[Guide] Stat-Based Tiering Guide

[Andyv2]

Yeah, there are definitely pokemon that are lower down/higher up in this list than they probably will be in the future in a different kind of tiering system.  Base stats, while influential when it comes to a pokemon's viability, definitely do not make or break every pokemon by themselves.  That's been noted enough already.

Different note: I find it interesting that over half of the game's fully evolved pokemon (not including megas) fall into Tier B base stat wise.  I guess that is a good sign for balance in that area?  When you start factoring in other stuff, though, the balance definitely shifts a ton.

I thought it was pretty interesting as well. One other observation I think is interesting to note is the spread of stats. Here are the 95% confidence intervals I derived for typical stats of regular Pokemon encountered in the B tier:

HP: 84 to 94; Att: 75 to 92; Def: 77 to 89; SpAtt: 85 to 99; SpDef: 82 to 94; Speed: 77 to 91.

Here are my thoughts on this:

1) In general, the range in variation of typical defensive stats is lower than that of offensive stats. This parallels your assertion in the Nucleon thread that Uranium's Pokemon tend to be less equipped to deal with hyper offensive strategies. Certainly, there are anomalies that defy this trend, but they are a bit more difficult to find than hyper offensive 'mons.

2) The SpDef stats tend to be noticeably higher than Def stats. I think this was good game design on the developers' parts, since there are way too many viable strategies that cripple/punish physical attackers, such as burn, confusion, Foul Play, and Intimidate users. This is also a reason I believe Urayne-alpha is balanced in the meta, since his highest reliable/spammable BP attack in the form of Atomic Punch gets severely reduced/limited if any of these obstacles are encountered. On a different note, Attack stats tend to be lower than Special Attack stats, but this is probably due to the fact that there are more strong reliable physical moves with a high base power than there are special moves to the same effect.

3) The range of "typical speeds" seems a bit low compared to those described in past competitive guides. One of the posts I read in the past asserted that any speed lower than 95 is considered "slow". My thoughts are that this discrepancy exists partly due to the heavy emphasis in the guides of the requirement to be faster than threatening Nuclear types, such as Nucleon, Xenoqueen, and Rafitti in order for a Pokemon to be viable. Nucleon is definitely getting quick-banned, but Xenoqueen is an A tier threat based on its stats alone. The need for speed in order to avoid being outright stomped could very well still stand in a meta where Nucleon is banned, but testing would have to take place when a comp scene is in order to confirm this.