CAP 4 - Part 4 - Secondary Ability Discussion

[Mari]

I like the idea of Haverst - it is a very nice ability and makes the use of pinch berries more attractive. It may be worse than Simple, but Simple would outclass Weak Armor. Pinch berries are a very risky strategy, therefore I like this suggestion.

[Yllnath]

Going over the list of abilities, I've found 3 abilities that I think play well alongside Weak Armour:

Huge/Pure Power
Intimidate
Rough Skin

What Huge Power and Weak Armor have in common, is that they are both used to boost a stat. Now, for Huge Power to be on equal grounds with Weak Armour in terms of team building, I kinda need to poll jump: Make it so that the base attack and speed/as well as boosting move are such, that choosing either ability, you're missing out on something. Going Weak Armour to net a speed boost will mean you'll be playing with low Attack. Vice Versa, going with Huge Power without a reliable speed boost is also a tough choice to make.

What both Intimidate and Rough Skin (Intimidate being just all-round to useful, so probably way overpowered towards Weak Armour) have in common with WA, is that all 3 abilities somehow punish incoming physical/contact moves. Hitting a just switching in CAP4 with a weak physical fighting move, for example, is just giving it a free switch-in and a decent chance to sweep at the same time at +1 speed. (Possibly)
Intimidate CAP4 is somewhat more forceful in elbowing it's way into the game and pushing opponents out, and is less reliant on what kind of physical move hits them. The return is that Intimidate is only good for getting you in on Physical opponents, while Weak Armour can give you the set-up you may need of the bat to get your sweep going. A well-timed Weak Armour switch-in (Fighting move) is likely worth a lot more than Intimidate in terms of scoring reward.

Rough Skin is more of a middle ground, and feel is actually too weak in comparison to Weak Armour. Like Intimidate, this is all about punishing a physical move (in this case, even more specifically, a contact move). However, the result is more direct, in that you immediately take a chunk of health out of your opponent (25% with the helmet thingy). Where Weak Armour may set you up for a sweep, a set tailored around a bit more bulk and taking health from contact attackers with Rough Skin might just as much get some usage.

Now, of all these abilities, I feel Intimidate falls adamantly into the category "Nothing to learn here, people. Move along". It's just all-round good, and even though we'd limit the move pool to no speed boosting moves and a lower speed stat, it's so much of a solid ability, that it will still out class Weak Armour. There is also little risk involved, but then again, other than forcing one switch, there is also little reward involved. (Unlike Weak Armour) Of all 3 listed, this is my least favourite.

Rough Skin is pretty straightforward, and doesn't teach us much really. It's also quite underwhelming and is completely opposite in terms of play style towards WA. Where WA kind of promotes fast and frail sweeping, RS promotes being sturdy yourself, trying to get as much out of that ability as possible. The ability in itself is a lot riskier that WA as well, as now you're limiting your usefulness to contact moves only. The reward can be that you might be taking 25% HP off your opponent, which could be the end of a weakened physical attacker. So the reward does measure up somewhat.


Now, Huge Power however, I feel could be really good for CAP4, but is heavily reliant on things that would be massive poll jumps on multiple stages.
However, in terms of duality, Huge Power has the potential to be an ability alongside Weak Armour, where you could have one set, and each ability could be a viable choice on that one set. (Something BMB has on his wishlist)
Neither ability really outclass the other too. Huge Power seems like an awesome ability because prior examples are pokemon that rely on this ability to become great. However, we have full control over the next stages, and Weak Armour can be just as viable if we have a perfectly fine workable special side and don't even need the Huge Power boost to be effective, you're just giving up physical moves with Weak Armour.
The problem in Risk assessment for Huge Power is not so much that Huge Power is a risky ability, it isn't. The risk comes from the fact that choosing, means your foregoing the other ability. You're taking a risk in the sense that you'll have to rely on no speed boost but an attack boost. Or vice versa, no physical attack stat to work off, and only a potential speed boost to net you a sweeping speed.

All 3 abilities look fine to me, but for the sake of bolding something, I choose Huge Power as my preferred choice.

