CAP 16 CAP 5 - Part 2 - Typing Discussion

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Birkal

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Let's get crankin' on this thing. As some of you know, Deck Knight is our Typing Leader for CAP 5. He'll be the one who will guide this typing discussion and ultimately make the slate of types for us to vote on. He confided with me that he's going to be absent for a few days, unfortunately. So until he returns, the CAP moderators and I will temporarily "fill in" for him by getting this thread started. Once he returns, the reins are his.

To start, let's review our concept:

Name: Type Equalizer

Description: A pokemon whose presence in the metagame increases the usage of one or more underused types and simultaneously decreases the usage of one or more overused types.

Justification: Take a look at the OU usage statistics for January and you'll see that 9 out of the top 10 pokemon have either steel, water, dragon or fighting as one of their types, and extending it to the top 20 shows 16/20 with those types. We should also be asking ourselves why these trends exist so strongly and what can be done about them. In creating this CAP, we'd have to discuss in depth many different aspects of what makes a type and opinions can ultimately being tested in the playtest.

Questions To Be Answered:

  • Is a types usefulness relative to the metagame or is it intrinsic? (Ie. Can any type be the "best" type given the right circumstances or do type match-ups, available STAB moves etc mean some types will always be better than others?)
  • What exploitable weaknesses do "good" types in OU have? Are their currently pokemon that can exploit them and if so, how do they function differently to CAP5?
  • How (if at all) will the targeted types adapt to the situation created? Will people choose different movesets, abilities, etc or will they just use them more/less? How is this linked to the way CAP5 functions strategically?
  • What effects will the changes on certain types' presence have on the metagame?
  • Which members of the targeted types will benefit and suffer from this most and why?
  • By creating CAP5, have we learnt any new ways to counter good types or use bad types?

Explanation:
Types have many complex interactions to explore - not just with one another but with abilities (eg, Magnet Pull, Water Absorb), moves and field effects (rain, Stealth Rock, etc), and sometimes even trends in the pokemon with the type. What I'm trying to present is a clear destination whose journey leads to good discussion and analysis of a large aspect of pokemon, whilst still being enjoyable. I feel one of the main strengths of the concept is that it has a wide variety of potential implementations which will help to promote discussion and creativity. The idea of a "bad" or a "good" type is rife throughout all areas of competitive pokemon, with CAP being no exception, so it seems valid to explore it.

A lot of people have asked how I envision this working. The short answer is it depends on which types we decide to take down and up. However, some general ideas can still be given:
Obviously we would want CAP5 to have the right type match ups for the concept. Resistances or immunities to the types we want to take down and weaknesses to those we want to bring up are ideal but not mandatory. Immunity granting abilities are a valid option to patch up not-so-ideal type match-ups later down the line. Between the two, we'd probably be hoping to make moves of certain types less spammable.
Statwise, the build very much depends on what we're targeting as well as the previous steps, so it's difficult to say much. I would suggest decent special defense to prevent people utilising hidden power rather than pokemon of our "bad" types, but that's not a necessity.
Choosing to target certain types might require CAP5 to have specific aspects: for example if we try to bring down water then an anti-rain element would be worth considering and if we're trying to bring up a stealth rock weak type then looking into anti-hazard methods would be a valid option.
Obviously, we should be mindful of specific threats of the targeted type(s) throughout, but we tend to do that well anyway.

Note that I haven't specified how many types we should target. This is really important. One of the big learning opportunities will be when we decide how ambitious we think we can be, as this will provoke discussion on just how firm type dominance is and contribute a lot to answering my first question in particular. I don't want that to be missed because I've said "we should focus on X number of types". That's for the community to decide.

This concept shares some similarities with Mollux in that they both try to make "bad" typings "good". However, the learning opportunities of Mollux were very much focused on the build of a pokemon itself, opting to alleviate typing's weaknesses by combinations of ability and movepool. I'm trying to look more on typing in relation to the build of the metagame and and what new opportunities existing pokemon will have in the modified metagame, without the presence of certain types.
In this thread, you're allowed to discuss both mono and dual types. Make sure you pay close attention to the Deck Knight's words; they are the most important ones to consider in this thread.

