The type chart is the single most important system in Pokémon. Every battle — from your first Route 1 encounter to a ranked finals match — is decided by the same 18×18 grid of "super effective, not very effective, and doesn't affect." Learn this grid and battles stop being coin flips; skip it and even a team of legendaries loses to a well-timed switch.
This is the modern (Generation 6+) chart used by every game from X & Y through Scarlet & Violet and beyond — the one where Fairy exists and Steel no longer resists Ghost or Dark. Below: how the multipliers work, full tables for all 18 types on both offense and defense, and the patterns worth memorizing.
Table of Contents
- How the Type Chart Works
- Attacking Chart: What Each Type Hits
- Defensive Chart: What Each Type Fears
- The Best Attacking Types
- The Best Defensive Types
- Dual Typing: Where the Chart Gets Interesting
- Six Matchups Worth Memorizing
- Put the Chart to Work
- Frequently Asked Questions
How the Type Chart Works
Every move has exactly one type, and every Pokémon has one or two types. When a move lands, the game looks up the matchup for each of the defender's types and multiplies:
- Super effective: ×2 — attacks a type it's strong against
- Not very effective: ×0.5 — attacks a type that resists it
- No effect: ×0 — attacks a type it can't touch at all
Dual types multiply both factors. Grass attack into a Water/Ground Pokémon (Quagsire): 2× on Water times 2× on Ground = ×4. The same Grass move into a Fire/Poison Pokémon (like Venusaur's line): 2× on Fire times 0.5× on Poison = a perfectly neutral ×1. That multiplication is why some dual types have shocking 4× weaknesses and others have almost none.
One more rule people forget: immunities override everything. Ground moves are ×0 against Flying no matter what the second type is — a Fire/Flying Charizard takes zero damage from Earthquake despite Fire being weak to Ground.
Attacking Chart: What Each Type Hits
Read each row as "if I attack with this type": what lands ×2, what gets resisted to ×0.5, and what it simply cannot hit.
| Type | Super effective (×2) | Not very effective (×0.5) | No effect (×0) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal | — | Rock, Steel | Ghost |
| Fire | Grass, Ice, Bug, Steel | Fire, Water, Rock, Dragon | — |
| Water | Fire, Ground, Rock | Water, Grass, Dragon | — |
| Electric | Water, Flying | Electric, Grass, Dragon | Ground |
| Grass | Water, Ground, Rock | Fire, Grass, Poison, Flying, Bug, Dragon, Steel | — |
| Ice | Grass, Ground, Flying, Dragon | Fire, Water, Ice, Steel | — |
| Fighting | Normal, Ice, Rock, Dark, Steel | Poison, Flying, Psychic, Bug, Fairy | Ghost |
| Poison | Grass, Fairy | Poison, Ground, Rock, Ghost | Steel |
| Ground | Fire, Electric, Poison, Rock, Steel | Grass, Bug | Flying |
| Flying | Grass, Fighting, Bug | Electric, Rock, Steel | — |
| Psychic | Fighting, Poison | Psychic, Steel | Dark |
| Bug | Grass, Psychic, Dark | Fire, Fighting, Poison, Flying, Ghost, Steel, Fairy | — |
| Rock | Fire, Ice, Flying, Bug | Fighting, Ground, Steel | — |
| Ghost | Psychic, Ghost | Dark | Normal |
| Dragon | Dragon | Steel | Fairy |
| Dark | Psychic, Ghost | Fighting, Dark, Fairy | — |
| Steel | Ice, Rock, Fairy | Fire, Water, Electric, Steel | — |
| Fairy | Fighting, Dragon, Dark | Fire, Poison, Steel | — |
Note how lopsided some rows are: Grass is resisted by seven types, Dragon by Steel and walled completely by Fairy, while Normal can never hit Ghost. These asymmetries shape entire competitive formats.
Defensive Chart: What Each Type Fears
Read each row as "if I am this type": what hits me for ×2, what I resist to ×0.5, and what can't touch me at all.
| Type | Weak to (×2) | Resists (×0.5) | Immune (×0) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal | Fighting | — | Ghost |
| Fire | Water, Ground, Rock | Fire, Grass, Ice, Bug, Steel, Fairy | — |
| Water | Electric, Grass | Fire, Water, Ice, Steel | — |
| Electric | Ground | Electric, Flying, Steel | — |
| Grass | Fire, Ice, Poison, Flying, Bug | Water, Electric, Grass, Ground | — |
| Ice | Fire, Fighting, Rock, Steel | Ice | — |
| Fighting | Flying, Psychic, Fairy | Rock, Bug, Dark | — |
| Poison | Ground, Psychic | Grass, Fighting, Poison, Bug, Fairy | — |
| Ground | Water, Ice, Grass | Poison, Rock | Electric |
| Flying | Electric, Ice, Rock | Grass, Fighting, Bug | Ground |
| Psychic | Bug, Ghost, Dark | Fighting, Psychic | — |
| Bug | Fire, Flying, Rock | Grass, Fighting, Ground | — |
| Rock | Water, Grass, Fighting, Ground, Steel | Normal, Fire, Poison, Flying | — |
| Ghost | Ghost, Dark | Poison, Bug | Normal, Fighting |
| Dragon | Ice, Dragon, Fairy | Fire, Water, Electric, Grass | — |
| Dark | Fighting, Bug, Fairy | Ghost, Dark | Psychic |
| Steel | Fire, Fighting, Ground | Normal, Grass, Ice, Flying, Psychic, Bug, Rock, Dragon, Steel, Fairy | Poison |
| Fairy | Poison, Steel | Fighting, Bug, Dark | Dragon |
The Best Attacking Types
Count the ×2 rows and two types win: Ground and Fighting, with five super-effective targets each — and between them they hit the two most common defensive types (Steel and Rock for Ground, Steel and Rock again for Fighting, plus Dark and Normal for Fighting alone).