Also, one last funny note. If we're ever wanting to make a Huge Power mon, this CAP is the only one where it's a viable option, because of the stat stage now being after Huge Power. With stats done first, the Attack stat has already been decided upon, and then suddenly picking an ability to double the attack would mean whopping attack stats. You can't choose Huge Power when the attack stat has not been designed specifically for that.
As this is the first CAP (At least since CAP5 gen 4, can't say anything about older CAPs) with the ability stage before the stat stage, and with this CAP probably only being an exception, the chance that we'll make a special, one-of-a-kind CAP that we'll never get another chance to make and learn from is very big. Even though this bonus for Huge Power isn't a bonus for CAP4 per se, it's a bonus in terms of what we can learn along the process, and it makes Huge Power a more unique ability.

[Mari]

Or what about Truant + Entrainment/Skill Swap ... It seems to be interesting, but risky as well (your opponent just can use Protect/Taunt or switch into Shadow Tag Protect+Calm Mind Chandelure/Gothitelle and you have no chance anymore ...)

[CiteAndPrune]

First I'd like to add that I agree with a lot of the points Jagged_Angel and jas are making. No Guard, if chosen, will be boring, all things considered. The negative aspect of getting 100% hit is overhyped. Now if we had selected a Fire/Electric then No Guard would be an excellent choice for STAB Inferno/Zap Cannon. But we haven't, and to not poll jump about what moves CAP4 would receive, No Guard has too much potential to be either useless (yet chosen simply to avoid the Def drop from Weak Armor) or clearly the superior choice. I'm not fully certain there's no fine line in between, but I would really rather not rely on threading that line when we could pick another ability where that risk isn't there at all.

About Klutz, it's a tall order bmb puts forth to not mention the obvious benefit it provides... what else do you want? Fine, you can launch a powerful Fling (once, or more with Recycle) picking Iron Ball, or Toxic/Flame Orb, and carry them for the surprise hit until the time is right. Guaranteed burn (as opposed to Will'o'Wisp) along with extra damage would be rather beneficial for a Bug/Psychic mon that's Pursuit bait.... I'm trying here, okay? Okay.

What Yllnath said about Huge Power makes me wonder. It is making assumptions about stats, and would pigeon-hole us in the stat-making stage extremely, trying to balance that with also Weak Armor. But his argument regarding duality is convincing: needing to choose either Speed or Power is akin to the cases of Bronzong and Yanmega. I am only concerned that we'd need to give CAP4 an Attack stat about as high as Caterpie's to not go overboard. You know how dangerous MARILL is with that boost. MARILL. Think about it.

[GRs Cousin]

Originally Posted by Fat Mari

Or what about Truant + Entrainment/Skill Swap ... It seems to be interesting, but risky as well (your opponent just can use Protect/Taunt or switch into Shadow Tag Protect+Calm Mind Chandelure/Gothitelle and you have no chance anymore ...)

Shadow Tag Chandelure isn't available yet where as Gothitelle is still below OU for understandable reasons. The idea is really interesting, don't get me wrong, but it's very gimmicky--you'll only see it on sets with Skill Swap, and every other set will be Weak Armor or the tertiary ability. Even then, it's rather controversial to say a strategy like that would work competitively. A common scenario is that you'll take damage when you use it, they'll switch into a check (removing Truant from their Pokemon), and you'll be forced into either losing momentum by switching as well or risking dying to their newly sent out Pokemon. There is risk involved, but given the low reward and pigeonholed viability, it shouldn't be considered.

With bmb's post said, much of it against abilities I'm for, I narrow my nominations to Illusion, Mummy and Rough Skin.

I'd also like to make it a point that No Guard does not follow the concept. We'll get 100% accurate moves, yes, but we get nothing else out of that. We'd be removing luck, but understandably removing luck entirely on its own has little to do with the concept. Removing luck is placing an unnecessary control group on CAP4, one that makes much more sense on a "Variable-Removing" CAP, and it's clear that this concept of risk wants variables to reach its full potential and give us the most natural play-testing period. I'm not saying we want this CAP to be based on luck, but I am saying that letting us freely use low-accuracy moves without risk goes against the concept. Additionally, nobody will be carrying moves like Thunder and Hurricane under justification that it counters CAP4 unless they are already on a rain team in the first place. The only real scenario that No Guard truly plays out is when CAP4 faces a Tyranitar choosing between Pursuit and Stone Edge. Beyond that, it'd be the obvious choice to merely switch out and not get hurt by their powerful, low-accuracy move. Essentially that leaves No Guard with no real downside.

