CAP 16 CAP 5 - Part 4 - Primary Ability Discussion

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I don't see what's so good about Swift Swim, either CAP 5 has no other ability in which case your only benefit from sun is getting roasted easier while on it or you do have another ability and so the MAIN ability gets completely ignored in favor of something with an actual use in-battle and we just lost the opportunity to tailor the remain of CAP5 to better accomodate said ability
 
Birkal, with what you've said about having a serious need for an ability that encourages use on a sun team, I believe our only option here is to choose flower gift. We need it very bulky so we don't create another shiftry. It already shares shiftry's bad defensive typing, but we don't want to make it so CAP5 doesn't have buffers or any means of defensing itself. The reason shiftry is NU is because gamefreak stripped Shiftry of all means of defending itself. We don't want to make that mistake (we've already given it a bad defensive typing). Since we can't poll jump to the stats or moves, all of our attention goes towards the ability. So to help with making this not a shiftry clone, we need to give it an ability to help with the defensive problem Shiftry (and cacturne) had. It needs to have something to do with the sun. We can't make up abilities so no magical ability that boosts defense in special defense in sun. It needs to be able to pivot from offense and defense. Flower gift grants 50% more attack andspecial defense in sun, it is a sun ability, it boosts an offensive and a defensive stat. The special defense stat to be precise which defends CAP5 from a threat mentioned many times, the Lati's.
 
Birkal, with what you've said about having a serious need for an ability that encourages use on a sun team, I believe our only option here is to choose flower gift. We need it very bulky so we don't create another shiftry. It already shares shiftry's bad defensive typing, but we don't want to make it so CAP5 doesn't have buffers or any means of defensing itself. The reason shiftry is NU is because gamefreak stripped Shiftry of all means of defending itself. We don't want to make that mistake (we've already given it a bad defensive typing). Since we can't poll jump to the stats or moves, all of our attention goes towards the ability. So to help with making this not a shiftry clone, we need to give it an ability to help with the defensive problem Shiftry (and cacturne) had. It needs to have something to do with the sun. We can't make up abilities so no magical ability that boosts defense in special defense in sun. It needs to be able to pivot from offense and defense. Flower gift grants 50% more attack andspecial defense in sun, it is a sun ability, it boosts an offensive and a defensive stat. The special defense stat to be precise which defends CAP5 from a threat mentioned many times, the Lati's.
I agree with this. I keep seeing people say that we shouldn't use flower gift or adaptability because it's an artificial stat increase whereas chlorophyll isn't because of reasons.

Shiftry already has Chlorophyll. Shiftry is horrible.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
I've been seeing many people say things along the line of "With XXX ability/typing/move/what the fuck ever, we will be countered by this, this, and this, which are underused types etc etc mission accomplished." I'm here to dispel this myth.

As is often the case, yilx has been speaking out against this, and correctly, since the beginning of the discussion but for some reason has been ignored. For those of you who missed his posts: We will not see more Ice types, we will see more Ice Punches. Pokemon are good in OU for a reason and their STABs are only a small portion of this reason; it's much easier to slap a specific coverage move on a Pokemon to deal with a threat than to run an entirely new, usually worse (except for countering CAP5) pokemon. Niche coverage has a long and storied history, with (for gliscor) HP Ice Terrak, (for gastro) HP Grass Ogre, (for mollux) HP Ground toed. Sure when a new defensive threat is introduced the usage of pokemon that can counter it may rise, but the use of coverage moves that can counter it on existing pokemon rises much more.

I'm not saying that our goal for CAP5 is hopeless; far from it. We can achieve it, but i'm not buying the "wall everything except for ice/bug/fire" crowd. for the large part, damage calcs with shit like Rotom-H overheat and Heracross megahorn are irrelevant. I'm far less worried about how our CAP5 will be able to take those attacks than Espeon HP Fire and Terrakion X-Scissor.


EDIT @ Above: Besides the fact that the whole "shiftry has x" argument was thoroughly dismantled on page 2 of this thread...

The difference between Adaptability and Chlorophyll is huge. Adaptability provides a power increase that, while respectable, can be made up with ~30 base atk points or a life orb. Chlorophyll, on the other hand, allows CAP5 to outpace latios in sun with no investment, a trait that could be replicated in stats, yes, if we made it speed tie NINJASK. Furthermore, while Adaptability fails in any way to actually tie CAP5's usage to sun, chloro's boost only works in the weather our cap should be used in—a trait i cannot stress enough, as grass/dark does not naturally lend itself to the weather.
 

Birkal

We have the technology.
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As a moderator, I've already deleted a few posts that have fringed on this topic. But since I'm an active member of the discussion now, I'll throw out a fair warning: please don't use "we'll have another x Pokemon" as your sole argument. It's a weak argument that holds little to no weight. Pokemon are incredibly diverse when compared next to one another. Stats, movepools, typings, and abilities all separate them, so it's futile to say that destiny will inevitably repeat itself. I am not personally for Chlorophyll, but I guarantee you that if it wins, we won't have "another Shiftry". Shiftry has paper thin defenses, lacks Pursuit, and is made to be a frail sun sweeper. CAP 5 could easily be a defensive pivot (that sounds like where we're headed), which would ultimately bear more semblance to something like Celebi over Shiftry. Sure, you can compare Pokemon and discuss merits and flaws therein, but don't construct literally your entire point of view over the existence of another Pokemon. So please, cut the nonsense. CAP 5 will be different from any Pokemon that currently exists due to the diversity of Pokemon.
 

Birkal

We have the technology.
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Also, Korski just wrote this on IRC:

Code:
15:24	Korski	does anyone want to post a 24-hour warning for me
15:24	Korski	i can't get to my comp atm
That constitutes a 24 hour warning. Korski, or Ability Leader, will be making the slate at that time. Make sure to get in any final thoughts you have before that deadline.
 

Korski

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I can work up a small post from my phone, so here goes.

