Online Competition Mega Melee

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currently 24-5 with 1750 exactly. gonna have basically a nap because it's hella late for me and I've gotta be awake to stream with NOVED later. stoss kang is ridiculous, I've gone 16-0 with it, and it would have won in all my losses...
mega melee progress 2.png
Lowllight of the night was this log:

Mawile used Play Rough, it missed!
Sableye used Metal Burst, it failed!
Mawile used Fire Fang, Sableye flinched!

That and the loss to Venusaur were the only hax I've encountered so I'm glad for that. Hopefully I can continue to have a clean run when I ladder alongside NOVED's stream in a few hours.
 
Just finished with Mega Melee and ended with 30-10 (or something similar) with 1710ish.



Almost couldn't practice for this one so I used the first day to try all my pokemon at least twice. I guess it wasn't the best choice and ended that day with 1515...
Anyway, after that learning experience I focused on using my favourite ones for this competition: Kangaskhan and Sableye.

  • Kangaskhan was the MVP, brought it from VC with Body Slam and Seismic Toss and won almost all the games it was on (lost to a Blast Burn Charizard-Y and probably something else). I didn't have a Scrappy one with this attacks so I never brought it when the other player had a ghost type. Expected to surprise someone who would Fake Out me, but never happened.
  • Sableye was the pokemon I enjoyed most, trying to figure out if the other person would go for an attack or not. Got it wrong the first time, but the rest ones went well. Used it between 5 and 8 times.
  • Wanted to try Mega Metagross in this competition and, when I did, it was fun. However I had better options out there and didn't want to risk with it.
  • Salamence was a good mon but only used it on Day 1, I didn't want to rely in Giga Impact too much.
  • Altaria was the dark horse, really good choice and glad I had the opportunity to try a Perish Song at least once (which worked!).
  • Chose Blaziken for team preview but used it a couple of times, didn't work so well.
Was surprised to find an Attract Tyranitar and not as many Kangaskhan as expected, I guess it was hard to get the right moves from previous generations.

When first saw about Mega Melee I thought that I wouldn't be good, but had so much fun. And having short battles was a nice change of pace, wouldn't mind having another one like this.
 

cant say

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I was 1792 before my last game which I won, so hopefully that puts me above 1800! Kang finished with 22-1, unfortunately I got cocky and chose it against a Lucario... People had just flat out not been choosing their fighting mons against me all tour so I thought this guy would do the same.

mega melee team.png


Kang was obviously my MVP, it just won against everything, and anything it lost to Sableye beat. Unfort I didn't get to use any others because these two were just way too good. I was excited to use Blaziken because this set was like the first ever "competitive" idea I had way back in BW for the battle tree (but with Liechi over weakpol) and it worked a treat on PS, but never got picked here. I wish I used Cotton Guard Altaria, or at least swapped Fly for Roost or something. I'm trying to figure out what the "meta" threats were but honestly it felt so spread out on both PS and cart so picking what will be most used is hard. I ran into a lot of Gardevoir and it felt like a decent pick for the format (I kinda regret not using it over Altaria but I think Alt worked in my favour at team preview way more) so I expect that to be high. Maybe there were a bunch more Kangaskhan running around that I just didn't run into. All in all this ended up being a fun format, even after I very vocally hated on it during practice on Discord lol.
mega melee progress 3.png
 

Ullar

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ended around 1550 or so; good times. wekpolblaz was hilarious. Some Battle Videos of amusement for your perusal:

G7HG-WWWW-WWW8-VU2R: My Venustall vs a metal burst aggron. Leech seed ftw

SH8G-WWWW-WWW8-VU3J: Rough skin is a Good Ability vs counter sash blaziken

EKMG-WWWW-WWW8-VU3P: FILTHY CASUAL DRAGINIUM Z CHOMP

GNFG-WWWW-WWW8-VU4V: freezehax gods answered my prayer
 

cant say

twitch.tv/jakecantsay
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Top Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Usage stats are also out, with whatever we can gleam from those.

