NEW: EV spread recommender

[Zarel*]

[Saturday, Aug 11]
- The teambuilder will suggest EVs and abilities natures. The suggested spread is usually (but not always) [one of] the best - this feature is targeted mainly at casual users. Experienced users might also find it faster to tweak the suggested spread rather than start from scratch.

It works like this:

It doesn't have any knowledge of Smogon sets.

Bulkiness is calculated from a formula that takes into account a pokemon's base HP/Def/SpDef, Leftovers, Protect, healing moves, defense-boosting moves, and a lot of other things.

Speediness is calculated from a formula that takes into account a pokemon's base Speed, any speed-boosting moves, and any speed-boosting abilities (Speed Boost, Swift Swim...)

Offensiveness is calculated from a formula that just counts how many attacking moves you have. Bulk-boosting moves, whether they're attacking (Scald, Drain Punch) or not (Cosmic Power, Protect) will give a penalty to offensiveness.

It compares these three values to get a general role ("Fast Bulky Support" or "Bulky Special Sweeper"). Choice items have their own roles associated with them. Each role has a primary EV stat and a secondary EV stat.

252 EVs are placed into these two stats, and a target stat value is obtained. If one of these stats is HP and you're running Transform or Substitute, the stat value is optimized down to a Substitute number. In LC (and for Substitute), EVs are removed until we reach the minimum required for the target stat value.

If Speed was not a primary or secondary EV stat but the Pokemon only needs a few Speed EVs to reach a certain Speed tier, EVs are pulled from your secondary stat.

If there are any remaining EVs, they're are placed into: Atk or SpA, if you're running an attack of one of these types but they weren't a primary or secondary stat (for instance, if you're a mixed sweeper), otherwise SpD if you're at a Download number, otherwise HP.

The +stat for your Nature is your primary stat (unless it's HP, in which case it's your secondary stat).

The -stat for your Nature is -Spe if you're running Gyro Ball or Trick Room, otherwise -Atk if you have no physical moves, otherwise -SpA if you have no special moves, otherwise -Def or -SpD depending on if you have more special bulk or more physical bulk, respectively (-Def is chosen in the case of a tie).

[phoopes]

Originally Posted by Fat Zarel

[Saturday, Aug 11]
- The teambuilder will suggest EVs and abilities. The suggested spread is usually (but not always) [one of] the best - this feature is targeted mainly at casual users. Experienced users might also find it faster to tweak the suggested spread rather than start from scratch.

My Lord, thank you. I always seem to forget to change abilities from the first option. I've ended up with Damp Politoed and Inner Focus(?) Dragonite and others too many times, because I've been an idiot. haha

[Relados]

Originally Posted by Fat Zarel

[Saturday, Aug 11]
- The teambuilder will suggest EVs and abilities. The suggested spread is usually (but not always) [one of] the best - this feature is targeted mainly at casual users. Experienced users might also find it faster to tweak the suggested spread rather than start from scratch.

This is possibly the single greatest feature of PS aside from being a battle simulator. I hate having to go and recheck my EVs for certain pokemon.

[Zarel*]

Sorry, I mean natures, not abilities. Setting a good default ability will come... later. :/

[phoopes]

Originally Posted by Fat Zarel

Sorry, I mean natures, not abilities. Setting a good default ability will come... later. :/

Oh, don't worry 'bout it. Still, an awesome feature. Though I'm curious... how'd you decide what set to pick for which Pokemon? Because stuff like Dragonite and Jirachi have a bunch of different viable sets.

[Relados]

Originally Posted by Fat phoopes

Oh, don't worry 'bout it. Still, an awesome feature. Though I'm curious... how'd you decide what set to pick for which Pokemon? Because stuff like Dragonite and Jirachi have a bunch of different viable sets.

I believe it checks movesets and items for certain pokemon. For dragonite, it checks for a moveset that is similar to bulky dragonite it goes bulk, but if it is offensive it gets offensive EVs. Same thing with Jirachi, Volcarona, Tyranitar, the works.

However, trust his word more than mine. I'm just guessing.

[Exclamation!]

I actually find the suggested EV spread to be a little bit distracting when I'm teambuilding. It's nothing really important, but the ability to turn that feature off would be a plus for me.

[alkinesthetase]

Originally Posted by Fat phoopes

how'd you decide what set to pick for which Pokemon? Because stuff like Dragonite and Jirachi have a bunch of different viable sets.

^ seconded, although I think relados is roughly correct judging by the teams I've got lying around and the spreads being suggested for them

and another question. I'm looking at my tentacruel and this is the text I see beneath the suggested spread button:

(Fast Special Sweeper | bulk: phys 26 + spec 35 = 61)

I'm just curious, but what does this mean? (the suggested spread was 252+ spd / 252 satk / 4 hp. this would seem unusual for tentacruel, but i was running hydro pump/ice beam/rapid spin/tspikes... i guess the use of hydro pump made it think i was getting aggressive with the set) If i had to guess what it meant, i think it's some kind of bulk estimate based on base stats?

[Zarel*]

Originally Posted by Fat Relados

I believe it checks movesets and items for certain pokemon. For dragonite, it checks for a moveset that is similar to bulky dragonite it goes bulk, but if it is offensive it gets offensive EVs. Same thing with Jirachi, Volcarona, Tyranitar, the works.

