AI disclosure: this page was written by AI and reviewed by humans.
If you are here to check whether a number can be trusted, the companion page Calculation methodology explains how these inputs become the numbers on screen.
At a glance
| What you see | Source | Refreshed |
|---|---|---|
| Damage numbers and KO chances | @smogon/calc | On engine upgrades |
| Base stats, types, abilities, moves, items, learnsets | PokeAPI | Cached locally, refreshed with the game |
| EV spreads, move, item, ability, and teammate usage | Pikalytics | Monthly, per regulation |
| Which species, items, and moves a regulation permits | metavgc.com regulation guides | Per regulation |
| Pokémon sprites | Pokémon Showdown | Live from their server |
| Item icons | PokeAPI sprites | Live from the repository |
| Typefaces | Google Fonts | Live |
| Mega registry, Champions abilities, threat weights | Hand-authored here | Per regulation |
1. Game data: PokeAPI
pokeapi.co supplies the reference layer: base stats, types, abilities and their descriptions, moves with their type, base power, accuracy, category and description, items, and every species forme.
It also supplies learnsets. The Team Builder will not let you give a Pokémon a move it cannot learn, and the list of what it can learn is built from PokeAPI's own move list for that exact forme, taking any learn method as learnable. Alolan Ninetales carries a different learnset from Ninetales, and the builder respects that.
Every species PokeAPI carries is synced, formes included. PokeAPI asks that consumers cache what they fetch, so the app keeps its own copy and reads from that. Nothing you do in the app calls out to PokeAPI.
2. Usage data: Pikalytics
pikalytics.com supplies everything the app knows about what people actually play. Per Pokémon that means:
- EV spreads with the share of usage each one holds. The top three appear as markers on a damage range bar, and the most common one is what an unscouted opponent is assumed to be running.
- Moves, with usage share. This drives the moves an opponent is presumed to have and the weighting in the Draft Board's threat score.
- Items and abilities, with usage share.
- Teammates, for reading a lead into a likely back half.
- Games played, which is how much weight the sample deserves.
Data is pulled monthly and per regulation, from the full ranked roster rather than a top-50 summary, above a ladder rating cutoff. The numbers describe strong play, not the ladder as a whole.
Spreads arrive in Champions EV points, the game's own 0 to 32 per stat denomination, and are stored exactly as reported. They are converted to conventional 0 to 252 EVs only at the moment a calc needs them.
3. Damage engine: @smogon/calc
@smogon/calc v0.10.0, MIT licensed, maintained by the Smogon community. It is the engine behind the Smogon damage calculator, which is to say it is the same math most VGC players already check their calcs against.
Every damage number in the app is produced by it, and nothing about the damage formula is reimplemented here. The app adds only the handful of Champions-specific mechanics that exist in no other calculator, which the Calculation methodology page lists in full.
Turn order is the exception. The engine does not compute Speed order, so that formula is the app's own, built on the standard stat formula.
4. Regulation legality: metavgc.com
Which species, items, and moves a regulation permits is not derivable from usage data. Usage records only what people play, and a legal pool is always far wider than that, so using popularity as a stand-in would quietly rule out most of what you are allowed to bring.
The legal pool therefore comes from a published per-regulation legal list, currently metavgc.com. That list is what the Team Builder filters species and moves against.
Items are not enforced. Published item lists are unreliable, and have omitted staples that are plainly legal. The list is carried for reference, but the builder never blocks on it. Treat item legality as your call, not the app's.
5. Sprites and icons
Pokémon sprites come live from Pokémon Showdown's sprite server, the Gen 5 pixel set at 96 by 96, front and back.
Champions' custom Megas have no sprite on any server, so they show their base species instead. Mid-battle, a base silhouette tells you more than a question mark does.
Item icons come from the PokeAPI sprites repository, not from Showdown. Showdown only ships individual files for older-generation items, so Assault Vest, Safety Goggles, and anything newer have no icon there. The PokeAPI repository covers everything the app can put in an item slot.
Champions Mega Stones have no icon anywhere, so they render a generic Mega Stone glyph served by the app itself.
6. Typefaces
Four families, loaded from Google Fonts:
| Family | Used for | License |
|---|---|---|
| Baloo 2 | Headings and labels | SIL Open Font License 1.1 |
| Manrope | Body text | SIL Open Font License 1.1 |
| IBM Plex Mono | Numbers and data | SIL Open Font License 1.1 |
| Silkscreen | Pixel accents | SIL Open Font License 1.1 |
7. What is hand-authored here
Not everything on the board came from somewhere else. These are written and maintained in this project.
| Data | What it is |
|---|---|
| Mega registry | Every held Mega Stone mapped to its base species, post-Mega forme, and granted ability. |
| Champions abilities | Dragonize, Fire Mane, Mega Sol, and the aliases and dismissals for the rest. The damage engine does not know them. |
| Move stat quirks | The moves whose damage reads a stat their category does not imply, such as Foul Play and Body Press. |
| State-scaled power | Moves whose base power scales on board state that the engine does not scale itself, currently Last Respects. |
| Speed and priority tables | Which passive abilities change Speed or priority, since the engine does not compute turn order. |
| Type chart | The plain Gen 6 and later 18-type matrix, used for effectiveness marks only. |
| Threat weights | The Draft Board's KO weights, speed bonus, and status-danger list. These are judgment calls, not derived constants. |
These are checked automatically against the engine's own data rather than by eye. The Calculation methodology page explains how.
8. What the app does not use
Worth stating plainly:
- No analytics and no tracking scripts. There is no Google Analytics, no Plausible, no PostHog, no session recording, and no advertising network.
- No data from Pokémon Showdown's usage statistics. Showdown does not run Pokémon Champions. Usage comes from Pikalytics.
- No scraping of your battles. The board is filled in by you.
The only third-party requests your browser makes while using the app are for fonts, Pokémon sprites, and item icons, from the sources named above.
9. Attribution
Pokémon and all related names are trademarks of Nintendo, Creatures Inc., and GAME FREAK Inc. Championite is an unofficial fan project, is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them, and claims no ownership of the game data it displays.
Thanks are owed to the projects this app leans on, all of which are maintained by people who did not have to make any of it public: the Smogon community for the damage calculator, PokeAPI for the reference data and sprites, Pikalytics for the usage statistics, Pokémon Showdown for the sprite set, and metavgc for the regulation guides.
Found something wrong? A wrong number is worth reporting, and so is a source credited incorrectly on this page.