Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Pikachu Cup: Smogon vs. the world

So we FINALLY have Smogon's stats for the month of August. Took a while! Anyway, I wanted to compare stats for the Pikachu Cup, so how about we do just that?

First thing we notice is that in the 1630 stats, which are typically what's used for tiering, Pikachu still ranked a solid seventh, so getting that Light Ball at the bare minimum was never in doubt. It's even in front of Raichu, in spite of being labeled as a "shitty Raichu" from the onset. But it's when we play with the weighting that the real fun begins. Without any weighting, Pikachu's fourth, and present on half of all teams (and a mere few percentage points behind Ampharos and Eelektross to boot. But with the most severe weighting (1760), it's down to tenth and only appears on a quarter of all teams. So this essentially confirms the obvious suggestion that the best players were in it to win it and didn't care a rat's ass about Pikachu, and everyone else just wanted to get another useless event move on Pikachu (I may have said this before, but I seriously doubt Endeavor Pikachu will be the next Refresh Salamence in that an incredibly rare move suddenly makes it broken ten years after the fact).

Other than that, Electivire dominates at all levels of play, but it goes from 77% with no weighting to 91% with 1760 weighting - again, unsurprising. Same for Eelektross, which is is actually third at 53% without any weighting, but goes up to a whopping 69% at 1760. And with a field so casual that Pikachu got third, Eelektross finished FOURTH in the actual competition. Heliolisk also seems to be a (relatively) well-kept secret: fifth in the competition, fifth (39%) on Smogon with no weighting, second (60%) with max weighting. Ampharos, on the other hand, experiences a slight decline as skill level goes up, and in fact gets leapfrogged by Eelektross and Heliolisk as the weighting gets more severe. Emolga and Raichu are funny cases, as they were used far less in the competition itself (10th and off the top 12 respectively) than on the ladder (5th and 8th). Inversely, Galvantula was used FAR more in the competition (12th) than on the ladder (a lowly 17th).

Interesting fact: while the detailed stats for Pikachu are relatively similar between the two (although Knock Off seems to have been much more popular on the ladder), there was slightly less use of the Light Ball on the ladder, and slightly more of the Air Balloon. Which makes sense as an alternative to the Eviolite, which is frankly dumb even if you're not planning on using Magneton or Eelektrik (remember, Item Clause is a thing here).

Finally, 26% of the Pikachus in the competition and 21% on the ladder brought Static with them when EVERY LAST POKÉMON ALLOWED is immune to paralysis. Sure, Lightning Rod isn't that much better considering Electric moves were almost absent, but they were still there and did something, even if that something is piddly damage.

8 comments:

  1. Only surprise I see on the 1630 list is that I didn't think Electrode was going to rank so high. I guess it works great as a speedy screen-setter (about all it's good for) so maybe not too big a surprise. I mean yeah some you'd think be used more than others but on a whole the list is close to what I expected. I forget though, were all legendaries like Zapdos banned from this tournament?

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    1. Yes. No legendaries, otherwise the likes of Zapdos, Raikou and Thundurus-I would've creamed everything, especially with two of them immune to EQ.

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  2. No, Endeavor Pikachu is gonna be the shit. Look at this:
    1. Focus Sash
    2. Use Endeavor
    3. Quick Attack
    4. You win. If they try to use a priority move, they'll be too slow because of the Static paralysis (it must be 100% because I always get paralyzed in-game! fucking voltorbs!)

    See, with these combination of moves, Pikachu is gonna wreck everything. I guarantee you, no one is ready for this level of power. It's so strong that it makes blast burn/hyper beam/giga impact/fire pledge Charizard quake in fear! Haha, fear! Did you see what I did there! xdxdxdxdxdxdxdxdlololololoollol

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    1. Or you could use Aron, a fundamentally different FEAR that can do similar to multiple Pokemon with Sandstorm, and even without Sandstorm, the other guys that aren't Ghosts, Mold Breaker, things with Skill Link, Mega Kangaskhan, or defensive will be easier to take out. As opposed to the electric rat that won't even get Endeavor at Level 1. Why can't we give it a move it can actually use? Or retcon its Speed to at least be 100. At least Raichu can take very weak hits...

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    2. Even the original FEAR Rattata beats FEAR Pikachu. You know, they could have given it something more useful, something alone the lines of Fire Punch, or I don't know Superpower I guess.

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    3. I thought it was pretty obvious that that post was a joke...

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    4. I know that sometimes. It's just funnier to reply as if you were dead serious. Both achieve the purpose of, "Why didn't Pikachu get something worthwhile?"

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