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Those check and counter definitions are terrible...
I would say a check is something that improves the strength of a team against a specific pokemon by being able to switch into it in the right circumstances and prevent it from gaining a decisive advantage at least once.
Then a counter is something that can reliably switch in against a specific pokemon and prevent it gaining a decisive advantage as many times as it reasonably should need to throughout the course of a battle.
So having said that Starmie vs Rhydon is pretty much the definition of a check? Eggy vs Rhydon is probably skirting the line between check and counter depending on the rest of the teams.
Obviously everyone is going to have different lines in the sand for what qualifies as check or counter. What I've heard from other people is something like: Check: Mons that can comfortably switch in and threatens the mon it's switching into. (Egg and Rhydon) Soft check: Kind of switches in but would prefer not to. It can work in a pinch. (Starmie and Rhydon) Counter: Switches in with little to no worry and completely scares out the opposing mon and/or stops all momentum. (Chansey and Starmie) Hard Counter: One mon absolutely cannot do anything (Rhydon and Zapdos)
Regarding Articuno and Moltres, you've rated them notably higher than anyone else. Your placement of them is an outlier, so that's why I say you're overrating them. Conventional wisdom and my own view is that Fire Bird and Ice Bird aren't quite that hot. You gotta expect a little pushback when you're going against the grain.
Just nitpicking but I also had Articuno at the same ranking Troller had him at, though I ranked Moltres a bit lower (the accuracy + being Rhydon walled is a big deal to me - maybe I've just never found builds where I could use its fire spin properly)
I largely agree with him on the notion that the birds are good and better than anything below them, the rise of Eggyless goes both ways - a great match up for them is less common sure, but they're so much easier to fit on teams if you don't start from the misconception that Eggy has to be there
Really, compare them to what's below them, Victreebel has vanished entirely, Slowbro is playing in a Jolteon meta, Golem, Porygon, and Dnite make nothing more than cameo appearances every big tournament. I think the only placement that could properly be called controversial is Lapras below them, but even that is because of the mon's history moreso than his current performances. Otherwise, I really don't see why 'conventional wisdom' should go against these placements at all - it's just his personal opinion on which of the unviables is most viable
Just nitpicking but I also had Articuno at the same ranking Troller had him at, though I ranked Moltres a bit lower (the accuracy + being Rhydon walled is a big deal to me - maybe I've just never found builds where I could use its fire spin properly)
I largely agree with him on the notion that the birds are good and better than anything below them, the rise of Eggyless goes both ways - a great match up for them is less common sure, but they're so much easier to fit on teams if you don't start from the misconception that Eggy has to be there
Really, compare them to what's below them, Victreebel has vanished entirely, Slowbro is playing in a Jolteon meta, Golem, Porygon, and Dnite make nothing more than cameo appearances every big tournament. I think the only placement that could properly be called controversial is Lapras below them, but even that is because of the mon's history moreso than his current performances. Otherwise, I really don't see why 'conventional wisdom' should go against these placements at all - it's just his personal opinion on which of the unviables is most viable
I generalized a little, but even your Articuno placement was a little lower (below Lapras). But that point about Eggy-less freeing up room to fit them is a good point. Perhaps my mind just hasn't caught up with the current meta.
I've given them more thought and I think I might be seeing the light on Articuno and Moltres. I hadn't noticed before but Moltres has the ability to switch into and beat just about every single viable Rest user after they rest besides Slowbro, who's hitting rock bottom right now anyway. Resting Jolteon requires a bit of prediction or luck, but Moltres still beats it switching in as it uses Rest or using Agility as Jolteon wakes up followed by Fire Spin>Fire Blast>Fire Blast as long as it doesn't take a crit Thunderbolt (which still has a ~30% to fail to OHKO). If it weren't for Starmie and to a lesser extent Chansey to sponge Fire Blast, it'd be very hard to avoid Moltres punishing Rest. And while Articuno has Moltres issues with being walled but worse because of Cloyster, I might be undervaluing the threat of Freeze Hax to muscle through Starmie and/or Chansey. Doesn't hurt that unlike the other birds Articuno has actual defensive value acting as a soft check to Rhydon, which is a nice trait to have when you're going Exeggutor-less. I've updated my VR rankings raising Articuno and Moltres a bit.
