First off, thanks a ton Antar. Great work as always.
Anyways, as a lot of us know, playtest stats are always skewed, so it is hard to say how well we did looking at the usage itself. However, there are some things we can look at to get a good idea of certain aspects. One of these is how well we countered what we intended to counter, and were countered by what we wanted to be countered by. So, lets compare counter stats:
Threaten:
Psychic types: especially Latios & Latias
Water types: most notably Politoed
Ghost types: Gengar and Jellicent
Electric types: Rotom-W, Jolteon, Thundurus-T
Well, lets see how we did. Here are those pokemon who had Malaconda listed as a check or counter in the moveset stats section, along with how well Malaconda did against them.
Code:
Politoed - (9.6% KOed / 61.0% switched out)
Dugtrio - (28.4% KOed / 43.8% switched out
Latios - (18.4% KOed / 48.3% switched out)
Rotom-W - (9.7% KOed / 64.6% switched out)
Jellicent - (15.3% KOed / 63.9% switched out)
Starmie - (17.8% KOed / 53.7% switched out)
Tentacruel - (9.8% KOed / 57.8% switched out)
Espeon - (21.0% KOed / 48.1% switched out)
Gastrodon - (9.7% KOed / 63.1% switched out)
Vaporeon - (9.1% KOed / 66.7% switched out)
Hippowdon - (6.5% KOed / 72.5% switched out)
Slowbro - (10.1% KOed / 62.1% switched out)
Milotic - (10.7% KOed / 68.6% switched out)
While we did miss out on the electric types and Gengar, the vast majority of the Pokemon here are Water types, Psychic types, or both. We also got a few ground types in there, but that is not that surprising, as they don't really have much to hit us with and are weak to grass. Overall, I think we really did hit the things we wanted to pretty well.
On the other side of things:
Be threatened by:
Steel types: including Heatran and especially Scizor
Bug types: Volcarona (and Scizor again) most imporatantly
Fire types: Ninetales and Infernape, for example
Some fighting types: such as Breloom and Toxicroak
And here are the Pokemon listed as checks or counters to Malaconda, along with how often they KOd it or forced it out:
Code:
Lucario - (44.1% KOed / 51.0% switched out)
Toxicroak - (34.0% KOed / 60.9% switched out)
Skarmory - (16.9% KOed / 69.0% switched out)
Conkeldurr - (35.2% KOed / 53.5% switched out)
Breloom - (34.3% KOed / 53.5% switched out)
Volcarona - (44.3% KOed / 39.1% switched out)
Heatran - (27.6% KOed / 51.1% switched out)
Dragonite - (47.4% KOed / 30.8% switched out)
Stoutland - (46.3% KOed / 41.3% switched out)
Terrakion - (45.6% KOed / 31.0% switched out)
Kyurem-Black - (44.8% KOed / 30.9% switched out)
Moltres - (29.9% KOed / 49.9% switched out)
Well.... huh. We got some steel types. We got some fire types. We got Volcarona, and we got a bunch of fighting types. But... not Scizor. Well, now isn't that surprising? With that said though, outside of that one anomaly, this is mostly what we were looking for. A couple of dragons are in there too, as well as Stoutland, but those are nothing that surprising as they are powerful physical attackers, or frequently carry super effective moves.
On both sides of things, I think we pretty much hit the mark with what we were aiming for. While we countered/were countered by a couple things that we didn't plan for, nothing ended up on the wrong list. We were vulnerable to most of the things we wanted to be vulnerable to, and hit most of the things we wanted to hit. So, I think, overall, Malaconda really did the job we set it out to do. We hit the nearly the exact niche we wanted to hit. Of course, there is still the question of whether or not that niche actually had the effect on the metagame we desired, and that would require a completely different type of analysis, but I think we would be hard pressed to figure that one out from the usage stats. However I do think this is a good sign.
