Pokémon Type Effectiveness Explained (sort of) [Part 1]
When your Pokémon battle screen says, “It’s super effective!”, there’s usually a logical reason. Usually. Let’s take a gander at the type effectiveness chart:
Type effectiveness (Generation II up to the present)
NORMAL: Scratching and body-slamming rocks and metal isn’t gonna be very effective, and ghosts exist on an entirely different plane of reality.
FIRE: You can burn plants and bugs, and melt metal and ice. Fire won’t, contrary to popular belief, fight fire effectively. Or, uh, dragons. and we know using a flamethrower on a river won’t have a profound effect on the health of the river. (fried fish, is, however quite tasty).
WATER: Water quenches fire, sinks rocks, and floods ground (also notice that it can erode both stone and earth). Water is soaked up by plants, though, and, like fire, isn’t powerful against itself. Try drowning a salmon, see how it likes it. Or a dragon.
ELECTRIC: Electricity is conducted well in bodies of water, electrocuting aquatic creatures easily. Natural electricity (lightning) also has a high likelihood of striking airborne monsters. Electricity is ineffective against grass-types in-game, although live plants are good conductors, and also carry lots of water! I guess it was a balance thing, though. Grass didn’t need any more weaknesses. And by now it almost goes without saying, but electricity won’t harm other electric-types much. Or dragons (which also almost goes without saying).
GRASS: Plants soak up water happily. They spread tendrils and vines through rocks, eventually destroying them. And plants also make use of (or steal, depending on your perspective) nutrients from the ground. Man, other than that, Grass sucks against like everything. Plants take forever to break down metals, toxins, and dragons, and are on the bad end of a symbiotic relationship with birds and bugs, the frickin’ parasites. Plants can’t smother flames without catching fire themselves, so that means they don’t do much damage to bonfires, I guess. Finally, plants are can deal with other plants super-effectively. I mean, they can’t. Just checking to see that you’re still reading.
ICE: Ice is bad against Steel, itself, and Fire, for obvious reasons, and not very effective against water, for an unknown reason. I guess even if you freeze some water, it doesn’t hurt it much. Frost does heavy damage to both plantlife and the ground. It also makes the wings of flying creatures too heavy to fly, and they come crashing down. Ice beats dragons, too. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Ice…is actually Dragon’s father. I know, you’ll tell me you thought Fire was his real father, but Fire and Flying were going through a rough patch in their marriage. It was after the introduction of Stealth Rock. Flying, though hampered greatly by this addition to the metagame, took it in stride. Fire, however, became sullen and gloomy. He would often stare out the window, took all meals straight to the television without so much as a “thank you,” and began smoking (ha). To this day, he remains submerged in this deep depression, waiting, hoping, to receive a new edge in Gen 5. Because of all the emotional stress at home, Flying hooked up with Fire’s old roommate, Ice. Ice understood Flying, and her weakness to Stealth Rock. But unlike Fire, he didn’t have a neutral relationship with his new bedfellow: Ice’s treatment of Flying quickly became domestic abuse. She returned to Fire, but not before conceiving a child, Dragon. What a skank. Dragon was raised to fear Ice, though he grew up thinking Fire was his biological father. Fire made sure his wife and child were safe from the cold influence of Ice for many years, but Dragon’s old weakness stayed. Tragically, Ice would forever have a devastating impact upon his son. So now you know. Just don’t let it get out, okay? They only told me because I’m a close family friend.
FIGHTING: Beefy fighters can smash rocks to dust, fold steel sheets with their index fingers, pulverize ice, knee those shifty, evil dark types in the gonads, and beat up kittens and other assorted cuddly pink creatures with ease. But with all these super-effective matchups, fighting-types have difficulty swatting bugs. I guess we’re talking more about sumo wrestlers and less about Mister Miyagi. Also, it matters not whether your Lucario is packing Close Combat or Hadouken Aura Sphere, fighters can’t touch ghosts at all. And they can’t hit many birds very hard, likely because it’s hard to catch them. Nor can they effectively combat Muk and his poison cohort. My favorite explanation for this is that ewwww, they just don’t wannaaaaa. As for the psychics, uh…hmm. I’ll get back to you on that one.
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