CAP 5 CAP 5 - Final Product

[hinode]

I don't know why people wanted to give it Technician and then decided to give it a new rock attack as well as 95 BP elemental attacks. Technician won't be used at all I don't think.

My guess is that the people who supported a new attack and most/all the elemental beams were the ones who voted for Levitate as the ability in the first place!

When I was making my votes I personally didn't worry at all what the ratio of abilities used would be, but rather what the usage rate of Strategem at all would be once the initial hype died down. It was pointed out early on that mono-Rock is a terrible defensive typing: weak to five attack types, all reasonably common now (thanks, Bullet Punch), and the types that resist it are almost always paired up with an SE move, i.e. Airslash+Aura Sphere or Body Slash+Earthquake Snorlax. If it weren't for Levitate, it would have almost nothing that it could safely switch in against at all. I voted for Lev as an ability for that reason, and I considered anything Strategem got from the second ability a bonus.

Even when it gets in, it has to actually sweep, which is pretty difficult for an all out special sweeper in gen 4, especially one so easily revenged by the ultra-common BP Scizor. Alakazam, Raikou, Porygon-Z, and even Azelf are struggling to do so currently, with Azelf getting most of its usage from Stealth Rock-Taunt-Explosion nowadays. Most special threats in OU have either really good defensive types to give them easy switchins and check common threats (i.e. Heatran, Zapdos) or are mixed attackers (i.e. Infernape); all-out special sweepers are pretty rare, but that's what we voted for, to break the mold on the traditionally defensive and physically-oriented Rock type, NOT to make it use a bunch of <=60 BP moves to try and make Technician look good.

I voted for movepools with lots of elemental options because those were the ones that I felt gave Strategem the best chance to actually be a relevant OU sweeper, rather than languish unused near the OU/BL border or get play as a suicide lead exclusively. Evidently a majority of voters had similar sentiments, given how the movepool polls played out. What I had no interest in was creating some arbitrary level of "balance" between the two abilities by undercutting Strategem's capabilities as a whole, not when its viability at sweeping at all was uncertain in general.

 

[zarator]

My guess is that the people who supported a new attack and most/all the elemental beams were the ones who voted for Levitate as the ability in the first place!

When I was making my votes I personally didn't worry at all what the ratio of abilities used would be, but rather what the usage rate of Strategem at all would be once the initial hype died down. It was pointed out early on that mono-Rock is a terrible defensive typing: weak to five attack types, all reasonably common now (thanks, Bullet Punch), and the types that resist it are almost always paired up with an SE move, i.e. Airslash+Aura Sphere or Body Slash+Earthquake Snorlax. If it weren't for Levitate, it would have almost nothing that it could safely switch in against at all. I voted for Lev as an ability for that reason, and I considered anything Strategem got from the second ability a bonus.

Even when it gets in, it has to actually sweep, which is pretty difficult for an all out special sweeper in gen 4, especially one so easily revenged by the ultra-common BP Scizor. Alakazam, Raikou, Porygon-Z, and even Azelf are struggling to do so currently, with Azelf getting most of its usage from Stealth Rock-Taunt-Explosion nowadays. Most special threats in OU have either really good defensive types to give them easy switchins and check common threats (i.e. Heatran, Zapdos) or are mixed attackers (i.e. Infernape); all-out special sweepers are pretty rare, but that's what we voted for, to break the mold on the traditionally defensive and physically-oriented Rock type, NOT to make it use a bunch of <=60 BP moves to try and make Technician look good.

I voted for movepools with lots of elemental options because those were the ones that I felt gave Strategem the best chance to actually be a relevant OU sweeper, rather than languish unused near the OU/BL border or get play as a suicide lead exclusively. Evidently a majority of voters had similar sentiments, given how the movepool polls played out. What I had no interest in was creating some arbitrary level of "balance" between the two abilities by undercutting Strategem's capabilities as a whole, not when its viability at sweeping at all was uncertain in general.

