Analysis of Pokemon Usages: Which Pokemon were used by high-ranked players in May?

[Jumpman16]

It is definitely what ipl has been doing for the last three months, but by "whoring" I don't specifically mean making tons of alts to use Wobbuffet pretty exclusively, I mean use Wobbuffet pretty exclusively regardless. I don't necessarily condone one player getting many different nicknames into the Top 100 or Top 50, but that's hard as hell to do just from a tme standpoint.

 

[SMZ]

I wasn't surprised about Electivire..GyaraVire is gone like the wind..it's not even funny. As for other Pokemon some surprised me like Skuntank and Mesprit but w/e and of course great work X-Act.

 

[Aldaron]

No surprise that Wobbuffet is #1, since IPL pretty much only ladders with his Wobbuffet teams and at least two accounts have been up high this past month, not including Doorman, which I don't know if he used or not in May.

Hipmonlee and I collected these statistics a few months back as well, and they showed similar trends (though without Wobbuffet).

I don't think the player / account differentiation should matter though: the bottom line is that these Pokemon are being used by the top teams on ladder, and these teams are the ones seeing the most consistently successful use.

Also, you can thank Gouki for that Sunkern statistic ;D

 

[X-Act]

Well, the thing is that these statistics take into account how the accounts' rating were in June 1st anyway. I don't believe ipl had all those accounts ranked so high at that time.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

This may sound silly, but a big reason that Wobbuffet and Deoxys-S rank higher than you'd think is that exceptionally bad players (the guys with under 200 ratings) are relatively likely not to know they are allowed. Of course, they're also fairly likely to attempt to use ubers on the ladder only to be blocked automatically. This is especially more of an explanation for Deoxys-S as they probably tried one Deoxys form (if they even knew the difference) and didn't think twice about the others. Of course, not all very lowly ranking players are this dumb, but there's a big enough chunk of them who just know nothing about the game that need to be remembered. Of course, I might say that every legendary Pokemon (which I guess doesn't include Wobbuffet) enjoys some bump from them as they are somewhat likely to be unaware that you are allowed to use Articuno, Regigigas, or some other extremely high quality Pokemon.

My favorite high ranking is Heatran; I'll tell anyone who asks that Heatran is the best Pokemon in the game for good reason! The thing is so good; it doesn't surprise me at all that it's used so much by the more winning players who are skilled enough to handle a 4X ground weakness.

 

[darkie]

Celebi being #2 doesn't surprise me, though it is pretty funny since months ago, in October, Celebi was in the 60s in Weighted Usage.

 

[imperfectluck]

I was responsible for Sunkern in April to some extent.

Edit: Mespirit is probably goofball's fault, he was laddering with his Mespirit team when we were having our "get highest on ladder" contest. Also, once again, Wobbuffet, Celebi, Zapdos are up there, and I used Deoxys-E more in April because I laddered more in April than in May.

 

[iruchii]

It makes me quite happy to see Skuntank over there.

But I still don't know what it can do that other CBers can't. Actually, he can hurt Ghosts pretty bad if they think they can come in an Explosion, so I'll give him that.

edit;
Also, imperfectluck, what's this gimmick Sunkern everyone talks about? Something related to Endeavor?

 

[imperfectluck]

For the month of April, I led a lot of L1 Focus Sash Sunkern, yes, as a joke to get "statistics" for Sunkern up. Although, I abandoned that pursuit because my ladder rating slightly suffered as a result.

 

[Pisti]

208 Taillow 1052.710059

191 Sunkern 1482.336957


I lolled when I read these two. I didn't see many Wobb users in April, but they must be good in rating...

 

[Jumpman16]

Well, the thing is that these statistics take into account how the accounts' rating were in June 1st anyway. I don't believe ipl had all those accounts ranked so high at that time.

Can you answer the concern on page one please, as it's a pretty big deal.

 

[aura_lucario]

This is really cool and will definitely help me in making my teams.
Keep up all the awesome math work and I hope that I see even more in the future!
I am pretty surprised at the Sunkern usage in April. I don't remember seeing it at all.

