[erisia]

Originally Posted by Fat BrianFantana

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.

I'd just like to say that I completely agree with this fantastic post. I was going to add some more support for Flower Gift later but this post pretty much says everything I wanted to say and more, so I guess I don't have to bother? :D