Doubles CAP Project thread! Stage 8: Stat Limits

[koolkranny]

The reason why my sand team works (yes only about 50% of the time) is because it's designed to put the opponent on the defensive from the get go. I have some decent support coming in the form of Togekiss, Hitmontop, and Suicune, while being able to hit the weak point of the opponents team. The 1 mon that I have the most trouble with is Landoge. If I don't kill him early then he just shits all over my team.

I don't think Pwnemon's option 2 is viable because Excadrill is still very viable. If we try to replace Exca, but make it not suffer from Exca's weaknesses then all we do is make another sand sweeper, and they pair it with Exca and Ttar. I think a support mon would be best, something that can combine Hitmontop, Togekiss, and Suicune.

In other words, I wholeheartedly agree with Lolk and srk1214.

 

[Stratos]

I think you guys are kind of missing the point. Or not even missing the point, directly stating the point and then glossing over it because of some sort of preconception that prevents you from seeing it.

It doesn't boost the power of anything except for Pokemon with Sand Force (none of which are particularly good) and the only viable Pokemon with Sand Rush, Excadrill, stacks with Tyranitar in many ways.

sand's biggest weaknesses are the lack of versatility and the prevalence of Pokemon that single-handedly beat sand's two threats alone (see Landorus-T, Conkeldurr, Breloom, Rotom-W, Hitmontop, Politoed, and many more)

The 1 mon that I have the most trouble with is Landoge. If I don't kill him early then he just shits all over my team.

All three of you agree: the big problem with sand is that Excadrill complements Tyranitar terribly. You want to 'fix this' with a third Pokemon but the problem is that you can't fix the fact that you are using two pokemon that each do the exact same thing. You're essentially trying to cover the entire metagame in 5 Pokemon, instead of 6, when you stack like that. To srk1214's point: weather doesn't thrive off of "diversity." Every rain team is toed+ludicolo+four mons that are roughly independent of rain (yes thunder accuracy, yes fire weakness reduction, those are very very minor). Almost every sun team is zard+venu+four mons that are roughly independent of sun (yes there's occasionally a heatran). When they aren't using Venusaur, though, it's not like they're using some "alternative sweeper," they just don't use one. There is no diversity in their choices. There is a single choice. But the difference between choosing Exca and choosing Venu or Ludi is that Venu and Ludi actually fucking work, and excadrill doesn't. What sand needs isn't a mon roughly independent of Sand that covers its weaknesses because the metagame has those, Skymin is a great example of one. What sand needs is a reason to actually fucking use sand because as far as I'm concerned Excadrill is an extremely shitty one.

 

[champetero]

To be honest I'd have to agree with Pwn, the main problem sand has is that Tyranitar and Excadrill stack so many weaknesses and they don't really help each other. Like if sand would get a better Excadrill that can actually help Tyranitar and not lose to like every single thing that T-tar loses to then Sand would get a boost in viability.

 

[Fangame10]

I agree, a pokemon that better compliments Tyranitar's weaknesses would boost a sand team's effectiveness. I think the pokemon should be able to work outside of a sandstorm against other weather based teams effectively and should cover much of tyranitar's weaknesses like fighting and grounnd types

 

[LightningLuxray]

Another thing we could do is try to get a better Tyranitar. The thing that sucks so much about Tyranitar is its many weaknesses and poor Speed, meaning it can struggle to consistently keep up Sand or help Excadrill. Excadrill, on the other hand, has a huge Attack stat and two of the best spread moves in the game, making it pretty powerful. If we replaced Tyranitar, it would obviously need to have Sand Stream, which kind of limits us a bit. However, we could give it ways to deal with Excadrill's weaknesses, such as Intimidate, priority, bulky waters, etc. I just kind of feel like Tyranitar has so many problems as a sweeper, it'd be hard to come up with a sweeper to compliment it well.

 

[Audiosurfer]

I'm more of the opinion that we need a mon that better complements TTar as opposed to replacing TTar. While the metagame isn't too kind to it with the increased usage of musketeers as well as Lando-T still being used a ton (although LO Special Attacker gets around Landorus-T), it's still fundamentally a very useful mon. It's bulky, has a nice spread move and high Attack, a mega form, a lot of versatility in terms of sets, etc. For those reasons, I'd rather take the second option as opposed to making a new Tyranitar.