Attendance has continued to drop, down to 10173 players (plus another 1285 in juniors)--predictable, since the prize of 50 BP is far less impressive than previous prizes (hell, it's not even enough to buy a single mega stone at the battle tree!) and general waning enthusiasm in the lull up to US/UM.

Once again defying description, the masters usage stats imply a total of just 11980 Pokemon across all the teams, which would require almost everyone to go into team preview with five blank slots on their team, and that clearly wasn't the case. More likely, it's leaving certain teams out of consideration for the usage stats entirely, though on what standards, no one can be sure (less than X battles? final rating less than Y?)

The number may in fact be a bit higher than 11980, but that has to do with the system I use to try and discern exactly how many copies of everything were in use on the set of teams that were being considered. That has to do with the details page: if you click one of the Pokemon icons there, you'll see a list of up to 10 most-frequently-used moves, items, natures, and abilities (though in this last case there will of course never be more than 3). What's notable about those lists is that precision is displayed to the tenth of a percent, but already this tells us a key point: however many times this Pokemon appears in the stats, it must be a number that's capable of being the denominator of a fraction that rounds to that percentage, and likewise that must continue to be true for up to 32 more distinct percentages. For example, if there were something that had listed percentages of 5.0%, 10.0%, 15.0%, and so on with nothing smaller than 5.0, the obvious conclusion is that there were 20 data points being sampled there. It might not necessarily be correct--the number could actually be 40, backed by the enormous coincidence of every move/item/nature appearing an even number of times--but especially given the individuality shown in movesets, and in random natures among players who don't care to optimize for those, 20 is the overwhelmingly most likely candidate to be the true total when faced with a data set like that.

This analysis is completely hopeless at discerning the true answer when that answer is 1000 or higher, and especially with the reduced eligibility field (only 43 Pokemon) compared to last month's No Holds Barred, the high end of the usage rankings must at the very least be dangerously close to that 1000 cutoff, if not surpassing it. But descending just a bit down the rankings, we can start to find a clear order that makes sense, and is also consistent with the ordinal rankings they show for the top 30. In each case here, I've taken the lowest population count that can possibly be consistent with all the reported percentages, and assuming that is in fact the true number, divided out how many of each Pokemon were in fact holding their mega stone:

Charizard 892 (533 Mega Y, 330 Mega X, 26 other items, 3 itemless)
Salamence 781 (731 Mega, 43 other items, 7 itemless)
Garchomp 714 (101 Mega, 608 other items, 5 itemless)
Metagross 692 (602 Mega, 87 other items, 3 itemless)
Blaziken 633 (354 Mega, 274 other items, 5 itemless)
Gyarados 630 (440 Mega, 187 other items, 3 itemless)
Kangaskhan 628 (587 Mega, 40 other items, 1 itemless)
Mawile 488 (469 Mega, 19 other items)
Gengar 466 (308 Mega, 154 other items, 4 itemless)
Venusaur 443 (419 Mega, 23 other items, 1 itemless)
Blastoise 433 (389 Mega, 43 other items, 1 itemless)
Gardevoir 421 (358 Mega, 61 other items, 2 itemless)
Slowbro 342 (291 Mega, 49 other items, 2 itemless)
Lucario 340 (274 Mega, 62 other items, 4 itemless)
Tyranitar 326 (213 Mega, 110 other items, 3 itemless)
Lopunny 324 (322 Mega, 2 other items)
Altaria 281 (271 Mega, 10 other items)
Sableye 269 (149 Mega, 120 other items)
Aggron 248 (178 Mega, 70 other items)
Scizor 240 (172 Mega, 68 other items)
Alakazam 231 (176 Mega, 54 other items, 1 itemless)
Manectric 202 (192 Mega, 10 other items)
Swampert 190 (118 Mega, 69 other items, 3 itemless)
Latios 170 (55 Mega, 113 other items, 2 itemless)
Aerodactyl 155 (117 Mega, 34 other items, 4 itemless)
Heracross 148 (123 Mega, 24 other items, 1 itemless)
Gallade 140 (129 Mega, 11 other items)
Sceptile 113 (84 Mega, 29 other items)
Latias 104 (71 Mega, 33 other items)
Ampharos 102 (86 Mega, 15 other items, 1 itemless)
Sharpedo 97 (67 Mega, 30 other items)
Medicham 83 (68 Mega, 15 other items)
Pidgeot 76 (72 Mega, 3 other items, 1 itemless)
Glalie 73 (21 Mega, 51 other items, 1 itemless)
Beedrill 70 (all of which were Mega)
Steelix 67 (50 Mega, 17 other items)
Absol 67 (45 Mega, 20 other items, 2 itemless)
Pinsir 66 (54 Mega, 10 other items, 2 itemless)
Abomasnow 58 (28 Mega, 30 other items)
Houndoom 50 (38 Mega, 12 other items)
Banette 49 (48 Mega, 1 other item)
Camerupt 47 (43 Mega, 4 other items)
Audino 31 (30 Mega, 1 itemless)