Hi I read the discussion here and I decided I was being a bit too derivative and uncritical of the existing VR. I think I made my list a little on autopilot. I tend to agree that the birds are underrated, and I realised that I was still overrating Lap in my rankings. I hadn't even thought all that much about Lap's placement, but I wholeheartedly agree that it deserves to drop in ranking
Also I agree with Troller in that Snorlax and Tauros feel mandatory to me, but I still have no problem dropping Chansey. It's funny, even a couple months ago I mentioned that I felt like I could still drop Lax, but then I went and built some more teams and every time I contemplated dropping Lax I felt like I was settling for a mediocre outcome, much like when I consider dropping Tauros. So that's two pokemon that are irreplaceable, but dropping Chansey in favour of more offense is still really fun
On literally every team
Tauros
Snorlax Still dominant and on nearly every team, but I will drop it if I feel like it
Chansey Extremely common
Exeggutor
Starmie
Alakazam Staples
Zapdos
Rhydon
Cloyster
Jynx Notable threats
Jolteon
Slowbro
Gengar Niche threats
Moltres
Articuno
Victreebel
Lapras
Golem
Persian
Dragonite Obscure threats
Hypno
Porygon
Sandslash
Venusaur
Kangaskhan
Kingler
Pinsir
Clefable
Flareon
Dodrio
Kabutops
Raticate
Poliwrath
Omastar
Golduck
I'll share some controversial thoughts.
I recently topped the ladder, but playing in the tournament scene is a different story and I've been off of it for a while now.
Everything else doesn't matter for competitive purposes, I've gone too far already.
The staples
I'm surprised to see that some guys put Snorlax at number one before myself: I agree nonetheless.
Many games are decided before Tauros even gets revealed, and Snorlax is the recurrent threat that can get rid of paralysis. Tauros can't switch into anything, Snorlax can switch into other Snorlaxes, Tauros and it will Rest on statused pokemon. So, I think Snorlax is #1.
Both are mandatory, though.
Chansey is #3 due to paraslam immunity alone. It's not mandatory, but it has to be on the vast majority of your teams.
Exeggutor is #4 due to Explosion and Sleep Powder alone. It's far from mandatory, but I strongly disagree with people who drop it wildly.
Starmie is #5 because it's the best lead and the most consistent pokemon left.
Zapdos is #6 because it's the next most dangerous threat and has good matchups against Tauros, Starmie and Exeggutor. If you're faced with Rhydon, it's up to you to get rid of it.
Alakazam is #7 due to speed, versatility, Recover and Thunder Wave. I have never loved Zam because in my view it's too frail and too easy to tank, but you can't lead with Starmie all the time and Alakazam is a great lead nonetheless.
Rhydon is #8 because it stops Zapdos and hits hard; I wouldn't mind placing it over Zam at #7 if it wasn't for the Sing Chansey trend.
Cloyster is #9 because it just put up a strong performance in SPL; I've never been a fan of pokemon without status inducing moves, but Clamp can destroy Rhydon teams once Starmie is crippled and Explosion can trade 1 for 1 after Cloyster battled with Snorlax for a while.
My interpretation is that Cloyster is doing what Slowbro used to do AND/OR what Victreebel used to do (read above), with the advantage of not being as awkward against Zapdos.
Even more, if we consider that Sing Chansey makes Thunderbolt somewhat of a rare Chansey variant (at least, so rare as it has ever been) Cloyster has a case for being ranked even higher; I could've ranked him as #7 and he is a good reason for using Zapdos/Jolteon or at least a hidden RBY secret - Thunderbolt Tauros.
