5th Gen Concept Theoreymoning

[Aerodactyl Legend]

Here's what needs to be asked. Besides those who directly [work with/ benefit from] any weather conditions, what are some dominating or just plain decent Pokemon that are seeing much use in the standard game right now? What new Pokemon have given you trouble and what returning Pokemon are still great assets to any competitive team? I still feel we are focusing on weather too much as we don't even know how the oncoming weeks or months will be for the standard game, as it's currently very unstable and imbalanced.

To answer my own question above, there's heavy usage of specific Pokemon such as Roobushin (Physically based fighter with a powered up priority attack), Burungeru (a Specially bulky Rapid Spin blocker who can burn Physical attackers and has access to instant Recovery), and Nattorei (very bulky Grass/Steel Pokemon which sets up entry hazards and is surprisingly effective and difficult to take down without any Fire moves)to name a few. As of right now, they provide consistant support for their own teams and provide consistant annoyance for unprepared opposing teams. I feel our future Caps should definitely be built in this mindset, with more realistic (and deeper) issues such as this. How can they effectively take on these Pokemon?

 

[smashlloyd20]

The thing is, those 3 work well together and there's really no one way to check the three of them.

 

[Mektar]

Here's what needs to be asked. Besides those who directly [work with/ benefit from] any weather conditions, what are some dominating or just plain decent Pokemon that are seeing much use in the standard game right now? What new Pokemon have given you trouble and what returning Pokemon are still great assets to any competitive team? I still feel we are focusing on weather too much as we don't even know how the oncoming weeks or months will be for the standard game, as it's currently very unstable and imbalanced.

To answer my own question above, there's heavy usage of specific Pokemon such as Roobushin (Physically based fighter with a powered up priority attack), Burungeru (a Specially bulky Rapid Spin blocker who can burn Physical attackers and has access to instant Recovery), and Nattorei (very bulky Grass/Steel Pokemon which sets up entry hazards and is surprisingly effective and difficult to take down without any Fire moves)to name a few. As of right now, they provide consistant support for their own teams and provide consistant annoyance for unprepared opposing teams. I feel our future Caps should definitely be built in this mindset, with more realistic (and deeper) issues such as this. How can they effectively take on these Pokemon?

Techloom. 'Nuf said.

 

[smashlloyd20]

What can loom do against Roob?

 

[Pokethan]

We could try and do a concept of a pokemon that is a special sweeper but sweeps using moves such as Psycho Shot and Sword of Mystery. Therefore theoretically its a special sweeper that can only be stopped by a physical wall.

 

[smashlloyd20]

That would make it have an extremely limited movepool though...

 

[Solstice]

That would involve an awkward amount of move creation to be effective. But if we're looking at major OU threats, I feel like Arghonauts concept could be rehashed well, but maybe not at this stage. The metagame is still VERY turbulent, we don't have a set difficult threat list, although Rohpushin, Nattorei, and Burungeru are in the top standings. What we could use right now is a Pokemon that stabilizes the metagame, but the best way of doing that is difficult. A weather eliminator removes that aspect of the game, which is where I find a lot of imbalance, but I feel like the bigger issue is how fifth gen brought a lot of offensive power, and the defensive has problems keeping up, between Doryuuzu and Rohpushin and Shanderaa (even without Shadow Tag its powerful), and Pokemon like Jalorda. Maybe a Pokemon that tries to right the offensive-defensive imbalance by being a wall that is better countered by walls, so very status weak and easy to defeat through slow HP drain, but not through full out attacking.

 

[Pokethan]

That would make it have an extremely limited movepool though...

Couldn't we make it be able to attacks effectively from just its special attack stat so the opponent wouldn't know when it sees one what defense it is targeting. Kind of like a mixed sweeper but without sacrificing having to ev in 2 attack stats.

 

[smashlloyd20]

Could work, but that would be a pretty amazing Pokemon even for CAP. Like MixApe on steroids.

 

[Pokethan]

Could work, but that would be a pretty amazing Pokemon even for CAP. Like MixApe on steroids.

The thing about it is the only "physical" moves it has to work with are Psycho Shot and Sword of Mystery anyway but it could still a good job of disrupting common walls and sweepers by hitting their defensive weakpoints.

 

[smashlloyd20]

So? Ape has a larger physical movepool, but Sword of Mystery hits the only worthwile special wall: Chansey/Blissey.

 

[Pokethan]

Thats true but its also up to everyone else if they like the concept or not. I personally like hitting special walls in the gut with physical attacks or vice versa with physical walls. I could see a pokemon like this become more of a wall breaker than an overall sweeper and thats why I like the concept so much.

 

[smashlloyd20]

When you put it that way, that seems like a good idea. I'm just not really sure when a great wallbreaker becomes an endgame sweeper.

 

[Yllnath]

I want to submit an idea for a concept that I feel is perfect for this stage of the forming of the 5th gen metagame. I chose to use our old standard of writing down a concept just because it helps me formulate a concept well. I feel a concept we choose to work on still has to incoorporate a way for us to somehow learn something about a metagame, and using the template below helps me orden my thoughts on how to do that with all the things that need to be written down.