In all, at least 9279 out of the 11980 Pokemon I can account for (77.5%) were holding mega stones--a slightly higher number than I would have expected prior to the event starting, but a lower number than I would have guessed in retrospect. My own team for the occasion was only half megas, and perhaps shaped by those decisions, I kept making safe plays to cover for potential gimmicks like Sash, when in fact only one of the opponents I ever faced all tournament was using a non-mega (the ever-exciting Mawile vs. Sableye Metal Burst mirror, out of 20 battles total with a 14-6 record).

Predictably, Garchomp had the lowest usage of its mega stone as a percentage of all its appearances; Latios, Glalie, and Abomasnow were the only other species to be less than 50% Mega.

Among the "other items", a few were just plain goofy--probably even more than this, but beyond the 10 that get displayed per Pokemon, I have no way of seeing what novelties got tossed into the "All other items" bucket":

There were instances of a Charizard holding Mewtwonite X and Eviolite;
Kangaskhan with Decidium Z;
Mawile with Honey, Max Repel, and even Rage Candy Bar;
Blastoise with a Float Stone (is Grass Knot that big of a problem?) and a Red Card;
Gardevoir with a Beedrillite and a Pearl String (...okay...);
Altaria was all over the place, with Potion, Poke Doll, Revival Herb, Lucky Egg, and Sticky Barb all seeing action;
Sableye with Marshadium Z;
Alakazam with Float Stone (this only cuts 1/3 of the power off Low Kick/Grass Knot, and it's not even weak to either one!);
Manectric with Big Nugget;
Swampert with Water Memory;
Latios with Latiasite;
Heracross with Smoke Ball;
Gallade with a regular old Stick;
Medicham with Moomoo Milk;
Pidgeot with a Kelpsy Berry (I guess it can learn Natural Gift, but then why not Salac instead?);
Glalie with a Repel, and a Strange Souvenir (is that what the kids call Sheer Cold these days?);
Absol with Lucky Egg;
Pinsir with Sticky Barb;
and Abomasnow with Big Mushroom.
 

cant say

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is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Top Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Once again defying description, the masters usage stats imply a total of just 11980 Pokemon across all the teams, which would require almost everyone to go into team preview with five blank slots on their team, and that clearly wasn't the case. More likely, it's leaving certain teams out of consideration for the usage stats entirely, though on what standards, no one can be sure (less than X battles? final rating less than Y?)
Only battles above 1600 count towards stats in all battle spot formats
 
There were 807 players with ratings of 1600 or higher, so if that was the cutoff then no more than 4842 Pokemon could be accounted for.

Giving allowance for the occasional blank space on a team of 5, the player in 2000th (and in fact also 2033rd) place has a rating of 1544, a cutoff that's normally commensurate with "three games above .500" in the absence of lopsided rating matchups. That's about the only thing notable I can find about that particular score.
 
Smalls.PNG


Finished in the top 500 because I actually bothered to play this competition. Although I only went 15-6.

Did not even use Zard Y or Venu, and only brought Lopunny and Slowbro to one game.

The main takeaways from this comp are that Waterium Z Gyarados was a great bluff set, and that Seismic Toss Mega Kang is some fucking bullshit.
 

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