Official Smogon University Simulator Statistics — November 2013

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Albacore

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I'm surprised at how many threats Quagsire counters. It might get some usage this gen as an unaware tank.
Clefable looks like it's getting quite a bit of usage in Pokebank. Don't quite understand why it's so much lower in standard. Anyone who's faced it in RU knows how tough it can be to break, and it's sven better now with the improved typing. It'll defenitely end up in UU, if not OU.
Absol should get more usage. It's a much better offensive magic bouncer than Espeon in most cases,and Pursuit resistance helps it (although U-Turn weakness doesn't). People will probably use it more when they realise that Dark-Fairy coverage is only resisted by Klefki and Mawile, the former not being able to touch Absol anyway.
 

alexwolf

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November Blue said:
Leftovers is much more popular than Lum Berry on Trevenant? Odd.
Leftovers recovery is just that important on a defensive Pokemon, and Trevenant is no exception, especially when one of the main reasons to use Trevenant is to have a hard counter to Rotom-W, which is usually spamming Volt Switch. SR + Volt Switch with no Leftovers means that Trevenant gets worn down really fast.
 
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The teammates portion of the stats seem a little wacky...
What specifically seems wacky? I can check my scripts if you give me something specific to check.

Interesting data right there, despite the fact that there isn't a well defined distribution I could approximate this data to the student t distribution should I need to run some form of hypothesis testing. From what I am seeing here the mean is around 80 and the statistical outliers are around the 85 to 90 base speed mark, Is there any reasoning behind why this is the case?
Note that I didn't weight these by usage (now THAT would have been interesting!), so you'll really have to ask Nintendo why their distribution of "good" Pokemon has this form. To do a real thorough analysis of speeds would also require factoring in Choice Scarf, speed-boosting moves, priority and Prankster/Gale Wings (probably not Sticky Web, though, at least not yet).
 

McGrrr

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Can this data be filtered for mega items?

| 6 | Kangaskhan | 13.73987% | 226989 | 12.241% | 184206 | 12.671% |

For example, this is really misleading because Kangaskhan is competing for one mega slot on a team. It would be more meaningful to compare its usage relative to other mega Pokemon, and not in absolute terms.

Edit: Nevermind, I did it myself...



December's data will be super interesting due to the Gengarite ban. I definitely predict Mega Kangaskhan to be on 1 in 6 teams (currently 1 in 7.3). This would make it incredibly centralising.
 
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What specifically seems wacky? I can check my scripts if you give me something specific to check.
For example, these are the stats for the common teammates of Talonflame in VI OU:

| Teammates | | Greninja +2.059% | | Kangaskhan +1.996% | | Aegislash +0.140% | | Rotom-Mow +0.022% | | Ferroseed +0.005% | | Quilladin +0.004% | | Swadloon +0.003% | | Clefairy +0.002% | | Wormadam +0.001% | | Herdier +0.001% | | Unfezant +0.000% | | Pumpkaboo +0.000%

That looks a little wacky to me...
 
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McGrrr, I do plan on compiling some sort of "Mega Stone" report. Just need the time to code it up (the data, as you saw, is already there).

nyczxjay, Someone brought that up previously. All that means is that there were only two statisically significant teammates to Greninja. But since my script lists the top ten teammates, as long as their teammate correlation is greater than zero, the rest of the stat is essentially random noise. I may go ahead and up [Edit: I went ahead and upped] my minimum threshold to, say, +0.5%. [Changes will take effect next month.]
 
| 72 | Landorus | 2.37939% | 34021 | 1.835% | 25900 | 1.782% |

| 75 | Deoxys-Speed | 2.26979% | 35820 | 1.932% | 32396 | 2.229% |

| 83 | Haxorus | 2.00403% | 45245 | 2.440% | 32252 | 2.219% |

| 87 | Manaphy | 1.78419% | 28570 | 1.541% | 21974 | 1.512% |

| 130 | Victini | 0.92023% | 18492 | 0.997% | 14796 | 1.018% |

What has Gen VI wrought?! It really is just way too hard to use these old favorites when we've got talonflame, aegislash, scizor, and kangaskhan nullifying offensive stats with priority moves I guess. I feel really bad for Haxorus in particular and I think I'll be trying to utilize him in the next team because I have a feeling he's being undersold. As noted before, his speed tier actually makes his speed basically irrelevant even with a scarf (because even outside priority, the best scarfers are garchomp gengar and genesect) 252 HP 252 Atk Adamant lets bust shit



