I love how each type's playstyle fits their type. Dragon is powerful, Electric strikes fast, Steel is steady, etc.

I like playing Monotype Normal simply because it’s fun to use a type that it’s considered boring and win teams like 6 dragons just with a Porygon2 (and a Bunny with strong legs in National Dex)

Monotype Poison is great because it has three pokemon with Regenerator that go on every team no matter what and Sheer Force Life Orb Nidoking just shreds half the tier with a correct prediction

Mono ghost is pretty nice now that they added poltergeist and dragapult, at least compared to previous gens

Recently got into monotype and I love it it's a breath of fresh air

I'm gonna be honest, I strongly disagree with mono-Water not being #1, let alone top 5. As a mono-dragon user I absolutely think Water is a better type than it is. No other type has that perfect balance of weather abuse, bulk, strong STABs, good typing, great walls, and great wallbreakers/sweepers. The only bad matchup it truly has is vs Rillaboom, everything else it can outplay with the right setup. It's obviously not unwinnable, but mono-water doesn't have to overstretch itself to patch offensive/defensive holes like others do.

My favourite aspect of Monotype is when it leads to the usage of usually untiered Pokemon, for example in Gen VII Alolan Golem was on almost every Electric team just because it happens to be the only Electric type with Stealth Rock and on every Rock team because Magnet Pull helps in the Steel type matchup

The funny thing its that with flying you can even use a Rain Offense. Pelipper, Zapdos/Thundurus, Swift Swim Mantine, and others... so nice lol

Monotype bug is a relatively niche choice. With access to offensive threats like Quiver Dance Volcarona, Swords Dance Guts Heracross, etc., Bug types, with their common poison dual typing, can counter Fairy, Psychic, and Dark.

Ice is notable for being the most volatile team type, one player is always going to lose very hard and it's not always clear which.

Monotype is really fun, it's interesting to see how people decide to build their teams

"It's not immediately obvious why Mono Flying is so good." My dude Landorus is RIGHT there 😅

Surprised mono water didn't make the list, from my surface level point of view it seems like it has ways to deal with it's weaknesses both defensively and offensively

Loving the Hoenn-themed song choices for each time! :D Oldale/Lavaridge, Zinnia, Gym, Steven, and Fortree

I'm a big fan of ground as a monotype. So many strong attackers while also having a defensive backbone with mons like, Garchomp and Landerous-Therian. You have some interesting ways to deal with some of your weaknesses like water absorb Gastrodon for water types, Thick Fat Mamoswine for ice, Nidoking for grass and so on.

I played a fair bit of monotype a year ago and really liked this one dark team. Beating fairy and bug teams was so fun and rewarding. Fighting teams hardly ever came up but the few that I fought annihilated me

I love NathanLoveChicken's monotype content so it's super cool to see you get into the tier too!

What an interesting format! I love the idea of building teams like a gym leader. I'd love to see more videos about it

11:12 I can't believe Freezai forgot rookidee, and corvisquire, those are HUGE threats who are pure flying type

Hearing about why blaziken and kartana got banned would be really cool!

Is it just me or is NathanlikesChicken getting recommended to everyone now, and monotype is starting to get really popular? Guy is popping off and deserves it for his efforts in the monotype scene.

Really hope you continue this series! monotype was always one of my favourite metagames back before I actually started to gain some game sense and learned how to get better (at least, a little better) at competitive pokemon. Water type teams were always my go to, and I vaguely remember and electric and flying team as well. I'd been thinking about getting back into it, might give it a shot because of this video! time to bring back my anti-water lapras and see what it can do in the modern meta

I'd love to see a video like this for all the mono-type teams. Really informative video!

