How To Truly Rank Your Pokemon, Sans Movesets

When you look up different sites as to what Pokemon are best at what qualities... best defender, best attacker, best at toughing it out (Stamina and/or HP), everyone seems to rank the various animals via a single stat.

And that's fine. It's good to know who outranks who in what category. Right?

But here's the thing - We are not all built the same nor can a Pokemon be rated via one single category, regardless of their max potential of CP or HP. Right?

Let's look at it this way...

Do you want a boxer who can only punch, but not take a hit? Or someone who can take a hit, but can't throw a punch? Right, that's what I thought.

Pokemon GO Attackers Ranked

The animal with the best Attack stat as of this writing, pre-generation 4 release, is Mewtwo, at 300. Great. So he or she can pack the biggest wallop out there. Slaking has the second most powerful attack stat, at 290. Here's the top-10, ranked by base attack stat:

Mewtwo
Slaking
Rayquaza
Salamence
Alakazam
Groudon
Kyogre
Latios
Dragonite
Espeon

BUT... if we liken our Pokemon to boxers, Mewtwo can pack a wallop, but Slaking can pack a punch too AND he can take a beating (Stamina). Mewtwo's Stamina is 193 while Slaking's is 273. Holy cripes! Right?

Now how's that top-10 list look like when you combine Attack and Defense stats?

Blissey
Slaking
Chansey
Wailord
Snorlax
Hariyama
Mewtwo
Rayquaza
Salamence
Entei

(Blissey gets in a lot of lists because of her pure excellence at stamina.)

Here's another example to think about...

Blissey is regarded as the best gym defender out there because its Stamina sits at 510, then Chansey is second ranked, with 500. The third ranked character in stamina is Wobboffet, at a 380. Boy that is a huge gap between 2nd and 3rd.

Blissey
Chansey
Wobbuffet
Wailord
Snorlax
Hariyama
Wigglytuff
Slaking
Vaporeon
Lapras

But what if you want a gym defender that can take a hit and return one? That would be the optimal boxer but because Blissey has such a huge stamina score, it ranks #1 as a gym defender no matter what. But the landscape changes when you add up the stamina and attack numbers.

Blissey is still #1, but suddenly we have Slaking sitting in 2nd, Chansey 3rd and Wobbuffet disappears. (Drops to 15th in this combo category.)

Blissey
Slaking
Chansey
Wailord
Snorlax
Hariyama
Mewtwo
Rayquaza
Salamence
Vaporeon

What if we want a good attacker, but also one that has a good defense? We're ignoring Stamina for now.

The good attackers top-ten look like this

Mewtwo
Slaking
Rayquaza
Salamence
Alakazam
Groudon
Kyogre
Latios
Dragonite
Espeon

But I want an attacker that can last a bit longer, so if you combine attack and defense, you get this:

Regice
Regirock
Groudon
Kyogre
Lugia
Ho-Oh
Aggron
Cloyster
Metagross
Latios

Mewtwo moved down to 12th after combining stats. So much for all the hype!

If you're looking to be lazy and want to sort out your list by all stats combined/added up, an overall ranking if you will, well, you get this list:

Blissey
Slaking
Chansey
Lugia
Ho-Oh
Groudon
Kyogre
Snorlax
Regice
Regirock

It all depends on what you are looking for in your game play but rather than giving you a list that you have to trust me about, her'e the link to my Google Drive Spreadsheet and you can look at things for yourself.

{ Google Drive PoGo Spreadsheet }

Let me know if you can't muck with the database in such a way that you can't sort by whatever category you want. I think I set it up right... but you never know.