edit: I would like to hear more opinions about speed in general. Imo there are 4 big speed tiers to be aiming for with or without boosts. First tier is outspeeding greninja the revenge killer at 122. If the thing you're using can just barely outspeed base 120s but can't beat greninja then it sucks. Second tier is lucario at 112. If you can beat base 110s but you can't beat lucario then it sucks. Third tier is garchomp at 102. Fourth tier is excadrill at 88. Wedged in there is dragonite; jolly drag hits 426 after one dance and only deoxys-s (and accelgor...) is faster. Adamant dragonite only hits 389 and now you're exposed to anything with base 128 or higher.

Obviously speed is a continuum and trying to tier things is at best a "rule-of-thumb" kind of thing. I just think that with priority and prankster, trying to theorymon outspeed things like jolteons or starmies is a waste and I would like to hear some guidelines from the more experienced players. I have heard the advice "just always max out speed" before and maybe that really is just the best rule.
 
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How does Smogon go about tiering Ditto? I mean... is it not an exception to the usage tiers? If it makes the cut for UU would it seriously be banned for use in RU or NU games? If its just perma-NU for the sake of being viable in all tiers of play, then is monitoring its usage causing whatever tier it falls into to basically lose a slot? Maybe I'm overthinking that one.

Man, Kangaskhan and Mawile in OU... what an era this is.
 
Azure30--I do not believe we would make any exception for Ditto (FWIW, Ditto was "illegal" in PU at the end of Gen V), but historically, Ditto has been niche enough to keep it out of the top tiers.
 
For the sake of consistency, I'm only going to comment on Pokebank OU rather than the actual OU itself. Pokebank will eventually arrive anyways.

I'm not very surprised with the usage on some Pokemon. We can all expect Gengar usage to drop for the December Stats (kinda sad, but its Mega Forme was declared Uber). Rotom-W on top, though, is a touch surprising. It oddly checks many new threats as well as maintaining its ability to check older threats. Talonflame is worth a bit of the hype since it DOES get Priority Brave Bird, a scary little tool. Aegislash is worth EVERY bit of the hype, though. Greninja...sure it can beat Starmie and set hazards, but does it truly beat Crobat, a common Defog Pokemon? Speaking of, Crobat doesn't even hit Top 50 (it's at 82)! That's...a little sad.

Some old mons remain in some high usage, which makes me a bit happy. Thing is, though, Genesect and Scizor are right next to each other in usage, which is nice and balanced considering it was TOP when OU in Gen V. Heatran is a mon I'm very happy to see still being commonly used, Excadrill being down shows it's still a threat, Dragonite is Dragonite--don't question, but...Gliscor? What did Gliscor gain? Can it learn Defog through Egg Moves and somehow have it passed with Poison Heal? If somebody could link me to something proving this, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I've really only seen new tactics used instead of having old ones revived. Rarely any ResTalk users, no DrizzleSwim, no wildly effective cores, and most certainly nothing from previous Generations were revived outside of Pokemon with Mega Formes. Overall, though, this is ALL to be expected since the meta is fresh and new. Several months after Pokebank has officially been released, I imagine that some more balanced numbers will show and some wild strategies from old and new will develop once more. Here's to Gen VI.
 

McGrrr

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I don't find the Rotom-Wash usage surprising. It switches in against so many common threats, boasts great offensive and support versatility, and is the quintessential Volt Switch user. I've created three teams around three different Mega Pokemon, and Rotom-Wash was always second on the team sheet.

You can attribute much of Gliscor's popularity to it being a solid counter for physical Mega Lucario (without Ice Punch). The Toxic stall moveset also legitimately crushes a lot of teams without a cleric, once Gengar and Skarmory are out of the way.
 
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edit: I would like to hear more opinions about speed in general. Imo there are 4 big speed tiers to be aiming for with or without boosts. First tier is outspeeding greninja the revenge killer at 122. If the thing you're using can just barely outspeed base 120s but can't beat greninja then it sucks. Second tier is lucario at 112. If you can beat base 110s but you can't beat lucario then it sucks. Third tier is garchomp at 102. Fourth tier is excadrill at 88. Wedged in there is dragonite; jolly drag hits 426 after one dance and only deoxys-s (and accelgor...) is faster. Adamant dragonite only hits 389 and now you're exposed to anything with base 128 or higher.
Hah, I've for sure been using Greninja as a personal benchmark to beat with boosting sweepers. Greninja's speed makes the 120-tier obsolete as you said - especially with Tornadus-T back in the game at 121 - and it's too potent of a threat not to account for (while Noivern is less of a general threat and, higher up, Talonflame gets its priority). I'm wondering though who (if anyone) has their Flying-resists EV'd to outspeed Talonflame? Choice Scarf Excadrill, for instance, makes an alright check for this reason, and bulkier/scarfed Electric mons would benefit from outspeeding the ubiquitous Firebird.
 
