CAP 3 - Part 4 - Primary Ability Discussion

[bugmaniacbob]

Originally Posted by Fat No Luck Involved

I am strongly opposed to Dry Skin because it is so affected by weather. If CAP3 did hypothetically have Dry Skin, it would only compound OU battles even more into who controls the weather. In weather vs weather battles it becomes even more important to win your weather war because if Sun wins out then CAP3 will likely be dead weight because of the ridiculous residual damage it would be taking. If you use it on a weatherless team then it's another Pokemon that's completely at the mercy of your opponent's weather. If they use Rain then great but CAP3 loses an STAB, if they use Sand then CAP3 is a little bit screwed, and if they use Sun then CAP3 is completely deadweight because two switch ins with SR and Dry Skin damage will near enough kill it.

I don't see why you think this is such a bad thing, or even why adding one more Pokemon that happens to be affected by weather (which is true of nearly any Pokemon in OU) will suddenly make weather the only viable option. Personally I consider Dry Skin to be more balanced than Water Absorb simply because it does have a disadvantage - namely, it prevents CAP3 from really checking both Sun and Rain at the same time.

Another reason I consider Dry Skin to be superior to Water Absorb is that it gives it an advantage to actually being used on rain teams as opposed to against them, since it is gaining HP in rain and can take down Celebi, Ferrothorn, and opposing Water-types (likely as not), as well as being an emergency check to sun teams, as, even if it is losing HP in sunlight, it is still getting the boost to its Fire-type attacks, so it's not total dead weight.

Originally Posted by Fat remetagross

I'm opposed to Dry skin as i think its Fire STAB will be much jeopardized: nobody will use it under sun, which squanders the 1.5 bonus of its Fire-moves, while in rain, well i agree Fire is still useful for detering Ferrothorn, but still this means being walled by Jirachi, Bronzong, and even to a certain extent Gengar! All of which are not designed to be counters/checks in the first place. Defensively speaking Dry skin is just a means of getting rid of the stealth rock weakness, which is another way of sneaking around the typing instead of using it. therefore this poke will be used in spite of its Fire-type, which is exactly what we want to avoid.

Nobody said Dry Skin had to be its only ability. It seems to me to be a good idea that, if you wanted to use this on a sun team, you would have to forego the Water immunity, given how powerful this thing is likely to be. I also fail to see how Dry Skin is merely "a means of getting rid of the Stealth Rock weakness" when its primary purpose is to make CAP3 effective in combating Water-types. Moreover, don't assume that it will be useless simply because its Fire-type STAB is less effective. Volcarona makes a very effective rain abuser, I'm told, despite its weakening of its main STAB. We could quite easily manipulate

As far as Drought is concerned I am more or less ambivalent; I consider Dry Skin to be superior as I do want to see this thing used on rain teams as well as against them, since this gives it a reason to use its Poison-type STAB more. I'm not fond of it, but I can see why others might like or dislike it (also I've been toying with the idea of a Fire-type Drought/Dry Skin Pokemon since the typing stages, and I'll admit it intrigues me).

[Rising_Dusk]

The immunity to Toxic and the draw-up of Toxic Spikes is the best reason to use the Poison typing ever. It is the most we can achieve out of the Poison typing for this CAP when we are supplemented by STAB Fire-type attacks. Trust you in me; every single competitive player who seriously wants to win battles will not use Poison STAB and will not switch CAP 3 into Fighting-type attacks due to the existence of Stone Edge as 'most frequent coverage move' for those Fighting-types. The only way to adequately use the Poison typing as a major selling point of CAP 3 is to create a Pokemon who desperately needs the poison status immunity. The best way to do that is to use an ability that results in status being the #1 response to it: a weather ability. Of the weather abilities, the one that best suits the threats lists that we have generated in the past thread is Drought.

I'll quote the concept as you have, just so you too can see exactly what makes Drought relevant here.

Originally Posted by Fat Concept

The idea here is to create a Pokemon who's typing, while normally considered poor defensively and/or offensively, becomes a strong selling point of the Pokemon itself via help from an ability, stats, and/or movepool.

The Poison typing will never be useful for this CAP if not for its poison status immunity. Drought manages to take what is otherwise a mediocre typing and make it a huge sell for a weather starter. That is exactly in the spirit and even wording of the concept.

