If Pokemon Could Have Three Types

pokemon that classic monster catching game from the 90s known around the globe since its debut there are some ways in which pokemon has noticeably changed not always for the better so we're really happy to finally be able to reveal dynamaxx but there are also many ways in which the pokemon of today is still very similar to the original games released in 1996. one thing that has remained mostly constant over the series 26 year run is what actually makes a pokemon a pokemon they have base stats learn moves get access to between one and three abilities and have one to two types just like school kids in an introductory computer class we're going to be focusing on typing now pokemon types have changed a lot over the years since red and blue three additional types have been added and there have been numerous changes to the relationships between the existing types one thing that hasn't changed however is that dastardly upper limit there has never been a pokemon that can have more than two types now i know what you're thinking ah i'm so interested to know what would happen if a pokemon were allowed to have three types if only there was a bearded man with numerous accolades and competitive pokemon to teach me well beloved viewer you're in luck before i share my thoughts i'd like to know what you all think about the topic which pokemon do you think deserves a third type and what type would you give them i hope you've been enjoying the content lately i've been focusing a lot on the quality and i hope that's apparent if you do enjoy these videos please consider subscribing currently only about eight percent of my audience is subscribed and it would be great if you'd help me raise that number up a bit i'm really passionate about pokemon and i want to help show more people what's so special about it we're also getting close to our half a million subscribers special anyway let's talk more about typing you might be wondering what do a pokemon's types actually do the short answer is two things first a pokemon's typing determines damage multipliers a fire type pokemon takes double damage from water attacks half from grass and neutral from electric second a pokemon's type will loosely determine the moves it can learn every pokemon learns moves that don't match their type but most pokemon primarily learn moves matching one of their types now any move used that is the same type as the user gets a 50 damage boost also known as same type attack bonus or stab for short just like its real life counterpart stab is a big deal but we'll talk more about that later so why is it that game freak hasn't added pokemon with more than two types yet as i am definitely not three pikachu in a wolf suit i can't say for certain but i do have some theories adding more types makes the game more complicated pokemon especially as of recent games has been designed for the lowest common denominator to be able to beat the game players already need to remember not only the intricate type chart but also the individual typing of the pokemon they fight against and adding to the game's complexity may go against game freak's design philosophy it's also possible that adding a third type to lots of pokemon could end up being overwhelming or game breaking but adding a third type to only a handful of pokemon is likely to have either not enough impact or make a small subset of pokemon way too powerful lastly adding new types to existing pokemon would be a very dramatic change in a series known for its familiarity mechanics like mega evolution z moves and dynamax can all be easily phased out as a generational gimmick unlike something like allowing pokemon to have additional types so there's many reasons why gamefreak might not want to add a third type but nobody here gives a heck about that what you're here for is me king of the monkeys and my opinion is law in monkey land there are two reasons why game freak can't afford to add a third type to pokemon one very minor that has an easy fix and one major with no clear workaround first the minor issue at present a pokemon with two types weak to the same attacking type is a huge liability pokemon like ferrothorn gastrodon and gyarados have all been good at one time or another since sword and shield's release but they require very careful positioning and play in order to ensure their four times weaknesses don't send them back to their pokeball preemptively adding a third type means there is now a possibility of all three types sharing a weakness picture a pokemon like camera presently ground and fire type if cam rupt were to gain the rock type not only would it have almost no chance of surviving even the weakest water move but it's even possible that it could be knocked out from full hp through protect in generations seven and eight using a z move or a max move into a pokemon that had used protect results in a quarter of the move's damage still going through for pokemon with an 8 times weakness this is the equivalent of an unprotected super effective move landing which when considering that the moves that deal damage through protect almost always have a high base power should be enough to knock out most pokemon now this isn't the biggest deal in the world as gamefreak could simply not design pokemon that have three shared weaknesses but it does apply restrictions in a way that don't currently exist with pokemon types the real issue though lies not in the defense of our hypothetical additional third type but with the offense i am very smart and i know about an incredibly advanced and never utilized technique known to scholars of the mind like myself as foreshadowing you all probably missed it earlier but i actually utilized this never before seen literary device on you here just like its real life counterpart stab is a big deal but we'll talk more about that later later well good viewers the time has come let's talk about the real reason game freak can't give pokemon a third type from a game balance standpoint stab gives pokemon a 50 damage increase if the move they use shares a type with them i know not all of you are as in the weeds as me when it comes to competitive pokemon