The Preposterous World of Pokémon Base Stats 

I'm surprised the fact onix is physically weaker than a purple rat and a bird with a mildly pointier beak didn't come up

With Ledian, there’s a bit more justification when you look at dex entries and movepool. Ledian has dex entries talking about how it uses light from stars as energy, and how it scatters “glowing powder”. And then when you look at its movepool from the very begginning, it’s one of few pokemon in gen 2 to get all of Reflect, Light Screen, and Safeguard by level-up. It being able to so naturally conjure protective barriers aligns with having special defensive properties. While there’s still the matter of it being as high as it is, I would say it makes sense as its highest stat. Ledian’s dex entries characterize it as a weakling, and there’s nothing to say it’s standout fast. So the dex entries about its cosmic ties in more passive light I’d say aligns with sp.def.

Vikavolts speed is so low it gets used under trick room. Compare that to its descriptions and how it is shown in the anime and we have weird discrepancy.

the speed stat is about how fast Pokémon react to orders, and not the actual speed for them. That makes Passimian and Rapidash make sense

It still blows my mind that literally god doesn’t hit as hard as a cockroach with toothpick limbs.

I love how Leafeon has 130 base defense and yet they made it into speedster in unite :x

Don’t listen to any comments that say something along the line of “this stat represents this, which is why they make sense.” Unless they’re siting a source, they might as well be writing fanfiction. You’re right! Pokémon stats DON’T make sense, and they never have. I like the video!

I picture Leafeon's high defense like a monk in DnD. They have a high armor class because they are dodging attacks, not because they're tanking them. So I picture Leafeon just kind of moving when up close to a physical attack and taking less of a hit.

I feel like I’m probably the only person who knew Cryogonal’s special defense stat. Considering it’s my favorite Pokémon, it’s kind of necessary to know.

The pokemon with worst base stats is Onix! They just don't make any sense to me!

If you ask me, it's such a crime that Flygon is slower than Garchomp. I say, give my boi ten extra speed to work with

Can’t wait to see whose Base Stats left us the most stumped 😅😅😅 (in regard to Dunsparce I honestly think they mean it is 4’11” from nose to tail _in length_ from nose to tail, not in height) Thanks for the new video Emperor and go hug your furbabies all 💙🐱💙

Sir, you have apparently never lived in the desert where the much feared giant tumbleweed is a very real thing 😅

Emperor Cubone when the leafy cat is bulkier than the bulletproof armadillo man: "I-I dunno, maybe I'm just not woke."

Have you ever been chased by a Veluza when surfing on the Casseroya Lake? Of course you have, everyone has, and also everybody noticed how fast this thing chases you in the overworld. When you use it in battle, it translates to a 70 base speed stat, which I don't understand 😅😅

9:03 I can understand Weezing having a high defense. Kind of looks like a couple balloons stuck together. Try punching a balloon & see how long it takes to pop.

They clearly design stats from a balance and gameplay perspective rather than a lore one so I don’t understand why people get so shocked by stats.

Can't wait to see what this video's about!

I’ve heard speed be described more like recharge speed: vikavolt is very physically fast according to the pokedex, but since it’s a railgun it can’t fire shots off very quickly so its speed stat is low. This works for most pokemon but has some odd implications for some mons. At least it explains how pokemon who can fly as fast as jet planes get outsped by a cat.

The same goes for Oddish and Onix Oddish has a higher attack stats than a snake made out of rocks

I'm surprised you didn't point at the classic of Amoonguss having more attack than Talonflame

Base stats don't reflect the lore. Zygarde Complete Forme has the same base attack as its 10% and 50% Formes, at 100, and yet it can apparently annihilate everything.

I feel like the classic example is that Trapinch has the same Attack stat as Flygon, its fully evolved from.

I would like to say, I knew about Cryogonal's special defense! I used one in my White team. And the reason is that it's partially based on a mirror.

