Ranking Every Type In Pokémon From Worst To Best

One of the most crucial parts of learning Pokémon is understanding types. Like fighting game matchups, some Pokémon completely trounce others, and knowing which pocket monster to sic on your enemies at the right time can be the difference between becoming a Pokémon champion and losing to that cocky rival of yours.

But not all types are created equal. Although Pokémon games are usually balanced enough to make sure all types have their uses, Game Freak will never fix the issue where some Pokémon types are just cooler than others. 

We’ve ranked every type of Pokémon from least cool to coolest. If you’re using this list to gauge how cool your current Sun & Moon party is, take the average ranking of every type your Pokémon is, divide it by four, then stop using this list as a way to measure how cool your Pokémon party is.

Ground
Look. I like Ground Pokémon. Some of my best friends are Geodudes. But you can’t argue that Ground as a type is redundant. We already have Rock. The ground is made up of rocks (and also other things, but that’s not the point). And if you can argue Ground isn’t redundant, I’m not willing to listen to you.

Normal
Normal is as Normal does. It doesn’t help Normal’s cool factor that all the boring, early Pokémon in most games are Normal type, setting them up as the type you either catch within your first hour or want nothing to do with. And also, Rattata is a Normal type. That’s all I need to say.

Poison
I’m all for weird types, but the poison type is heavily tainted by the first generation of games. In a generation where Psychic was king, Poison was among the weakest, and that weakness infected a number of Pokémon. Grass/Poison and Ghost/Poison Pokémon were abundant, and it meant Psychic Pokémon were often indispensable.

Fairy
One of the more recent types, Fairy Pokémon seems to have been created to create a second Normal type that wasn’t as boring (which should tell you how boring Normal is). That plans seems to have worked, however, and the type gave Pokémon like Clefairy and Jigglypuff a second wind.

Flying
Being able to fly is certainly cool, but few Pokémon are pure flying types. That’s because Flying is a boring type. No one wants to just be able to fly. You want magic electricity powers, or to also be a dragon. In a game with as many cool concepts as Pokémon, just Flying doesn’t cut it.

Bug
Bug works not just a cool type with its own strengths and weaknesses, but as an aesthetic choice. You can usually tell if a Pokémon is Bug type. They were also the secret way to fight Psychic Pokémon in the first generation of games, which made them feel that much cooler.

Water
I’ll admit that being able to spew water whenever you want is a useful skill, but I can already do that, so it’s not that cool. But, Water Pokémon do have the option to live in the ocean away from the rest of the world, which is something I could use right now.

Rock
Setting aside that Ground is objectively the worst type, Rock Pokémon are actually really cool. Adding the Rock type to any Pokémon makes them scientifically 10 percent cooler, and Rock Pokémon have some of the coolest designs in all of Pokémon.

Grass
Similar to Flying types, you won’t find too many great pure Grass types. That said, Grass at least lets you do cool things like summon sharp leaves and channel the power of the sun into a Kamehameha-like beam.

Find out which types are the best ones on the next page.

Steel
Introduced in the second generation, Steel felt like the more powerful version of Rock. It wasn’t (since it’s weak to fire where Rock is strong against it), but it was the exact kind of twist from a generation of games that came out in 1999.

Fire
Being able to breath fire is among the coolest things anyone could do. Burning things up is cool in a way no other type will ever be. That said, “breathing fire” is also one of the first things people come up with when it comes to thinking of cool powers. Still, it’s better than the Flying type.

Ice
Ice is Water’s cooler cousin. I can’t spew ice from my mouth yet, and that would be a much more useful skills at parties. Ice is also the way to beat Dragon types, which bumps it a few notches above most other elemental types.

Dark
The other type introduced for the second generation of Pokémon, Dark gave us a way to fight Psychic types, which we desperately needed. “I have a Dark Pokémon” is also just a cool thing to say.

Electric
The best elemental type, bar none. They’re super-fast, have a solid place in terms of strengths and weaknesses, and also, Pikachu. It also never made any sense to me why electricity was beaten by Ground. I’ve seen thunder mess up some ground.

Fighting
“Aren’t all Pokémon Fighting Pokémon,” you might ask. No. The fact that there’s a Fighting type at all suggests not all Pokémon were created to fight. Their existence questions the nature of whether Pokémon should be fighting each other, and that’s cool as heck.

Psychic
Whoever thought of Psychic as a type deserves a raise. Rolling telepathy, mesmerization, and other ESP-based powers was a great move for a game that could have been all about different kinds of elements fighting each other.

Ghost
Forcing dead spirits to fight for you after they’ve already died (likely from fighting for you) was a cool concept in 1996, and it’s a cool concept now. Even in death, Pokémon cannot escape the brutal survivalism of the wild, which was a weird thing to learn when you were six years old.

Dragon
One time, I read a book called The Truth About Dragons that told me dragons were real. I believed it then, and still do. Dragons are too cool for this planet. Being a Dragon is too good for most Pokémon. I still don’t have a Dragonite in Pokémon Go. That’s how cool they are.