Representing a Team's SR Weakness as a Number

TL;DR Main Ideas are in bold.

This thread is about finding out how much damage your team will roughly take from a first turn Stealth Rock that stays on the field the whole game, using simple math, to decide whether Stealth Rock might be a problem for a certain team. This formula is just an idea and is by no means perfect, so I appreciate all constructive criticisms and ideas.

Stealth Rock is an interesting move that deals large amounts of damage slowly over the course of the battle. Turn by turn it's damage seems low, but if all the damage is added together, Stealth Rock has the highest average damage per PP point of any move in the game. It is also interesting because its damage can theoretically be controlled by the player affected by the move, though most people would say that the player is being controlled by the damage.

I can estimate how much damage my team will take from stealth rock by deciding how many times each of my Pokemon is most likely to switch in

The damage I receive from stealth rock is determined by how many times I decide to switch my Pokemon and which Pokemon I decide to switch in. Thus, I can theoretically determine how much damage I will take from stealth rock during the course of the battle by using my past battle experience to predict approximately how many times I will switch in each Pokemon in my team. This can be represented as a percentage.

The estimated damage a team will take from stealth rock over the entire battle can be shown as a percentage between 0% and 100%.

The % will be between 0 and 100%, with 0% being a team of Magic Guard Clefables. The highest percentage you can have is 100%, which would be switching all your Pokemon in and out till their dead while your opponent spams protect or something.


1. First, determine how much damage each of your Pokemon takes as a % from switching in on Stealth Rock

First, we have to figure out much % damage each of our Pokemon take when switching into Stealth Rock. Stealth Rocks damage is based on your Pokemon's weakness to rock attacks. Here's how it works:
x4 resistance: 3.12%
x2 resistance: 6.25%
x1 neutral: 12.5%
x2 weakness: 25%
x4 weakness: 50%

So if both your Pokemon's types resist rock attacks, you'll only lose 3.12% from each switch, vs if both your Pokemon's types are weak to rock, you'll lose 50% on each switch. Easy right? Remember, don't factor leftovers into your equation. Leftovers do not activate when a pokemon switches in after a KO. Next step then.

2. Next estimate how often you usually switch each Pokemon in after the first turn during battle, and multiply that number by the % of damage that Pokemon takes from switching into stealth rock.

The next step is to assign each of your Pokemon a number for how many times you usually send that Pokemon in after the first turn of battle, which is when stealth rock is usually setup. Some of you maybe scoffing already, saying how there is no way to know this as no two battles are alike. You'd be right, except that like Chess, all Pokemon battles have a limited number of variables that make them follow a predictable pattern. If you were to chart how many times you switched a certain Pokemon into battle over hundreds of battles, the chart would clearly point to one number. We'll call this the Arbitrary Switch number, as this is an arbitrary number that you will have decide for yourself, based on your own battling style and experience. Make sure your factoring in stealth rock being on the field, that's the entire point of this exercise. Experienced battlers should be able to easily project how often they switch in a certain Pokemon that they're familiar with. If you have trouble estimating how often you might switch a particular Pokemon in, here are some guidelines I've come up with from battling in the competitive DP scene since the game was released back in April and having used hundreds of teams and move sets. EDIT:Note that I am basing these on my own observations, experiences, and playstyle, so will have to examine your own playstyle to know what your Arbitrary Switch number is.

0: Suicide leads who set up something and then die (Aerodactyl, Azelf) will usually never switch into stealth rock. Also remember that if you switch on the first turn to something that's going to suicide or attempt a full sweep, that would also be 0 because the switch occurs before stealth rock can be put up.

1: Frail Sweepers who have few resistances or rare immunities to help them switch in (Infernape, Rampardos, Weavile) and are vulnerable to many types of hazard damage will generally only be switching in once, mostly for lack of opportunity. These pokemon usually have to brought in off of the ko of a teammate. More skilled battlers may be able to switch them in with prediction, but they still rarely come out more than once.