Based on the arguments posted since my last post, I have edited the discussion lists in the kickoff post, putting discussion of Adaptability, Swift Swim, and Water Veil to rest. I'm comfortable saying the short list will be the slate we'll be voting on at the conclusion of this thread. These abilities stand as the most-intelligently supported and thoughtful options for our Primary Ability. Feel free to use the last 24 hours of discussion to comment on the slate and push for your favorite abilities!
 

Nyktos

Custom Loser Title
Well, I got an extension on my political science paper, so I guess that means I have time to post! I will attempt to address the shortlist abilities.

First off, Chlorophyll. I've already said a bunch of words about it, and my position hasn't changed at all since then. I largely agree with what Pwnemon has said as well. However, I would like to address a couple of common arguments against:

Chlorophyll will make us a sweeper - We don't have to give it Growth. We don't have to give it good coverage. We don't have to give it sky-high Attack or Speed. We can quite easily make it inferior to Venusaur in every way as a sweeper while making it useful for other roles. We can tailor its stats so that it needs substantial investment in both Attack and bulk in order to beat the things it beats, thus preventing huge Speed investment. Chlorophyll will make us a sweeper if and only if we have zero self-control. Zero self-control with Chlorophyll will make us a sweeper. Zero self-control with Harvest or Flower Gift makes us outright broken.

Chlorophyll makes us incapable of beating Lati@s in rain - First, not necessarily. If we build it to be able to tank one or two attacks, we can beat it with prediction or on on the revenge, and we can still give it Sucker Punch. We become a much shakier check, true, but it's not as though we'd be any better off in that spot with Natural Cure or Flower Gift. Second, why is it even a bad thing if we can't destroy Lati@s in rain? In the last thread there was worry that beating Lati@s or rain outright would cause us to break sun. Now suddenly we're useless if we can't beat both at the same time? Keep in mind that Lati@s are not, currently, very common on rain teams. If rain decides to spend a team slot on one of them specifically in order to beat sun, we are doing something right.

Now, the other abilities. Flower Gift I have softened my sense on quite a bit. I no longer think that it will make our CAP broken and in fact I would now call it my second choice. An excellent comparison brought up by reachzero in IRC was Tyranitar. If we give this thing 100/100 natural special bulk, that's good enough to take a hit from Toed in rain and in sun we're equivalent to Tyranitar in sand. Similarly an Attack stat in the low 70s puts us at Tyranitar-level in sun and much less outside of it (but still enough that Toed doesn't want to take a Power Whip / Wood Hammer). Tyranitar isn't broken, and it's certainly an excellent counter to Lati@s. Obviously the actual stats don't have to be those, but we can take them as a baseline.

That said, I still have my doubts. Tyranitar often runs Choice Band, and that's probably not what we want. Flower Gift pretty much guarantees that this thing is going to hit like a truck in sun, and I worry that that's going to become its selling point. Now, this is more or less the same sort of concern as the one that Chlorophyll will make us a sweeper, so it would be rather hypocritical for me to dismiss Flower Gift outright because of it. However I think that it will be a lot harder to make such a set not work than to do so with a Chlorophyll sweeper. I think we can do it, but I'm a lot less certain on that than I am with Chloro.

Harvest I still dislike. The debate on this, seems to boil down to "it will make us too versatile!" versus "versatility is not bad!" forever, and I admit that I can't add a hell of a lot to that. However, the Necturna comparison really doesn't work for me. Necturna's entire concept was based around being versatile; of course versatility didn't cause it to fail! Our goals right now, however, are clear, well-defined, and limited in scope. I do admit Harvest actually does help with those goals (which is more than I can say for some of the proposed abilities) but it also inherently adds a ton of options which do nothing but distract from them.

Natural Cure is the reverse of Flower Gift: while before I liked it, the more I thought about it the less I did. It...doesn't really do much. In particular, Scald burns have been brought up a lot, and it's actually insanely awkward against them. You switch in on Toed, get burned, and your Attack is cut in half. Now, depending on what that Attack is there are two possibilities: one is that you're now to weak to beat Toed, but you can't switch out to cure that burn because CAP5 is your main switch in to it. Oops. The other is that you can still beat Toed through the burn, in which case...why do we even care? Natural Cure prevents us from being crippled by burn for the rest of the match, but I'd take the offer to have one of my Pokemon crippled in order to eliminate Politoed any second of any hour of any day of the goddamn week. Natural Cure, thus, ends up being more "a nice thing to have" than something that really does a lot to achieve our goals. Again, though, at least it does something, which is more than I can say for...

Cloud Nine. This is the strangest ability to gain traction I have seen all thread. What does it do? It lets us take Water attacks in rain better. Water attacks that we resist. Water attacks that will never be anything's strongest hit on us. What else does it do? It lets us take Fire attacks in sun. Fire attacks that we are supposed to lose to. At the risk of sounding like a Redditor: why would you do that?
 
I feel as if the sun-based abilities are the main primary abilities of choice within the slate. Cloud Nine and Natural Cure would each benefit on a sandstorm or rain team just as much as in the sun. This being the case, sun would see a decline in the playtest while battles turn into duels of who can defeat the opponent's weather first within other weather. If our stats are going to be based around that, then we are completely cementing all the pressure of making CAP5 sun viable by making its movepool much more scaled down into sun-teams and thus less viable within sun teams. This is counterproductive.

Natural Cure is almost outclassed by Harvest in the fact that it fulfills the same niche of removing burn via Lum (without having to even switch, might I add) in addition to having plenty of other versatile options in the sun. Having an ability that benefits from being in the sun more than any other weather is beneficial to the concept. If you're using CAP5 without being reckless, reliance of your ability won't be an issue when fighting Politoed and Lati@s in the rain... You can also see Celebi for why a 4x Bug-type weak Grass-type with Natural Cure and sun-compatible moves isn't seen often in the sun.