If all that still isn't enough, let us consider that Machamp most likely wouldn't even be UU were it not for the factor of No Guard. Almost every other Fighting-type gets the same things it does at faster speed or higher attack, but the only thing separating Machamp from the other Fighting-fodders is that it gets 100% accurate Dynamic Punches and Stone Edges. Name to me one equally powerful set using Guts. Show me that Machamp doesn't outright benefit from No Guard. Seriously. If Machamp gets almost-high usage based on two moves complimenting a single ability, then it can only be worse if we give it to an OU-orientated CAP with a higher BST and more moves to likely abuse it. No Guard does not have a place on this CAP.

[Maxim]

I suppose I may as well add my two cents.

To me, when I hear the word "risk" I generally think of a strategy or command that has the potential to put the user in the lead by a wide margin, and the potential to backfire horribly.

Now, naturally, this definition of risk is a bit intricate, because if we make too much reward, and too little risk, then that ability will always be chosen over the other one (think Bronzong and Heatproof). However, if we make too much risk with too little reward, then the ability is dead space. Thus we have to strike a delicate balance between those two.

Weak Armor was a good option because it certainly falls into the category of risk. If CAP ges hit with enough physical attacks, then it has a huge reward of extra speed to blow through your enemy's competition. However, if the CAP's hp hits zero, or the enemy has a Pokemon that doesn't care about the speed (Choice Scarf users, particularly bulky pokemon, priority users, etc.) then the end result is a horrible backfire. This sort of risk vs. reward is the sort of balance I'm looking for.

Now as for the second ability, it seems we're looking for a few basic things.

1. Duality with Weak Armor; ergo, if CAP chooses one ability, it will miss the other ability. This is a little difficult, because we don't want to make a Pokemon that is mediocre with both abilities. To be honest though, I think this will be best fulfilled in future polls, thus I won't go there.
2. Balance between risk and reward. As I outlined above, give CAP too much of either and it becomes either too good or too bad.
3. This ability will hopefully come into play most if not every game, unless the ability backfires. Basically, if we give CAP an ability that only works some of the time, then people will pick the other ability because it's more reliable.

I'm probably missing a few things, but I think this list will do for now. My emphasis is really on #2 though. To be honest, I think one of the main problems we're running into is that few of the abilities actually have a backfire mode on it. This isn't so much the fault of the players as it is of the game itself, as most abilities don't have a drawback.



Based on that, here are some abilities I like (from most liked to least liked):


Illusion is probably my favorite ability out of the bunch. It gives a clear, albeit psychological, element of risk v. reward. If the opponent calls the bluff, then it just backfired. However, if the opponent is fooled then it has the potential to absolutely wreck the opponent. Let's look really quick on how it fits the three points above:

1. It doesn't have the best duality, since as soon as the opponent sees a CAP without a disguise, he'll know that it has Weak Armor. That said, it comes down to a decision on how much risk a player wants, which I think is awesome. Does he choose Weak Armor, and get a more reliable risk, or does he choose Illusion, which is riskier and doesn't always work, but when it does work it tends to make a huge dent in the opponent.
2. Risk and reward are quite balanced here. I feel like I'm repeating myself a bit too much here, but Illusion gives CAP both a high risk and a high reward. The risk comes from the opponent calling the bluff and using Crunch, but the reward comes from possibly slamming his Tentacruel with a Psyshock while he thought you had Houndoom out.
3. Obviously, Illusion comes into play every game, and it depends a lot on what the player's team structure is as to its effectiveness.

So really, I don't see any well defined argument against Illusion. Honestly, the only thing I'm concerned about is outclassing Zoroark.



One interesting ability I found while looking through the Ability list on Smogon proper was Hustle. The risk v. reward aspect is pretty clear here, as it gives us a huge power boost, but at the expense of valuable accuracy. The only problem I really see here is a bit too much intensity between reward and risk (i.e. it has a lot of risk and a lot of reward).


Mummy is pretty decent I think. It's reward v. risk aspect is in whether you nullify the ability of something like Gyarados's Moxie or whether you nullify something like Archeops's Defeatist. The only trouble here is really that most popular OU Pokemon don't have things like Defeatist. Thus, I think it does fall a bit short on point #3. I'd still recommend it as a possible Dream World ability though.


Moxie is an interesting concept I think. The ability itself doesn't have much of a backfire potential, but when one uses it they have to make absolutely sure their opponent doesn't have a backup plan. That said, I am a bit wary as if you look at most Pokemon with Moxie, they are all generally used either late game, or whenever their counters are dead. Thus, I am a touch worried that it will only make our Pokemon an effective late-game sweeper, and not much else. That said, my feelings are overall positive, as I think we can work around it if need be.


