>>44558187You're only counting the number of matchups, rather than what they are.
Steel only has 3 weaknesses, but those are weaknesses to 3 of the best offensive types in the game. Fighting and Ground are SE against 5 types and Fire is SE against 4, so moves of those type aren't dead weight outside of dealing with Steel. It has the most resistances by far, but it's balanced by its extremely common weaknesses Also, Steel is bad on the offensive end. Steel coverage was useless before gen 6 because Rock and Ice already had much more exploitable weaknesses.
Fairy, on the other hand, has 2 weaknesses. Those weaknesses are to Poison and Steel, which are both bad offensive types. The only reason to run a Poison or Steel coverage move is to deal with Fairies. And Fairy's strengths are against 3 of the best types in the game. Literally by design. It was introduced to nerf Dragon, Fighting, and Dark, which were too good in gen 5.
Fairy makes sense in theory. I agree that Dragon, Dark, and Fighting needed a nerf, but Fairy's weaknesses should've been to more common types. Poison and Steel didn't need to be SE against something new because they were never meant to be offensively-oriented types.