2: Sweepers with many immunities/resistances (Lucario, Gengar, Heatran) or abilities that aid in their switching in but who have exploitable weaknesses or defenses or are slightly bulky but forgo instant recovery moves/use recoil items/are weak to stealth rock (choice users, DD/Mixmence, Honchkrow, Electivire, Arcanine) will usually switch in around two times before being put down.

3: Bulky Sweepers (Bulky Gyarados, Bulkymence, Starmie, Scizor) tanks and walls who lack instant recovery moves (Machamp, Bronzong, Suicune, Tangrowth, Forretress, moonlightless-Cresselia, Vaporeon, Donphan) walls/tanks who are weak to stealth rock but have instant recovery moves (Zapdos, Togekiss) usually switch around three times before they succumb. Lesser walls like Miltank, Porygon2, defensive Scizor and Slowbro also tend to fall into this category.

4+: These are your sturdy walls who have 50% recovery moves, and take neutral or reduced damage from stealth rock (Celebi, Gligar, Cresselia, Skarmory, Blissey, Hippowdon, Milotic). These are the self-rebuilding steel walls that just don't die to normal attacks. Offensive teams who use them to fall back on in an emergency will usually only send them in 3 times or less, while all out stall teams will send them in around 4-6 times.

3. Now take your Arbitrary Switch number and multiply it by each Pokemon's Stealth Rock damage %. 4. Find the average of the six numbers, Projected Indv. Damage, produced and you have your estimated SR damage.

Now that we have estimated how many times each of our Pokemon will be switching into Stealth Rock on average we can multiply each Arbitrary Switch number the Pokemon's individual Stealth Rock % damage. So if a Pokemon would take 12.5% from each switch in, and I project that I switch that Pokemon in around 3 times per battle, that Pokemon's Projected Individual Damage, or PID for short, will be 37.5%
I then find the average of all of my Pokemon's PIDs, and that is my SR weakness number!

Examples:
My team:
1.SashAero
2.MeditateE-Vire
3.GyarakillingDDGyarados
4.DDOutragemixmence
5.SDBPbulkyscizor
6.FlinchhaxTogekiss

Step 1.
Find Team members stealth rock %S
1. 25%
2. 12.5%
3. 25%
4. 25%
5. 12.5%
6. 25%

Step 2.
Project each members average amount of switch ins
1. 0 lead that stealth rocks and dies
2. 1 switches in on motor drive, meditates for a sweep. high recoil
3. 3 abuses intimidate and stone edge to chase out other gyaras
4. 2 Life Orb, SR and Outrage make it hard to switch in and out
5. 3 Bulkiness and resistances let it switch in often
6. 3 Tank that can heal but is weak to SR

Step 3.
Multiply Step 1 numbers by Step 2 numbers
1. 0 = 25 * 0
2. 12.5 = 12.5 * 1
3. 75 = 25 * 3
4. 50 = 25 * 2
5. 37.5 = 12.5 * 3
6. 75 = 25 * 3

Step 4.
Find the average of these numbers and show as a %
(0+12.5+75+50+37.5+75) / 6 = 41.6%.

This is the average total damage I will take from switching if I let my opponent set up stealth rock on the first turn and keep it on the field. With 1 attack, my opponent will be able to to take 41.6% of my teams total starting hp from me if I don't prevent them from getting Stealth Rock set up or get rid of it.

So what does my SR% weakness number mean? How can I use it?
The number that you got at the end of the formula shows you a rough average of how much damage your team will take from Stealth Rock, where 100% is your entire teams hp added together. You can use this number to decide of your team should be changed to lessen the damage done by Stealth Rock, or if you should think about using a spinner or taunter lead to keep the rocks off the field. Barring some circumstances like teams that have reversalers, berry users etc. that are messed up by SR, you can grade your team based on this rubric:

0~20%: Can comfortably play with Stealth Rock up without having to worry about using a spinner or taunter.

21~30%: Can play around the rocks, but might be somewhat restricted in how much they can switch.

31%~40%: Switching is restricted by Stealth Rock, and pokemon being kod a turn earlier than they normally would is not rare. A spinner/fast taunter might be beneficial, but is not nessecary.