Additionally, Cloud Nine would mean CAP5 would also work against sun-teams. This again does not consider the possibility of what use sandstorm and rain teams would have for CAP5 against opposing sandstorm-immune Rock or Ground-types and rain-affiliated Water-types. Sun becomes completely left out of the equation. Pick at the possibilities however you want, sun will no longer become the playtest's weather of choice when CAP5 comfortably fits onto other teams.

All that being the case, I can lean towards any of Harvest, Chlorophyll, or Flower Gift in that they are absolutely basic to the concept. Using a sun-based ability for a sunmon? Designing stats to work best with an ability that will see use primarily in the sun? This isn't brain surgery, people. This is common sense.
 
Harvest: I current support this ability the most. I think it would give the Pokemon versatility but not make it dependent on the sun. If Politoed/Tyranitar switch in or the sun is otherwise unable to come out, CAP5 would still have use of its ability. On the other hand, I think that Chlorophyll and Flower Gift make the Pokemon too dependent on sun, which I believe seriously lowers its versatility and ability to impact the metagame.

Cloud Nine: I'm on the fence about this. It would definitely help with the anti-rain and anti-water capability this Pokemon is supposed to have. On the other hand, like others have said, this Pokemon is supposed to have no problem taking water hits and shouldn't be taking fire hits anyway.
 

alexwolf

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Chlorophyll will make us a sweeper - We don't have to give it Growth. We don't have to give it good coverage. We don't have to give it sky-high Attack or Speed. We can quite easily make it inferior to Venusaur in every way as a sweeper while making it useful for other roles. We can tailor its stats so that it needs substantial investment in both Attack and bulk in order to beat the things it beats, thus preventing huge Speed investment. Chlorophyll will make us a sweeper if and only if we have zero self-control. Zero self-control with Chlorophyll will make us a sweeper. Zero self-control with Harvest or Flower Gift makes us outright broken.
So in addition to the restrictions we already have for the CAP's stats, which are good HP and SpD in order to handle Lati@s and strong Water attacks, and good Attack in order to hurt Lati@s back with a physical Dark attack, let's see the further restrictions that we have by choosing Chlorophyll. We can't give it a high Attack stat. You said sky-high attack attack, but i disagree as even with 100 or 110 Attack a Pokemon can make for a very good cleaner with Cholorophyll. We also have to give it a low or a very low Speed stat in order for it to be outspeedable in sun, so that it will neither be faster than Venusaur and thus competing with it, nor it will be able to outspeed common Scarfers, to prevent it from being broken. So this means a Speed stat of 70 or less, and even a positive natured base 70 Pokemon can outspeed most Scarfers up to Base 108. And all those for what reason? To outspeed Lati@s in sun?
Chlorophyll makes us incapable of beating Lati@s in rain - First, not necessarily. If we build it to be able to tank one or two attacks, we can beat it with prediction or on on the revenge, and we can still give it Sucker Punch. We become a much shakier check, true, but it's not as though we'd be any better off in that spot with Natural Cure or Flower Gift. Second, why is it even a bad thing if we can't destroy Lati@s in rain? In the last thread there was worry that beating Lati@s or rain outright would cause us to break sun. Now suddenly we're useless if we can't beat both at the same time? Keep in mind that Lati@s are not, currently, very common on rain teams. If rain decides to spend a team slot on one of them specifically in order to beat sun, we are doing something right.
Beating Latios in rain wouldn't make it broken and is actually one of ours musts for this CAP. We will still have many threats used on rain teams that can check or wall the CAP, such as Steels, Toxicroak, Breloom, Keldeo, and Hydreigon, so it will be fine. Rain will very often be up, and what do you do then with Chlorophyll?
Harvest I still dislike. The debate on this, seems to boil down to "it will make us too versatile!" versus "versatility is not bad!" forever, and I admit that I can't add a hell of a lot to that. However, the Necturna comparison really doesn't work for me. Necturna's entire concept was based around being versatile; of course versatility didn't cause it to fail! Our goals right now, however, are clear, well-defined, and limited in scope. I do admit Harvest actually does help with those goals (which is more than I can say for some of the proposed abilities) but it also inherently adds a ton of options which do nothing but distract from them.
First of all i want to say that Harvest not just helps with those roles, but is easily the best out of all the abilities, as far as handling the threats we want to goes. Now let's talk about the supposed cons. Many people vaguely say ''Harvest is very versatile and unpredictable'' and stuff like that so let's break it down. What are the uses of Harvest? Here let me highlight the most viable of them:

  • RestLum
  • Sitrus
  • Sub + Boosting Stat Berry
  • Ice or Fighting resist Berry (Fire and Bug moves OHKO or dent the CAP even with the Berry, and all Flying-types beat the CAP with or without the berry)
  • SubProtectSeed with Leppa berry
If i forgot anything you can mention it so we can discuss it. So let's see each of those cases.

RestLum is good and doesn't derail us from our goal. Same goes with Sitrus Berry. Both are meant to increase our survivability in order to check the threats we want to, but they still do nothing to cover the CAP's big weaknesses in Bug and Fire moves, nor do they give it coverage against the Pokemon that can wall it and set-up on it.

The type-resist Berrys are good for specific purposes and strategies, but once again they don't strongly derail the CAP from its goal. While it can now survive some Fighting attacks and strike back, is this a bad thing? I would say no. This way it can sort of check Keldeo, a huge rain threat, which is something sun teams appreciate and is not outside of the threats that we would like the CAP to handle but not counter. Chople Berry may surprise some Terrakion that attempt to kill with CC. It will also allow the CAP to take Fighting moves from Pokemon that use it for coverage, such as Thundurus-T and Specs Politoed, which is a good thing, as those are Pokemon that we want the CAP to handle. Every other fighter that is supposed to counter or check us still does, such as Breloom, Toxicroak, and Conkeldurr. Same goes for Yache Berry. It doesn't do anything drastic to change our list of checks and counters, and the basic draw is the ability to switch into Water-types much easier, which once again is something that we want the CAP to do.

