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Champions Data & Methodology

Exactly what's hand-curated, what's sourced, what's an editorial projection — and what we won't publish without a verifiable source.

Contents

Curated vs sourced, at a glance

Battle roster

Hand-curated

The list of species confirmed available in Champions, maintained by hand and verified against Bulbapedia/Serebii as availability is confirmed. Its import snapshot is shown below.

Regulation sets

Hand-maintained

Season dates and ruleset notes are transcribed from official in-game announcements. The in-game regulation screen is always the final authority for banlists and item rules.

Tier list & sample teams

Editorial projection

Our tier list and sample cores are projections based on each Pokémon's competitive pedigree and Champions' Mega-centric rules — clearly labeled as such on those pages. They are not tournament results or usage statistics, and they never will be presented as either.

Usage statistics

Sourced — Showdown ladder · snapshot Jul 16, 2026

Monthly usage rates and move/item/ability/teammate distributions come from Smogon's publicly posted Pokémon Showdown statistics for the Champions ladder formats. Every figure carries its snapshot month, source link, and battle count — and is labeled as Showdown ladder data, which is a different population than the official in-game ranked ladder.

The roster dataset

Pages like the battle roster, regulation pages and the team builder are built on our curated Champions roster. It changes only through a validated import that records a snapshot — page caching may re-render daily, but that never means the underlying data changed.

Source: Hand-curated (verified against Bulbapedia/Serebii) · Data snapshot: Jul 16, 2026 · 208 rows

The usage dataset — and its limits

Usage figures on the regulation pages are imported monthly from Smogon's Pokémon Showdown usage statistics for the Champions formats (e.g. gen9championsvgc2026regmb, 1760-rating cutoff). Two honest caveats:

  • It's simulator-ladder data. Showdown's Champions ladder is a different player population than the official in-game ranked ladder — treat the numbers as a strong signal, not the official meta.
  • Percentages are weighted by Smogon's rating model at the stated cutoff; the battle count shown next to every table is the sample behind it.

An official ranked-ladder API from The Pokémon Company / The Pokémon Works, or licensed tournament exports, would still upgrade this — if either becomes available we'll add it alongside, clearly labeled. And the standing rules don't change:

  • No usage percentages without a named, linkable source and a sample size next to every number.
  • Editorial projections stay labeled as projections — never passed off as measured data.
  • No anecdotes or screenshots presented as statistics.

Source: Smogon / Pokémon Showdown usage statistics · Data snapshot: Jul 16, 2026 (2026-06) · 375 rows · Methodology

Update policy

  • Regulation changes are transcribed from official announcements when a new set is announced or amended.
  • Roster updates land through the validated import pipeline; the provenance line above always shows the active snapshot.
  • If the roster snapshot goes stale past its 90-day horizon, pages built on it show a stale-data notice while continuing to serve.
  • Corrections: if we find an error in curated data, we fix the data — we don't quietly edit history. Bigger corrections get a note on the affected page.