How type matchups work in Polandball Go

Every ball has one or two types, and the game's type chart decides how hard one type hits another. This covers the chart, the orb and item numbers stacked on top of it, and why battles don't always go the way the chart says.

Seventeen attributes

The game calls types attributes. There are seventeen: Agriculture, Balance, Chaos, Cosmic, Energy, Faith, Fire, Ice, Light, Metal, Mountain, Nature, Oil, Shadow, Storm, Water and Wind. Every ball has one or two of them.

The game publishes its own chart of how each attribute does against every other. We read it from the official API every day, so if the game changes the chart, the change shows up here without anyone typing it in.

Reading the chart

For every attacking type against every defending type, the chart gives +1 if the attack is strong, 0 if it's neutral and −1 if it's weak. Against a ball with two types you add both values together. One attack into a dual-typed ball can land anywhere from −2 (weak against both types) to +2 (strong against both). A +1 and a −1 cancel out to a neutral hit.

Only one of the attacker's types counts. The defender's two types both matter, but the attacker swings with a single attack type.

From the chart to the damage

Orbs turn the chart's total into a damage multiplier. Type Proficiency has three orb tracks, and two of them matter here:

• Attack (Advantage) gives Type Boost. If the total is positive, the multiplier goes up by the attacker's Type Boost for each point. Type Boost is 10% at level 1 and 30% at level 10.
• Multiattack gives Resistance. If the total is negative, the multiplier goes down by the defender's Resistance for each point. Resistance is 5% at level 1 and 25% at level 10.
• Ultimate gives a Synergy Bonus. The game's screens don't say what it multiplies, so we leave it out instead of guessing. It's small next to the other two anyway.

A total of zero means a multiplier of exactly 1. Two examples using those rules: a +2 attack from a ball with level 10 attack orbs hits for 1.6 times damage (1 + 2 × 30%). A −1 attack into a ball with level 10 Resistance hits for 0.75 times (1 − 25%).

Both curves get steeper past the middle levels. The last few orb levels are worth more than the first few.

Which type a dual-typed ball attacks with

A ball with two types doesn't get to use whichever is better. When you unlock it, the game picks one of the two at random. That becomes its primary type, and it attacks with that type for as long as you own it. You don't get a say, and trading the ball rolls it again.

So two players' copies of the same ball can be completely different matchups. That's why Fire/Water and Water/Fire are separate entries on the tier list and on ball pages. If we've seen a copy in a battle or on a live profile, we know its roll and the answer is exact. If we haven't, either roll is equally likely, so the type calculator shows the average of the two with the range next to it.

Items

Every item has a resonance type, an attack stat and a defence stat. The item's attack gets the same type multiplier as the ball's, worked out from the item's resonance type against the target. That means an item can land a strong hit even when the ball's own attack type can't.

Defence is flat. It comes straight off incoming damage, whatever type the attack is.

Some items also have bonus effects, like extra damage against a certain type. Effects that aren't type damage, such as statuses and raid-only effects, aren't part of the calculation. The site marks them wherever they're shown.

What battles add

The chart is the rulebook, but a battle is more than one hit. PvP is five balls against five, and each slot fights the one opposite it. You see the first two slots before you attack. The last three are hidden and shuffled by the game. Whoever takes three of the five slots wins.

The game's battle feed only says which side won. It doesn't say who won each slot. So a ball's win rate here is really the record of the teams it was on, and that drags every win rate towards 50%. Even a ball that's genuinely dominant rarely gets much past 55 to 60%.

The first two slots are counter-picks. The attacker saw them before choosing a team, so matchups from those slots show what people bring against a type, not what beats it.

The last three are different. Nobody chose those pairings, because the game shuffled them. The matchup win rates on the meta page only count those slots, and they're the fairest type-against-type measure the battles can give.

Attackers also win far more often than defenders, and the gap widens the higher you go. That's why every win rate here counts attacking and defending separately first, and only then puts the two together.

Where to look next

• The type matchup calculator shows what the chart alone says about any two balls, both ways, with the working. It ignores CP and win rates, so a ball nobody plays gets judged just as fairly as the most popular one.
• The meta page shows what people play, which typing and item combos do best against it, and how each typing's matchups went in the hidden slots.
• The tier list grades every typing and ball on its real win rate at each ladder tier.