Excadrill isn't too great now either with the increased usage of Rain offense compared to the start of the format alongside Lando-T and Zard Y still being popular, which makes it much harder for a Sand team built around Excadrill to be successful, since it has no way to get past any of these things, putting a lot of increased pressure on Tyranitar to keep sand up.

For those reasons I'd rather go with the 'new Excadrill' option as opposed to replacing Tyranitar.

 

[AuraRayquaza]

I must say i concur with most of what has been said, exca is pretty bad rn and a better sand rush user would help sand greatly. I also think we should consider going special with it. Any sand rush poke will not be much different to exca if it loses to WoW and intimidate. That is what makes other weather sweepers good, they are special

 

[Lolk]

I agree that the CAP should be built primarily to compliment Tyranitar better, I just think we shouldn't approach it as Excadrill 2.0 because relying on a 2 man core leaves plenty of room for ez counterteamming (which is a similar problem Sun/Rain has). It would be better if we approached this CAP as a way to compliment Tyranitar that also doesn't completely outclass Excadrill so that sand does has the potential to use Tyranitar/CAP and Tyranitar/Excadrill/CAP depending how the team is built and what other strategies the teambuilder wants to incorporate into their team.

 

[Bughouse]

Alright, so we're gonna wrap up Concept Assessment now and open up typing discussion in a little bit.

It was clear that the majority opinion is NOT to make a better Sand Stream user than Tyranitar. Instead, we will be looking to make a CAP that benefits from Sand in such a way that makes Sand a more viable playstyle.

The go-to beneficiary today is Excadrill and to some respect we will be looking to improve on Excadrill, though the CAP is not necessarily intended to be a substitute for and improvement over Excadrill. It could also be a complementary beneficiary, though not in a supportive fashion. The CAP must exert a notable amount of offensive pressure and directly benefit from Sand. Essentially, the CAP should work better with Tyranitar than it works with Excadrill, but if both Exca and the CAP work well together in the Sand, that's an incidental benefit.

In the end, if the CAP is just better for Sand teams than Excadrill and ultimately becomes the sole beneficiary of Sand on most teams, much like how Rain teams usually only have Ludicolo OR Kingdra but not both and how Sun teams only have Venusaur, that's fine. Those team structures are known to work for both Sun and Rain. One "sweeper" is enough, provided it's a good sweeper. But it's also fine if the end result is that Sand can comfortably use all 3 of Tyranitar, Excadrill, and the CAP (though this may be tougher to do since as many have noted, Tyranitar and Exca compound weaknesses to some extent).

 

[Stratos]

Stage 2: Typing Discussion

The name may have clued you in: this is the stage where we discuss the typing for our CAP. Please keep in mind what srk1214 just posted as we discuss typings, and please, no polljumping.

The CAP so far:
Concept:

Name: The forgotten sand.

General Description: A pokemon that can help make sand teams more viable in a doubles XY metagame.

Explanation: When gen 6 came, weather suffered a huge blow with the new weather mechanics, while sun and rain are still relevant, sand on the other hand became rather unreleant. Tyranitar got worse this generation because of the rise of new pokemon like bisharp and landorus-T and the drop of usage of pokemon like Cresselia. Excadrill also suffered with landorus-T becoming the best pokemon.

Now the overall goal of this concept is to create a pokemon that can help sand overcome the issues it has for example being able to handle better rain,rotom-W,etc. While it's impossible to have one single pokemon check all of sand's issues but it will at least help sand become relevant in a doubles XY metagame.

As a final note, participation in this CAP so far has been absolutely abysmal. It's been extremely fun, but you can't sustain a CAP on such a skeleton crew of activity as we got during the last stage. If participation doesn't pick up during typing discussion, I'm probably going to have to axe the project. This stage will probably last for around 72 hours.

 

[Bughouse]

Alright, so from a typing perspective, the CAP should probably have passable to good matchups with most of the things that threaten Tyranitar. Matchups are determined by much more than typing alone, but a bad typing matchup is much more difficult to overcome later than probably any other single decision.

A long list of those mons includes: Politoed, Landorus-T, Rotom-W, Scizor, Kangaskhan, Mawile, Heracross, Amoonguss, Terrakion, Keldeo, Bisharp, Azumarill, Breloom, Conkeldurr, Shaymin-S, Garchomp, Escavalier, Genesect, Sylveon, Gardevoir, Ludicolo, Ferrothorn, Hitmontop, and Scrafty

In much shorter terms, the list of mons that TTar struggles with includes: Fighting-, Steel-, Fairy-, Water-, Ground-, and Grass- types. The CAP should aim to address many of these typing concerns, though obviously all at once is impossible. There are 6 Pokemon on a team after all.