Archaludon is the only Pokemon thus far, that’s not a Mega, Pseudo-Legendary or Mythical, with a 600 BST

I’m not going to lie, I’m genuinely surprised to hear that Reuniclus’ Special Attack is the exact same with its pre-evolution. XD Still, even if it’s the most obvious, I’m never going to get over the fact that Onix, an enormous rock snake that towers over several Pokemon with its size speak less of its height, has a lower attack stat than most 1st stage Pokemon. I know Gen 1 is wacky with stats at the moment but seriously? Great video btw!

3:05 or rather, it has a higher HP stat than the fragment of Arceus that a player is actually able to use. Plus its overall effective bulk is still much less.

According to fan interpretations, the stats don't all mean what one might think, like Speed referring to reaction time instead of running a race, who starts off the block fastest in the first second and a half, not who gets to the finish line fastest a minute later, as it's used to determine action order within a turn and doesn't (outside of Legends: Arceus) let anyone lap a competitor by acting twice in a row (which is more based on move Style, not base Speed) no matter how far apart the Speed stats are. Maybe someone can outpace a "faster" foe long-distance, but it's zero-to-sixty and not the speedometer's max that's reflected on the stats page, they're just bad at explaining that.

The thing to remember with stats is that they reflect the Pokemon's battle capabilities in an arena, not just their maximum physical capabilities. Pidgeot can fly at mach 2 speeds, but it can't reach those speeds in the confines of an arena, so it doesn't have a ridiculously high speed stat.

Hey Cubone. Not sure if you'll read this but just to say I always look forward to Tuesday, it has the best 10-15 minutes of the week when your new video drops. Now I've buttered you up I just wondered, have you ever thought about doing a video thinking about giving some Pokemon a fourth evolution? Either adding an extra evolution or adding a baby Pokemon at the front of a line? I personally don't think it's the best idea and they'll probably never do it but could be fun to think about. Or could an existing Pokemon be added to a line to make a fourth evolution, for example maybe Butterfree could evolve into Venomoth, not sure what that'd mean for Venonat haha. Anyway just a thought, could be an interesting idea to do some videos about?

In regards to speed, my theory is that a Speed stat for a Pokémon it's its quickness in reacting to command given by its trainer, or, in case of wild Pokémon, their quickness of thinking which move to use. If that was the case, Trick Room would be the twisted dimension enhancing a slow Pokémon reaction time or viceversa for a quick-thinking Pokémon

Mega Sceptile and Dragapult really helped me understand GameFreak's approach to the Speed stat - it's not always about moving fast so much as it's more about how quickly a 'mon can unleash attacks, such as shooting missiles (or whacking away with two elastic tails)

Still not as weird as Omastar having more firepower than Houndoom. Yes, a monstrous Hell hound somehow has lower Special Attack than some ammonite.

mild addendum: friction is still very much in play when you are not touching the ground

The Speed stat is not "moving speed", but combat speed...probably more like reflexes. That's why it's only used to determine which Pokemon can attack first. If it were what we typically consider "speed" to be (e.g., movement), it'd probably also influence evasion or something similar.

Pokemon stats through the generation lead us to believe that pokemon that larger and more rotund tend to have more HP (thinking not just Chansey and Snorlax, but also things like Hariyama, Slaking, Slowbro, Slowking, etc.), which made it come as a complete shock to me to find that Dusknoir, the retroactively added evolution to the uncontested bulkiest ghost at the time, only has 45 HP. Of course, it makes sense that ghosts on average wouldn't be that healthy, but it's kind of the Duskull line's entire schtick: tanking hits while whittling down opponents with tricky status effects.

I knew about Cryogonal's stats. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I like it. It has such a unique and interesting Stat spread.