- Ground hits Fire, Electric, Poison, Rock, and Steel — but Flying-types are completely immune, which is why Levitate and Flying-types matter as checks.
- Fighting hits Normal, Ice, Rock, Dark, and Steel — but Ghost immune.
- Ice hits four including Dragon and the potent Grass/Ground/Flying trio, but Ice-types themselves defend terribly. Ice is a great move type, a bad team type.
- Electric only hits two, but one of them is the ubiquitous Water — and it can't touch Ground at all.
The lesson: raw hit-count isn't everything. What matters is whether your coverage threatens the types your opponents actually use, which is exactly what the type coverage checker maps for your specific six.
The Best Defensive Types
Steel is the undisputed defensive king: ten resistances plus a Poison immunity, weak only to Fire, Fighting, and Ground. That's why every generation's best walls have Steel somewhere.
Fairy is the modern co-star: resists Fighting, Bug, and Dark, is immune to Dragon, and its only weaknesses (Poison and Steel) are historically underused attack types. Fairy's 2013 introduction wasn't just a new type — it was a balance patch that dethroned Dragon.
Water is the dependable everyman: only three weaknesses (Electric, Grass), four resistances including Fire and Ice, and no immunities to work around. It's why Water appears on more competitive teams than any other type.
Dual Typing: Where the Chart Gets Interesting
Dual types multiply, and that creates both disasters and masterpieces:
- Water/Ground (Quagsire, Whiscash, Gastrodon): ×4 weak to Grass — one Energy Ball ends the conversation. In exchange: Water cancels Ground's Grass weakness, and Ground immunity cancels Electric entirely. Electric attacks simply don't work.
- Fire/Flying (Charizard): ×4 Rock weakness — the eternal stealth rock tax.
- Steel/Flying (Skarmory, Corviknight): Fire and Electric are the only two weaknesses, with ten resistances and a Ground immunity. One of the best defensive type combinations ever printed.
- Electric/Flying (Zapdos): just Ice and Rock, with a built-in Ground immunity.
- Grass/Steel (Ferrothorn): quad-resists Grass, but pays for it with a ×4 Fire weakness — pairs beautifully with Water-types that eat Fire attacks (see our balanced team building guide for exactly how these handoffs work).
The pattern: every dual type trades somewhere. Your job is making sure the trades land on threats nobody carries.
Six Matchups Worth Memorizing
Full tables are for looking things up; these six cover half of all in-battle switching decisions:
- What beats Ghost? Ghost and Dark — and note Normal and Fighting can't touch Ghost at all.
- What beats Dragon? Ice, Dragon, and Fairy. Ice on a Dragon/Flying type is ×4.
- What beats Fairy? Poison and Steel — and practically nothing else resists it.
- What beats Water? Electric and Grass. Ground is immune to Electric but not to Water.
- What beats Electric? Only Ground — the chart's single most famous immunity.
- What beats Steel (defensively)? Fire, Fighting, Ground — the three types every serious team carries an answer with.
Everything else you can look up. Which is where the tools come in.
Put the Chart to Work
Reading the chart once doesn't make you type-literate — applying it to your six does:
- Map your coverage. Drop your team into the type coverage checker and see all 18 attacking types at once: where you hit hard, where you're stuck at ×0.5, and which types walled you completely.
- Stress-test the math. Before trusting a "check," run it in the damage calculator — resist + bulk sometimes survives your super-effective hit, and that's how games are lost.
- Fill the gaps. Draft candidates with the random team builder, compare finalists side by side in the compare tool, and look up exact matchups on any of the 1,025 Pokédex pages.
For the full framework — roles, coverage, and synergy in a 10-minute loop — read how to build a balanced Pokémon team next.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the strongest Pokémon type?
Offensively, Ground and Fighting hit the most types for super-effective damage (five each). Defensively, Steel is the strongest with ten resistances and a Poison immunity, followed by Fairy and Water. In practice "strongest" depends on format — Fairy reshaped competitive play more than any type before it.
What beats Ghost-type Pokémon?
Ghost and Dark moves hit Ghost for super-effective damage. Meanwhile Ghost is immune to Normal and Fighting attacks, which is why Ghost is such an annoying defensive type — half the movepool literally cannot connect.
Did the type chart ever change?
Yes, twice recently. In Generation 6 (2013) the Fairy type was added — immune to Dragon, super-effective against Fighting, Dragon, and Dark — and Steel simultaneously stopped resisting Ghost and Dark. Those two changes rebalanced the entire game. The chart has been stable since.
How do dual-type weaknesses calculate?
Each of the defender's types contributes a multiplier, and they multiply together: Grass attacking a Water/Ground Pokémon is 2 × 2 = 4×; the same Grass attack into Fire/Poison is 2 × 0.5 = 1× neutral. Immunities always override — anything multiplied by zero is zero.
What's the best defensive typing combination?
Steel/Flying (Corviknight, Skarmory) is a strong all-time answer: ten resistances, a Ground immunity, and only Fire and Electric weaknesses. Electric/Flying (Zapdos) is nearly as clean with just Ice and Rock weaknesses plus the Ground immunity. The "best" depends on what your format actually attacks with.