"Take 'best pokemon' charts with a grain of salt."

#PokemonGO: Following the discussion about the new 'best attackers/defenders', I really felt that I had to make this post. Obviously, quite a lot of people are aware of the following, but there's also a surprisingly high amount of players that just believe charts like the new one by Professor_Kukui without thinking for themselves.Let me first say: There's nothing wrong with the chart per se, I'm actually thankful for it and using it. It just needs to be highlighted that this ONLY takes into account the PURE mathematical aspect of DPS or the like, and ignores several practical aspects. (Again: As a theoretical model normally does. That's not an accusation, just a note to people who are not aware of this)Long story short: What is a strictly mathematical approach to DPS/attacking/defending/... missing?Let's take a very obvious example first.Rhydon is listed as new #2 overall defender. It isn't. As most people know, we basically have a 'Vapoeron-meta', where on of the strongest Pokemon is simultaneously one of the most common ones. Everyone has multiple Vapoerons with, in comparison to his trainer level and other Pokemon, very high CP. Basically, anything that's weak to water can't be a top 10 defender, unless it had a +1000 CP advantage or something.Let's take a less obvious example next. For Exeggutor, Confusion/Solar Beam is listed as best moveset for defending. This is also not true for multiple reasons.1) 100 Energy moves are considerably overrated in general: 1.a) The math doesn't take into account that 100 Energy moves effectively cost ~110 Energy, where a 50 Energy move costs 50 effectively. 1.b) The math doesn't take into account that the more Energy cost (and thus damage) a move has, the more damage of that move is on average wasted due to overkill. (Alternatively, energy is wasted by saving your Charge Move for the next defending Pokemon when attacking) This, by the way, is WAY more significant for defending Pokemon, as they are controlled by AI and sometimes use big Charge Moves when the Opponent is on 5 or 10% HP.Due to these points, I would subtract about 15% of a 100 Energy Charge Move DPS/effiency when talking about attacking, and about 25% when defending. Note that I came up with these numbers by instinct solely and they could be off, even though the main point (100 Energy moves being less good than the pure DPS math implies) definetly stands.2) An attacker that sees an exeggutor defending an Arena will probably try to fight it with a Pokemon that has an elemental advantage over it - most often probably a Flareon or an Arcanite. So, an Exeggutor defending an Arena will in MOST fights receive a 20% penalty on it's Solar Beam damage, but not on Psychic. Another thing to consider.Now - does that mean that purely mathematical DPS charts are useless? Definetly not! It gives you lot of information - as I said, I am very thankful for people taking their time to write them, I study them a lot, I learn a lot from them.But:Still use your brain! There are so many aspects that those charts cannot include of which I stated two exemplarily, but there's so many more! Sorry that this post got so long, but it really bothered me seeing people looking at those charts and going 'Meh, I guess my Pokemon is useless because it doesn't have the moveset that is listed as best.'(That's not to say that some movesets are not definetly better/worse than others, but it might just be a different one than some chart says, or depend on a specific situation.) via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2fNEAWC