Pretty cool video, but it really does seem as if you've forgotten which types are and aren't special types. Ghost and poison were both originally physical types. Granted toxtricity's main movepool is pretty specially oriented, so your point still stands it probably ought to have particularly high special attack, but ledian is from gen 2, so when it was made, its special defence wouldn't have done anything to protect it from ghost attacks. My only guess for some pokémon having higher defences than steel types or higher special attack stats than certain electric types is that maybe the developers factored in that type resistances and STAB would make them functionally tougher/stronger anyway? I think weezing does look pretty tough, and while it is a bit odd for it to presumably be tougher than duraludon, the flat defence stat being higher still doesn't always mean weezing can take a punch better, as duraludon also has resistances to soften the blow while weezing doesn't. That still doesn't explain leafeon being a tougher grass type than chesnaught though. Or noivern's special attack still making it worse at using boomburst than plenty other pokémon due to it not having STAB to make up for it.

Dude, the god of all Pokémon creating Pokémon that would be stronger than himself is honesty so wholesome. That just goes to show not all things were made equal and i guess Arceus made that goes for god's as well.

I remember having a friend named Sean on pokemon showdown who loved ambipom a lot and managed to make me use it constantly to this day

Here's a stat fact that's funny to think about Flareon has 130 physical attack Meaning it has attack higher then Terrakion the sword of Justice, Pinsir a human size bug with massive pincers, Gyarados the pokemon said to wipe out entire villages and Tyrantrum a flippin Tyrannosaurus

2:05 Air Resistance is friction. Where there is atmosphere, there is friction.

Need more stat vids

THATS my BOY 💪🏻

8:08 so agreed i love noivern alot and the fact they took crobat's stats and only took a tiny bit of speed into special attack, instead of using more attack or defense to special attack makes it quite weak offensively, which is sad :(

Ysah. So strange with stats.... like how is a fat cat faster than the Lati twins, which overtake JET PLANES

Leafeon's defense is what you call "hardwood".

Oddish being physically stronger than Onix is the most glaring to me.

A lot of these points are pretty valid, but i think you get a little mixed up with the defensive stats. It is important to note in game that defensive stats and hp work in conjunction to make a pokemon bulkier. Both leafeon and weezing have high defense stats because of their actual defensive capabilities, but like you said leafeon is small and weezing is made of gas inside so their hp stats are low. It's weezings hard shell and leafeons... I assume hardened leaves or something that make them very defensive

I think 'Movement Speed'/'Walk Speed'/'Run Speed' refers to Evasion, while 'Attack Speed' refers to Speed. When you're walking with your Pokemon in Sword/ Shield and Scarlet/Violet, many of those Pokemon have fast movement speeds, despite their speed stat being low.

Ledian has 110 SpDef, but only 55 HP. Making it incredibly good at resisting things that will still kill it anyway because it has the health pool of a toothpick.

Lanturn @ arceus: what is a god to a non believer

Pokemon is incredibly weird for us to think about because its ecosystem functions so differently than ours does. Basically… for pokemon to work, not just gameplay wise but also anime wise, we have to make the assumption that a trained butterfly is capable of easily beating up an untrained elephant. Pokemon exists in this really bizarre asymetrical balance where every species regardless of weight and size, is capable of defending themselves from any other species. Bees, dolphins, jellyfish, sloths, gods, and godzilla all exist, they all fight one another, and they are all capable of beating each other up. When you make that assumption in gameplay terms, the stat spreads start to make a little more sense. In real life, if a person has a base stat total of 400, a butterfly probably has a bst of like… 1. In pokemon, things are a wholeeee lot closer to even.

in legends arceus i set out to only use regional forms and new pokemon but when i saw yanmega flying around it sparked something in me. i decided to break the rule i had for every new pokemon game since gen 6 and used a non new pokemon. i named him shinji and he was the only thing that saved me from the final boss battle

Special Defense isn't something you can really judge just from just looking at a Pokémon's design. Meanwhile, Speed is more about reaction time than pure running speed.

I treat speed as tactical in the battle And overland when traveling Did you know tanks irl are decently fast?

A lot of these just don't land for me, especially Leafeon. It really highlights that you're not examining the base stats according to the way they're designed.

I'm a firm believer that a pokemon stats are just for gameplay and doesn't reflect the pokemon's lore and biology.