I doubt it's the best, but certainly the one I've had the most fun and success with has been mono Poison. It's not just the triple Regenerator core with Amoonguss, Toxapex and my precious boy AV Slowking, but also Nidoking's sheer power (pun intended), Galarian Weezing's ability to counter a lot of different mons and setters like the tapus, and other useful fillers, such as Tentacruel for hazard removal, Scald burns and Toxic Spikes for a very useful free moveslot on Weezing or Pex, Drapion for a Psychic immunity with a good chance to launch a Sniper-boosted critical stab or Eq on a switch-in, or Scarf/Banded Crobat for a speed control to spam U-Turns (once used a Defog Boots one in a non-Tspikes team, but didn't really work out) and other offensive moves. I just don't know why, but it's more fun than it has any right to be having my opponents playing around status constantly as I go quite more offensively than I should lol

Electric, particularly in natdex mono is a super interesting type. There’s always going to be a core of 3 Pokémon that define the team ;Zapdos, Koko, A-Raichu), a second tier of 2-3 Pokémon that have moderate/high usage (Zeraora, Rotom-W, Magnezone, Regileki) and some teams will run a fringe option such as Dracozolt, Rotom-H, Galvantula or even something less viable such as Togedemaru or A-Golem. Within those three core Pokémon (Zap, Koko, A-Raichu), there’s a bevy of different sets, physical pivot Koko, dual screen Koko, special Koko. Specs Raichu, EB Raichu. Specs Zapdos, scarf Zapdos, defensive Zapdos, Flyinium Z Zapdos etc.

I would infer that Normal would be pretty solid for some sort of team. Lots of normal types have great natural bulk, and their key contribution throughout the games has been amazing movepools. You can even use something like Scrappy Miltank with Body Slam and a Lum Berry for covering Ghost Not to mention the absolute offensive monsters you have access to, two of which being Guts users which provides you two status immune sweepers…probably my favorite type ever and I just think it’s so slept on

I currently run a psychic type team at around medium ELO. Indeedee is really good for covering the ghost types. And with so many strong psychics also having the fairy type, dark isn't too scary either. Mono bug is actually the biggest problem but it's still doable with victini taking care of them. I typically also run a Physical attack Mew as well since it's a little tough to find a good physical psychic type Team is: Mew, Slowbro, Victini, Tapu Lele, Alakazam, and Indeedee

This was such a wonderful video to stumble upon. Playing monotype has become my favorite and pretty much primary way I play competitive Pokemon on showdown. I first found out about it because I generally really like a lot of poison mons that are generally not super viable in most competitive formats except the more stall based mons and this was a way to kind of fufill the gym leader fantasy ever kid has. I also found that team building can have a very different mindset behind it which is also super interesting. While you can still build a very balanced team with you standard support and sweapers I have also found that supprisingly having teams of very niche sweepers that work well with a couple of coverage options works very well also. Also just in general Mons that wouldn't see much if any usage suddely have niches on teams and its just a lot of fun all around that doesn't get talked about enough. I honestly am a little bit sad that there isnt a doubles monotype available on showdown but hopefully one day.

my favorite type is ???

This is my favourite Freezai video in a long time. I hope it does well so we get more videos like this.

Mono Dark is another great type due to how many great pokemon they have in their line-up

I've been sick and haven't slept for a week, so I had to watch this video twice to follow along properly, but I REALLY enjoyed learning more about the monotype format and I hope you do make more videos about it! Thank you for treating us to so many fascinating commentaries!

I didn't play competitive Pokemon for like a year but a few weeks ago I got the itch to play monotype. It's a really fun format, I personally love using mono-Electric. Currently at the time of writing I'm #6 on the Showdown ladder but admittedly that's probably a fluke, I typically float around between 1600 and 1700. One type that I think is really strong that you didn't mention is Ghost. Dragapult, Spectrier, and Aegislash have a few different movesets that they can run, and if you guess wrong which one they're running and you give them a free turn as a result you can get in serious trouble. And of course if you're dependent on physical attackers, it can be really hard to break past G-Corsola (luckily Electric doesn't have that particular problem).

Before the video started my guesses for top 5 were Water, Fairy, Steel, Dragon and Ghost. I got 3 right and water was the honorable mention. Not bad considering I never play this tier I guess Lol. Cool video I liked the concept.

Longtime player of Monotype and National Dex Monotype. Been loving my Poison stall team.

Really looking forward to your two next videos in the format, they sound very interesting !

I can't wait for poison/ground Quagsire for my poison monotype team, gives that extra edge against electric and steel that is kinda needed right now

mono ice is so fun. slush rush plus darm is fantastic and no one respects your type until you brutalize them.

