Where for art thou Scizor?
So Shakespeare aside, I couldn't find Scizor anywhere in my pokebattler simulations against Mewtwo.
I've inputted my team into their pokebox and I started running some sims. My Scizor is level 30 FC/XS, only 69% cp but with 15 attack (2304 cp). I tried sorting all possible movesets, I sorted by power, time, and overall with all kinds of things coming up in the top 24. Things like ground Rhydon, rock Golem, multiple eevolutions (including Espeon). The only time I got Scizor to show up at all was when I sorted by potion usage against Psychic and Hyper Beam.
Is Scizor overrated? Are my ivs that bad? I'm new to pokebattler, so I may be misinterpreting everything. Someone with more knowledge help me please!
Edit: all pokemon that were ahead of Scizor we're level 32 or below, mostly at level 30.
Answers
Change your Scizor's level to 31.5 in the Pokebox and see if changes anything.
With 15 attack IV, Scizor's Fury Cutter increases from 3 to 4 damage at level 31.5 which is very significant as it's damage is low and also it is the fastest move in the game.
If your Scizor isn't showing I'm guessing your other Pokemon that don't counter Mewtwo are high level
Um, holy cow that made all the difference! I know all about breakpoints and have quite a few optimized mons, however I had been hesitant to power up this Scizor with mediocre ivs (I caught the Scyther wild). After changing the level to 31.5 it jumps to the top 3 against all movesets! Thank you very much for your help! That will be 16,000 stardust well spent!
Okay, upon further examination, the fix isn't the break points, it's dodging. I had set the sim to dodge specials. Without dodging, Scizor ranks up with my Tyranitars. With dodging, he sinks down. My best guess is that since Scizor resists most of Mewtwo's moves, the reduced damage will just fill the charge bar allowing lots of x-scissor attacks while any dodging just takes away from his dps.
Scizor isn't an optimal Pokemon for tanking damage to convert into energy because it's HP is low. It is made more survivable by it's resistances but that doesn't increase the energy you gain from taking damage, it's still 2 damage = 1 energy.
It might rank up with the Tyranitars for DPS but also check the death count compared to Tyranitar. Unless you're doing the Mewtwo raid with 10+ people, it's not a 100m sprint, you've got to balance your DPS with survivability if you want to get more bonus balls for damage.
Your 6 Pokemon do not deal equal amounts of DPS, keeping the higher DPS ones alive longer results in more total damage.
If you don't dodge at all you could faint long before the battle finishes, and sure you'll do more DPS than if you had dodged, but you'd have done less total damage which is what matters when calculating the damage bonus. You can rejoin but then you lose your damage bonus anyway.
Scizor with FC/XS is one of the best Pokemon for dodging with, Fury Cutter is so fast there should be no downtime in between dodges and attacks, whereas with slower attacks there's almost always time between your attack finishing and waiting for the opponent's attack to happen.
level 31.5 is the breakpoint for fury cutter with 15 attack IV, going from 3 damage to 4 is a significant jump in damage.
your houndoom with snarl has already reached one of it's breakpoints and doesn't reach another until 37.5 so it's already doing close to it's maximum amount of damage, plus houndoom is the highest DPS dark attacker (not overall, just DPS) and has increased resistance to mewtwo's moves.
scizor resists both quick moves and 2 charge moves, but only has a 0.714x damage multiplier while houndoom also resists both quick moves and 2 charge moves, but takes 0.51x damage instead from psychic moves.
so houndoom has more DPS, has higher resistances and your scizor is also missing out on a 25% of it's maximum quick move damage, not hard to see why houndoom is favoured.
Check:
1. Using the correct scale ? time to win is the most important factor
- Dodge style: dodge SP, realistic dodging.
- High enough lvl? check break points.
My mewtwo team:
3450 tyranitar
3450 tyranitar
2500 scizor
2450 gengar
2400 pinsir
tbd
scizor is ranked:
C/FB: 4th best
C/P: 4th best
C/SB: 4th best
C/HB: 4th best
PC/FB: 5th best
PC/P: 5th best
PC/SB: 4th best
PC/HB: 4th best
Basically it has a lower DPS than SC/SB-gengar and B/C tyranitar. But outperform the rest. even a B/SE tyranitar has lower DPS.
Celebi:
2nd best in all match 6 set ups.
mew:
4th or 5th in all match ups
I'd say it is a solid raider for tier 5. Neither over- nor underrated.