so let's talk about how much this actually matters to understand how impactful this damage boost is let's talk about some popular items that boost damage first some items give boost to only a certain type of moves like mystic water boosting water type attacks or miracle seed boosting grass these items offer a damage boost of 20 without any drawback the item expert belt also gives a 20 damage boost but only to moves that are super effective next in terms of power is the life orb life orb increases damage dealt by 30 but whenever the pokemon does damage they lose 10 of their maximum hp which is a significant drawback the final form of items that boost damage are the choice band and choice specs items giving a 50 boost to all physical and special moves respectively these items are considered so powerful that in order to balance them a pokemon holding one can only use the first move they select until they switch out balancing a large power trade-off with stark and flexibility now consider the fact that stab like the choice items boost damage output by 50 without a serious drawback this would be a major buff and one that frankly the game isn't built to handle at the moment everything has been designed around the fact that a pokemon has two types and listen i'm not saying that the game is balanced perfectly okay i'm not saying it's balanced decently alright i'm not gonna say that it's balanced but i can at least say that allowing pokemon to gain a third type would certainly break things another thing to consider is that pokemon can only learn four moves at present most pokemon that aren't support pokemon typically run protect at least one stab move and then some combination of coverage moves the remaining stab move if they have multiple types or utility moves for pokemon with three types i fear the move sets would be very homogeneous protect stab one stab two stab three uh oh you goons just got foreshadowed again guess what we're gonna talk about now items you probably already forgot but those items we were talking about earlier yeah they also work with stab and they're multiplicative a pokemon using a stab move while holding a choice item will be at 225 percent of the original move's power and that's before considering any other help like weather or stat boosts now to be fair this already can happen with two types but there's a major difference between having two stab moves and three to understand why let's ground our analysis in examples take a pokemon like mammoth wine with ground and ice stabs mammoth swan is able to hit every pokemon with only one type for neutral or super effective damage no single type in the game resists both ground and ice more than that though mammoth swine is able to hit over half of all pokemon ever created for super effective damage if a pokemon were made with ground ice and fighting type it would be able to hit over two thirds of all pokemon ever created for super effective damage and pokemon like rotom wash which are able to resist mammosphine stabs would no longer be effective against the new fighting moves in other words a pokemon that is fighting ice and ground hits more pokemon for super effective damage and has fewer reliable defensive answers of course pokemon like mama swine and glastrier can already run this combination of offensive moves but without stab they are far less effective when hitting opposing pokemon for neutral damage on a pokemon like mama swine for example stab is going to be the difference between ko and rotom wash in two hits instead of three i don't want you to think i'm nitpicking and biased as mama swine not only has notoriously good offensive coverage but also doesn't make any sense to give fighting coverage too so let's look at another example flygon is dragon and ground type but you could make a rather compelling argument that it should be bug type instead of ground let's look at what happened if flygon were made into a dragon bug and ground type pokemon with dragon and ground flygon is able to hit six individual types for super effective damage and no one individual type resists both dragon and ground it also hits just under a third of all pokemon for super effective damage you might expect that adding the bug type considered the worst type in the game might not do much for flygon and you would be very wrong giving flygon bug stab allows it to hit almost half of all pokemon with its dab moves in contrast to less than the third before bug does more than simply broaden the spectrum of pokemon flygon can threaten with super effective attacks dragon is one of the best types in the game and bugs the worst and yet some popular dragon attacks like draco meteor and outrage have notable drawbacks giving flygon access to moves like stab bug buzz and u-turn would allow it more security in attacking when facing off against pokemon like rotom wash or rillaboom to be clear i'm not saying that adding the bug type to fly gun would make it the strongest pokemon ever created in fact i'm confident that it would still be worse than landorus t however it should be clear that giving flygon an additional type significantly improves its viability flygon is a pokemon that is lackluster in most formats of competitive pokemon but with this change it would likely become a very meaningful threat in formats with lower power levels and keep in mind that for this example i intentionally picked a pokemon that isn't classically considered strong imagine giving a third type to a pokemon already on top of the metagame even though i don't think pokemon can realistically add a third type in a healthy way i do still think it's fun to think about and in the process of working on my research for this video i came up with a number of pokemon that i thought thematically could have a third type i'll go through them now and share how good i think each of them would be but i'm also interested in whether or not i missed anything so let me know in the comments what you think our first pokemon is arguably one of the most iconic pokemon of all time charizard many players myself included think of charizard as a dragon to the extent where they even gave charizard a mega evolution that