Pokemon Rankings for Special Battle Spot (VGC14)

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Really, really interesting stuff here, I'm glad they finally got this feature live. Meowstic that high is a little surprising, but Manectric that high with no Amoonguss in the top 12 seems strange. Seeing the "what went in with this Pokemon" feature is neat too, especially when you end up picking out popular combos like Kangashroom, Khan Artist, Liepard + Gengar, etc. Ability usage is interesting to look at too; I see a few of you either can't get the hidden ability or are running healer bluffing the Aroma Veil on your Aromatisse. Looks like 100% of Arons have endeavor, but only 99.9% have Sturdy. Wouldn't want to be that guy.
 
things that i think should've been used more:

-amoonguss: i know bird and charizard are super popular, but it's pretty much the only follow me user these days. spore is as good as always, though it really sucks how you can't redirect sleep powder from venusaur.
-hammer arm/protect kangaskhan: maybe it's just me, but i prefer my kanga to straight up OHKO other kanga and ttar. if i use power up punch, i try to use it with protect because when you use power up punch you don't switch unless you're getting rid of a burn or intimidate drops (both of which can be played around relatively easily tpth), which makes fake out less useful. you know as well as i do that anyone in their right mind is going to try to gang up on a +2 kangaskhan.
-rotom-h: looking at the top 12, rotom-h can cover charizard, bird, manectric, aegislash and mawile, along with faring well (or about as good as rotom-w) against everything else there except for rotom-w and lumchomp if it's running bulky w-o-w and tyranitar if it's scarfed.
-scrafty: yeah it has a x4 fairy weakness, but you've got intimidate+fake out, a good fighting STAB to hit kanga with, ice punch/stone edge to snipe zard/chomp, and assault vest to give you an effective +1 on both defenses. also talonflame sucks
-lucario: ok you got me, i just want to promote luke since this is the first meta where he's actually somewhat viable with mega kang and ttar running around (and i guess gardevoir since that's a thing now apparently). he would be a lot better if aura sphere wasn't nerfed and could ohko mega kang with a special mega set. also you guys should try out a bulkier follow me set sometime instead of using the weaksauce special megaluke like the nearly 60% useage of lucarionite and 50%/50% aura sphere/flash cannon indicate. also if people are actually using yolocario like the similar usages lead me to believe.....................

(thats all off the top of my head)

things i question being used as much as they did:

-choice band/outrage garchomp: i mean i GUESS a CB EQ is pretty tempting, but i doubt it really scores any KO's that LO or regular chomper would get. on outrage, i think if it was seriously considered for anything besides 4th slot filler on a choiced set (i wouldn't want to be locked into outrage, would you?) anyone using it should either get used to losing or just give it iron head or stone edge. i mean, people only won with it about 3% of the time, but it was the 5th most used move, so....
-meowstic: WHY ARE PEOPLE STILL USING SAFESWAG SO OFTEN, THIS IS NOT OCTOBER. i mean if anything, trick room/twave should be higher than at least one of those moves. it's a shame the stats don't show how many times opponents hit themselves in confusion and stuff, otherwise i'd have a better idea of what actually won on meowstic so i could better make fun people using it.
-choice specs gardevoir: i'm mostly confused as to how it was more popular than choice scarf. seems to me that outspeeding and ko'ing chomper or finishing off charizard is what garde does best, but i can see the reasoning behind specs. maybe i just missed the train on this one
-rock slide salamence: seriously people, rock slide mence cant ohko charizard when you're using -attack natures. naive is only used 5.7% of the time, too! stick with stone edge guys, 80% to kill at full health is better than 0% chance.

other than that, i like how scarftar is making a comeback (especially now that ice beam is super popular) among other minor things.
 
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Interesting to see how Kang's top "counter" is Kang himself and how there's no go-to check. Gamefreak really made that guy too good
 
I can agree with Choice Specs being used more than Choice Scarf on Gardevoir just because I think Choice Scarf Gardevoir is really bad. No matter how you EV it you have to pick two of speed, power, and bulk. It's going to be garbage in one and mediocre at the other two. At least with Specs it comes sort of closer to being good when you take speed out of the equation entirely.

I wouldn't be surprised if Meowstic continued to see relatively high usage because it's not a bad Pokemon in itself. Players are just using it so, so badly right now... There is no excuse for not running an attack on Meowstic, and the highest damaging move on it being its 10th most used move makes me cringe. That just screams "gimmick" to me and I think usage is probably going to equalize a little bit when people stop valuing Quick Guard of all things over any semblance of offense and start running actually viable sets.
 

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Choice Specs Gardevoir feels to me like a poor man's... Mega Gardevoir. ;[ Granted, of course, Specs means keeping your Mega evolution open elsewhere (and it hits harder; Mega only has ~22% more SpA than non-Mega) but both serve the same purpose, boosting damage. Scarf is an entirely different monster and I think that makes it more of a threat overall, especially in its Speed bracket. It's not fast enough to outspeed a lot of the things it wants to kill, not slow enough to consistently threaten in Trick Room. It is fast enough for Scarf to put it above almost everything.
 
That just screams "gimmick" to me and I think usage is probably going to equalize a little bit when people stop valuing Quick Guard of all things over any semblance of offense and start running actually viable sets.
I think the problem here why people are valuing Quick Guard so much is simply put between the various other Pranksters and Talonflame's ability to net what can only be described as extremely cheap revenge kill/KO's it instills a certain fear into most players. The fear of never being able to do anything is quite powerful and that is what most Pranksters and Talonflame do, they take away your sense of control which is extremely infuriating and suddenly you see Meowstic who can lift some of that pressure off you and it's a godsend.

Personally I don't like Meowstic as much as I'd love the support it provides simply because it lacks so much offensive ability and defensive play is very very difficult in VGC prone to backfiring a lot where consistency is more important and quite frankly mono Psychic offense is just...bleck.

Something else I find interesting is Gardevoir being so high in usage despite being a dark horse during the formation of VGC '14. You compare to other Battle Spot formats where Togekiss is rampant and Gardevoir is missing it tells me a lot more about why it's being used. When you look at what it has going for most other Fairies don't you realize it's about the only special based Fairy we have in this metagame who can deal with common Fairy counters.

What I do love about the stats however is you should look into the common partners data and you find some pretty interesting stuff about the ones who aren't featured in the top 12 but likely quite common as well. Too much attention is being given to what we already know about VGC '14 and not enough about the threats just underneath the surface, like a glance at Gengar's regular partners you see things like Gothitelle and Politoed which are signature signs of that Perish Trapping is also seeing quite high usage.
 
It looks like the numbers are based off of the number of battles, not the number of players that use it. For example, there are only two people that have used Kricketune in Rating battles: Myself and another player. However, my Kricketune's set has a 13.3% usage rating. It's not 50%. So, one player can have a huge influence on these numbers if enough battles are had.
 
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