CAP 5 - Part 1 - Concept Assessment

[MCBarrett]

Of the different project directions brought up in this thread, how do you think they compare with each other?

I'm going to have to say that all of these directions look pretty solid, however there are definitely some that need to be developed more, and others that we will have to be very careful in order to be successful.

Which are most likely to be successful? Least?

The direction that is most likely to be successful is the sun mon. It really just is a perfect fit for this concept but I think it may be a little too easy for us. However, I really like jas's description of this direction because it really shouldn't be something that necessarily abuses the sun like venusaur or the other chlorophyll users do. I think something that would be given chlorophyll and could take out things like latios one on one would be incredibly overpowered and centralizing. It should be something that provides offensive, defensive or hazard support to patch up a sun team's weaknesses to make it more successful. I think this is a direction we could patch into one of the others as well. Something I thought of was something along the lines of starmie in terms of stats and support abilities but that could be used effectively in the sun.

On the other side, I would say Direct Approach and Extremecould be a little too broad to be successful. I'll provide an example for this in the form of celebi in the current metagame. Specially Defensive Celebi is pretty much the best counter to common rain threats besides Tornadus right now. You would think people would be scared of using as many water types with this thing running around as it takes literally no damage from things like rotom-w, barely any from offensive threats like keldeo and specs politoed and it can hit them back for super effective damage while giving support to its team through thunder wave etc. at the same time. However, people aren't too scared of celebi because it can be dealt with by a multitude of common threats such as mamoswine, tyranitar, scizor, jirachi etc. This is the problem with these directions. In order for it to work, imo, we not only have to counter the common type that is in question, but we can't be shut down by common threats, even if they are uncommon types like mamoswine and tyranitar. If our rain counter is beaten by another common threat we won't have to resort to something such as an underused poison type to defeat it. We simply throw the counter's weakness onto our rain team and continue to spam specs hydro pumps from keldeo without a problem. And with this obstacle, I fear that we will try to give great stats, and secondary typings to take on the common pokes in OU that will likely counter us, and we will be making that does well against everything in OU which completely defeats the purpose of this concept. This may seem like the easy way out at first glance but I think if we don't look over every avenue with this direction we will just end up being dealt with by things we do not want to be countered by.

Are any too restrictive? Too broad?

Kind of already answered this above but I don't think any are too restrictive so that's good

Do you believe any of them are more conducive to interesting discussion than the others?

Definitely. I think both directions which are kind of underdeveloped at this point could bring some great discussion later on. These would be the Hazard Controller and the Help a Playstyle.

The former option will provide some discussion and research into how controlling hazards in some way will truly affect both common and uncommon threats. With something like guaranteed no stealth rocks make things volcarona unstoppable? Or would it have very little effect at all? Would this absence of stealth rocks backfire on us and benefit the types we are going after such as dragon? What would our perfect rapid spinner be like in terms of stats, movepool, typing etc? Would lower used types like ground and rock become even less used because stealth rock is no longer helpful? I think these are all some good questions to look at going forward with this direction.

The latter option really intrigues me because we would get to delve into underused play styles such as hail and anti-weather (weatherless) to see what would make them more usable in the current metagame. Would making an underused play style more viable make rain less effective? Would we just replace sand or sun as the "Next Best"? What type of poke would make playstyles such as hail and anti-weather more effective? Would it take out opposing counters through offensive coverage? Would it wall certain threats to these teams? Would it be viable to use this mon in other playstyles? Could we make an underused type more viable or would we just make common types more viable on these teams? I think these are all good questions to look at for this direction. However, as you can see, these options have many variables and although they will most certainly challenge us and bring some great discussion to the table, we may put lots of time and energy into just figuring out it will likely not succeed.

And I kinda touched on the last two questions in my other answers and its getting late. Maybe I'll come back to it at another time but I think these are some things people should consider before deciding which way we should go with this.

[ShyGuy1221]

The Direct Approach and the Extreme Approach are by nature very similar and share a key weakness, Hidden Power. If we take the direct approach and make CaP5 counter dragon types and lose to say grass types, there will inevitably be some dragons or teammates of dragons that switch their hidden powers to grass or use a grass coverage move just to counter CaP5. Perhaps this isn't as big of a deal as I'm making it, but it's still something to consider if we decide to go down this route.
That being said I think this is the most open in terms of what types we want to raise/lower the use of, as we can choose any two types to affect and build CaP5 around that.

Sun Mon is a path that gives us a clear goal, but restricts us to buffing fire and grass and nerfing water. Nothing wrong with that, but if people want to counter fighting and boost dark usage, we might as well pick another avenue. However, if we do choose sun mon we must be careful not to simply replace key sun abusers, meaning chlorophyll sweeping, fire stab abusing, and setting up sun, are roles which we should avoid. That means we would need fill a role that sun currently does not have any good abusers of. We also would need to decide if sun mon is good only in sun, or if it functions perfectly fine out of sun, but really good in it.

Hazard Controller is definitely something that we would need to pair with something else if we decide on this one. Though the question is what? The direct and extreme approaches would not likely have time to deal with hazards if they are focused on countering their respective types. This leaves Sun Mon and Help a playstyle as possible partners. A combination of hazard controller and sun mon would give an extra boost to fire types by helping to alleviate their weakness to rocks. Possibly acting as sort of sun version of Starmie or Tentacruel, a fine spinner outside of a sun, but even better in it.

[MyNameIsRicky]

Apologizes if someone has said this already, but I believe a major reason for the dominance of Dragon, Water, Steel, and Fighting types is largely due to the prevalence of Stealth Rocks. Dragon's best counter, Ice, is weak to it. Similarly, Fire is hit hard by rocks, limiting its capacity to check Steel types. Fighting and Steel both resist Stealth Rocks, which just shows how much the move overcentralizes the metagame. What I think could be a solution to the problem is have something like a Fire-Flying Pokemon with Magic Guard (perhaps a physical attacker with Flare Blitz and Brave Bird, but that might be too powerful) that could ignore rocks and come in safely and force out or kill most of the Pokemon in OU. I think trying to use weather to counter the aforementioned trend will actually increase the use of rain teams because the best counter to weather is weather.

[ganj4lF]

Okay, let's comment a bit the roads we can take.