Try to keep your discussion clean and do not poll-jump into later parts of the process. If you're not sure of what poll-jumping is, I recommend you read this post from CAP 4 in order not to be infracted. It contains some excellent information. Remember to discuss with mind to the Typing Leader (Deck Knight) as well as the community. He is the one you will have to convince to be slated. Best of luck!
 

Birkal

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Again, I don't have too much to say here. Deck Knight is our Typing Leader for CAP 5, and I don't want to step on his toes for what he has in mind. He'll be back in a few days to provide better vision. So until then, we should primarily refer to jas61292's last post in the Concept Assessment thread. Specifically note that CAP 5 will focus on helping the sun playstyle; keep that in mind as the conversation progresses throughout this thread.

Utilize this thread to suggest a potential typing for CAP 5 and comment on previously suggested types. All suggestions should address the following questions:

  • How does the proposed typing help CAP 5 raise the usage of rarely used type(s)?
  • How does the proposed typing help CAP 5 lower the usage of highly used type(s)?
  • How does the proposed typing help CAP 5 support sun-based playstyles?
  • What other relevance does the proposed typing have to the concept?

Consider each of these questions as you make your propositions in tandem to jas61292's concluding post from the Concept Submission thread.
 
I would like to suggest Grass/Psychic for CAP5.

I will begin by saying I am not new to CAP, (been here since Necturna) but this is the first CAP that I am trying to fully participate in, including discussion, submissions, and voting. Now that thats out of the way, I would like to start weighing the pros and cons of Grass/Psychic. First of all Grass/Psychic sports great resistances, specifically to Water and Electric which are common STABs on rain teams, which we are semi- trying to counter by making a sunmon. Not only does this typing help us against rain teams, but it also helps against sand teams slightly with its resistance to Ground which would be able to help a lot of team members on sun, mostly fire types. It also has a resistance to fighting which could also help make a synergetic core with Heatran. Of all of Grass/Psychics weaknesses, Heatran is able to stop all of them, fire, ice, poison, flying, bug, ghost, and dark. This could help sun teams greatly having a core like this that takes either every attack neutrally, or resisted.

Grass/Psychic also has great STABs for countering common rain pokemon. Grass STAB counters all of the obvious water types, most notably Gastrodon, Politoed, and pretty much any other water type used in the rain. Psychic also helps significantly because of the high usage of Terrakion and ESPECIALLY Keldeo. Keldeo would be forced to run Icy Wind or a Hidden Power to beat CAP4 with this typing.

A Grass/Psychic type would help with the increase of fire types by helping the playstyle of sun. This would significantly lower the usage of many popular types, especially considering the possible usage of a core with Heatran. This core would stop Dragons, Water types, Fighting types, and Ground types to an extent. CAP4 would accomplish through its STAB and also a defensive core with Heatran. The only real threat I can see for this core would be an Expert Belt, or Life Orb Keldeo.
 
Hiya guys. I'd like to jump straight in with what I consider to be the most obvious initial typing choice, and one I suspect many others have in mind too - Grass.

If CAP5 is to help the sun playstyle, it follows that it will aim to have a positive effect on fire type usage and hamper the usage of water types - though these will probably not be the only changes in type usage consequential of a shift towards sun in the metagame, they are certainly the most predictable. As everybody who has ever chosen between three level 5 starter pokemon knows, these two types form a simple triangle with grass.

A grass type CAP5 would encourage usage of fire in two key ways. Firstly, grass type has great defensive synergy with fire. It resists common ground and water type attacks targeted at fire types, and in turn baits fire and ice moves for them to switch in on. This would mean users of CAP5 would have strong, simple cause to consider using fire type pokemon on their teams. The notion of defensive synergy is particularly relevant when we consider raising the usage of fire types, as many of the fire type threats in UU that this concept would ideally bring up to the OU environment don't come with secondary typings that complicate the issue - none of Arcanine, Darmanitan, Victini or Chandelure are exempt from any of the simple type matchups I just outlined. Secondly, a grass type CAP5 would encourage fire type counters to itself for obvious reasons. Grass type CAP5 gives teambuilders reason to use fire types whether they're using it or checking it.

