Long post up ahead..
I highly disagree with this post and would like to throw my support behind Decks original decision to ban Wonder Guard. (I'm less decided on Magic Guard and don't really care about Magic Bounce either way as I feel the latter doesn't even really fit the concept one way or the other)
I'd like to echo Doug in the previous discussion thread where he mentioned that the CAP community has the tendency to just always shoot for the best and most awesome stuff every single stage of every single CAP.
And what comes creeping up it's hole? Wonder Guard of all things. The freaking ability that made 1 HP Shedinja get an Uber analysis and actually perform well in Ubers with the right support.
Rock/Ice is not Bug/Ghost, and Ubers is not OU, but Wonder Guard is by far and about one of the most scary abilities in the entire game, and it's for good reason GameFreak only used it once.
Seeing the proposal for Rock/Ice with related comments for something like Wonder Guard makes me feel that's just gunning for Wonder Guard for it's novelty factor. While this may not be true, I can't read minds, after all, regardless, it's still just picking the utmost worst typing, assuming something will bail the CAPmon out at a later stage, something at least as awesome as Wonder Guard.
I for one was really glad when Deck posted, and I quote:
There are many ways we can consider compensating for the typing we choose, but none of these three abilities will ever be in contention. The SR weakness level we choose will be that SR weakness level, and that will be the end of it.
I bolded the part that I agree most with. Just picking the worst types at random that I've seen go on throughout the thread, to me, at least, feels like people are almost expecting some kind of amazing ability at a later stage, just to bail the typing out. There's almost no other way to save some of the typing combinations that have been suggested.
Deck's statement which is basically saying (at least, that's how I interpret it), "Take responsibility for the typing you're backing. If it has a 4x weakness or a 4x SR-weakness, then
no, we're
not going to make up for that by something absurd. We chose for that typing, we're going to live with it."
In my personal opinion on this thread so far, I believe that just picking the single most bad typings, just because something has the most weaknesses is far from the best learning experience we could possible gain from this concept.
Deck mentioned in his last post in the previous thread that defensive or offensive inclination would not be discussed in the typing discussion, but by doing that, we're basically skewing the results of this thread. Objectively looking at worst typing, it's the easiest way to look at the typing in terms of how many weaknesses it has, and to which types it has those weaknesses. Combine the worst 2, and poof, there's Rock/Ice as a top contender. But trying to find the worst typing in terms of it's weaknesses is basically locking us in to typing combinations that are well, defensively terrible. And any and all hope for a more defensive pokemon for such types is far more difficult. That's exactly the reason why for many types submitted, I feel that a glass cannon type of approach is the only way the type could be saved (again, bar something absurd like Wonder Guard or 150 stats across the board, that is) to be able perform at least one role in OU (an revenge killer or hyper offensive role).
In the previous thread, I mentioned that the results of the typing discussion would be far more useful if everyone would have to keep in mind that the type combination they were backing would have to be able to still balance itself out in a way that it would also be able to fulfil a somewhat defensive or at least bulky offensive niche. What this does, is that you're still asking people to try to find the worst typing, but they will also have to think about the viability of the typing in multiple ways, something like this.
Some questions we're already asking, like:
- Is this typing really bad? Why?
- What are it positive sides that we can emphasize?
In addition to that, it would be great to theorymon about:
- What would be the viability of this specific typing in both defensive and offensive roles in OU, assuming no changes to the weaknesses and resistances chart?
- What would this CAP require, given this typing, to be able to perform well in both an offensive and a defensive role?
I'm not saying that everyone should just write one big poll-jumping story for the last question in every single post, basically giving us a complete sketch of what is needed in every single step after this.
What I am trying to say is that these two question offer a specific additional insight into the typing discussion that go beyond the simplistic "Here's the type char, 1+1=2, so type 2 must be the worst typing, mathematically speaking. Let's now fix that very worst typing with Wonder Guard."
Going to the first question I posed, by being forced to think about how a typing combination (or a single type) would fare against OU through it's weaknesses, resistances and likely STABs alone, you get much more insight and discussion about the specific role that the mechanic called typing plays within any pokemon. Normally, you don't isolate just the typing aspect of any pokemon, just to see how it matches up against OU, because that's not logical. You compare a pokemon, with all it's aspects, against another pokemon. By isolating on the typing like this, you get a much more in-depth research into the typing specifically.
The second question I posed, was more of a failsafe question for people proposing or backing a typing. If you propose any typing, and then on this question would have to answer, well, to perform offensively with said chose typing, we will need to be fast and have a high attack stat, because we have a absurd large amount of weaknesses. And well, if we would want to have any defensive role at all, then we need some like Levitate, Magic Guard, Wonder Guard, etc. If you're answers to the question 2 is something along those lines, I believe the typing should not be proposed, for the simple reason that at some point, it's not about the typing anymore. Then we get back to what I said while echo Doug earlier. We're just throwing the most awesome options on this CAP throughout every stage again, and we end up with a final product with a bunch of great aspects, that are so awesome, regardless of the typing, that if you would blindly swap out the typing for something else, the pokemon could possibly still work. We will have learned nothing about fixing a typing at the end of the project that way. We will only have learned how to compensate for obvious weaknesses that could've easily been avoided with a little foresight. In other words, by asking yourself the question what would be needed to at least be able to envision X type in at least a somewhat defensive and a somewhat offensive role.
tl;dr.
This concept has a lot more learning potential that what we're currently doing with it. Just picking the worst typing in a statistical or mathematical sense judging solely on weaknesses is skewing the type combination towards an offensive inclination by default, since, well, we're picking pokemon with the worst possible weaknesses as criteria in the first place, and therefore those type combinations will have a hard time to perform in any sort of defensive role.... Unless absurd abilities (hello Wonder Guard), absurd stats, or whatever.
By forcing ourselves to balance to ask a question what we would need to do to balance this pokemon both offensively and defensively, we will most likely not end up building of the absolute "worst" typing out there in terms of weaknesses, but we will likely still be using a "sub-par"/uncommon typing, that's at least more balanced and does not need an extraordinary amount of fixing in later stages. We will also learn more about what defines a good or bad typing in the process, by just matching that typing on how it will fare against the most common mons in OU in terms of weaknesses, resistances and STABs alone.
I hope all of this made sense. If not, and if I'm proposing ridiculous stuff in this post, and my request pretty much get skipped, I still
hope that we will be able to restrain ourselves in not going with the most absolutely worst typing, then come to the conclusion in later stages that we
need to fix it with ridiculous abilities and stats, where we completely forego the learning part of how to fix a specific typing. That, or we come to the conclusion that, "well, doh, with so many weaknesses, we can only seem to make a glass cannon-mon. Who would've possibly guessed?".