The Sunmon is a cool concept, gives us a clear goal in terms of what type we want to target and what type(s) we want to boost, which is something valuable since I feel the other concept are a bit too vague in this regard. It is broad in the sense we can achieve this in many ways, however we must keep in mind reachzero's post, especially the part where it ways that the pokemon must be advantageous in sun much more than it is for the other playstyles, which makes the concept kinda tricky. For example, one of the most crippling flaws of Sun is that its weather inducer is weak to Stealth Rock, however giving Sun an easy way to keep Rocks off the field can only work if it's unusable for the other weathers / playstyles (Dry Skin Rapid Spinner? Just a random idea) since otherwise Kyu-B, Thundurus, DNite and whatever become instantly huge threats that probably overshadow the Sun's improvement. I won't exclude the possibility to give Sun a better weather inducer, since it automatically fulfills the "conditions" of reachzero's post (it doesn't work well outside Sun, while boosting significantly that weather, and indirectly Fire types), however I recognize that it might be the least interesting way to pursue. The concept's chances to succeed or fail, and its broadness, depend entirely on how we decide to achieve the goal of buffing Sun, so answering jas's questios is a bit tricky; however it is also for the other concepts, and given the clear focus of this one, it is likely to be a good way to build our CAP, in my opinion.

The Direct Approach is the one I don't like at all. We already have many examples of those kind of pokemons (see Celebi, Gastrodon) for Rain teams, but they fail to achieve their goal as successfully as, say, Heatran for Sun teams. Countering defensively Rain (which is the most discussed type, so let's talk about this first) is very tricky thanks to the different ways they can exploit their weather. You have to consider Thunder, Hurricane, Secret Sword, Ice moves in general, the chances of a Scald burn, and their probable Ferrothorn ready to set-up on you if you cannot threaten it. The other most used types all have ways to go past their weaknesses, so this approach is both challenging, fairly unlikely to succeed, and uninteresting (since we've already seen many examples of this kind of pokemon). Maybe I'm overstating things, but that's my first impression.

On the other hand, the Extreme Approach is maybe the most interesting one. There are only a few pokemon that can single handedly threaten a type, and they are likely to fail thanks to other defects in the case of Water (Thund-T, which is probably the closest thing to this concept we have is crippled by SR and is generally weak defensively, as it is Jolteon). Building such a pokemon would help us learn how to counter a type as a whole offensively, which I think is quite a big deal. I don't know if it's likely to succeed or not, however since CAP is more about the journey than about the destination, I think this is a good way to proceed in our CAP.

Hazard Controller is interesting but it has a quite high risk of backfiring, as described previously. I would avoid this concept, although not as strongly as the Direct Approach.

Help A Playstyle is concept with unpredictable outcomes since its extreme broadness. If someone can come up with a clear direction to pursue this, it can be a good alternative. Otherwise, I'd stick to the previous mentioned entries, specifically either the Sunmon (which is a restriction of this concept, so not too far from it) or the Extreme Approach; both of them have their advantages without the sheer amount of unpredictability that a concept like this can present if not provided with a clear path to follow.

Just my two cents.

[jc104]

First of all, these options aren't mutually exclusive. I honestly believe we should be doing ALL of them (except possibly sunmon), but of course some are more important than others:

I'm going to go against the mold here, and say that by far the best method is the direct approach. Yllnath described this an an "easy way out" - is this concept not difficult enough for you already? Isn't an easy option exactly what we need? Isn't an easy option an effective option? OK, I understand this might not promote "interesting discussion", but when we complicate things in CAP, we tend to get them horribly wrong. The CAP voting crowd is extremely fickle, and struggles to stick with one plan throughout. This most basic approach is the safest way to go about this. If we look at water-types, for instance, the best way to deal with them is simply to take water-type moves really well (immunity, ideally). Rain actually has fairly little to do with it - you don't want to benefit from rain at all, otherwise rain teams gain an advantage. The Extreme Approach is just us doing a good job of the direct approach; it's the ideal result of the direct approach. These two approaches should be our main focus when it comes to inhibiting types.

Helping a playstyle (such as sun) is a good idea. We should be trying to inhibit one playstyle (rain) in favour of others for the first part of our concept. We might also achieve the second part by doing this. However, we must be careful not to limit our CAP to a single playstyle, for that will severely limit its usage and effectiveness with respect to the concept. This is a particular concern when it comes to sun, which is currently somewhat rare as a whole playstyle - think how common one pokemon is likely to be, even if it's used on 100% of sun teams. I actually think that buffing SAND instead might be a better move - sand is already relatively common, and seems to have the upper hand against rain right at this moment. I mentioned this in my last post, but Cradily is an excellent example of the kind of pokemon we want to create (save for its general weakness). Cradily prefers sand as a weather condition due to its rock typing, benefits little from rain, and yet takes on rain attackers very well thanks to storm drain (grass typing is perhaps not the best choice, as it leaves cradily weak to ice and fighting, although it does let cradily smack waters around). It isn't inhibited or benefitted by rain or sun at all, which would make it usable on other types of team if it were generally a better pokemon. Even when being used on rain, it's still inhibiting rain. It's also worth mentioning that Tyranitar is both a Dark type and a Rock type, and promotes other rock-types - sand boosts uncommon types as well as sun.

Hazard controller could be great or awful depending on what we decide to do. If we're trying to inhibit dragon-types, it's a pretty awful idea (dragonite, salamence, kyurem-b...), and if not, it's a great idea. I see this being largely movepool-based (e.g taunt, rapid spin) or possibly ability-based, so it could easily be tacked on without too much concern.

edit:

The Direct Approach and the Extreme Approach are by nature very similar and share a key weakness, Hidden Power

This is actually quite an important point; I believe it should still work, as long as we are careful not to give our CAP a 4x weakness. A 2x super effective hidden power is only as strong as a 2x resisted STAB Hydro Pump in the rain.

[BrianFantana]

With regards to the extreme direct approach/hidden power issue, I think that the issue is negligible for two reasons. Firstly, solid special bulk (and no dumbass 4x weakness) would go a long way to sort it out, encouraging either powerful special STAB attacks or physical offense (and our underused types - take Grass for example - don't tend to have widely distributed physical coverage moves). Secondly, and much more importantly, the aim would not be primarily to be defensively vulnerable to the underused type but to be offensively impotent against it, necessitating usage of pokemon of that type rather than coverage moves.

I agree with jc104 that ideally elements of each approach should be integrated - after all, typing is such an integral part of the game that it takes multiple factors to affect its usage. In fact, I'm entirely in agreement with his post - the direct/extreme approach should be the focus, with the playstyle/hazard concepts accounted for but not centralized.

