CAP 19 CAP 19 - Part 9 - Movepool Limits

Status
Not open for further replies.
jas61292

jas61292

used substitute
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Top Community Contributor Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
This is the stage where we set limits to CAP 19's movepool ahead of the actual movepool submissions. CAP19's stats generate a Base Stat Rating of 315 (Very Good). A Very Good BSR corresponds to a Very Good movepool limit of 65 total moves and 33 "Restricted Moves". However, we may end up going higher or lower. That is where this thread comes in. The actual list of Restricted Moves can be found in this article.

Also, please note that there is no vote at this stage! Our Movepool Leader (alexwolf) will be gathering the community consensus at the end of this thread and making an executive decision.

---------

CAP 19 so far:

Concept:
Yilx said:
Name: Einherjar ~Acta Est Fabula~

Description: A Pokemon that dissuades your opponent from fainting it, or can even leave it's presence on the field felt even after it faints.

Justification: When a Pokemon faints, it's usually thought of as the battle having gotten down to a 5-6. However, we've yet to discover if a Pokemon can leave a lasting impression on the battle even after having fainted; be it through moves like Healing Wish and Destiny Bond, placing hazards that the opponent can't remove as their removal has been taken care of, or by leaving an opponent's key member weakened and/or taken out.

Questions To Be Answered:
  • How can a Pokemon leave a long-lasting effect on the rest of the battle with just it's moves?
  • How the hell is it different from simply ramming a sacrificial martyr into your opponent's team and hoping it punches holes in it?
  • Building on the previous question, is it possible to build this Pokemon as a defensive threat rather than a "Glass Cannon"?
  • Is it even possible for a Pokemon to leave a lasting effect on on the battle, even after it faints?
  • Could changing your opponent's way of thinking even be plausible? From, "I need to take CAP X out!", to, "Damn, if I take CAP X out, I'll be in trouble...!"
Click to expand...
Hk46p2E.png

Type: Electric/Poison
Abilities: Storm Drain / (Insomnia/Vital Spirit)
Stats: 60 HP / 57 Atk / 119 Def / 131 SpA / 98 SpD / 100 Spe

Leadership Team:

Pwnemon- Topic Leader
ginganinja - Ability Leader
srk1214 - Typing Leader
alexwolf - Movepool Leader
Deck Knight - Stats Leader
 
We have decided to build a strong special attacker that lures in a specific group of Pokemon, Pokemon that Gyarados can set up on, so that the opponent is facing a serious dilemma in order to KO the CAP. Furthermore, we have a done a pretty good job in not giving potentially distracting moves to the CAP. And, we have done pretty well so far in staying true to our checks and counters list, so i think we can afford to be a bit more lax in this final competitive stage.

As jas said, our BSR corresponds to 33 RMs and 65 total moves, so i think that's a very good start. I am willing to raise this a tiny bit if the proper justification is given, but it's doubtful given our limited attacking and support movepool.

Let's see your ideas guys!
 
Posting this from my phone so it'll be fairly brief, but imo the limits should actually be a bit stricter. I say this because there aren't many moves we need in order to fulfill our concept but there are a lot of attacking moves that are allowed but completely unnessecary. We can beat our targets basically with STABs + Hidden Power + Psychic move; everything else is unnessecary fluff. Some of it is a bit dangerous i.e. Ghost, Dark, and Dragon moves. Making the limits stricter will force submitters to choose their moves carefully. I don't really have an exact number to shoot for as I'm currently working on my movepool; this post is mainly my general thoughts that I think everyone should keep in mind. I'll extrapolate on these points when I can get on a computer.
 
Last edited:
I see no need for a movepool limit greater than what CAP 19's BSR suggests. Let's take a look at the two previous movepool threads to see why.