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The shaky stuff / the stuff I don't like
Jolteon, #10: unstatused Jolteon is a pest, para'd Jolteon sucks. Its stats pale in comparison with Zapdos' and so does its moveset, but Jolteon can be scary for the same reasons: T-Wave, super-effective moves, speed, critical hits.
Gengar #11: if I want something with a sleep inducing move other than Sing Chansey (possibly because I want to prevent my opponent from leading with Sing Chansey), I'll go with something with a good win rate.
Jynx #12 never been a fan, it just had a negative win rate again in SPL. I don't see why it should be used more than "occasionally".
I'm not sure it should be this high because I don't even use it, so I'll just join the choir and hey - Jynx is a respectable lead like it or not.
Victreebel #13 I feel like it still is decent, even though it obviously struggles due to the increase of the number of faster pokemon on opposing teams.
Lapras #14: it scored a 55% or so win rate in SPL, that's counter-intuitive if you look at the picture of the metagame.
I've always liked Lapras: it does a decent work if you can make sure that the damage it dishes out won't be healed for free and Sing is a nice button to have on your side.
Slowbro #15: I genuinely root for him, I won't waste more words.
Golem #16: 1999-2015 RIP, no PhysLax no party. It still walls Zapdos and Jolteon I guess.
Articuno #17: I don't buy the story that legendary birds are better than Victreebel and Lapras. I love them, but being awful against both Starmie and Zapdos is too much when combined with poor movesets (Articuno is kinda decent against Zapdos, I mean that you can at least paralyse Zapdos and be ok, but it sucks against Lapras and Cloyster)
Moltres #18 : It's just too bad against Zapdos (para'd too), so Articuno is better in my opinion. If I were high on trapping moves, I would had ranked Dragonite some minutes ago already.
Dragonite #19: Dragonite's attack continues
Persian #20: it has a small niche, but the moveset sucks and it can't punish ReflectLax...
Kangaskhan #21: if it's on my team by accident, the game still feels like a 6v6.
Venusaur #22: Victreebel is a respectable pokemon and Venusaur is just a worse version - still dignified. And let's be real: he's one of the coolest pokemon ever if not the coolest.
Porygon #23: the best gimmick in the game, it's going to embarrass your opponent and crush his ego.
I'm not going to use it, though. Not even by accident, hell no.
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Gimmicks:
Hypno, Dodrio, Pinsir, Raticate, Sandslash, Flareon: there are pokemon that do better what they're trying to do, but they'll perform better than the other pokemon left in what was, is and forever will be the first generation of a brand that turned out to be a social phenomenon.
That's an accomplishment, isn't it?
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Trolling material:
everything else
Notes:
I feel like Jolteon is not a hard counter for Zapdos, actually trading Thunder Waves is good for the Zapdos' user. Is Rest Jolteon having that much success?
Exeggutor is great at switching into Rhydon because even though it can't recover, it can still use Sleep Powder and Explode (which are the tools to keep RestLax under control) hence it can still go 1 for 1 (or even better) after having bailed you out against Rhydon.
Rhydon's timely paraslams hurt, but other than that it's pretty ok.
Big 4
I understand the desire to want to rank Tauro and Lax above Chansey/Egg, and I probably rank them slightly above, but I definitely do not think they deserve their own separate tier. Chansey and Eggy both still perform functions that can't be close to replicated by any other mon. Eggy's ability to sleep/explode and pressure with psychic/h-beam/dedge ect.. allows it to do multiple important things in a match. It can effectively take out 2-3 of your opponents mons. I often think in similar team match ups whoever gets more out of their eggy can determine the winner.
