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[Guide] Stat-Based Tiering Guide
#1
Seeing a little bit of discussion arise in the Nucleon thread, I felt encouraged to make this stat-based tiering guide of all fully evolved Pokemon in Uranium's Pokedex. Based only on base stats and ignoring typing, abilities, and movesets for each Pokemon, I have separated the fully evolved Pokemon in Uranium's Pokedex into 3 distinct tiers. I have also looked at Mega Evolutions separately and have separated them into 2 distinct tiers; the reason I treated Mega Evolutions separately was because they noticeably skewed the average stats in my calculations, making them more error-prone, and balancing their impact has proven to be too difficult, since the Mega Evolutions are also disadvantaged in that they can't be regularly switched in as part of a battle without risking initially taking damage in their base forms and they are also unable to hold any other items except for their Mega Stones.

Hopefully, this can serve as a rough guide as to the viability of Pokemon in the Uranium Pokedex and reasonably discern strong metagame threats that can be built effectively in several unpredictable ways and weak Pokemon that usually get outclassed by other stronger Pokemon in the metagame in their roles and are limited in the ways they can effectively be built, making them too predictable and relatively easy to counter. The tiering below is based on stats calculations, admittedly with a little bit of subjectivity as to what makes certain stat builds stronger than others (asking myself how many underpowered stats on a Pokemon are required to balance out its overpowered stats, and evaluating the quality of the stat distribution on the Pokemon in ambiguous cases).

My opinion of an ideal metagame in PU with justifications will be made clear at the end of the guide. Okay, here we go:

Regular Pokemon Tier A:

Feliger
Yatagaryu
Fafninter
Seikamater
Xenoqueen
Gyarados
Actan
Beliaddon
Laissure
Lanthan
Garlikid
Chimaconda
Electruxo

I would like to reiterate that the tiering is based only on stats. All of the Pokemon shown above either have:

1) too many base stats that are significantly higher than the rest of the Pokedex without a reasonable amount low base stats to balance them, or
2) a balance in the number of high and low base stat, but containing a stat total within their most effective offensive and defensive niches that is unreasonably high compared to other Pokemon.

Having said that, this is by no means a ban list for these Pokemon, but some of these could potentially be very worthy suspects for a ban depending on their typing and abilities (looking at you Yatagaryu, Sheer Force Subduction Lanthan, Fur Coat Fafninter, Sticky Web Seikamater, and Contrary Chimaconda; ...).

OLD: [*Syrentide was the most questionable case that consistently circulated between this tier and the one below it (Regular Pokemon Tier B). With only its speed keeping it in line to potentially fit in the lower tier, any form of Rain support, would make this Pokemon overpowered, since it can abuse its ability Swift Swim to outspeed even Mega-Inflagetah without requiring and stage increases in speed to do so. Expectedly, rain support would be very common in a meta where teams are trying to preserve their steel type Pokemon to avoid getting completely swept by nuclear types. Thus, in a typical battle, Syrentide will likely have an average speed that is significantly higher than that of the rest of the Pokedex, which made it deserve this tier.]

Regular Pokemon Tier B:

Syrentide
Winotinger
Luxelong
Frosthra
Dermafrost
Brainoar
Tubareel
Glavinug
S51-A
Cocancer
Metalynx
Trawpint
Antarki
Dunseraph
Gellin
Baariette
Astronite
Floatzel
Espeon
Jolteon
Vaporeon
Leafeon
Sylveon
Blubelrog
Gliscor
Escartress
Coatlith
Mismagius
Glaceon
Umbreon
Anderind
Archilles
Krilvolver
Ampharos
Inflagetah
Harptera
Daikatuna
Luchabra
Tracton
Flareon
Gararewl
Herolune
Dramsama
Neopunk
Vilucard
Corsoreef
Aromatisse
Majungold
Alpico
Haagross
Theriamp
Oblivicorn

Note: Based on stats alone, Nucleon would fit into this tier but it is obviously getting a quick-ban due to its 100% accurate spammable 90 BP nuclear type Atomizate boosted Hyper Voice, as discussed in several other threads; thus, it was excluded to reduce any confusion.

