"Hold On to Your Hatches: A quantitative comparison of L20 Chansey to other popular gym defenders"

#PokemonGO: Hold On to Your Hatches: A quantitative comparison of L20 Chansey to other popular gym defendersby u/CuttyWow  Abstract: Speculation about Chansey’s ability as a gym defender began with the July 2017 gym rework and the introduction of motivation decay. Despite Chansey’s presence in the S Tier of the Gamepress Gym Defender Rankings, little public systematic comparative analysis has been performed to date (see u/QuantumOverlord 's study linked below). The following analysis demonstrates that when total time of battle is the preferred metric, a level 20 Chansey outperforms nearly every other Pokemon—including many Blisseys—as a defender over the lifespan of a gym. Furthermore, this level of performance is achieved with little to no resource investment, as level 20 Chanseys are available from eggs. Methods For each defender, I first calculated the CP decay for each hour of defending, from initial placement through eight full hours, using the following formula: IF((Original CP < 2300), Original CP * (80/60) * EXP((Original CP/1487)1.5 )) / 100, Original CP * 0.1) This is based on the formula for percentage CP decay proposed by u/Zyxwgh :http://ift.tt/2xX5zbV converted the percentage decay to nominal decay, and subtracted the nominal decay from the previous hour’s CP.1 I then calculated the CP drop after each battle in each hour, using the following formula: ROUND(Original CP * 0.28, 0) I believe u/RyanoftheDay was the first to identify this formula on TSR (swag swag):http://ift.tt/2jT5HmP further assumed that if a Pokemon’s CP value after a battle was below 20% of the Pokemon’s original (fully motivated) CP, the Pokemon would be removed from the gym and no further battles would occur. See:http://ift.tt/2xX2EQt process yielded 27 CP values for each Pokemon, grouped in nine “battle sets” of three. A “battle set” is the series of battles required to remove a Pokemon from a gym. Some of the CP values were negative; I assigned those a battle time of 0. Others were below the 20% threshold; if those were the second or third value in a set, they also received a battle time of 0. Next, I used the invaluable Pokebattler.com to simulate a battle against the chosen defender with each of the remaining CP values.2 I set Dodge Strategy to Dodge Specials PRO and Simulation Type to Monte Carlo Gold. For Chansey, Snorlax, and Blissey, the attacker was a level 30 Machamp with perfect IVs and Counter/Dynamic Punch. For Slowking, the attacker was a level 30 Tyranitar with perfect IVs and Bite/Crunch.3 Our Chansey was level 20 with perfect IVs and Zen Headbutt/Dazzling Gleam. Other defender movesets are shown under Results. Finally, I added up the simulated battle times to find the duration of each battle set. Results are shown in the tables below. Results Chansey vs. Slowking (level 30, Confusion/Blizzard)4 Chansey CP at HourDuration (s)Slowking CP at HourDuration (s)Battle set 083950.9212838.7Battle set 182249.0197134.4Battle set 280548.9181431.9Battle set 378847.8165721.2Battle set 477146.6150018.5Battle set 575446.3134317.9Battle set 673745.5118616.9Battle set 772045.610298.7Battle set 870345.68726.0 Chansey vs. Snorlax (level 30, Zen Headbutt/Heavy Slam)4 Chansey CP at HourDuration (s)Snorlax CP at HourDuration (s)Battle set 083950.9287656.3Battle set 182249.0258843.0Battle set 280548.9230042.6Battle set 378847.8201229.4Battle set 477146.6172421.8Battle set 575446.3143621.8Battle set 673745.5114810.6Battle set 772045.68607.9Battle set 870345.65727.8 Chansey vs. Blissey (level 20 & level 30, Zen Headbutt/Dazzling Gleam)4 Chansey CP at HourDuration (s)Blissey CP at Hour (L20)Duration (s)Blissey CP at Hour (L30)Duration (s)Battle set 083950.9183966.32759101.4Battle set 182249.0174263.9248386.0Battle set 280548.9164557.6220772.8Battle set 378847.8154844.5193151.3Battle set 477146.6145138.3165542.5Battle set 575446.3135437.3137932.4Battle set 673745.5125736.2110318.9Battle set 772045.6116033.382715.2Battle set 870345.6106318.95519.2 Discussion I make two assumptions when evaluating defenders in the current metagame: Time is more important than potions. Potions are a renewable resource (rapidly renewable, if you’ve been raiding post-reward change). Time, however, is the limiting real-world factor, is necessary for gym badge progress, and is the sole determinant of coin collection. In high- or medium-turnover areas, the marginal minute of defending can affect your income. Furthermore, protracted battles are the only deterrent to an attacker, and they annoy your rivals (hi rivals!). Investment in defenders is undesirable. Players reserve stardust for a) meta-relevant attackers (Tyranitar, Golem) or b) vanity projects (favorites, perfect IV Pokemon, or both—ask me about my 100% Rattata). Insofar as you value time, items, and stardust differently, whether due to area, fun, or other reasons, your defender selection may vary. Prior to this study, Slowking was one of my go-to defenders. He is rated as difficult to defeat by a variety of tier lists, is easily accessible at high levels in my area, looks hilarious, and carries the additional perk of using up one of the King’s Rocks that I am otherwise