This forces us to think about the typings themselves - weakness, resistance, movepool typicalities, stat trends - and work from there rather than use an external factor like weather to get the result without deep consideration of the concept's initial questions. Seeking primarily to buff a playstyle ultimately teaches us more about that playstyle than about the types that it makes use of, and might not have the desired suppressive effect on dominant types (would Drizzle teams pack less water types purely because of an increased sun/sand/hail presence? Hell no. Would they vary their typings more specifically because CAP5 makes life hell for them if they don't? Much more likely.)

[CiteAndPrune]

I better put this in Hide tags before the size of this posts gets the better of me. >>

Of the different project directions brought up in this thread, how do you think they compare with each other?

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I think they all show promise and are likely to succeed if we pursue any one direction with dedication. However, some of them show more synergy with others and given their different strengths I think going for the best balance of options they suggest will make for better multi-faceted discussions and a richer learning experience overall - for example, making a(n Extreme) Type Counter, who enables Sun teams, controls Hazards, AND supports another playstyle besides Sun - such as weatherless Stall - is ambitious but doable, and would have the best overall impact on usage as a consequences.

Which are most likely to be successful? Least?

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Direct Approach: I think this one has it the hardest because the Water, Fighting and Dragon Pokemon we're trying to 'counter' are such offensive powerhouses that attempting to tank and then force them out would necessitate a ridiculously defensive stat distribution. And even if we manage to make it work, it's not necessarily going to be interesting. Doesn't help that Water-Fighting-Dragon aren't resisted by anything short of Water-immune Ghost/Steel, as others brought up before.

Extreme Approach: A much more potent direction considering, as I posted earlier, that the dangerous Water, Fighting and Dragon Pokemon share a common quality of being fast, offensive powerhouses while lacking in bulk. There really is nothing easier than making a CAP5 faster than all of them and capable of OHKOing our select threats, rendering them liabilities to have on the team. However, I do believe that since this is simple to complete, then merging this approach with another would be to our benefit.

Sun mon: I think it has a fair chance to succeed, provided we do not try to make a better Ninetails or better Venusaur. What Sun teams need right now is someone to enable their better abusers to truly (pardon the pun please) SHINE. If we can do that, we're good to go... also, although jas stated his doubts for it as a playstyle, I think a hail mon is also a viable route we could take here, comparable to sun if slightly harder in execution. However, if we did make an Ice type (and avoiding Blizzspam gave it that boosted STABed Ice Shard) it'd combine well with the above Extreme Approach, so that's something to consider.

Hazard controller: I think this is a fairly simple approach, so there isn't a high chance to fail at what we'd set out to do - control hazards - however, unless it is paired with another approach it may not be enough to affect usage significantly. Giving Sun teams a better hazard controller, that thrives off Rain teams, is one way to do this - if Fire attacks are a liability in a metagame where Heatran can switch in and return a boosted Fire attack right at you, what would happen if a Storm Drain Pokemon was the hazard setter on sun teams? Every single Water STAB they want to use, from Hydro Pumps to Scalds, would be a liability to them - would threaten to give up free turns and get set up on.

Help a Playstyle: It has a fair chance to succeed, but we must decide on WHAT playstyle we want to help before we venture further here. It could be Sun, or Sand, or Hail - it could be Stall - it could be Weatherless Offense - or even those Baton Pass teams. I'm in favour of Stall at the moment because with all the Hyper Offense I frankly want to see more good Stall in play, and would curb the power creep of offensive behemoths, if done right.

Are any too restrictive? Too broad?

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Direct Counter: Too broad until we narrow down which types we want to raise and lower. Also, no one Pokemon can wall all of the top 4 (and Steels aren't stopped by Walling them, anyway).

Extreme Approach: Also too broad until we decide on the types, but at least we have a bit more freedom here in that we're not forced to make CAP5 ridiculously defensive to do its job. There's several ways to make a Type a liability to have and exploring those in detail while narrowing down our options will lead to a good discussion, I hope.

Sun mon: This one I fear might be too restrictive. We already got 'raise Fire and Grass types, lower Water and Steel types, leave Fighters and Dragons untouched, can't overlap with any of Sun's current premier team members'. If we select this approach and focus on it without joining any others, then we have barely any wiggle room other than selecting the particulars and hoping Sun triumps Rain and dominates our metagame for the next few weeks. This is the reason why, while I see it as fairly likely to succeed, I'm not excited to see this approach win... unless - say - CAP5 had at minimum two abilities, one making it a great sun abuser and another letting it function competently on other teams (Weatherless, Stall, or even Hail if it was, say, Fire/Ice?), letting it spread its scope some more.

Hazard setter: Currently it's vaguely defined and simultaneously concerned with too little, if we go the route of 'just give it Rapid Spin' we're not getting much done. I think this is a fair direction to pursue because of the larger impact on the metagame that removal of Stealth Rock might have, but at best this can be a secondary approach, supporting another one.

Help a Playstyle: Broad until we select a Playstyle. But once we select one - for example Stall - there's many different ways we could go, discussing HOW to Help a playstyle, what it really needs, how to meet its needs etc. So I have no worries for this one, and let's give it a shot if we're not doing Sun mon (or even then, as the two are actually so similar).

Do you believe any of them are more conducive to interesting discussion than the others?

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Direct Approach: Not really.

Extreme Approach: Better than above, but not by much unless people can't agree on the best practical application of it. I guess it depends on which Types specifically we'll try to make Liabilities, if we settle for little the path to take will be straightforward, but with just enough, then searching for the right combination of Typing, Ability, Stats and Moves to accomplish all our ambitious goals without compromising any role will be a great journey. Still, I'm hoping that this can combine with at least one approach (like sun mon or hail mon).

Sun mon: Figuring out the perfect member that sun teams are now missing will be an interesting discussion. I think it's fairly average otherwise.

Hazard Controller: Not really.

Help a Playstyle: Depends on the playstyle and how ambitious we'll be. That said, I think this approach holds the most potential for great discussions, but we'll need to proceed rather carefully.

What types would each method be best for dealing with, both positively and negatively? Conversely, what method would be best for increasing/decreasing the usage of the different highly/lesser used types?

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Direct Approach: Deals best with Fighters, maybe Dragons. Water is too versatile to just counter Directly and Steel does the countering. It has an average chance of decreasing top types' usage, except for Water if Rain teams just incorporate CAP5 as a must-have counter to enemy Rain teams.

Extreme Approach: Deals best with Water, Dragon, Fighting or Steel, but not all of them at once. I think making a Type a Liability is the single best approach to bringing down usage of that Type, while depending on coverage holes, it can be fairly successful at increasing the usage of whatever lesser Type we select.