 

[Fatality]

Phanpy higher than Weavile?

And the Skuntank mystery is yet unsolved...

 

[AMSP1]

I don't mean to sound arrogant or anything but I think I'm pretty much responsible for skuntank being that high on the list.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40425

I used this team and various versions of this team, all with skuntank, for a while and did pretty well with it. I peaked on the ladder somewhere around 60.

 

[X-Act]

The way I look at it, five good people set on whoring the shit out of Wobby could have made accounts that comprise 50% of the top-100 ranked players (I'm exaggerating for a reason). To me, this indicates more that these five players are good/have a lot of time on their hands than that Wobbuffet is the pokemon most used by the players on the ladder.

To be totally semantic and nitpicky in order to be as clear as possible, the title of this thread would be more accurate if "players" were replaced with "accounts". I may not be thinking about this the right way either, though, and I'd appreciate it if X-Act could weigh in.

Actually, this would work better if the Pokemon is used by only very few people. The reason why Skuntank went up so high is because there were very few users of it, and their rating wasn't so bad (probably in the 1200s). Visiting Shoddy's leaderboard, one finds that the top 100 players all have ratings in excess of 1500; however the highest average rating we got here is only 1357.

That means that Wobbuffet is used by both people with 1700s rating and people with 900s rating... but, when averaged out, it's used by people whose average rating is 1357, which happens to be the highest average. So no, I don't think that good players are whoring Wobbuffet just to get it used more. If that happened, I would have seen an average rating that would be at least 1450 (like what happened with Sunkern in April!)

 

[Darth Meanie]

I mentioned the weighted/unweighted concept in the wobbuffet board, nice to see some use coming out of it, even if its proving the opposite point I was trying to make. X-Act, was this great minds thinking alike, or did you see my post on the Wobby discussion board about the potential of this statistic? Just curious.

 

[Jumpman16]

Actually, this would work better if the Pokemon is used by only very few people. The reason why Skuntank went up so high is because there were very few users of it, and their rating wasn't so bad (probably in the 1200s). Visiting Shoddy's leaderboard, one finds that the top 100 players all have ratings in excess of 1500; however the highest average rating we got here is only 1357.

That means that Wobbuffet is used by both people with 1700s rating and people with 900s rating... but, when averaged out, it's used by people whose average rating is 1357, which happens to be the highest average. So no, I don't think that good players are whoring Wobbuffet just to get it used more. If that happened, I would have seen an average rating that would be at least 1450 (like what happened with Sunkern in April!)

I think it's actually much simpler than you're making it out to be and more logical than mathematic. First, it literally is the case that good players are whoring Wobbuffet, regardless of the reason. ipl has owned up to this to me in PM and in his battles and I'm pretty sure on these forums a few times too. Second, I understand now that the stats were taken in June 1 but it still stands to reason that ipl and other people would have multiple accounts, and therefore there are several unique accounts being counted as one player each when in actuality there are less actual human players.

Please tell me if I'm offbase in thinking this way, but it does seem to me that of wobby users:

ipl1: 1700
ipl2: 1700
ipl3: 1700
noob: 900

should be considered different from

ipl: 1700
husk: 1700
mop: 1700
noob: 900

right?

 

[TheMaskedNitpicker]

Please tell me if I'm offbase in thinking this way, but it does seem to me that of wobby users:

ipl1: 1700
ipl2: 1700
ipl3: 1700
noob: 900

should be considered different from

ipl: 1700
husk: 1700
mop: 1700
noob: 900

right?

The piece of the equation that's being left out here is how many usages of Wobbuffet each account has. I'm assuming that when someone has three accounts, that doesn't mean they play three times as much Shoddy. It just means they split their play among three accounts. If I'm not mistaken, these stats are gathered by multiplying number of usages by rank of account and then taking the sum over all accounts. Your argument suggests otherwise.

 

[kd24]

I used Sunkern on my team but someone else did as well. Er...I can't remember who it was.