In terms of more general things TTar struggles with, it's not a big fan of Intimidate, nor does it like Will-o-Wisp. Tyranitar's many weaknesses and susceptibility to Intimidate and Burn are further compounded by its low speed, though it sometimes uses Choice Scarf (Rock Slide spam ftw).

The saving graces for TTar are its good overall bulk, if you can get it in the right matchups, decent power, great Rock STAB, and massive customizability. TTar's movepool is enormous. Furthermore, it can boost itself with Dragon Dance, and can even do so in a fearsome mega forme if so desired.



Given the pluses and minuses of using TTar, and therefore sand as a whole playstyle, what typing do you think the CAP should have?

 

[Fangame10]

Given that ttar suffers from many weaknesses notably fighting types, the best type would be a type that can compliment tyranitar while still working inside a sandstorm
therefore I propose our cap pokemon to be Ground/Fairy type.
A typing that completely dose neutral damage towards the meta while retaining a ground typing
Its Fairy typing wipes out Fighting pokemon with ease as all fighting types can take super effective damage from this type (steel fire and poison types are ko'd by ground typing) the fairy typing will also provide needed coverage toward Dragon types like garchomp who pose some threat to tyranitar as well
Still retaining a Ground typing it still is able to cover Steel types which are massive threats to tyranitar
PROS: Covers Fighting and Steel types which are major threats to tyranitar as they tend to be physical moves
CONS: Dose not counter Bug types or other Fairy types, water and grass types tend to be special which ttar with its sp def in sand storm can handle effectively, also is weak against Steel types itself
Type Coverage:
Offense pros: Dark, Fighting, Dragon, Steel, Poison, Fire, Rock, Electric
Offense cons: Flying/Steel, Poison/Flying, unable to effectively cover water, grass, and ground types
Defensive pros: Dark, Bug, Electric, Dragon, Fighting, Rock
Defensive cons: Water, Grass, Steel, Ice
Despite its cons, adding in some helpful moves in its move pool will easily cover these weaknesses like adding a fire move which will guarantee KOing Scizor and Escavalier and Ferrothorn. Or and Ice move to cover grass and ground type woes. However 2 notable pokemon this will struggle against will be Azumarill and Gyarados as they are physical water type. I wanted to pick a unique type that could benefit and this is what I picked after a long time of looking through types. This type may not be the best but it certainly shaves off a major portion of tyranitar's weaknesses and I hope is considered and not panned too much for some of its flaws
(PS I explained all its major flaws so no need to go on how this type is bad or say that I explained it's bad therefore we shouldn't use it)

 

[Level 51]

alright time to jump into this discussion
I think a (part-)Flying type CAP would be pretty good for this concept. It deals pretty well with a few of Tyranitar's weaknesses, especially the Fighting-types that threaten both it and Excadrill. Furthermore, this grants it an implicit Ground immunity so that Excadrill can Earthquake without worrying too much. Obviously this isn't going to address all the concerns that TTar and Excadrill have (since there are a lot!), but I think it's a great starting point for this concept.

(not to polljump but if we give our CAP Sand Force / Sand Rush, which we prolly will anyway since it needs to benefit from Sand, we don't need a Ground-/Rock-/Steel-typing)

 

[Lolk]

I think the biggest problem for sand teams (aka the current sand core) is fairy types tbh. Tyranitar/Excadrills vulnerability to Grass/Water/Ground/Fighting is very easy to cover with teammates such as Latios, Skymin, etc. The biggest annoyance when teambuilding for sand is that you cannot rely on Excadrill to switch in on Hyper Voices cause its Special Defense is piss af. To add insult to injury, you cannot really add any more steel, poison, or fire types to absorb hyper voices without compounding a serious ground weakness aka half the team (this is where lando-t becomes a problem). Ferrothorn kinda fills this spot as a hyper voice/earthquake absorber, but it doesn't keep the offensive momentum tyranitar and escadrill need. For this reason, I would conclude that this pokemon needs to be able to switch into Hypervoice and handle Earthquake spam. Something like Steel/Flying or Poison/Flying would accomplish this, but I want to see some more posts before I reach any conclusion.

