Excellent analysis. Something that I would add is that all other stats being proportional (not equal) then for Pokemon at the same C, the Pokemon at the higher level will have better stats due the c level CP multiplier. This multiplier gets larger as level increases. This is why a level 40 Medicham with it's relatively terrible stats can perform similarly to a level 16ish Machamp.
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PvP stat shape - further analysis
A follow up on my previous article about PvP.
There’s a lot of speculation and debate about what PvP could be, but it seems to me that we haven’t addressed the fundamental questions. Sure, we all know (hopefully) that resistances and strength of movesets will be important factors. But all of that is built on the base pokemon, and we don’t know what base will work best, so here’s my humble efforts to figure it all out.
For raids, one can functionally bring an unlimited number of pokemon to the table. I grant that in practice, a team of 18 Deoxys Attack Forme would have problems with re-entering and losing energy when dying, but in principle, it could have a higher overall DPS than any other team, enabling it to finish raids that lower DPS teams couldn’t do in the time allotted. For PvP, that’s not the issue.
In PvP, restricting ourselves to one on one battles (for now) the most effective pokemon will do damage that is a greater percentage of the opponents total HP before getting knocked out. That’s probably the right metric - how much of the opponents HP does the pokemon in question do before getting knocked out. Of course, this percentage could be greater than 100%, which means that in a 1 on 1 solo battle, the pokemon would win.
All else being equal (it never is, but for this level of analysis, let’s begin there), one would expect that a balanced pokemon would be most effective in this regard, because it can both do good damage (although not as good as some), and take a good amount of damage (although not as much as some).
For the analysis, let’s ignore moves and typing, and look at 4 canonical pokemon:
Blissey - high stamina.
Shuckle - high defense.
Gengar - high attack.
Sudowoodo - balanced.
If all of these pokemon had neutral typings and a moveset with the same base power, I expect that in a 1 on 1 battle, Sudowoodo would beat each of the others. It would have enough HP to take Gengar’s attacks and KO Gengar before getting KO’s itself, and would do enough damage fast enough to take out Blissey and Shuckle, while taking not too much damage from the opponent’s attacks.
That said, there’s another factor - the CP formula. That’s what limits the pokemon used in the Great and Ultra leagues. And the CP formula is more heavily weighted towards attack - if I remember correctly, it is a function of attack squared times defense times stamina (or maybe the square root of all that, which is functionally the same thing for these purposes).
As such, it turns out that one could have a stronger pokemon for a given league by emphasizing both stamina and defense a little more, and de-emphasizing attack. An easy way to think of it is that adding a point of defense or stamina increases the CP less than a point of attack, so defense or stamina are a “better buy” for the points of CP one has left to spend. (Yes, of course, we don’t power up pokemon this way.)
This implies that there is an ideal balance of stats, where the stamina and defense are both say 40% higher than the attack, and that a pokemon with that combination of stats would be the favorite in a neutral 1 on 1 battle. Note that this isn’t about the IVs, it’s about the overall stats, base stats plus IVs. What this suggests to me is that what we should be looking for is that ideal combination of stats, pokemon who are close to that ideal combination, and what IVs they should have to get closer. For example, the previous analysis suggests that for Rhydon, the ideal IVs would be a strong stamina and defense, and zero attack. That combination will be higher level than a Rhydon with balanced IVs, but still have a CP that allows it into the league.
Without all the information about PvP, we can’t really speculate what’s ideal, but we can look at the stat profiles of pokemon, and see which ones have attack at 70% of the stamina and defense, and consider them first. Here’s all the examples I could find:
Blastoise
Nidoqueen
Ninetails
Poliwrath (if IVs are 15 def, 0 stamina 0 attack)
Tentacruel
Slowbro (high defense)
Hypno
Cubone (but CP is too low for Great league -a great candidate if there’s a CP 800-1000 league)
Marowak (with high stamina, low attack and defense)
Lapras (high defense IV)
Articuno
Meganium (Can’t quite reach 2500 CP, but could excel in the CP 1500 league)
Ledian
Bellossom (low attack IV)
Azumarill (high defense IV, extreme spread)
Jumpluff
Umbreon
Slowking
Forretress (high stamina IV)
Steelix (High stamina IV)
Corsola
Mantine (high stamina IV)
Skarmory
Miltank
Suicune
Lugia
Dustox (but won’t reach CP 1500)
Ludicolo (high defense IV)
Medichan (doesn’t reach CP 1500)
Volbeat/Illumize
Swalot (high defense IV)
Torkoal
Grumpig (low attack IV)
Altaria
Cradily
Milotic
Tropius
The regis
Bastiodon (high attack IV)
Vespiqueen
Lopunny (high stamina IV)
Lumineon
Uxie
Giratina (altered forme)
Cresselia
This isn’t meant to be a final list, and some here have much better balance than others. But this is where I’m going to start looking for strong PvP pokemon once the system comes out.
Further, the analysis above completely ignores moveset strength and weaknesses/resistances. Many of the pokemon here don't reach CP 2500, or if they do, it's at a very high level (like Poliwrath) making them very costly in terms of dust and candy to get there.
This is my current feeling about stat shape, based on what we know. I won't go far afield speculating about how PvP will work, because that's an unproductive exercise. YMMV.
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Answers
Where have I seen charts and things showing an individual Pokemon's stats going up with level? I was thinking that the CP multiplier caused individual stats to increase. I thought that was the whole reason that lower attack IVs were preferable because they allowed a Pokemon (for the great/ultra league) to reach a higher level at the same CP. My understanding was that being at a higher level had a greater effect on a Pokemon than it's individual attack IVs. Where am I going wrong?
As I wrote in another thread, the problem with this analysis is that it disregard moves. Think of moves as affecting the attack stats without affecting CP, so a Pokemon with better moves can trade some attack for bulk, and vice versa for bad moves. The result is that there is no universal sweet spot, and every Pokemon will have a different ideal proportions based on it's moves.
Yes, of course. I'm trying to analyze the stats problem, and figure out the best options there. Attacks are pretty straightforward once we know how they will work in PvP. Then we can find the best combinations of stat shape, attack, and resistances to figure out the top dogs in PvP. The list of pokemon above give us a much shorter list to analyze the attacks and resistances for.
Sweet Jebus .... We don’t even know the basics of how PVP is going to work .... how many shields do we get per battle? Can a single Pokémon use more than one? .... During the 50 second cool down after switching out can your opponent use charged moves? Is there a cool down after the first switch out? .... these thing matter, and frankly the only sources I find even remotely accurate or reliable... have all said basically the same thing “we played the beta and Niantic said what we played isn’t the finished product”