Concept: The Centralizer (NOT DE-centralizer)

Description: A pokemon capable of stabilizing the metagame around it with as primary goal having the top X pokemon of OU being pretty much the same ones over time.

Justification: The 5th gen metagame is.. turbulent.. to say at the least. Stall, the new Quickstall, Weather teams left and right, Heavy (Dragon) offense, Bulky offense. There are many possible and viable strategies, and although this isn't a bad thing, it doesn't make for a stable metagame in terms of usage statistics. Now usage statistics isn't everything, but OU has always been based on them. That's where the goal of this concept comes in. Make a pokemon that is capable of centralizing and stabilizing the metagame around it, allowing for a calmer metagame with usage statistics being (on average) the same over a longer period of time (barring events like official bannings of pokemon).

Questions To Be Answered:

• Is it possible to centralize a metagame where new sets and threats are being discovered regularly?
• Is it possible to centralize the metagame around a single (but non-potentially-uber) pokemon, while still retaining the beauty of having many different strategies (and the choice and freedom in team building that comes from that), team building options and playstyles?
• In a more general sense, before we can even start this CAP, what makes a metagame "tick"? What keeps it together and stable over the long run in terms of usage statistics?
• What kind of pokemon is capable of centralizing the metagame around it? What can we learn from top metagame threats from the 4th gen? Is it a heavy hitter like Salamence that centralizes a metagame? Or is it actually an anti-metagame pokemon like Heatran?
• How can we build a pokemon that centralizes the metagame around it, but not to the point where it fulfills that task through means of all other pokemon must have to centralize around it, just to stop it? (I.e. Garchomp, where every team just had to have 1 or 2 counters just to be effective)

Explanation: A pokemon that can centralize a metagame but at the same time isn't overpowering to the point that it's banworthy on the banning characteristic of overly centralizing. Is it even possible? That's what we can learn from this CAP if we would choose to do it. Hell, we'll even learn a great deal from the current 5th gen if we go with this concept. Because one can not centralize the metagame before knowing what we need to centralize and what threats and strategies we need to keep in mind when we want to centralize around a single pokemon.
I don't want to go to in-depth on exploring our options as to what we could do with this pokemon, but like I already mentioned in the questions to be answered sections, this pokemon could do a lot of things (we need to decide which, though). We could try to stabilize the metagame going an anti-metagame route. For example, a good strong Air Lock pokemon centralizes the metagame partially by making weather strategies and weather related pokemon less viable and thus centralizes the metagame around the other strategies and pokemon. But anti-metagame doesn't have to be fixed to just Air Lock. An anti-metagame pokemon (like Heatran) is capable of stopping multiple kinds of strategies and pokemon and thus this concept isn't as lopsided as just an "Air Lock pokemon".
However, we could also go a overpowering (but just not enough to be banworthy? Thin line kind of thing..) and make a pokemon powerful enough that when building your team, you need to keep this Gen V CAP 1 in mind.
Then there is a possible strategy supporter route we could take, where this CAP 1 is build with the specific goal of not functioning too well when randomly slapped on a random team, but when it's on a specific kind of team, it's ability to support that team is so great, that said strategy becomes staple and other strategies need to focus on countering this well build team. Example: a pokemon that through ability, stats and movepool, can function really well on .. Stall/Bulky Offense/Hyper Offense/Etc. .. but is rather poor for other kinds of strategies. But when used inside it's favourite kind of team, it's either horrifically deadly or can support to a point where it can make it's team great.


The main thing about this concept is how far we can go in terms of trying to stabilize the OU metagame, without potentially breaking it and having to end up banning this CAP for whatever reason. (Overcentralizing/Overpowering/Over the top-supportcapabilities/etc.)
​

 

[smashlloyd20]

I don't get it Even if the metagame is constantly shifting, CAP is not trying to centralize the metagame.

 

[Yllnath]

From the CAP Mission Statement:

"The Create-A-Pokémon project is a community dedicated to exploring and understanding the competitive Pokémon metagame by designing, creating, and playtesting new Pokémon concepts."

I don't get where you're coming from when you say that "CAP is not trying to centralize the metagame". CAP is NOT not trying the centralize the metagame either.

The goal of CAP is to make a pokemon based on a concept that makes us, the buildings, learn something about the metagame. We had a decentralizer concept, which was a concept that revolved around letting us learn how a single pokemon could have an effect decentralize the metagame, in other words, deal with the top OU threats in a way that the metagame would resolve around those threats less.

This concept is pretty much the exact opposite of that one. It's a concept that allows us to learn a great deal about what constitutes a metagame and what key factors are needed (what we'll be designing) to make a metagame centralized around one pokemon. Like how the 4th gen was centralized a bit around Salamence/Scizor/Heatran/etc. for a long time.

Since for the bigger part of a generation, the OU tier is pretty stable after the first few months are over, the chance to do a centralizer concept where we focus purely on how to stabilize a metagame pretty much goes away. That's why I feel that this is a great time to do a concept like this.

