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Only way to balance pokemon without retconning the entire battle system would be to establish a handful of base stat total levels then balance the tiers so they can stack up evenly despite the stat differences using abilities and movepools. I'd try something like one tier each for baby pokemon, other basic pokemon, 1st evolutions, 2nd evolutions, and legendaries, single stage and final evos of 2 stage lines go into 1st or 2nd evolution category depending on the pokemon's relative strength. Every tier is 30 points apart, each pokemon's base stats add up to exactly their tier's bst except if it gets a mostly shit move pool it gets +15 and if it gets a better than average move pool it gets -15. Pokemon with good abilities and/or few type weaknesses get -5, +5 for pokemon with a lot of weaknesses and/or useless abilities. The pokemon's stat distribution is determined by the individual pokemon's nich within the world, IVs go back to being 0-15, and EVs are reduced to 128. Obviously I'm no expert at balancing a meta this large and some of it won't make sense lore-wise since a lot of pokemon are canonically gods or borderline unstoppable while others are just common pests, but it'd basically eliminate power-creep due to runaway stat growth from trying to make new legendaries seem extra powerful and make it more about strategy than numbers so even if it's still not easy a route 1 bug can have a legitimate shot at beating arceus.