Klutz is fairly good since it opens a lot of unique opportunities to mess around with items. It also has a pretty significant drawback since you can't use more useful items like Lefties or Life Orb. That said, it does lack the backfire possibility that I think we may want on this pokemon.



Now for the abilities I think won't work at all (from most hated to least hated).


No Guard...geez how did this get so popular? My opinion is that it shouldn't have even been considered. I think jagged angel hit the nail on the head on this one. This concept has the potential to either have too much reward and not enough risk, or be completely useless, depending on the movepool we choose. The only remotely viable move with this would be Megahorn, which I don't feel would be enough to justify No Guard. By far my biggest gripe with this ability is simple: There is zero risk for the user.


Now, let me explain here. There would be plenty of risk if people commonly used things like Dynamicpunch, Inferno, and Zap Cannon. The fact is though, they just don't, and if they do, they already have a way to patch up the accuracy. With the obvious culprits of risk out, it's down to the subtler moves that qualify risk, namely Fire Blast, Blizzard, etc. The thing here is, people use these because they at least work more often than they don't. All No Guard does in this situation is remove the possibility for the opponent to miss and CAP, and all CAP gets is more reward with not a whole lot of risk added to it. As such, where is the risk coming from? It isn't coming from the opponent, since the only moves he's likely to have were probably going to hit CAP anyways, and it certainly isn't coming from the CAP or ability itself.


Basically, what I'm saying here is that No Guard fixes an entirely different problem than we're trying to solve. Practically, all it does is make sure CAP cannot win because of miss hax, otherwise it is entirely dependent on the movepool. And since the movepool can only make No Guard worthless or entirely overpowered, risk isn't really involved at all.


Guts/Flare Boost/Marvel Scale/any other status dependent ability: These on the other hand I can understand why they were proposed. My only trouble with these are really that the risk is rather subdued. In fact, I'm not sure I'd even call it risk, since it's really more of a reward in exchange for a limited time for the pokemon to be useful. Again, there isn't really much that's bad about these, it's just there may be better options.


Defiant and similar abilities: This is a pretty good idea on paper, but in practice it's worthless more than anything else. It's far too situational. The only stat down move that is commonly used is Intimidate. Most other pokemon just boost their own stats rather than mess with stat down moves.



Huge Power: My main gripe with this one is simply that it severely limits our options as far as stats go. If we make it more than 100 Attack, then it goes into uber territory, and if it's much less, then Weak Armor becomes less viable. It also lacks a risk element. However, this isn't all bad, as it could fulfill two roles as a Specially inclined Weak Armor Sweeper or as a Physically based sweeper.


So there's my two cents.

[Zarco]

Originally Posted by Fat Asylum_Rhapsody

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that exactly what bmb just said that he wants?

There's a difference between not being used on the same set and differing how something plays. Take Porygon-Z or Honchkrow. Both have several applicable abilities that can be used on the same set. But you'll play Scarf Pory-Z differently if it has Adaptability than if it has Download, and MoxieKrow differently that Insomnia Krow. The former case decides how you plan on using the pokemon- and against what. Your opponent's lack of knowledge as to which you're using in the latter case (exactly as many people want in CAP 4) causes them to take into account the risk and reward of each situation. If you go for the sleep move on an Insomnia Krow, you might just be screwed. But if you attack into a Sucker Punch from Moxie Krow, or switch the wrong thing into a Brave Bird/coverage move, it gets a free attack boost and now has the chance to wreck your team. It's an issue of considering the worst case scenario and the best; in other words risk and reward.

No Guard doesn't do this. A bad move to take for CAP 4 is bad regardless of No Guard; a Fire Blast has an 85% chance to KO it anyways (with average stats), and 80% for Stone Edge. These are bad chances for anyone considering risk and reward, so it's a bad move regardless of No Guard. It does nothing to encourage risk vs. reward here. So the other side, offensively: still not risky. Sure, it removes luck and opens up our coverage options, but very slightly so. We can give it accurate moves if this is what you want out of No Guard, but it seems just a jumping off point to abuse a good ability without improving on the concept we have, or alternatively an inherently bad choice. We can do better than that.