was dragon and fire instead of its original flying and fire typing if game freak were to introduce pokemon with three types i think charizard would be candidate number one and it should be obvious why when you consider that charizard has been given pretty much every possible generational gimmick and even has two different mega evolutions so how good would a fire flying and dragon charizard be defensively the dragon type adds weaknesses to ice and dragon and removes charizard's resistance to ferry but also gives charizard a triple resistance to grass a double resistance to fire and a neutral relationship with water and electric i would say that defensively this charizard is a lot stronger as it loses its weaknesses to water and electric and only gains in ice weakness and charizard is very threatening to ice type pokemon offensively these three types actually don't synergize super well adding the dragon type to a pokemon only allows it to hit more pokemon for neutral damage in addition to opposing dragon types for a super effective and charizard already excels at dealing neutral damage the main pokemon charge it struggles with are specially defensive water and rock types and while dragon coverage is somewhat useful it isn't as useful as the grass moves charizard normally runs to summarize i think that this would be an improvement to charizard's defenses but likely wouldn't change the standard set of fire move flying move solar beam and protect making it a surprisingly balanced change another clear beneficiary of a third type is gyarados gyarados like charizard is a pokemon that looks like it should be dragon type despite its water and flying typing in a ludicrous bait and switch gyarados's mega evolution changed his type in an unexpected way turning it into a water and dark type pokemon i for one think that was stupid and for this video i will be taking a look at what would happen if gyarados were a water flying and dragon type pokemon first let's take a look at what this does to gyarados defensively gyarados at present has a weakness to rock and a double weakness to electric adding the dragon typing would turn the double weakness into only a single weakness for electric and add weaknesses to dragon ice and ferry it would also provide a resistance to grass and double resistances to water and fire double resistances are a big deal in competitive pokemon as they often function very similar to immunities and allow your pokemon more ease when switching in or winning 1v1s overall i think this is a positive change defensively as gyarados loses its extremely detrimental double weakness to electric and gains helpful resistances in exchange for three new weaknesses offensively this is a massive buff for gyarados one of the main weaknesses of gyarados is that its only physical flying type attack worth using is bounce a two-turn attack that is not only easy to play around but also inaccurate typically gyarados run to protect dragon dance waterfall and bounce though bounce is so inconsistent that players have opted to run taunt instead at times the lack of a good physical flying move has relegated gyarados to mediocrity only really being strong when the power level of formats was low and there were ways around the reliance on bounce in the form of z moves and dynamics with this change i think gyarados would be far easier to use dragon claw would serve as a reliable option against the water grass and dragon types that resist waterfall and would allow gyarados to be less reliant on dynamaxx or a well-positioned z-move to shine our next pokemon is especially egregious lugia lugia is a psychic and flying type pokemon whose pokedex entries all have to do with it being the guardian of the sea now i'm not a scientist but last time i checked the sea was made of water in fact i'm relatively confident that nearly every pokemon that lives underwater is shocking water type the fact that lugia isn't a water type has always frustrated me so what better way to remedy the issue than by giving it a third type a water flying and psychic type lugia would be interesting defensively lugia ends up with weaknesses to rock ghost dark and a four times weakness to electric and resistances to water psychic steel fire and an immunity to ground lugia's primary strength competitively is its bulk the ability multiscale makes it near impossible to knock out from full hp and although it lacks an offensive power it aims to make up for it with speed utility and survivability this is the first pokemon we've talked about where i feel that adding a third type hurts more than it helps although water is one of the best types in the game turning lugia's weakness to electric into a double weakness is a massive deal as it opens a glaring hole in lugia's defensive abilities offensively adding a third type never hurts lugia goes from being able to hit about a quarter of pokemon for super effective damage to over 40 percent a sizeable increase in terms of individual types neither psychic or flying are able to hit steel pokemon for neutral damage which water remedies water also doubles the number of individual types that lugia is able to hit for super effective damage going from four types to eight if lugia gained access to skald i think a set of combined scald roost and aeroblast would be usable in competitive pokemon granted i don't think it would be amazing overall this change would be mostly relevant from a lore and design perspective and wouldn't do much to lift lugia out of mediocrity competitively there's two more pokemon i want to cover here and they're a pair of legendary pokemon solgaleo and luna are meant to represent the sun and the moon and yet solgaleo isn't fire type and lunala isn't dark type let's take a look at what happens if we rectify that a fire steel and psychic sogaleo is interesting defensively before changes solgaleo is weak to fire dark ghost and ground the addition of the fire type makes the ground weakness double and turns the fire weakness into a water weakness instead the 4 times weakness to ground is a big deal but overall i think these changes help more than they hurt steel resists the rock type attacks fire is weak too