Thanks for covering Monotype! Monotype has always been one of my favorite ladders because of how you build a type to both play to its strengths and to counter its weaknesses. Also, I saw my own mono flying team (same pokes, probably different and better moves) on here which both makes me feel skilled and generic, haha.

Nathan: *tickles the algorithm* Freezai: “this is my funnel”

I love monotype, I get to relive my childhood dream of becoming a gym leader!!

Monotype is one of my favorite tiers. I'd love to see more videos about it.

Yes! ive been waiting for monotype videos, ty so much

when both of your favourite pokemon's types and your favourite eeveelution's type makes it in the video:GGs

This is will always be my favourite metagame on pokemon showdown though I haven't played in a while

I played a lot of Mono Bug back in Gen 6. It wasn't amazing, but I found it to be a really fun hyper offense strategy. It seems to be pretty bad these days though. No good new Bug types means it still loses to its worst matchups but even harder now. Add to that, it used to not have the worst matchup against Fighting and Dragon, but it kinda feels like Bug insta-loses to Kommo-o. I'm surprised to hear Electric being so good these days. It used to be just horrible, but I guess Tapu Koko and Zeraora really brought a lot to the table.

Ice is an amazing type despite all it's weaknesses you got everything you really want but at the end of the day are at the mercy of your own skill vs the opponents despite this you still have mons like Weavile/G-Darm/Kryurem for offensive pressure and more defensive mons like Eviolite Piloswine for rocks / HDB Avalugg for spinning/phasing Kyurem can also stall a fair bit with it's sub roost set

Please make a video about the fighting type! It was very looked down on in generation 7, but I played it a TON and got good results with it. I'd love to see a video about what you think about it in gen 7

I've found that Mono Dark's STAB Sucker Punch hits incredibly hard. (Also Water should definitely be #1 imo)

The sad thing though, is since it would be top 5 and bottom 5 types, we would be missing 8 types for a tier list

I'd like to see you do a top 5 worse types too - I'm only a few minutes into yhe video but I'd like to hear you elaborate why Fighting fell off so hard over the past few generations (largely assuming Fairy is part of this)

Honestly I love learning about competitive Pokémon even though I don’t play it

Mono Flying has always been my preferred option thanks to the multitude of good options around

Would be super cool to see a gen 9 update to this 👀

Finally, a format I am familiar with

Youve made a video about my passion this time, Ive made Monotype teams Of every type made to counter each other type + a Mono team for General usage. 19 teams of each type, 18 types, 342 teams for Natdex Monotype alone

5:20 why’d you have to include this replay bro I got my ass beat 😂 love the vids

i really only know competitive pokémon because i used to play randoms with my now-ex (he once said he quit because mega sableye was a pain in the ass, which i find funny, because sableye is my favourite mon and i literally have a half sleeve tattoo of him) but when i heard of monotype i made a ghost team because most of my favourites are ghost (sableye, froslass, mimikyu, dragapult , mismagius and phantump are all some of my favourites). i think the team i made all of those but instead of phantump it was frillish. i only played it once and the guy i played against was super nice and gave me so many tips on how to play a monotype ghost team. i miss that person. i hope they know that i think they were very kind and i appreciated them being gentle with me , as i’m really just a pokémon fan for The Littel Guys

You could probably make a whole video on all the banned monotype Pokémon

This format reminds me of a Pokemon League of sorts where we kind of played mono type teams againat challengers (Like a Pokemon League), did have an "Elite 4" tournament, I actually ended up winning as Mono Fairy vs Mono Steel back in X/Y.. Those days were really fun

YOO THAT SEISMITOAD AT 3:09 ROCKS LOVE MF DOOM

Even knowing nothing about the monotype meta I was sure flying would be a great monotype just because bird spam has been so effective in the past. If you can practically make a monotype team and have success in OU that type is surely going to do well in monotype.

