Do Pokémon Types match their Stereotypes?

[@jmcbango]

While it doesn't relate to base stats, I'd say a sterotype for normal types is that they have wide movepools that include most other types of moves

[@WhoElseButZane]

I always thought they had high hp but that's mostly just mons like chansey snorlax miltank etc.

[@tortoisecity]

high hp and wide move pools are definitely ones I've heard before, kind of just make me think of a jack of all trades, master of none type that also serves as a punching bag

[@BoomBoom-ym5oy]

​@@tortoisecitysmeargle would be the mascot

[@shaggytodopoderoso9526]

​@@WhoElseButZanethey do have the highest avg HP. But I guess chansey, blissey and snorlax boost the stat by a lot

[@hensleybrown4276]

@@WhoElseButZane

[@demi-femme4821]

The fact that Eternatus skewed it by 5 whole points shows just how absurdly strong it is

[@tortoisecity]

eternatus is ridiculous, skewing it 5 points out of all dragons, which already have really high bst is insane

[@ricksdarkness3257]

Other stereotypes: • Dark types are mostly edgy • Electric types being the fastest • Normal types having quite high HP and the widest movepool • Fire types being one of the most rare in most regions • Most flying type are also normal types

[@tortoisecity]

I've got some more thoughts about common type combos and normal types being broad brush, but yes I agree! thanks for the comment!

[@bulborb8756]

here's one sterotype that can fit with Water: being very bulky (which yeah there are a lot of bulky waters: quagsire, swampert, empoleon, gastrodon, suicune, araquanid, mantine, dondozo, slowbro, slowking just to name a few)

[@tortoisecity]

the bulky water is a classic

[@cioplasmmajic8327]

My uncle works and Nintendo, and he told me that he hates ice types. He personally went out of his way to make most of them slow and bulky so they're useless.

[@TotalAnalyst2]

Can confirm I'm his boss

[@tortoisecity]

I can confirm, I invented ice types in 1994 and have ruthlessly enforced the decision since

[@josephbulkin9222]

Joke's on you, I had a Lapras in Kanto, a Froslass in Sinnoh, and a Vanilluxe in Unova. And they were all great. Not useless in the slightest.

[@cioplasmmajic8327]

@josephbulkin9222 Bob made those. Bob is why he hates Ice types.

[@josephbulkin9222]

@@cioplasmmajic8327 I don't get it.

[@demi-femme4821]

Ice's Achilles heel is how damn SLOW it is. Its Speed is its lowest stat on average, which is the opposite of what you want on a type with 4 weaknesses and 1 resistance.

[@jaschabull2365]

That's the problem with giving such poor defensive attributes to a type which is fundamentally based on slowness (cold is just molecules moving particularly slowly).

[@tortoisecity]

yeah having weavile as the sole fast ice type and also being hyper fragile really doesn't do it any favours, and the rest of them have trouble keeping up with a glacier

[@josephbulkin9222]

Lapras works perfectly as a slow Ice Type. The ulitmate tank.

[@paulsus914]

​@@tortoisecityWhat about Chien-Pao?

[@tortoisecity]

chien-pao is based

[@defaultgraycat]

Ice should resist water

[@tortoisecity]

agree

[@memelurd7341]

It should also hit super effective on fire types but still be weak to fire.

[@AEVIGATA]

And grass, flying, hell even bug would make some logical sense.

[@jimkas3606]

​@@AEVIGATA all those types already struggle offensively. I nominate Ground type as a type that Ice should resist

[@harukaze7388]

I believe Ice can honestly work as a type with no resistances (but itself), Normal shows a type can work with no effectiveness. But it needs some balance. One weakness to either Rock or Fight needs to go. I'd pick Rock since it makes more sense to me. Its offensive presence needs to exist. A couple of its resistances need to be gone, Water should juts be weak to it since it's an incredibly tanky type as it is.

[@jaschabull2365]

I guess one of the troubles of using straight-up average is that it can be skewed based on ratio of various forms - a type that has more 3-stage lines may have a lower average than one with more one-offs, especially legendaries. If the likes of dialga and rayquaza had unevolved forms to drag the average down, the margin of mean stat total and distribution may be narrower at least. And I have to wonder if excluding even just the first-stage regional bugs would still leave bug that far behind in terms of mean stats. Heck, I wonder how much shedinja's HP being a single point affects the average. Maybe not all that much, but it's something to possibly adjust for. Also, did you accommodate pure power/huge power attackers having low base attack, but functionally double that? Medicham looks deceptively weak by just looking at its stat spread, even though it is anything but. I wonder what the numbers would look like if the averages were done based on stage of evolution - which types have the highest of which stat in their base forms, vs. their final forms, and if some gain more than others when they evolve.

