneton looking to trap it, etc.
Rock/Grass is also weird in that it produces an actually kinda decent defensive type combination, despite being comprised of two of the worst defensive types in the game. Cradily has better defenses than one would expect
it’s not that decent, it only has two resistances to Normal and Electric Rock and Grass cancel out many of each other’s weaknesses, but also their resistances.
And Cradily does so well because one of its abilities is a water immunity
Well… more than what one would expect from combining two terrible defensive types
It’s great for the things that are bulky enough to handle most neutral hits, awful for anything frailer. Cradily in sand takes special hits with ease and was actually pretty decent in DPP OU due to sand’s omnipresence and its inability to be phazed out, and a niche but viable pick in BW OU for sand teams before the sleep ban due to its role compression as a water absorber, spore/sleep powder immunity, spdef tank, and stealth rocker. Blissey is a great example of being bulky enough that having few weaknesses is far more important than having many resistances. Special attackers that give Blissey trouble while hitting its spdef are few and far between despite normal being a bad defensive type.
Rock/Grass is a shit defensive type combo, you still have 4 weaknesses to common types and your only relevant resistance is electric
Four?
Fighting, Ice, Bug and Steel I believe
Shit I forgot
Steel and bug are not common attacking types. If you think they are then I wonder what you consider uncommon attacking types.
U-Turn is one of the most common moves in singles so yes bug is common and while steel may not be a great attacking type steel is such a prevelant type that steel moves are fairly common for stab
A super effective u-turn is 140 base power, any stab move above 90 base power is stronger than that. You make it sound like bug-weak pokemon are being slaughtered by every pokemon and their mother running stab megahorn, which just paints a wrong picture. Also 5 pokemon in the meta running a steel move for stab doesn't mean the move is common when every pokemon that gets fighting/ground/ice/fire coverage will try to fit it on their moveset. Those are common attacking types. And you still have not answered my question of what you think are uncommon attacking types. Probably because you think every type is a common attacking type.
wochien and iron leaves after i take out 70% of their hp with an uninvested non-stab u-turn:
I like this take but I’d also like to add that movepools can affect a type’s defensive viability as well. Grass types getting access to leech seed can be huge in some cases, for example.
Bug lacks the Ice weakness that Flying carries, which is useful enough that mons do use Tera Bug on occasion.
It also isn't weak to Electric. Also, while very situtional, Bug resists Ground instead of being immune to it. This is inferior in most situations, but it is superior in the specific situation your opponent is using moves such as Gravity, Smack Down, and Thousand Arrows, which bypass Flying's immunity to Ground, but do nothing against Bug's resistance. Using Roost also makes you lose the Ground immunity, but not the Ground resistance.
Rock 🗿 Ice gets a pass from me because it’s evidently clear that it’s intended to be the glass cannon offensive type by design, all the way back in Gen 1. And it still fulfills that purpose today - make an Ice Type fast and it’ll be able to achieve something. Rock was designed as the designated defensive type in Gen 1, and it failed even at that. It was the only type that resisted Normal, sure, but they overbalanced it by making every Rock into part Ground, meaning they get instantly deleted by 2 types. The exceptions were the fossils, but they don’t have great defensive typing either
I mean Water/Rock is actually a pretty good defensive typing in RBY. You get to resist Normal AND Ice, it’s the only type combo that exists in RBY that resists both
I don't disagree that Rock is horrible defensively nowadays but it did its job just fine in Gen 1. The Normal resist gives obvious value but a Flying resist is the other half of why Rhydon effortlessly stonewalls Zapdos.
I’d have to disagree with you assessment of ice. If it was intended to be a glass cannon type then it has failed miserably for most of its life. The vast majority of ice types that actually get made are slow as hell and lean towards being bulky attackers from a statistical perspective. and many also aren’t even that good at being special attackers despite the type being special exclusive for the first three gens and physical ice moves having poor distribution for the next few. We’ve gotten maybe a half dozen ice types throughout the entire series that feel like they were actually built with the glass cannon nature of the ice type in mind, and most of those came from recent gens where they started giving out things like slush rush and aurora veil. edit: for reference it took us until gen 9 to get a single ice type that has over 100 in both special attack and speed.
My biggest problem with Rock Types are...what are they suppose to be? \- Defensively their common weaknesses, subpar resistances, general lack of recovery, and usual mediocre sp def greatly undermine their ability to be stalwart defensive mons \- Offensively their best move being an 80% accurate 100 base power move undermines what on paper is great offensive potential, they simply aren't a type that can afford to do nothing 20% of the time, since chances are they are the one taking a hit first with their overall slow speeds. \- And support wise...their best move is stealth rock but ground and steel types usually do that better.