41~50%: Stealth Rock damage will be high, and unless your pokemon are bulky and heal reliably, switching will be difficult. Using or spinner/fast taunter, numerous healing moves and items, or using less rock weaks is recommended.

51%+: Switching safely quickly becomes impossible. Attaining victory without ridding the field of stealth rock will be very difficult and unlikely.
 
I am very impressed by the great logic in this. This could very efficiently be used to measure how weak a team is to SR instead of the old "2 Pokes SR Weak" which does not explain much. This could fluctuate very much though since the battle could go many more different ways than originally planned, however, I'll definately try this out for my teams.
 
Seeing as my hail team instantly fails this test, with only two neutrals, i'll try my BL/UU team:
Venomoth - 25% - 0 times - 0
Pinsir - 25% - 2 times - 50%
Feraligatr - 12% - 1 time - 12%
Claydol - 6% - 3 times - 18%
Weezing - 12% - 3 times - 36%
Clefable - 0% - 4 times - 0%

Average: 19.3recurring%
It seems a lot more than that usually. At least this team has Claydol as a spinner, but Weezing is definitely crippled by SR. Pinsir is Scarfed, so it doesn't matter AS much, and Venomoth doesn't usually come in that often. Go Magic Guard on Clefable though. ^_^
 
Damn, I forgot about Clefable XD. That means that a team can have a SR% of 0%, if it's got five clefables lol.

Thanks for the feedback guys!
 
My team is pretty safe from Stealth Rock:

1.SashRalts
2.DTSClamperl
3.TRBronzong
4.TRClaydol
5.CBTrapinch
6.TRCMSlowbro

1. 12.5%
2. 12.5%
3. 6.25%
4. 6.25%
5. 6.25%
6. 12.5%

1. 0 lead that trick rooms and kamikazes with destiny bond
2. 1 special sweeper that comes in on free switch in
3. 3 tank that switches into many attacks to setup trick room
4. 3 tank that switches into many attacks to setup trick room and rapid spin
5. 1 revenge killer that comes in on free switch or electric attacks, traps and kills
6. 3 tank that calm minds and sets up trick room

1. 0 = 12.5 * 0
2. 12.5 = 12.5 * 1
3. 18.75 = 6.25 * 3
4. 18.75 = 6.25* 3
5. 6.25 = 6.25 * 1
6. 37.5 = 12.5 * 3

(0+12.5+18.75+18.75+6.25+37.5) / 6 = 15.625%.

With 1 attack, my opponent will be able to to take 15.625% of my teams total hp from me if I don't prevent them from getting Stealth Rock set up or get rid of it.
 

mien

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My average is..
53.16%
Damn hailteams are so SR weak >_>, it's simply a miracle i manage to get so many wins
Using SR is like adding a 7th poke to a team or an 8th in my case
 

Hipmonlee

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One thing that is misleading, is that you probably have more than 100% hp, since that you will recover with leftovers or with recover.

So when you say "With 1 attack, my opponent will be able to to take 41.6% of my teams total hp from me" that doesnt mean one attack does 41.6% of the total damage needed to beat your team.

Have a nice day.
 

Aldaron

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It would be useful if we could get a total damage output for all moves / Stealth Rock, and for average damage output for all moves / Stealth Rock in battle.

It would really be the necessary evidence we could use to decide whether or not Stealth Rock is a suspect.

I am growing tired of the masses complaining about this and not giving me anything other than theorymon.

However, if we can see that Stealth Rock does a significantly higher amount of damage than various other moves individually (or even combined), then I might be willing to listen to some complaints.
 
Surely the fact that the majority of teams are prepared to sacrifice their lead to be ablr to set it up is proof of its power.
I do not totally agree with this statement. A suicide leads job is not only to set up the rocks, it is also to give the player using it an aggressive advantage against their opponant. Even if they do explode into a ghost type they can then bring in a pokemon that poses a threat to said ghost type, putting them in control of the game and forcing their oponant to make a clever play. Unless people are following the crowd, using a suicide lead represents an aggressive intent right at the start of the battle.
 