Agreeing totally. It seems that most people cant understand the huge difference between 120 Atk and 120 Spatk. And this difference lies only in a word - I know you see it's coming -: Blissey. This pink blob absorb special hits like nothing can do on the physical department. Even Skarmory is easily knocked out by boosted neutral Physical moves, especially Close Combat. The only thing I can imagine doing the same to Blissey - dent it severely without being supereffective - is Specsogre's Water Spout. Unless you manage to roll something like 4 CM or so with your Stratagem - nigh impossible in the first place - there's no way Blissey cant force you out.

 

[jagged_angel]

What I had no interest in was creating some arbitrary level of "balance" between the two abilities by undercutting Strategem's capabilities as a whole, not when its viability at sweeping at all was uncertain in general.

I totally agree with your reasoning hinode, it's just a shame that a good ability like Technician got added on without the movepool to back it up.

Unless you manage to roll something like 4 CM or so with your Stratagem - nigh impossible in the first place - there's no way Blissey cant force you out.

Weeeell, if Bliss doesn't have seismic toss, then Sub/CM Stratagem will beat it one on one. The real danger is the many type weaknesses of Rock. There's just so many pokemon that will have at least one supereffective move against this thing.

 

[zarator]

Weeeell, if Bliss doesn't have seismic toss, then Sub/CM Stratagem will beat it one on one. The real danger is the many type weaknesses of Rock. There's just so many pokemon that will have at least one supereffective move against this thing.

If Stratagem prove to be as threatening as was Raikou in ADV, I'm pretty sure Blissey will run old Seismic Toss without any remorse

 

[Naxte]

I totally agree with your reasoning hinode, it's just a shame that a good ability like Technician got added on without the movepool to back it up.

True; it is. But it seems that Stratagem is probably going to be hurting trying to do everything it needs to do, even without being limited to Technician-boostable moves for most of its offense. If it were, this problem would be even worse and could possibly open up even more problems for it, due to its decreased damage-dealing abilities, and it already has enough to worry about (Scizor and Blissey provide a lot by themselves).

Really, if anything, instead of this woe about how it shouldn't have these moves because they hinder Technician, I'd really rather we'd have just not given it Technician, and instead gave it something like Tinted Lens or Mold Breaker for its secondary ability. Both would increase its offensive potential without any worries about its movepool needing to be limited, unlike Technician, which begs for a Pokemon not to have to many options over base 90 power, which a sweeper doesn't exactly like. Also, neither of them would have broken it, since Scizor and Blissey would still have the upper hand either way.

 

[jagged_angel]

Really, if anything, instead of this woe about how it shouldn't have these moves because they hinder Technician, I'd really rather we'd have just not given it Technician, and instead gave it something like Tinted Lens for its secondary ability. Tinted Lens would increase its offensive potential without any worries about its movepool needing to be limited, unlike Technician, which begs for a Pokemon not to have to many options over base 90 power, which a sweeper doesn't exactly like. It also wouldn't have broken it, since Scizor and Blissey would still have the upper hand either way.

I agree completely. It was a mistake to give Stratagem Technician. I guess it was all part of the confusion of the CAP process, seeing's how we didn't know if CAP5 would get a new move or how strong that move would be, so Technician Ancientpower was the only decent STAB until the new move poll. It definitely split the community into those for and against Technician.

It would be great if we could go back after playtesting and finding that Technician is redundant and remove it/add something else. I wouldn't give it Tinted Lens though since that sort of makes its fanboyishly large offensive movepool redundant.

 

[Bass]

Yeah, I also agree that nobody was expecting a new move to be created exclusively for Stratagem and therefore skewed everyone's perceptions towards Technician. But after reading several posts in this thread, I can definitely foresee a Stratagem revision coming pretty soon after play-testing if it is as broken or difficult to counter as our theorymon suggests. Still, everyone expected Skymin to be unbelievably broken when it was revealed, but now people seem to have mixed opinions towards its tier status.

That's why I hope several contributors to this project who haven't bothered to actually playtest the other four CAP pokemon will start doing so once Doug implements Stratagem into the server. It took MONTHS after Syclant and Revenankth were completed befire we ended up kicking off their revision processes (Which still won't be done for some time). If we start having regrets about design decisions we made for our final product, then it's better to do something about it sooner rather than later.