I read a comment on a post here in the forum somewhere that stated that the PU Pokedex is very balanced for the most part; I would have to say the statistics agree with that assertion as do I. All of the Pokemon shown above are very balanced with respect to their stats and utilities. This encourages a very diverse and exciting metagame to be a part of with approximately 51 Pokemon that could potentially be chosen to fill in certain roles on a team. While some might have a bit of an edge over others, by no means does one Pokemon severely outclass another based on stats alone. Introduce typing advantages and disadvantages and abilities into the mix and the story may very well change here. Having said that, not all Pokemon were created equal and there are still quite a few that are solely there to make the in-game adventure more fun, but are by no means worthy of being on a serious competitive team. These are:

Regular Pokemon Tier C:


Gargryph
Kiricorn
Pajay
Empirilla
Navighast
Splendifowl
Chainite
Frikitiki
Paraboom
Stenowatt
Praseopunk
Nimflora
Geigeroach
Drilgann
Titanice
Ludicolo
Tanscure
Whimsicott
Sponaree
Eshouten
Lavent
Jerbolta
Raffiti
Harylect
Miasmedic
Terlard
Hazma
Tofurang
Firoke
Arbok

I think I might have missed Barand and Sableye; however, in the off chance that Tier C does gain community interest in creating a comp scene around it, Barand and Sableyes would be probably be considered as jokes even here based on their stats. I guess what this tier is saying is that based on base stats alone, the less skilled player in making in-battle decisions using exclusively Pokemon in higher tiers will win noticeably more battles than the more skilled player in making in-battle decisions using exclusively Pokemon in this tier.

The take home is, in general, Tier A > Tier B > Tier C when discussing regular Pokemon.

As promised earlier, I also created a tiering for Mega Evolutions; the inclusion of Urayne-alpha here was an accident, but giving it some thought, I later came to the conclusion that including it here was appropriate, since it has a wide variety of useful stats, albeit slightly less than other mega evolutions, as well as the ability to hold an item and sweep with 4X supereffective coverage against >80% of the metagame. I do believe that if teams opt to include Urayne-alpha, they should not be able to also include a Mega Evolution in addition to it. This, I believe, will allow for the best possible diversity, since I don't think Urayne-alpha is completely broken (unlike Nucleon), and the extreme difficulty in soft resetting for a competitive 5 IV Urayne with an ideal nature somewhat balances it out. I think we are all on the same page that the beta form of Urayne is stupidly broken on a completely different level than the scope of any of these tiers and doesn't deserve a place in a serious comp scene. Here is the first tier for Mega Evolutions:

Tier A: Strong Megas and Urayne

Inflagetah (Mega Inflagetah)
S51-A (Mega S51-A T)
Baariette (Mega Baariette)
Syrentide (Mega Syrentide)
Gyarados (Mega Gyarados)
Metalynx (Mega Metalynx)
Archilles (Mega Archilles)
Ampharos (Mega Ampharos)
Electruxo (Mega Electruxo)
Urayne (Urayne Alpha)

These Mega Evolutions are discernably stronger and have a higher utility than the ones in the following tier based on their base stats:

Tier B: Weaker Megas

Sableye (Mega Sableye)
Drilgann (Mega Drilgann)
Kiricorn (Mega Kiricorn)
Arbok (Mega Arbok)
Whimsicott (Mega Whimsicott)
Dramsama (Mega Dramsama)

Overall, these Megas do not contain any impressive stat builds and superficially, they don't seem to give enough of an "oomph" factor when they appear and are very outclassed by their counterparts in Tier A. These should not be taken seriously based on their stats alone.


Now that I have presented a stat-based tiering guide, I would like to present my opinion of an ideal metagame in PU:

Firstly, I believe that the most popular metagame that would be played would be one that encourages the use of Pokemon from Regular Tier B as much as possible and discourages the use of Pokemon from Regular Tier C. This would optimize team-building diversity to the best ability possible. Seeing that the vast majority of Mega Evolutions exist in Tier A, it naturally follows that Mega Tier A should complement Regular Tier B, and that Mega Tier B should complement Regular Tier C.

As I said earlier, Pokemon in Regular Tier A are by no means broken, so they shouldn't necessarily be excluded from fights. Thus, I propose the following team-building archetype for 6v6 singles:

- choose any (1) of a Mega-Evolution/Urayne-alpha, or any other Pokemon;
- choose any (2) of a regular Pokemon in Tier A or lower (any except Urayne-alpha); and
- choose any regular Pokemon from Tier B or lower to fill in the rest of the team slots.

Another possibility for those desperate to do team-building using their favorites that would otherwise perform sub-optimally against the rest of the Pokedex:

- choose any (1) of a Mega-Evolution in Tier B or any other regular Pokemon in Tier B or lower;
- choose any (2) of a regular Pokemon in Tier B or lower; and
- choose any regular Pokemon from Tier C to fill in the rest of the team slots.

This tier could ideally allow people to experiment with any Pokemon I ranked too harshly low and boost their usage to be potentially viable in the more competitive format initially proposed.