I have no intention of polljumping as you have, Pwnemon, most notably in your assumption that we will give this thing better stats than Ninetales and better sweeping tools. I see no reason why any of that has to be necessary, especially at this juncture. We can very easily balance Ninetales and CAP 3 against each other and create a situation where CAP 3 will have to sell itself on its differences from Ninetales in order to be OU. In this sense, we will not fall into the pitfall of "This thing is guaranteed to be OU because of its ability alone." I do not think that will be particularly problematic for us, as a community. We have insight into this that GF did not, most notably that we are intentionally creating a competitive product for the purpose of learning. We are able to tailor this Pokemon's future details to our needs, and this will result in the most fruitful expenditure of our time as a community. We will learn a lot from making our first weather-mon, and in-fact that we will be able to learn about both it and the concept without detracting from either. Specifically, I say we would be doing the concept a favor by choosing this ability.

The toxic immunity is not nifty. It is key to being a successful weather starter. That is what makes Drought so valuable as an ability here; it brings the toxic immunity to the forefront as a seller of the Pokemon. It achieves the concept masterfully.

[MLaRF]

I'll have to vote fer Drought and Dry Skin, because they're both an incredibly useful "fuck you" to water types while making the mon fare even more poorly against Heatran and other fire-types, making it a great double-edged sword.

[psykokitty]

I am disappointed by how limited the spread here is. Only the four most obvious water-checking abilities were slated. I feel like the CAP community has a lot to gain in trying to rethink a lesser-used ability in order to use it more to creatively threaten water types, instead of taking what I feel to be the 'easy way out' and give it either Drought or an immunity to water.

For example, I think there is an enormous potential in Trace. With Trace, it could come in on things like Vaporeon and Toxicroak and appropriate Water Absorb or Dry Skin as the situation demands. It could also gain other useful abilities, such as Swift Swim (though the extent of this specific ability's usefulness would be determined by the stats and movepool stages of CaP). Heck, it could even grab something like Levitate and require common Earthquake users to carry Stone Edge as a back-up (since many, if not most pokemon who rely on Earthquake also have access to Stone Edge, I feel that removing the 4x ground weakness in this manner would not allow it to cease being threatened by ground types).

I'm sorry, but I can't really get behind any of the slated abilities because, frankly, I think they will make CAP3 too good at countering water-types, and I believe there are more creative and challenging avenues to pursue that would also allow us to check water-types.

[Temperantia]

Originally Posted by Fat No Luck Involved

I am strongly opposed to Dry Skin because it is so affected by weather. If CAP3 did hypothetically have Dry Skin, it would only compound OU battles even more into who controls the weather. In weather vs weather battles it becomes even more important to win your weather war because if Sun wins out then CAP3 will likely be dead weight because of the ridiculous residual damage it would be taking. If you use it on a weatherless team then it's another Pokemon that's completely at the mercy of your opponent's weather. If they use Rain then great but CAP3 loses an STAB, if they use Sand then CAP3 is a little bit screwed, and if they use Sun then CAP3 is completely deadweight because two switch ins with SR and Dry Skin damage will near enough kill it.

I agree with this statement 100%. While I love the idea of reversing CAP3's STABs, why would we want to make yet another tool for Rain Teams? I feel like we'd just end up making a better Toxicroak if we went this route.

On the topic of abilities I do suggest: Water Absorb/Storm Drain I feel that not only either, but both of these should be CAP3's abilities.
I realize that talking about a secondary ability is a slight poll-jump, but I feel as if using both options would allow CAP3 to take dramatically different paths of either offensive-orientation or defensive-orientation, which can thus be enhanced by its stats.

[Redjar]

While I partially agree w/ psychokitty I think Trace is a ridiculous idea and would also be "too" good. We've gone from combatting waters to scoffing at them. I'd nominate solid rock as an ability if we were taking nominations/discussing the matter instead of just automatically assuming these 4 abilities.

[Deck Knight]

Originally Posted by Fat psykokitty

I am disappointed by how limited the spread here is. Only the four most obvious water-checking abilities were slated. I feel like the CAP community has a lot to gain in trying to rethink a lesser-used ability in order to use it more to creatively threaten water types, instead of taking what I feel to be the 'easy way out' and give it either Drought or an immunity to water.

For example, I think there is an enormous potential in Trace. With Trace, it could come in on things like Vaporeon and Toxicroak and appropriate Water Absorb or Dry Skin as the situation demands. It could also gain other useful abilities, such as Swift Swim (though the extent of this specific ability's usefulness would be determined by the stats and movepool stages of CaP). Heck, it could even grab something like Levitate and require common Earthquake users to carry Stone Edge as a back-up (since many, if not most pokemon who rely on Earthquake also have access to Stone Edge, I feel that removing the 4x ground weakness in this manner would not allow it to cease being threatened by ground types).

I'm sorry, but I can't really get behind any of the slated abilities because, frankly, I think they will make CAP3 too good at countering water-types, and I believe there are more creative and challenging avenues to pursue that would also allow us to check water-types.