Surely the fact that the majority of teams are prepared to sacrifice their lead to be able to set it up is proof of its power.
Taunt is actually the main attraction of those suicide leads. Preventing the opponent from setting up their strategy for a few turns while you set up yours gives you a tangible tactical edge in battle by putting your opponent several turns behind you. I'll be discussing that in my next thread.
 

cim

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Wait, how is this that amazing at all? you average SR damage and multiply by a completely arbitrary number of switch ins per "role" to get a number. That number isn't how much damage one attack would do to you, either, it's a slightly, arbitrarily modified average of SR damage!
 
I think it's because before, the best we had to go by was the number of SR weak Pokemon per team, which could be "fooled" by things such as SR resistant Pokemon being walls that switch in a lot and SR weak Pokemon that either lead or aren't meant to survive long anyway. IMO the number of switches per role and the average number is the big deal, simply because no one's formalized it like this before AFAIK.
 
Wait, how is this that amazing at all? you average SR damage and multiply by a completely arbitrary number of switch ins per "role" to get a number. That number isn't how much damage one attack would do to you, either, it's a slightly, arbitrarily modified average of SR damage!
That is what I was aiming for, an average amount of damage that would be done to your team by Stealth Rock, which you would have to arbitrarily determine by examining your own play style. Note that the player decides for themselves the number of switch-ins, I was only trying to give examples.

Stealth Rock deals damage. Stealth Rock is an attack that is used once. Therfore, damage accrued by SR is damage from one attack, no?
 
I think this is a way to approximate SR damage, an interesting way of looking at it.

The best method to test Stealth Rock damage is to actually go through the log and determine how much it dealt overall over the coruse of a match, but this is nice for teambuilding.
 
This is quite useful, thanks TVboyCanti, although I agree with Hipmonlee that the results are biased unless things like leftovers and how many recovery moves your pokemon have are taken into account. For a stall team (where all six bulky pokes have recovery moves) that is SR weak, the total amount of damage done by SR obviously can't be as high as the calculation suggested, which for a team of neutrals would be 4*12.5*6/6=50%. Stall games often last more than 40 turns so there is nothing new here.

And why exactly are people trying to argue how much damage SR do to the metagame using only theorymon and approximates as their backup evidence? IMO it would be much better if some programmer can just insert a few lines of scripts into the server and we will have all the data we need at the end of the month to argue for a SR suspect test. This paragraph is not targeted towards anyone of course, it's just my rant.
 
For the "arbitrary switch numbers", instead of a generalization like that, what I would do is record twelve logs and disregard the highest and lowest number of switches for each Pokemon, find the average for each Pokemon, and use that instead of the "arbitrary switch number".
 
For the "arbitrary switch numbers", instead of a generalization like that, what I would do is record twelve logs and disregard the highest and lowest number of switches for each Pokemon, find the average for each Pokemon, and use that instead of the "arbitrary switch number".
That is a great idea. Now that I have Warmachine installed on my computer, I'll be going through my battle logs and comparing my arbitrarily projected Stealth Rock damage to actual Stealth Rock damage. EDIT: ROFL, I never let my opponent put stealth rock up on the first turn! Looks like I'll have to get some battles in.
 

cim

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This seems like the kind of thing you don't need numbers to do though. If you have a Zapdos, Gliscor, and Articuno as your tanks something is very wrong, but if you have a kamikaze sweeping Salamence and 5 things not weak to SR, you're fine.
 
FIELD TESTING DATA NOW AVAILABLE!!

Okay, I've spent all morning battling on shoddy battle (with a hangover no less) to gather data on how much damage a team that I've applied my formula to actually takes during battles.

This data is taken from ten battles where my opponent put stealth rock on the field on the first turn and I let them keep it there the whole game. I used the same team for all the battles, and the only change I made was swapping out Aromatherapy for T-wave on my Blissey. Here's the team that I used:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1511500#post1511500
All of these battles were fought to win by me, and I was not thinking about the statistics I would produce until after the battle was over.

If anyone wants to see the actual battle logs, I can post them up. For now I'll just post the data that I extracted from the battles.