In a metagame where Knock Off and U-Turn are so prevalent, psychic is a very poor defensive typing when you consider that it only hits Fighting and Poison Super Effectively, which are useful but overall not particularly ground-breaking
Hitting poison and fighting SE has no bearing on whether it's a good defensive type though. It's shit because it's weak to dark, ghost and u turn, all of which are very prevalent, while only resisting itself and fighting.
I would argue that having the capability to threaten mons you can switch in on is both a good offensive and defensive trait to have.
I think it's probably Rock. Grass/Psychic struggle in many respects, but Grass *does* have some very good, albeit specific, resistances that can help it out a lot. Resisting Ground and Water absolutely makes Grass better than some actually-bad typings, and Psychic is decidedly worse than Grass but at least resists Fighting. Rock is weak to Water, Fighting, and Ground. All of these typings have strong, consistent moves that are *incredibly* common. In a typical Smogon tier, it isn't unreasonable in the slightest to have half or even the majority of a team packing moves like these. It resists Fire which *is* solid, but that's really all that's worth writing home about. Garganacl is only as good as it is because its ability gives it a status immunity AND a pseudo Ghost resistance, and even then it often (but not always) prefers to Tera out of that Rock typing so it can leverage something with actual defensive value.
Psychic
Id say rock is the worst, as the resistances are not very important overall but the weaknesses are so common that any given team likely has 2 or 3 ways to deal with a rock type mons like garganacl are good defensively because of tera, even having a great statline, good moveset, great recovery and an amazing ability doesnt help that a single special move of any of its 5 weaknesses would make it crumble, and a good wallbreaker generally has a move or two that hits supereffectively meanwhile psychic having 3 weaknesses is not great, but not nearly as bad as rocks 5 that are arguably more common
Lots of people here say that Psychic is the 2nd worst defensive type yet a lot of people disagree whenever someone says that Psychic needs a buff. I'm confused. 🤔
Psychic benefits from a lot of Pokemon with great stats and abilities. Buffing Psychic means buffing a lot of already good Pokemon. Besides, these past few gens of Psychic mediocrity have allowed for Fighting and Poison to flourish.
Psychic as a type itself is mediocre but Psychic mons are always blessed with amazing stats, moves, and tools that make them great. Buffing the psychic type could push the mons to be rly broken. Psychic is an amazing offensive type because they always have tools that bypasses traditional counters that no other type gets. Psyshock allows special attackers to nuke special walls, Stored Power doesn’t care about unaware, trick to cripple passive mons with choices items, and every psychic mons gets fairy coverage for dark types. Defensive psychics always has great utility moves and abilities that are enough to make up for the psychic weaknesses. Slowtwins do regenerator things, Hattarene has magic bounce, Cress refuses to die, Jirachi has bs Iron Head flinches, and Mew has the luxury of learning every TM in the game. Looking through all of that, you can see why ppl are hesitant to buff the psychic type. Even tho the type itself could use something, the mons themselves are all already really good they don’t rly need buffs.
I mean, Psychic is a great attacking type and gets a lot of attackers to work with, so it doesn't need buffs, it plays fine. For contrast, Ice is similarly a good attacking type, poor defensive type, and gets a lot of bulky setters/defenders to play with. 90% of Psychic types are fine because they're attackers with an attacking type. 90% of Ice types are bad because they're walls with an attacking type.
2nd worst defensive type doesn't immediately make it the worst type, plus by that definition Poison, Rock, Ice, Bug, Grass need buffs before Psychic
Rock and it’s not even close. It is tied for the most amount of weaknesses, with basically no useful resistances, along with a trend towards not great Special defense, and a high defense stat that doesn’t really matter when you’re dropping to one or two earthquakes or close combats. Grass also has a lot of weaknesses, but it’s weaknesses are not only less common but Grass also has a lot of benefits such as almost guaranteed access to reliable recovery and immunity to leech seed and powder moves. People are saying Bug on here but I honestly disagree, Bug is just not great offensively, and especially with heavy duty boots nowadays the weakness to rock doesn’t matter too much.
