X & Y Battle Spot Doubles: An Early Look At Pokémon Usage
While we still don’t have an official ruleset for the VGC ’14 season, many players have been battling on the Doubles ladder on the in-game Battle Spot feature in order to get practice with the X & Y mechanics and to gauge the strength of new and changed Pokémon. Over the past couple of weeks, I slowly collected some data about the Pokémon that players on the ladder were using by collecting the rosters of the six Pokémon opponents rated 1700 or higher I ran into were using and compiling them. Since collecting data on my would be slow, I got some help from Simon, skarm, and Unreality, and also pulled data from Cybertron and iss’s stream archives. I ended up with 131 teams total to pull data from, which is still a relatively small sample of 1700+ teams, but a large enough number that I think it’s fair to say you get a reasonably accurate view of the Battle Spot Doubles metagame from looking at it. I ended up with incomplete data on a few teams, and most likely due to data entry errors the total number of Pokémon is a little lower than it should be (774 instead of the expected 786), but the listing below should give a fairly accurate view of the metagame on Battle Spot. Only Pokémon with more than two uses are listed, and the data of each trainer was only recorded once even if we battled them multiple times or a trainer battled multiple players collecting data unless the trainer in question changed their team between games.
| Rank | Pokemon | Uses |
| 1 | Garchomp | 63 |
| 2 | Rotom-W | 62 |
| 3 | Talonflame | 54 |
| 4 | Tyranitar | 42 |
| 5 | Mawile | 36 |
| Togekiss | 36 | |
| 7 | Kangaskhan | 33 |
| Meowstic | 33 | |
| 9 | Scizor | 19 |
| 10 | Chandelure | 16 |
| 11 | Gengar | 15 |
| Hitmontop | 15 | |
| Salamence | 15 | |
| 14 | Abomasnow | 14 |
| 15 | Azumarill | 13 |
| Gyarados | 13 | |
| 17 | Aegislash | 12 |
| Ferrothorn | 12 | |
| Greninja | 12 | |
| Manectric | 12 | |
| Metagross | 12 | |
| 22 | Politoed | 11 |
| 23 | Amoonguss | 10 |
| Klefki | 10 | |
| Venusaur | 10 | |
| 26 | Aromatisse | 8 |
| Kingdra | 8 | |
| 28 | Charizard | 7 |
| Excadrill | 7 | |
| 30 | Arcanine | 6 |
| Breloom | 6 | |
| Gardevoir | 6 | |
| Goodra | 6 | |
| Rhyperior | 6 | |
| Scrafty | 6 | |
| Volcarona | 6 | |
| 37 | Gastrodon | 5 |
| Hydreigon | 5 | |
| Rotom-C | 5 | |
| Sableye | 5 | |
| 41 | Bisharp | 4 |
| Noivern | 4 | |
| Zapdos | 4 | |
| 44 | Ludicolo | 3 |
| Ampharos | 3 | |
| Blastoise | 3 | |
| Chansey | 3 | |
| Clawitzer | 3 | |
| Gourgeist | 3 | |
| Liepard | 3 | |
| Lucario | 3 | |
| Mamoswine | 3 | |
| Reuniclus | 3 | |
| Rotom-H | 3 |
While the relevance of this data is sort of sketchy, since we expect a few of these Pokémon probably won’t be available in Standard this year (the Pokémon who are not in the Kalosdex, italicized), and PokéBank transfers will shake up the game a lot if they are allowed, I think this is really good preliminary data to begin gauging the relative popularity of Pokémon based on the international competition on Battle Spot. Winter Regionals are only two months away, so hopefully having this information available now will help players get prepared if they haven’t had a chance to battle much yet. I’m biased since most of my recent matches are recorded, but I haven’t been recording data for most of my battles and the usage still feels like a pretty accurate representation of what I’ve seen on the ladder to me.
If you’d like to contribute to my usage tracking, feel free and PM me data about your opponents. I need the following information: your opponents rating, their location, the six Pokémon they had on team preview spelled correctly, and optionally their name to make it easier not to count the same teams twice, if you can read it. It’s definitely better if you do this in an online spreadsheet so I can copy and paste, but I’ll work with what I get. I would actually really prefer we didn’t just do a group Google Spreadsheet for this one because I’d prefer not to make a database for team scouting in the process… just PM me the data and I’ll compile and present it. I’m still only interested in the teams of 1700+ rated players, as I’d like to focus on Pokémon that players with at least reasonable success are using in order to gauge the metagame on the top half of the ladder, since getting to 1700 already isn’t very difficult.
Happy planning, hope this helps out people who haven’t had a chance to play much.
About the Author
Scott started playing VGC in 2011. He finished 17th at US Nationals, then lost in the final round of 2011 Worlds LCQ. He finished 10th in the 2012 World Championships and qualified for Worlds again in 2013 after going into US Nationals second in CP. Instead of playing, he commentated at US Nationals and the World Championships in 2013 and 2014. Follow him on Twitter @NBNostrom!
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16 Responses to X & Y Battle Spot Doubles: An Early Look At Pokémon Usage
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Wow, I wouldn’t have expected stuff like Meowstic and Manectric to be as high as they are. That’s cool though.
Since I’m 1800+ in rating and thus frequently battling 1700+ trainers, I might contribute to this as soon as I play some Doubles again. Very interesting data though, pretty much reflects what I’ve experienced so far.
This is really awesome, and I will definitely contribute as I can!
If the data collected becomes voluminous enough, will you (or a delegated person) break down the data by region and weigh each Pokemon by the average rating of the players that used them (although I guess this metric is really not worthwhile without a huge amount of data for each Pokemon)? (*Not wanting to be a rude person who suggests something without offering any help, if names were removed, I love messing around with and organizing things in spreadsheets).