Defensively, it isn't that clear cut, as a great many water types use ice type moves for coverage, threatening a grass type CAP5. A secondary typing with an ice resistance would help wall water types, but this would come with the major implication of either removing (water, fire) or compounding (ice, steel) its fire weakness. Of the two, perhaps counter-intuitively I believe the former would be infinitely preferable. The latter would encourage not fire type counters but fire type coverage moves; a 4x weakness to fire (under sun no less!) is an invitation for pokemon who would otherwise struggle to check CAP5 to carry hidden power fire and wreck its ass. Conversely, a neutral hit from fire type under sun is still threatening, but would appreciate STAB.

Of the two secondary typing options, fire and water, that mitigate the ice weakness without compounding the fire one, I'd argue that water is superior. In addition to not risking redundancy when pairing CAP5 with other fire types, it neatly doubles the water resistance, giving CAP5 a passable shot at shrugging off Specs Politoed's Drizzled Hydro Pump and countering it - a role which would be immensely valuable to any sun team.

For these reasons I believe the grass type to be an elegantly simple initial typing, whatever the secondary - but my specific suggestion would be Grass/Water.
 
Perhaps a Bug/Ground type would be able to boost sun a bit.

Sun can remove the water weakness, while this pokemon could tank some of the thunders that rain teams love to throw around and tank some of the earthquakes (and possibly rock type moves too) that many fire type mons can't handle.

Also, a bug/ground could hit the Latis and Heatran for super effective damage with its stabs, two pokemon that Sun teams struggle with.

Depending on the stats, it could also act as a Terrakion check among other fighters. Although countering fighting is not necessarily a primary goal of this CAP, it is acknowledged as one of the most common and powerful types in OU.


To be honest, I'm not good enough at analyzing the metagame to say much more about what I think a Bug/Ground type would do, but I do think that if we end up trying to buff sun, we shouldn't only consider types like Fire, Grass, etc.

I don't want to create a sun sweeper, or any sweeper. I don't think any one sweeper would be able to simultaneously nerf all of the types/playstyles that we want it to. I think the end product will likely be more of a support mon with a niche to help sun teams. An alternate typing could certainly help with that.
 
I'm going to jump in right here with the typing that's proven very popular on IRC:

Grass/Dragon

"But wait, PureQuestion!" I hear you ask, "Dragon is one of the types we want to lower, isn't it!? Aren't we getting away from the spirit of the concept?"

And to that, I laugh! For a Grass/Dragon is exactly the sort of pokemon we want! In particular, it has a lovely pair of STABs, that, while walled by some very annoying pokemon, slices right through everyone on the rain team not named "Ferrothorn", also allowing it to obliterate other dragons - a key issue for Sun teams. Grass STAB also does massive damage to Keldeo and Terrakion, two of the three most potent fighting types in OU; the third, Breloom, isn't bulky enough to enjoy dragon attacks, and isn't a massive threat to sun anyway.

Aside from the offensive prowess, Grass/Dragon also has a lovely set of resistances, being quadruple resist to both grass and electric (very popular attack types in rain), as well as allowing our pokemon to be a Grass mon that isn't instantly fried by the fire attacks that are boosted by the sun we aim to help. The grass typing also brings a very nice ground resistance, and gives super effective coverage against ground and rock types, which will be of some help in dealing with sand, the other major weather.

The notable weaknesses of the typing are of course that it follows the ubiquitous trend of 4x ice weak dragons, as well as sporting a troubling weakness to u-turn and flying attacks (I'll note here that even with the ban of Tornadus Therian, Hurricane still exists, even if it has become much rarer), but these simply come with the grass typing, which seems fairly popular judging by the posts before me. The ice weakness is nasty, but it's not as if sun teams don't have plenty of viable ways of getting around that.

There are many other notable benefits of the typing, but the basic point is, Grass/Dragon is a very effective offensive and defensive typing for the role we aim to fill; I'm sure some people can list some of the things I've forgotten, the IRC conversations were very long.
 