Edit: Pwnemon did you read srks post lol? My proposal compliments both ttar and exca, not just exca (aka what srk said was an option)

 

[AuraRayquaza]

Basically we have to think about what we want in this poke. The way i see it, we have 3 options:

1. Cover fairy types. To do this, our poke needs to have a poison, steel or fire typing. However, we lose to ground, one of the more important types that needs covering.
2. Cover ground types. As our poke is not going to have levitate (it needs an ability boosted by sand), it has to have a flying type. However, we are then smashed by hyper voice, possibly tyranitars biggest problem.
3. Cover both. We could attempt to cover both with a steel/flying, poison/flying or fire/flying typing. Fire/flying should be out of the question, as we already have two viable pokes with that typing. The other two sacrifice a whole lot of offensive presence, with poison/flying being one of the worst offensive types there is. See here. For a replacement to excadrill (seemed to be the general consensus from the concept assessment), we want to have wide offensive coverage to deal damage more effectively and not be walled by much.
4. Cover neither. This means ttar is just as vulnerable as before to its main weaknesses. However, we do have more flexibility when it comes to offensive typing, something i feel needs to happen.

I didnt mention fighting, grass, steel or water because, like lolk said, stick a lati@s on the team and you are sorted. However, we do need to come to a conclusion on what this CAP is doing. I think option 3 is not what we should be looking at, and im leaning more towards covering neither or covering fairy types.

For this reason, i believe our pokes typing should be a ground / fire typing. This is the best offensive typing in the game that has a type resisting fairy in it. It adds beats steel types too and has fun with grass types. Yes it is weak to ground and water, but as said before, we cant have it all. Therefore we get a compromise between defensive synergy and offensive presence. Ground / poison is the other option as it covers fighting types, but like what has been said, it isnt hard to cover and fire / ground is better offensively.

 

[Stratos]

First things first, Lolk and anyone else who is confused, WE ARE NOT BUILDING FOR EXCADRILL GODDAMMIT. Excadrill is a non-concern. The only Pokemon that has been decided on our team is Tyranitar.

OK now I can talk typings. Tyranitar's strength is that it has high bulk and a spread move with a douchey effect. At its best, it's a source of constant annoyance and a consistent damage output that's hard to extinguish, softening up teams so that they can be easily cleaned up later. If we want to capitalize on this, we're going to have to take out the things that make it not behave like this at all, basically: things that reduce its damage output to non-threatening levels, and things that can cut through its high bulk to donk it. Intimidate, and Fighting/Steel types respectively.

The thing that stands out to me most is that we must, must, must beat Landorus-T. Landorus got almost 50% usage in SPL and its usage has only risen since then, and it shits all over Tyranitar. If we lose to Landorus-T, then our core suffers from a serious liability right out the gate and one that isn't easy to patch. So I'm not particularly a fan of any Ground-weak or probably even Ground-neutral typing, and not any Rock-weak typings either.

Honestly, I'm mostly concerned about Intimidate as a whole. Fairy-types are, comparably, a non-issue. For one, Gardevoir is 2hkoed by Rock Slide, so it can't switch in. Sylv survives 2 rock slides with ~20% which isn't too much better. I mean, you can't stack on fairy weaks without resists alongside Tyranitar, but just having Tyranitar doesn't make you fairy weak. but Intimidate ruins Tyranitar's efforts to spam Rock moves all over the place by making them weak as piss.

The two other big fears for me are Fighting and Steel types, because they resist Rock and threaten Tyranitar (and Ground, yes, but that's mostly just Landorus-T with cameos by other Pokemon). While grasses, waters, and fairies are loath to switch in because they take heavy damage for doing so, Fights and Steels are hardly punished at all, and can keep threatening tyranitar out, turning all momentum against the Tyranitar user.

So, typings? I'm not sure, I've laid out quite a disparate set of goals for our CAP. Grass tends to do quite well against all of Landorus, Terrakion, and Keldeo, though we're then risking being real Scizor weak, not to mention have trouble beating other Steels. Fire beats the Steels but then we're weak to the musketeers and Landorus. Water tends to do pretty decently all around, but it's not particularly special vs any of them, maybe that's the route we should take.

 

[Qazoo306]

One typing I think would be good defensively is ghost. Ghost / Grass would be good, so would Ghost / Rock with levitate. It needs to be able to use grass moves to rek the musketeers to help with Tyranitar and Excadrill's crippling fighting weakness. Grass moves would also help kill common rain pokemon get rekt Mega-Swampert like Politoed. Halving access to fire moves would help it deal with apposing Excadrill and Scizor too.