[@tortoisecity]

very much agree RE: using strict averages, mostly did so A) because it was relatively easy to actually make that dataset myself and B) most people are familiar with the concept of the base stat total, so averaging it out was not that far of a leap. That doesn't mean there isn;t more ways to break it down, I really like your ideas of subsets of certain stages of evolution and different abilities like pure power. Generally to answer your question: no, I did not separate out the data or factor in specific abilities or gimmicks (would take me far too long and be far less fun to manually cobble together). i was aware when I was looking at this that the data would be skewed in a million different ways by a lot of things, whether that's dragon's prominence in the legendary pool, or bugs typical regional first stages, but just wanted to take a broad look at the stat ranges generally and see if they more or less aligned with how we think about them. Thanks for the comment!

[@dillonsomerville4729]

I think abilities shouldn't be accounted for due to the fact that Pokémon species don't always have to have their stat changing ability. You also have to balance out if a Pokémon has 2 stat changing abilities, or what if it's their hidden ability which is often not easily accessible. Then there's abilities like Truant, Slow Start or Defeatist. How would you factor these abilities in? Abilities never affect a Pokemon's Base Stats, they only affect the Pokemon's current stat, and considering this is only taking into account BSTs, they shouldn't affect this list.

[@trevorclinton2573]

I can think of some physical attacking psychic types (Metagros), but I can’t think of any special attacking fighting types, just a few mixed attackers like Lucario.

[@A_wild_Xavi_appeared]

I can only think of Keldeo

[@jaschabull2365]

I guess the trouble with this sort of thing is that a lot of the outliers of these stereotypes very well might still be typical of a different type of theirs (a physical attacking steel type doesn't sound that unusual).

[@tortoisecity]

very true about the special fighters, even now there's really not much. definitely quite a few physical attacking steel types

[@srgzachattack1594]

If its special attack stat is higher its a special attacker

[@blackdot105]

​@@srgzachattack1594Dunno, I see more Physically oriented Lucarios over Special. Or even Toxapex, which has a higher Physical attack, used to only use Scald, a Special move.

[@metageek7878]

I think Grass has a general stereotype of being mostly support based with narrow movepools usually only having Stab moves and normal moves with some status moves. There are exceptions like Sceptile, Roserade and Tsareena, but even they have seen more support based play in competitive despite high attacking stats And Contrary Serperior is just a big outlier in general. The fact every status powder move is Grass type helps this stereotype.

[@tortoisecity]

I'd generally agree with that, I'd probably say that the stereotype has diminished a bit over type, but still holds up

[@ktvx.94]

How about electric being fast and fire offensively oriented? You did mention ghosts being frail too, they tend to rank low in HP.

[@tortoisecity]

all legit stereotypes for sure

[@n00dl3]

I was thinking about this recently. I suspect Brock saying Rock-types have high defence is a hint that he is still kinda amateurish, like many of the trainers in Pewter City. Think about it - he lives in a city where all of the trainers caught their Pokémon in Viridian Forest, so their mostly Normal-type attacks are ineffective. He must have gone to Mt.Moon to get his Pokémon, but possibly didn't go any further after losing to Misty's doubly effective Water-types in Cerulean City. So from Brock's perspective, they DO have high defence. They easily withstand any physical attacks he's encountered and lost against the only special attacks he will have faced.

[@jaschabull2365]

Being able to find an onix at Mt. Moon can't be that amateurish a feat. Just you try doing it (spoiler: You won't find an onix unless you go at least as far as the rock tunnel).

[@tortoisecity]

I like this world-based explanation for why a character might think the way they do, thanks for the comment!

[@harukaze7388]

I feel it's a bit of a legacy from Gen 1 worldbuilding. The player's pokemon *is* a rarity. Rock types do resist mainly what used to be physical-only types. Normal, Flying, Poison, which are what most people have. "Special" types are a bit of a rarity, and even many aquatic pokemon moves are physical, normal moves.

[@emblemblade9245]

Gen 1 worldbuilding is wack. Damn near everyone has no idea what they’re doing and acts like they just discovered Pokemon yesterday. It’s a cool relic.