I had initially considered Trace in the OP, but decided against it. I did this for the simple reason there is no method, no matter how creative, of stopping the threats we decided we want to stop. Rain is dominant for a reason: it is basically immune to all "creative" means of stopping it. In CAP 3's particular case it's a 1.5x boost to a 2x weakness, which also happens to dampen it's best offensive STAB by 50%. There's no such thing as a creative way around that, all you can really do is either a) change the weather upon switchin or b) have an immunity to water. The reason they were selected is not because they were the most obvious, it's because they were the *only* consistent, viable methods.

The reason I have this discussion at this juncture is because I want to gauge how the CAP community wants to address the Water-type threats. It will be entirely possible to vote for another of these abilities later, what I want to figure out is the primary means the community wants to use to address these threats, and then move forward from there. These particular abilities are almost an extension of typing, with Drought being more of a support-based nuetrality to Water on the switchin's and the other abilities being hardcoded Water immunity. I almost consider them to be an add-on to the typing rather than an ability proper, but I want to see where we go with this.

My personal preference is for Dry Skin, since Drought will still require a certain level of manuevering, and we already have a decently quick Drought Pokemon with good Special Defense in Ninetales, but there's no reason CAP3 would have to go in that direction. In any case I think it will provide a far more interesting discussion later if we only settle on one defining ability for now and wait for stats later to see what pans out.

Or I could just be sadistic. There's that.

[Jellicent*]

First of all, Drought sounds like a bit of overkill. It's such a defining ability that it could turn Ninetales of all things into a solid OU Pokemon (and Vulpix BL). There are definitely more creative routes we can take this CAP than just slapping a weather starting ability on it.

Out of the three others, Storm Drain or Water Absorb makes the most sense. They allow this CAP to take on Water-types wholeheartedly while not limiting it in the sun. While some might see a weakness to sun as a plus, I think allowing this CAP to succeed against rain and sun simultaneously really carves out a niche for it. Remember, this thing is all but useless against sand, the most common weather, as Rock- and Ground-types run rampant under that weather. Dry Skin would cut its utility drastically. It would see use on rain teams, and perhaps the odd sand team, but that would be pretty much it.

With Storm Drain or Water Absorb, we would A) give sun a Fire-type sweeper that can hold its own against rain teams, B) give sand teams a weapon that functions well in rain or sun, and C) give rain teams an ally to take out opposing rain teams while still keeping sun in check. Though that might look like a lot, it still fails hard against sand teams, which already greatly reduces its viability. A weakness to Stealth Rock and Spikes doesn't help much, either. I don't think a Fire/Poison type is shaping up to be so overpowered that we need to nerf it in sun.

That said, I think Storm Drain is my preferred option of the two, as it would help turn CAP into a more offensive Pokemon rather than a defensive pivot. Granted, either role would be interesting, but an offensive Fire-type succeeding in rain (where its better STAB is halved, forcing it to actually use that Poison STAB or coverage moves) just sounds like a really unique way to go with this thing.

[Jake Of Johto]

Originally Posted by Fat Temperantia

I agree with this statement 100%. While I love the idea of reversing CAP3's STABs, why would we want to make yet another tool for Rain Teams? I feel like we'd just end up making a better Toxicroak if we went this route.

On the topic of abilities I do suggest: Water Absorb/Storm Drain I feel that not only either, but both of these should be CAP3's abilities.
I realize that talking about a secondary ability is a slight poll-jump, but I feel as if using both options would allow CAP3 to take dramatically different paths of either offensive-orientation or defensive-orientation, which can thus be enhanced by its stats.

YES! I was going to post virtually the same thing, it would make the most sense, and would help stem down the rain teams.

[Birkal*]

Originally Posted by Fat Pwnemon

So, the idea of the concept is to take a Pokemon and make its typing become its selling point. I don't think drought adequately does this at all!

I implore you to take a look back over your own paragraph, leaving out the sentences i have highlighted. You will notice that everything else applies equally to Ninetales as it does to CAP3; the typing is not a selling point at all! Sure, we acquire a nifty toxic immunity and (possible) ability to absorb tspikes. So? Sun already gets Venusaur. 90% of the time you're killing a ninetales it is because it is frail as balls, not because you toxic stalled the thing. Fire/Poison typing is only marginally better than pure fire at Drought abuse.

[/B]And before you accuse me of thinking that Drought is Taboo because it makes things auto-OU or something that is not the case at all. I'm perfectly fine with Drought or Sand Stream or Drizzle or fuck even Snow Warning on a later CAP. Even on this CAP, if it had had a different typing (say, Pyroak's typing). But as it stands, Drought does not at all accomplish the goal of the concept.

