Glass Cannons vs Tanks

Great question. Let me analyze the average Attack minus Defense stat across all 18 types. A positive number means the type favors offense, negative means defense.

The spectrum is striking. Fighting types are pure offense machines — their Attack exceeds Defense by almost 30 points on average. Dragon is close behind at +23. At the other extreme, Steel types are built to absorb hits, with Defense outpacing Attack by nearly 20 points.

Let me find the Pokémon with the biggest gap between Attack and Defense.

Deoxys (Attack Forme) is the ultimate glass cannon — 180 Attack but only 20 Defense. That's a 160-point gap. One hit from Deoxys can end a battle, but one hit on Deoxys might end it too. Mega Mewtwo X and Rampardos follow the same philosophy: hit first, hit hard, hope you survive.

The defensive specialists are fascinating.

Shuckle is legendary — 10 Attack but 230 Defense. It's not winning any battles quickly, but good luck taking it down. Mega Steelix and Mega Aggron are steel fortresses. And Eternatus has both massive Defense (250) and enough Attack (115) to actually threaten back.

Let me plot every Pokémon's Attack against their Defense.

Most Pokémon cluster in the middle — decent at both, exceptional at neither. The interesting ones are at the edges. Upper-left are the glass cannons (high attack, low defense). Lower-right are the tanks. Very few manage to reach the upper-right corner with elite stats in both.

Sharp intuition. Let me check if there's a correlation between offensive bias and speed.

There absolutely is. Fighting types average 76 speed with their +30 attack bias. Dragon averages 85 speed with +23 bias. Electric types are the fastest at 88 average speed. Meanwhile Steel — the most defensive type — is also the slowest at just 57 average speed. The pattern is clear: if you're going to hit hard, you better hit first.