[@ProfessorRugops]

9:21 Volcarona using Quiver Dance to sweep your booty:

[@tortoisecity]

volcarona was top of my mind when i was thinking about this, that and mons like yanmega, heracross, and others which are pretty good, but well above bug type average

[@kirbyhasn9047]

For Gen 1 half fire types being physical attackers Water types being mostly bulky defensive (blastoide,vaporeon,lapras,cloyster,slowbro, tentacruel,dewgong) Psychic and electric types frail and fast glass cannons mostly Grass types are not pure grass, tangla is literally the only pure grass mon... Normal types pokemon are not normal for the amount of moves they can learn. Tbh i don't wanna say ice types are bad, sure they're bad defensively but great offensive 4 types to hit super effectively is great. Ice type pokemon problem is not being Bad, it's gamefreak who doesn't know how to make good ice types.. that is the reason on why i don't think i used ice type move on actual ice type mon...

[@tortoisecity]

I have a lot more to say on the matters of normal types and grass types always being poison types, but I generally agree with everything above - I would add for ice, only having one resistance is a really big downside, having everything but you hit you for at least neutral is really bad, almost doesn't matter if you are bulky to counteract it

[@MousaThe14]

Your rock and steel sections only cover part of the story because while they do have the stereotypes of being highly defensive, everybody thinks it’s a joke because Rock only has an average amount of weaknesses and resistances and it only resists weak early game types, making the stereotype idiotic compared to Steel’s absolute glute of resistances. The games want us to think of Rock as a weaker version of Steel but in practice its strengths and weaknesses are middle of the road and being weak to the common water and ground types or the overwhelmingly offensive fighting is meaningless regardless of your defense stat. Speedy electric types I suppose is one stereotype I hear but I think that’s pretty true. One thing I accidentally assumed from watching too many Pokémon videos is that maybe Normal types have a bulky specially defensive niche but I think that’s just the outliers are over represented. Actually, Bulky Water type is a cliche I hear often but I wonder if that bears out in the math or if the outliers are also over represented. I’ve heard Grass be called frail but I think that’s only because of the amount of weaknesses they have rather than because of any inherent stats

[@tortoisecity]

you're absolutely right that there's a lot more to the rock and steel dynamic than I covered here, but wanted to cover a broad brush of stereotypes than narrow in on one. Fast electrics is definitely one, bulky waters too, though water being the most common type limits that a little bit, and grass is frail but mostly due to type effectiveness matchups. Thanks for the comment!

[@JB-fp3fb]

"... Steel’s absolute glute of resistances." Hahaha! Steel be resisting with its whole ass. That's the best typo of the month for me; please don't edit it.

[@GeHeum]

You should maybe also have taken out mega's. Or maybe average all megas separately then take a weighted average of megas and none megas with the same weight for each type

[@tortoisecity]

totally could have, but I found a little more interesting to do a broad brush average, just because I think that kind of reflects the stereotypes in and of itself (for example, dragons with high bst being more likely to get megas) - but a fair point, thanks for the comment!

[@nihildwo4874]

i once did an Earth Nation Avatar challenge (i.e. I can only use Pokemon which have ground, fighting, steel and rock as primary typing): I felt the "type stereotypes" so hard. almost every pokemon I had access to was either "slow physical wall" or "Physical attacker" (most of them were slow too). this run was quite painful for so long because you stack up so many weaknesses (ground, grass, water), almost all pokemon are slow and low special defense and you have literally 1 good special attacking option (Lucario). Guess what the first 2 gyms in that fangame were .... grass and water LOL

[@tortoisecity]

that's brutal, getting past grass or water in the early game with rock or ground type is really hard, no matter the game. sounds like a super cool challenge though! (with emphasis on the challenge)

[@pun-inator6075]

The sterotypes I think off for each type are: Normal - versatility in movesets Water - high HP Grass - Stall tacs Fire - Offensive Flying - Speed? (I'm guessing with this one) Bug - Physical attack Poison - Defensive Electric - Speed Fighting - Physical attack Rock - Physical defence Ground - Physical attack Steel - Physical defence Ice - Weak defensives Fairy - Special status Dragon - Powerful offensives Ghost - Weak defensives Psychic - Special attack Dark - Special defence

[@tortoisecity]

that's pretty comprehensive - I am not super sure I'd assume high spdef for dark or special status for fairy, but I may be missing something that others are picking up!