To add to the above we do not have to hit every single typing in the 'Big 4', just one or two. By the looks of it we're trying to hit Water-types (and will hit Steel types by strengthening Fire moves as well), so that should be good enough, surely.
 
Aside from the offensive prowess, Grass/Dragon also has a lovely set of resistances, being quadruple resist to both grass and electric (very popular attack types in rain), as well as allowing our pokemon to be a Grass mon that isn't instantly fried by the fire attacks that are boosted by the sun we aim to help.
I like your post in general - Grass/Dragon is another combination I thought would work well - but this is a particular point I'm not sure about. Maybe this is an overly simplistic perspective, but do you not think it would be positive for CAP5 to encourage fire types both as teammates and potential counters?

Also, as I mentioned, the weakness to ice is a killer considering how popular a coverage move it is for water types - the way I see it, the more completely CAP5 can wall water types, the more of a liability they become. This idea - liability - was discussed in the concept thread, and while it was eventually (wisely) decided that a sun mon would be the primary approach, I reckon we would still be wise to incorporate the thread's other ideas to varying degrees. Remember, we're trying to change an entire metagame with one pokemon - we should probably pull out all the stops.

Edit: Oh and finally, if CAP 5 is successful in bringing sun to prominence as a playstyle, it will pretty much be the last nail in the coffin for Hurricane, which would suddenly become liable to become 50% accurate. I don't think that the flying weakness is a big issue.
 
The ice weakness is a big deal but I'm indecisive on the matter; it's certainly a coverage move they have, but it's not something that generally gets spammed; you'll need to be careful to not switch into an ice beam, but I don't think that's a huge deal breaker.

As for the fire type part, that's a very tricky point, but on the plus side, it might be an alternative way of dealing with Heatran to "bury it with Dugtrio", depending on what coverage the mon gets.

Every typing has ups and downs. By no means is Grass/Dragon a perfect type, but it has some very interesting traits.

Edit: Oh, also; there's always air slash and brave bird, I guess. The latter of which is a legitimately good move on certain pokemon...
 

Stratos

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I'm not going to actually pull for any specific typing, but now that we've established a direction, I think that we should lay out clear goals for our CAP, and this starts now.

We know we want to bolster sun. We know this goes beyond just giving it another abuser, so just slapping it with some Chlorophylls and a fire mon with grass coverage isn't going to work. We need to decide how exactly we are going to lend support, though. I have a list of sun's weaknesses, things to keep in mind when you are suggesting typings to keep them on track:

  • Weak to hazards, especially Stealth Rock, and lack a good spinner
  • Main attacking types are walled by Dragons and Heatran
  • Weak to Sand and Rain if Ninetales cannot switch in
  • Lacks solid defensive backbone; virtually forced to play offense at all times.
It would be a mighty tall order to ask one Pokemon to patch all four of these weaknesses, especially considering one of the weaknesses, Dragons+Tran, is really two as the mons are so disparate. On a standard sun team, you have to use a different mon for each of these weaknesses; I'd like a CAP that can cover at least three, personally, and this starts with the typing.

Another thing to consider is that even in this stage we still want to pay attention to the concept. Like it or not, people /are/ going to be using 80% CAP5 in the playtest, and we need to keep this in mind, i think, when we consider what types we are going to be using. What I'm trying to say is that if we make a Pokemon that absolutely helps sun and makes it a powerful playstyle and happens to be 4x weak to steel and fighting, we have hardly accomplished the concept in any appreciable way, because Steel and Fighting type (especially the latter) will be everywhere in the playtest to keep CAP5 from doing its job. I do think this effect will be mitigated if CAP5 is relegated to more of a supportive instead of sweeping role, however.



With all the above said, I'd like to list candidate typings:

Grass somewhere really does strike me as a good idea; i'm not surprised it's been brought up so much. For one, it resists water, which I really do think is a necessity. A pivot that can switch into water-type attacks and back out to Ninetales is in my opinion a must to reduce the effectiveness of rain in beating sun, as Tales can't really switch directly into the likes of Rotom-W or Politoed or Keldeo. Furthermore, Grass is nice in that it's countered by Flying and Bug, two lesser-seen attacking types (the former only in tnade, the latter only in Scizor and Volc) which may see a usage increase instead of something like Fire or Fighting.

