Hi there.
After the last usage stats for July came out, I was kind of fed up with how some Pokemon were vastly overrated, and how others were vastly underrated. However, there was no real quantitative way to tell just exactly how over/underrated a Pokemon is in the metagame. So, I came up with these so called "Viability Stats", which are fairly simple in concept.
I went off the assumption that the Viability Rankings were a fairly solid and well-regarded measure of a Pokemon's relative power, as the list is vetted by top players in the metagame and approved by the now-tier leader. I'm assuming that all rankings are "correct", and that all Pokemon are correctly tiered. Now, before you say it, I know this isn't true, and I know that the viability rankings change all the time. However, I had to make the assumption of a static list, because if the list was fluid then that would throw off calculations. I'll explain later how I can account for changes in the Viability rankings.
My next step was assuming that each Viability Rank corrolated to a specific range in the usage rankings. The easiest example is Top-S, where there are only two Pokemon (Jynx and Scolipede). If the usage list completely mirrored the viability rankings, Jynx and Scolipede would be #1 and #2, in no particular order. This would give the average Pokemon in Top-S a usage rank of #1.5. However, Jynx is #12, and Scolipede is #17. Jynx is therefore 10.5 spots below average, +/- 0.5 spots. The +/- comes from the fact that Jynx could be either #1 or #2, as the Viability Rankings are listed in alphabetical order and don't list in order of power. This was done for all of the Viability Rankings (I had originally done part of it with C-rank as one rank, but then Raseri broke it up into Top/Mid/Low).
I had started doing this manually, but @TalkTakesTime was super helpful and wrote me a python script that took the Pokemon and their viability ranks, and the usage stats, and output the calculations I wanted in a neat little text file. He also did the calculations for both the normal usage stats and the 1850, which made a fairly large difference in some cases, as you would expect. If you want to see the code he used, ask him.
Here are the links to the pastebins of the two Viability Stats:
Normal July Usage Stats
1850 July Usage Stats
If the "distance" is positive, that means the Pokemon is underrated by that many usage spots. If the "distance" is negative, that means the Pokemon is overrated. However, be sure to check the +/- at the end, because if a Pokemon is within that range of average (like say, Misdreavus), then it's "fairly ranked", and not over/underrated.
I'll leave the discussion of individual Pokemon to other people, but I have two comments to make first:
1) This is not infallible. This is a rough approximation with fancy numbers of how much a Pokemon is over/underrated according to us. I know there is a large disconnect between the vocal minority on #neverused and the ladder at large. I know that the Viability rankings can change on a whim and that the usage stats change every month. That's why it was compiled with a script, so that if there are major changes I can get it updated a lot easier than having it hardcoded.
2) There are 66 Pokemon that have over 3.41% usage for the month of July. Assuming that they were all in the Viability Rankings thread in correct order, these 66 Pokemon would comprise from Top S - Mid B, with all but 3 Low B rank Pokemon too. This makes sense because the definition of B-rank is "Positives outweigh the Negatives most of the time", while C-rank is "Has a good niche but needs a lot of support to work".
After the last usage stats for July came out, I was kind of fed up with how some Pokemon were vastly overrated, and how others were vastly underrated. However, there was no real quantitative way to tell just exactly how over/underrated a Pokemon is in the metagame. So, I came up with these so called "Viability Stats", which are fairly simple in concept.
I went off the assumption that the Viability Rankings were a fairly solid and well-regarded measure of a Pokemon's relative power, as the list is vetted by top players in the metagame and approved by the now-tier leader. I'm assuming that all rankings are "correct", and that all Pokemon are correctly tiered. Now, before you say it, I know this isn't true, and I know that the viability rankings change all the time. However, I had to make the assumption of a static list, because if the list was fluid then that would throw off calculations. I'll explain later how I can account for changes in the Viability rankings.
My next step was assuming that each Viability Rank corrolated to a specific range in the usage rankings. The easiest example is Top-S, where there are only two Pokemon (Jynx and Scolipede). If the usage list completely mirrored the viability rankings, Jynx and Scolipede would be #1 and #2, in no particular order. This would give the average Pokemon in Top-S a usage rank of #1.5. However, Jynx is #12, and Scolipede is #17. Jynx is therefore 10.5 spots below average, +/- 0.5 spots. The +/- comes from the fact that Jynx could be either #1 or #2, as the Viability Rankings are listed in alphabetical order and don't list in order of power. This was done for all of the Viability Rankings (I had originally done part of it with C-rank as one rank, but then Raseri broke it up into Top/Mid/Low).
I had started doing this manually, but @TalkTakesTime was super helpful and wrote me a python script that took the Pokemon and their viability ranks, and the usage stats, and output the calculations I wanted in a neat little text file. He also did the calculations for both the normal usage stats and the 1850, which made a fairly large difference in some cases, as you would expect. If you want to see the code he used, ask him.
Here are the links to the pastebins of the two Viability Stats:
Normal July Usage Stats
1850 July Usage Stats
If the "distance" is positive, that means the Pokemon is underrated by that many usage spots. If the "distance" is negative, that means the Pokemon is overrated. However, be sure to check the +/- at the end, because if a Pokemon is within that range of average (like say, Misdreavus), then it's "fairly ranked", and not over/underrated.
I'll leave the discussion of individual Pokemon to other people, but I have two comments to make first:
1) This is not infallible. This is a rough approximation with fancy numbers of how much a Pokemon is over/underrated according to us. I know there is a large disconnect between the vocal minority on #neverused and the ladder at large. I know that the Viability rankings can change on a whim and that the usage stats change every month. That's why it was compiled with a script, so that if there are major changes I can get it updated a lot easier than having it hardcoded.
2) There are 66 Pokemon that have over 3.41% usage for the month of July. Assuming that they were all in the Viability Rankings thread in correct order, these 66 Pokemon would comprise from Top S - Mid B, with all but 3 Low B rank Pokemon too. This makes sense because the definition of B-rank is "Positives outweigh the Negatives most of the time", while C-rank is "Has a good niche but needs a lot of support to work".