[@THGMR-ox7sd]

I wish ice resisted more types

[@tortoisecity]

someone suggested water, which would be great

[@NoForksGiven]

You should do a video next of whether or not pokemon match their learnset stereotypes. I can think of quite a lot of pokemon that can learn Quick Attack, who have less than 90 speed, yet some fast pokemon don't. I can also think of a few pokemon who can learn Dragon Pulse, yet do not have the stereotypical personality of dragon pokemon i.e. violent and powerful

[@tortoisecity]

not a bad idea, though I have lists and lists of ideas at this point so can't say I'll get to it anytime soon!

[@ProfessorRugops]

One thing I can think of is Poison being a passive type where the Pokemon basically sit around and do nothing while inflicting status or doing team support, probably because before fairy was added Poison only hit one type super effectively and it was the least important one to do so, plus Poison moves were pretty bad until gen 4.

[@tortoisecity]

I can see the poison being a passive type for sure, but needed more resistances to successfully pull that off

[@jimkas3606]

​@@tortoisecity With 5 resistances now (2 being really good in Fighting and Fairy) it's doing a lot better as a type that sits around and clicks Toxic

[@tortoisecity]

for sure - really helps that not as many things get toxic any more as well, means they have much more of a niche to fill

[@harukaze7388]

back in the day poison was seen as like the defensive counterpart of ice, but it got much better at like gen 5 and especially 6

[@furball192]

We love your videos ❤

[@tortoisecity]

thanks!

[@janthehuman1679]

Normal types actually do have an associated “stereotype,” but it’s not that commonly talked about. In Gen 1 onwards, Normal types are more likely to have learnsets that contain lots of different types of moves (ie ice beam, thunderbolt, psychic, water gun, etc.) to add variety in terms of their coverage.

[@tortoisecity]

I will have more to say about normal types at some point in future, so will address this. thanks for the comment!

[@harukaze7388]

there's a distinction to be made too with like, how a type functions mechanically, and how the pokemon handle that mechanic. giving weighted rankings to each type and then analyzing those interactions tells you some about how they function rock has the defense stereotype but in reality is a weak type defensively and strong offensively. but a lot of rock type pokemon do have bulky stats... that play against them anyways that said one has to take some of the dialogue in context, like it may be really just telling you types before the category split, or its interactions with certain dominant types (normal, water) anyways fairy is overpowered better version of the glass-cannon type, no-sells the formerly overpowered type, better version of psychic in every way for some reason, weak to mainly defensive types, resists bug out of spite fairy is basically Better psychic

[@tortoisecity]

fairy definitely op, could be nerfed quite easily, and yeah all exists in context, including stereotypes

[@harukaze7388]

@@tortoisecity the worst is with ice, because it's supposed to be the almighty offensive type... with 4 very common resistances, and even its big hit is worthless because the strongest type does its job a million times better and its literal strongest moves are given to everything else the type itself is bad as a stereotype, and then the pokemon run all against it Fairy is basically Better Ice and Better Psychic

[@tortoisecity]

agreed, I remember when fairy came out and I thought it was really OP, despite there being several unbalanced types that either didn't function or could use nerfing, it was very bizarre to just add another OP type

[@harukaze7388]

@@tortoisecity when Fairy came out I just thought they were fixing the "stop making Dragon pseudos" problem by removing the Ice type from the game. _Then_ I saw the actual type chart and flinched (Honestly even the Dragon immunity seems too much, a resistance would be enough if they just, made less 1200BST Dragon types instead)

[@AEVIGATA]

I would love to see your data made public via Google sheets. I would also love to see the data tables sorted in such a way that we could quickly view the data including or excluding mega evolutions, legendaries, or pre-evolutions. I say this because I would personally believe a type’s merit should be reflected by the stats of the final stage evolution of all non-legendary, non-mega Pokémon. Maybe I’ll go on a spreadsheet spree myself if you choose not to make the table public…

[@tortoisecity]

fair enough! my data is not particularly sophisticated (blind to what the pokes are, for example, and only sorted into types) so sorting through manually for legends, megas, and pre evos would be an entirely new task, but is now linked in description :)

[@Tonicheddar]

I would like to gently disagree on bug types being bad. I love them too, and I play competitive, bug types if they're not explicitly meant for attack I.E Scizor(my favorite pokemon ever), they're often utility meaning they don't really specialize in one type of stat all that much and it's more of their abilities or move pool that makes them strong in a battle.