Zarco, maybe I'm missing something here, but when exactly did "introduces risk and reward" and "does not alter how a Pokemon is played" become mutually exclusive? Because you seem to me to be saying that No Guard can't be the former because it is the latter, whereas I'm not seeing a problem with it being both.

[capefeather]

I'm looking at the recent comments about No Guard, but replying to them at length would just be rehashing the old arguments from the previous discussion. I'm kind of baffled that anyone would take the experiment analogy and argue that somehow that is against the goal of learning about the concept. Worse is that arguments are being made with respect to singular turns without any context, which is not-so-secretly something that I really wanted us to move away from when I submitted the concept. You can be against No Guard or anything else for whatever reason, but some of these claims strike me as extremely short-sighted and ignorant of the big picture and the long-term dynamics of a match.

I don't have much to say to the claim that No Guard would be boring. I suppose that that is ultimately up to preference. I personally don't think that it would be boring to reduce the luck factors and reveal more of the tactics and mindgames within. That's just how it is, I suppose.

Earlier, there was a list of proposed abilities, and Shield Dust and Liquid Ooze stand out to me, however minimally. I considered Shield Dust in times past, but I find that it may provide too much of a generic reward, shutting down moves like Scald and Body Slam, for which the secondary effects are a large part of their viability. Liquid Ooze strikes me as mostly inferior to Rough Skin for being more situational.

[srk1214]

Like my position on No Guard last time around, I fail to see how Mummy has any relevance to concept in the OU metagame. And I find myself unlikely to change my mind on that. I'm pretty meh on everything being talked about actually :/

[Korski]

So Weak Armor is the literal interpretation of the concept: Risk = -1 Def; Reward = +1 Spe, or in other words, you are exchanging "getting hit once [risk]" for "never getting hit again [reward]" (or at least that's the idea). The stats will surely fill in the gaps to make this Ability useful, which is why our other Abilities should try to stay away from requiring particular Speed numbers or tankiness ratings, so as to not double-up on responsibilities in those areas. I could support No Guard if I knew for sure that both Thunder and Blizzard will be in the movepool, but beyond those two moves and maybe Focus Blast, I can't see No Guard being much more than a zero-sum Ability for those who are reluctant to deal with activating Weak Armor. Especially if we end up with yet another middling-speed, bulky-offense CAP, except now with good boosting moves, No Guard will eclipse Weak Armor as being the safer choice, owing to the fact that the user needn't rely on the opponent to control his/her strategy. This goes completely against the concept. Where Weak Armor makes a sacrifice in order to excel elsewhere, No Guard does no such thing. If you are switching into Terrakion, it's because you are predicting Close Combat, not because you are predicting it will miss with Stone Edge. Ensuring that Stone Edge gets that extra 20% accuracy is probably exactly the CAP equivalent to getting 20% on a test: it's just slightly better than not trying at all.

tl;dr if you support No Guard because you secretly want to abuse Thunder/Blizzard/Hydro Pump/Focus Blast regardless of weather and don't want to polljump, then wink twice so I know and I'll support it. Otherwise, on a conceptual basis, No Guard is just a nothing Ability that interacts with the concept in only the most shallow ways I can think of.

--------------

I still think that Flare Boost could rock in conjunction with Quiver Dance, Psycho Shift, or Trick, and since the options appear to be No Guard and Illusion again, I'd like to hear better arguments against it than "residual damage aghh" because it is actually very possible to enter the field of battle without SR, SS, 3 layers of Spikes, and a critical hit on Mach Punch.

[GatoDelFuego]

I fail to see how anything with a free +2 boost is risky in any way whatsoever. You'd have to give it something like below tyranitar speed for it to not absolutely destroy the metagame...and think about it, ttar does just fine with little speed anyway. Huge power provides zero risk at all for this pokemon.

[Camisado]

Originally Posted by Fat srk1214

Like my position on No Guard last time around, I fail to see how Mummy has any relevance to concept in the OU metagame. And I find myself unlikely to change my mind on that. I'm pretty meh on everything being talked about actually :/

Amen to that. There are no abilities that currently stand out that scream "What are the risks/rewards of choosing X over Weak Armor, especially when we have no idea of what stats are going to have. Most abilities currently in contention for being slated just "sort of correlated if you use your imagination.