Dragon has been mentioned—but i'm not so much a fan of this typing. Half the reason dragons are so dominant in the metagame is that they are so potent in any weather, and i easily fear that a Dragon CAP could "jump ship" and be used on rain as a sun counter. The only way we could ensure this doesn't happen is to make it reliant on a sun-reliant ability, but then we're making it basically useless, and removing half of the point of a dragon typing which is to be able to switch in to water types.

a Fighting-type Spinner, however, i feel has some real merit. For one: Fighting provides a STAB which Heatran cannot switch in on; Fighting resists Stealth Rock; Fighting can pivot on Tyranitar and Terrakion, two common Stealth Rock Setters. The problem with a fighting typing remains, again, keeping it from jumping ship, though I think it is more manageable than Dragon due to not actually having intrinsic value vs Sun teams.
 

Brambane

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Supporting Grass/Dragon. PureQuestion's post sums up my thoughts quite nicely, and I'm fairly sure there will be posts from others who took part in the conversation that will echo the same sentiments. If you missed the very long IRC discussion today, then you are probably skeptical, but it convinced me that Grass/Dragon is probably the best typing suggested for the concept. It holds key resistances to two very common and dangerous types and weaknesses to underutilized STABs. It just fits well.

edit: I also support Dark/Poison
 
I propose Dark as one of CAP 5's types. I wanted to concentrate on types and roles that Sun teams tend to lack, which is why I kind of have a problem with all of the proposals for Grass so far (except I guess Grass/Dragon is cool). Dark immediately helps to deal with some of the most dangerous Dragon-types to pit against sun, namely Latios and Latias. These two also happen to have the property that Ice Beam and Ice Shard aren't as gigantic a deterrent to them as most (possibly all) other Dragon-types. Dark doesn't provide much in the way of resistances, but with only two weaknesses, it's that much easier to tack on multiple different secondary types.

In general, I see the typing as more important for defensive purposes than for offensive purposes. This holds especially true with sun teams in mind, since we're trying to deal largely with Pokemon that have double weaknesses, which can easily be addressed using coverage moves. That said, I don't think that we should try to resist a whole bunch of obvious attacking types because this quickly becomes unfeasible. I want to strive for a typing that is at worst neutral to Water, Electric, Ice, Rock and Dragon. The first three are common attacking moves on Water-types; I have Rock because sun has enough problems with Stealth Rock and not dying to Terrakion would be cool; and it would be nice to be able to switch into at least some Dragon-type attacks. I also think that the typing should overall have a good number of resistances, 5+ maybe. This leads me to propose Electric or Poison alongside Dark.
 
@PureQuestion
Generally I agree - although if ice type coverage isn't something that gets spammed currently, it probably will be if grass/dragon CAP5 becomes as centralizing of a metagame force as it needs to be to make a whole playstyle popular again.
Anyway I think your proposal and mine - Grass/Water - are essentially pretty similar. And although I did point out the fire type counter thing, grass/water is even less apt to be countered by fire types, so I'm really of in agreement on that too. A sunmon that's neutral to fire is still going to take a huge hit from a fire attack, particularly if it comes off STAB from one of the fire types we're hoping to raise into the metagame.
In fact, I have to admit I like Grass/Dragon just as much as Grass/Water. I think they're probably equally viable - unless there's some colossal flaw with my proposal that I haven't considered of course.
 
I was thinking along the same line as capefeather, but after considering many combinations (Grass / Water was among the first), I'm not so sure anymore that a Grass type is the way to go, as most Sun teams carry one of those, sometimes even two. I finally want to propose Fighting / Ice.


This is not a defensive typing at all, it's meant to offensively take care of a Sun team's main problems, which, are dragons and Heatran. Fighting + STABs take care offensively of these two problems. It should probably be a physical attacker, given that's a Fighting type, so it would threaten even the Latis. The fighting type would also alleviate Ice's weakness to Stealth Rock.

