CAP 13 CAP 2 - Part 4 - Stat Limits

Now we move on to the beginning stages of CAP 2's eventual stat distribution. This isn't where the community will submit stat spreads, but rather where we will discuss the upper limits of CAP 2's stats in order to ensure that things are held together in a coherent manner when we actually do submit spreads.

CAP 2 thus far:

Korski said:

Concept: Sketch Artist

Description: A Pokemon that learns Sketch, once, and everything that goes along with that.

Justification:

In terms of uniqueness, I think that few existing Pokemon can match DPP Smeargle, an otherwise laughably worthless Pokemon trolling OU with access to every trick in the book (or at least 4 of them) but also affecting the metagame greatly by becoming a top threat in the lead metagame. This Pokemon will borrow some of that uniqueness by learning the move Sketch and thus having access to ONE surprise/strategic/gutshot bonus move to supplement its pre-existing movepool. Being otherwise competently built (read: usable stats), this Poke could be a top threat or specialist for reasons we can't even predict yet.

Questions To Be Answered:

• How will a Poke that has access to any one move out of all the moves in the game affect common battling tactics, namely prediction, scouting, and switching?
• Which Sketch moves will become most common on this Poke's best sets? Does Sketchmon's success rely on hiding that secret Sketch move until just the right moment or can it succeed with predictably powerful moves like Spore, Spikes, Hurricane, Shell Smash, etc.?
• Does this unique and powerful access to moves need to be counterbalanced elsewhere in the Pokemon's design? If so, then to what degree?
• What kind of impact can Sketchmon have on teambuilding in terms of being able to patch holes with common utility moves like Rapid Spin or Toxic Spikes?

Explanation: The key here is that we have a lot of freedom to construct a unique Pokemon while staying within the confines of the concept. Typing, stats, abilities, and even most of the movepool are completely fair game so long as the Poke learns Sketch only once along the way and that we keep that in mind during previous steps. Now, this doesn't mean the CAP process will be directionless; Rising Dusk is pretty well organized and good at keeping discussions focused, and the concept itself has firm grounding in Smeargle's precedent. What's really being studied with this concept is movepool diversity and effectiveness, so it should have the most effect on the movepool process, where movepool creators will have to carefully balance their Sketchmon's actual movepool with the possibility of adding any one other move to the list. In terms of the metagame, there is no doubt in my mind that throwing a wildcard like this into the mix will strongly affect the metagame.

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Focus: Bulky Offense
Typing: Grass / Ghost

This is a relatively tricky stage of the process if you're not familiar with what it is we're doing and why we're doing it. For that reason, I strongly encourage those who intend to participate to read the entire OP thoroughly and ask questions where needed. Remember that we have a focus to adhere to, which is bulky offense as listed above. We will be taking that seriously as we set these limits.

Let's recap what it is that makes a bulky offense Pokemon such. It's really pretty simple, as complicated as some people might play it up to be. A Pokemon needs to be both bulky (obviously) and able to reliably check certain relevant threats, and then once in be able to set up and perform some kind of offensive role. This simultaneously means that we'd like to encourage the usage of Sketch to improve our offensive opportunities, but we want sufficient bulk to be able to get in strong attacks repeatedly or possibly set up for the sweep. Also keep in mind Grass / Ghost's intrinsic resistances/immunities to Ground-, Fighting-, Water- and Electric-type attacks. This means that it could be good at switching into special elemental attacks, or physical attacks. There are many good options here, and I want to see them discussed!

Please do not poll jump by talking about specific stat spreads or suggesting specific abilities.

Be forewarned that there is no poll for this stage of the CAP. I will decide the stat limits for CAP 2 upon the conclusion of this thread, which will happen in roughly 24 hours.

Stat Bias Limits

Stat bias limits set the general stat bias of a Pokemon from an offensive and defensive standpoint. Stat biases are not solely for limiting stats, but they also describe the overall build of the Pokemon in offensive and defensive terms. However, the stat spread is the only part of the project that will be specifically constrained by Stat Bias Limits; the other part will be explained below. There will be four stat biases selected and a total Base Stat Rating (BSR) limit. The Stat Biases are:

Physical Tankiness (PT)Physical Sweepiness (PS)Special Tankiness (ST)Special Sweepiness (SS)A spreadsheet for calculating the biases can be found here. The formulas themselves can be found here.

Because the introduction of 5th Generation has made our previous metric of BSR-movepool correlation somewhat obsolete, we will be handling movepool limitations slightly later in the process, when we are able to take ability and base stats into account.


tl;dr: Quack! (Limits!)