Here's my teams projected SR weakness using my formula
Sala: 25 * 1 = 25
Elec: 12.5 * 1 = 12.5
Bliss: 12.5 * 3 = 37.5
Suic: 12.5 * 2 = 25
Gen: 12.5 * 2 = 25
Gya: 25 * 2 = 50
(25+12.5+37.5+25+25+50)/6 = 29.1%

Actual Average switches per pokemon:
Sala: 1.4
Elec: 1.4
Bliss: 2.4
Suic: 1.9
Gen: 1.8
Gya: 1.8

Actual Average switches per pokemon excluding lowest and highest switch #s:
Sala: 1.25
Elec: 1.1
Bliss: 2.37
Suic: 1.75
Gen: 1.75
Gya: 1.75

Actual total SR damage over 10 battles:
(35+17.5+30+23.75+22.5+45) / 6 = 28.9%

Switch Spreadsheet
Switches per poke per battle
Battle#: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
Salame : 2 - 2 - 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 - 3 - 1 - 1
Electiv : 1 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 1 - 1 - 1
Blissey : 4 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 4 - 3 - 3 - 1
Suicun : 4 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 3 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 1
Gengar : 3 - 1 - 3 - 3 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 1
Gyarado: 1 - 1 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 2 - 2 - 2
Result : W - L - W- L - L - L - W - W- L - W
Score:1-0:0-4:4-0:0-2:0-3:0-3:2-0:2-0:0-5:5-0

Comparison of projected damage vs. actual damage
Projected: 29.1%
Actual: 28.9%
Adjusted by removing lowest and highest switches: 27.01%


Thank you to the artic one for his awesome warstory formatter, which you can find here.
 

Legacy Raider

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Hmm, this is a great concept, but I'm not too sure this can be used for every team.
For example, I'll give the figures for my SandStall team below:

- Hippowdon - 6.25 x 4 = 25
- Shuckle - 25 x 3 = 75
- Skarmory - 12.5 x 4 = 50
- Rotom-H - 12.5 x 2 = 25
- Celebi - 12.5 x 4 = 50
- Tentacruel - 12.5 x 3 = 37.5

(25+75+50+25+50+37.5) / 6 = 43.75

That seems a heck of a lot of SR damage for a team with only 1 SR weak...

Is this giving an accurate representation of the damage that one move can do to my team?
 
Hmm, this is a great concept, but I'm not too sure this can be used for every team.
For example, I'll give the figures for my SandStall team below:

- Hippowdon - 6.25 x 4 = 25
- Shuckle - 25 x 3 = 75
- Skarmory - 12.5 x 4 = 50
- Rotom-H - 12.5 x 2 = 25
- Celebi - 12.5 x 4 = 50
- Tentacruel - 12.5 x 3 = 37.5

(25+75+50+25+50+37.5) / 6 = 43.75

That seems a heck of a lot of SR damage for a team with only 1 SR weak...

Is this giving an accurate representation of the damage that one move can do to my team?
I guess for bulky stall teams, SR damage can mostly be ignored as long as it's not super effective, since the damage is being accumulated so slowly and all your pokemon are constantly healing themselves.
 
What needs to happen is the formula should have the Stealth Rock damage x Switch # (as %) x Poke's HP

Then you add all those up and divide by total HP.

Here's my team:

Infernape- 12.5 * 1 = 12.5% * 293 = 36.625
Milotic- 12.5 * 4 = 50% * 394 = 197
Gliscor- 12.5 * 4 = 50% * 354 = 177
Lucario- 3.25 * 2 = 6.25% * 281 = 17.5625
Porygon-Z- 12.5 *1 = 12.5% * 312 = 40.125
Salamence- 25 * 2 = 50% * 394 = 197

Before:
(12.5+50+50+6.25+12.5+50) / 6 = 30.2083

Now:
(36.625+197+177+17.5625+40.125+197) / 2028 = 32.80%

It may not seem like a lot of damage between the two, but in the case of Legacy, Shuckle might not make as big a difference.
 

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