Okay time to be a buzzkill...
There's a lot of really good concepts this time around. A ton. There's probably six or seven that I wouldn't mind pursuing. Unfortunately, there's one that I've been seeing get a
lot of traction that i just can't imagine being worthwhile, and I feel like I need to post in opposition to it (sorry Birkal D:)
Perfect Nemesis, at first glance, seems like the antithesis of Voodoom's concept, which was a great project. Voodoom made something good by working together with it; this would make something good by working against it. But it's not that simple.
See, the problem with Perfect Nemesis is I don't really see how much we could truly learn from it. Birkal's justification lists three main points that we would explore with this concept:
1) How to threaten the tier as a whole. Now, every offensive Pokemon that is good threatens most of the tier. If a Pokemon wants to be OU, it has to threaten the tier. "how to threaten a tier" is hardly a concept that is unique to a "Perfect Nemesis;" furthermore, if we make a pokemon that can attack a tier's weak points and has only one dedicated counter, it will easily risk being broken. If it is not, there are two paths i see: a) better pokemon will adapt to counter CAP4, thus making it fail in its goal because the pokemon that it was supposed to rise in usage didn't ride in usage or b) the pokemon it was supposed to make rise in usage becomes necessary on every team, therefore making a centralized and bland meta. I see no middle ground.
2) To explore what makes a counter a counter. The thing is, unlike with Voodoom's "core" idea, a counter is one of the most exact, most explored, most defined sciences in all of Pokemon. It's well known what makes a counter; in fact, CAP has six rules for just that in its Counters Discussion. Quoted from the page in the Process guide:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Fat CAP Process Guide
The end goal of the Counters discussion will be the basis for limiting Attacking Moves and non-Attacking Moves. A few Pokemon will be selected as Pokemon that should Hard Counter the CAP based on fulfilling three of six criteria:
- Can switch into this CAP's Strongest reliable STAB attacks at least three times from full health.
- Can switch into this CAP's strongest possible coverage move at least twice from full health.
- Can stall this CAP indefinitely using its recovery options either forcing the CAP out or healing enough that the stalling Pokemon can alternate between recovery and attacking.
- Can OHKO or 2HKO the CAP with one of the moves on that Pokemon's relevant official Smogon moveset.
- Can cripple this CAP with a permanent status move without risking a OHKO.
- Can set up, use hazards, weather, or otherwise execute an opponent's strategy without risking a 2HKO.
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I challenge you to find a flaw in this definition of a "counter." It will be very difficult, because countering is quite airtight. By definition, being a counter leaves no room for uncertainty, and without uncertainty to the nature of a counter, i fail to see what can be learned by doing a Perfect Nemesis.
3) Discussion of the merits of Low OU Pokemon. While i'll admit this would be fun, we don't need a CAP for that: head on over to the OU Subforum and start a thread (or, more likely, post in an existing one) if you want to do this!
So, in summary, I don't think that a Perfect Nemesis can teach us much about how counters work because there's nothing left to be learned, and either the Perfect Counter will fall by the wayside to the likes of more generally useful pokemon who can counter or strongly check CAP4, or else the meta will revolve around cap4 and its counter and become quite centralized and repetitive.