[@tortoisecity]

that's a very fair point, they're definitely not useless competitively - I think we could still have some high BST bug types though! please gamefreak give us a 720 bst bug legendary, it'd be so sweet :)

[@Tonicheddar]

@@tortoisecity Bug Box legendaries would be amazing. I'm sure there are plenty of real life legends or pop culture things to base them off of. MOTHMAN LEGENDARY

[@tortoisecity]

box art mothman would be amazing

[@Avianeyes]

@@tortoisecity bug plate arceus, take it or leave it

[@tortoisecity]

arceus is only ever a normal type to me

[@BoomBoom-ym5oy]

I kind of knew about stereotypes subconsciously but its cool to see a video and the community as a whole agree on this concept

[@tortoisecity]

it's something that you hear about so much, if I had a dollar for every time I've read "bulky ice type"

[@bulborb8756]

I will always say that the dev's REALLY need to stop making bulky, defensive ice-types, its never going to work as the type itself works best when they are fast offensive mons, and like the only somewhat "defensive" ice type that works is mamoswine

[@tortoisecity]

yeah I very much agree, too one note as far as ice types go

[@bulborb8756]

@@tortoisecity yeah since ice is supposed to be the "glass cannon" type, its great on offense but bad on defense, so idk why they insist on making this type defensive when it never works. as for Bug...yeah those guys need all the help they can get, the type is held back a lot by the sheer amount of weak early-game bugs that evolve fast and quickly fall off, and we really need more bugs that are like vikavolt, centiskorch, scolipede, venomoth, lokix and scizor, and less bugs like butterfree, dustox and ledian (heck even just changing the type chart where they are super effective against fairy instead of being resisted by them would help a ton too)

[@tortoisecity]

definitely more actual good bug types and some kind of buff would do well for bug

[@TotalAnalyst2]

What about Lapars and Wahlerin

[@bulborb8756]

@@TotalAnalyst2 tbh they kinda work, but if they didn't have the ice type then they would be better defensively, so them having the ice type is more like a hinderance for them. but unironically water/ice is one of the "better" defensive ice type combo's

[@Santi-ei3qf]

You also mentioned another stereotype in this video: Ground and rock being a common combination. Surprisingly there aren't many of them, specially after gen 2.

[@tortoisecity]

I may look into this kind of thing in a later video, because I've thought about it a lot before. thanks for the comment!

[@brooke89776]

great video thank you : )

[@tortoisecity]

thank you for watching!

[@Vahria-2_Rivaha-4_]

Mamoswine is a great Ice Type. I use it currently in Heartgold.

[@tortoisecity]

mamoswine is really cool

[@axilia203]

My two favourite types are bug and ice, I think you can understand my pain TwT Then my third is poison, and poison is mid

[@tortoisecity]

yeah I get you, I like poison and bug a lot, mixed on ice, but that is pain

[@Snt1_]

The thing of course is ice types arent known for being WEAK, theyre known for being BAD

[@tortoisecity]

they are definitely widely criticised for being bad

[@KuroiRenge]

Leech Life and Megahorn are fantastic Bug-type moves.

[@tortoisecity]

absolutely - a shame that leech life was bad for so long and they made megahorn a signature move for heracross in gen 2

[@MrPaki206]

Lmao, when they gave Leech life a boost, they had to get rid of lv 5 zubats with it 😂😂

[@SSBBPOKEFAN]

​@MrPaki206 Low level Zubats still exist, they just learn Absorb instead. This is true for every Pokemon that had early-game Leech Life.

[@edgargaebolg9307]

​@@MrPaki206 Now they get Absorb, which is both better (coverage against Rock) and worse (lower SpA)

[@handanyldzhan9232]

The psychic type's stat averages are also padded up by all the legends and mythicals with it. I'm sure that if you ignored them in your comparison, they'd be one of the weakest types around (with one of the better specially oriented stat averages, but that's it). Fairies aren't stereotyped in universe in terms of stats and movepool (just being called cute and stuff), but they're known as fair(l)y slow, of average or above average power, and specially very defensive by the player base.

[@tortoisecity]

I know so little about fairies, except that they scared the hell out of me when I first played ORAS, it seemed like they had no weak points. you are probably right about psychics, but I think there are quite a few high bst non legendaries and mythicals.

[@0whatman]

hah! I'm the 100th like! lmao

[@tortoisecity]

I'm the first like on this comment!