Sun mon: Deals best with Water and Steel, most likely approach to increase usage of Fire and Grass types. Pretty straightforward.

Hazard Controller: The most successful approach for increasing usage of Types weak to Stealth Rock, however it might backfire by making certain Dragons and Hurricane-spamming Rain members more powerful. It can't decrease the usage of any of the top Types by itself, so it basically necessitates the use of another approach.

Help a Playstyle: Difficult to gauge and AGAIN depends on what playstyle we want to support. If we suddenly made Hail dominant, then Ice types would increase in usage while Dragon usage would plummet, though Steel would still be great defensively and now also have an offensive use for their STABs. On the other hand, improving Stall might bring back Ghost types as spinblockers and Dark types as Pursuiters.

And now for one more HIDE box, this one coming entirely from me.

How could we possibly integrate the different approaches into one direction?

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Since I've been advocating to merge approaches, I'll show you one example of what I mean. I'm going to combine Extreme + Sun mon + Hazard Controller + Help a Playstyle here.

First, imagine we gave CAP5, Electric/Fire Typing and Storm Drain. Its only weaknesses would be x2 Rock and x4 Ground, while its list of resistances becomes x1/2 Bug, Electric, Fire, Flying, Grass, Ice, x1/4 Steel and x0 Water. That translates into immune to Rain team's main STAB of course, resisting their Thunders, Hurricanes, Ice Beams and their Grass coverage, walling and roasting Scizor and Ferrothorn. It would be neutral to Fighting and Dragon, but an Electric/Fire type could Will'o'Wisp or Thunder Wave to cripple those and let CAP5's team clean them up.

Having a Water Type on the team of Water coverage moves becomes a liability, because you risk getting OHKOed by Electric STAB and giving CAP5 a Storm Drain boost if it switches in on your Hydro Pump - and if that wasn't enough, your Rain gives it no-miss Thunders, while in Sun its Fire STAB gets boosted and it might have Solarbeam to smash Waters with.

Having a Steel Type on the team becomes a liability because Fire hits super-effective and Electric STAB hurts Heatran, who might get screwed over due to paralysis.

Having a Fighting Type, which bar Keldeo are physical attackers, means you might get Burned/Paralyzed and have no chance to sweep (and Keldeo fears the Electric STAB). Same deal with Dragon types, essentially.

Who would rise in usage then? Well, Rock and Ground types (even Rock/Ground ones) could appear to block its STABs, as well as DEFENSIVE Dragon types (can you see the return of Wish Salamence?). If Rock and Ground types rise then Sand might increase in usage to counter the Sun, though Sun's Grass types hold the advantage over those. At any rate, that'd further push Rain teams out of the limelight.

So that covers Extreme Approach. How Electric/Fire helps out Sun teams as their awesome Rain counter and additional Sun abuser is obvious, I hope.

How would this monster Control Hazards? Well Ferrothorn, Skarmory and Forretress can't really stay in and Stealth Rock in its face or they'll get smashed by super-effective STAB moves. It could have Rapid Spin to clear once they die - OR it could have Taunt to render them useless, as it resists their STABs - OR it could use their turn wasted on setting up a hazard to setup itself and proceed to sweep, in Volcarona fashion. I'm not saying it should have Quiver Dance, though if it did - even one turn could spell a team's demise.

For Help a Playstyle, though, this kind of offensive threat would function excellently even on Weatherless Offensive teams, doing its job vs Rain like it does for the Sun teams. If used on Stall, it could instead be a great status platform, with Will'o'Wisp/ThunderWave, or also Lava Plume/Discharge. It could be their pivot with Volt Switch, too, in a somewhat Quickstall role. And that's before considering general support moves it could also get.

Now, please bear in mind I'm not saying the above example is the best end result that fullfills the Concept or anything like that. It's one of many routes we can take - and I'm confident that whichever route we pick in the end, we'll arrive at something no less awesome, if we really put our mind to it. We got all the competitive steps ahead of us to be decided and we have all the tools to combat the top Types while encouraging lesser used Types to join the fray. So let's set an ambitious goal and fulfill it as best we can.

[jc104]

I know that this isn't the topic right now, but I really think we needed some kind of decision as to which type to go after. I mean, some people are still assuming that we are going to go after fighting, which strikes me as utterly ridiculous bearing in mind that it's about the 7th most used type in OU (if you sum the usages of all OU pokemon of each type).

Whether we're going after dragon is critical when considering the hazard control idea, and there's not even any guarantee we're trying to nerf rain yet. So could we have some kind of decision, jas?

[PureQuestion]

I think going after purely waters and dragons is the ideal choice for a drop off; Steel is largely doing as well as it is because of those two (Steel is great anyway, rain and dragons just make it better)

As far as what types to raise, that's tied into some of the approaches; Hazards control is aiming to improve bugs/ice/flying/fire, sun is aiming to improve sun/grass, and so on.

[ShyGuy1221]

Another thing we might want to consider is when boosting the use of a lesser used type, what representatives will be most likely to rise up from low OU, BL, and possibly UU? If we decide to boost sun we will inevitably boost the usage Venasaur, Ninetales, and possibly UU fires like Arcanine, Chandelure, and Darmanitan. But lets say we try to boost the use of Ghost or Dark types, who is likely to rise up, and more importantly, who do we WANT to rise up?

If we try to boost Dark, we might see usage of UU pokes like Honchcrow, Sableye, and Weavile, but we might inadvertently cause Hydreigon to be a potent threat adding to our dragon problem. As for boosting Ghost, we could see more Gengar and possibly Cofagrigus, but Jellicent could rise up make water more difficult.

Same goes for Hazard controller to rise the use of SR weak types. Fire and Ice could see more use but Rain and Dragons will get boosts as Hurricane spammers and certain dragons like mence and nite would no longer have to worry about rocks.

These are things we will have to keep in mind through every stage in building CaP5. Who we want to raise the usage of, who will rise in use inadvertently, and how we can prevent that.

[Mr Holiday]

Alrighty...internet trying to kill me, but anyway...

I tend to think that a simple answer is a more correct answer. If we start getting wrapped up in overly complicated ideas of how to do this, we run the risk of losing sight of our goal: Reduce the usage of one or more common type/s.

I think our sun-mon idea is to restrictrive, and detracts from the goal; instead of nerfing the Water type, we would just end up feuling the whether war, and may even get a negative result by further raising the usage of Water types to kill our new sun-abuser. The Hazard controler I think has potential, and could acheive our goal, but I find it unapealing since, to me, it doesn't really address Types so much as how do differant Types deal with hazards.