 

[smashlloyd20]

Maybe it's fine now, when the metagame is crazy...but what about later? Once our OU has settled down will it be all about this CAP?

 

[Yllnath]

If it'll be all about this CAP, we done a bad job building it and perhaps it should be banned. Don't know, I'm not capable of reading into the future. I do know that it's something we'll learn a great deal from, trying to make a pokemon capable of stabilizing and centralizing a metagame, but with a very clear boundary (Which I mention multiple times in my concept), it can't be overpowering to the point that it's found banworthy under any of the uber characteristics (one of them being overcentralization..)
So yeah, I do hope that once the metagame settles and this CAP is around, it does it's job and it's a high contender in the OU ranks, but not to the point of the entire metagame revolving around him.

 

[smashlloyd20]

Wait. You want the CAP to centralize the meta around it, but you don't want it to revolve around the CAP.

 

[DetroitLolcat]

I think he wants to have the CAP centralize the metagame around OTHER pokemon by making their counters less viable?

 

[Nails]

short post: that sounds like a pretty awesome idea for a cap yllnath.

 

[Server_Crash]

I've noticed in the 5th gen that entry hazards are rarer and harder to set up. With Espeon and Xatu reversing your efforts and Erufuun punishing you with encore for setting them up. I think that a CAP that can choose between magic mirror OR mischievous heart would be an interesting concept, because it either allows you to send entry hazards to your opponent, being very good in a stall v. stall scenario, OR to punish your opponents for setting up the hazards with priority taunt/encore, and then proceed to go on the offensive with a free boost or something along those lines, good for offense v. (semi-)stall.

I personally don't think that weather is as broken as people are making it seem. Sure, rain is really good now, but saying that the prevalence of weather forces you to use weather is like saying that you can't run an all special attacker team because Blissey exists. The metagame changed, so teams have to as well. Conclusion to my rant: Creating a pokemon that becomes an automatic weather counter is simply refusing to accept the new metagame, and that isn't okay. Maybe, in a few months, when the metagame stabilizes, weather becomes so prevalent that it is impossible to win without utilizing your own weather. Kinda like Scizor, except that 'it's so broken' that we need to change it.

 

[Yllnath]

Wait. You want the CAP to centralize the meta around it, but you don't want it to revolve around the CAP.

Smashlloyd, stop putting words in my mouth and actually read what I say for a moment, seriously. I'm talking about moderation here, as in, I want it to centralize the metagame but not to the point where the entire metagame revolves around this CAP. Those are two completely different things. When Garchomp wasn't banned, not only did he centralize the metagame around him, but everything revolved around him as well, since everyone had to have counters for him. If you forgot to deal with Garchomp when building your team, you probably lost.

The 4th gen metagame also is centralized by Heatran. He is always the F in the F/W/G cores, he is the perfect counter to Scizor, who was the #1 poke for a long time. But you can't say the metagame "revolves" around Heatran the way it does with Garchomp. It's not like you should pack 6 grasses on your team and think you can get away with it, but it's also not the case that you need 1 or 2 pokemon dedicated on your team just to deal with Heatran.

That is the concept I propose for this CAP. Something that can centralize the metagame, but without being so overpowering or overcentralizing that it can be banned to uber on either of those uber characteristics.

I think he wants to have the CAP centralize the metagame around OTHER pokemon by making their counters less viable?

That is just one of the options we could go making this CAP. Like I said in the "Explanation" section in my concept, there are many routes we can take to make this Concept fulfil it's role as Centralizer. (Anti-metagame, stand-alone powerhouse, specific strategy supporter, etc.)






The reason I make the concept so vague is on purpose, that's how all concepts ever have been in CAP. CAP is a community project where all aspects/stages (Stats/typing/ability/movepool/etc.) of building the CAP is done through community polling. If I mention up front what we should build, then it can hardly be considered a concept anymore, then it's just a pokemon blue print.



I shouldn't hijack this thread any further. If think my concept has been pretty well explained so far, so if you have any questions about it, feel free to PM me. I'd like to see other possible concepts too, besides "Air lock pokemon". I'm curious what we can come up with in this new metagame.

 

[RWB]

Here's an Idea I'd like to see:

* No Guard Special Sweeper (access to Zap Cannon, Purgatory, etc.)

I have two others, but they're good and I want to be the one to submit one of them when the time comes.

I like this one. Bulky Sweeper or fast sweeper? Bulky has been done with the physical No Guarders, so a fast special no-guarder? Would need paper defenses though, because 100% paralysis on a 120 attack move(Even worse if it also has electric typing) is a fair bit devastating...


I've read a lot of good ideas in the thread. Let's see if I myself can come up with one that isn't already mentioned...

 

[djtoxic]

I have a quite strange idea. A cloud nine mixed sweeper. Psychic Steel typing, so although it wrecks weather it's weak/non-resistant to the most popular weather signature type moves fire-ground/water respectively. It could use STAB Psycho Break/Psycho Shock, along with Psychic, for both physical and special stab, and maybe BP as priority STAB. My 2 cents.