>>21498078People keep saying this, but that's not entirely true.
sure dragons as individual pokemon have a lot going for them outside the type itself. Dragon Dance, great coverage, great stat spreads, high BSTs, but the type itself is still great.
Think of it this way, offensively, STABs are valued for their neutral coverage, not their super effective hits. Dragon is only SE on dragon, but prior to gen VI it was only resisted by steel. defensive pokemon are largely dependent on their resists to do their job, only a few defensive pokemon wall things with their sheer defensive stats alone like Chansey. This meant that if your opponent didn't have any steel types the game became 1)press outrage 2) win. Teams commonly ran two steel types each with complimentary secondary types, like Skarmory + Heatran, to deal with them. and even if you did have steels they often lack good recovery, so if your opponent loaded up on dragons they could just repeatedly hit them until even they were broken.
Fairy put a stop to this. By being immune rather than resistant they couldn't be worn down by repeated hits or have to add significant defensive investment. They also have no overlapping weakness with steels, which are weak to 3 of the best coverage types in the game. So dragons can't just run EQ or Fire Blast and work around all their resists either, since they need a coverage move for steels and for fairies.