Chansey's ability to switch into mons like Starmie/Zam can't be overstated, Chansey is the pivot point of the team. Without it mons spc mons like star/zam would be able to inflict way more pain. Chansey has huge flexibility in the sets it can run, probably only 2nd to lax in that regard and even it's "gimmick" sets can change the game with surprises, like a counter taking out a full hp lax or singing an opposing chansey. Chansey will always perform an important defensive function throughout the game that can't be replicated by any other mon and it's definitely not a whole tier below Tauros/Lax.
Rhydon/Zap/Lap
I think Lapras is chronically underrated by some people here. It's a bulky mon that threatens a good chunk of your opponents team. Eggy/tauros and lax absolutely will never swap into it, and with tbolt and sing an opposing starmie and chansey can even be dealt with. Not to mention the added bonus of the freeze threat when mons swap into a bliz. It can withstand physical and special damage well and having rest adds to it's bulkyness. Lapras can switch in against lots of mons, it's probably the objectively best switch in for Cloyster for instance. Even it's "worst" match up against Zap or Jolt Bliz will pack a heavy punch. If Lapras absolutely has to be in against Zap then it can use Bliz and tauros can come in after for a revenge kill.
Rhydon is easily the best OU mon outside the "big 6". It's physical prowess, sweeping ability in the end game and it's great match up vs zap gives it a role that no other mon can really fulfill. On the other side of the coin I think Zapdos is overrated by some, only because Rhydon absolutely walls it. It's not just the fact that Rhydon is free switch in vs Zap in a single turn but the cumulative cramping effect Rhydon has on the whole gameplan of the team with Zapdos. As long as the Rhydon is alive the Zapdos can't perform any of it's usual functions, it's only real use at all until the Rhydon is gone is to bait Rhydon in and double into something else. It's whole purpose just becomes inducing 50/50 mind games. You're basically playing 5 against 6. If you do try to use Zapdos and the opponent just switches into Rhydon the cumulative free turns throughout the game will make it so you surely lose. I mean this is pretty basic just highlighting how big of a disadvantage it is to have Zap vs a Rhydon team.
I might post more thoughts later on the lower ranked mons. I know I'm not posting anything groundbreaking here, I just like discussing RBY and posting my general thoughts on the meta.
Big 4
I understand the desire to want to rank Tauro and Lax above Chansey/Egg, and I probably rank them slightly above, but I definitely do not think they deserve their own separate tier. Chansey and Eggy both still perform functions that can't be close to replicated by any other mon. Eggy's ability to sleep/explode and pressure with psychic/h-beam/dedge ect.. allows it to do multiple important things in a match. It can effectively take out 2-3 of your opponents mons. I often think in similar team match ups whoever gets more out of their eggy can determine the winner.
Chansey's ability to switch into mons like Starmie/Zam can't be overstated, Chansey is the pivot point of the team. Without it mons spc mons like star/zam would be able to inflict way more pain. Chansey has huge flexibility in the sets it can run, probably only 2nd to lax in that regard and even it's "gimmick" sets can change the game with surprises, like a counter taking out a full hp lax or singing an opposing chansey. Chansey will always perform an important defensive function throughout the game that can't be replicated by any other mon and it's definitely not a whole tier below Tauros/Lax.
Rhydon/Zap/Lap
I think Lapras is chronically underrated by some people here. It's a bulky mon that threatens a good chunk of your opponents team. Eggy/tauros and lax absolutely will never swap into it, and with tbolt and sing an opposing starmie and chansey can even be dealt with. Not to mention the added bonus of the freeze threat when mons swap into a bliz. It can withstand physical and special damage well and having rest adds to it's bulkyness. Lapras can switch in against lots of mons, it's probably the objectively best switch in for Cloyster for instance. Even it's "worst" match up against Zap or Jolt Bliz will pack a heavy punch. If Lapras absolutely has to be in against Zap then it can use Bliz and tauros can come in after for a revenge kill.