All in all, I do believe this is a good starting point that can help influence the initial usage statistics to create as healthy as possible of an early stage metagame. However, we shouldn't just stop there. One limitation of this guide is its failure to take into account Pokemon's abilities, typing, and movesets. I don't believe this limitation is too extreme though, since most of this will develop when people attempt to build their own personalized teams. Of course, Pokemon that have been brought up as suspects in other threads should be suspect tested (Yatagaryu, Inflagetah, Mega Syrentide, Lanthan, etc.), but only when the time comes and only when usage stats become available and reliable for each Pokemon.
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#2
Huh.....good analysis. It's a bit too brief, concise, and somewhat limited in scope (as you have already addressed), but its a decent quick read up on the myraid Pokemon in Uranium, doesn't dwaddle in getting its points across, and offers feasible teiring solutions and methods. My main problems with it stem from the fact that the guide is as you say it is: just a starting reference point, with hardly any consideration for meta analysis (when a meta DOES develop, someday [hopefully...] or how a given Pokemon may preform/what it does in a given environment/with certain peers (for nothing exists in a vacuum) . You've already mentioned these limitations and accounted for them in writing, though, and there is not really that much else to go or discuss for prediction on tiering until an actual Meta develops and enough players , so as it is I say the guide is perfectly alright. When/if a Meta game DOES end up coming into fruition, though, its most likely going to become quickly dated, but for now it can be enjoyed as one of many probably insights of things to come.
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#3
Thank you Lord Windos. That’s what I was going for mostly. While we are waiting for a comp scene to arrive, we can use this as a guide to make the best choices possible as to which Pokémon to IV breed for teams; just because no one has written a guide for a Pokémon I placed in Tier B doesn’t mean it can’t be meta relevant. By the same token, expecting to win the majority of games using Pokémon mostly from or exclusive to Tier C in a meta allowing Pokémon from higher tiers is definitely not smart either. Of course, it is advisable for the player to take a second look at the stats, typing, ability, and move pool to decide what niche and limitations each Pokémon has and decide from there whether or not it would be appropriate for their specific team.
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#4
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.
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#5
(04-04-2019, 08:56 PM)Dragonstrike Wrote: 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.
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#6
(04-04-2019, 10:07 PM)Andyv2 Wrote:

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.
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#7
Seeing the Comp section showing signs of life always makes me happy. And you analysis also gave me new motivation to take forward a thing I was working on, so thank you. I really like your approach, as I believe that, although it can't be considered the most accurate way of analysing a metagame in Pokémon, it can give you a pretty good overview of the Dex and can be a great starting point for building a metagame. On the other hand, as everyone here said, including you, the guide has it's own natural limitations, as sometimes, in Competitive Pokémon, base stats alone can't determinate whether a Pokémon is good/viable or not. You have to factor stuff like typings and meta trends; is like Dragonstrike said, viability is pretty much always related to how the Pokémon fares in the actual metagame. Although I can't talk about the time when people used to hold in-game tournaments, I was there when the activity on the sim was somewhat high, and, for example, S51-A was probably the most used mon there; it was what Landorus-T is in the core-series.

That being said, I actually liked a lot your idea about Urayne-Alpha. I guess it would be a nice way of balancing teambuilding around it if you consider it as a "Mega" taking up a slot. Don't know if everyone would agree to that, but I would. Overall, awesome iniciative you had there, and I hope we have more from you, especially WHEN the meta develops.
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#8
(04-06-2019, 07:37 AM)Jabuloso Wrote: Seeing the Comp section showing signs of life always makes me happy. And you analysis also gave me new motivation to take forward a thing I was working on, so thank you. I really like your approach, as I believe that, although it can't be considered the most accurate way of analysing a metagame in Pokémon, it can give you a pretty good overview of the Dex and can be a great starting point for building a metagame. On the other hand, as everyone here said, including you, the guide has it's own natural limitations, as sometimes, in Competitive Pokémon, base stats alone can't determinate whether a Pokémon is good/viable or not. You have to factor stuff like typings and meta trends; is like Dragonstrike said, viability is pretty much always related to how the Pokémon fares in the actual metagame. Although I can't talk about the time when people used to hold in-game tournaments, I was there when the activity on the sim was somewhat high, and, for example, S51-A was probably the most used mon there; it was what Landorus-T is in the core-series.

That being said, I actually liked a lot your idea about Urayne-Alpha. I guess it would be a nice way of balancing teambuilding around it if you consider it as a "Mega" taking up a slot. Don't know if everyone would agree to that, but I would. Overall, awesome iniciative you had there, and I hope we have more from you, especially WHEN the meta develops.