SubProtectSeed with Leppa has the potential to be an unstoppable stalling machine, but there is a reason that it is not such a good strategy to begin with. Taunt, Perish Song, Roar and Whirlwind, SD Breloom (Bullet Seed), Mamoswine(Icicle Spear), Cloyster(Icicle Spear), slower U-turn users, faster Pokemon, and priority moves (the CAP is weak to Mach Punch and Ice Shard) are all threats to this strategy, while the CAP will be huge set-up bait for hazard setters, and then forced out by one of the ways i mentioned above. Finally, this strategy will do nothing to solve the Lati@s issues, which will be able to terrorize the sun teams with DMs that 2HKO the cap while it can't do much back.

Sub + Boosting Berry is the only strategy that has the potential to create some unexpected strategies and get out of control, but it won't happen with careful decisons on the next stages. For examples as long as we don't give to the CAP strong boosting moves or coverage moves, which we shouldn't anyway, as they do not match with the CAP's goal, then what will it do with those boosting berries? SubLiechi will be walled by any Steel type, Hydreigon, Breloom, and Toxicroak, while being prone to revenge kills. SubSalac will be walled by the same Pokemon, and except from fearing revenge kills it will fear any Pokemon with good physical bulk that can take its attacks, such as defensive Gyarados, SubSeed Venusaur, BU Conk, Gliscor, Kyurem-B, and bulky Volcarona. These are the most important berries that i think deserve mention, and i won't discuss the others as they are too gimmicky to have any real merit imo.

So tell me please, how will Harvest derail the CAP from its goal, when it doesn't do anything to significantly change the list of Pokemon that it handles or are handled by it?

---------------------------------------------

One last issue i want to adress for everyone... One of the most serious weaknesses of sun teams is how much they struggle once their weather is down. And what does Chlorophyll do to fix this? Nothing. It just further increases the power difference of sun teams depending on if they have their weather up or not. So this means that Sun teams will win easier games that they have the weather control the majority of the time, but they will lose easier games that they don't have the weather control the majority of the time. And i want to ask, don't they do exactly the same thing right now?
 
I'm a little worried about Flower Gift. It seems like a great ability in several ways, and definitely helps CAP 5 take on Lati@s, but it has trouble against the other threat we want CAP 5 to threaten: Politoed. Here's the problem: if we give CAP 5 a decent attack stat AND Flower Gift, then it will probably be a wonderful sweeper in sun, but will not contribute a whole lot to the concept. So we need to keep our attack at a reasonable level. However, with an attack stat that is only "good" with Flower Gift activated, CAP 5 will struggle to beat Politoed in rain. For example, with 70 base attack (a number I've seen here a couple times) and fully invested, positive natured attack stat AND a life orb, CAP 5's Pursuit does less than 40% to a defensive Politoed switching out. Power Whip will OHKO after stealth rocks in this situation, but as we seem to be aiming for a bulky pivot, a life orb seems unlikely, as does a fully invested attack. Without the life orb and boosting nature, CAP 5 would need over 100 attack EVs to even 2HKO Politoed. Standard Venusaur already 2HKO's Politoed easily with Giga Drain, so this isn't adding a whole lot to a sun team. I'm worried that, with Flower Gift, we would be unable to threaten Politoed enough to fulfill the concept.
 
Cloud Nine is the best ability for CAP5. It helps us tank water attacks better, which lets Venasaur not have to take that role. This is, I think, one of the goals for our CAP: to consolidate roles. It also helps vs' Tyranitar and against other weather teams in general, obviously. Although the ability itself could be used vs. Sun teams, it can't on CAP5. Unless we give it gargantuan bulk, it can't take hits from the likes of Victini, Darmanitan, Venasaur or the other common sun sweepers. They all have SE STAB, and Cloud Nine works both ways. So CAP5 is useless against sun teams unless we make a major mistake in the stats stage. Also, although CAP5 itself might, and I stress might, fit on other teams, it would raise usage of sun teams because they counter it completely. We don't need to stick to the obvious sun abilities if another ability boosts sun teams just as much.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
I feel bad posting so soon after my last, but alexwolf's post is so indicative of a lot of the misconceptions that have been plaguing chlorophyll, and i want to clear it up.

So in addition to the restrictions we already have for the CAP's stats, which are good HP and SpD in order to handle Lati@s and strong Water attacks, and good Attack in order to hurt Lati@s back with a physical Dark attack, let's see the further restrictions that we have by choosing Chlorophyll. We can't give it a high Attack stat. You said sky-high attack attack, but i disagree as even with 100 or 110 Attack a Pokemon can make for a very good cleaner with Cholorophyll. We also have to give it a low or a very low Speed stat in order for it to be outspeedable in sun, so that it will neither be faster than Venusaur and thus competing with it, nor it will be able to outspeed common Scarfers, to prevent it from being broken. So this means a Speed stat of 70 or less, and even a positive natured base 70 Pokemon can outspeed most Scarfers up to Base 108. And all those for what reason? To outspeed Lati@s in sun?
Premise 1) Our CAP has to have a strong special tankiness, no matter what ability we choose.
Premise 2) If we use Chlorophyll, we will have to give it Attack stats lower than 100, and speed stats lower than 70, in order to prevent it being broken / overlapping with venusaur
Conclusion: Choosing chlorophyll is all too restrictive on the stats stage of the project

This entire paragraph hinges very largely on the assumption of premise 2, which has been proven throughout the thread to be completely false, but i guess i'll explain again.

Chlorophyll does not mandate our CAP have Growth, and without Growth, it cannot hope to compete with Venusaur as a sweeper. Grass is not a good enough sweeping type for a 'double dragon' strategy. It can therefore be safely assumed that unless a sun team eschews Venusaur, CAP5 with Chlorophyll will never be used as a Chlorophyll sweeper.