Rhydon is easily the best OU mon outside the "big 6". It's physical prowess, sweeping ability in the end game and it's great match up vs zap gives it a role that no other mon can really fulfill. On the other side of the coin I think Zapdos is overrated by some, only because Rhydon absolutely walls it. It's not just the fact that Rhydon is free switch in vs Zap in a single turn but the cumulative cramping effect Rhydon has on the whole gameplan of the team with Zapdos. As long as the Rhydon is alive the Zapdos can't perform any of it's usual functions, it's only real use at all until the Rhydon is gone is to bait Rhydon in and double into something else. It's whole purpose just becomes inducing 50/50 mind games. You're basically playing 5 against 6. If you do try to use Zapdos and the opponent just switches into Rhydon the cumulative free turns throughout the game will make it so you surely lose. I mean this is pretty basic just highlighting how big of a disadvantage it is to have Zap vs a Rhydon team.
I might post more thoughts later on the lower ranked mons. I know I'm not posting anything groundbreaking here, I just like discussing RBY and posting my general thoughts on the meta.
Hmmm this is interesting. Since I'm one of the people rating Chansey as a sub-tier below TaurLax, I'll just say that the reason I do so is that Chansey does have the downside of being absurdly passive, which is a problem if you want to run a more aggressive strategy, while with enough offensive firepower you can compensate for not having Chansey's immense defensive utility. However, Chansey is still really bloody good, and I think it's fair to rank it alongside TaurLax, even though I don't quite agree.
I definitely disagree with ranking Egg alongside them though. Aside from sleep and explosion, Egg doesn't have much going for it offensively- I disagree with you when you say that its regular attacks provide significant pressure, because I really don't think that's the case- Psychic is tanked by Chansey and literally every other Psychic type, while its physical attacks are kinda mediocre unless they're hitting Zam or Jynx. Chansey isn't afraid of its attacks and Starmie is only bothered by MD, which is a move that shits the bed vs pretty much every other response to Egg. Having only sleep and boom (i.e. wallbreaking and also an emergency check to some sweepers) is something that at the very least Gengar already does, but they're two things that can be covered by other teammates, albeit not necessarily with a single pokemon. Defensively, it's generally decent, but there are actually very few cases where it's the optimal check to a specific threat (basically GolDon and Rest Jolt). Even then, it gets steadily worn down since it lacks recovery. It just doesn't dominate games to anywhere near the same extent that the 3 Normals do.
Regarding Lapras, the biggest issue it has is that Starmie is better than it in most ways. The additional bulk doesn't mean much when Star has Recover, whereas Lap usually has nothing, and even if it runs Rest, there's not a whole lot it's waking comfortably against. Offensively, I think Sing is waaaaay less valuable than it used to be, since I think it should be expected these days (personally I think it should be an unambiguous standard, since it's so much better than everything else Lap has for the 4th slot), and also people have started absorbing paralysis with Chansey regularly again, which just ruins Sing Lap unless you really plan around it. It gets bodied by Chansey roughly as much as Star, but is able to provide far less utility while doing so, especially since Star has TWave
Also technically Starmie's a better Cloy switch in js. Clamp is ridiculous enough that in a 1v1 the Lap matchup is close to 50-50 (if you really want, I can find the thread where M9M worked this out). Also freeze threat is a moot point, since all relevant water and/or ice types bar Bro and PsyBolt Star threaten that
D
18. Kabutops
19. Kingler
20. Persian
21. Kangaskhan
22. Sandslash
explanations:
S+: undroppable. dont play rby without those. i rate chansey and snorlax higher than tauros because a para'd tauros can be quite worthless and para'd lax and chansey are still supergood. also you have to figure out their movesets during a game while in my eyes a tauros only carries 4 moves (i will never endorse fire blast or thunder).
S: super good shit. will always come in handy.
A: good mons that have certain niches to battle against the S+ and S mons
B: situational stuff that comes in handy on certain team structures. jynx and gar teams are always a bit more specific and different.