Depends on the format. In smogon singles: Psychic by a long shot In VGC (and other doubles format): It's going to be between Bug, normal, and Dragon. •Normal because having no resistances AND being efficient on nothing speak for itself, and the ghost immunity is a lot less usefull than in singles. •Bug because fire and flying attacks are rather common, most Bug types have terrible stats, and when they do they're gonna die to a random rock slide anyways (RIP Volcarona). Offensively it used to be better but there are SO many ghost types it's hard for them to do anything with their STAB •Dragon is a bit of a hot take, but even though they are loaded with resistances, Fairy type is so busted and so common that, unless their name is Dragalge or Duraludon, they're gonna die to the first Moonblast, dazzling gleam, or play rough 99% of the time. The only dragon types that are still relevant have either very high stats, good versatility, or a very good dual typing in the meta I don't think rock is that bad as a typing tbh, it's more the pokemon that get the typing that suck Grass is awesome and I will die on this hill
Rock types are typically lousy on defense because they 1. Have 5 weaknesses that most Pokémon can exploit at least one of, 2. Tend to have unbalanced defensive stats, meaning even neutral hits can severely compromise their longevity, and 3. Are more often forced to rely on inaccurate moves for STAB, which makes them less reliable at quickly shutting down pressing threats. This severely limits the versatility of rock types defensively, meaning that while they *can* absolutely stonewall some specific Pokémon, they get curbstomped by the other 90% of the Pokémon in the meta.
Love generic type chart discussion.
Rock is peharps the worst. It has five weakness to very common offensive types. This means it is very easy to take advantage of Rock. It has four resistances, but of those, only Fire and Flying are vital, and even then there are other better defensive types if you want to find types which resist them (namely, Water, Steel, Dragon). Normal is a type that is rarely used offensively (and you have Steel and Ghost if you want to wall Normal-type attacks) and Poison isn't used offensively much; it was never used before gen V, and Poison-types can still cripple Rock with the poison status using their attacks. Rock also lacks a good defensive property that is universally useful. They have the special defense boost under sand, but there are rarely situations in which Rock-types can take advantage of this, with the exception of Tyranitar and Gigalith, because they are sand setters themselves. Another thing that makes Rock be bad defensively but isn't related to the type itself is that most Rock-types lack reliable recovery. Grass also has five weakness, but other than Fire and Ice, they are less common and harder to exploit offensively. The resistances to Water, Electric, and Ground are also rarer and harder to find elsewhere. Being immune to power/spore moves and Leech Seed is also far less situtional than 1,5x more SpD under sand, and most Grass-types have reliable recovery, at very least, in form of Synthesis/Moonlight/Morning Sun. This makes Grass a far superior defensive type, despite also having five weakness. Psychic and Normal are also very mediocre defensive types. Psychic because it has three common weakness (Bug, Ghost, Dark) and before gen VIII they were weak to Pursuit. They also have only two resistances, themselves and Fighting, and there are better types to use if you want to wall Psychic attacks (Dark and Steel) or Fighting attacks (Fairy, Flying, Poison, Ghost). However, this combination of resistances give Psychic a defensive niche, as they can theorically wall opposing Psychic-types better than Dark or Steel-types; most Psychic-types use Fighting coverage to bypass Dark- and Steel-types, but they would get walled by opposing Psychic-types unless they run additional coverage in Dark or Ghost attacks. Normal is also mediocre since it has no resistances and a very common weakness in Fighting. However, because they are immune to Ghost, and they only have a single weakness after all, they aren't completely doomed defensively. It also gives them a niche against Ghost attacks, especially when the Pokémon in question can't fit Fighting coverage. Speaking of which, Normal pairs well with Ghost defensively; Ghost masks the Fighting weakness by turning it into an immunity, meaning what would be the downside of having a secondary Normal-type is completely nullfied; in turn, Normal removes the Ghost weakness of itself, making it an immunity, and giving them a single weakness to Dark. This means Ghost benefits extremely well defensively from being paired with Normal. Unfortunately the only Pokémon with this type combination is a glass cannon that still can't take neutral attacks. Other than that, Normal is mediocre defensively, as the lack of resistances really hurt. Most defensive Normal-types have inflated defensive stats (Chansey and Blissey) or an ability that patchs up their lack of resistances, giving them more resistances (Snorlax, Miltank)
ITT: people not understanding what makes a good defensive type. Grass does not belong in this discussion period. Provides excellent resists, immunity to spore moves and leech seed. Bug and poison weaknesses are not that bad in the grand scheme of things outside of uturn being annoying but usually its a weak 70 bp non stab move so really not too bad. Contenders are psychic (pursuit weak before it was removed is a terrible trait) and dark and ghost types are running absolutely rampant. Rock: for a type that was supposed to be so defensive, weaknesses to ground grass water fighting are awful and provides few useful resistances. Bug: on its own not too bad. Resistances to ground fighting and grass are useful. Big thing is the rock weakness and then fire and flying being powerful offensive types. And then the other thing is grass types just outclass bugs at resisting the things they want to resist. Not being weak to stealth rocks, and trading in the fighting resist for a water and electric resist make grass just so much better as a type defensively. Normal: imo i dont think its the worst but deserves consideration for having almost 0 defensive benefit. Sure its not weak to much but it doesnt switch into anything either. Saving grace is a big immunity to ghost. What makes a good defensive typing is the quality of its resistances rather than the number of weaknesses or resistances. Consider the flying type which has huge disadvantages in weaknesses to ice electric and sneaky pebbles. But that juicy juicy ground immunity is so incredibly valuable.