Therefore, it is entirely safe to give CAP the kind of attack stat people want to, and to let it outspeed things. It takes a lot of investment at around base 75 to outrun the base 108 scarfers anyway. Could that be useful? hell yeah, but would it be worth screwing over your bulk? probably not, and definitely not to the point of breaking the CAP.

Beating Latios in rain wouldn't make it broken and is actually one of ours musts for this CAP. We will still have many threats used on rain teams that can check or wall the CAP, such as Steels, Toxicroak, Breloom, Keldeo, and Hydreigon, so it will be fine. Rain will very often be up, and what do you do then with Chlorophyll?
what do you do? sac a pokemon on the specs DM, switch in CAP5, revenge kill. As nyktos said (though i'm sure you didn't even hardly read his post for fucks' sakes), CAP5 with Chloro serves as a /counter/ for latios in sun and a /check/ for latios in rain. I mean we don't want to break it here. The kind of special bulk required to COUNTER latios in rain (assuming harvestlum and a set of spikes) without a resist... a special tankiness of 286. For comparison, Lugia has a special tankiness of 273. I'll let that speak for itself.

I promise i won't make this a post attacking harvest, but i know you'll go playing the "well you could run Sitrus" card. you can't attack chlorophyll for being unable to beat Politoed and Latios with the same set while in rain, to turn around and propose an ability that can't even beat them both in sun. Doesn't work that way.

One last issue i want to adress for everyone... One of the most serious weaknesses of sun teams is how much they struggle once their weather is down. And what does Chlorophyll do to fix this? Nothing. It just further increases the power difference of sun teams depending on if they have their weather up or not. So this means that Sun teams will win easier games that they have the weather control the majority of the time, but they will lose easier games that they don't have the weather control the majority of the time. And i want to ask, don't they do exactly the same thing right now?
People who claim that Chlorophyll's weakness comes from its inability to function outside of sun conveniently ignore that CAP5 is also providing Sun with the most firm, reliable answer to winning the weather war that it has ever had. I don't WANT a Pokemon that can completely demolish politoed, but even if it doesn't that's good, because it can still destroy the Latis even in rain, oh and also it spins. that sounds like a recipe for breaking sun to me.
 

alexwolf

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Premise 1) Our CAP has to have a strong special tankiness, no matter what ability we choose.
Premise 2) If we use Chlorophyll, we will have to give it Attack stats lower than 100, and speed stats lower than 70, in order to prevent it being broken / overlapping with venusaur
Conclusion: Choosing chlorophyll is all too restrictive on the stats stage of the project

This entire paragraph hinges very largely on the assumption of premise 2, which has been proven throughout the thread to be completely false, but i guess i'll explain again.

Chlorophyll does not mandate our CAP have Growth, and without Growth, it cannot hope to compete with Venusaur as a sweeper. Grass is not a good enough sweeping type for a 'double dragon' strategy. It can therefore be safely assumed that unless a sun team eschews Venusaur, CAP5 with Chlorophyll will never be used as a Chlorophyll sweeper.

Therefore, it is entirely safe to give CAP the kind of attack stat people want to, and to let it outspeed things. It takes a lot of investment at around base 75 to outrun the base 108 scarfers anyway. Could that be useful? hell yeah, but would it be worth screwing over your bulk? probably not, and definitely not to the point of breaking the CAP.
You are seriously underestimating the sweeping potential that Chlorophyll alone gives. Let me give you an example... Stoutland. Take a look at this Pokemon. Without any playing experience, there is no way in the world that you would think that this Pokemon would make for a decent sweeper or cleaner in OU, but in reality it does, even with a mediocre Attack stat of 100. The CAP doesn't need many things to derail to the offensive role instead of the defensive with Chlorophyll, if we give it at least a decent Attack stat. Even with just its STABs, HP Fire, and Rapid Spin and LO or lefties, it will make a very good offensive Pokemon even with only 100 Atk and 70 SpA. And don't start listing me examples of what can wall it, as this is not the point. The point is that the CAP would be able to hit hard and outspeed a lot of stuff, while still hitting the Steel-types that are supposed to counter it with HP Fire. It may not be the best offensive Pokemon around, but it will surely make for a good offensive combo with Venusaur. As you can see it is not so easy to avoid going on the offensive with an ability so offensive natured and this is the problem. Even Tangrowth of all things uses offensive Chlorophyll sets over defensive Chlorophyll sets the few times that it sees use on sun teams. And he has 50 Base fucking Speed.

what do you do? sac a pokemon on the specs DM, switch in CAP5, revenge kill. As nyktos said (though i'm sure you didn't even hardly read his post for fucks' sakes), CAP5 with Chloro serves as a /counter/ for latios in sun and a /check/ for latios in rain. I mean we don't want to break it here. The kind of special bulk required to COUNTER latios in rain (assuming harvestlum and a set of spikes) without a resist... a special tankiness of 286. For comparison, Lugia has a special tankiness of 273. I'll let that speak for itself.

I promise i won't make this a post attacking harvest, but i know you'll go playing the "well you could run Sitrus" card. you can't attack chlorophyll for being unable to beat Politoed and Latios with the same set while in rain, to turn around and propose an ability that can't even beat them both in sun. Doesn't work that way.
I will say it to you once again because you don't get it or because you choose to ignore it on purpose. There are many ways that the CAP can counter Lati@s in rain if we go with Harvest! Be it with decent special bulk (90 HP / 90 SpD) and Sitrus Berry, with great Speed, good Special bulk (95 HP / 110 SpD / 115 Spe) and LumRest, with decent special bulk, good Attack and Speed and Salac Berry (110 Atk / 90 HP / 90 SpD / 100 Spe), or finally with huge special bulk (100 HP / 140 SpD) and LumRest, it can be done! Please do the calcs about the examples i gave you and don't bring up again the ''with Harvest the CAP can't counter Latios without huge special bulk'' argument as it is false. So between countering Lati@s in sun and only checking them in rain and sand with Chlorophyll and countering them in every weather, which would you choose? The winner is obvious, Harvest!