Me and a friend used to do competitions in monotype on Showdown. It functioned in that we go up to gen 8, a randomizer selecting the types we get each gen with no repeats (if you get ghost in gen 1, you can't get it in 2-8). Additionally, our opponent doesn't know what types the other has. Other rules being no mythicals or major legendaries, basically box art mons or equivalent but you can use lesser legends like the legendary birds, beasts, and swords of justice or mythical Pokemon. Also it's usually a coin flip whether we allow generational gimmicks. AKA: no megas, no z crystal, no dynamax. Also because gen 1 and 2 lacks some type in quantity, we only allow for 3 mons. An optional rule we did differently each time was gen 3 onward, we play doubles instead of singles. As 1 and 2 lack double battles. For every gen we do 2/3, winner gets a point. Whoever has most points wins, we never tied but the system I suggested is that a randomizer picks a random gen but we get to select our types. (Other person obviously not knowing beforehand.) We had a ton of cool battles. Like the time we both got gen 3 fighting and had near exact teams except 1 Mon. Even setups were near exact. Was very close, coming down to who's medicham beat the others. I luckily had the foresight to preserve mine, whilst he focused on his Heracross. (Thankfully my near death one won the speed tie and 1hk'd it with HP Flying, but went down right after from his Hariama.)

What team counters all these? You know Freezai’s gonna be using it in the next mono tournament

I remember I one took part in a Gym Leader tournament on PS and ended up with Jasmine. Has been my avatar ever since!

I would have put Ghost as an Honorable mention simply because it's really good at neutral matchups, sure the type struggles quite a bit against Dark and Normal (but it DOMINATES Psychic and Fighting like nobody's business lmao. Using Fighting and seeing a Ghost team facing you is one of the worst feeling in the tier, roughly as bad as say using an Ice team against a Bug team), but it's damn consistent against most neutral match ups simply because Ghost resists are in short supply and Ghost teams have a premiere offensive line up and some more than decent defensive backbone with Corsola, Mimikyu and Aegislash (and Dragapult which has a good defensive type and can take a strong neutral hit in a pinch). Ghost is definitely a pretty solid type

As i was watching your previous video i thought "id love to see a monotype video from him" and then i saw this. And Then i saw a non-evolved nuzlocke which is another thing ive wanted to see! How was i not already watching your vids

I’m shocked that ground isn’t in this list

was surprised to see mono electric here, might try this mode out seems like fun

I love how this was a sneaky list of reasons you should play them too- the "if you like X playstyle" on a couple of those explanations is a good hook to try and get people to try out monotype ladder :P

I used to be addicted to monotype on smogon back in the gen 7 days, and I started to get frustrated with it after a while from trying way too hard to be competitive and wasting hours and hours teambulding "the perfect team(s)" just to still face failure. Eventually i dropped the sweaty try-hard mentality and just kicked back and did what i thought was fun. Instead of copy and pasting meta strats and picking "s tier types" (that most people were already running) i just played my favorite types with my favorite mons. Ironically, the strategy of fun eventually led me to my highest ladder ranking ever on smogon which was either just shy of 1400 or right at 1400 cant remember. Got that high MOSTLY due to a fighting type team that was close to my heart, with help from a tapu koko focused electric team secondary

Ngl, I didn't know that existed and it actually sounds fun, and is likely the thing that might actually get me to try anything competitive pokemon out, even thought I probably will lose as i'm not very competitive or good at in depth type stuff. As far as pokemon goes that is.

With my group friends we do a monotype tournament every 4 months. The gimmick of the first half was Free for all. Next week is the finals and I am there. Wish me luck!

Normal is about to pop off when hisuian-zoroark becomes usable

"What makes the flying type so good is nothing too far fetched" Heh. Flying type. Heh. Farfetch. Heeh.

As a user of monotype grass and monotype rock, i really think celestela should be band on monotype, is so hard break on flying or steel teams. And the reason is she has lot of things, leech seed, flamethrower, haveay slam, automize, and even beast boost

Now I want to see the top 5 worst types in competitive monotype Pokémon.

Bug is underrated but so fun in monotype

Liking for more mono content. Wish mono LC wasn't dead.

omg i look amazing thanks for the cameo

Hail in national dex monotype with mega abomasnow and alolan ninetails supporting arctovish, arctzolt and alolan sandslash is a lot of fun to use

I got to #1 in this format twice. Once with Fairy and once with Ghost.

