"A Blissful Pandemic - A brief analysis on Blissey"

#PokemonGO: It looks like the hot topic of this week is Blissey. Honestly, it is surprising that the discourse on this Pink Monstrosity has only picked up now, seeing how it has been pressing its weight on the meta-game since Gen 2’s release.We all know Blissey is good, but how good?Well for starters:Blisseys Defender Quotient is nearly 4-5 times higher than nearly every Pokemon.Under my formula and u/QuatumOverlord’s formula Blissey towers over all Pokemon in performance. She’s roughly 2-3x more powerful than Snorlax, 4x more powerful than all of the greatest defenders, and 5x more powerful than more common Pokemon. Just to drive home how much more powerful this is:A 2300 Blissey is more powerful than Slowbro, Slowking, Steelix, and Lapras at Max CPA while ago I decided to run some calcs on Pokebattler to see which Pokemon would be ideal for building a gym to have a maxed out Slowking at the top. Why would I do this? Check my flair B). The result; however, was that Blissey is just flat out better than everyone. Even at their Max CP, Blissey is twice as good as them while on their same power level.As you can tell,Countering Blissey isn’t easy.Recently, there have been 3 different analysis’s on how to bring down this Pink monstrosity. u/dondon151’s analysis on Gamepress, u/Ryanoftheday’s beatdown chart, and most recently u/Bombylius’s analysis (all of which utilize u/Celandro’s battle simulator)Where most Pokemon have an obvious, natural counter, Blissey’s movesets are set to directly counter anything that thinks it has it easy. While non-STAB attacks that hit super-effectively have the same multiplier as STAB attacks, the variety of these attack speeds and their differing energy usages can make them even more deadly than Blissey’s STAB arsenal. It is to the point that if you go into a Blissey blind or you have very few go-to answers to her, one change in her anticipated quick or charge attacks can turn the tables on you.In general, Machamp ought to be Blissey’s best counter, but 2/3rd’s of her movesets are extremely punishing to it. Considering this, Dragonite and Tyranitar step to the plate as the superior Blissey counters, but, like Machamp, are washed away by its statistically and anecdotally best moveset “Dazzling Gleam.” As a result, Flareon and Exeggutor become Blissey’s “safest” counters, but if their dodging gets sloppy, their performance is even more tenuous than the aforementioned counters.So exactly how valuable is Blissey?If you rate a Pokemon’s worth by multiplying their Defender Quotient by their CP, Blissey ends up being 3x more valuable than Snorlax and 6x more valuable than nearly any other Pokemon. Given that she can lock out gyms, time-out gyms, dissuade attackers altogether, and tank down 3-4 Pokemon per Max Potion if you choose to use her as an attacker, her actual value may be even higher than that. To put things in a more realistic perspective, if I use a tracking app to get almost any Pokemon, there may be 1-2 other people on site catching it as well. If it’s Blissey..well..in my small-medium sized city it has resulted in the cops being called due to presumed gang activity more than once.And exactly how easy is it to get Blissey?It only takes 50 candy to evolve Chansey. That’s roughly 2-3 10km Egg hatches. Blissey also spawns in the wild. They’re quite rare, but using a tracking app in my small-medium sized city, I can catch at least 1 a week (probably 4 if I bothered to). Players who use tracking apps in larger cities? From what I can tell, their encounter rate is roughly double. And let’s not forget that evolved Pokemon give you extra candy, so if you’re unfortunate and encounter a super low CP one, the Pinap Berry says “Hi : )”Wow. Niantic probably should’ve made it harder to get Blissey.”I agree. Thanks to u/Celandro’s simulator and u/QuantumOverlord’s analysis, we knew months before Gen 2 even hit that Blissey would be the monster that we’re currently faced with. While Niantic’s representatives claim that this game is hard to balance and which Pokemon are good is hard to anticipate, even casual players could recognize that Blissey was going to be insane. How did Niantic prepare for this? They had an event that increased Candy gains and increased Chansey spawn rates directly prior to Gen 2. Genius. It is almost as if they wanted to flood the meta-game with its greatest burden. Problems with Gym stagnation? Say hello to the one and only Pokemon that can make someone say “Eh. I’d rather not fight this..” in excess.How should Blissey have been handled?I’m going to skip the argument of “how to nerf Blissey” entirely, because the way the game is currently set up, they’d likely have to regress to the old stat formula, alter how HP is calculated, or do a Special/Physical Damage Type split to put a dent in this marshmellows power. A direct nerf to Blissey likely isn’t going to happen. The supposed “Gym Rebalance” likely won’t touch her power. Level 10 all Pink Gyms are likely here to stay. If they put some sort’ve species limit on gyms, the wealth will just be spread rather than condensed. That said, Niantic could have put in measures to slow down its propagation by doing any of the following things they already do for other Pokemon:Increased the amount of Candy it takes to evolve. Gyarados isn’t even all that good and it literally takes 400 Candy to build one. Blissey? For 1/8th of that you have Pokemon Go’s GOD.Given it a “buddy distance to evolve” mechanic like for Espeon and Umbreon. In the main games, not only does Eevee evolve into specific Pokemon due to its “happiness.” Clefa, Pichu, Igglybuff, Golbat, Togepi, and Chansey could have all received that “easter egg.” Gating a Blissey evolution by 10km could have done a lot in making it less pervasive. Especially when you consider the burden it’d place on multi-accounters.Make it not spawn in the wild. Umbreon, Espeon, Steelix, Scizor, Slowking, Kingdra, Bellossom, Sunflora, Porygon2 and Politoed have no trouble not showing their face in the wild; Pokemon Go’s God on the other hand? Have at it!If Niantic took any of these measures now, it’d likely do a lot for bottle-necking the Blissful Pandemic we have on our hands. Even more so when you consider how much it would slow down botters, spoofers, and, most of all, multi-accounters acquisition of it, all at the general public's salt of course since it’ll be harder for them too!Hope for the future?There are several ways, beyond the aforementioned changes, that Blissey will be indirectly nerfed.Mewtwo. If/when Mewtwo becomes a reality, it will quickly ascend to the greatest counter to Blissey. Unfortunately, Mewtwo will likely be gated leading a “has vs has not” scenario for who can counter Blissey well.The Power Creep. We’ve recently seen Dragonite usurped as the main Gym Topper. The release of Legendaries will only do more to press the importance of CP for staying on gyms (assuming that aspect of gyms doesn’t get changed). Gen 3 is going to bring in even more Pokemon that can top Blissey’s CP, one of which Slacking, who, if Niantic doesn’t change how CP works in relation to Gyms, will likely top everything with very little effort (3109 CP at level 20, 5363 CP at max).People stop caring about Gyms. Blissey can’t stop you from taking Gyms if Gyms aren’t part of your agenda. To be honest, all the effort is worth $1 a day in Pokecoins at best. It’s like they say, the best way to win a game is to not even play.That is all.I hope you enjoyed my analysis on Blissey and the meta. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2pnSG5F