Passimian is from Alola, so it’s just cursed to be slow

What's God to a shiny electro-fish? ^^ (or indeed to any Pokémon with a higher stat than Arceus) Have you ever attempted to kill an ant in real life? Every time I do, those little buggers could almost outrun Usain Bolt the way they try to outrun my flyswatter. So, Durant's base 109 Speed, which conveniently lets it outrun many Pokémon of the sole type it's (4×) weak to, makes sense. If you haven't already, you should look at various "Pokémon Stats Make No Sense" videos by various RU-vidrs, as well as spinoffs focusing on height, weight, breeding groups, and move distributions. This franchise is a gold mine. You think it's just Scarlet and Violet that are glitched and broken? These games were definitely made by some people who may have eaten Pecharunt's purple mochi (mochi!). xD

ive always been obsessed with ledian having a randomly high special defense stat, its also 110 not 101

Flareon has the same attack stat as Machamp. Yes. The fire fox and the macho man with 4 arms hit at the same power

The fact that Onix has only 45 attack is pretty bad. So many terribly weak Pokemon can take down other Pokemon much easier than Onix can. And Bruno uses 2 of them in the Elite Four.

I’m surprised that Purugly’s speed stat didn’t come up once

why do noivern and crobat have almost identical stat spreads, i think noivern has 7 less speed and 7 more special attack (and maybe attack stats are swapped)

Still never got over how vikavolt is slower than a bulbasaur.

I object to the Reuniclus thing. The buff in HP and defenses means it actually loses less percentage of HP per hit than even eviolite Duosion on top of being able to hold leftovers. Duosion's just happy it can sometimes be considered over Musharna (though typically not due to higher bulk and utility).

I wasn't surprised when I realized Ambipom was that fast because pokemon makes a lot of decently fast normal types with okay attack stats

trapinch has 100 attack. that is more than a large amount of pokemon, including poliwrath which can turn boulders to dust while trapinch can crack them. cracking boulders means more attack than obliterating them

7:04 I knew, I like Cryogonal alot and I have the curse of "remembering base stats for no reason" (kartana 181 atk blissey 255/10/10/75/135/55 etc :p) lol

2:06 “the laws of friction don’t apply. Air resistance:

Tympole has higher Attack than Onix

It blows my mind that Deoxys has less HP than Farfetch’d

Okay, I'm not gonna take this tumbleweed slander lying down: Tumbleweeds are actually extremely dangerous, considered an invasive species in many locations, and they can get HUGE. Under strong winds they can absolutely kill you just as easily as Iron Treads could.

Hahaha, lol, i literally just today 2hko Iron Treads with my Brambleghast using Power Whip, in random battles, and Treads did only like 30% with Iron Head.

This can easily be a miniseries with how bonkers some cases get. Like why is a toucan as strong as a snow leopard with sword teeth and, almost as strong as a T-Rex and stronger than a wrestler tiger? And why are all of these weaker than a fluffy fire fox? Or why is a yellow dog (Boltund specifically, though I guess Jolteon could be mentioned) faster than a Space horse? And how are three moles just as strong as a dual wielding samurai? Way too much to leave it at one entry.

i understand its for gameplay purposes but i do wonder how they could maybe rectify these stat distributions in a more "realistic" way...

I know the video is meant to just poke fun at some inconsistent stats, but can we talk about how it _actually makes no sense for Passimian to be so slow?_ The other mons can at least be explained away by Game Freak using other references for their stats: Noivern is probably meant to be a bit weaker than the residential pseudo legendary Goodra, so take a few points and let's go with 97, sure. Girafarig, the giraffe, would probably run slower than a mon like, say, Murkrow would fly, so base 85 Speed it is. Durant is a speedy little insect, so let's make it faster than something like Darmanitan by a few points. But I'm completely lost on who they referenced Passimian's Speed to. Yeah, Alola is a slow region, but all the other simian mons are pretty fast. Darmanitan sits at 90 base Speed. Primeape goes at a brisk 95 base Speed. Slaking manages to hit 100. Aipom is already 85 base Speed despite being a baby. Infernape is freaking 108 base Speed. Why does Passimian have such mediocre Speed when _every other_ primate mon is fast? (or is Darmanitan, who is clearly geared towards brute strength). It actually makes _no_ sense.