C: best of the rest. not a fan of them, but they're there and they can fill roles on more creative/unconventional teams
D: shitmons ive played around with and can surprise an opponent but def not optimal
First the data is cleaned by compensating outliers 1 standard deviation away from the edge of the percentiles expected to contain +/- 1 standard deviation of a normal distribution. This is a modification of the conventional interquartile range (IQR), which I have not chosen to use because 50% of the sample doesn't capture the full variation from what I've seen. The compensation is done by bringing these points to the edge of this extended range. This results in mostly zero, but sometimes one or two outlier corrections. We then plot the outlier-removed data as a function of the integer rank to obtain this graph.
VR Tiering Decisions
Examining the top 20 more closely, we see some clear, some vague separation into tiers:
I have decided, with the approval of kjdaas to define clearer separations as full tiers, and looser separations partial tiers. This is why in the following VR tiers, there is no A- rank. Rhydon/Zapdos are closer to Cloyster than to Alakazam, so I have chosen to put Rhydon/Zapdos in B+, not A-.
S: A+: A: B+: B: B-: C: D: E+: E:
Metagame Shifts This chart shows the difference in this and last year's VRs
where we observe small rises in Snorlax, Starmie and Alakazam, small drops in Chansey and Exeggutor, while seeing huge rises in Cloyster, Jolteon, Jynx, and Gengar, and huge drops in Zapdos, Lapras, Victreebel, Slowbro, and Golem.
Heroic Troller: exeggutor starter dropping more often in favor of starmie in the same slot
Heroic Troller: so wrap found itself fighting teams more aggressive toward it
Heroic Troller: lapras dropped too
Heroic Troller: all the slower mons but rhydon disappeared
Heroic Troller: wrap was left with not much to flinch
Analysis of Camps This quantiative methodology allows me to tease out particular camps that different players reside in. To do that, I have made dendrograms of groups of tiers to find clusters of players within each group of tiers/subtiers. These dendrograms represent (the Kendall-tau) distance between each player's rankings, and the distance is represented bytheheight of the branch point connecting two players. Clusters of players in the same school of thought will be joined at low positions.
For example, in the following Dendrogram, Roro, Rozes... ErPeris basically have zero distance and are joined at the bottom, while HML and Enigami are close in the same cluster, joined by a point in the middle. But the camp of AMP-EB0LA is very distinct from the camp of Nails-Enigami.
All of these tiers produced by the ranking plot show some structure of clusters, and even the same can be said of all rankings combined:
so we will proceed by analyzing these biases within the tiers, then through all top 20 Pokemon as a whole.
Tier-Specific Analysis of Camps
In the following few graphs, I plot the relative rank of every individual, sorted by camps in different colors, for different tiers.
Notice that the Nails-Enigami camp consistently underrates Tauros and Exeggutor, while overrating Snorlax, Chansey and Starmie.
The EB0LA-Rozes camp seems low on Cloyster and high on Jolteon. The Lusch camp is relatively high on Cloyster and low on Zapdos. FOMG-SMB are high on Zapdos, and low on Jolteon. The Amaranth-teal6 camp is high on Jynx and low on Rhydon.
Noticeably, the majority is high on Gengar, high on Victreebel and low on Lapras, but the ErPeris-Ortheore camp is higher on Lapras than Victreebel. The HML-Nails camp is low on Lapras, and especially low on Victreebel, but high on Slowbro.
The ErPeris-EB0LA camp is low on Articuno, high on Golem, Dragonite and Persian. The Caetano93-SMB camp is high on Persian and low on Moltres. The Ortheore-HML am camp is low on Golem, Dragonite, and Persian, but high on Articuno and Moltres.
