CAP 3 - Part 10 - Attacking Moves Discussion

[Scoopapa]

Originally Posted by Fat Deck Knight

So what I'll do is axe Hurricane entirely. It doesn't really fit with me, serves no purpose but to expand coverage needlessly

.........

Unless people have a problem with there being no poll, I think this settles what we need. If you want to argue for a Controversial option Hurricane exclusive from Scald, you can make a case for it.

I would like to see Hurricane put to a vote.

I've already argued for Hurricane quite a bit, but I think this post is pretty comprehensive, for my argument at least. I think it at least dispels the idea that it serves no purpose other than needless coverage; the differences really come in with whether or not we should be able to counter or check any non-Grass Fighting-types. I think being able to threaten Fighting-types realistically is as applicable to the concept (due to Poison typing) as being able to threaten Steel-types in their home turf is (due to our Fire-typing). Dry Skin was necessary to take advantage of the latter ability, because if we were destroyed by Water-types in the rain, all we'd ever accomplish is to threaten out Steel-types and then get owned by Tentracruel, Politoed, Rotom, Etc. In the same way, trying to deal with Fighting-types will get us owned by Stone Edge unless we have a move that really threatens them.

[Rising_Dusk]

Originally Posted by Fat Deck Knight

This leads to an odd dynamic where you actually run things like Landorus/Gliscor/Duggy in Rain because you know Mollux is no threat since its only relevant offensive STAB gets halved in Rain. I don't think that's a healthy dynamic, and I think like the frets over Pyroak's walling capabilities, the frets over Scald are overblown. Ironically without Scald, are Threats are only true Counters in Rain, which is playing against their own style. Switching in Tyranitar actually *decreases* in value because in Sand, Mollux can obliterate most of those checks with Fire attacks.

Rain will evolve to beat Mollux regardless of what we give CAP 3 to beat rain. Period. That said, if rain is forced to run Dugtrio / Landorus / Gliscor to beat Mollux, we have succeeded and we have weakened the core of rain teams by forcing them to substantially adjust to a potent anti-metagame threat. You need to realize that part of changing the metagame to shake it up is forcing it to adjust to something new. Assuming that "a changed metagame is unfavorable for CAP 3" means that we have failed when that metagame changed because of CAP 3 is truly myopic in its scope.

252 Modest Choice Specs CAP 3 (Rain) Fire Blast

vs. 252/0 Impish Toxic Orb Gliscor: 58.5% - 68.9%
vs. Jolly Choice Scarf Landorus: 61.4% - 72.7%
vs. 4/0 Jolly Choice Band Terrakion: 27.5% - 32.4%

252 Modest Choice Specs CAP 3 (Rain) Scald

vs. 252/0 Impish Toxic Orb Gliscor: 154.8% - 182.5%
vs. Jolly Choice Scarf Landorus: 163.6% - 193.1%
vs. 4/0 Jolly Choice Band Terrakion: 146.3% - 172.2%

252 Modest Life Orb CAP 3 (Rain) Fire Blast

vs. 252/0 Impish Toxic Orb Gliscor: 50.3% - 59.6%
vs. Jolly Choice Scarf Landorus: 53.6% - 63.3%
vs. 4/0 Jolly Choice Band Terrakion: 23.8% - 28.1%

252 Modest Life Orb CAP 3 (Rain) Scald

vs. 252/0 Impish Toxic Orb Gliscor: 134.5% - 158.2%
vs. Jolly Choice Scarf Landorus: 141.7% - 167.4%
vs. 4/0 Jolly Choice Band Terrakion: 125.9% - 148.8%

252 Modest Leftovers CAP 3 (Rain) Fire Blast

vs. 252/0 Impish Toxic Orb Gliscor: 39% - 46%
vs. Jolly Choice Scarf Landorus: 41.4% - 48.9%
vs. 4/0 Jolly Choice Band Terrakion: 18.2% - 21.6%

252 Modest Leftovers CAP 3 (Rain) Scald

vs. 252/0 Impish Toxic Orb Gliscor: 103.4% - 122%
vs. Jolly Choice Scarf Landorus: 109.7% - 129.2%
vs. 4/0 Jolly Choice Band Terrakion: 97.5% - 114.8%

The difference is staggering.

If rain is forced to run these Pokemon to beat Mollux, then we have succeeded at using the concept. If CAP 3 faces down sand and one of these Pokemon come in while the rain is still pouring down, then these Pokemon do check CAP 3 extremely well.

You're right, Deck, we didn't create a counters list. And you know what? Even with CAP 3 not getting Scald, these Pokemon don't hard counter Mollux by any means. Gliscor can be dealt with, and two switch-ins puts Landorus down. Thunder can even punch through Terrakion fairly well (especially well 30% of the time). But if CAP 3 gets Scald, these Pokemon will not even be threats anymore, they will be relocated to pure revenge killers. That is the distinction that made Salamence broken in DPP, and is the distinction that will either spell ruin for CAP 3 if it gets Scald or success if it doesn't.

[Deck Knight]

The problem comes in trying to fit Mollux into your own Rain core Dusk, not in weakening Rain cores by making them run Sand mons (expect to see Gastrodon in Sand before Gliscor/Landorus). Mollux put in a Rain core is under that scenario is actually weaknened more in Sand because at that point you want to avoid setting up your own Rain, or relying on your Rain mons to take out their Sand mons. This puts you at a distinct disadvantage - we both agree on the same point, my issue is one where Mollux has no synergy with the teams its supposed to balance out, which effectively means that Mollux's only place is on a non-weather team. While I'm sure that could work, it's not exactly OU material.