You forgot the Threats Discussion which was supposed to come before this thread as decided about a month ago in a PR thread: read here

<~tennisace> yeah i guess we'll do that next cap
<capefeather> lol
<~tennisace> at this point its too late

<~DougJustDoug> It's not a huge deal. It's not like we have always assessed threats immediately after typing.
<~DougJustDoug> RD can even open the Threats thread concurrently with Stat Limits probably.

I hope I'm not being rude by quoting some of the mods <.< I'll try to get this started, then.

I think that CAP 2 should have a bias toward special tankiness, if any bias. The typing we have is going to want to switch into Water-type and Grass-type moves frequently, and these tend to be special. Furthermore, I think that priority from e.g. Choice Band Scizor should be more threatening to CAP 2.

Now, considering the typing we have, it would probably be best to look at STAB base powers of 80-90. As it turns out, with base 102 or lower SpA, +2 Life Orb Modest 90 power Fighting doesn't OHKO CB Scizor or SpD Heatran without help (Stealth Rock, but I'm not sure a Shell Smasher would end up running Modest, anyway). So really, I think we're looking at a ballpark of 100 base SpA. Alternatively, we could go physical, but that gets into a lot of complications and I'll have to think about it more myself...

I believe that CAP should lean toward Physical Attacking. Why? Ghost is a shit type when it comes to Physical attacking. If we go SpA, it will just always run SS/Aura Sphere/Shadow Ball/Something. Physically, it's forced to choose. It can sketch a powerful STAB move in Power Whip or Shadow Strike/Force OR it can go with the coverage move of CC/Sacred Fire/Blahblah, which means it's less capable of being a runaway sweeper, more forced to expand its options, and, our main goal, more unpredictable.

Something we need to consider: Is CAP2 capable of Sketching Shadow Strike / Paleo Wave?

Quick question: will this CaP have access to Shadow Strike, either via Sketch or via its natural movepool? My assumption is that it wouldn't, seeing as each CaP is regarded individually and Kitsunoh is an artifact of a previous metagame. I would assume Shadow Strike is the same.

Why wouldn't it be? From the way I understand sketch, it copies a move when it is used. That could be used on anything, even the CAP specific moves.

the thing is each CAP is made to be applied to only the OU meta, not the CAP meta. In OU, there is no Shadow Strike, so it probably won't be able to sketch it.

Just curious can Sketch copy Judgement?

yes. but you better not do it because on a dual type i'm pretty sure it would not work

Ok, I'm going to come right out and say that this guys should be biased towards defense. Being able to attack is fine, but emphasizing sweepieness over tankieness will only serve to make boosting moves the only common choice for sketch. With a more defensive spread, it can still boost or run more of a tank style set, but also makes other kinds of sets viable. As we are trying to learn about the versatility of Sketch, and not just the power of boosting, I think this is the way to go.

Once more I will bring up Scrafty as a good example of what we should be going for. Scrafty has very good tankiness on both sides of the spectrum, and above average sweepieness on the physical side. While I don't think this is exactly the kind of spread we want, a similar mold would be good. I think the most important way for it to be different though would be in its physical special bias, both offensively and defensively. I personally would think something slightly less powerful on one offensive side, but more on the other when compared to Scrafty would be ideal. Give it the ability to go both ways, but emphasize one over the other. On the defensive side, we could do something similar, depending on what we want to counter it/want it to counter.

Personally I would suggest something slightly more physically based offensively and specially based defensively, with an overall defensive bias.

Sketch is almost 100% going to swing whatever way we make its stats. If we go physical, the Sketch move is going to be Sacred Fire/ Shadow Force/Outrage or something physical, or vice versa. I think the best way to go is to even out all of its stats, but give it an offensive-based movepool to widen the use of Sketch.

The thread title says CAP 1, but this is CAP 2 we're discussing. just throwing that out there

I would recommend that we go for a Physical bias. Why?

Seed Flare.

If we give CAP2 a specially offensive bias, we will see little apart from Seed Flare or Leaf Storm being thrown around wrecking anything which isn't a Dragon or Steel-type.

Specially defensive, physically offensive seems to be the best way to go in my opinion. While it opens up room for stuff like Power Whip and Shadow Force, it's not as insane as Judgement or the aforementioned Grass-type moves. It also means CAP2 can soak up Electric- and Water-type moves more easily.

Personally I see no need to have a physical or special bias in either attacking or defensive stats. I guess that stats should be limited to at most Serperior's stat distribution (BST ~ 530, perhaps a little less), with maybe a little less speed in favour of some more hit points.

I am going to agree that the CAP should focus on Special Tankiness on the defensive side of the spectrum. As CAP2 is a Ghost, it is HIGHLY likely we will give it Will-o-Wisp, which will help greatly with the lower Physical Tankiness I am proposing. In fact, I think that CAP2's Physical Tankiness to begin with should be fairly mediocre, otherwise CAP2, due to its great resistances, might always be used as a Physical Wall, which to me is rather uninteresting.

