VGC teams replays!

Hello, I am Jose Mena (jocan3mena@) from Costa Rica, I am a Software Engineer and also a Pokemon VGC fan (not really a player) since many years ago. One of my hobbies of playing with data and web tools ended up in a project called VGC Teams Replays. This tool allows you to look at trending teams used in Showdown based on sample battle replays.

Report data

The reports are created biweekly and you would be able to switch between datasets using the dropdown menu at the top. Each dataset consists on a sample of battle replays extracted from Pokemon Showdown during 2 weeks and parsed to get the following information into the report:

Usage: Number of times a Pokemon team was used in a battle replay.

Win: Number of times a player using the Pokemon team won the battle in a replay.

Users: Number of different users that have played using the Pokemon team in the replays.

Win ratio*: Ratio of number of wins respect to the number of times a Pokemon team was used (x = win/usage).

Usage ratio*: Ratio of the number of times a Pokemon team was used respect to the total number of teams included in the report (x = usage/total # of teams)

Relevance*: Score calculated based on the popularity of the Pokemon team (number of users) and the win ratio. For instance, a team tested by a high number of users with a high win ratio will have a high Relevance score.

* Data only visible on desktop view (PC or tablet).

Interacting with the report

You can play with the report of different ways when looking for strategies or team building:

Search by Pokemon: If interested in one or more Pokemon, you can use the search bar by typing the names (or part of the names) separated by spaces. For instance, by typing: “Corvi Draco” you would see teams that include Corviknight and Dracovish.

Sorting: Each column in the report is sortable by clicking on the column name.

Replays*: By clicking on this option, you will see links to the battle replays in Showdown for the specific team. Battles are separated by wins and loses of that Pokemon team.

Data*: This data consists on moves, abilities and items per Pokemon extracted from the battle replays where that team won the battle. Please note that this data is parsed based on what you can actually see during the replay (that’s why EV spreads or items/abilities that are not evident during the battle will not be extracted). For each Pokemon stat, it will indicate the percentage and number of times an specific move/item/ability was used out of the total. For instance, the below information show that for Arcanine the move “Snarl” was used 5 times out of the 15 times an Arcanine attacked in the winning replays.

The data also includes information of leads used in the battles.

* In mobile version, tap the row of the Pokemon team that you want to check in order to see the options.

How to get the most of it

Players new to VGC would have access to a huge number of teams and options to start exploring. You can start by grabbing some of the most popular teams since those are the ones that have already been tested by many users, and the report will give you complete information around move sets, abilities, items and leads. You will also have a big list of links to battle replays where you can see strategies and how those teams are actually being used. When building your team, there are other online resources such as PokemonShowdown team builder and Pikalytics that will help you to complement data for specific Pokemon, such as EV spreads.

Take into consideration that creating a team based on this report only represents the start of your competitive journey, as the best way to get better is to practice a lot with the team by yourself and being able to identify improvements and tweaks to counteract weaknesses.

Experienced players can also take advantage of the reports as they provide good insights of how the meta is changing across the time. And you can also take some ideas that could help you during your team building process as well as looking for specific Pokemon usages.

Feel free to provide any feedback to me directly about this tool and if you want to report any issues or suggest improvements you can let me know on Github.