People who claim that Chlorophyll's weakness comes from its inability to function outside of sun conveniently ignore that CAP5 is also providing Sun with the most firm, reliable answer to winning the weather war that it has ever had. I don't WANT a Pokemon that can completely demolish politoed, but even if it doesn't that's good, because it can still destroy the Latis even in rain, oh and also it spins. that sounds like a recipe for breaking sun to me.
Countering Lati@s in all weathers and switching in safely against Politoed seems as a recipe for breaking sun to you? Sorry then, but this is the project that the community decided to work on. These are the threats that we agreed that the CAP should cover, and between Harvest and Chlorophyll you can't deny that Harvest just does it better.
 
Concerning the non-sun abilities:

I don't really understand what the appeal of Cloud Nine is. I see it as kind of the same as Water Veil and Swift Swim: it sounds really cool because it deals with one set of concept threats so well, but then you realize it hardly does anything against the rest. Although Natural Cure is kind of the same, the key difference is that it improves CAP 5's overall role as a pivot, so it has a lot more merit than any of the other non-sun abilities.

On the sun abilities:

Flower Gift is easily the most sun-focused of the three. This is pretty much its main selling point, preventing us from really straying from the concept. So the potential problems lie entirely in the balancing act, which I would argue is also helped considerably by the sheer dramatic nature of the ability. It's significantly worse in the sun, but it wouldn't necessarily be useless. It takes a lot more to be broken than to be great. The rest is optics.

Harvest is the opposite, being the least sun-focused. This is not to say that it is the worst, because there is definitely a certain degree of safety and consistency brought by it that the other two don't really have. Personally, I'm not convinced that any berry will be nearly as influential as Lum Berry on this ability, so I think that some of the concerns of it being too versatile are a little bit overblown. The biggest concern is that Harvest still activates with a probability of 50% outside of sun, which could actually become pretty reliable, especially if CAP 5 is bulky.

Chlorophyll is in the middle, not as dramatic as Flower Gift but definitely more sun-focused than Harvest. I think that it gets a lot of undeserved criticism, mainly because Chlorophyll could easily benefit something like a walling role, and even if it became a sweeper overlapping with Venusaur, there's nothing necessarily wrong with double Grass offense. I just feel that a lot of the supporting arguments given for Chlorophyll are flawed and present a very simplified view of the situation. Chlorophyll means that Speed EVs are essentially "half-price", so that it would be really hard to justify sacrificing that for both bulk and power. Speed is really important in Pokemon, and with Chlorophyll giving CAP 5 such a huge range of benchmarks to beat, I don't think that changing that situation would be as simple as people seem to think. Like I said, though, I'm not sure that that's necessarily a bad thing.

None of these abilities precisely define CAP 5's role. However, I don't think that that is a priority for a sun ability. CAP 5 with a sun ability just needs to have at least one role that sun would appreciate. For example, Nyktos mentioned Choice Band Flower Gift, but I don't see how that's a bad thing.

I think that Flower Gift and Harvest are the strongest options, followed by Chlorophyll and Natural Cure. The former two give a strong sense of "knowing what they're about". I'm not exactly "against" Chlorophyll, but it seems like a comparatively wishy-washy direction.
 

Bughouse

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All I can do in support of Cloud Nine is ask people to read over my previous post and find actual flaws in the logic, rather than saying "It doesn't feel right." I totally understand the desire for a Sun-oriented ability. Personally, I find all Sun abilities available unsatisfactory. If you don't that's fine. But I remain wholly unconvinced by each.

One point I suppose I left out, which helps compared to some Natural Cure (and even kinda Harvest) supporters is the following: Sun does not need a counter to switch-in to Defensive Toed or indeed any Scalds on Rain. Yes, Venusaur dislikes the accidental burn. But Ninetales is perfectly capable of switching in too, taking only around 20% from a Scald in the Sun. And Ninetales can't get burnt. Yes, hazards are a pain. But that's still two potential switch-ins to Scalds. The bigger issue when it comes to Waters is Hydro Pump, and that's where Cloud Nine does the job much better.

I firmly believe we should handle the Waters here in ability, as abilities can more easily harm their capacities than the Latis'. Latis can be addressed in Stats and Movepool.
 

alexwolf

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All I can do in support of Cloud Nine is ask people to read over my previous post and find actual flaws in the logic, rather than saying "It doesn't feel right." I totally understand the desire for a Sun-oriented ability. Personally, I find all Sun abilities available unsatisfactory. If you don't that's fine. But I remain wholly unconvinced by each.

One point I suppose I left out, which helps compared to some Natural Cure (and even kinda Harvest) supporters is the following: Sun does not need a counter to switch-in to Defensive Toed or indeed any Scalds on Rain. Yes, Venusaur dislikes the accidental burn. But Ninetales is perfectly capable of switching in too, taking only around 20% from a Scald in the Sun. And Ninetales can't get burnt. Yes, hazards are a pain. But that's still two potential switch-ins to Scalds. The bigger issue when it comes to Waters is Hydro Pump, and that's where Cloud Nine does the job much better.

I firmly believe we should handle the Waters here in ability, as abilities can more easily harm their capacities than the Latis'. Latis can be addressed in Stats and Movepool.
So Lati@s can be handled by stats but rain boosted water attacks can't? There is definitely something wrong with that logic. You just said that tanking two Specs DM from Latios is easier than tanking two Specs Hydro Pump from Politoed. You basically stated why the sun related abilities are better. Rain-boosted water attacks can easily be taken care of with not over the roof stats, unlike Toxic from Politoed, and Scald burns, which can't be solved at all with stats, and Specs Ice Beams and Specs DMs, which need titanic special bulk.
 