 

[yourDeadGrandad]

I'd say implement it soon so we can stop with the theorymon and move on to the testamon! :nerd:

 

[tennisace]

Yeah, I also agree that nobody was expecting a new move to be created exclusively for Stratagem and therefore skewed everyone's perceptions towards Technician. But after reading several posts in this thread, I can definitely foresee a Stratagem revision coming pretty soon after play-testing if it is as broken or difficult to counter as our theorymon suggests. Still, everyone expected Skymin to be unbelievably broken when it was revealed, but now people seem to have mixed opinions towards its tier status.

As TL, I'm usually supposed to stay relatively unbiased. But I'm one of the people that thinks Technician and all the attacks were completely unnecessary, and I would completely support revising it in the future. That is, once we get the revision process down.

That's why I hope several contributors to this project who haven't bothered to actually playtest the other four CAP pokemon will start doing so once Doug implements Stratagem into the server. It took MONTHS after Syclant and Revenankth were completed befire we ended up kicking off their revision processes (Which still won't be done for some time). If we start having regrets about design decisions we made for our final product, then it's better to do something about it sooner rather than later.

I'd like to extend that to anyone who posted in the threads, not just major contributors. The more people that play our metagame, the more solid it gets. This means all the "drive by" voters should come on and just play! Really, its not that hard a metagame, unlike heavily modded servers (CMS, AAMS, Dusty Hills, Snowy Mountains). Its 4 Pokemon. There aren't really any specialized sets to counter the pokemon, which is the beauty of the metagame. All the CAP Pokemon are countered by OU Pokemon, no exceptions. We don't bite, and its easy enough to connect now that the metaserver's up. So come one, come all!

EDIT:

I'd say implement it soon so we can stop with the theorymon and move on to the testamon! :nerd:

Maybe tonight, after numerous server changes are tested for bugs.

 

[Hyra]

I guess I should post to congratulate Tennisace for doing a great job running this. And to say that Revenankh was long because a) I had to do a few extra polls at the beginning that are no longer in the process (shush you are doing polls I didn't do, but those were the ones that had landslide victories) and b) I did 3 steps for almost every poll on purpose, even when it wasn't that necessary. So you have the longest CAP with the process guide, while I have the longest one overall.


Also, saying I need to get in the habit of being on the server again. Like I need to do with a lot of other stuff I dropped for the last few months.

 

[darkie]

I agree totally that more people need to come and playtest all our guys.

Also noting that my project only took about 6 days to complete.

 

[tennisace]

I agree totally that more people need to come and playtest all our guys.

Also noting that my project only took about 6 days to complete.

Except you don't have a final pro-duck-t.

 

[Hyra]

oh yay, just as stratagem is about to come online, shoddy freezes for me.

thank you tennis

 

[beej]

So excited for Stratagem. I'm glad that we finally get to see the product of our hard work.

Also tennis, you did a great job with running this CAP. You definitely exceeded expectations. There were no major hitches along the way. Congrats on a smooth job.

 

[Bass]

Stratagem is officially up on the CAP server right now! Come check it out, and help us get started with play-testing it.

 

[Not Scicky]

I don't know why people wanted to give it Technician and then decided to give it a new rock attack as well as 95 BP elemental attacks. Technician won't be used at all I don't think.

Because the moves like gigadrain have effects that the elemental beams don't.

 

[Deck Knight]

Awful lot of Technician hate going on in this topic. Seriously guys, it barely lost the primary ability poll, the idea that Levitate was set in stone and Technician was just some fanboy add-on is ridiculous.

Everyone had the chance to vote on a movepool that would allow for a variety of Technician-able moves. They decided to go with X-Act's instead. So if you want to blame short-sightedness, blame it on the people who saw X-Act's name and clicked on it ;-).

As it stands, the additional effects of Tech moves are desirable. Icy Wind brings Scarfers down to speed, Charge Beam can increase SA, Giga Drain is its only recovery move and directly damages two types that can hit its weaknesses, Vacuum Wave has priority, and the Ancientpower/Ominous Wind duo is 16 chances for a 10% boost to all stats. Seriously guys, it's the only special-oriented Technician user unless you count NP Persian (which isn't OU).

 

[X-Act]

Well, I hope people don't vote for me just because it's me... and I'm sure that this doesn't happen much, otherwise I wouldn't have won only 2 polls from around 8.