(EDIT: Reworded Paragraph)
I prefer the Extreme concept. An Extreme Pokemon is better suited to nerf one type, while at the same time encourage the usage of other types. For instance, a powerful Electric type would nerf Water substantially, but encurage the usage of ground. Or, A strong Flying type could help with Fighting types, and raise usage of Electric types. So, I think we should consider a simple solution, and not over-complicate things if we can help it.

[Haradion]

Well, what I have noticed is that the top usage types are in a loop. Dragons are very popular and powerful, so steel types are used to counter. As a result Fighting types are used because of it and this hurts Ice due to its frailty.

The imbalances seem to be water rain and Dragon/Steels. We are not going to fix the meta game with one pokemon but we can reduce the effectivness of those threats. For example:
I would suggest a pokemon that simultaneously hurts fightings and steel, whilst still possessing some bulk to defend itself, or negate weather.
The ability Cloud Nine wound bring down not just waters but also other weather teams. A Fire/Ice pokemon would fit in well for this niche. (Hope this doesn't count as post jumping).

[PommyDragon2525]

The main thing I see in CAP5 is that type alone is not the main thing, but type's reaction to hazards and weather. We can debate type use all we want, but that's one piece to the trifecta, so I want to make a counterpoint to a common thing i'm hearing.

the concept that CAP5 needs to be

Originally Posted by Fat inanimate blob

resistant to Rocks.

, is a valit point, but I suggest we look at a design that uses hazards and opponents weather to its advantage. If we cant stop hazards and weather, we need something that can use the disadvantage to it's advantage, something that converts a field with weather and hazards into it's advantage, like a Castform that can actually compete. Once we look at that, typing can then be looked at to use the hijacked field, but till we deal with those two issues, CAP typing and OU typing are semi-pointless to analyze.

I will say I like Deck Knights idea:

Originally Posted by Fat Deck Knight

Dual Doppler:

The other idea I came up with is a Pokemon that functions well in at least two weathers with a typing and ability that can take advantage. There's a multitude of these, basically just pick a mon that has a typing good in one weather (like Grass or Rock) with an ability that benefits it in another weather (like Sand Force or Flower Gift) so that the Pokemon can hold its own in a weather other than its favorite.

If we can expand this to work with hazards too, I think a counter OU type and movepool will fall into place on it's own.

[zyrefredric]

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.

Unlike precious CAPs, the concept has a very specific and measurable objective. After we introduce CAP5 into the OU metagame, there must be a noticeable/significant change in usage of OU Pokemon. However, each objective are virtually opposite of each other, and I'm afraid that if we address both end goals for every CAP step, it would spread our resources and attention too much. I think that even if even when here are two objectives to be accomplished, one can not be without the other. If the usage of one or more underused types increases, then the usage of other types (including the overused types) WILL relatively decrease as a result; and vice versa. Thus, if we focus only on one objective, simply making sure it does not jeopardize the other objective, then both objectives can be achieved. With this in mind, I'm liking:

The direct approach: Counter a top type, lose to a lesser used type.

The more extreme version: A Pokemon that makes a top type a liability agains when it is around, but is destroyed by lesser used types

However, both models places far too much importance in beating the overused types. I think CAP5 will be more successful if we make it in a way that it can only be defeated, whether because it will be walled, tanked, checked, countered and/or made into a liability, by an underused type. All other types (specially the overused) just wouldn't be able to handle CAP5 as well as the underused type. An example of how this could be dne is given below:

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One way the concept could work is to make CAP5 a Pokemon with a VERY strong offensive presence (great offensive stats, set-up moves, high BP moves), but whose entire moveset can be handled completely by unused type. For example, a Grass/Fighting CAP5 with Grass/Fighting/Poison/Bug as its only moves, hits all Pokemon for neutral/super effective except by most Poison-types, and is then easily defeated by the likes of Crobat. Or a Water/Electric CAP5 with Water/Electric/Grass/Ground as its only moves, hits all Pokemon for neutral/super effective except by most Grass-types.

[Kavatika]

An indirect approach to may be viable as well. For example, say we want to hinder water types. Rain is what helps water types become such a massive threat. As stated before, Celebi has rain teams walled, except for the problem of Tornadus. If we make a mixed wall rock type as CAP5, we can cover Tornadus, and, given the right ability, it can at least take a water type move. With Tornadus countered, Celebi can come in and comfortably wall the water-type attacks thrown about. Simply put, it could make rain teams less common by helping a pokemon that can wall water-types once Tornadus is out of the way.

With rain out of the way, other weathers such as sun or sand can become the most common type of weather team.

[reachzero]

Of the different project directions brought up in this thread, how do you think they compare with each other?

I believe that no other approach will produce as effective a product in term of shaking up typing dominance in the metagame in a clear and controlled way as the "Sun Mon" approach. While certain of the other approaches are indeed possible, and in fact could be incorporated as elements of the Sun Mon approach, all of these would have to settle for a lesser impact and less certain outcomes than the Sun Mon approach. Let us address these in order.

• The Direct Approach is limited by the same, normal factors that apply to the rest of the metagame. Being very good against a specific type may make it much easier to actually face that type, but by itself will probably not move the usage stats much. Mamoswine is great against Dragon-and-Steel based teams, but it doesn't keep them from being popular. Celebi is great against Rain, but Rain gets used anyway. Basically, you get a "nice Pokemon", but not a huge metagame shift.

• The More Extreme Version is worth considering. If it could be done, it definitely would shift the metagame. Realistically, it would probably have to mean making a "liability" of one of our target types, while settling for merely doing well against the others. The problem with this approach is that it’s really, really hard. Making Dragon a liability is outright impossible. The OU Dragons are just too good and too hard to exploit for that. Water is more exploitable, but still very difficult without a highly integrated and well-planned project. I thought it would be virtually impossible, until it occurred to me that it would be nearly impossible for Rain teams in their current state to handle, for instance, a hypothetical Mamoswine with Water Absorb. I am skeptical that we could build such an integrated threat with the step-by-step CAP process.
  

• Hazard controller would be a huge spin of the usage roulette. The big question, of course, would be whether such a Pokemon is even possible without resorting to "strong Magic Bounce user", which would be powerful beyond belief. But let's suppose that it simply ended up taking the direction of "perfect Rapid Spinner", and it was basically unblockable. Would Fire usage go up? Maybe (I know Volcarona usage would!). But it might level out, as usage of Dragonite, Salamence, Kyurem-b and Gyarados go through the roof. Tons of damage calculations change with hazards out of the equation. In other words, this is highly unpredictable, and even if it works at controlling hazards, it might not work at changing usages the way we expect.