As for the attacking side, I don't have a huge preference of which side is stronger, but I am thinking to make the Special Sweepiness higher, but NOT give CAP2 Seed Flare in the main movepool. (I am ok with Leaf Storm due to the drops which make CAP2 set up fodder.) That way if CAP2 decides to Sketch Seed Flare, it loses all hope of a coverage move/recovery/hazards/whatever else it doesn't already have.

Ungulateman, Gen IV OU (which had a lot less of a power creep than this generation does) at 100 SpA/100 Spe Seed Flares and did perfectly fine. Hell, to the best of my knowledge, BW UU has Landmin and its Seed Flares (which are probably faster and more powerful than CAP 2's will be if I know anything about the public opinion here) without any issue. Even with a fairly broad natural movepool, it surely won't be a particularly large threat to CAP 2 becoming an overpowered special sweeper.

srk1214 said:

I am going to agree that the CAP should focus on Special Tankiness on the defensive side of the spectrum. As CAP2 is a Ghost, it is HIGHLY likely we will give it Will-o-Wisp, which will help greatly with the lower Physical Tankiness I am proposing. In fact, I think that CAP2's Physical Tankiness to begin with should be fairly mediocre, otherwise CAP2, due to its great resistances, might always be used as a Physical Wall, which to me is rather uninteresting.

As for the attacking side, I don't have a huge preference of which side is stronger, but I am thinking to make the Special Sweepiness higher, but NOT give CAP2 Seed Flare in the main movepool. (I am ok with Leaf Storm due to the drops which make CAP2 set up fodder.) That way if CAP2 decides to Sketch Seed Flare, it loses all hope of a coverage move/recovery/hazards/whatever else it doesn't already have.

Click to expand...

True, if it chooses Seed Flare, it'll have limited options for coverage against common OU pokemon like Skarmory, Bronzong, Haxorus, Heatran, Hydreigon completely wrecks its STABs, and other Fires, Dragons, and Steels. Thus, it will be severely limited if we for some reason don't give it Spikes or Leech Seed, or especially something very use ful like Recover. Again, the most options it can get out of Sketch, would be by evening out both Sweepinesses and Tankinesses (I think that's proper English). In general, all the stats in maybe the 80-110 range would (positvely) greatly effect the product of CAP 2.

I think that Special is neat for Hidden Power's added versatility, though that may not be the direction we want to go in. I also really like Seed Flare being an option – it will hugely limit your coverage but give you a kickass STAB move (for choice sets maybe?). Special also means that you are choosing between Quiver Dance and Shell Smash, which may offer a little more versatility for setup CAP2's (not sure if that's a good or a bad thing yet). Special also means that CAP2 will always have a pretty hard counter in Chansey/Blissey (although I guess Seismic Toss won't affect CAP2), so whether that's something we want/don't want should be noted – although there is a stage for that (I don't really see Physical having any "hard counters" unless Atk is very low). Physical offers really neat stuff like Sacred Fire, Shadow Force, and many good Sketchable Fighting attacks.

TL;DR, this post reeks of indecision, but some things to think about are:
Should CAP2 be able to access a great STAB like Seed Flare?
Is Hidden Power's versatility wanted or unwanted (letting you run an HP so you can use Shell Smash, etc. might even be necessary depending on how much we limit this guy's coverage)?
Do we want hard counters?
Are strong and reliable Fighting (coverage) moves desired?

This feels like extreme poll jumping but I don't really know how else to discuss this stage in the context of Sketch. Please let me know if thats a problem (I tried to only talk about sketched moves though).

I get the feeling this thing should be a special attacker- however, that might just be because most ghost and grass types are special attackers. I think it should have good physical defense but better special defense, as it has some nice resistances to some primarily special types.

Yeah, okay, that new stage threw me for a loop because I thought it was just a renamed and slightly edited counters discussion moved earlier in the process. Apparently it is just that, but it's a speculation stage, so it should indeed happen right away. I could, as Doug suggested, run the two alongside each other, but I think that if we're going to discuss early-stage threats, we'll definitely want to focus on that and not let this thread distract us. I'll close this and reopen it when the next thread has run its course.

Okay, now that we've handled the other stage, with my recap seen here, I will reopen this thread for discussion. Hopefully that slight delay hasn't put off any of the contributors, and perhaps the intermittent discussion we had has spurred a few new ideas!

For what it's worth, I will reset the "24 hour discussion duration" now that the thread has been reopened.

So we want to get past one of Skarmory, Heatran, and Jirachi, but not all three at once. We shouldn't be able to get past Hydreigon without giving up the STAB slot to dispatch it.