I want to emphasize, this typing is not supposed to be defensive (it's got 5 weakness, including Fighting and Steel), rather, it adds to the already offensive lineup of Sun teams.
 
I'd like to propose Grass/Water.
Here's how this typing would combat various types:
  • Water: Our CAP can hit hard with Grass moves, and 4x resists Water moves.
  • Steel: Steel moves give neutral damage. With good coverage, it could hit Steel pretty hard.
  • Dragon: same as Steel.
  • Ground: Ground moves are 4x resisted, and both Grass and Water moves can kill Grounds quite easily.
  • Rock: same as Ground.
Water/Grass provides excellent coverage, and a good sun-related ability like Chlorophyll would make perfect sense (in flavor terms).

That's my two cents.
 

jas61292

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So, between the huge amount of irc discussion and the first few posts here, Grass/Dragon has been brought up a lot so far. I want to take a bit to express my concerns about this type. First off, and most importantly, one of the big points that people have been using in favor of this typing is that it can be used to beat other Dragons who give sun a lot of trouble. The biggest concern here is that using a dragon to beat dragons is difficult to do. Dragon hits super effectively right back and have giant attacking stats to back it up. If you are to use a Dragon to beat a dragon you are going to need to hit it before it hits you, with significant power. To me, this would be making serious assumptions which would be bordering on (if not outright) poll jumping.

Secondly, I don't even see this working. Even if it does beat Dragons, it is a Dragon itself. For it to do its job there need to be Dragons. Any decrease in dragon usage will just be because of an increase in CAP 5 usage. Dragon replaces Dragon and we fail to really do anything. Additionally, if it is as good at beating dragons as some of the discussion I have seen would lead me to believe people want, it will not just be used on sun teams. It will be used on all teams. Being used outside of sun is fine, but simply becoming the Dragon of OU instead of some of the current ones does nothing to help the concept.

Additionally, I feel that of the other arguments outside of Dragons in favor of this typing, most are simply anti rain, not pro sun. Beating rain is OK, don't get me wrong, beating rain is fine, but it alone is not a way to complete this concept. Besides, sun already has a plethora of Grass types that can fufil this role just as well if not better. Double weakness to Ice means it cannot reliably beat most common water types of rain despite its double resistance. The inability to touch Ferrothorn doesn't hurt.

Overall, though, I just don't think this typing can really do what we want to do without making major assumptions at this point as to stats and movepool.

That being said I don't want this post to be completely negative, so I will say that I very much agree with capefeather's suggestion of some sort of Dark type. I don't have too much to add to what he said at this point, but I do believe that by specifically targeting the Pokemon that most threaten sun. While I aim is to decreas usage of types themselves, this is likely better achieved by going after specific member than by trying to make a catch all Dragon stop, or something to that effect.
 

Bughouse

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capefeather is so right about Dark. Let me put it this way... I've not been on irc. I independently came up with Dark as a primary typing as well. It just makes sense. And as I pondered a second typing, Electric too seemed natural.

I don't want to say great minds think alike or rehash any of cape's arguments, but I support Dark/Electric.
 
While we are trying to dethrone Rain here, Sandstorm is still a threat to sun (including stealth rock). Because of this, one of our types could be Grass or Fighting, to counter Tyranitar and Stealth Rock. Right now, Grass seems like an excellent idea, as it resits Rain abusers (not counting ice coverage), Sandstorm abusers, and Stealth Rock, while being synergetic with Sun.
I'm not absolutely sure about the second type, but ice is underused, deals with dragons, and cancels the Ice weakness.

So right now I'm considering a Grass/Ice.

EDIT: This would give CAP5 a x4 weakness to Fire, but that would also help in dethroning the "Big Four", by encouraging Fire types.
 
While we are trying to dethrone Rain here, Sandstorm is still a threat to sun (including stealth rock). Because of this, one of our types could be Grass or Fighting, to counter Tyranitar and Stealth Rock. Right now, Grass seems like an excellent idea, as it resits Rain abusers (not counting ice coverage), Sandstorm abusers, and Stealth Rock, while being synergetic with Sun.
I'm not absolutely sure about the second type, but ice is underused, deals with dragons, and cancels the Ice weakness.