I think you're actually selling Drought here more than giving it the thumbs down. We can engineer it so Drought isn't broken on CAP3; you're right. So why is it a bad thing? As an OU battler, Drought is a serious selling point on a Pokemon. Let's take Politoed for example. People don't always choose Politoed for Rain support. Some of OU's best teams just slap on Politoed for "dat Hydro Pump" offensive presence. Furthermore, it can provide team support through infinite sunlight.

If I look at CAP3 right now, I don't want to use it in OU, especially if it only gets Water Absorb or Storm Drain only. Because quite frankly, it would still be a poor Pokemon (unless we gave it stats and attacks up the wazoo). It would get absolutely wrecked by any Ground-type attack (hint: Earthquake and HP Ground are already everywhere for Heatran). Popular Psychic types also stand up well against it. I fear that Water Absorb and Storm drain would force CAP3 to be a "niche" Pokemon.

This is why I am all for Drought primarily and Dry Skin secondarily (the marriage of both on CAP3 is actually what interests me the most). Rising_Duck is absolutely corrent: we need to sell CAP3 to OU players. The best way to do this is by giving it Drought, in my opinion. It powers up its STAB, gives use to its Poison-typing (immunity to Tspikes and Toxic), AND gives it a valuable role in team support. Dry Skin is also unique in that it'd give CAP3 a unique place on rain teams. However, I don't like Dry Skin as much because it ruins its Fire-STAB to use it in rain. Drought is absolutely the best ability here, in my opinion. Again, as an OU player, I question whether I'd actually use CAP3 unless it got Drought.

[Mono789]

I'm strongly opposed to Drought and Dry Skin. Ninetails only sees play in OU at all because of Drought and we're looking to make something that's almost guaranteed to be better than Ninetails. If we weren't, then we'd just be making another Ninetails. Making another Drought user doesn't teach us a whole lot. Dry Skin I am opposed to because it doesn't make sense to me for a fire type to dislike sunlight. Ok, it gets a STAB boost, but it also takes a chunk of its HP away each turn, and, may I remind everyone, CAP3 is already weak to hazards, so that will wear down on it quickly. I think one of the top reasons to use this will be to counter rain teams, which is something that sun teams in particular need badly. I don't agree with hosing CAP3 in the sunlight.

My preferred choice is Water Absorb, although Storm Drain would be acceptable to me as well. Water Absorb is nice because it gives CAP3 some HP recovery to help counteract its weakness to entry hazards without hindering it in other ways. Storm Drain is okay too, since it at least doesn't have the drawbacks of the other two abilities, but prefer the option between these two that helps CAP3 survive longer.

Additional note:
I disagree with Birkal that giving CAP3 Water Absorb or Storm Drain will make it a niche Pokemon. Remember that we can still give it a usable secondary ability if we want to give it a purpose besides countering rain teams (and I definitely like that option, since CAP3 being a one-trick pony would be kind of disappointing).

I really want to like Drought and Dry Skin, because I like them conceptually, but there are just a couple of issues with them that I don't think anybody's really responding to.

A lot of people have brought up how Drought is such a defining ability that it brought Ninetales up to be one of the most popular Pokemon in OU, that it would become the factor that defines this CAP rather than its typing. I can't help but feel like Drought proponents keep dodging this question. The only comment I've seen to address it is suggesting that it goes well with the Poison typing because of the toxic immunity that it grants... But, I'm just not buying that. I sounds incredibly contrived. We know that weather starters are not at all in need of toxic immunity in order to be successful. To me, that doesn't sound like a case of the ability enhancing the typing, making the typing the selling point. That sounds like the selling point is the ability, and the typing just so happens to help it out a little.

As for Dry Skin, I was actually really into it at first, but I started having doubts when people started discussing using it on their own rain teams. I think that might be going too far. We want an ability that helps it against water types, and that's fantastic, but Dry Skin inflicts a lot of collateral damage on this concept by heavily encouraging its use on exactly the teams that it's meant to counter. This Pokemon wouldn't threaten rain teams; it would empower them. Unless this Pokemon somehow functions better under no weather at all than it does in rain, which I have a hard time imagining unless we place an unreasonable amount of emphasis on its Fire STAB, we're just going to make another rain abuser, and we simply do not need any more of those. Rain is already fantastic enough.

Again, I want to like Drought and Dry Skin. I really do. Please convince me. But right now, it's looking like Water Absorb and Storm Drain better fit the concept without incurring all of these questionable side effects.

[MCBarrett]

I don't understand how anyone could argue for drought to be the ability for this cap. Everyone already knows that drought is a helpful ability for fire types and a toxic resistance would help it be more successful so why would we use it? We go this route and the cap is basically over already. From my understanding this is all supposed to be about learning more about the metagame and drought is nothing unique at all.

