LogFAQs > #986637674

Lazy_Haar posted...

Have rock types ever been considered decent? This topic has got me thinking and I don't know if I've ever used one seriously. I just played Violet recently and when I was trying to make a team of Pokemon I typically didn't use, I was looking at adding a rock type and got frustrated at how almost no rock moves have 100% accuracy (or if they did, they were often low power). I always saw them as awful in Gen 1, too, but I want to say most (if not all) of them were Ground/Rock type and super weak to Squirtle/Bulbasaur (not to mention they were slow).

Rock-types are solid in Gen 1 (competitive), because Normal resists are incredibly handy in a generation where Normal is one of the two best types (many would actually argue Normal is better than Psychic. I may agree.). Their only constantly relevant weakness is Ground which though bad is workable - everything Fighting-type in Gen 1 is terrible, Grass-type attacks in Gen 1 are largely terrible (the best Grass-type, Exeggutor, often doesn't run one at all), there aren't many common Pokemon that actually carry Water-type moves because Ice tends to hit everything you would want to hit something weak to Water just as hard (although Rhydon - the most common Rock-type - is also weak to Ice).

due to more outside changes than changes to Rock itself (Normal got way worse, Fighting and Grass got way better, Steel was invented), after Gen 2 (where due to the best Pokemon in the game being a Normal-type, being resistant to Normal is still very useful) being a Rock-type is mostly a bad thing.

it isn't completely absent from benefits - Rock is even more useful offensively in later gens due to Flying- and Fire-types being much more common, and they get nice sandstorm benefits like the special defense boost from Gen 4 - but it suffers from many of the same issues as Ice. Ice as a defensive type is ass, but the offense is amazing, so ideally Ice-type Pokemon shouldn't take hits and should just hit hard and fast, so they kill you before they get hit. Most Ice- and Rock-types are slow and hard to use as walls. Nearly every successful Pokemon of these types in later gens is offensively-minded.