So right now I'm considering a Grass/Ice.

EDIT: This would give CAP5 a x4 weakness to Fire, but that would also help in dethroning the "Big Four", by encouraging Fire types.
Grass doesn't resist Stealth Rock... in fact, making it Ice gives it an SR weakness
Not to mention that something which has a 4x fire weakness and is intended to be on sun teams doesn't sound ideal to me
 

MCBarrett

i love it when you call me big hoppa
Just a few thoughts on some of the proposed typings so far

Dragon/grass see jas' post. Seriously though, I don't see this working since you're just adding more grass coverage to a sun team really. The only good I can see from it is an increase in mamoswine which has two underused typings but mamoswine poops on sun besides Volcarona so it would work against us as well.

Water/grass unless this gets some major sun abilities later on, it doesn't abuse the sun at all, which would be fine if its typing didn't lend itself to absolutely loving the rain

Dark I really like this type because it actually goes after a specific threat in lati@s without boosting our weakness to it. I would also love having a good pursuit trapper on a sun team as the most viable at this time is snorlax. Yeah... Snorlax.

Electric I could see this pairing with dark potentially as others have mentioned but I want to look at its merits through its typing alone. First of all electric coverage goes after water types with coverage that has not been present on sun teams since the almighty genesect was banned and he loved pooping on politoed. Secondly, electric gives us a volt turner which, depending upon its secondary typing, would be the only sun volt turner to not have a stealth rock weakness since, you guessed it, genesect.

I would have to put my support currently behind dark/electric because pursuit, volt switch, and their combined coverage is just awesome for a sun team plus there is no SR weakness. However, I would be very intrigued by a typing that would compliment a sun spinner.

EDIT: to the above two posts. A 4x fire weakness is very ideal in my opinion. (just ask genesect) it boosts sun by being weak to it and a good typing could at the same time abuse the sun. However I'm generally opposed to grass at this point seeing as it is very common in sun already, plus SR weakness is nasty. I think a better argument could be made for this than grass/dragon though.
 
how does grass/ground sound? neutral to stealth rock, supper effective to steel (not skarm, but oh well) and water, it resists fighting, but dragon could be a problem though

if it were a wall it could encourage ice types, but if it were a sweeper it could probably learn a dragon move to increase versatility
 
I'm new to Smogon and not overly familiar with the OU scene, but I've read all the way through the topics til now and one potential typing sticks in my head.

I'm fond of Fighting/Electric, as it provides a stealth rock resistance, and supereffective STAB against both Water and Steel, all without stepping on Grass's toes.

A weakness to Ground-type attacks on a team bound to be sporting at least one Fire-type is not appealing, true, but it still seems to me to be effective.
 
Electric/Ground sounds like the right direction for this to go in, to be honest.

How does the proposed typing help CAP 5 raise the usage of rarely used type(s)?

Right off the bat, let's look at its weaknesses: Grass, Water, Ice, and Ground. Except for Water, each of those benefit from sunlight, where CAP5 will often be found in, thus raising their usage in an adaptive way from rain.

  • Grass-types are far and few in OU. There are only 4 Pokemon that are part Grass-type in OU, meaning that it is understood that it is rather under-represented. By having a weakness to Grass-type moves, the usage of Grass-type moves will increase. This will further promote things like Solarbeam or Synthesis, both moves that are often found on Grass-types that benefit from the sunlight, thus promoting anti-rain playstyles.
  • Ice is the big one. Ice-type attacks are not weakened in the sunlight, thus they would be considered a main weakness to the typing, bringing up Ice-type usage. A bonus to this is if we tailor its stats to survive regular Ice Beams and HP Ice, but fall to STAB Ice-type attacks.
  • Ground is notable to mention in that we don't often see OU Pokemon with Ground-typing unless they either provide a niche that any other typing could just as easily do (Dugtrio, Hippowdon) or rely heavily on their secondary typing (Garchomp, Gliscor). Being another OU Electric-type that isn't just Rotom-W would give more reason for STAB Earthquake users to exist. Additionally, the Electric/Ground typing itself means that sun teams now have a reliable STAB Earthquake user. Earthquake is otherwise seen on very few Pokemon in Sun teams in general, instead being in Rain or Sand teams.
Flygon, Mamoswine, Claydol, Roserade, and Weavile, just to name a few, would start seeing more usage. That on its own is noteworthy.