Required

Thunderbolt
Return / Frustration
Hidden Power
Facade
Hyper Beam
Round
Giga Impact
Rest

Allowed

Electric moves
Poison moves
Psychic moves
Rock moves
Bug moves
Steel moves
Dragon moves
Fairy moves
Dark moves
Ghost moves
Normal moves
Flying moves
Physical Ice / Grass / Water / Fighting / Ground / Fire moves

Required

Toxic
Sleep Talk
Rest
Substitute
Protect
Confide
Attract
Swagger
Double Team

Allowed

Taunt
Thunder Wave
Safeguard
Encore
Clear Smog
Haze
Rain Dance / Sunny Day / Hail / Sandstorm
Attack boosting moves

Even if it were somehow decided that splurging on everything on this list was a good idea, it would still be quite difficult to exceed the Restricted Move limit. This suggests that limits a little stricter than 65 total and 33 restricted would not put too heavy a burden on the CAP's shoulders nor on the shoulders of movepool submissions.
 
I'm going to echo ELS's comments that we do not need a large movepool. In some experimental movepools I've been testing, I've found that even if you go with every viable Non Attacking move, almost all Attacking Moves (At least one of each type, and the majority of the STAB moves), and some flavour moves, it's still difficult to break 33. I'd say a reduction to closer to 26-28 on RM would be appropriate, with no comment on the upper limit (Although bringing that down would not go amiss either).
 
Let's start with the non-Attacking moves. Of the 20 moves we could give it (Assuming it gets all the moves on the weather list and listing only Swords Dance as an Attack booster), 5 of the required moves are restricted and 6 of its allowed moves are restricted. We shouldn't go ham on the non-attacking moves, since this isn't where his team support comes from, so giving him a limit of 12 non-attacking moves, 8 of which can be restricted seems fair.

With the Attack moves, assume we go ham and give him one move in each of the categories listed (also called the Krillowat suite). With just one move in each category, he gets 26 moves. 5 of his 8 mandatory moves are restricted. He's going to probably need more than 1 Electric attack and more than 1 Poison attack, so let's give him 35 moves, knowing that he's probably going to end up with enough STAB moves to keep his coverage low, and cap off the Restricted moves at 18 so he can get enough support to be good without being completely ridiculous.

So adding those together, we get 26 RMs and 51 total moves. That gives us a 4 non-RM move space for extra finagling if needed. Long story short, we didn't approve enough moves to justify giving CAP much more than 50 moves, and my 26 RMs is a bit on the greedy side given how many RMs are on the disallowed list already.
 
This is going to be my recurring thing:
"Deck Knight, post: 4658842, member: 653"]So here I am again going to ruin everyone's fun by pointing out brute obvious facts of movepool aesthetics.

The fact is, STABs and "every mon" VGMs always take up a substantial portion of the movepool. Lets start with the basics:

Toxic
Hidden Power
Protect
Frustration
Return*
Facade
Rest
Sleep Talk

That's 8 VGMs there, so now we've got 22 left w/ 60/30.

Lets add in STABs, including all the moves we've discussed and Tutors/TMs:

Crunch
Dark Pulse
Foul Play
Payback
Punishment
Pursuit
Sucker Punch

Power Whip/Wood Hammer/Leaf Blade
Energy Ball
Giga Drain
Grass Knot
Seed Bomb

That's 12 more, so we're now up to 20, just with aesthetic STABs and discussed STABs, leaving 10 moves left. This is further diminished if you want to offer people options like Power Whip and Leaf Blade etc.

And I'm not even to support moves yet, which would in most pools include Taunt, Rapid Spin, Glare and Knock Off. There's another 4 down, leaving 6 left.

Add U-turn, Dragon Tail, Roar, Aromatherapy, Synthesis, and Spikes and that completes the 30.

30 is simply too low if we do not want a series of cookie-cutter movepool submissions, where the only difference lies in say whether someone likes Ice Fang but not Spikes and so excises their movepool that way - or deliberate cuts out superfluous STABs to make room for more competitive moves.

