Credit to Antar for the original version of this FAQ.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
- Where are the stats?
Stats can be found at https://smogon.com/stats/ From there, navigate to the desired month. - Why aren't the stats up for the month yet?
Processing currently takes around 44 hours; ~25 hours to process the raw logs and ~19 hours to process the files found in the link above. I pre-process the first 25-29 days of any given month before the month is over to get stats out as soon as possible, and so far this has resulted in usage stats out on the 1st of every month. If for some reason there's a problem with the first step, it will take 44 hours to re-process everything so stats would only come out on the 3rd or later. Please be patient if this happens! - Where are the moveset stats / metagame stats / lead stats / monotype stats / chaos stats since last month?
Respectively, in the "moveset," "metagame," "lead," "monotype" and "chaos" subfolders of each month. - What do "Usage %", "Raw", and "Real" mean?
Code:+ ---- + ------------------ + --------- + ------ + ------- + ------ + ------- + | Rank | Pokemon | Usage % | Raw | % | Real | % | + ---- + ------------------ + --------- + ------ + ------- + ------ + ------- +Antar said: - How are usage stats weighted?
Every player on Pokemon Showdown has a skill rating for each metagame they participate in. This rating--which is different from your ladder score--is calculated using an algorithm called Glicko and consists of an estimated skill value R and an uncertainty in that estimate RD. Based on these two values, we calculate the likelihood that a given player has a "true" skill value above a certain baseline (the conventional baseline was 1500, corresponding to the "average" player). For more about ratings, read Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ratings. For more about weightings, read Weighted Stats FAQ. - How are tiers determined from usage?
For the foreseeable future, all usage will be based on the previous month using the 3-month cutoff of 4.52% to accelerate accurate tier formation.
During the regular 3-month cycle, month 1 has quick drop cutoff of 1.53%, month 2 a quick drop cutoff of 2.28%, and month 3 the new standard of 4.52% for drops and rises. (Unrounded these cutoffs are 0.01528524706, 0.02284003156, and 0.04515839608, respectively.) Month 2 and month 3 will be averaged evenly with the other month(s) in the cycle.
As for which stats are used to determine the tiers, we're currently using a baseline of 1695 for OU and Doubles OU, and 1630 for all other tiers. - What's the deal with the filenames?
You'll notice that for each tier and type of analysis, there are a bunch of of different files, most with names like gen8uu-1630.txt. The first part of the filename is the tier, the second part is the weighting baseline. Also note that a baseline of 0 means that the stats are basically unweighted. - How should I think about Baseline-0 vs. 1500 vs. 1630/1695 vs. 1760/1825 stats?
- Baseline-0 (unweighted) stats represent everything in the format, no matter how lulzy the player or team. This is what you'd expect to encounter if we stopped doing matchmaking.
- 1500 stats represents what the average player in the metagame sees. Since Showdown's playerbase is more than just Smogonites, this is considerably "below" what the average person reading this thread sees.
- 1630 (1695 for OU) stats represent "standard" stats, what the typical competitive player should see and be prepared for.
- 1760 (1825 for OU) stats represent "1337" stats, what the best-of-the-best in the metagame are doing. To some extent, this is what all players should strive to be doing, but there are some Pokemon and strategies that are difficult to pull off and might require a greater amount of skill than the typical competitive player possesses.
- Why are the OU stats for 1695 and 1825 instead of for 1630 and 1760?
OU, aka "Standard," is, well, our standard tier. It sees more battles than any other format and has the largest playerbase (second only to randbats). It also has the smallest fraction of "competitive players" of all non-random formats, due to its prominence and easy accesibility. Since our rating systems are percentile-based (that is, a rating of x roughly corresponds to being better than y% of the ladder, rather than indicating that the player is the nth best in the metagame), that means that it's a lot easier to get a rating of 1630 in OU than it is in UU or LC. Because of that, and because OU has a larger pool of battles to work with, we can up our baseline to 1695 for the "standard" stats. Similarly, while 1760 is the usual value we use for "elite" stats (the best of the best), the number that works better for OU is 1825. - What's the best way to make use of the moveset stats?
- If you're trying to figure out what's good in a tier (in terms of movesets), 1760/1825 is probably the way to go, since that tells you what the very top players use on their Pokemon.
- If you want to determine what the likelihood is that your opponent's Pokemon carries X move or Y item, consult the moveset stats closest to your own Glicko R rating.
- If you're having trouble dealing with a certain Pokemon and are looking for checks/counters, consult the 1500 (or even possibly the 0) stats: the lack of "1337"ness is vastly preferred to the sheer lack of data you encounter when you get that high.
- Can you make an analysis of the win rate for a Pokemon / team type?
W/L ratio is a horrible metric on PS, because the ladder tries to pair players of similar skill levels. In a perfect world, everyone's W/L ratio would be 50/50, regardless of skill, because you'd always be playing people on your own level. You also don't want to use winrate or average rating or anything like that to measure a Pokemon's effectiveness, because then all you're measuring is how popular the mon is among n00bs. You might want to read into this a bit: http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...re-of-how-far-a-pokemon-can-take-you.3546373/ - Can I perform my own analyses?
If you have background with a programming language that can parse json, take a look in the "chaos" folder of each month's stats. Those files contain all the information used to generate the moveset statistics. - Why did this Pokemon drop multiple tiers at once?
The Pokemon had previously risen multiple tiers at once earlier during that generation. If nothing major changed since then (for example, a game release), it drops back down to where it came from. See also the Policy Review thread on drastic tier shifts.