How does the proposed typing help CAP 5 lower the usage of highly used type(s)?

Water is no longer a weakness when in sunlight, meaning that it will only take neutral damage. This also means that you can follow up with a STAB Electric-type move, something for the most part completely unseen outside of rain, to wipe out most Water-types on the spot.

In addition, Steel-types are afraid to be around this typing due to Ground-type moves hitting super-effectively while Electric-type moves hit neutrally. Only things like Ferrothorn or Steelix would dare challenge CAP5... But wait, you're in the sunlight, meaning HP Fire alone will wreck them. Excellent use of sun!

Lastly, while not of focus, Dragon and Fighting-types don't usually wall this thing given the neutrality of its moves. While Dragon may resist Electric-type attacks, any variant of CAP5 that comes packing HP Ice to create a pseudo BoltBeam combo will take care of them. Basically, the typing adapts extremely well to all four main OU types.

How does the proposed typing help CAP 5 support sun-based playstyles?

I already mentioned my reasoning earlier. In a nutshell, sunlight gets the Electric and Ground-type support it needs; Water-types and rainmons in general will be hesitant to fire off Water and Electric-type moves; And sunlight-friendly move-types like Grass and Ice will be used more to attack CAP5.

What other relevance does the proposed typing have to the concept?

It's a good typing in general in terms of hitting some of the most used Pokemon. Scizor, Heatran, Skarmory, Politoed, Tyranitar, Gyarados, and Jirachi would all find themselves at the very least checked by Electric/Ground-typing, which helps to the concept and lets it survive in the overall existing metagame.

So yeah, Electric/Ground-type sun-promoting mon, anyone?
 

Woodchuck

actual cannibal
is a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Going to take my submission in a completely different direction than the others so far:

Steel/Flying

I know that we already have a Steel/Flying type, but Skarmory has an extremely specific niche and isn't even found on sun teams anyway! Steel/Flying is a typing with interesting potential. A Pokemon with such typing can already switch in for free on Tyranitar and Hippowdon as well as checking Tornadus. It is also a typing well suited to switching into Mamoswine (a Pokemon that tends to give sun teams trouble). How will Steel/Flying diminish the use of common types?

Steel/Flying is uniquely suited to defeating most Dragon-types because it is immune to Ground-type attacks, a common coverage move for most Dragon-type attackers. It can diminish the use of Steel-types as Steel/Flying switches into most Steel-types in OU and sets up on them -- a Pokemon with the ability to set up something and Steel/Flying typing can make Scizor a liability when the CAP could threaten to come in and set something up on an errant Bullet Punch. Steel/Flying also has the STAB to hit all OU Fighting-types super effectively bar Lucario. Finally, while not resistant to Water-type attacks, a Steel/Flying Pokemon checks Tornadus (and possibly Toxicroak), rain staples, very well.

Steel/Flying is also unlikely to turn around and benefit rain teams against sun as Drought exacerbates its weakness to Fire-type attacks, and with the right tuning in stats it can be made to lose to most Chlorophyll abusers.

also, re: dragon/grass:

[23:01] <woodchuck> to make this pokemon effectively check dragons
[23:01] <woodchuck> it's going to either need to be fast enough
[23:01] <woodchuck> to be broken
[23:01] <woodchuck> or need to run scarf
[23:01] <woodchuck> and i don't see how sun can afford scarf
[23:02] <woodchuck> since it has no defensive backbone
[23:02] <woodchuck> for most teams
[23:02] <woodchuck> so this type of dragon would once again
[23:02] <woodchuck> help rain
[23:02] <woodchuck> more than sun
 
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