On the other hand dry skin, storm drain, and even water absorb, provide so many more options for the cap moving forward and could easily result in a very unique mon(I mean I would say a fire type that resists water is pretty unique) that would actually allow us to learn something about the metagame. Maybe like looking into more unusual type resists in the future? Sounds a lot more exciting than another weather starter to me...

[srk1214]

To be clear, I am still supporting Dry Skin as the best option of these 4, but I would like to outline a few issues against and in favor of it...

Using Dry Skin (or Storm Drain/Water Absorb) instead of Drought means that CAP3 only has 3 weaknesses: Ground, Rock, and Psychic. It has 7 (!) resistances: Fighting, Fire, Poison, Ice, Grass, Bug, Steel and now also 1 immunity!

Just as a comparison... Ferrothorn has 2 weaknesses, 10 resistances, and 1 immunity. The difference is... Ferrothorn's immunity is to Poison, which is almost never used. And it's a strict immunity. Instead, CAP3 not only is immune to WATER which is at least reasonably common (once you average out rain vs not rain teams) but it even heals from it. Plus, on rain teams, it's extra lefties.

Basically, I just want to point out that we're taking an already somewhat decent defensive typing and making it approach Ferrothorn level typing-wise. Of course we don't have to give it bulk like 74/131/116, but we will have to be careful to not turn Fire/Poison into an aspect of the Pokemon. It's supposed to be the main selling point, and all of these abilities (Drought included) are big game changers.

Now for the counterargument, I suppose. Dry Skin will NOT become the main selling point of CAP3. We have nothing to fear.

Why you ask? Dry Skin would generally suggest that CAP3 would fit well on Rain teams. But does it actually provide much for rain teams beyond what Tentacruel does? Sure, we might give CAP3 the very natural Toxic Spikes. Sure it very well might get the annoying Scald (which to be clear would not break flavor, Emboar gets Scald for example). But what if it doesn't get Rapid Spin? Tentacruel offers a lot to Rain teams and the only things that distinguish CAP3 ahead of Tentacruel at the moment are the immunity rather than resistance to Water moves, something Rain teams generally do NOT struggle with anyway since they already have multiple resistances, and the ability to maybe help against Sun teams, since Fire STAB gets boosted. If we are smart, that's not enough to make CAP3 a replacement of Tentacruel as a main supporter on rain teams. And therefore Dry Skin will not define CAP3.

One thing precisely GOOD about Dry Skin (or another absorbing ability) is it's usefulness for Sand teams. Gastrodon is currently run in OU almost exclusively due to it's Storm Drain ability. But the thing is... Gastrodon sits there and does NOTHING to the Ferrothorn/Celebi/whateverhonestly... that switches in and forces it out. This is why I'm more strongly in favor of Dry Skin over Storm Drain. If say, CAP3 switches in and absorbs a Rotom-W Hydro Pump getting a Sp. Atk boost, then Rotom-W Volt Switches out the next turn to a Gliscor to resist the Poison move (or whatever), CAP3 would be forced out immediately. Instead, Dry Skin (and to a lesser degree Water Absorb) have longer lasting benefits. Dry Skin CAP3 helps Sand teams against Rain teams, which can often be difficult to beat (especially in CAP...)

Almost finally, as a hater of Ferrocruel, I'm a huge proponent of Dry Skin on CAP3 as I think (barring some hazards being set up) it is the single best Pokemon to break through the core.

The only meaningful discussion left is Dry Skin vs Drought. I've said where I lie.

[bugmaniacbob]

Originally Posted by Fat Asylum_Rhapsody

As for Dry Skin, I was actually really into it at first, but I started having doubts when people started discussing using it on their own rain teams. I think that might be going too far. We want an ability that helps it against water types, and that's fantastic, but Dry Skin inflicts a lot of collateral damage on this concept by heavily encouraging its use on exactly the teams that it's meant to counter. This Pokemon wouldn't threaten rain teams; it would empower them. Unless this Pokemon somehow functions better under no weather at all than it does in rain, which I have a hard time imagining unless we place an unreasonable amount of emphasis on its Fire STAB, we're just going to make another rain abuser, and we simply do not need any more of those. Rain is already fantastic enough.

The reason that CAP3 would be effective on rain teams is less because of the healing from Dry Skin and more because it can destroy just about everything that would threaten a typical rain team (Ferrothorn, Celebi, Rotom-W, Vaporeon etc.) that isn't another weather-changer. Dry Skin only makes it a bit more effective in doing so. In fact, I'd question whether it would even be particularly effective on rain teams at all - its main STAB is neutered and all it has left is Poison, and why would you want something like that on your team when you could have Hurricane Dragonite? Rain teams are already strapped for space - I cannot imagine this Pokemon really empowering rain teams more than it hinders them, since, yes, it does still stop more or less anything you would expect to find on a rain team besides Tornadus and the other Hurricane abusers.

