Very interested in helping out with this kind of thing. I'm not huge in battle spot, but I love giving people what they need...and if it's not going to just collect dust in the PC of someone who just wanted it because it's free, I would be more than willing to work together towards it
There's great data there, but it's not always the easiest to make sense of. A general discussion across which we can share knowledge and interpret statistics from various formats would be huge. And it would help track the changing metagames.
I know they do have online discussions similar to ones we have through Smogon, etc., but as far as I can tell they're mostly scattered across chat servers (I've seen someone's pictures of a fan-released competitive magazine that includes chat conversations about the early XY metagame). But as pointed out earlier, the physical proximity of players is also a huge benefit there, and likely the reason simulators never became a thing.
^^
Hmm, I've been having this problem with my own team (stuff I was using months ago, put it aside for breeding, and picked up again this season). Still, when you've got no team and no idea what to do, having SOME piece of information is beneficial. Maybe as a part of the viability ranking or PGL usage statistics page, we should discuss basic common pokemon sets and synergies? Which leads us into...
(2) A Q&A format. People post questions about / questionable PGL usage statistics, and the community offers advice and attempts to answer the question. This would be easier to get started with, but could very easily die off if no one asks anything or answers questions.
Staraptor
Base stats: 85 HP / 120 Atk / 70 Def / 50 SAtk / 60 SDef / 100 Spd
Typing: Normal/Flying
Somehow the second relevant route 1 bird in this format, Staraptor is one of the game’s better designed competitive Pokémon. While certainly not a Pokémon anyone would accuse of being overpowered — perhaps it is a touch underpowered — it has exactly the tools it needs to in order to fit a small niche it performs better than any other Pokémon and nothing more. Staraptor gets to be competitively relevant almost exclusively because of Final Gambit and its Speed and HP stats, which allow it to assassinate targets with lower or equal max HP to it as long as it doesn’t take damage first by attacking into a Protect or being hit by a priority move. Staraptor has some other useful moves like Brave Bird, Close Combat, and U-turn, which do decent chunks of damage even from an uninvested base 120 Attack. Intimidate also helps Staraptor provide some utility in games it can’t get the Final Gambit off, though it is certainly a weaker option than other Intimidate Pokémon when Final Gambit is taken out of the equation.
Staraptor is an extremely high risk, high reward Pokémon. If it takes a Pokémon out that is more valuable than it is with Final Gambit, it can be game winning. Even just trading 1-for-1 with a Pokémon of equal value can be a big deal for teams that can exploit playing 3v3 instead of 4v4. However, even a slight misplay with Staraptor can prevent it from taking a KO as it goes down, which can easily be game losing. Priority, Protect, and Ghost-types switching in are Staraptor’s bane, but it can make huge plays when it predicts correctly for such a humble-looking Pokémon.
Key Moves: Brave Bird, Close Combat, U-turn, Final Gambit, Double Edge
Typical Builds: The stats are infected with some garbage, so I’m going to be blunt with this one: you shouldn’t care that only 65% of Staraptor used Choice Scarf and only 43.3% of Staraptor used Final Gambit. The viable competitive Staraptor set has Choice Scarf, Final Gambit, 252 HP, and then the player has some decisions to make regarding whether they value a little more power when Staraptor isn’t Final Gambiting or more Speed to creep against other Choice Scarf users like Salamence. U-turn is pretty important and Brave Bird is Staraptor’s offensive fallback without Final Gambit, but the other attacks are a bit of a toss-up in the final slot since they don’t tend to get used very much.
No no, I didn't interpret your earlier comment like that at all. :) I was just trying to examine the motivations of breeders / collectors, as distinct from breeders / competitors. I don't think I was so clear with that in my original post. The community takes some getting used to, and I'll totally admit that I'm a part of the problem too, lol. If you follow the link in my sig to my trade shop, you'll see the main point of it is to collect dream ball female pokemon with HAs, with very little thought to their overall competitive value, lol. A collection of pokemon I'll probably never battle with. ^_^
Yep, there was previously.
This totally makes sense. Similar to what you said concerning a lot of Japanese players might not be interested a such a different style of play, most of the western community (as it currently is centered around smogon) would likely be uninterested in the no-house-rules style, most evident by the low traffic here/the fact that this is the site that more or less sets the house rules. However, I'd be really surprised if there weren't at least some Japanese players utilizing their mandatory English on Showdown, but I'd definitely find the language barrier daunting if I were trying to play in Spanish or some other language I had learned a bit in school.
This is in the works. In the meantime, people are doing a great job of dissecting Triples videos and statistics in the CCAT thread.
