Power creep

Power creep

Intro
Today I want to talk about power (Machamp) creep (Hypno) in Pokemon. I wanna talk about the impact on singles battles and VGC and if power creep is going too far...

Before we consider which Pokemon are BREAKING THE GAME, we should define what makes a Pokemon good, and what actually is power creep?

But firstly, I guess we should consider what makes a Pokemon good...

Basically it is the combination of a Pokemon's typing, stats, ability and movepool that allows it to perform a specific role.
There are now almost 900 Pokemon (it's amazing how they are still not running out of ideas...). Because of the number of combinations of typing, the number of available abilities, the fact that the 6 stats can range from 5-255 and the wide variety of moves a Pokemon may have access to, every Pokemon is unique and if you try reeeally hard you can find niches for some of the least viable Pokemon. But it also means that some Pokemon are objectively a lot stronger than other Pokemon.

So how to measure whether a Pokemon is strong in battle?

The best way to do this is to consider how frequently it is used or wins in a particular format - if it is used more, it is likely that it is a good Pokemon. So bearing that in mind, for this video we can use VGC usage statistics and the smogon usage based tiering system to determine which Pokemon are responsible for power creep.

So now is a good time to consider what is power creep actually?

Power creep occurs when a new game introduces Pokemon that are more powerful than the most powerful Pokemon already in the game. You'll see usage of these Pokemon spike, and they usually prove to be a big challenge in teambuilding - you have to consider how to beat them and ensure you have a good answer, and you may have to justify why you are not using such a powerful Pokemon because excluding it from your team is itself a big handicap (though for a lot of people, using the most standard powerful Pokemon is itself a reason to avoid them - but that doesn't affect how good these standard Pokemon are!)

Now I want to dispel a common misunderstanding about power creep

Some people believe that an example of power creep is if a new Pokemon is introduced that is a direct upgrade of an existing Pokemon, making that Pokemon obsolete.
Firstly, it's super unlikely for an existing Pokemon to be completely obsolete - it may have a small niche due to differences in stats or movepool. But even if a Pokemon does become less viable when a new Pokemon is introduced, it is not necessarily an example of power creep.

An example is when Scolipede was introduced in generation 5. It is a bug/poison type. We already had a bug/poison type in Beedrill. However, Scolipede is much faser and stronger than Beedrill and has an amazing hidden ability in Speed Boost which boosts speed every turn. Scolipede also has much better coverage moves. This made Beedrill all but obsolete. So is this an example of power creep? Well... no! Scolipede did not push the power level of the game - in smogon tiers it was not even OU. Simply making Beedrill, an already weak Pokemon, less viable does not constitute power creep.

Now we've establish how to measure power and what power creep is, let's look at power creep over time in Pokemon!

So first off, VGC...
To whether newly released Pokemon were more powerful than previously available Pokemon, I looked at the top 20 Pokemon in usage in each VGC meta since 2015 on pikalytics - 2015 because this is the further back the data goes.

VGC15: 7/20 (4 megas, M-Kang 52%, rest under 20%)
VGC16: 5/20 (Groudon-P 65%, Xerneas 56%), only 5 new mons
VGC17: xnationalx
VGC18: 7/20 (Incineroar 46%, Kartana & Tapu Fini 43%)
VGC19: 3/20 (only 6 new mons)
VGC21: 9/20 (Regieleki 36%, Rillaboom 34%) only rilla & Urshifu with G-Max
Restricted: 3/20 (Zacian 31%, Calyrex Ice 12%, Shadow 11%) only 1 restricted, only Zamazenta didn't place

Trend for more of the top 20 to be newly added Pokemon, legends tend to dominate (gen6, gen 8 especially).
What has been the impact? Gen 6 metas very unbalanced - CHALK ft. Kangaskhan on over 50%, restricted meta worse with Groudon on 2/3 teams and Kangaskhan, Xerneas, Smeargle on >50%.
Gen 7 had 63% Landorus, but then generally slightly more balance and variety between teams.
Gen 8 is the most diverse format for some time. Despite over-representation of gen 8 mons, most used is Incineroar at 40% - this means if you play 2 teams, they are likely to look very different! Much more diversity.
This seems quite positive - the new Pokemon are comparatively stronger, but lead to a balanced game overall.
Then there's Zacian...

Ok so next let's look at singles and the smogon usage based tiering system. Instead of just looking at usage statistics, we can instead consider bans: tiers are based on usage. Everything starts in OU or overused, and if it is not used enough it drops. But if it is too dominant (i.e. on too many teams, not enough tools to deal with, too restrictive when teambuilding), a Pokemon may get banned either automatically via council decision or via suspect testing in the community and voting. Some people consider this process controversial, but overall it allows smogon to cultivate a balanced tier with scope for difference playstyles and teambuilds, with more Pokemon being viable in the long run. It's also worth noting that something that is balanced in doubles may be completely broken in singles.
ANYWAYS, I looked at the bans for each generation to see which had the most broken Pokemon.