So, its always bothered me, and I'm sure quite a ton of other people, that by pure numbers, Grass is so astronomically worse than either the Water or Fire type despite being positioned as a counterpart to them as one of the three starter types. In fact, by pure number of weaknesses and resistances, its arguably the literal worst type in the entire game, being both tied for the most amount of weaknesses and somehow also tied for the most amount of resistors, putting it in contention for both the worst offensive AND defensive type at the same type.
This is my attempt to try to rebalance grass's type matchups to make it stand on equal footing with Fire and Water, which are both considered some of the best types in the game. To be clear, this is meant to be a huge buff to the grass type, so my changes are overwhelmingly positive with one sole exception.
I wanted to keep Grass's type identity as a passive strategic type so I buffed it defensively moreso than offensively. I removed both weaknesses to Air and Ice, leaving it at 3 weaknesses (which is pretty average, actually). And I added a resistance to Ghost and an immunity to Fairy, both popular suggestions I've seen talked about elsewhere. If an immunity is considered too much, it could also just resist Fairy but I felt like Grass was bad enough that it needed that extra push.
Offensively, I removed Air and Metal's resistance to Grass, leaving it at 5 resistors. I had the idea of replacing its super effective match-up with Rock with Electric instead. As it stands right now, I feel like Grass simply has too much overlap with Water since they both hit Earth and Rock for SE damage, so I think it would be best to differentiate them this way. It's not necessary and I'm not super in love with the idea, so if you think it's better to keep the Rock weakness, that's okay too.
These buffs might seem excessive at first glance, but I assure you they're not. For comparison, this improved Grass type might still struggle to stand on the same level as Fire for example. Fire would still hit more types for SE damage (4vs3) while being resisted by less types (4vs5), while defensively both would have the same amount of weakness (3) and same amount of resistances (6, yes Fire resists SIX types), so compared to this *massively buffed* Grass type, Fire would still be the objectively better offensive type while being equal with it defensively.
Okay, so I wanted to get your opinion on these changes and specifically if you could answer these questions for me. Would this improved grass type be as good as Fire and Water types currently are? How would it compare to them? Would it still be the worst of the three starter and if so, by how much? Even if its still the worst, would the gap have at least shrunk considerably? And how good would this improved grass type be in general, compared to all other types in the game? Would it be enough to jump to the upper half of all types?
by Wisley185