To that end, Dry Skin is far more useful against rain teams than either Water Absorb or Storm Drain because, yes, even if it isn't hit by a Water-type move it is still getting recovery every turn, so it lasts longer.

No comment on Drought.

On another note, I'd love it if we could try to tone down some of the rhetoric coming from certain camps.

[DarkBlazeR]

I'm totally in favour of Drought because it would make this CAPmon a real team player, rather than simply be a niche counter to a few threats. Sun teams will absolutely love having a decent weather starter (Ninetails sucks), and the Poison typing will go to great lengths in helping to win the weather war.

[DetroitLolcat]

Drought is definitely my least favorite of the four options. Not only does it have the potential to be beyond broken when paired with Ninetales, it also greatly impacts the metagame while going entirely against the concept. A Fire-Type using Drought? What an extreme makeover!

Now, Dry Skin would make this Pokemon a Rain abuser, most likely. That would be great, but it's not an extreme makeover in the sense that we already have a Fire Pokemon that's made for the Rain: Volcarona. Volcarona is commonly seen as a Rain abuser, so Gen 5 has already demonstrated to us that Fire Pokemon can work well in the Rain. Since the only advantage of Dry Skin is that it allows CAP3 to work especially well in the Rain, Dry Skin becomes an outclassed ability because Rain Fire sweepers already exist.

Now, that leaves us between Water Absorb and Storm Drain. At this point, the two abilities are so similar that it really doesn't matter whether we use Storm Drain or Water Absorb. The main differences are that Storm Drain is an offensive ability while Water Absorb is a defensive ability. Since Fire/Poison, at first glance, is more of an offensive typing than a defensive typing, I think it's better to go with a defensive ability in this case.

If I had to vote now, I'd go with Water Absorb, but Storm Drain is plenty acceptable as well.

Also, I would like to know if these four abilities are the only abilities allowed for the primary ability. This seems pretty restrictive since all of the abilities are very similar and it feels like this stage of the process is going by through fiat, not by community opinion. Just a thought, of course.


EDIT: Water Absorb and Storm Drain do not necessarily give CAP3 the ability to check both Sun and Rain. In the Rain, Specs Tornadus and SubCM Jirachi will possibly be able to break CAP3 since Jirachi's Special Defense and Rain give it the power to withstand many Fire moves and hax back with its hax moves. Specs TOrnadus shreds anything without a resistance and many things with resistances, so it's safe to assume we'll probably lose to it. On the sun side, what's to stop Venusaur from just using the Mixed set? MixSaur wrecks CAP3 with Earthquake. Dugtrio, another common Sun Pokemon, also traps and kills CAP3. Even with the typing and Water immunity, we're not countering Sun and Rain at the same time.

[Quilph]

I should point out that any argument that says Dry Skin is bad because it creates a Fire type that "dislikes sunlight" is rather tenuous. Obviously, the STAB boost is very welcome. Solar Power Charizard, while uncommon, nonetheless is the sole reason that the fire lizard is seen nearly as much as it is. Many players have determined that the loss of health in that scenario is well worth the added power. Further, sun teams are not seen very often, so the fear that CAP3 will be under constant threat of having 1/8 of its health stripped every turn is ridiculous. Overwhelmingly it will find itself in a sandstorm or rain, and the former is already causing it minor trouble health-wise. Choosing Dry Skin allows recovery in the rain. So I really don't think the damage caused by sunlight + Dry Skin is anything to fret about. It's a non-issue.

I also don't like hearing people sell the Poison typing short. Perhaps it is true that immunity to Toxic and Toxic Spikes is its best selling point, but we are depriving ourselves of some perfectly good moves by categorically denying use of Poison, which we will get STAB from, which some seem to forget. I can see how having a coverage move added may be necessary (most notably for Rock), but doing so at the expense of Poison is foolish, when the Fire type covers many of its resistances.

[capefeather]

I don't get the argument that Drought is going to be boring whereas the other three Water-fighting abilities aren't. We have a Dry Skin Pokémon. We have a Water Absorb Pokémon. We have a Storm Drain Pokémon. In addition to all this, imo Vaporeon/Jellicent and Gastrodon are very good at what they do, and besides that, Storm Drain and Water Absorb are virtually identical, anyway. On the other hand, quite frankly, Ninetales sucks as a weather inducer. It has to do some pretty crazy things to compete with the other weather inducers (Sunny Day? Really?) and it's worn down so quickly by residual damage and lack of good switch-ins. I think that Drought is way more interesting than Water Absorb or Storm Drain.