 

[LightningLuxray]

Levitate really isn't an option for an ability Qazoo306; we need Sand Rush / Force in order to take advantage of sand, else there's would be no reason to run it with TTar outside of good type synergy.

I do think Grass and Flying are two very helpful types for dealing with Landorus-T. Grass in particular also allows to beat Terrakion and Keldeo, as well as deal with Water- and Grass-types easily, which is awesome. Another benefit of Grass is the immunity to Spore and Rage Powder, helping us better deal with Amoonguss. However, the downside of a Grass typing is that all of Fairies' resistances, Fire, Steel, and Poison, are weak to Ground, meaning it removes the Grass resistance and leaves us weaker to Landorus-T. Steel and Poison are also very difficult to pair with Grass due to the poor coverage they have together, (However, I feel this could be remedied by having a special attacker with Hidden Power Fire, though I'm pretty sure we'd have to wait until a later stage to talk about that) and while Fire has nice coverage with Grass, it doesn't give us a super effective option against Fairy-types, and also leaves us weak to Rock Slide.

If we feel Fairy-types are big issue, then Grass / Fire or Grass / Steel would probably be our best bets. Grass, as I've already mentioned, gives us a way to deal with many of the threats laid out in this thread so far. Fire typing gives us a way to threaten Steel-types while still being able to switch into Fairy-types, but has the downside of being weak to Rock Slide and having no super effective STAB for Fairy types. Steel typing gives us a way to offensively threaten Fairies, though it leaves us vulnerable against opposing Steel types.

One issue I do have with these typings, however, is the fact that Landorus-T is not threatened offensively. This means that out CAP would either need A. Enough (Special) Attack to OHKO Landorus with a STAB Grass (or Fire) type move, or B. It would need some kind of coverage move, like Ice or Water, to hit it super effectively.

Another route we could take, brought up by Pwnemon, is Water. Water allows us to offensively threaten Landorus-T and Terrakion, as well as deal with Steels and opposing Water-types quite easily. However, Water leaves us no way to switch into Ground, Fighting, or Fairy, and means we'll be walled by Grass-types.

One options I like with Water are Water / Flying. Water / Flying gives us an immunity to Ground and a resistance to Fighting, and would give us a way to offensively threaten Grass-types and Keldeo. However, the downsides of this would be no real way to deal with Fairy-types, as well as a weakness to Rock Slide, though we would have an offensive STAB move to help deal with it. While this typing has been explored in numerous Pokemon, none of them have a really powerful Flying-type STAB move, which we could give our CAP. Hurricane is an iffy STAB option, Air Slash is weak as hell, and going with something like Brave Bird means that we'd be hurt by Intimidate, burns, AND recoil damage. I'm not very familiar with CAP, so I'm not sure if the addition of a new move would be possible. If it would be, I think a better Flying-type STAB move would be a great thing to give this CAP should we go with Water / Flying.

The main problem is that Tyranitar is weak to both Ground AND Fairy, and those two types in unison get perfect type coverage. This means we have to decide which one is more important to cover when creating this CAP, making it difficult to choose the best typing. A nice thing is at the movepool stage, we might be able to add Hidden Power type to help with coverage issues, especially those of the first two types.

Overall, while I think Water / Flying is in theory the best type, the lack a reliable Flying-type STAB move means that one of the first two types would probably be our best bet should we give it the correct type coverage. (However, if the ability to give it, say, a 90 BP special Flying-type move is possible, then I'd definitely prefer Water / Flying for the CAPs typing.)

 

[Qazoo306]

Levitate really isn't an option for an ability Qazoo306; we need Sand Rush / Force in order to take advantage of sand, else there's would be no reason to run it with TTar outside of good type synergy.

That's why I said Ghost / Rock was an option too. Rock types get a 50% boost to SpDef in the sand (a benefit IMO), and levitate would help by giving Tyranitar something to switch into when EQs loom. Also grass is a good coverage type in this meta, so even without STAB, Terrekion and Keldio won't want to switch in at risk of getting KOed. It was just a thought to give an option outside of Sand Force / Rush.

 

[LightningLuxray]

That's why I said Ghost / Rock was an option too. Rock types get a 50% boost to SpDef in the sand (a benefit IMO), and levitate would help by giving Tyranitar something to switch into when EQs loom. Also grass is a good coverage type in this meta, so even without STAB, Terrekion and Keldio won't want to switch in at risk of getting KOed. It was just a thought to give an option outside of Sand Force / Rush.

