[bugmaniacbob]

To be reconciled:

Support vs. Offensive
Team-based Risk vs. Prediction-once-in Risk
Liabilities vs. Choice

I have seen a lot of good discussion here – which makes it difficult, as a TL, to really know how to proceed. There is a lot to be said for a good many avenues – there is no path that is automatically better than any other. Having said that, I think I am developing some idea of what I want our CAP to eventually turn out to look like. I am personally of the opinion that we should be trying to challenge ourselves as much as possible with this CAP (I've said that far too many times, but it still holds valid), and at the same time, I think that going down any one avenue would not really teach us anything. We could quite easily go the risky sweeper route, but this wouldn't really challenge us in the strictest sense – we could just slap Shell Smash and Simple on any given Pokemon, and the rest turns into a balancing act. Ditto for many of the other options already expressed.

I have already said that I would like to try to reconcile the various different parts of this concept, and while I think that, yes, it might be challenging or even counterintuitive, it is worth our while – we may learn more, we may find the process more difficult, and that sort of thing. As such, I want to see us create a Pokemon that does have both offensive and support qualities – and that can be, depending on role, a risk to put on the team, or a risk to use.

I will ask you to please bear with me at this point, as my sleep cycle is rather shattered at the moment and I am finding it very difficult to put my thoughts across. Don't be afraid to call me out if I'm being unclear.

What I envision seeing from this concept is as follows. We have a Pokemon who is not frail necessarily, but who has a large number of common weaknesses and – crucially – a weakness to passive damage, which creates the same effect. Thus the point of "making every switch count" is retained, while not necessarily making it too difficult for said Pokemon to switch in. A weakness to passive damage, if I'm not being clear, can be achieved in a few ways, such as susceptibility to Spikes/Toxic Spikes/sandstorm, Stealth Rock weakness, lower attacking stats which force a reliance on Life Orb or Choice items, or even forcing the use of Substitute to cover a low Speed stat. There are other ways to achieve this, of course – I am certain you will all have your own ideas on this point.

There is little to be said for the question of support vs. offensive. I am quite certain that both can be achieved, to a reasonable degree, within the same Pokemon. With reference to support, I do believe that there is a good deal to be said for capefeather's argument on viability – strategies such as Trick Room and Tailwind have more or less been proven to be, in a vacuum, far too much risk for too little reward, without there being an ability such as Persistence to increase the reward, as such. Thus, I can only see the absolute limit of Support being strategies that, while rare, still have noticeable benefits, such as DS + Memento and what not.

On the offensive side, I also want to incorporate both aspects of Risk outlined above. Based on observations made by jas, Pwnemon, Rediamond, and others, I am of the opinion that we can both have the Team-based Risk – where control of the field and other support provided by the team are rewarded by a greater probability of success once set up – as well as Prediction-once-in Risk – where there are fewer "safe" options for the Pokemon to be using, or rather, where the riskier options tend to be more rewarding than the safe ones. Personally, I see that we can achieve the former through any set-up sets – which would be extremely effective once set up but difficult to get to that stage – and the latter through any non-boosting sets we may have. This could potentially be quite easily achieved through having both powerful attacks with drawbacks alongside more reliable moves, for sets where the power isn't needed quite so much.

That's all I really have to say at present. Keep on going, you're all doing a fantastic job thus far.