Why people should cover their bases before going public

I happened upon a gamepress article where the author explained why the tiers had been chosen as they were.

I don't agree with everything, but that's fair. Agreeing is subjective.

I do, however, react when I read blatantly incorrect statements.

This is what it says:

DT/HP Gyarados is better than Vaporeon as a specialist

In the 2 matchups where it really matters - vs. Rhydon and Tyranitar - Vaporeon wins faster and with more % HP remaining. So no. They do about the same vs. Flareon but Flareon is such a joke and uncommonly seen in gyms nowadays. Donphan is also uncommon but less of a joke, and Vaporeon does way better here

Which would have been fine apart from being incorrect, or at least partially incorrect.

Rhydon suffering from double weakness against water is faster to hack through with a Water Gun / Hydro Pump vaporeon than with a Dragon Tail / Hydro Pump gyarados.

The bit about tyranitar is wrong. Tyranitar suffers from a single weakness against water, so water attacks do an extra 25% damage.

Let's have a look at Water Gun versus Dragon Tail. Raw output power for vaporeon is 10 with STAB giving us a 12.5 power. Compare with Dragon Tail where gyarados lacks STAB and still gets 13.6.

The advantage is less than 25%, which makes the statement above viable -- until we look at the base attack stat for vaporeon and gyarados. 205 versus 237. That's an over 15% advantage for gyaraos. Combined with the small advantage built into the primary attacks we're at the 25%.

Running the calculations and inserting the base attack stats for vaporeon and gyarados respectively and dividing by the base defense stat for tyranitar we end up with Water Gun doing 4 points of damage every 0.5 seconds, while Dragon Tail does 9 points of damage every 1.1 second.

While 8.18 damage per second isn't much better than 8 damage per second, it's still better.

0.5 * 5 * 1.25 * 1.25 * 205 / 212 = 3.77. Round down and add 1. Cooldown 0.5 seconds.

0.5 * 15 * 237 / 212 = 8.38 Round down and add 1. Cooldown 1.1 seconds.

A bit into the fight gyarados is going to launch the same charge attack as the vaporeon, from a 15% advantage, and the discrepancy grows even larger.

10 energy per second from Water Gun versus 9 energy every 1.1 seconds for Dragon Tail helps vaporeon but doesn't suffice.


Yes, vaporeon will have more HP left after the job is done, but both pokemon will cut through a defending tyranitar so fast it isn't even funny. The same goes for rhydon, even though a vaporeon is indeed slightly faster here, but in the case of rhydon you're going with a Bullet Seed / Solar Beam exeggutor if truly ludicruous speed is of essence.