Im still glad to see my Sunkern usage payed off >=)

 

[COalex]

I think it's actually much simpler than you're making it out to be and more logical than mathematic. First, it literally is the case that good players are whoring Wobbuffet, regardless of the reason. ipl has owned up to this to me in PM and in his battles and I'm pretty sure on these forums a few times too. Second, I understand now that the stats were taken in June 1 but it still stands to reason that ipl and other people would have multiple accounts, and therefore there are several unique accounts being counted as one player each when in actuality there are less actual human players.

Please tell me if I'm offbase in thinking this way, but it does seem to me that of wobby users:

ipl1: 1700
ipl2: 1700
ipl3: 1700
noob: 900

should be considered different from

ipl: 1700
husk: 1700
mop: 1700
noob: 900

right?

Not quite. The statistic counts usages of certain pokemon, not the number of accounts that used x pokemon.

There's no difference between ipl using wobbufett once on three accounts or three times on one account.

 

[Warthog]

good work X-Act, this is very interesting.

however.. I dunno if I like this. Because if I ask IPL to use Granbull on one of his winning teams, even for like 20 games or w/e, how much would that change the statistics of Granbull for June? Just wondering because I would like to know how much these statistics are inflated just because one or two people with high rank use them.

 

[Chimera]

while helpful to an extent, the best information about a metagame would be not the average rank, but the average change in rank for people using a specific poke. I just play wifi so it doesn't matter to me, but its something to bear in mind before saying X poke is good or wondering how people can do well with Y.

 

[Amelia]

Forgive me if i'm wrong... but now that i have this info, i can really screw it up for the next month right?
Let's say i'm one of those gimmick users. I have an account that i use to ladder all the way to the top, and then switch my team for one with a gimmick Pokemon in it (Say, Pikachu), and suddenly Pikachu would rise in the ranking.

On the other hand, let's say i'm a Wobbuffet lover. I get several ladder accounts, play them terribly, and have them at say 600 ranking. Then i use teams that are really horribly built with Wobbuffets in it, and Wobbuffets ranking on the list will go down, thus proving why it should be OU.

So erm... the first time this list is released, it's most probably accurate (With several acceptions, see Sunkern/Stuntank) but now people can play around with it, right?

 

[dirtybirdy]

Forgive me if i'm wrong... but now that i have this info, i can really screw it up for the next month right?
Let's say i'm one of those gimmick users. I have an account that i use to ladder all the way to the top, and then switch my team for one with a gimmick Pokemon in it (Say, Pikachu), and suddenly Pikachu would rise in the ranking.

On the other hand, let's say i'm a Wobbuffet lover. I get several ladder accounts, play them terribly, and have them at say 600 ranking. Then i use teams that are really horribly built with Wobbuffets in it, and Wobbuffets ranking on the list will go down, thus proving why it should be OU.

So erm... the first time this list is released, it's most probably accurate (With several acceptions, see Sunkern/Stuntank) but now people can play around with it, right?

Obviously, but one can help sway any statistic if you really want to. The only difference here is that one may see a stake in the tier'ing of pokemon based upon this statistic (I disagree for what its worth) thus giving you a more tangible incentive to try and fuck with the numbers (unlike someone using a UU poke in OU play a lot because they are a fan of it or w/e and just want to see it higher up on the monthly usage stats for shoddy). In any case, you're gonna have to rely on the fact that people generally want to win matches more than they care about pokemon and their statistics every month just like we do with every other usage based stat.

 

[Jumpman16]

Since the weighted usage of a Pokemon is simply the sum of the ladder rankings of the players using it at that time, then we can calculate the average player ladder ranking for each Pokemon as follows:

Average Player Ladder Ranking = Weighted Usage / Unweighted Usage

This can tell us which Pokemon are used by the best players.

In the hypothetical ipl1-3, the sum of their rankings would be 5,100. However, it is literally impossible for one single ipl account to get to 5,100 no matter how much it plays on it, certainly not if that amount is exactly three times as much as normal. Do you guys see what I mean yet?