I think we should forego a physical or special bias. Having even, or roughly even, stats on both sides should be our goal. We do have stronger boosting moves on one side than the other - Special gets Tail Glow and Quiver Dance; Physical gets Gear Shift, Coil, and Belly Drum. There's also Shell Smash, which fits the same mold as Belly Drum but benefits mixed attacking.

We want to be able to abuse all of these boosting options, but we don't want any of them to be vastly outclassed by the others. I think falling back on a middling, but boostable Speed is important. Bulk should be slightly exaggerated, with enough firepower to take on threats after a boost. It certainly can't be a sitting duck on support sets, but it can't be too strong on offensive sets. It's a tricky balancing act that has no easy answer. I might be back with calcs.

Since Sketchy is "Bulky offense" his overall sweepiness should probably be a bit higher than his overall walliness/tankiness. The question is how to balance both between special and physical.

As far as defense goes, I'd opt for having PT and ST being in sort of the same range. One can be higher than the other, but not so much that one can't fix that with EV's.

As for attack, while it would be a fun experiment to create a pokémon that can handle both type, and this would extend the range of use for Sketch, that's probably too much of a concept of its own. So, like allmost every pokémon, Sketchguy is going to need a specialisation.

And basically, the choice between PS and SS is a choice of what this guys primary type is going to be. Ghost is more special oriented, grass is more physical (then ghost at least). While I can see both options working I'm somehow more curious as to how physical attack Sketchmon would work, I think it could become a nice combination of some trickery and simple flat out physical attacks.

For the purpose of adding some more interesting choices I'll advocate giving a physical attacker a bit more special defense.

So my own opinion (add the word humble before opinion if that sounds less arrogant) woukld be:
PT: Ballpark (below) average
ST: Ballpark above average/good
PS: Solid, ballpark very good (to excellent?)
SS: Mostly irrelevant, but let's say somewhere between poor and average for taste reasons (and because speed is still somewhere in the formula here, and i've read some good reasonings as to why the pokémon could do with a pretty decent speed).

For a more ghostly pokémon switch the specials and physicals arround.

just lost reply in threats discussion eurgh

LouisCyphre said:

we don't want any of them to be vastly outclassed by the others.

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This is actually the reason why you should be looking towards a physical bias. Without knowing what coverage moves we're getting (if any), when it comes to physical boosting vs special boosting, you have two move coverage and +1 or +2 attack boosters vs. three move coverage and +1, +2 or +3 attack boosters. Hidden Power alone makes Special boosting so much more viable, and Tail Glow and Quiver Dance are probably the best boosting moves in the game. You're going to have to heavily skew the stats physically if you want them to be close to even.

Ultimately though, with its STAB , i find it hard to believe that Physical boosting is going to work very well at all unless we do give it powerful physical coverage in its base moveset (unlikely). There many, many OU threats impossible to muscle through with Grass/Ghost coverage alone. Physical attacking lends itself far more easily to all-out attacking sets with Sacred Fire / Icicle Crash / Close Combat coverage, bulky-boosting sets with Coil, or mixed sweeping sets with Shell Smash. Making something like Gear Shift viable on this mon is going to be a massive difficulty, so you really may as well give up with that.

I would still argue that there should be a physical bias, however. With the reduced viability of physical boosting, we can actually afford to hit a good number in Atk without making it broken. There's also a wide number of physical attacks that are viable alongside Grass/Ghost. Special attacking sets, that are going to be boosting more often than not (who wouldn't with three move coverage and Quiver Dance/Tail Glow?) and potentially getting off multiple boosts with enough bulk, are more likely to be broken with high SpA, and require the higher stat less. I think this is the kind of thing reachzero had in mind when he suggested Grass/Ghost in the first place, actually.

When it comes to defenses, I'd like to say that generally I don't think it matters too much - it would be nice if there was a balance, or an ability to tailor CAP2 defensively to wall either side of the spectrum (Grass/Ghost is a reaaaally nice, niche defensive typing). Low Defense seems fair - Scizor's Bullet Punch and Mamo's Ice Shard should be an OHKO after Shell Smash no matter what, however.

Most stat-up moves raise a single stat by two stages. The only exceptions are Tail Glow and Cotton Guard, raising SpA and Def by +3 respectively. (There's also Belly Drum for +6 Atk, for a very hefty price.) Ceteris paribus, this CAP should have a higher Atk and SpD to give physical/special offensive/defensive boosting sets more or less equal merit. This line of thought surprisingly leads to the same proposal as Monstermongler just above me, that of "a physical attacker with a bit more special defense".

My own take on the stat limits:
Physical Sweepiness (PS): Very Good
Special Sweepiness (SS): Good
Physical Tankiness (PT): Good
Special Tankiness (ST): Very Good