More to the point at this point we don't have a move to address Defensive Heatran, and it wins because it can just SPAM Fire attacks and out STABs are powerless against it. Having to run HP Ground against Defensive Tran gives us Fire/Electric/Ground coverage, and if it's Ballooned we have to hit it with Tbolt first, and it always wins with EP. Really it's about what's on your side of the field, not theirs. Adding another Rain mon that gets hindered against Sand by being on Rain is nonsensical in the Rain-Sand dominance war.

[Deck Knight]

So yeah, this is coming down to the wire.

I think I'll make a radical decision though, based on conversations in #cap and my gut instinct.

Nothing is more important to me than adhering to the concept, I do want to succeed, but do so with the minimal tools necessary. I think we can pull a lot out of the burn and poison immunities, and the proper supporting movepool.

So I apologize if this is erratic, but I think this will provide the best test.

Scald is out, I think our best test will be Fire/Electric/Poison coverage, with a few flavorful coverage moves that might make an impact like Mud Shot, Octazooka (Q. Acc) and Power Gem if people want to avail themselves. With a 4x weakness, it's critical that we have some mechanism to be able to OHKO threats in Rain, and I think Tbolt itself can handle that, if someone wants insurance in a Rain move, I think both Hurricane and Thunder are healthy for different purposes. I understand the Bubblebeam in Rain calcs - Octazooka isn't Bubblebeam, it has less accuracy for the same power, even if its effect is arguably better, I think it's balanced but competitive enough to warrant implicit approval.

The last thing I'll do is allow Hurricane, but make it exclusive with Thunder (but not Bolt), e.g. you cannot have them on the same set when you make a movepool, but they can both be available. I don't really care that Gen5 moved all TM moves out of Egg Pools if you're worried about that, or you can make Thunder DW only, whatever you can think of.

[samtheman]

After thinking about it for a long while, I'm thinking we should allow Brine, Hurricane, Bug Buzz, etc. Allow everything.

I think many (including myself) are forgetting that just because a move is allowed does not mean that Mollux will get it. Thus, the wider the selection, the more varied the move pool submissions will be. There will be some movepools with Brine and some without, etc. rather than several very similar submissions.

This is also my last plea for Bug Buzz to be allowed. Just as an option for someone to include in their movepool. If people feel it is overpowered, it won't go in their movepool or it won't win the vote.

Deck, while I understand your reasoning, don't you think you should leave more of the compatibility of moves to the movepool creators? You can give them feedback, but my thinking is that the movepools will be more varied if you give them more freedom. Limiting them this way seems like you don't trust submitters to make their own judgements on what might be too much or too little in the way of attacking moves for Mollux.

[jackm]

Alright, first things first. Scald should be disallowed. The whole idea of CAP 3 is to try to highlight its typing. Scald would interfere with that way too much. As in, it would probably get a higher percentage of usage than any STAB move Mollux would learn. The reason for this is that in rain, Scald shreds Mollux's threatlist to, well, shreds. It's just too good to pass up. In general, I think we should be very, very careful about giving Mollux Water-type moves, because they could overpower it and make it a slave to rain.

Secondly, I'm intrigued by this idea and I think that we should pursue it:

Originally posted by fat Darklatias92

I was thinking… what if we give to Mollux a Poison variant of Psyshock? In that way we can hit hard special walls and have a reason to use our Poison STAB. I'm not pretending to give 80 BP like Psyshock, but at least a decent power to deal with special walls that otherwise shut CAP down.
Most of our checks have already high Def stat and are mainly scared by our special moves, and Poison has a rather terrible coverage (only supereffective against Grass and neutered by Steel, who are already demolished by Fire, excluding Heatran).
I don't see the problem in giving it a similar attack, unless you point me out the contrary. May 31st, 2012 10:46:31 PM

Giving Mollux a physically targeting poison STAB move that works off of its enormous Special Attack stat wouldn't break it, like Scald. Pretty much all of its threatlist isn't threatened by it.In addition, coming from Ubers, which is my tier of battling "birth" and my current tier of choice, one of the deadliest threats is Mewtwo, commonly running Calm Mind/Psystrike/Ice Beam/Fire Blast. Part of what makes this Mewtwo so deadly is that it has the ability to strike the opponent's weaker defensive stat without sacrificing precious EVs to go mixed. Therefore, I would like to formally suggest giving Mollux a Poison-Type attack, probably of 80 Base Power, which uses Mollux's Special Attack stat and the opponent's Defense stat.

[MCBarrett]

I'm just gonna say that I agree with deck's idea 110%. Scald is really too powerful as dusk's calcs showed and would definitely be used being 100% accurate and having a chance to burn. Not allowing it makes us look elsewhere for less reliable but still effective coverage ( i think octazooka is totally possible for that). Also, allowing thunder gives us more of a reason to use mollux on a rain team with the 100% accuracy and sheer power but it won't be too much for our threats to handle. That makes mollux a counter to every water type (barring gastrodon but hp grass can help there) plus absorbing two forms of status makes mollux a legitimate option. Finally, mollux may still be given will o wisp to inflict burns on its threats but it will come with lower accuracy and without boosted se power to not overpower them.

[Deck Knight]

Alright, so my post about 24 hours ago didn't include an official warning, but it was close enough. We're moving on to NAM.