I personally don't believe that Water Absorb or Storm Drain even help the concept. All they're really doing is adding an immunity, which isn't really using the typing, just modifying it to make it a bit better. Dry Skin differs itself from these two precisely because of the drawback. It creates an interesting dilemma between using the typing offensively and patching it up defensively.

I don't believe that Drought is too powerful for this concept, nor would it make the CAP about Drought. In fact, it helps the concept in so many ways. Rising_Dusk touched upon a lot of how BOTH typings can use Drought to their advantage. Take Solar Power, for example. Solar Power on Charizard is far, far better than Solar Power on Tropius. Both are terrible, but at least Charizard is actually used in NU... Point is, even abilities like these can be majorly defined by the typing.

I'm kind of in a hurry right now so I'm not sure I covered all my bases here, but these are my thoughts on all this right now.

[Project_Mars]

Originally Posted by Fat Birkal

If I look at CAP3 right now, I don't want to use it in OU, especially if it only gets Water Absorb or Storm Drain only. Because quite frankly, it would still be a poor Pokemon (unless we gave it stats and attacks up the wazoo). It would get absolutely wrecked by any Ground-type attack (hint: Earthquake and HP Ground are already everywhere for Heatran). Popular Psychic types also stand up well against it. I fear that Water Absorb and Storm drain would force CAP3 to be a "niche" Pokemon.

Interestingly, so will Dry Skin/Drought, although they both interestingly have completely different niches, whereas Water Absorb and Storm Drain both lead to the same niche. Pretty much what we are looking at to do with CAP3 involving it's ability would be to make it a:

• Pokemon that starts Sun (Drought)
• Fire-type that is desirable on a rain team (Dry Skin)
• Fire-type that can switch in to a water-type and not die horribly (Water Absorb/Storm Drain)

Our Choice in this would also help determine how we would want to approach CAP3, and thus i can understand how this step would be more important than stat assigning, in this build. If we go with one ability from the four listed, we just pick one niche to go with, if we go with two then we have two real choices: Do we want a pokemon that can perform real well on two different types of team (sun and rain, meaning Drought/Dry Skin) or do we want a pokemon that is very comfortable with fighting in the rain, whether on or against a rain team(Dry Skin/Water Absorb or Storm Drain)? (having both abilities be Water Absorb/Storm Drain would be fairly redundant and uninteresting.)

I for one would be more inclined to go with the former choice, a pokemon that can perform real well on two different types of team, because that would be the more interesting of the two, plus still allow for a little flexibility in design.

I was initially on the same argument as those who dismissed Drought for being too similar to Ninetails, but i realized that can be fixed by setting up CAP3 to perform a different role than Ninetails. Ninetails is designed to be an attacking pokemon, so if we make CAP3 a support pokemon, it won't overlap too much in terms of use. The typing does slightly lend itself towards that role anyways, due to being able to absorb toxic spikes and toxic, plus the resistances conferred by the poison typing. And on the rain-side of things, are there any common support 'mons for rain?

Finally, I would also like to suggest Adaptability for consideration. Tinted lens was mentioned and said to be too powerful as it would allow it to do good against its checks, but what about adaptability, which just improves the base power of the STAB moves by an additional .5x? I could see this as a DW ability, were we to confer it one that isn't on the list, that would allow it a place off a weather team, where it would be very useful for its ability to scare the fight out of Scizor and Ferrothorn, the two most threatening OU pokemon who are scared away by CAP3's typing alone.It also allows CAP3's poison STAB to still deal decent damage to water-types (it does lose the ability to threaten them though, a HUGE strike against using Adaptability.) and doesn't make any special cases for Rock/Ground types, so it shouldn't deal unreasonable damage to them.

[The Reptile]

imo, Drought doesn't help up check/counter Water-types very reliably. Sure, their main STAB just got cut down to half and our Fire STAB is boosted, but what happens when Politoed, something we want to check/counter, switches in? Our Fire STAB is now weak as all shit and their Water STAB are stronger than ever. Sure, we can switch into Politoed, but Water is still SE and SR make us loose 25% of our HP.

For this reason, I still say that Water Absorb and Dry Skin are the best options, and I'm leaning more towards Dry Skin. We can always give it another ability if we need it to work in the Sun, as Dry Skin gives it the ability to function very well in Rain teams, taking out Ferrothotn and Forretress and denting Jirachi, Brongzong, and other Steel-types, and as we already found out, Poison and Fire have decent neutral coverage, only blocked by Rock, which the rest of the team can deal with.