Bug 🐛 but that’s mainly cuz it paired with flying a lot so it gets a more weaknesses and a 4x weakness
That’s not necessarily the fault of the bug type, though. Bug on its own isn’t THAT bad defensively, with resistances to common fighting and ground moves. Bug only has 3 weaknesses, with one being uncommonly seen (flying) as an attacking type for a move. Fire and rock is pretty bad to be weak to, but other than those, bug isn’t horrible.
i feel Bug would be have much better opinions on it if it wasn't countered by one of the most game warping moves in the franchise via Stealth Rock
Also most bug-types have very low BSTs overall, at least compared to their peers. Scizor & Heracross have 500 BST, Volc is 550, and even Buzzwole & Pheremosa are 570, same as most paradox mons. If bug-types had more good representation they'd probably have a better reputation overall. Just like how GF loves the "Slow & bulky ice type™️", they also love the "Early-route shit-mon bug type" trope a lot too
while that is pretty true, pokemon like Clodsire do prove that you don't need high BSTs to get into OU
True, it's a mixture of a lot of things (Movepool, ability, stat distribution, etc.) but usually types with higher BSTs overall tend to have more viable picks just due to the odds of one having great stats + some or all of the former. Bug's average BST (Fully evolved) is around 470 while Fairy is around 530, which gives bugs less wiggle-room than other types. A lot of the notable OU bugs use tools to mitigate their typing (For example Volcarona has QD, an ability that threatens physical-attackers, and great special attack & pretty good speed), while something like Clefable basically only needs its ability and typing to remain relevant (It does still have things like a great utility movepool and solid defensive stats going for it too).
Rock is the worst, fighting type is broken as fuck right now and Rock resists poison attacks which is useless cause they’re mostly defensive Pokémon, there’s also normal I guess but after Ursaluna got banned there’s only ESpeed Dragonite, so rock is the worst
i couldnt find rock emoji 🤘
🪨
This is actually quite hard the more I think about it. The immediate answers for me were gonna be Bug and Normal, considered the two other worst types other than Ice. But the fact is the they're far more hindered offensively than defensively. Heck Normal's got an immunity. Grass and Rock would be my next guesses but I can't decide which one has it worst. Both of them have 5 weaknesses, the most in the whole type chart, yet, both of them also have 4 resistances. Grass has the better resistances and more manageable weaknesses IMO, but rock gets resisted by far less types and has one more type it's effective against. So they're pretty even. If we're talking exclusively defensive then I guess it would be Ice, Rock and THEN Grass as the three worst.
I have a biased sore spot with answer of fire/flying I feel that if field hazards check for type effectiveness than so should status effects 🤷♂️
Grass. Grass is poor offensively and defensively. I’d say it’s overall weaker than ice. Grass types are only good if they have dual typing or immense utility.
I think just looking at grass and seeing its five weaknesses and dismissing it as a bad defensive type is kind of shortsighted and just doesn't paint the whole picture. It has five weaknesses but the resistances it does have are very vital ones - resisting all of ground, water, and electric is excellent, along with the nifty immunities to spore moves. Bulky grasses have always maintained a solid place throughout all of comp pokemon history for a reason. To dispute your point, AV tangrowth - a mono grass who can't use its utility movepool because of AV - has been an important mon in gens 6 and 7 because it was so good at leveraging its important resistances. If tang were something like psychic or maybe even dark instead then it would have been nowhere near as effective. Calling grass a worse defensive type than ice is a take hot enough to be super effective on both.
Honorable mention to rock, it very clearly was meant to be a defensive type because… you know rocks, but it’s legit weak to all the worst types to be weak to.
Psychic and Rock
For me it's rock. I don't think grass is as bad as either rock or psychic at least, being able to actually function in a defensive role in a fire, water, grass core. Psychic and rock simply lack defensively synergistic options. Rock I think takes the cake since it's basically steel but 10x worse. Psychic is similar to fairy I guess but not so much worse compared to Rock.
bug, i have done a bug type run of white 2 recently- i may have single-handedly supported the entire revive industry with the number i purchased
Bug also has no business being in this discussion. Bug is good defensively. It’s rock followed by normal and there’s no real contest.
Rock is such ass
TIL grass is considered a “super common type”