CAP 13 CAP 2 - Playtest

destinyunknown

Banned deucer.
I have been playing a bit and have to say that necturna is an amazing offensive spinblocker. I had an OU team based on Deoxys-D Spikes but always find a hole on my team I couldn't cover, a Bulky Ghost that mantained offensive pressure at the time. Gengar was too frail and Jellicent too deffensive, but Necturna is really interesting on that spot. I'm on the top 10 of the ladder without losing (well, I actually have 1 Lose because my internet crashed once -.-) and I have defeated some good players on the ladder.

Oh and magnezone is ridiculous in this meta with all that rain and steel types.
 

tennisace

not quite too old for this, apparently
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What about Soak ?
You could just set up Spikes and/or StealthRocks with any teammate and just bring him in. He has coverage problems with Grass/Ghost not being very efficient STABs. You just change the opponent's type to Water, and rape him with STABbed super-effective HornLeech or PowerWhip. The opponent will have the choice between staying there and dying (or trying to attack without his STAB) or switching and taking damages from Spikes. As Necturna spinblocks as well, he could quickly become very annoying.
Elevator Music actually used this against me and I was literally stunned when my Heatran got boned...
 
What about Soak ?
You could just set up Spikes and/or StealthRocks with any teammate and just bring him in. He has coverage problems with Grass/Ghost not being very efficient STABs. You just change the opponent's type to Water, and rape him with STABbed super-effective HornLeech or PowerWhip. The opponent will have the choice between staying there and dying (or trying to attack without his STAB) or switching and taking damages from Spikes. As Necturna spinblocks as well, he could quickly become very annoying.
Well I'm definitely using this now haha
 
Okay, well, I talked to the moderators awhile back about some ground rules for the playtest because PS! is still in a beta right now and not everything can be handled properly. Two rules were devised for the playtest, which between the mods they felt were fair. I did not include myself in the deciding of these rules, that way I wouldn't be biased since I am, of course, participating in the playtest seriously.

The rules are:

  • Your ranked account must be registered to verify identity.
  • Your ranked account, at the end of the playtest, must not have a 'Provisional Rating' to reduce the impact of ladder abuse based on the way ACRE works now.


The #1 player on the ladder, identified as ssbbm, had a provisional rating due to not playing enough games, and the #2 player on the ladder is unregistered and unidentifiable by any means. Anyone could theoretically claim that account, so it is disqualified from the champion position. And, well, the #3 player on the ladder is me; Duskypoo is my registered alt.

The top 5 players that meet the requirements are as follows.
Code:
 ACCOUNT    ACRE    SMOGON ACCOUNT
----------------------------------
Duskypoo    2020     Rising_Dusk
lolcat      1945     detroitlolcat
Imanalt     1883     Imanalt
tennisace   1800     tennisace
srk1214     1742     srk1214
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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Congrats, R_D! Definitely feels right for you to be the winner. I hardly feel deserving of 5th place, since I lost miserably almost every time I played anyone good. But hey, I'm not complaining about the publicity!
 
lol @ all my loses. i guess i had to learn the hard way not leave my computer unoccupied after clicking the 'find battle' button. u_u

oh yea, and since the necturna play test is over, does that mean we can play with any of the CAP pokes?
 

DetroitLolcat

Maize and Blue Badge Set 2014-2017
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Would complain about hardcore crash, but I never got close to >2000. Damn that ladder is unforgivable!

Necturna was probably the best CAP we have had in a while and is one of the few CAPs I've liked to playtest so far! Great project and all that!

Congratulations R_D! By the way, do you mind disclosing which Necturna set you used? It would be really interesting!
 
Yeah, I'm actually going to write an RMT about it when I get the chance to help document the metagame. I also agree with you, Necturna has had perhaps one of the most enjoyable and "OU feeling" playtests of all of the ones I've participated in. I'm glad others felt similarly!
 
lol i'm funnzip ):

but w/e i'd rather r_d have this~

also: i'll follow in r_d's example and make an rmt too i guess

and yeah, necturna affected the metagame the least out of all the CAPs ever created: i'm fairly certain i could have succeeded with an all OU team. necturna's main effects were making the game more steel / dragon based, imo, which is kinda interesting, seeing as necturna is a grass type so it'd be intuitive for it to help f/w/g cores more. (it did help f/w/g, but the amount of steels on the ladder was.. insane)

additionally, i actually think that necturna isn't broken and is the least broken of all CAPs barring voodoom. the most broken set, imo, was the shell smash set, seeing as it smashed through basically all unprepared teams who let it set up and basically required a team to either have scizor or skarmory and heatran or dragonite without sr up. (although spin-blocker sets were good as hell too: necturna is probably tied with jellicent for best spinblocker. jellicent admittedly walls pokemon such as starmie with much more ease - getting 2hkoed by lo ice beam is never nice - but necturna was much less of a dead-weight than jellicent often is: necturna could phaze, set up hazards, and do nifty stuff like threaten sweeps even if the set itself was defensive)

however, it's main downfall was the fact that necturna was hard-pressed to find a time to set-up, seeing as taking an attack (especially physical ones!) at -1/-1 often meant that necturna could more often die to recoil damage. the requirement of LO for ss necturna (it was weak af without it) was also a downfall, seeing as there was no "kill all" move for necturna - it had no equivalent move like outrage with just smashes through everything, resistances and all - this exacerbated the recoil problem as good prediction could cause a team to outstall necturna.

another weakness was that, with the prevalence of rain (or even sandstorm which reduced necturna's life even more!), hidden power fire was often not enough. this could be solved with magnezone to defeat skarmory: however, skarmory almost always ran shed shell at higher levels of play because it was such a good necturna check (in fact, spdef isn't even ohkoed by 0 EV +2 HP Fire! in neutral weather) seeing as it could ohko back with brave bird.

as said before, magnezone and dugtrio were amazing necturna partners (i got to #1 with a simple maggy / dugtrio / necturna / starmie / dragonite / salamence HO team), but necturna was also helped by pokemon such as heatran and skarmory, allowing it to stall better. imo, if a metagame cannot have a successful stall team, then it is definitely not stable: i got to #2 with a stall team + lucario, showing the stability of this metagame (and even then, i don't think lucario was quite necessary - the core of necturna / heatran / tentacruel / when combined with bliss/skarm is quite amazing - it checks possibly every archetype of team, while having an incredibly easy time against opposing stall due to necturna + spikes + three phazers.)

the most interesting thing about necturna is that it showed the importance of risk management. for example, i lost 2 games because i switched in my scarf salamence into a sub / qd necturna as it used substitute. i expected a sub / wisp version, so i switched back out to another pokemon to try and outstall; however, necturna simply quiver danced on my switch-in and easily swept me. the "unexpectedness factor" of necturna simply placed immediate pressure on the opponent: would it substitute on the toxic? or would it shell smash? thankfully, the limited non-sketch movepool made dealing with necturna easier: heatran checked basically every set, along with bulky d-nite.

something that i wanted to try but never got the chance to was honchkrow / staraptor. they act as pretty amazing checks to necturna (although i'm pretty sure they both get taken down by +2 power whip), and they can synergize pretty well with a lure necturna (necturna with either hp fire or sacred fire to kill skarmory) to wreak havoc on the opposing team.
 

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