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the washing machine being ou king seems reasonable enough to me, derps around with quite a fair bit of things and the bulk is generally good.

| 44 | Galvantula | 4.02638% | 67271 | 3.628% | 60489 | 4.161% |

seems like the sticky web hype is dying down a fair bit, he slipped a total 20 places. noivern also dropped quite a lot, seems like people finally notice it's not really very amazing...

| 46 | Scolipede | 3.93783% | 72017 | 3.884% | 60893 | 4.189% |

up it goes, the toys it received makes it a great OU candidate

| 5 | Greninja | 14.66916% | 258976 | 13.965% | 202828 | 13.952% |

good but overrated, it's more of useful with a good movepool but its fraility really prevents it from doing too much.
 
Pleasantly surprised by Trevenant and by Galvantula's high placement in OU. at 16 and 37 respectively, both higher than Blissey, an OU staple.

I'm surprised Flareon isn't higher, now with flare blitz, but the rest seems pretty reasonable, falling into most of the tiers that they were in prior to Gen VI, and most Gen VI mons falling in reasonable spots.

I do have a question for you Antar, how do you get the statistics about Metagame Analyses, especially when so many people (I included) will run a choice item, but have a sand stream T-Tar in the background, but neither are the crux of your teams, most are support. Especially games like VGC, where you only use 4 of the 6 pokemon you choose. I'm genuinely curious.

On the other hand, it does look like people are still attracted to "shiny new toys". I'm looking at things like Scizor and Garchomp, and their megastones are still dominant in use. Not to say, these are bad megas, but I foresee them dropping sometime in favour of Choice Band and so on. Still, things like Tyrantrum, Hawlucha and Florges are starting to drop down.

I'm glad that Clefable's finally getting some love. It puts a hard stop to so many things, dragons in particular.
All points I agree incredibly strongly with. I used Clefable when it was in RU, and it tanked the meta-game hard there, with a new typing, I'm surprised it isn't used all the time. That Flame Orb is nasty on her.

As for the Megastone, I never thought they were that great. Sure, Mega-Scizor gets a boosted attack, but I don't find it too astounding to be completely honest. It's speed isn't enough to have it do prevalent damage, Bullet Punch isn't enough, and right now its movepool is seriously lacking. Mega-Garchomp always seemed to me like a waste of a mega, Sand got nerfed, so its boost (which isn't quite the boost Life Orb Gives all the time) is limited to time.

Your final point, about the three new pokemon dropping down, is long overdue. Florges has too small a movepool to work with, and too low defense to be a wish passer in the same tier as Chansey and Blissey. Hawlucha is nice until you see how unrewarding it is. There isn't enough to work with.
 
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Rain isn't getting a lot of usage because people just don't think about using it. I'm pretty sure 50% of the ladder doesn't even know that Drizzle + Swift Swim is legal now. Or that Manaphy is OU again. People just like to use what other people use for some reason.
 
Hey guys, I did some maths!!! By the time I was done calculating, I wasn't entirely positive...what....I just calculated. But I'm pretty sure that I calculated the probability that a given pokemon in a battle will be in a given speed tier. Except I did it badly, and the math is fallacious rounding. But it took too long for me not to post, and it still succeeds in giving a general idea of the speediness of last months Pokebank OU. Just not a very precise view.

Screen Shot 2013-12-04 at 6.25.37 PM.png

this graph uses increments of 31-40, 41-50, etc. With the exception of the first interval in which the only pokemon is Ferrothorn at base 20.

For those interested, this is a breakdown that I did not graph which uses cut offs that are more pointed. Generally it will have a few mons that are on random speeds and cut off on a cluster point which will constitute half or more of the entire speed tier. Except 81-90 which owes most of its usage to rotom and excadrill and had no convenient place to end it so I just stuck with 90.

