Introduction

Hello, my name is Jorijn (@jorivgc). I am a VGC player from The Netherlands. I started playing in 2015, and in August last year, I started working on a program that can copy the data from the Pokémon Showdown folders into a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet was actually made by a friend, Cleffy (@cleffyvgc) since he used to copy these stats in the spreadsheet manually. Over the past few months, I have massively improved the program and put all calculations in the program, instead of in the spreadsheet. I put together some of the stats in graphs and wrote a little about what certain benchmarks do. For this, I used the 1630+ weight stats, which means that it will focus on the players that do well on ladder – but not too much so the sample size stays big enough and is not overly focused on specific sets.

Purpose

You might be wondering: why is this better than other data? We aim for this data to be more meaningful. We’ve seen the 6 most common spreads listed and then there are often at least 60% other spreads left. Spreads that are off by just 1 EV would be listed separately. This is why Cleffy decided to look at the separate stats instead of the spreads. You can use this to see how much Speed and bulk certain Pokémon run. There is still one problem though. The bulk of a Pokémon is based on the HP stat and the Defense / Special Defense stat. That’s why the bulk is represented by the HP stat multiplied with the defensive stat in a certain range. This is also a very good approximation of bulk going by the damage formula.

Bulk Stats

So how can you use these bulk stats? Basically, you can convert a bulk number to a certain stat. If the bulk number is 20090, you can give the Pokémon any HP stat, say, 200. Then you want the defensive stat to be 20090 / 200 ≈ 100. It doesn’t really matter what HP stat you choose. You can also take a more general approach. You can estimate the power of an attack with the following formula:

22 / 50 × Atk Stat × Move Power × Multipliers (spread, STAB, effectiveness, terrain, weather, items, etc.)

The way this estimation works is that if it is lower than a bulk stat, that Pokémon will generally survive the attack 100% of the time.

Groudon

Speed 110 or less: Uninvested or Trick Room. 8% have a TR nature.

111-113: This is probably speed creeping and Speed dumps.

115: Can’t really seem to figure out what this does, but it gets slightly higher bulk than 118, either ensuring you’re more likely to be 3HKO’d by Kyogre’s Water Spout or allowing more HP investment for taking Xerneas’ +2 Moonblast.

118: Outspeeds all Choice Scarf Kyogre in Tailwind.

142: 252 EVs neutral Nature

156: 252 EVs beneficial Nature Defense and Special Defense

We can see that Groudon is mostly specially bulky. With the move power estimation, we also see that some of these benchmarks are for Xerneas +2 Moonblast, Kyogre Z Move in Sun, and a good roll on surviving 2 Kyogre Water Spouts. Moves Other moves include Substitute at slightly below 5%. Items Other items include Life Orb and Assault Vest.

Xerneas

Speed 123: Outspeeds all neutral Nature base 70s, which means Xerneas will generally move before Ludicolo outside of Rain, which in turn means it can Geomancy before it uses a Hydro Vortex.

125: This one is a bit unusual, but with +2 to Speed or in Tailwind, Xerneas will outspeed base 99s that are at+1 Speed. This allows you to outspeed other Xerneas after Geomancy with Icy Wind or Electroweb support. Another reason this sees higher usage may be that Jamie Boyt used this Speed stat on the Xerneas on his Cannes team.

143: Outspeeds neutral Nature base 90s, so most restricted Pokémon.

146: Outspeeds beneficial Nature base 80s, so it will outspeed Venusaur out of Sun.

148: Outspeeds neutral Nature base 95s, most notably Tapu Lele. However, a good amount of those are Choice Scarf.

151: 252 EVs neutral Nature

166: 252 EVs beneficial Nature Defense and Special Defense

We can see that Xerneas’ don’t tend to be very bulky. It’s common to have small amounts of HP and Special Defense investment on Xerneas to ensure it takes Modest Kyogre Water Spout or Lunala’s Menacing Moonraze Maelstrom, which we see represented in the bulk numbers. Moves Other moves include Psyshock at about 3%. Items



Yveltal

Speed 119 or less: Uninvested, with barely any Trick Room variants.

123: Outspeeds all neutral Nature base 70s, which means it will generally move before Ludicolo outside of Rain.

125: This is similar to the benchmark on Xerneas, except it is much harder to explain since it is much less practical on a Pokémon without Geomancy. This could easily be a Speed dump.

135: Outspeeds all beneficial Nature base 70s, which means it will always move before Ludicolo outside of Rain.

140: Outspeeds all beneficial Nature base 75s, which means it will outspeed Smeargle.

151: 252 EVs neutral Nature

166: 252 EVs beneficial Nature Defense and Special Defense

We see that Yveltal doesn’t tend to be physically bulky, but is often very specially bulky. Using this is difficult because the graph doesn’t take Assault Vest into consideration. Nevertheless, the spread used by players such as Raghav and Preston on Assault Vest Yveltal gives a bulk number of 35475 and appears to be reasonably popular based on the graph. It allows Yveltal to comfortably take Koko’s Z-Thunderbolt in terrain. Moves Other move include U-turn at about 2%. Items Other items are Weakness Policy and Life Orb at about 4%.

Lunala

Speed 117 or less: These are mostly Trick Room variants, but some are just uninvested in Speed. About 17% have a TR nature.

149: 252 EVs neutral Nature

163: 252 EVs beneficial Nature Defense and Special Defense

Mostly max HP or almost no bulk. Moves Other moves include Hypnosis and Focus Blast at around 2%. Items Other items include Safety Goggles, Colbur Berry, Mental Herb, Psychic/Electric Seed, Fightinium Z, Normalium Z and, funnily enough, Ghostium Z, all at around 1%.

Kyogre