Thanks Jabuloso. It will certainly be exciting to do meta-relevant damage calculations and look at/analyze actual usage stats when the time comes. I really do think the best way to start the new metagame is to give the benefit of the doubt where possible as to ban suspects, without completely discarding facts that we know for sure, such as how high/low a Pokémon’s base stats are compared with the rest of the Dex. After all, being too ban-happy also restricts opportunities for team diversity in the same way that allowing broken ‘mons in play does. I will fully admit though that I have very little/no experience in hands-on comp, but I am willing to participate and learn, even if it takes getting 6-0ed several times to do so. The only reason I don’t practice in the main scene is because there are quite a few new Pokemon since I last stopped playing the main series. Anyways, I am very glad I inspired you to take steps forward on whatever project you had on the back burner. I look forward to hearing more from everyone here as well.
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#9
Reading through this again, there is one thing I'd actually like to point out:

There's only one Drizzle user in Uranium, and it's M-Electruxo (which can't extend the Rain's duration with a Damp Rock).  That could potentially affect how common Rain teams are, and thus how often Syrentide can abuse Swift Swim.  You won't often see pokemon using Rain Dance unless you're facing a dedicated Rain team.  Probably.  

No guarantees, of course, as Uranium's future meta trends could be different than any expectations developed from playing competitive in the main series, but I still think this is an important thing to keep in mind.
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#10
(04-07-2019, 12:38 AM)Andyv2 Wrote:
(04-06-2019, 07:37 AM)Jabuloso Wrote: Seeing the Comp section showing signs of life always makes me happy. And you analysis also gave me new motivation to take forward a thing I was working on, so thank you. I really like your approach, as I believe that, although it can't be considered the most accurate way of analysing a metagame in Pokémon, it can give you a pretty good overview of the Dex and can be a great starting point for building a metagame. On the other hand, as everyone here said, including you, the guide has it's own natural limitations, as sometimes, in Competitive Pokémon, base stats alone can't determinate whether a Pokémon is good/viable or not. You have to factor stuff like typings and meta trends; is like Dragonstrike said, viability is pretty much always related to how the Pokémon fares in the actual metagame. Although I can't talk about the time when people used to hold in-game tournaments, I was there when the activity on the sim was somewhat high, and, for example, S51-A was probably the most used mon there; it was what Landorus-T is in the core-series.

That being said, I actually liked a lot your idea about Urayne-Alpha. I guess it would be a nice way of balancing teambuilding around it if you consider it as a "Mega" taking up a slot. Don't know if everyone would agree to that, but I would. Overall, awesome iniciative you had there, and I hope we have more from you, especially WHEN the meta develops.

Thanks Jabuloso. It will certainly be exciting to do meta-relevant damage calculations and look at/analyze actual usage stats when the time comes. I really do think the best way to start the new metagame is to give the benefit of the doubt where possible as to ban suspects, without completely discarding facts that we know for sure, such as how high/low a Pokémon’s base stats are compared with the rest of the Dex. After all, being too ban-happy also restricts opportunities for team diversity in the same way that allowing broken ‘mons in play does. I will fully admit though that I have very little/no experience in hands-on comp, but I am willing to participate and learn, even if it takes getting 6-0ed several times to do so. The only reason I don’t practice in the main scene is because there are quite a few new Pokemon since I last stopped playing the main series. Anyways, I am very glad I inspired you to take steps forward on whatever project you had on the back burner. I look forward to hearing more from everyone here as well.

 I agree with you about bans. We should first see if a Pokémon we consider to be broken and unhealthy to the metagame is indeed broken and unhealthy to the metagame. Of course, the probability of something like Urayne-B breaking the meta is high, but at least let the community experiment with it. Also, in some cases, I think making moves illegal in determined mons a good idea. For example, I don't think Inflagetah is that busted, as long as it doesn't have Belly Drum. I believe it's a good way to keep team diversity while also protecting the meta from the broken stuff. 

And you should give Competitive Uranium a try! I myself don't play the main series competitively since SM came out I guess - except for Little Cup, which I still played for some time -, although I still watch some content related to it. But as you see, Uranium for me is a completely different story. It's thrilling to explore the possibilities Uranium gives you. You should definitely give it a try. Actually, if you have any interest and isn't informed about it, the simulator just came back online, and people over there is playing a lot of randbats hahah. The link for the sim is https://sim.pokemonuranium.org/. Also, if you aren't there yet, you can join the Breeder's Guild discord; there is a Competitive discussion channel there where you can, well, discuss about competitive stuff and arrange some matches to be played on the sim. Hope we see more of you!!
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