Flareon has a higher Atk than Snorlax, Gyarados and Arcanine and it's the same as Rhydon's, Machamp's and Kingler's. Mr. Rime's Sp.Atk is only 110 and not much higher than (Galarian) Mr. Mime's which is 90 and it's slower than its pre-evolved form by 30 points. There are so many stats that don't make sense and that make me mad haha; like Crawdaunt having 90 Sp.Atk which could have been it's Sp.Def or Spd stat. It's Atk is already high, it didn't need a decent Sp.Atk, too.

surprised you didn't mention how fat cat purugly or fat cow miltank are both faster than the guardian of the skies, rayquaza

This is why you don't try to equate the base stats to the lore; The base stats are made for gameplay, balancing competitive & the main campaign. The lore is made to be the lore. Though even still, some base stats are questionable. Also, "height" is a mistranslation - What "height" measures varies by species & body typeDunsparce is serpentine, & so its "height" is body length. See the official illustrations from the Gen 1 Japan only Pokedex book, which Bulbapedia shows on the "Height" page.

I’m going to throw this out to the Imperial community. Wouldn’t the Speed stat being renamed “reactions” stat help explain a lot of the speed issues? Wouldn’t that explain purugly and durant.? Equally explain sharpedo? It’s fast yes but its reactions are slower. Just a thought

I LOVE YANMEGA

whimsicott Is faster that tornadus, which Is funny because whimsicott use the wind to move and tornadus Is the good of wind

7:57 poltigeist is actually a reference to the opium wars when England went to war with China because England wanted to trade drugs for tea

One that I just can't get over, Mew has 100 attack, not that bad. And then you look at Krabby. 105. And this doesn't get any better with Pokémon's own God. At 120 attack, it's lower than Kingler with 130. Some crabs can hit harder than the origin of all things and a literal God. How? Why?

One that never made sense to me is Jumpluff having 110 in speed. That makes it as fast as Dodrio and faster than Staraptor.

I had just found out that Archen (which hasn't even evolved yet) hits harder than Swampert (a fully evolved starter). Swampert's Attack is 110, but Archen's Attack is 112.

Okay why don't people understand pokemon stats. The speed stats is the easiest to explain it's attack speed not racing speed. Run at full speed and try to do a drop kick and let me know how it works for you.

The Eevee line are foxes

Speed stats are important when is Omega Ruby I bred a Slowpoke with 85 speed

Remember this list every time Game Freak says anything about "ballancing the game". Talking about Brambleghast and stats early on. The one thing that pisses me off the most about it is how it got shafted design-wise in Scarlet and Violet. Brassius, looking like he had the soul sucked out of him, with a thorny whip, and an artist that makes sculptures, doesn't use the thing that looks like a wire frame, not even on rematch battles. Instead, for the sake of a pun, he uses Sudowoodo, a Pokémon that is worse than it in everything except physical defense. Even if you'd prefer Arboliva because it looks like an oily garland and it could be artistic, that's still another 100 points in BST that Brassius ignore for the sake of one single pun. Think about that.

Look at kraby's attack stat. I dare you

Onyx attack will always be the worst

I kind of wish there was a hack that redid all the stats in a way that makes logical sense, rather than in a balanced manner.

This always bothers me, but decidueye states is so odd it was a higher attack stat than its special Attack how it's an acher not only that but its signature move its a physical attack it throw to its opponent like can someone tell how is that physical and a another thing nobody is talking about why and how is decidueye a physical attacker not an special Attacker this always bother me and it sucks being i love decidueye its my ghost type pokemon in the franchise.

😢

The one that always gets me is that Alomomola has a higher HP stat than Snorlax (165 vs 160) lol

Ants are extremely fast

I guess lore and actual gameplay don't really get along in terms of base stats lol