One thing people are kind of shying away from I think needs more attention is the fact that Sandstorm is also a weather. This is important in the sense that CAP5 needs to be somewhat viable outside of sun (probably a low b rank to high c rank if we're talking viability ranking threads) because there's always the possibility that your Ninetails will lose the weather war. Slapping Chlorophyll on a Sun-based Pokemon and calling it a day doesn't exactly do much to increase it's overall effect. When you look at Rain teams, the Pokemon used on there are also viable outside of weather- Starmie is a very potent special sweeper, the Latis are still really good at doing whatever they want based off their movepool, Ferrothorn can still wall, and Scizor can still demolish stuff without the lowering of Fire's power. CAP5 needs to have some presence outside of Sun as well as in Sun, which is why I'd support Harvest over Chlorophyll. Harvest still gives CAP5 a fighting chance assuming you lost the weather wars may it be to Politoed or Sandstorm. Harvest is just a more encouraged ability in Sun, which is why you would prefer to run them in a Sun-based team. Chlorophyll would nearly kill the momentum CAP5 has out of Sun based off what stats people tend to be throwing around being paired with Chlorophyll (Low 70s high 60s speed, low 100s high 90s attack stats). I reuse alexwolf's example in Stoutland. Stoutland is scary if it gets the speed boost from sand. Otherwise, it's completely not viable and remains down in NU where it is useless at trying to attempt a sweep in OU. Chlorophyll gives focus and purpose to use on a Sun team, yes; but it gives it just a little too much focus to the point it wouldn't work out well for you in the very possibly event Politoed or Tyranitar outlives Ninetails.

Regenerator and Natural Cure both have their little merits, I would pick either of them as a second choice but won't make many comments on them besides that they'll be useful considering many people are talking about how much people are going to be switching out CAP5 for Ninetails and vice-versa. Status Absorber and a Tank with semi-reliable recovery is never a bad thing.
 
I'm going to throw my featherweight support behind Flower Gift at this late stage.

The main reservations I see about it are those concerned that it might see CAP5 either underpowered out of sun or broken in it.

I think that the latter is highly improbable - it should not be forgotten that CAP5 will likely be of no more than mediocre physical tankiness if it wants to take on Lati@s while staying balanced, and is weak to both Mach Punch and Ice Shard. It also suffers a 4x weakness to U-turn, whose (often scarfed) users it may not be able to outspeed. It's hardly going to be unstoppable. Furthermore, according to our threatlist it's probably not going to pack much coverage besides its STAB options, limiting its overall offensive presence. A +1 to Atk and SpD is in all probability not going to break CAP5.

The former is certainly more possible - it's easier to be underpowered than broken - but I also highly doubt it. CAP stat spreads tend to be devised with the utmost care and sensitivity (yes Aurumoth is probably a bit overpowered, but it's an exception) - I've been lurking intermittently since Voodoom, and the amount of thought that tends to go into them always impresses me. If misgivings about a boosting ability come down to no more than questions of balance, I would suggest that they're misguided, for I have no doubt the participants in this project can devise a stat spread that makes Flower Gift CAP5 pretty good in general, but great under sun.

That's what's needed. A CAP5 that could fulfill the roles it needs to fulfill reliably, regardless of weather conditions, would be a valuable asset to sun teams, sure, but if it were to develop a significant presence in the metagame in general it would risk failing to ultimately fulfill the concept and significantly impact their overall usage relative to other team types (usage, zero-sum game, remember?). A CAP5 that could under normal circumstances perform such roles capably but unspectacularly, but truly excel under sun, would be far preferable. Flower Gift sees Sun boost CAP5's SpD and Atk. I'm sure I don't need to point out that these are exactly the stats that are going to help it function as a pivot against specially offensive threats, a counter to Lati@s and Politoed, and a spinner that can reliably kick the asses of OU's premier spinblockers. These are all the roles it's been determined that CAP5 needs to fill for sun teams, and with them covered sun will find itself on much more level footing with other playstyles.

For the record I also see appealing qualities in Harvest and, to a lesser degree, Chlorophyll and Natural Cure, but if I seem to have little new to add regarding Flower Gift then I have even less to add on these; I think their pros and cons have been detailed terrifically elsewhere.
 
All I can do in support of Cloud Nine is ask people to read over my previous post and find actual flaws in the logic, rather than saying "It doesn't feel right."
I don't think anybody said that? As much as you think the criticisms of Cloud Nine are unintelligent or whatever, the fact is that a lot of people don't see the point of it at all. The reason for this is actually in the post linked: there's a lot of talk about little details, but it's missing the big picture entirely. It's not even the optimal way to address the one thing it tries to address, since Water Absorb and Storm Drain are right there - something you actually admit in trying to claim that CAP 5 wouldn't be a good sand mon. The suggestion is so focused on a singular aspect of a singular threat, and doesn't even pay attention to all of the possible side effects of the weather removal, that I don't think it even has a big-picture goal in mind. Seriously, what is the goal of Cloud Nine? If it's just to resist water, why not just cut out all the irrelevant stuff and back Water Absorb?
 

Bughouse

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So Lati@s can be handled by stats but rain boosted water attacks can't? There is definitely something wrong with that logic. You just said that tanking two Specs DM from Latios is easier than tanking two Specs Hydro Pump from Politoed. You basically stated why the sun related abilities are better. Rain-boosted water attacks can easily be taken care of with not over the roof stats, unlike Toxic from Politoed, and Scald burns, which can't be solved at all with stats, and Specs Ice Beams and Specs DMs, which need titanic special bulk.
Um, actually YES? Nothing about Latios specifically can be dealt with in Ability. Sure you can give it an ability like Harvest to try to tank hits better because of Sitrus recovery. This will also result in taking arbitrary things like Jirachi's Iron Heads better too. The same problem occurs for Chlorophyll. Sure, you know outspeed Latios. You also now outspeed Salamence and OHKO with HP Ice.

My point is the oppposite... Rain-based Water attacks (aka Hydro Pumps) CANNOT be taken easily by anything currently found on a Sun team. Scalds are the easy option, Ninetales and Venusaur both somewhat handle them. Venusaur also takes the Toxics, as can Forretress or Espeon or Xatu.