incapable of discarding. Unfortunately for our Shellder-headed friend, Chansey far out-performs even a level 30 Slowking, by over 30% at initial placement. Slowking in this analysis is representative of other lower-tier defenders, such as Muk and Steelix, who perform similarly to Slowking against their best counters. Snorlax is widely considered the second-best gym defender. However, as shown above, a level 30 Snorlax only outperforms a freshly hatched Chansey for the first half hour they inhabit the gym. In very high turnover areas, or for very active berry feeders, using a high-level Snorlax from the previous gym system may be the better choice. For medium turnover areas, or for those without a stock of berries, Chansey is clearly preferred. Blissey is just a better Snorlax. By losing CP so slowly over time, removing a Chansey takes longer than removing a Blissey after as few as three and a half hours. For trainers starting gyms, or for moderately active berry feeders, Blissey is likely the better choice. However, for lower turnover areas, where persistent defense is important, evolving your Chansey is not a clear-cut decision—particularly if those 50 candies would instead be used to power the Chansey up to level 28. An existing discussion of these considerations may be found in the comments below u/QuantumOverlord 's excellent post comparing Chansey to Blissey over the eight hour, twenty minute coin-collecting period:http://ift.tt/2jPvkVj, despite Chansey’s outstanding performance relative to other well-regarded defenders, she appears to be heavily underused, appearing in a mere 1% of gyms. This usage rate is below Pokemon such as Rhydon, Arcanine, and Kingler. See u/Skydiver2021 's survey:http://ift.tt/2xX2FE1 combination of high stamina and low CP make her at least the second-best, if not the best, defender in the game. More time-intensive to remove than Snorlax, even at a significant level disadvantage, she maintains that difficulty over the entire life of a gym. With no resource investment required to raise her to elite defender status, Chansey should be much more widely used. Acknowledgements Thanks to u/TorpedoRunner and u/Zyxwgh for reviewing and commenting on the draft, and again to u/Zyxwgh for correspondence regarding the CP decay formula. Thanks also to u/celandro for pointing me towards the CP modifier as the key to this project, and for all things Pokebattler—hit up his Patreon! Finally, thanks to chapotrap9876 for inspiring this piece, brainstorming, reviewing, and general Team Valor righteousness. Keep fighting the good fight! September 22, 2017  Footnotes Note 1: I used u/Zyxwgh’s formula because the fit is tight throughout the CP range in which I was interested, and because I find the 80/60 ratio attractive. However, more research is required to precisely identify the CP decay formula and the threshold for the 10% decay cap. I suspect that motivation is straightforwardly tracked separately from CP and used to calculate CP decline, but since CP is all that is displayed, we are left guessing as to the actual rate of motivation decline (and its effect on CP). The interested reader should review the literature to date on the subject. First attempt by u/kk5566 :http://ift.tt/2jPvjRf representation by u/melts10 :http://ift.tt/2xX2Grz by u/DrThod_PokemonGo :http://ift.tt/2jPQYZD attempt by u/PsionicStormOP :http://ift.tt/2xX5xRl 2: Pokebattler’s BASIC mode has a built-in IV calculator that translates the CP input to an IV spread. Unfortunately, that meant that it couldn’t accommodate the decayed CPs while also preserving my selected IV spread. To get around this problem, I took the decayed CP (whether by battle, time, or both) and ran it backward through the CP formula to get a ‘New CPM’. I then compared the ‘New CPM’ to the CP Modifier table, found the next highest half-level, and plugged that (with the IV spread) into Pokebattler’s ADVANCED mode. This means that the simulation results may be slightly inaccurate, but the magnitude of the effect seems to be at most one second per battle. To put that into perspective, that’s about the same as going from ZH/DG to Pound/HB on Chansey. u/celandro tells me that there are ways to do simulations with custom CPM arguments, so if anyone with web development experience wants to make this more accurate, shoot me a message. Note 3: Selecting optimal attackers means that the simulated times are as low as they can be with respect to this variable—if the attacker is lower IV, lower level, or not Machamp/Tyranitar, then each battle set will take longer. However, nearly two months after the release of raids, and seven months after the release of Generation II, I think it’s safe to assume that most trainers will have a Machamp and a Tyranitar available for gym battles. Don’t @ me. Note 4: As with the selected attackers’ movesets, using the ‘best’ moveset (per Gamepress) for the defenders puts a lower bound on time required—by doing the most damage, attacker charged moves are charged faster and may be used more frequently, leading to a faster battle. In other words, suboptimal defender movesets when it comes to damage may actually be preferred when it comes to battle duration. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2xX7zRF