[Apologies if this is in the wrong place; feel free to move or delete as needed, or ask me to do either]
Over-analyzing win rates is usually a waste of time and energy. But, it’s fun, and it’s one of the only continuous variables we have, so I’m going to play with it anyway.
Cloyster caught my eye as doing quite well this SPL, as it has a 56.25% wins out of 24 games; this is up from last year and is actually the highest of any pokemon in RBY-SPLXIV that has more than one game played.
I like cloyster a lot, but I struggle to figure out when it’s good and when it struggles in competitive RBY. I waded into this further, and I looked at team compositions to see if it’s just being brought up by well-performing partners (mainly thinking Zam here).
Here’s a table of Cloyster’s partners this SPL so far (cutting the normals and most pairs with only one game):
45. | 42 | Cloyster / Alakazam | 10 | 6.76% | 60.00% |
46. | 43 | Jynx / Cloyster | 9 | 6.08% | 66.67% |
47. | 44 | Cloyster / Starmie | 8 | 5.41% | 75.00% |
49. | 46 | Cloyster / Exeggutor | 7 | 4.73% | 21.43% |
57. | 54 | Cloyster / Gengar | 4 | 2.70% | 62.50% |
58. | 54 | Zapdos / Cloyster | 4 | 2.70% | 50.00% |
64. | 54 | Jolteon / Cloyster | 4 | 2.70% | 25.00% |
80. | 72 | Cloyster / Rhydon | 1 | 0.68% | 100.00% |
Almost everything in SPLXIV here is quite high and up from last year, notably.
The one major exception here is Cloy+Egg cores really dragging the win rate down of an otherwise outstanding performance. That 21.43% is out of seven games, with less than two wins! Seven games isn’t a lot of data, but 6/7 non-wins is alarming. Just to address it early, the very first instance of Cloy+Egg this SPL was Felix bringing it against Chuva in G1, that resulted in a tie. The tie counts as 0.5W, so the stats are a bit weird by being 1.5 wins out of 7 games.
So I’m wondering, what is it about this team core that is struggling?
When I first saw this pattern, I thought it must just be a condemnation of slower teams. We’re seeing teams get faster and faster, with Zam+Mie+Don being one of the best team comps these days.
However, Egg+Don is still doing fine, sitting at 58.33% wins out of 12 games (63.6% if you only count the 11 Mie+Egg+Don). Even Don+Cloy won its singular game. Maybe the speed is a problem, but it shouldn’t be a death sentence here.
Next I assumed Zapdos is maybe scoring wins against this extremely Zapdos weak core. However, not a single game with Egg+Cloy was against a Zapdos. Ok, then I was really confused and did a full dive.
Maybe the uptick in BoltBeam Chansey (as Gastlies mentioned in the VR thread) is punishing this core, but only one game was definitely against boltbeam Chansey (G3 Serpi vs Nails. What about tbolt Starmie (up 9.09% in usage from SPL XIII)? Nope, never saw an opponent Starmie click it. Not Hyper-Beam lax either, as that was also only clicked in one game vs Egg+Cloy (Serpi v Nails G1).
Looking at teammates gets tricky, as the sample size is quite small (the third teammate on these teams was Gengar three times, zam three times, and jolteon once). I’m going to mostly skip over this for space/time. Suffice to say, none of the teammates (outside of jolteon) are doing poorly. Gar+Cloy, Zam+Cloy, and Gar+Zam are all >60% wins. Gar+Egg is at 57.69% through 13 games, while Egg+Zam is a bit low at 46.15% through 39 games. Regardless, the data points are just too few here to make conclusions about the third member.
One other thing that could separate Egg+Cloy from Egg+Don is the Alakazam match up. Zam handles both Cloy and Rhydon in a straight 1v1, but Rhydon can threaten the 2HKO back, while Cloyster cannot. Further, Zam doesn’t switch into Rhydon as well as Cloyster, and, if Zam is para’d, Rhydon is extremely threating. In fact 6/7 of the Egg+Cloy games were against Zam, with the remaining 1/7 being the tie. Considering the ~9% uptick in Zam usage from last year, maybe this a contributing factor to Egg+Cloy struggles? Egg+Don cores also have the benefit of Starmie often being third, whereas we haven’t seen Mie+Egg+Cloy yet (pray there’s no Zapdos if you run that team). However, Cloyster is still doing well in other pairings, and the Gar+Egg+Cloy is doing slightly better than Zam+Egg+Cloy.
Besides, Egg should be able to hold the Zam matchup, as long as it has double edge, right?
Well, perhaps Eggs are dropping d-edge to make room for Stun-Spore+Mega-Drain to handle Starmie (SS up 16.28% from last year, but MD is stable at ~16%) allowing Zam to punish the team core?
In fact, not a single Egg+Cloy team revealed d-edge on Egg. Then, if your answer to opponent Zam becomes your own Zam+Chansey, and your Zam gets slept early in the game (as happened in 2/3 of the Zam+Cloy+Egg games), then you end up with a team core quite weak to one of the most threating pokemon in the meta at the moment. This is really on display in the wk 4 Felix vs Nails set. In G1, Nails’ Zam really pushes our protagonist around, until Nails is able get Slowbro in on Cloyster’s rest and take over the game. G3, Felix’s Egg gets the sleep down on Nails’ Zam, but it can only click Mega Drain, and Nails’ Zam wakes. The final turn ends up being Nails’ Zam putting away Felix’s remaining Egg, which feels like a poetic end to this particular essay.
I think this is the symptom of greater trend that others have already pointed out, which is why I wanted to post this manifesto:
teams are focusing on methods to slow down opponent Starmie, causing them to sacrifice reliable answers to Alakazam.
I think we already knew this, but the Egg+Cloy anomaly seems to be a data point to support the hypothesis, and it also highlights the dangers of this method. Starmie is a major threat, and we haven’t found good ways to slow it down, especially when it pairs with Rhydon. But, over-focusing on it may be creating opportunities for Zam. This meta is so cool - thanks to the players for keeping me entertained this winter.
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ere’s my table so far of Egg+Cloy cores, in case anyone is interested:
week | player | result | vs zapdos? | 3rd partner | Opp Chansey set | opp starmie set? | vs HB lax? | Opp Zam? | opponent |
wk 1 | felix | T | no | Gar | ref+stoss | no star | no | no | chuva |
wk 3 | serpi | L | no | jolt | sing+IB | surf/? | yes | back | nails |
wk 3 | serpi | L | no | gar | boltbeam | no star | no | lead | nails |
wk 3 | Mana | L | no | zam | sing+toss | Psy/Blizz | no | lead | LNum |
wk 4 | felix | L | no | zam | sing+toss | ? | no | lead | nails |
wk 4 | felix | L | no | zam | ? | Psy/? | no | lead | nails |
wk 5 | serpi | W | no | gar | ? | Psy/? | no | lead | troller |
Other interest, Serpi and Felix have each brought the duo three out of the seven times, and four of the games have been against Nails. So I don’t know, Nails, seems people are targeting you with this, but it isn’t working anyway.
I’m definitely thinking too hard about win%, but it’s still intriguing to me. I’ll look through these games in more detail to see what else I can find, and I’ll probably revisit this after the full tour and winter ssnl stats come out. If any of you more experienced people have insight, please share.
In the meantime, I challenge people to try more Egg+Cloy cores. SPLers, please increase my number of data points; this is really important work I’m doing here. I might take a team into ladder and see if I get slapped by Zam. Then I’ll try d-edge on the eggy and see if that causes me to get slapped by Starmie instead.
Oh, and if anyone can win a serious tour game with Egg+Don+Cloy, that would really throw me through a loop.