EDIT: I also believe any ability that doesn't help vs Water-types should be secondary abilities and should (imo) discussed after stats. That way, we can give it an ability that works with it's stats (Tinted Lenses isn't going to be very useful on a defensive pokemon)

[XcRunner]

I'm going to back Dry Skin 100%. That would absolutely be a niche that has not been seen before as a fire type capable of doing well on a rain team, or especially against a rain team. Some people are seeing this as a boon to rain teams, but think about how other teams would be able to handle rain from now on by using CAP3. CAP3 could beat Scizor and Ferrothorn on its own based on typing, It resists Toxicroak, It absorbs toxic spikes, and with Dry Skin Tentacruel (which would be a counter based on typing) can't do anything to it as poison will do nothing and scald/surf won't damage him. Most bulky waters can't stand getting poisoned, most notably Gastrodon, which would be CAP3's most notable rain counter.
I like how he can deal with a variety of different weather teams, even sun. Fire gets STAB in the sun, albeit with the drawback of dry skin's damage per turn, but it also means that sun teams have a much more reliable rain check. Heck, it may even work on a sandstorm team that doesn't want T-tar/Hippowdon poisoned and wants a more offensive rain check than Gastrodon is.
Basically, Dry Skin gives him a niche that is completely not filled in the metagame and works because of his typing! We've gone over this before, but fire immune to water is incredible, and dry skin means the poison typing will get more usage because of how fire's damage is halved in the rain, therefore making both types useful.

[TubaKing]

I absolutely agree with Rising_Dusk and Birkal.

The main point of this CAP is to take a shitty typing and then use said typing as the selling point of the Pokemon we're creating. Just slapping on any of the three water immunity abilities simply fails to do so. Sure, they help CAP 3 not get destroyed by Rain teams, but they fail to accentuate its Poison typing.

Drought is the perfect use for Fire/Poison typing. Having immunity to both burn and poison is invaluable for a weather starter. We don't have to give to give CAP 3 great stats or setup moves in order to make it a useful part of the OU metagame in spite of its typing. Also, Drought would help counterbalance the dominance of Rain and Sand in the OU metagame.

I also feel that Dry Skin could be a nice secondary ability, if only to add to the variety of what CAP 3 is capable of, becoming a good choice for both Sun and Rain teams.

[FlareBlitz]

I am opposed to Drought for two reasons.

1) It does not adequately address the spirit of the concept. I think we should be trying to carve out a very specific, very unique niche in OU with our typing. Giving it Drought means we just make a better version of Ninetales or, in some unlikely twist of circumstances, a worse version of Ninetales (I don't even know how we could manage that). Either way, it means that this CAP either supplants another Pokemon at an existing niche by doing the same thing except better or just...fails to make any impact whatsoever. Both of these seem like very boring outcomes to a concept rife with potential.

2) Drought does not truly address the Water-type weakness. To avoid poll-jumping, I did some calcs on this using Heatran's special defense as a baseline, because we all know how bulky that thing is. Here are some common offensive rain attackers against 252/252+ Heatran in Drought.

Specs Politoed's Hydro Pump: 45.1% - 53.4%
Specs Rotom-W's Hydro Pump: 49.7% - 59.1%
LO Starmie's Hydro Pump: 38.9% - 45.6%

Note that this is with absolute max special defense, so unless we want to give this substantially better defensive stats than Heatran, we're going to face easy 2hkos from every powerful water attack commonly found on a rain team, even in sunny weather.

Given that we explicit stated that we wanted to threaten Politoed, losing outright to one of its more common sets seems undesirable. Not to mention being threatened by Rotom-W and Starmie. Now, this specially-defensive set does do a good job of threatening Tentacruel and Jellicent (takes around 15% from Scald), but what if we wanted to go with a more offensive EV spread? Assuming a 4/0 spread with around the same special-defensiveness as Heatran, we take upwards of 30% from Jellicent's Scald, which means that it will easily beat us before we can do anything to it (especially considering it resists both our STABs). Tentacruel is in a similar situation, except without reliable healing and worse defenses.

Given these two points, I think that, at least as far as covering our Water-type weakness goes (which is what this discussion is about), Drought is undesirable.

[fourkings8414]

Instead of comparing Drought on CAP with Ninetails, the constructive argument, I believe, would be to compare the potentially new weather starter to other ones, Hippowdon, Ttar, Politoed and how they benefit from their own abilities. Namely Ttar, who has a weakness to water, grass, bug, steel, ground, and 4x to Fighting, how and why is he performing so well in OU? Is Sand Stream INDEFINITELY the reason why he is common among teams? If he didn't have Sand Stream, would he still be as common? Answering these questions will let us have a more sound reason to shoot down Drought or even accept it.