It's also very difficult because a large part of this is "guessing stat builds" we don't know if Riskymon is going to have low speed that uses Weak Armor in a fashion similar to Shell Smash Cloyster, an average speed attacker into something base 115-esque, or a high-speed attacker becoming reaching nearly 500 base speed at +1.

It's even harder to guess because of how contradictory 'stereotypical' Bug and Psychic types' stat spreads work. Bug types are stereotypically fragile, physically offensive sweepers. Psychics are stereotypically bulky, specially offensive tanks and walls.

I would of been much happier choosing a secondary ability maybe before the final slate for stat spreads, or before seeing movepools, but I understand that wasn't a very viable option given the fairly rigid model we follow CAP with.

[forestflamerunner]

Reading Birkal’s argument for illusion back on page 2 gave me an idea.



Weak Armor allows us to explore a risk with an external locust of control- For weak armor to be effective, the opponent must attack you with a physical move that you can tank. That moves a lot of the risk onto your opponent, where he/she has to weigh the pros and cons of using a physical attack that CAP 4 can tank because if they mispredict, they would have a +1 psybug on their hands. Yes have the risk of losing your Pokémon if you mispredict/mistimed your entry, but your opponent has to make the wrong move for weak armor to work which puts a substantial amount of the risk on your opponent.

Multiscale allows us to explore a risk with an internal locust of control- Multiscale, unlike weak armor, does not require specific actions by your opponent to activate. On the flipside, it is very hard to keep Multiscale intact, and to abuse it you will need a lot of team support. Multiscale can give you one free setup opportunity, but if you are forced out, you are at a siginificant disadvantage. This maintains the whole entire “one shot at glory” theme we have going on; you can’t sacrifice multiscale until your checks are weakened enough to warrant a sweep.


Also, Multiscale does introduce a mindgame aspect into the battle. Suppose you switch CAP 4 into, say, Metagross. You are at full HP. The opponent now has a choice before him. Does he attack with Meteor Mash to break your Multiscale and risk letting you get a boost via Weak Armor, or does he switch and risk giving a Multiscale variant an extra turn to set up? This seems to be the sort of feel we are going for with the secondary ability and that is why I’d like to support Multiscale.


EDIT: Did that for you BMB

[bugmaniacbob]

So, as I may not be around much tomorrow, I might as well post my current, potential slate here for your viewing pleasure.

Illusion
No Guard
Moxie
Mummy

All of these have hopefully been sufficiently explored in this thread to explain their inclusion. Feel free to now discuss what you do or don't want on this slate. I'll probably close this up in about 20 hours, so you can take your time. Just remember that restating old arguments without addressing those of others is not very likely to get your position any greater sort of consideration.

Oh, and because somebody on IRC wanted me to make it clear - just because Weak Armour is the primary ability does not necessarily mean it takes absolute precedence in all matters. It only means that it was the ability that we chose first.

----

Originally Posted by Fat forestflamerunner

locust of control

ahaha genius

[SubwayJ]

Still nothing on Trace BMB?

Anyways...

I am pretty happy with the current slate, barring one.

I am definitely AGAINST Mummy, I fail to see the risk associated with it. It puts risk on the opponent which is NOT what we want. In my opinion, mummy fails to achieve what we want.

I am however in support with No Guard and illusion (a little hesitant on moxie)

[ChrisTehAwesome]

I'm not sure how this could fit with the typing, but we could go with something like Swift Swim. It would be risky because CAP would only get the speed boost against a rain team but it would be a much more immediate boost, allowing for some immediate offensive pressure.

Dunno if this is too much "teambuilding risk" and not "in-battle risk" though.

[capefeather]

At this point, I'd say the choice between the four abilities is entirely up to preference. I can see the argument for all of them, even Mummy now. I think it might still be a tad too situational to be worth it, but it does achieve a decent contrast with Weak Armour. I just wish I could figure out with a degree of certainty what will win because my stat spread considerations will depend greatly on it :(

[Unitas]

I would also like to get MultiScale on the ballot. The duality with Weak Armor works very well for a few reasons. One, CAP4 will have to be somewhat bulky to make weak armor work so multiscale would really help this CAP. Second of all, this ability really makes your opponent try to predict what ability you are running. If you have weak armor and they think its multiscale, they might attack trying to break it, to wind up with a +1 speed CAP on their hands. On the flipside, they think you have weak armor so they switch giving multiscale CAP a free turn to set up with multiscale still intact.

