Pokemon Sword & Shield: Type chart, strengths, weaknesses of Pokemon

The type effectiveness (weaknesses and strengths) feature of Pokemon influences how strong or weak a pokemon is against another. It’s been a staple of the games since the franchise’s inception in the 1990s, and the type chart in Pokemon Sword and Shield is no exception. In-game, the winner of a battle is frequently determined by whether you use type effectiveness correctly and optimally. Despite this, there are a few things to keep in mind. The move type of your opponent and your own species determine whether your Pokemon’s attack is super effective or not. For example, grass-types are vulnerable to bug-type moves, but even if a bug-type uses the best psychic-type move, it will still be vulnerable.

Pokemon Sword & Shield type chart

A table listing each type’s particular strengths and weaknesses can be seen below:

As you can see above, there are a total of 18 different types of Pokemon throughout the entire Pokemon series. As previously demonstrated, different’mon have different strengths and weaknesses against different types. Fire-types are an excellent example of this, as they are effective against bug, grass, ice, and steel-types but ineffective against ground, rock, and water.

Despite what the table above suggests, there is a lot more to type effectiveness than meets the eye. Super effective moves, for example, deal double the damage, whereas ‘weak’ moves deal half the damage. There are a few moves that do no damage at all, such as normal-type attacks on ghost-types. Dual-types play an important role as well. Dual-type Pokemon have two types, as the name implies. If you use a move that is effective against both of the opposing Pokemon’s typing, it will deal 4x the damage. If the move is weak against both, it will only deal 1/4 of the total damage.

Using a water attack against a rock and/or ground type is the best example of a super-effective type attack. Geodude (a dual rock/ground Pokemon) would be 4x more vulnerable to water Pokemon attacks in this case. When a Fairy-type move is used on a Pokemon like Heatran, who is a dual steel/fire type, the opposite effect occurs. This would only cause a quarter of the damage.