Aesthetics is not a flavor argument. I take my movepool aesthetics very seriously because I want the product we produce to be comparable to existing Pokemon and not just be a jumbled mass of competitive moves placed in whatever slots they can (cape knows I detest Tomohawk's movepool aesthetics). It's about being complete and presenting an image of a realistic Pokemon.

Therefore my suggest is a modest increase to 70/35 to account for the fact that at least a few movepool submitters take seriously the idea of replicating in-game learnsets including their flavor rules - which include moves that others don't think of adding to their movepools because they never come up competitively.
I'll do a similar exercise here.

The Auto- 7 Restricted Moves (since one is a duplicate) is still the same. Now for STABs that seem likely on this CAP:

Fire Blast
Flamethrower
Flare Blitz
Heat Wave
Lava Plume
Overheat

Aqua Jet
Aqua Tail
Hydro Pump
Muddy Water
Scald
Surf
Waterfall

Most people I imagine will boil this down to about 4 each for aesthetic purposes, so there's another 8 moves. We're now up to 15 RMs, and we haven't even gotten to coverage and support yet.

That leaves us, given a 25 limit, 10 moves out of the following:

Allowed List from AM, minus STABS:
Aura Sphere
Clear Smog *
Flash Cannon *
Power Gem *
Sludge Wave *
U-Turn *
Physical flavor moves that would technically be RMs like Gunk Shot, Poison Jab, Rock Blast, etc. *

Allowed List from NAM, minus any moves that aren't actually RMs:
Aromatherapy / Heal Bell / Refresh*
Baton Pass *
Destiny Bond
Haze
Healing Wish
Memento *
Pain Split *
Rain Dance *
Reflect *
Stealth Rock *
Will-O-Wisp *

I've marked with an asterisk moves that will be in high aesthetic or competitive demand, the total of which is 14 (and technically more for physical aesthetic RMs).

It's thus my recommendation that if the RM limit is to be lowered from 33, the amount should be between 28 and 30 (inclusive) and not 25. 25 is too prohibitive aesthetically because we judge RMs based on their inherent competitiveness and not their specific competitiveness.

And so it continues:

STABs and "every mon" VGMs always take up a substantial portion of the movepool. Lets start with the basics:

Toxic
Hidden Power
Protect
Frustration
Return*
Facade
Rest
Sleep Talk

That's 8 VGMs there, so now we've got 22 left w/ 60/30.

Discharge
Thunder
Thunderbolt
Wild Charge

Gunk Shot
Poison Jab
Sludge Bomb
Sludge Wave

Mercifully, Poison doesn't have many RMs and people might settle for 2 of the 4. Electric however will probably have all 4, or 3 of them. So this adds about 6 total VGMs from STAB.

So we'll have 12 VGMs before we get to support and coverage. I think this is fine for this CAP, as it leaves 18 with a limit of 30, with each reduction lowering that number. Our list of valued support moves is not very long, rising to about 9, which would leave 9 moves for coverage both aesthetic and competitive (Bounce, for example is competitively useless but aesthetically possible).

I think the lower baseline for this CAP means we can safely lower it from 33, but my lowball recommendation would be 27, not 26. 58 total moves should be more than adequate.
 
Given what we've allowed and disallowed I don't think most any limit would be particularly good or bad. We did a decent job last step. That said we don't actually need 33 RMs (or 65 moves) for reasons Deck and others have articulated.

Arbitrarily, I'll suggest a lowering of 5 RMs and 10 moves total, giving limits of 28 RMs and 55 Moves.
 
Thank you everyone for your comments! Seeing as we have reached a consensus, the limits will be 28 RMs and 58 Moves. We obviously need very few moves to do our job, so there is still plenty room for flavor within those limits. Time to see some cool movepool submissions!
 
To be frank, I don't see us going wrong in this step. Unless we dip below 15 RMs, we're going to get every move that the CAP needs to function, and the total move limit is a purely flavor consideration. So whatever alex decided would have been fine by me. Let's move this along.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top