• Help A Playstyle is so vague there is almost nothing to say about it except to say that neither Hail nor Trick Room nor Baton Pass chains not Volt Turn teams or any other playstyle have both the viability and the sheer capacity for challenging the dominant types that an Anti-Dragon Sun Mon does.
  

Which are most likely to be successful? Least?

Obviously I believe that Sun Mon is the most likely to be successful. We already know that Sun is viable as a major competitive strategy in OU, and know precisely what effects boosting it would have on the metagame. We know what problems is has, and could really work to come up with creative solutions. The other solutions run the risk of failing to shift the metagame enough, with the major exception of Hazard Controller, which could shift the metagame in ways we cannot fully grasp now.

Are any too restrictive? Too broad?


I don't believe any of these approaches are especially restrictive, but Help a Playstyle is definitely too broad. What playstyle would we be talking about, how would we help it, and what difference would that make? "Help a Playstyle" might as well bring us back to the Concept Submission stage of the process. It's THAT broad.

Do you believe any of them are more conducive to interesting discussion than the others?

I believe that any of the approaches except for Help a Playstyle would produce excellent discussion. The less effective approaches are problematic because they do not promise a good answer to the concept, no because they are uninteresting or not thought-provoking.

What types would each method be best for dealing with, both positively and negatively?

A Sun Mon would obviously be almost automatically best for dealing with Waters and Steels, and would have to really work to protect Sun teams from Dragons (good luck building a Sun team right now that can actually beat SubCM or CM Refresh Latias!).

The More Extreme Version would probably be best off targeting Waters and Steels, since it is almost entirely impossible to make Dragons an actual liability. It could be made to be strong against Dragons, at least. Fighters are not as large an issue as their reputation suggests, so they are not worth specifically targeting.

Conversely, what method would be best for increasing/decreasing the usage of the different highly/lesser used types?

No other method is as certain of boosting less-used types (Grass and Fire) as the Sun Mon method is. Other approaches risk making Dragons or Steels (or really, both) more popular in targeting only Waters, and so on. The second most likely is Hazard Control, but that comes only with very significant risks because of the inherent volatility of removing hazards as a factor completely.

[jc104]

I find it somewhat irritating that sunmon gets its own category while other playstyles are all dismissed for together being too vague.

A sand abuser is a very solid idea for this CAP. Bearing in mind that I think it's best to deal with water types via water immunity ability, the only obvious way to make a sun mon is to make a fire type. Anything without a water immunity is at severe risk of being skittled by rain. At best we can get a 2x resist without using a dragon or water-type. A 2x resist is very shaky when it comes to checking water types in the rain - without significant investment and good defenses, it's probably looking at a 2HKO from SpecsToed and Specs Keldeo. Grass, the only way to get said 2x resist, is one of the more common OU types, is actively disadvantaged by sun, and is bad against both dragons and steels. It's also weak to Hurricane. Fire types are also fairly bad against dragons, and tend to rely heavily on their sun, unless you give them a big advantage in rain, but we saw what happens when you do that...

Sandmon would most likely be a rock type. For starters, it's a much rarer type than grass (and reading the concept, the usage of the CAP will be BY FAR the greatest contributor to the additional usage of underused types - no reason why it shouldn't count). It isn't inherently disadvantaged against dragons. It fits onto a more common playstyle with a more advantageous matchup against rain (don't get my wrong, I still think sun is advantageous against rain). It would probably fit on to various other playstyles better than sunmon. Sand is a more varied playstyle itself than sun. So overall, I think sand is a decent choice, and is probably the better option if we decide to go after dragons rather than steels.

[MCBarrett]

Originally Posted by Fat jc104

I find it somewhat irritating that sunmon gets its own category while other playstyles are all dismissed for together being too vague.

A sand abuser is a very solid idea for this CAP. Bearing in mind that I think it's best to deal with water types via water immunity ability, the only obvious way to make a sun mon is to make a fire type. Anything without a water immunity is at severe risk of being skittled by rain. At best we can get a 2x resist without using a dragon or water-type. A 2x resist is very shaky when it comes to checking water types in the rain - without significant investment and good defenses, it's probably looking at a 2HKO from SpecsToed and Specs Keldeo. Grass, the only way to get said 2x resist, is one of the more common OU types, is actively disadvantaged by sun, and is bad against both dragons and steels. It's also weak to Hurricane. Fire types are also fairly bad against dragons, and tend to rely heavily on their sun. Sandmon would most likely be a rock type. For starters, it's a much rarer type than grass (and reading the concept, the usage of the CAP will be BY FAR the greatest contributor to the additional usage of underused types - no reason why it shouldn't count). It isn't inherently disadvantaged against dragons. It fits onto a more common playstyle with a more advantageous matchup against rain (don't get my wrong, I still think sun is advantageous against rain). It would probably fit on to various other playstyles better than sunmon. So overall, I think sand is a decent choice, and is probably the better option if we decide to go after dragons rather than steels.

I agree with you that we should try to get more direction going for the help a playstyle mon because there aren't enough posts like yours that show why a sand mon or a hail mon could work. I would've done hail already but i'm not very familiar with it but I might look into something else like voltturn and post that later tonight.

However, what you said about sun mon probably having to be a fire type and sand mon probably being a rock type, i dont really agree with. The best sun mon of Gen 5 in my opinion was Genesect and he effectively had a 6x weakness under the sun and didn't resist water type attacks. However, Genesect paired up with dugtrio could deal with everything that sun teams had trouble with up to that point, namely heatran and the lati twins. Also genesect could threaten most members of rain teams with a plus one thunderbolt. I think this is a better way to look at how we should build our sun mon, sand mon etc. We don't have to necessarily make it a great abuser of the weather itself but rather a great threat or counter to what those teams generally don't like seeing.

That's also why I liked Kavatika's suggestion of what I would describe as Help A Counter. Here we would find a poke that had great synergy with the counter of a certain playstyle, such as the example of celebi appreciating something that could help it take on tornadus, maybe something like a electric/ghost which takes all of tornadus' common moves. I think the best part of this direction is that we would force the opposing playstyle to run something that normally is not seen on those types of teams.

EDIT: Also, to jc104 I dont think we should count cap5 to the underused typing change because then we effectively are just re-doing the concept of cap4. From my understanding we want to effect the metagame as a whole and help usher in underused threats that are looked over due to their typing.

[BrianFantana]

Originally Posted by Fat jc104

I find it somewhat irritating that sunmon gets its own category while other playstyles are all dismissed for together being too vague.

