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When introduced to spirits, the game shows the chart below and explains a rock, paper, scissors relationship between non-neutral primary spirit types.

Primary Type Advantage Chart

Clearly if I'm challenging a Shield spirit, I should use a Grab spirit, or at least avoid using an Attack spirit, but why?

For example, if I'm challenging a lvl 10k Shield spirit and I've got both a lvl 10k Shield spirit and a lvl 8k Grab spirit, which one is the better choice?

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After running a few tests, it looks like having a type advantage increases damage by roughly 30%, which having a type disadvantage decreases damage dealt by about 15%.

To test this I took 3 spirits with equal attack values and made teams out of them:

  • Kammy Koopa, Atk 500, Attack Type
  • Porygon, Atk 500, Shield Type
  • Staryu, Atk 500, Grab Type

The Porygon also has 500 Def and will be used as the target for these tests, hoping that having Atk and Def even out helps us focus on just the type advantage results.

Type Advantage Lab Rats

Then I went into training mode and tested by using fully charged side smash attacks with Marth.

When testing with the same times (Shield vs Shield), I dealt 20.1% damage

Porygon Attack Case

When testing with a type advantage (Grab vs Shield), I dealt 26.2% damage

How does a Staryu even grab?

When testing with a type disadvantage (Attack vs Shield), I dealt 17.1% damage

Kammy Koopa attacks with a Type Disadvantage

If you divide the standard results with the advantage results (26.2/20.1) you get 1.303. So a type advantage grants roughly 30% extra damage output.

Dividing these standard results with the disadvantage results (17.1/20.1) you get 0.850. A type disadvantage thus reduces damage output by roughly 15%.

For a second test, I repeated the general steps from above but this time with Atk and Def values around 1000 to see if the results remain consistent.

Here I chose Urbosa (Attack, 1011 Atk), Blooper (Shield, 1003 Atk), Solidus Snake (Grab, 994 Atk), and Houndoom (Attack, 997 Def).

(The Atk values aren't exact with this test, but a quick test with two spirits with a 16 point difference in Atk values dealt the same damage in this test, so I'm assuming here that the differences are minor enough to not largely effect the results.)

Stats from second batch of testers

After repeating the test, I got:

  • No Advantage: 19.1%
  • Advantage: 24.8%
  • Disadvantage: 16.2%

The previous calculation here yields 1.298 (vs the previous 1.303) and 0.848 (vs the previous 0.850).

To be extra thorough, I tried this test one last time but with the 1000 Atk spirits vs the 500 Def Porygon spirit.

  • No Advantage: 23.5%
  • Advantage: 30.5%
  • Disadvantage: 19.9%

This gives 1.297 and 0.846, which stays in line with the original 30% and 15% estimates.

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    Note that "Power" is the sum of Offensive and Defensive power. Since Dark Matter has the greater Offensive power, it explains why he deals more damage to James than James does, despite having type disadvantage.
    – Nolonar
    Dec 28, 2018 at 13:34
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    Something else that may be affecting these test results, according to one of the wiki's for the game: "Equipping a fighter with a Primary Spirit from the same series as the fighter gives a 10% bonus to the spirit's stats". Dark Matter is from the Kirby series, which means he's giving an attack and defense buff to the Kirby's in the first and last test if this is true.
    – Question Marks
    Dec 28, 2018 at 15:09
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    Great points, both of you. I'd really love to see some more testing done on this, so I made it a community wiki. Please add any data that you can
    – CornSmith
    Dec 28, 2018 at 18:02
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    @CornSmith. I went through Twitter (I have a private Twitter account, which I only use for Switch screenshots). I could also remove my SD card, but that's not really worth it, in my opinion.
    – Nolonar
    Dec 28, 2018 at 18:06
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    Still trying to figure this out, but I got 3 spirits of the 3 main types with exactly 500 attack each, and a shield spirit with 500 defense. Testing with Marth's smash attack and no same series bonus (or any other bonuses), I got 20.1% with no advantage, 26.2% with advantage, and 17.1% with disadvantage. I want to now get the same setup with higher stats to test again, since Attack and Defense stats don't perfectly cancel each other out (same test with Marth but with exactly 4426 attack vs 4426 defense gave 16.5%).
    – Question Marks
    Dec 31, 2018 at 15:31

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