"Gym Attacker Rankings (Dragonite, MewTwo, etc) [Research]"

#PokemonGO: Gym Attacker RankingsAs a personal labor of love, since I love data and spreadsheets - I decided to make a spreadsheet to see if one of the new MewTwo movesets would replace my Dragonite with DT/Outrage as a general "gym sweeper", and how the other legendaries would perform. This study is focus only on performance against gyms (not raids), since I like to spend as little time as possible earning my coins. First I had to create my gym defender rankings spreadsheet, which I did by randomly selecting 1,000 gyms worldwide.Then I ran simulations of 15 different attackers against 50 different gym defenders, weighted by how often they occur in gyms.Please see more details regarding my methodology & movesets further down below the tables.What this study is, and is notMy study only looks at results weighted against the current gym metaI'm not looking at what attackers do more neutral damage, there are many other posts that cover thatI'm not claiming the current gym system has "defenders", this data will be more relevant if Niantic changes the gym decay systemThis will be most relevant for fully-motivated gyms that are berried up oftenI do realize many gyms are de-motivated, or full of pidgeys and rattatas, for which any attacker would workThis study did not look at performance against raidsRanking against all gym defenders, looking at speed and tankinessALL WEIGHTED (SPEED 67% TANK 33%)PERCENTDragonite Outrage100.0Raikou99.3Mewtwo Focus Blast96.3Tyranitar94.8Machamp94.5Dragonite Hurricane92.8Mewtwo Shadow Ball90.6Mewtwo Psychic88.0Zapdos87.4Vaporeon83.4Moltres82.7Entei82.5Lugia SkyAttack81.5Lugia FutureSight78.4Articuno75.7Ranking against all gym defenders, ranking tankiness over speedALL WEIGHTED (SPEED 33% TANK 67%)PERCENTDragonite Outrage100.0Raikou99.5Tyranitar98.7Mewtwo Focus Blast94.7Dragonite Hurricane94.1Lugia SkyAttack94.0Lugia FutureSight90.0Machamp88.3Mewtwo Shadow Ball87.9Vaporeon87.8Mewtwo Psychic86.5Zapdos86.4Entei85.6Moltres82.8Articuno79.8Ranking against all gym defenders, looking only at speedSPEED ALL DEFENDERSPERCENTMachamp100.0Dragonite Outrage98.8Raikou97.2Mewtwo Focus Blast97.0Mewtwo Shadow Ball91.9Dragonite Hurricane90.2Tyranitar89.8Mewtwo Psychic88.1Zapdos86.6Moltres81.9Vaporeon78.9Entei78.6Articuno71.3Lugia SkyAttack68.4Lugia FutureSight66.1Ranking against all gym defenders, looking only at tankinessTANKINESS ALL DEFENDERSPERCENTLugia SkyAttack100.0Tyranitar96.3Lugia FutureSight95.7Dragonite Outrage94.2Raikou92.8Dragonite Hurricane89.9Mewtwo Focus Blast87.8Vaporeon87.2Entei83.3Mewtwo Psychic80.0Mewtwo Shadow Ball79.8Zapdos79.6Articuno79.0Moltres77.8Machamp77.5Ranking against gym defenders weak to fighting (Blissey, Snorlax), ranking speed over tankinessWEIGHTED (Speed 67%) WEAK TO FIGHTINGPERCENTMachamp100.0Mewtwo Focus Blast96.7Raikou81.7Dragonite Outrage80.1Tyranitar75.6Moltres75.6Dragonite Hurricane74.8Entei74.2Mewtwo Psychic73.8Zapdos71.2Vaporeon67.0Lugia SkyAttack63.8Lugia FutureSight61.0Mewtwo Shadow Ball58.7Articuno56.4Ranking against gym defenders NOT weak to fighting, ranking speed over tankinessWEIGHTED (Speed 67%) NOT WEAK TO FIGHTINGPERCENTDragonite Outrage100.0Mewtwo Shadow Ball99.2Raikou97.9Tyranitar95.0Dragonite Hurricane92.5Zapdos86.7Mewtwo Psychic85.9Mewtwo Focus Blast84.1Vaporeon83.3Lugia SkyAttack82.4Lugia FutureSight79.5Machamp79.4Articuno78.4Entei77.4Moltres76.9Movesets AnalyzedDragonite with DT/Outrage and DT/HurricaneAll MewTwo movesets have Psycho Cut (Focus Blast, Shadow Ball, Psychic)Raikou with Thunder Shock / Wild ChargeTyranitar with Bite / Stone EdgeZapdos with Charge Beam / ThunderBoltVaporeon with WG/HydroPumpLugia with ES/SkyAttack and ES/FutureSightMachamp with Counter / Dynamic PunchEntei & Moltres with Fire Spin / OverheatArticuno with Frost Breathe / BlizzardNotes:Articuno