[eric the espeon]

If I don't reply to something, either you've made the change I suggested, or I accept your reasoning for not making the change and don't have a counter argument. I've reordered a bit.

I stand by this decision. Basically, my reasoning assumes that if a matchup is unfavorable, one can always make a switch. You aren't going to leave Blissey in against Machamp. You aren't going to try to take out Steelix with Druddigon. Are mixed sweepers more potent than single-side sweepers? I've wrecked enough teams with mix Deo-A (Espeed / Superpower / Ice Beam / Psycho Boost) to know that walling such sets is much more difficult. But it's been my experience that truly effective mixed sets are few and far between and don't really need the extra weight to be classified as the deadly beasts they are.

As for "double walls," a well-constructed stall team is dependent not on one Pokemon being able to slow all attacks but on several Pokemon having the synergy to completely block each other's weaknesses. In other words, it's been my experience that a wall really is as good as its strongest defensive side. On my super-stally RU team, Audino NEVER takes a Close Combat, and Steelix NEVER takes a Flamethrower.

While you're unlikely to leave a one side only wall in against their weakness for long, a one side only wall seems massively less defensive than a wall which could take hits as well as that one side wall from both physical and special attackers. You can switch in an unfavorable matchup, but doing so shows that this set has been unable to stall out the foe, and had to bring in a team mate. Using a fairly small power for the multiplication you could easily enough give an appropriate boost. There being few or many deadly mixed sweepers seems irrelevant to the extra potency given by the ability to strike with physical and special attacks.

If Blissey had 130 base defense it would be rated as exactly the same stalliness as it currently is. And it would be staying in against pretty much any physical attacker. If Druddigon had 120 base special attack it would again have exactly the same rating currently, and it really would be blasting right through Steelix with Flamethrower. These are of course thought experiments of extreme cases, but it helps to clarify, and you're going to be having these same effects on a smaller scale for practically all sets (especially those which split EVs, for equal attack Pokémon like Deo-A if you're putting some EVs in both Atk and SpA you're going to be classed as more stally than just dumping it into one attack). With the method I suggested previously ((Atk^x+SpA^x)^-x, same for defenses, with perhaps a different x value), you could weigh the lesser defensive and offensive stat as strongly or weakly as appropriate with relative ease. Pokémon which are very capable of taking one kind of attack would still be given a fairly high stalliness rating so long as x is not very small, which corresponds to them taking only the kind of attacks you want.

Your reasoning holds for not weighing both greater and lower stats equally, but it does not show that the lower stat should have zero weight.

You'll note that I named by metric "stalliness" rather than "offensiveness." That's because it really is more about stall vs. "anti-stall" than stall vs. offense.

Hm, I'm curious about the distinction between anti-stall and offense.

Several times as I played with the metric I was confronted with the problem of "intent," which ideally would not be an issue at all. I had to ignore modifications from many abilities simply because they tend to have no practical use on most sets, and if I accounted for them, the metric would get thrown off. Not accounting for Leftovers at all was thus more of a "fitting" decision than anything else. However, when I add in Expert Belt et al., I'll consider throwing in a +0.25 for Lefties as well.

Perhaps ignoring abilities was not necessarily the best way to handle it? As you say, intent would ideally not be an issue. I'd like to think it was possible to make a metric which can work simply off the stalliness of the set, taking as much into account as it can. Maybe the reason the metric was getting so thrown off was that abilities were given too high weights?

If Berry Juice is ever unbanned or Gen IV Little Cup ever goes live on PS, I will reconsider this decision (will probably play it safe and make them neutral).

hm, if you're likely to change it when gen 4 LC comes to PS.. is it not worth preparing the formula for tiers which are not yet live on PS, since it's being used not just by you but by UPC's team and set analyzer? Obviously lower priority, but still. Also, is Oran Berry not used on Sub sets in LC, like Drifloon? hm, actually, yea, even 5th gen LC has quite a few Pokémon which sometimes prefer HP to defenses for more Subs, Wynaut's countercoat, or various abilities.

Graphs

hm, I like how adding leftovers differentiates between the different styles more (other than the most stally bulky offense, which seems to be an anomaly anyway, perhaps classified incorrectly? or perhaps an example of something that's being missed by the metric? which team is that?). The balance/semi-stall division seems to benefit most from it, though with only three semi-stall teams it could be a fluke.


Also, something which you seem not to have replied to from my previous post was the idea of applying the stat modifying effects before doing the damage to self calc. This may be mathematically equivalent to current implementation in many cases, but (especially if you take both stats into account) it seems a neater way to handle things (prevents the need for rounding on 20% boost items to get a tidy number, and with the split, makes Life Orb, Light Ball, etc much simpler, makes Wise Glasses and Muscle Band give appropriate boosts (currently their 1.1x for both is a ~20% overall boost, but Light Ball's 2x boost for both is a 100% boost, inconsistent)), and makes it a more easy to understand for those not familiar with logs. The direct changes to the score from other effects are useful, but applying boosts directly when possible seems sane.

And:

Originally Posted by Fat blog post

Light Ball, Thick Club and DeepSeaTooth subtract 1.0 from the metric when held by the correct Pokemon
DeepSeaTooth adds 1.0 to the metric when held by Clamperl