Would Water Absorb most directly address the Water switching in? Sure. I also think though that maybe that's too much to give to Sun. I don't think that CAP5 should literally gain HP on switching into Water moves. Beyond weakening the Water moves, I think that harming Thunder/Hurricane/Tentacruel are also useful, so it's not as if Cloud Nine is totally single-focused. And as I said above, it's a heck of a lot more targeted at a thing on our "threaten" list than a general goodstuff ability such as Harvest or Chlorophyll, which boost CAP5 against EVERYTHING.

It's true that nothing on a Sun team appreciates Specs Draco Meteors from Latios. (That's true for most every Pokemon, but I digress.) But until there's an ability that helps against Latios but not Terrakion, I'm not buying it. Chlorophyll and Harvest are both too non-specfic for CAP5 to target any specific threats. At least Cloud Nine targets Waters specifically.
 

Ignus

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I just want to remind everyone how bad a defensive typing grass-dark is. It has an extremely narrow range of useful resists, and only has one less weaknesses then types like Grass-Psychic and Grass-Ice, which have the most in the game. We should be careful with defining CAP 5 as a wall for fear of being wrecked by every single Dragon type that has a coverage move in OU, which is ALL OF THEM. I volunteer that we look at either Harvest or Flower Gift for dealing with these problems. Harvest makes counter-cheese easy with resist berries. Flower Gift gives us the advantage needed to deal with Lati@s in the sun while still relying on Ninetails to set up the sun in the first place.
Honestly a lot of our ability choice comes down to utility. With such a weak defensive typing and only moderately strong offensive typing, it's ability will need to be a force of it's own. Harvest can give it the defensive utility it needs and the Cheesey, Cheap moves that could be pulled off as baits. Flower Gift gives it the Pivot utility of being able to take a hit and then respond. Both work for this, but one must be chosen over the other.
tl;dr: Our typing is somewhat bad bar specific situations and if this mon wants to be useful in enough to Change an entire type's usage, we must either give it versatility or raw power.
 

alexwolf

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Um, actually YES? Nothing about Latios specifically can be dealt with in Ability. Sure you can give it an ability like Harvest to try to tank hits better because of Sitrus recovery. This will also result in taking arbitrary things like Jirachi's Iron Heads better too. The same problem occurs for Chlorophyll. Sure, you know outspeed Latios. You also now outspeed Salamence and OHKO with HP Ice.

My point is the oppposite... Rain-based Water attacks (aka Hydro Pumps) CANNOT be taken easily by anything currently found on a Sun team. Scalds are the easy option, Ninetales and Venusaur both somewhat handle them. Venusaur also takes the Toxics, as can Forretress or Espeon or Xatu.

Would Water Absorb most directly address the Water switching in? Sure. I also think though that maybe that's too much to give to Sun. I don't think that CAP5 should literally gain HP on switching into Water moves. Beyond weakening the Water moves, I think that harming Thunder/Hurricane/Tentacruel are also useful, so it's not as if Cloud Nine is totally single-focused. And as I said above, it's a heck of a lot more targeted at a thing on our "threaten" list than a general goodstuff ability such as Harvest or Chlorophyll, which boost CAP5 against EVERYTHING.

It's true that nothing on a Sun team appreciates Specs Draco Meteors from Latios. (That's true for most every Pokemon, but I digress.) But until there's an ability that helps against Latios but not Terrakion, I'm not buying it. Chlorophyll and Harvest are both too non-specfic for CAP5 to target any specific threats. At least Cloud Nine targets Waters specifically.
I have already adressed your worries about Harvest and the extend of its usefulness. And i explained how Harvest doesn't alter our threatlist (be it the threats we want to threaten or that we want to threaten us) drastically. The Pokemon that we want to counter us and switch-in to us still do, so stop mentioning radom stuff such as Jirachi's Iron Head, which btw would still murder the CAP with U-turn. Either respond to my reasoning as to why Harvest will not derail the CAP from its goal, or stop claiming things without arguments.

Also for the love of god i will say it one more time. The CAP has many ways to counter Lati@s when having Harvest, not only Sitrus Berry. I have already mentioned those ways in this very same page so take a look at them before talking again about how to coutner Latios with Harvest.
 

Bughouse

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I really could give two hoots about intended effects vs actual effects. Yes, our threatlist (Bugs, Fires, etc) all still beat us regardless of something like Sitrus Recovery, and all probably still do even with Lum Rest.

That's not my problem. My problem with Harvest is that it turns a lot of things that should be neutral matchups into wins for CAP5. It essentially makes everything that doesn't beat it lose to it, more or less. You claim Jirachi can just U-turn. Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but Jirachi only used U-turn on 22% of sets in January, most of which, I'd bet are choiced, so that's not a big factor as you'd likely know that already.

The problem is you can come in on SpDef Rachi and, given the right bulk, never fear dying from Flinch Hax. Some may say that's a good thing. I say that's crap. Jirachi is supposed to be a neutral matchup, if not worse for CAP5. Harvest enables CAP5 to muscle through.

Jirachi was an arbitrary example. This could have a similar effect on a Scarf Terrakion locked in on Stone Edge. What was once a scary thing for CAP5 to switch into now becomes easier. Is this an excellent thing for Sun teams? Sure. It's also excellent for ALL teams. Beyond that, it's also not something we said we should threaten in our Threats discussion.

In short, Harvest affects way too many outcomes that initially would be neutral. This makes CAP5 into general goodstuff and while it will be tied to Sun because of Harvest's improved rate of activation, the list of things threatened by CAP5 will far exceed the things we said we wanted to threaten back in Threats. That's a problem I think we should avoid. Under Sun, if we are not exceedingly careful with Harvest, CAP5 will win way too many matchups for my taste, considering neither Toed nor TTar can switch in to debuff Harvest.

I am legitimately worried Harvest is too good in general to serve the purpose of this CAP.
 
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