I asked Troller for some comments on these trends, and here's what he had to say:
Heroic Troller: because the teams they like drops eggy, in favor of starmie, it is a chain reactions
Heroic Troller: in those teams snorlax is more important than tauros
Heroic Troller: in just one team preference you have why eggy is lower, why starmie is higher, why lax is higher (and tauros lower)
Heroic Troller: because jynx teams shit on rhydon teams
Heroic Troller: they sleep the leader, boom chansey with anything and have a free blizzard path on rhydon teams
Heroic Troller: so the more you think jynx is good
Heroic Troller: the more you think rhydon sucks
Heroic Troller: as for cloy jolt
Heroic Troller: they just fight over the same place
Heroic Troller: chansey lax leader snorlax are always taken
Heroic Troller: two slots are usually a psychic+something else
Heroic Troller: they fight to be the something else
Metagame-Wide Analysis of Camps
When we look at the dendrogram evaluating the top 20 Pokemon as a whole, we see that there are mainly three camps
Their relative rankings are shown below, where the error bars represent the uncertainty in the means. This is not the standard deviation, but the standard deviation / sqrt(camp size-1)). So the error bars do not capture the natural variance, but simply serve to give confidence that the trends we are seeing are statistically significant.
Note that this data gives us an idea about the relative averaged ranks, but hidden within those averaged ranks are opinions across all pairs of Pokemon that cannot be aggregated into a single number. A clearer way to compare between camps is through a dissimilarity matrix, which roughly speaking, looks at every pair of Pokemon A and B and every pair of people P1 and P2 in the two camps, and finds the average number of times they disagree with each other on the relative position of Pokemon A and B. The resulting interaction is shown in the following three maps representing pairwise combination of the three camps.
To read this graph, note that the numbers in each square go from -100% to 0% to 100%, representing full disagreement, to full agreeement, to full disagreement again. For example, in the graph below, both Amaranth and Enigami camps disagree on the relative ranking of the Chansey/Tauros and Chansey/Snorlax pairs by 25%, but reading the 1st column, 3rd row, the Amaranth camp is in favor of Chansey by 25%, while reading the 2nd column in the same row, the Enigami Camp favors Chansey by 25%.
The Amaranth camp is the smaller camp of about 6 people, so we will use the Enigami camp as the reference and ignore observations that deviate by about one person (16%). We can see that relative to the Enigami camp, among the big five, the Amaranth camp favors Snorlax and Chansey to Tauros, favors Snorlax to Chansey, and favors Starmie to Exeggutor. Most of the preferences are then concentrated in the lower-tier Pokemon, with the Amaranth camp heavily favoring Articuno, especially compared to Lapras and Victreebel, and favoring Moltres, especially compared to Lapras, Victreebel, Golem, and Dragonite. Less significant preferences are also present in Slowbro over Victreebel.
To reiterate, when I say "favor" I mean it in relative, not absolute terms. Roughly speaking, if 30% of Amaranth camp places Articuno over Lapras, and 5% of the Enigami camp does likewise, then I consider the Amaranth camp to prefer Persian (even though it's only a 30% representation).
The ErPeris camp is small compared to the prevalent Enigami camp, so we will make comparisons with respect to the Enigami camp. Since this camp only consists of four people, I'm going to ignore anything changes of at most one person, ie. <25%. Relative to the Enigami camp, the ErPeris camp prefers Lapras to Cloyster, in fact putting Lapras also ahead of Jolteon, Jynx and Gengar, and over Victreebel. There is also a slight liking for Slowbro over Gengar and Victreebel. There is a strong preference of Golem over Dragonite, and Persian over Golem and Dragonite.
The ErPeris camp, just like the Enigami camp, has the same preferences wrt the Amaranth camp in the big 5, and also in the strong preference for Lapras. However, some notable preferences stand out in the lower tiers: Victreebel over Articuno and Moltres, as well as Golem over Articuno and Dragonite, as well as Dragonite over Articuno and Moltres, and notably a very strong preference for Persian over all other C tier Pokemon.
From this data, I conclude that the Amaranth camp has significant opinion deviations in both the big 5 and the later part of the B- to C tier, and such a deviation in opinion spanning the entire metagame is a mark of a true divide. The ErPeris camp is more subtly separated from the main camp, and its deviations lie in the significant overvaluing of Lapras, and somewhat that of Slowbro and Persian.