The benefits of having a decent EQ switch-in are outweighed by the fact that you'd have an overall crummy Sand sweeper.

Ghost / Grass is an interesting option though. You have a really nice secondary STAB that hits most things neutrally. Bisharp and just Dark types in general could be a problem though. However, you could remedy this with Wisp to an extent, should we give it to the CAP. My main problem with this is that you aren't really hitting much super effectively, meaning if you don't KO the opposing Pokemon, you're at risk of getting KO'd yourself.

 

[Fangame10]

I will also like to suggest that Electric/Flying type is an option as well since it resists Fighting, Grass, Ground, and Steel types as well as doing super effective damage to Water, Fighting, and Grass types while retaining only 2 weaknesses to Ice and Rock types which are covered by tyranitar. And having Electric one of the best types for neutral damage. However, Terrakion could pose a threat to this type

 

[Moudou]

I have written two ways of defending my idea on this subject, one is considering that the only thing we are sure of having on the team is Tyranitar (as Pwemon said), and the other one is considering we run Excadrill and M-Garchomp as well (and stuff like that). However, I'm really new to competitive discussion so this might all be crap, sorry if that so :$

Sheer synergy with Tyranitar

As L-51 said, I like the idea of a flying-typed mon, partially because it checks Pwemon's point about Lando-T, and because I guess at one point or another in the game, we're gonna want to use EQ for ourselves. It's always nice not having to shoot an ally when using that move. Tyranitar might have to use it for himself at one point or another, in case a Steel pkmn is in front of him for instance.

However, considering Tyranitar's weaknesses, a Flying pkmn will only (offensively) check the Fighting-type (big plus!), Bug-type (idk if that's really relevant, appart from Lando-T's U-turn, and that isn't the biggest problem with lando) and the Grass-type (leaving Ground, Fairy, Fairy and Steel weaknesses to cover, the two latter being a big issue [and defensively, Ground isn't a problem for our pkmn but it is to Tyranitar]), while being weak to Rock, and I totally agree with Pwemon when he says it's not a good idea to have such a weakness.

On the other hand, Grass will only check Water and Ground threats, and it will worsen the Bug weakness (but you're not weak to Rock). So I think that Flying will still be better than Grass, as to me, Fight is the biggest problem. Steel, Fairy and Ground come next close to tie. And Lando-T is at the top. (I might very well be wrong about this ranking, it's only my opinion...).

AuraQuaza clearly proved that it will be very difficult to have offensive sweeper that will both check Ground and Fairy threats at once. However, Flying/Steel typing isn't that bad offensively (we can have stuff such as Iron head/tail or Flash Canon to do Fairies, and Brave Bird/Acrobatics to deal with Fighting typed mons). But it really doesn't check Lando-T, except if it is granted a very wide movepool (although I could imagine an Ice Punch/Beam somewhere close), but that's not the issue yet. Plus, it's not weak to Rock anymore, offensively it can deal Terrakion (that would endure most Flying attacks) and it doesn't take Sand damage (take what you can get!) So all in all, I find a nice balance there. Now I see this typing as pretty defensive, but maybe it's just because I keep relating it to Skarmory and maybe there's a way to have something offensive with that.


Therefore, we can deal with anything that would threaten Tyranitar, except for Water, Ground, and Steel typed pkmn. So I like this typing, even though as Auraquaza mentioned it, it might lack offensive potential, and that would be a huge problem.

Based on the Sand Teams that now exist

The most important pkmns on the team are basically (for now!) Tyranitar and Excadrill. I would like to ad either Landorus not T and Garchomp to the reflexion, as I wouldn't want to kick either of them out without consideration. Excadrill and Garchomp ill want to spam EQ, so I'm in favor of Flying or Grass type. Garchomp fears Ice, Dragon and Fairy, Landorus fears Ice and Water, Excadrill fears Water, Fire, Ground and Fighting (geez...) and Tyranitar fears... a lot of things! So as I said in the previous show/hide, Flying/Steel seems to me like a very acceptable support typing for Tyranitar, and the odds are that it also covers Garchomp's weaknesses, at least not fearing any. Actually, Flying/Steel is only weak to Electric and Fire, so it's a great defensive coverage for a sand team.
But we want something more offensive. I believe that we might have something decent with the Flying/Steel, so maybe it won't be possible, but supposing it. Then we could deal with threats such as:
-Amoongus
-Terrakion
(-Kyurem)
-Skymin
-Venusaur
-Breloom
-Conkeldur
-Gardevoir
-Ludicolo
-Hitmontop
-Scarfty
-Sylveon
(-Togekiss, but he's not too much of a problem with what we've got now)