[DetroitLolcat]

I'm not sold as to why we need another competitive ability. Weak Armor is a fine risk/reward ability in that it promotes switching into Physical attacks, which means that in order for this ability to activate, you're going to need to take some damage. Great choice.

However, since Weak Armor is such a great ability, why do we need another? Weak Armor accomplishes the concept very well, and adding another Ability seems to be adding to the Pokemon simply for the sake of adding to the Pokemon. There are plenty of good suggestions here, I particularly like Analytic and Rivalry. Though bmb has made his stance on NCA pretty clear, I still think it's the best choice for the CAP.

Complaining aside, Analytic and Rivalry are my two favorites for the secondary ability. Analytic rewards lowering this Pokemon's Speed, which forms a very interesting duality between this Pokemon's two abilities. Meanwhile, Rivalry will make players even more conscientious about gender selection, which will add interesting mindgames to teambuilding when it comes to gender selection. Rivalry might be a bit unsophisticated, but it does accomplish the task.

Analytic, however, is a very interesting ability in the context of Weak Armor. Analytic will (THEORYMON ALERT) split this Pokemon into two very different sets. Weak Armor will most likely promote running Speed on this Pokemon to fully take advantage of the ability, while Analytic will promote running bulk and low Speed in order to take advantage of the power boost and slamming a switch-in immediately. Analytic is risky in that if this Pokemon is given enough Speed to abuse Weak Armor, it also has to have a low enough Speed to abuse Analytic on a different set. The rewards to both abilities are pretty apparent.

Analytic is the best choice for this Pokemon, with NCA and Rivalry as good alternatives. No Guard is a bad choice (high reward, low risk), and many other suggested abilities (Justified, Defiant) are either luck-related or just too small-scale to be useful.

[srk1214]

For what it's worth, I also believe NCA or even NSA is the best option too. But bmb spoke. Plain and simple. It's within his rights as TL. No point complaining.

EDIT:

Yes... which is why it would have to be something so awful that it wouldn't be used... aka Truant.

[capefeather]

I, for one, think that we have four perfectly good candidates for alternate abilities, and that any of them would fit the concept more than just having Weak Armour. Plus, I'm not sure that any ability would be purely non-competitive... (Yeah, remember that argument from last CAP?) Rivalry is based largely on arbitrary whims of teambuilders, which makes it undesirable to me. bmb has made his case countless times against Analytic, so it's a lost cause to essentially repeat the arguments supporting it.

[ThePhalanx]

Originally Posted by Fat capefeather

I, for one, think that we have four perfectly good candidates for alternate abilities, and that any of them would fit the concept more than just having Weak Armour.

Personally, I don't believe No Guard should be on the list, but I guess enough people want it so it'll probably be a top favourite. My vote still goes (and will always go) to Moxie, though, as I still think its the best one on the list, and the one that fits Weak Armour the most as a secondary ability.

Also, how can we make Illusion work so that it doesn't completely outclass Zoroark? Because if we're making Zoroark 2.0 then we're completely missing the point of this CAP. Otherwise, it's also a pretty solid choice, as it practically personifies the risk-reward concept.

And finally, Mummy. I'm still undecided on Mummy, but it looks like a solid second choice, if too situational for my liking, though I guess it could work, and I see the potential risks and rewards associated with it.

So, my current order of choice is:
Moxie --> Fits the concept better, excellent synergy with Weak Armour
Mummy --> A bit situational, but okay
Illusion --> Great if we can make it not completely outclass Zoroark, otherwise nope
No Guard --> I fail to see the risk outlined in this whatsoever. Why is it even slated?

[ZhengTann]

If BMB would care to add Multiscale into his slate, then I'm definitely supporting it. Like Moxie, it requires careful strategy execution in order to make CAP4 an unstoppable wrecking ball later in the game, but Multiscale gives out greater risks as entry hazards will strip it off and leave CAP4 with nothing but raw stats and 4MSS.

[GatoDelFuego]

While I believe that Illusion is the best ability, I think it will indeed outclass zoroark. However, that doesn't mean that Illusion CAP 4 will outclass Weak Armour CAP 4. Zoroark is a pretty bad thing to put as a benchmark, as it's really not that good outside of its ability. Still going to support it, always have. I liked Moxie in the past, but it really doesn't seem like it will mesh very well with weak armour when I think about it. Definitely not No Guard, and Mummy indeed puts risk on the opponent, good job of Subway for seeing that.