Wow i think Scrafty and Klefki being that low is weird as both can a really be outstanding in their respective role
@ Calm Lava: My thoughts exactly, I´ve been running a gimmicky team with both on PS with moderate success. Personally, I find it weird for Klefki usage to be so low, considering about half of the teams over there run it either as a double Screen setter or pulling a Liepard T-Wave/Swagger/Foul Play/Sub set.
I have intend seen many, many Garchomps. Some Mega, some not. Humorously, it’s usually the non-Megas that do the most damage.
I sort of bounce between 1700-1800 on Battle Spot so I could definitely contribute, and to be honest this list looks exactly as I’d imagine it myself.
Garchomp and Rotom are *everywhere*, and I’d say Garchomp is rarely even with his mega stone, really showing the trend of the mega being a pretty unpopular choice (due to its speed drop). Rotom is like the town bike, everybody uses one. I’m so tired of seeing them (and many of other top 10’s all in mix with one antother) it makes Battle Spot doubles a bit of an annoyance to do because it literally feels like I’m fighting the same person in every battle, who might be making slight tweaks to their own team. Showdown tends to give me more of a variety in opponents. I won’t complain too much but that’s always what has annoyed me about competitive Pokemon…a real lack of originality in a large majority of your opponents.
No Trevenent?…….. 🙁
There is an error in the numbers/sorting somewhere around Scrafty, Mowtom and Rhyperior. And “Gourgiest” is actually named Gourgeist.
So Ferrothorn is more popular than Klefki or Amoonguss? That’s interesting… And why is a mediocre and hard-to-use mon like Chandelure in the top 10 again?
Oh, and I wonder where the Global Link stats have gone.
Nice job of Scott and good point of start. Thanks so much, but maybe is necessary a purge of nob kalos dex monsters
Lack of rain makes sense, it doesn’t have all the stuff it had in bw2 (like thundurus and hh politoed) and meteor does less, fairy types hurt kingdra, and kind of manual sun with Charizard is there as well to hurt rain
I definitely won’t personally, but we’ll see what kind of data I end up with.
I think people are afraid of the double Fairy weak on Scrafty but I’d agree it’s really underplayed. I’ve used it in probably about half of my games, so obviously it’s not holding me back. Hitmontop is extremely annoying with Scrafty, though, so maybe usage will increase when we get official rules if Hitmontop usage decreases as a result.
I’m not huge on Klefki. Japan is pretty clearly favoring Meowstic right now (33 uses to 4), and while I don’t think the gap in their impact is as large as that would suggest, I do think it’s the better Pokemon because Meowstic is a lot harder to predict against because in addition to getting all the relevant moves Klefki does it also gets a variety of options Klefki does not, most importantly Charm, Trick Room, Trick, Sunny Day and Quick Guard. I like Meowstic a little better defensively, too, since it’s naturally a little bulkier and Steel is less exciting defensively in a metagame where Garchomp and Talonflame are in every game.
It was one of the Pokemon that didn’t make the cutoff because it had exactly 2 uses. It’s far less popular than it should be and I think if Trick Room, and especially Trick Room hybrids, were a little more common right now it would have higher usage. I think it’s much stronger than many of the Pokemon used more than it. Gourgeist should really be used more, too.
Yeah, yeah, whatever, fixed that stuff.
I honestly have no idea why Chandelure is so popular (though Scizor is the last Pokemon on the list I associate with being flavor of the month, even though the usage gap is small) and have been surprised to see its usage myself even collecting so much of the data personally. It certainly doesn’t feel as popular as the stats would suggest, and I can’t remember a single game I played in where it was effective.
I actually don’t agree with this — I suspected based on the top mons Rain would be pretty good in this metagame and iss seems to have many more favorable than unfavorable matchups with his team when I watch it,even though his team is sort of set up in a way to win hard when he has a decent matchup rather than to win against the largest variety of opponents. Not having HH Politoed is a big deal mostly because of the impact it has on Kingdra’s damage, but Rain is always going to be pretty good in a metagame with Garchomp and Tyranitar dominating it and other than Politoed itself it was an archetype that never needed Gems so it isn’t losing quite as much other than Cresselia in RainRoom from the XY changes.
Definitely agree on the Charizard point, though. I’ve been playing around with Sun lately in XY, and I played quite a lot of Rain toward the end of BW1 so I feel pretty confident in that matchup. I think one constant through the last several years has been that I’d much rather be on the Sun side of that matchup… especially now, where it’s a little easier both to work in a Mega that’s consistently effective on Sun and to get a secondary Sun setter that fits on the team than it is with Rain. MegaManectric is really fun looking and adds cool tools, but not sure it really brings comparable power to what Charizard-Y brings to Sun’s Sun mode, though Rain combos better with TR to get one of the stronger, slower Megas rolling.
I feel like Rotom-H ( Fire ) is highly slept on and Rotom-W is just easy to throw on any team. I like Rotom-F also and suprised Liepard has less use -.-…. the top 10 seem like the easier pokemon to use with the exception of say chand and meowstic.
I have 1870 rating right now, and I have to say, I hate fighting all the talonflames. I guess I could also contribute since I fight a few guys at 1900 rating.
Lol @ all the peeps here trying to be recognized by bragging about hitting 1700+ on the ladder.
Inb4 LYK OMG MAN HE WUZ AZKIN FOR DA GOOD PLAYURZ TO HELP GET DA USE STATZ
very helpful chart in terms of team building and recognizing potential threats.
I’ve seen 80% of Japanese players have Meowstic (Swagger is not god). Now, I was noticed that’s less Talonflame/Kangaskhan/etc usage. MegaZard-Y is growing slowly in Metagame because it is one of the mega evolution can do most damage.
That’s very helpful article for team building and prepared for those threats.