These are a all big threats to Sand Teams, as Fairies can take out Garchomp and Tyranitar (and Excadrill can take them out but if he falls...) and Fighting can, for the most part, tear the team apart on their own thanks to Fighting- and Ice-type moves. (Grass are a little less important, but still...) That's why I think that Flying is mandatory, not because you can save yourself some EQ damage, but because Fighting-type pkmn are the true plague of Sand Team. And Steel is for the Fairies, which come very close behind.

But it has difficulties dealing with quick Ice Beam spammers that can wreck Garchomp/Lando, which are very powerful in the team.

So to be short, I think Flying/Steel is a fairly good option :3


The only two things that make me think it's not the best solution are:
-that it's offensive does seem pretty lousy. Not bad, not awful, but just not good enough. Because we don't need a singing metal bird in the team, he must take threats out!
-that it doesn't deal with Lando-T, and that's a HUGE issue...

 

[LightningLuxray]

Fangame10 I do like Electric / Flying, though I feel like that suffers from a similar fate as Water / Flying except even worse - not only does it not have a good Flying STAB move, but it'd be relying on this Flying STAB to hit thing like Lando-T, which would get iffy. Hidden Power Ice is always an option, though, but this leaves it no good way to hit things like opposing Rock-types and means Steel-types like Ferrothorn could be annoying (Though Fire Blast TTar could help with this.)

Moudou I do think Flying / Steel would be an excellent defensive typing for out CAP. However, it doesn't really threaten enough offensively IMO. Landorus-T is the biggest one, but things like Water-types bad Keldeo / Ludicolo are really annoying for this thing (Most notably Rotom-W, which a core of TTar + Steel / Flying CAP would be extremely vulnerable to.) Also other Ground-types like Garchomp seem annoying, especially considering it can run Fire Blast.

I think one thing that the majority of these CAP typings will like as a partner is Fire Blast TTar, considering it can really help deal with Steel-types like Scizor and Ferrothorn. It does, however, need a lot of special attack investment to OHKO Ferro most of the time, and Steel-types such as Aegislash and Mega Mawile would still be hard to break. (Crunch does hit Aegi, but King's Shield mindgames can make it much harder to kill.)

252 SpA Tyranitar Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Ferrothorn: 340-404 (96.5 - 114.7%) -- 81.3% chance to OHKO
252 SpA Tyranitar Fire Blast vs. 164 HP / 0 SpD Mega Scizor: 388-460 (120.4 - 142.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Tyranitar Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 36 SpD Mega Mawile: 194-230 (63.8 - 75.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

 

[Moudou]

I like that Water/Flying typing, but the big problem overall is that you don't want Flying type because it's offensively weak (I mean let's face it, it's looks appealing because it can theoretically deal with Fighting threats, but it doesn't have the movepool to o so).

So why not a Water+Fire(or Steel maybe) type? You can deal with Lando, you resist Fairy, you can kick out Grass and Bug with Fire (or Fairies with Steel)... Problem would be Fighting type threats. But I guess a W-o-W will deal most of them (except for Keldeo, of course, he just had to be there...) (and Steel doesn't have wow, but threatening Fairies could compensate a little).


That's just an idea, I didn't put a lot of thought into it, and it clearly would have trouble benefiting from Sand Force, plus not being very cooperative with things such as Excadrill or Garchomp.


Just one last thing about my Flying/Steel type idea: with Sand Force, there would be room for a powerful Steel coverage. idk, maybe it's worth something to bet on, probably not, but i thought I'd mention it.

 

[Fangame10]

one thing I feel I should say is if we make a non Ground, Steel or Rock type, we will be limiting our ability choice to sand rush exclusively since sand force is to be used only with those types to give them a 30% boost in effectiveness. There's little use in this ability for non Steel/Rock/Ground types since they do not get STAB from it and would only use it for boosting the power of said type coverage moves. I'm not saying this is bad but if we want a perfect type coverage pokemon for tyranitar/excadrill that's not one of these types, then sand force will probably not be too viable for our CAP pokemon in the future and will be shunned in favor for Sand Rush