[Guide] Stat-Based Tiering Guide

[Dragonstrike]

Spoiler

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.

1) Yeah, it's not that there aren't defensive pokemon and that more defensive teams aren't viable.  It's just that the most powerful pokemon in Uranium can often break through the majority of them, really only being stopped by a select few dedicated walls.  Another interesting observation to note is that even the walls can hit like trucks at times.  For example, S51-A has a very respectable 115 Special Attack to complement its good Defenses and typing, so it can act both offensively and defensively. Metalynx is in a similar boat with its 95 Attack, which is still respectable by Uranium's standards.  I think that might be a product of Uranium primarily being designed as a single player experience.  I doubt balanced multiplayer was one of Twitch and JVs' original goals when they were creating the game, particularly when they did some wacky things like giving a Transform user a ginormous HP stat just for the fun of it (RIP Dramsama's original gimmick)

2) Whether Urayne-Alpha is balanced in the meta is still technically up for debate, given Atomic Punch is still one of the best offensive moves in the game and Urayne can always go the mixed attacking route and still cause large amounts of devastation with little consequence (even just getting one or two KOes can swing an entire battle in your favor if you play well), but when you analyze the stats like that, it does seem to paint a picture of how balanced everything seems to be at first glance.  It is true that it's harder to punish Special Attackers the same way that you can punish Physical ones, so stat trends like that do make sense if you want to try and balance things somewhat so both attacking methods are viable.

3) Yeah, there's a lot of 'slow' pokemon in Uranium's Dex.  Not nearly as slow as Alola, thankfully, but enough to make a difference when the most threatening mons are considered speed demons when they start approaching/surpassing 100 Speed.  That did actually used to be considered fast, back in the days of Gen 4 and before in the main series.  Garchomp was amazing in Gen 4 because it speed crept all the Base 100 Speed mons and had an attack stat to back it up.  Moral of the story: Being able to outspeed what's relevant in the meta tends to have a rather large effect on a pokemon's viability.  Garchomp wouldn't have been nearly as threatening if it was just a little slower than it was (Mega Garchomp is effectively an existing proof of that concept for the most part.  Not many players use it because the speed drop often isn't worth the Mega Slot even though Garchomp gets a ginormous attack boost).

Until we actually get some kind of actual tiering in place for Uranium, though (bans on certain pokemon included), speed tiers are going to be very variable and difficult to determine since they're very meta dependent.  Garchomp's still a strong pick to this day in the main series, but that 102 speed doesn't go as far as it used to.