with Frost Breath / Ice Beam gives very similar results, within 1 or 2%. I apologize in advance for not looking at further movesets, but these were the only movesets I wanted to consider for my personal attackers.Dragonite with Dragon Breathe / Dragon Claw or Dragon Breathe / Outrage will perform similarly to DT/Outrage. Depending on the battle, I'm seeing results within +- 5% of each other.Raikou with TS/Wild Charge is 6-7% better than TS/ThunderBolt.Why did I choose Psycho Cut for MewTwo over Confusion?This was a personal preference of mine, as I enjoy using "quicker" fast moves, I understand that does not matter to othersPsycho Cut gives greater energy buildup, lessening the difference in weave DPSMewTwo with PC + Focus Blast outperforms Confusion against types weak to fighting, which is where Focus Blast is most likely to be usedIn most neutral matchups, Confusion / ShadowBall MewTwo appears to outperform PS / ShadowBall mewtwo by 2% - 4%, so you can adjust the results accordingly for Confusion / Shadow Ball MewTwo.I acknowledge that for low motivation gyms, some trainers may prefer Confusion over PC as the attacker may die before a charge move is needed, and they most likely will not be dodgingMethodologySimulations were run in PokemonBox V1.4, built by /u/gxy91, which I have used extensively and found to be quite accurate compared to Gamepress Rankings & Pokebattler.com.Tankiness is how many defenders the attacker can defeatResults were the average of 3 strategies; dodge all, dodge none, and dodge charge onlyThe weightings I used for the gym defenders can be found hereOnce I realized that MewTwo Focus Blast did so well against Blissey / Snorlax, and MewTwo Shadow Ball so poorly, I decided to give myself the option to view results separated into defenders weak to fighting, and defenders not - just out of curiosity.I double-checked my work in many ways, one way was by creating a completely separate spreadsheet using a subjective analysis of the best attacker for each defender, instead of a computational objective one. This was still based on the PokemonBox battle simulation. The results were similar to the results I posted here, giving me even more confidence in the numbers.Limitations of this studyGym meta will change in the futureData does not apply to raid bossesIf gyms are fully demotivated, the attacker will not even need to use charge movesSimulations were run in PokemonBox V1.4 instead of Pokebattler which many consider more accurateSaving a charge move for the next defender was not considered in calculationsBlissey and Snorlax have the highest weighting because they are the most common gym defenders. However, I did not increase their weight even further just because they take longer to battle.ConclusionsDragonite, MewTwo Focus Blast and Raikou will all make great "gym attackers", if you are in the market for a single "gym sweeper" regardless of who is in the gymMewTwo Focus Blast and Machamp are great options for Blissey, Snorlax, Tyranitar and any other normal type, or any type weak to fighting such as Tyranitar or LaprasDragonite and MewTwo Shadow Ball are the best choices with the current gym meta for a general attacker against types not weak to fighting. This is useful if you have 2 main gym attackers instead of one.Dragonite appears to benefit from a higher number of better type matchups, but this can change in the future. Raiko also appears to benefit from many positive type matchups.Special ThanksSpecial thanks to /u/BoozerTV, /u/Caralyse for their early feedback, any other user who gave me early feedback, and especially /u/gzy91 for his excellent PokemonBox spreadsheetPlease let me know if you have any questions, or want to see any more data, and I hope you found at least something in the study interesting. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2vR6HsM