Would anyone care to comment on these trends?
Individual Analyses
Finally, we get to the part where as a contributor to this VR you can compare yourself to other players and see who's more in tuned with who. These are plots of the correlation between any two players' VR. They are arranged by camps, so you can also see camps here (represented by bright squares along the diagonal). The numbers in each square is the % correlation, ranging from 100% (same order) to -100% (opposite order).
Closing Thoughts
I hope these quantitative methods can be a springbed for discussion, especially among lines dividing different camps. As I do not know RBY, I probably have missed trends that should have been noticed by an experienced eye, so comment on anything you find interesting.
The data is incorrect for me. I have Chansey 2nd and Snorlax third. Also I edited in Raticate, Muk and Weezing which you missed as well. I had just overlooked those on the first pass.
Hi vapicuno I also posted an updated personal rankings following some of this discussion, it seems that the older rankings were used as data instead. Sorry, I should've gone back and edited my initial post to say that I'd updated them.
In any case, I think these rankings look good, you've done an amazing job with your post. I think it's really cool that analysis was done with and without outliers- although not having outliers is generally better, including the outliers I think is great because it gave us some data for the fringe stuff, which is an improvement on the previous rankings which only showed a handful of nichemons
Hi vapicuno I also posted an updated personal rankings following some of this discussion, it seems that the older rankings were used as data instead. Sorry, I should've gone back and edited my initial post to say that I'd updated them.
In any case, I think these rankings look good, you've done an amazing job with your post. I think it's really cool that analysis was done with and without outliers- although not having outliers is generally better, including the outliers I think is great because it gave us some data for the fringe stuff, which is an improvement on the previous rankings which only showed a handful of nichemons
Sorry man, would you say though that your new rankings shift you into a different camp? I don't know if I have the time to edit it, but I might try if they are significantly different. It's a lot of work :p
Regarding outliers, I must clarify that they are actually compensated, not removed, in the determination of the mean and standard deviation. Meaning I am bringing them to the edges of the acceptable bracket, so they will still influence the data, but not by too much. Don't worry, the number of outliers for most mons is like 0-1 so it's not a big issue.
Sorry man, would you say though that your new rankings shift you into a different camp? I don't know if I have the time to edit it, but I might try if they are significantly different. It's a lot of work :p
Regarding outliers, I must clarify that they are actually compensated, not removed, in the determination of the mean and standard deviation. Meaning I am bringing them to the edges of the acceptable bracket, so they will still influence the data, but not by too much. Don't worry, the number of outliers for most mons is like 0-1 so it's not a big issue.
Hmm yeah good point, I probably wouldn't stress it. The main changes were that my second iterations rates MoltCuno higher and Lap lower, but again, I guess it's not a huge deal and I can see that it would be a lot of work to change it lol
Vapicuno, you are a blessing to VRs every year. This data is beautiful.
That being said, if the VR is to help new players, I don't think we should add E to the rankings. I mean, E+ is fine, but E is full of garbagemons that I think will distract new players. To me, personally, E should just be unranked.
Also my boy, Poliwrath is not getting the D rank it deserves.
The OP has been updated with the VR proposed by vapicuno using the data obtained from 24 players. I want to thank again vapicuno for making the beautiful graphs and doing the statistics and the players for sending in their rankings! I have added all the mons until E, because we are still discussing which mons should be included in E-rank and which we neglect, because not a lot of people have ranked these mons. However, I'll soon add these as well and then the RBY VR should be fully updated following the current trends in the meta!
Also please check your rankings in this sheet to see if I have made a mistake while inputting them, because small errors might slip in when processing a lot of data manually!
imo keep E included but just make a dividing line between the ranks and a small note saying that "these mons should not be used in OU unless you really know what you're doing"