20-50: 14% 51-65: 10% 66-70: 6% 71-77: 7%

80: 7% 81-90: 14% 91-100: 17% 101-108: 7%

110: 7% 111-120: 4% 121-126: 9.4%
This does not take into account scarfers, differing EV spreads and the change in speed of any mega except MegaKanga. Which it turns out there weren't even a lot of. Gonna be some megas trickling down to the lower tiers that are awful powerful. It completely omits Sableye and Klefki as their speed is almost never relevant, and uses data that goes down to Jirachi at 3.18% usage.

Thoughts? Anything surprising in this?
 
Rain isn't getting a lot of usage because people just don't think about using it. I'm pretty sure 50% of the ladder doesn't even know that Drizzle + Swift Swim is legal now. Or that Manaphy is OU again. People just like to use what other people use for some reason.
Here is the thing about rain swift swim teams in this gen is that it is so risky. You are constantly in a race against time. You have to make sure to get the swift swimmer before time runs out because if rain ends then the pokemon becomes a dead weight. And the other person knows that you will switch into a swift swimmer making the team easier to predict. If you decide against switching into a swift swimmer then you are just burning your precious rain time. Also they can stall you out. Plus you don't have much time to set up. Now i'm not saying its a bad statagy it is just that there isn't nearly as many advantages as before.
a point I just want to make, why use terrakion, latios, and keldeo when you can use clefable?
 
I feel really bad for Haxorus in particular and I think I'll be trying to utilize him in the next team because I have a feeling he's being undersold. As noted before, his speed tier actually makes his speed basically irrelevant even with a scarf (because even outside priority, the best scarfers are garchomp gengar and genesect) 252 HP 252 Atk Adamant lets bust shit
I used to run Adamant max Attack and max Speed. My thought process was as follows: there's nothing below 97 that'll want to run a speed boosting nature since being below 100 means... well... being below 100. As well, even with a speed boosting nature, I need 2 DDs to beat scarf genesect.

I then had one situation where I brought Hax in against a Kyurem-B that just scored a kill. I clicked Dragon Claw, but to my surprise Kyu-B just outraged and killed me. It wasn't scarfed for sure so it must have been running a speed boosting nature. I know this is just a one-off and Kyu-B isn't that high in usage, but Excadrill is something else that you may like to guarantee outspeeding. Not-yet mega Lucario is another

Jolly max speed seems situational as it's use is mainly to help an unboosted Hax get through a few things, but it's starting to surprise me how often I'm forced to attack unboosted
 
Hey guys, I did some maths!!! By the time I was done calculating, I wasn't entirely positive...what....I just calculated. But I'm pretty sure that I calculated the probability that a given pokemon in a battle will be in a given speed tier. Except I did it badly, and the math is fallacious rounding. But it took too long for me not to post, and it still succeeds in giving a general idea of the speediness of last months Pokebank OU. Just not a very precise view.

View attachment 5120
this graph uses increments of 31-40, 41-50, etc. With the exception of the first interval in which the only pokemon is Ferrothorn at base 20.

For those interested, this is a breakdown that I did not graph which uses cut offs that are more pointed. Generally it will have a few mons that are on random speeds and cut off on a cluster point which will constitute half or more of the entire speed tier. Except 81-90 which owes most of its usage to rotom and excadrill and had no convenient place to end it so I just stuck with 90.

20-50: 14% 51-65: 10% 66-70: 6% 71-77: 7%

80: 7% 81-90: 14% 91-100: 17% 101-108: 7%

110: 7% 111-120: 4% 121-126: 9.4%
This does not take into account scarfers, differing EV spreads and the change in speed of any mega except MegaKanga. Which it turns out there weren't even a lot of. Gonna be some megas trickling down to the lower tiers that are awful powerful. It completely omits Sableye and Klefki as their speed is almost never relevant, and uses data that goes down to Jirachi at 3.18% usage.

Thoughts? Anything surprising in this?

I am more concerned about the the initial speed plus EV spreads... it seems to be a reasonable hypothesis that speed would be bimodal since Rotom-W or Scizor generally has fewer incentives to invest in speed than a Garchomp. Also, it would seem that in Gen 5 OU, there is a (somewhat weak) inverse correlation between speed and a Pokemon's offensive potential (with Conkeldurr, Tyranitar, and Breloom being exceptions) and those Pokemon would focus on bulk. For Gen 5, it is likely that Jolly Breloom represents a spike in the speed distribution (for example, the suggested spread for the bulker attacker Landorus-T suggests enough speed to outspeed it).
 
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