A sand abuser is a very solid idea for this CAP. Bearing in mind that I think it's best to deal with water types via water immunity ability, the only obvious way to make a sun mon is to make a fire type. Anything without a water immunity is at severe risk of being skittled by rain. At best we can get a 2x resist without using a dragon or water-type. A 2x resist is very shaky when it comes to checking water types in the rain - without significant investment and good defenses, it's probably looking at a 2HKO from SpecsToed and Specs Keldeo. Grass, the only way to get said 2x resist, is one of the more common OU types, is actively disadvantaged by sun, and is bad against both dragons and steels. It's also weak to Hurricane. Fire types are also fairly bad against dragons, and tend to rely heavily on their sun, unless you give them a big advantage in rain, but we saw what happens when you do that...

Sandmon would most likely be a rock type. For starters, it's a much rarer type than grass (and reading the concept, the usage of the CAP will be BY FAR the greatest contributor to the additional usage of underused types - no reason why it shouldn't count). It isn't inherently disadvantaged against dragons. It fits onto a more common playstyle with a more advantageous matchup against rain (don't get my wrong, I still think sun is advantageous against rain). It would probably fit on to various other playstyles better than sunmon. Sand is a more varied playstyle itself than sun. So overall, I think sand is a decent choice, and is probably the better option if we decide to go after dragons rather than steels.

Why would a Sunmon be necessarily a fire type? Also, just because we're trying to discourage a Type doesn't mean we can't use it for CAP 5; you say 'without using a Dragon or Water Type', but why shouldn't we? That's the kind of thing that can be covered during Typing discussion proper.

I also disagree that grass is 'one of the more common OU types' - its presence is fairly rare save for obvious threats like Ferrothorn and Celebi, largely because of what you go on to point out: it performs poorly against Dragons and Steels (which, if CAP 5 were to be a Sunmon, wouldn't matter too much; the type it would aim to sink would almost certainly be Water). Furthermore, Grass types might be 'actively disadvantaged by sun' in theory, but in practise a whole heap of existing grass types have abilities that benefit from sun, and it's existing pokemon that are important to this project - a Sunmon would encourage their presence, not discourage it.

You also need to be careful where you say that 'the usage of the CAP will be BY FAR the greatest contributor to the additional usage of underused types - no reason why it shouldn't count'. There are two huge problems with this - firstly, it assumes CAP 5 will be of the typing it is aiming to boost, an approach which has already been argued against persuasively elsewhere in this thread, and secondly, the aim of this concept is to boost the usage of existing pokemon within a typing. Raising the usage of the typing simply by slapping it on to a godly CAP and watching it impact the statistics is a sidestep.

[jc104]

Originally Posted by Fat BrianFantana

Why would a Sunmon be necessarily a fire type? Also, just because we're trying to discourage a Type doesn't mean we can't use it for CAP 5; you say 'without using a Dragon or Water Type', but why shouldn't we? That's the kind of thing that can be covered during Typing discussion proper.

I also disagree that grass is 'one of the more common OU types' - its presence is fairly rare save for obvious threats like Ferrothorn and Celebi, largely because of what you go on to point out: it performs poorly against Dragons and Steels (which, if CAP 5 were to be a Sunmon, wouldn't matter too much; the type it would aim to sink would almost certainly be Water). Furthermore, Grass types might be 'actively disadvantaged by sun' in theory, but in practise a whole heap of existing grass types have abilities that benefit from sun, and it's existing pokemon that are important to this project - a Sunmon would encourage their presence, not discourage it.

You also need to be careful where you say that 'the usage of the CAP will be BY FAR the greatest contributor to the additional usage of underused types - no reason why it shouldn't count'. There are two huge problems with this - firstly, it assumes CAP 5 will be of the typing it is aiming to boost, an approach which has already been argued against persuasively elsewhere in this thread, and secondly, the aim of this concept is to boost the usage of existing pokemon within a typing. Raising the usage of the typing simply by slapping it on to a godly CAP and watching it impact the statistics is a sidestep.

Because Fire is the only type that really benefits from sun, maybe? This was assuming that the ability field was to be used for something else of course. If we can find another way around that I can see a whole host of different types being used.

Grass IS one of the more common OU types. It's in the top half as far as usage is concerned, which seems like enough evidence to me. It's only one behind fighting according to the approximate calculation near the bottom of page 1. While I don't think it's an especially GOOD type, that was not specified in the concept either. In fact, boosting a common but not good type seems to be boosting a type that is underservedly overused, as in what most people mean when they say overused outside the pokemon world. That's the worst possible thing to do.

I think it's highly unlikely that we'll not be attempting to reduce the usage of water types. Using a water type is likely to increase the usage of water types. Simply replacing water types with other ones is also a massive sidestep, and doesn't even adhere to the wording of the concept. As far as I can tell from talking to people, they are not keen to use one of the three most used types in order to take on the other two. Again, that seems rather against the spirit of the concept.

However, to count the usage of the CAP as an underused type just allows us to do more with our CAP. It doesn't have to count equally, of course, but I don't see why we shouldn't boost a second underused type by using it, instead of trying to boost only one. I would strongly disagree with having only the usage of our CAP raising a type. I agree - that is a sidestep of the highest order.

edit @ MCBarrett.

First of all, hail should not be in the running - it's a pretty weak style and would be tough to buff significantly enough to make a difference. I've always been a massive hail fan, and I've wanted to do a hailmon for ages, but now is not the time. As for the genesect thing, you've clearly never played in the blaziken metagame! Seriously though, genesect was a very strong sun mon, but that was largely because it was a very strong mon against everything - nothing we make is going to have a flamethrower that powerful without being a fire type. It didn't really mind too much which weather it was in too much, either.

For me, helping counters is probably inferior to being a counter. Obviously, we want to help out the counters as much as possible, but it's definitely not a priority.

[Pwnemon]

Why is sandmon a no but sunmon a yes? Because the pokemon that a sandmon would boost are /already good in OU./ The difference between sun and sand is that sand doesn't really have ABUSERS—in an ideal world, your best possible sand team would still probably be shit like Ferrothorn, Landorus, Jellicent, Tyranitar...