Great vid! What we REALLY need to know though… what’s the best secondary typing for monotype? As in, what type do you see most often that isn’t the type shared for all 6 mons? For example, I think flying would definitely be up there again since it has such a high dual type percent and creates a ground immunity (which 5 monotypes are weak to) and there are just good flying types in general… electric is another easy answer simply because the rotom forms are so good lolol (is this question relevant to anything? No… but I think it’s kinda fun and interesting 😊)

Hey man, love your content! Started playing showdown recently and have been learning a lot of cool stuff from ur vids, even started doing some LC games after watching ur teambuilding guide

First thanks for covering that format👍 My favorite this Gen would be mono Fire. Nothing like Drought plus V-Create or Flare Blitz spam. Addtionally it helps a lot that Pursuit is removed. Thus Victini and Blacephalon are really good now. Not to mentioned Cinderace is like cheat code with Libero.

It's worth mentioning the air balloon for electric, and how common ice is on water pokemon. The former is a very useful item and the latter is a very useful offensive type. At least that's my armchair understanding.

I got recently into Monotype, because I thought this mode was actually really fun to play Got into 1500 elo today with just an Electric team! Seeing Electric as top 3 types in Gen 8 Monotype makes complete sense tbh xD Btw, here is the team, Im so proud of this little boys :') -Tapu Koko -Magnezone -Alolan Raichu -Rotom Frost -Regieleki -Galvantula Hope everyone enjoys Monotype as much as I do!

I played a good bit of monotype and groun is REALLY fun as long as you dont get a grass team, then rillaboom sweeps. My team is landorus, hippowdon, excadrill, mamoswine, nidoking and seismitoad. The reason i use seismitoad over gastrodon is because its less passive since it has power whip for water types. The whole team hits like a truck especially banded mamoswine (with thick fat to resist ice) its only issue is its lacking speed without sand rush excadrill.

I actually run trick room on my mono dragon teams to counter slush rush, and faster dragon type teams. Additionally I run 30 speed IVs to ensure I out speed opposing dragons in trick room.

As a long-time Flying-type enjoyer, this puts a smile on my face.

TRAGIC FALL OF THE FIGHTING TYPE PLEEEEASE

literally never played monotype in my life ngl

Really, I'm just happy that two of my favorite types, Electric and Dragon, are here.

I like the water types being named after BALLADS 1

Good gameplay my fella

I've spent ages trying to get mono rock to work lol. Good vid!

In the past i climbed up the ladder with mono rock: Sandstorm is great and can set up sana rush lycanrock to outspeed a lot of mons. I user storm drain cradily and diamond storm body press diancie. Was very fun and effective i personally suggest to try that.

I know they don't have that many inherently strong mons. But I think Poison type is one worth mentioning. It only hits Fairy and Grass super effectively, and doesn't have that many resistances, but it's only weak to two types. Psychic and Ground. Both of which can easily be turned into immunities. Also, poison doesn't hit much super effectively, but it hits a lot for neutral dmg. Although I think it's a solid mono type, there are some glaring weaknesses of course. Despite its accessible immunity to Ground type, it's STAB attacks are resisted by ground, and even with multiple poison/water types to hit them super effectively, it still would be a hard team to break through. Also, steel types immunity to Poison, makes that a hard match up as well. Which is very unfortunate for the type in the META, as Ground and Steel are very powerful and thus common types. However, there **are** ways around even those weaknesses, and I think being able to cover both your weaknesses with immunities, through multiple Pokémon, hitting a lot of types neutrally, and being able to harass with lots of annoying status conditions. All serve to make it a notable mono-type in my opinion. Or, at least one with a place in my heart

Mono Dragon's mean weaknesses being mono dragon and mono ice make sense, but even with Dragalge (and Duralodon), I would have thought M. Fairy would have been so much more threatening. About Tornadus being the only pure flying, iirc, Corvisquire and Rookidee are also pure flying, but little cup aside, who uses preevolutions outside of certain niche exceptions (frequently with eviolite)?

Just wanted to add to your awesome video that the biggest threat to a steel type team is by far nidoking