It doesn't compare to Smogon sets at all - there is no mention of Smogon sets anywhere in the code.

I've split this thread, and edited the first post to have a summary of how it works: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpos...00&postcount=1

Originally Posted by Fat alkinesthetase

^ seconded, although I think relados is roughly correct judging by the teams I've got lying around and the spreads being suggested for them

and another question. I'm looking at my tentacruel and this is the text I see beneath the suggested spread button:
I'm just curious, but what does this mean? (the suggested spread was 252+ spd / 252 satk / 4 hp. this would seem unusual for tentacruel, but i was running hydro pump/ice beam/rapid spin/tspikes... i guess the use of hydro pump made it think i was getting aggressive with the set) If i had to guess what it meant, i think it's some kind of bulk estimate based on base stats?

Yes, Hydro Pump is indeed what put it over - you can replace it with Scald and watch as its recommended set becomes the Physically Defensive set. :P

I guess I should lower the bulk threshold for Tentacruel.

[phoopes]

Cool beans. Thanks for the explanation behind this. Was wondering what the bulk thing meant myself. Agreeing with Relados, probably one of, if not the best feature on PS right now.

[alkinesthetase]

very cool, very cool. the alg doesn't even come close to approximating my own spreads, but i can't really complain because my spreads are usually pretty weird (112 satk forretress to always deal 50% to 0/4 dnite with hp ice 8D). moreover, it has a good idea of understanding what i want to do with a mon, which is impressive in and of itself. it also notices some key speed tiers (eg recommending 32 speed for a jirachi that's not significantly leaned to offense), which is interesting

[UltiMario]

May I suggest putting the recommendation UNDER your normal EV spreads? As in, either below Nature or below the "protip"

It's an aesthetic nitpick of mine to keep the distracting extra casual elements farther away from the core teambuilding area. More visually pleasing for the people that can actually build a team (90% of people on PS) by keeping the clutter below rather than in the middle.

[Arcticblast]

Even for experienced teambuilders it's handy for putting EVs in quickly, assuming the recommendation is right. It's especially useful when replacing a Pokemon (ex. replacing Terrakion for Jolteon).

[Dusk209]

First of all, I agree with UltiMario: the suggested spread should be under the other stuff. Second of all I'd like to point a bug out: My forretress, with gyro ball/volt switch/stealth rock/rapid spin, doesn't get a -speed nature suggested. Instead, it lowers forre's sp.def. I tested this multiple times on both forry and ferro.

Also, continuing this conversation from the suggestions thread:

Originally Posted by Fat Zarel

PS usually picks a speed-boosting nature for a sweeper with no other speed boost, but a power-boosting nature for a sweeper with something like Unburden or Dragon Dance or something like that.

When using a scarf, you won't always want a power boosting nature. For example, scarf Infernape prefers Naive or Hasty, which allows it to outspeed other scarfed threats like Landorus.

[Pocket]

Really enjoying the intelligent user interface of Showdown! Thanks for these cool features, Zarel >:D

[ginganinja]

Just posting to thank Zarel for his hard work for this feature, and ShakeItUp for helping fine tune some EV spreads, thanks so much to both of you!

[breh]

I can't help but feel that setting abilities won't take much time at all; all you have to do is sit down for an hour or two and enter in which ability you want it to select for a mon if at all. Scizor will always want Technician, Espeon always wants Magic Mirror, etc.; hell, you already have randbats do it for you to a certain extent, don't you? (granted, it doesn't always choose the right choice, but that's beyond the point)

Anyway, the next logical step to this is simply checking the smogon analyses for the spreads and returning those. Showdown can't approximate everything (252 HP / 252 Spe / 4 Atk Careful for Ninjask when the best spread is 248 HP / 224 Def / 36 Spe Impish) and certain sets do what it does better.

Another problem occurs when you realize that none of these spreads are guaranteed to be efficient. Using that Ninjask example from earlier for the sake of example (252 HP / 252 Spe / 4 Atk Careful), a whopping 100 EVs are wasted simply because of bad EV distribution (the same stats are obtained with 252 HP / 4 Atk / 52 SpD / 100 Spe Jolly). This is a pretty big example, but I'm sure that others like it exist with respect to HP and defense products. I'm not sure how you'd fix this in an efficient manner (I'm not sure how long it takes to check if a more efficient spread for a mon exists), but if you can, it would be a really neat thing to implement.

[Zarel*]

No.

PS has never used Smogon analyses directly for any of its features. Mostly because I like writing AIs much more fun than scraping analyses from Smogon, but also because it's nice to write an AI and watch it come to the same conclusions as Smogon analysis writers.

In the end, I think it does more to encourage creativity this way.

And anyway, I think it's more fun to write an AI to do things like that, than to do it manually.

[breh]

Well, would it at least be possible to make the spreads efficient like I mentioned in my previous post?

[alkinesthetase]

integrating this http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54101 into the code would solve that problem. it's java so it can easily be decompiled; i was actually fiddling with the source the other day because i wanted to add some new mons to it and port it into another language

[coolbiz]

I dont know if it was supposed to do this on purpose but it made my Bronzong gentle natured?