Competitive Pokemon: Underused Pokemon Viability

Abstract

Pokemon is a video game with a battling system in which you bring a team of six pokemon to each game. Within this battling system, some pokemon are considered less useful and thereful being used less. This dilemma on whether or not an underused pokemon are a specific downgrade than another overused pokemon with similarly good typing effect the winrate in “best of three” matches in Pokemon Showdown. This leads me to my research question, to what extent does having the under-used pokemon, Zoroark-Hisui, change the results of a similar team with Flutter Mane in twenty five best of three matches each. Zoroark-Hisui (ZH) was chosen because it’s my favorite underused pokemon. ZH is an underused pokemon because of its frail bulk, or inability to take a hit. Flutter Mane, an overpowered pokemon (Uber), was chosen due to its dominance in the meta and it’s decent resemblance to ZH. It’s important to me and other competitive players to understand whether or not an underused pokemon can perform as well as an overused pokemon because it’s more fun to use a more diverse set of pokemon. The results (so far) dictate that Flutter Mane would perform better in a tournament setting with the same person piloting both teams due to having a win-rate of 50% to Zoroark-Hisui\u27s win-rate of 25%