and fire resists the fire attacks steel is weak too when we look at the resistances we see something terrifying our thermal kitty boasts resistances to normal flying dragon and bug double resistances to steel grass ice fairy and psychic and an immunity to poison this is an absurd combination of resistances we touched earlier on how having a double resistance is in many cases very similar to having an immunity to a type giving a pokemon with good natural bulk five double resistances and an immunity is ridiculous the amount of pokemon who has seriously struggled to touch sogoleo is astronomical and when you consider that it would have three stab types and an ability that prevents opponents from lowering its stats it's clear that this pokemon would not be balanced in the slightest speaking of solgaleo's offenses let's take a look at what adding fire does to our feline friend originally solgaleo was able to hit 5 types for super effective damage and 26 percent of all pokemon created adding fire allows sogoleo to now damage eight individual types for super effective damage and 43 percent of all pokemon solgaleo was already a good pokemon it wasn't the strongest legendary but it's seen a fair bit of play since its debut and is typically ranked towards the middle of the pack when considering viable legendary pokemon adding the fire type would likely skyrocket its viability as it gains a very valuable tool to hit steel type pokemon which have walled it thus far solgaleo already gets access to powerful fire type attacks like flare blitz so we don't even need to speculate about its move pool sogolayo would likely function as a bulky trickrom setter and attacker as well as a weakness policy dynamax sweeper i expect it would be extremely popular especially when you consider that fire allows it a positive match-up against the current strongest legendary pokemon zaishan finally let's talk about solgaleo's counterpart lunala lunala is a quiet legendary pokemon in that it doesn't seem like people have strong feelings about it one way or the other and it's rarely in the discussion for strongest legendaries however the one year it was legal lunala won the pokemon world championships despite its double weakness dark and incinerate being on 80 of all teams so i think it's fair to say it's quite powerful let's look at what adding the dark type would do to linala defensively at present lunala has a double weakness to ghost and dark and that's it adding the dark type would turn both those double weaknesses into a single weakness and would add new weaknesses to bug and fairy this is overall an extremely positive change typically bug is one of the least common offensive types in pokemon if not the single least common type being able to turn two double weaknesses into regular weaknesses is well worth the cost of adding a fairy weakness despite ferry never being a good type to be weak to while weaknesses to fairy ghost and dark might still seem concerning it's important to consider lunala's ability lunola's shadow shield is effectively identical to multiscale meaning if lunala is at full hp it will take half damage from all incoming attacks this is an enormous buff especially when you consider lunala's incredible natural bulk by removing two four times weaknesses it will be virtually impossible to knock linola out from full hp making it difficult to play against and increasing the viability of sets with recovery in terms of resistances lunala has never had much to work with and dark doesn't do much to change that nunal originally has resistances to psychic and poison and immunities to normal and fighting our new luna simply changes the resistance to psychic to an immunity and that's it not super exciting but again lunala's primary defensive tool is its ability and bulk and having three immunities is nothing to scoff at either offensively this change matters very little if at all lunola originally is able to hit psychic ghost fighting and poison for super effective damage and 29 of all pokemon for super effective with neither type hitting dark for even neutral damage after this change lunala is also able to hit psychic ghost fighting and poison for super effective damage 29 of all pokemon and none of the three types can hit dark for even neutral damage incineroar player is eating i think it's funny that this change would be so powerful but exclusively defensively if you're confused as to why i think this change would be impactful despite not looking like as big a deal as some of the other pokemon we've looked at the short answer is because linal's offenses are already good enough ghost is one of the best types in the game at hitting pokemon for neutral damage and because luna already has a high special attack stat and a very powerful no drawback signature move its pain points have always been its double weaknesses not its offensive prowess i really love the idea of giving pokemon three types but after spending so much time with the topic i think this is one aspect of pokemon that really shouldn't change while i think it would be fun and exciting at first it's too difficult to balance and would change the series in a major way that would shift the balance too much towards offense which as we've seen from dynamaxx isn't especially good that being said this was still a lot of fun for me to work on so i hope it was enjoyable to watch as well if you enjoyed this video check out this one on what would happen if pokemon could learn 5 moves and if you've already watched it let me know what you thought in the comments

Channel: WolfeyVGC

Views: 989,102

Keywords: Wolfey, Pokemon, VGC, Wolfe Glick, Competitive Pokemon, Pokemon VGC, Pokemon Sword and Shield, twitch, twitch streams, pokemon nuzlocke, nuzlocke, pro gamer, gaming, gamer, hardcore nuzlocke, smallant, ludwig, pokemon challenge, pokemon challenges, alpharad, pokemon types, pokemon type tier list, pokemon three types, what if Pokemon could have three types, pokemon typing, pokemon type, new pokemon types, pokemon scarlet, pokemon violet, pokemon gen 9, new pokemon games

Id: fW_kmxo0Stk

Length: 22min 35sec (1355 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 21 2022