Xerneas and Tapu Koko I could debate but Zacian DEFINITELY thrives on its Fairy typing because they min-maxed its offensive profile so hard that a Neutral typing with only 1 Coverage move needed is plenty for it to blow through things, while being one of the best dual typings in the game (so Fairy is just as intrinsic as Steel to Crowned).You're not saying anything wrong, but you're kinda proving my point: most of the value of the Fairy Types isnt just "they're fairy types", is how stacked they are with both good typing AND good moves / ability / stats.
Purely being a fairy type doesn't make a mon good. As I said, call me when Aromatisse is sent to Ubers due to being a fairy type. Most good fairy types would still be good without the fairy typing. Xerneas would still be a godtier pokemon if it was pure Normal. Zacian would still be insane if it was Bug type. Tapu Koko would still be strong if it was pure Electric.
There's definitely cases where being fairy is *part* of why a pokemon is good, es speaking of Tapus, Tapu Lele wouldn't be anywhere as strong if it wasnt part fairy letting it actually face Dark types instead of being murdered by them. But being "part fairy" never was the breaking point.
There is a massive difference between being "good" and being "op". No single type is op in pokemon. Otherwise, if say... a mechanic was introduced that lets you change typing on a whim, everyone would run Fairy type right?
https://x.com/VGCdata/status/1746967515866058773?s=20
Hint: it isnt. If you take out Flutter Mane, which mainly uses it for the 2x stab value, it would be far down compared to Water, Grass and Ghost.
Water type is op if anything, not Fairy.
Fairy types just happen to have a higher amount of min-maxed or optimized pokemon than the other type. That's the limit of it. The type is not op.
And you seem to be missing my actual point: I said
This is not me saying the type is strictly overpowered on its own to the point that being a Fairy automatically makes something OP, and that's inadvertently arguing with a strawman if your responses treat that as the position being dealt with. My point was that Fairy's design was lazy and didn't think about how to design or balance its attributes beyond the surface aspects of "weaken these types and empower these" when those match-ups carry significantly more problem.Its design encompasses all the worst aspects of how Gamefreak tries to handle balance
With that said I WOULD still argue Fairy is one of the strongest vacuum types in that it is one of the hardest types for a Pokemon to be given and not be better with it than without it.
The Terastal comparison is faulty because Terastalization, like everything else, derives from the whole kit in what it synergizes with, and since the Pokemon were not designed with the types in mind they don't frequently include aspects like this. Incineroar runs Grass because it specifically wants to gain resistances to two of its base type weaknesses (Water from the extremely prevalent Urshifu and Ground) and doesn't have Fairy moves or base offensive options (or even a role) that favors Fairy on those fronts instead. Farigiraf by comparison is an Anti-Meta mon with Utility moves and a good Fairy type option while Fairy actively helps its existing profile. The "gotcha" here is that Terastalization is one-off so a Tera Fairy Incineroar is not a comparable value proposition to a Base Fairy Incineroar-esque Pokemon Kit.
Doubles particularly thrives more on surviving a few big/gotcha hits than Singles where either a single mon might take more turns of mileage from 1 extra survived (see set up sweepers) or long-term Defensive survival holds significantly more value. This warrants mention to me because there are still officially supported Singles formats in-game even outside of Smogon, even if VGC itself is doubles, so they can't totally ignore the way types or mechanics play out in both.
And
Arguing against this was my whole point of bringing up the 8 Dragons in current OU and history with others like Garchomp. Fairy if anything has an extremely low number of min-maxed Pokemon since most of the Pokemon the typing was added to were "mid-game mid-mons" like Whimsicott and Granbull. Heck even one of the most famous Fairy types is Clefable, who is ANYTHING but min-maxed despite having a very cohesive kit (to the point of being useful in Gen 4 singles before the type's introduction rocketed it even higher). I am receptive to the claim that Fairy type is not "OP" even with my position that it is just poorly designed and "just" better than the majority of standalone types, but you have a much harder case convincing me Fairy type includes more min-maxed Pokemon than the majority of other types like Dragon, Ground, Fighting, maybe even Dark.Fairy types just happen to have a higher amount of min-maxed or optimized pokemon than the other type. That's the limit of it. The type is not op.