In a sun team, there are absolutely hordes of Pokemon that get a huge boost in Sun that don't see usage because they are either a) too dependent on weather and not strong enough in rain (Darmanitan, Victini) b) impossible to run when you're already devoting so many teamslots to a decent backbone (Ninetales, Dugtrio, Forretress is basically half of every sun team already.) By making a Pokemon that really makes sun the dominant weather, you're increasing the viability of a shitton of UUs that will now be good in OU thanks to not having to worry about rain beating them. If you make a Pokemon to boost sand, your team will be: Tyranitar/Keldeo/Landorus/Ferrothorn/Scizor/CAP5.

tl;dr: a sunmon accomplishes both boosting underused types AND hindering overused types, whereas a sandmon only does the latter.

[BrianFantana]

Originally Posted by Fat jc104

Because Fire is the only type that really benefits from sun, maybe? This was assuming that the ability field was to be used for something else of course. If we can find another way around that I can see a whole host of different types being used.

Grass IS one of the more common OU types. It's in the top half as far as usage is concerned, which seems like enough evidence to me. It's only one behind fighting according to the approximate calculation near the bottom of page 1. While I don't think it's an especially GOOD type, that was not specified in the concept either. In fact, boosting a common but not good type seems to be boosting a type that is underservedly overused, as in what most people mean when they say overused outside the pokemon world. That's the worst possible thing to do.

I think it's highly unlikely that we'll not be attempting to reduce the usage of water types. Using a water type is likely to increase the usage of water types. Simply replacing water types with other ones is also a massive sidestep, and doesn't even adhere to the wording of the concept. As far as I can tell from talking to people, they are not keen to use one of the three most used types in order to take on the other two. Again, that seems rather against the spirit of the concept.

However, to count the usage of the CAP as an underused type just allows us to do more with our CAP. It doesn't have to count equally, of course, but I don't see why we shouldn't boost a second underused type by using it, instead of trying to boost only one.

There are other ways weather can benefit a typing - Rock and Ground types effectively lose their Water type weakness in the sun for example, and Grass types get a single turn STAB Solarbeam (although yes, Politoed/Ttar/Hippo/Abomasnow switchins will ruin their lives). If CAP 5 were to be a Sunmon, its typing is far from a foregone conclusion is all I'm saying.

Touche as far as Grass type usage is concerned, I had it in my head that it didn't have so much of a presence, and stand corrected.

I don't really disagree that Water is the probable target. What effect CAP5 would have on the usage of the targeted type(s) if it itself were to adopt them is debatable - and doesn't really bear discussion until the typing stage anyway, so it's a moot point for now. Let's agree to disagree eh ;)

And if all you meant by counting CAP5's usage as a boost was that it could represent a wholly separate underused type, then sure, why not - although it's kind of incidental to the main concept don't you think?

[MCBarrett]

Originally Posted by Fat jc104

edit @ MCBarrett.

First of all, hail should not be in the running - it's a pretty weak style and would be tough to buff significantly enough to make a difference. I've always been a massive hail fan, and I've wanted to do a hailmon for ages, but now is not the time. As for the genesect thing, you've clearly never played in the blaziken metagame! Seriously though, genesect was a very strong sun mon, but that was largely because it was a very strong mon against everything - nothing we make is going to have a flamethrower that powerful without being a fire type. It didn't really mind too much which weather it was in too much, either.

For me, helping counters is probably inferior to being a counter. Obviously, we want to help out the counters as much as possible, but it's definitely not a priority.

You are correct that I was not around for Blaziken but anyways on to the other points.

Genesect could definitely abuse its fire type coverage more than the average poke since it could receive a boost to its special attack stat giving it psuedo-stab so now I do think that we should at least build something that will be able to abuse it's weather in some way if we decide to go with sun mon. However, if we go with a more defensive sun mon or an offensive sand mon we will have more room to work with for the typing since it isn't as crucial that their typing matches up with their weather.

Now on to the Help A Counter vs. Direct Counter. While I still like the help a counter direction you bring up a good point that helping counters isn't the only thing we can look at. However, I think it is a point that would still be important to consider if we decided to go with the direct counter. I'll try to explain what I'm saying more clearly with an example. With this concept, we can't be countering everything, right? Otherwise we wouldn't be encouraging a new typing to be brought up. Therefore, we have to give a direct counter mon some weaknesses to be able to usher in our new type. But at the same time we cannot have weaknesses that can be covered by things that are currently common threats in OU, or what we are trying to counter will just run one of these threats to be able to continue using what we are trying to counter. (I'll make a more specific example here saying we are trying to counter rain but end up being weak to Fighting as a result.) Therefore, when building a direct counter mon, we have to be sure that there is currently something that counters the weakness we do not want becoming stronger (fighting) but still shares a weakness, or at least cannot counter, what we are trying to encourage being introduced (such as poison). On top of this, it should be able to at least deal with the type we are trying to decrease which in this example is of course water. It would also be nice if whatever counters our mon's weakness would be something that is of the type we are hoping to encourage the use of, therefore increasing that types usage immediately, but we would have to see if this is a possibility once we get to the typing stage. Hopefully this made enough sense and wasn't too hard to follow but I think that is what we will have to take in to account if we try to build a counter to a certain type.

[jas61292]

Ok, so I think it is about time we wrapped this up. There has been a lot of good discussion all around from people of all different opinions. With that said, we need a direction for this project going forward, and I based on the arguments presented here, I think that the best way to approach this concept would be by making a Pokemon designed to help the sun playstyle. In the end, to me, this is really about the fact that none of the other proposed directions really gave as clear a picture of how we would go about achieving both parts of the concept: raising a typing, as well as lowering one.

There have been some arguments that this route would be restrictive, but most of those were saying that it was so because it specified which types we are looking to raise and lower. I believe that having those determined is actually one of the biggest upsides of the concept, and is something I consider crucial at this point. The main reason I asked the last question in my previous post was because I don't think any of the other methods really had a good idea what they actually wanted to do. Unfortunately, I feel that the few responses that question actually got made it clear that people weren't really sure what direction those would actually take. With that said, I feel that some of the other methods are not mutually exclusive to the sun direction and may still be applicable down the line. There are many ways we can go about improving the playstyle of sun, and I expect many of the elements talked about here to come up again in later threads.

All this being said, I want to make a few things clear before we move on. Just because we are helping out sun does not mean we are trying to be a sun abuser. The goal of this approach is to improve sun as a playstyle by giving it something that it currently lacks, not to simply make a better version of something it has. I have heard many suggestions on how to approach this, such as a dragon slayer to deal with one of sun's bigger weaknesses, or sun equivalant of Starmie or Tentacruel to provide it with a more appropriate spinner, among others. Which of these path's we go down I want to leave open for now, as they don't necessarily clash. I believe the existence of these different paths will serve to make good discussion points during the typing stage and other places down the road.