Okay so people should stop hating on Drought like it's somehow bad for the concept. It's not. In fact, it's perfect, as many users have posted, for playing to advantages of the Fire/Poison typing and dealing with Water attacks in general. I'm just a little disappointed, I guess, that that's the case. The problem with starting with Drought is that it's neither
Extreme nor a
Makeover of the typing (sorry if this is all rehash). It's a Fire-type that thrives in Sun and a Poison-type that can't be Poisoned. It does nothing Ninetales can't do to compensate for the things that have been keeping Fire-types down through the generations, namely the SR and EQ weaknesses. Granted, Dry Skin doesn't do that either (it
will let it heal off SR damage sometimes along with a free switch-in), and there are two other Abilities to go, and CAP doesn't
have to be all about Sun, and all that. I'll be honest, too, Drought CAP would have a huge impact on our understanding of weather and ways to manipulate its effects, and a Sun-swept playtest sounds like a very interesting thing indeed.
I just think Dry Skin is better (for the concept). The point of Drought is to weaken incoming Water moves, so why not instead discourage them altogether, or even better, profit from them? A healing immunity is much more intimidating to opponents than halved power, imo, so to that point, I say Dry Skin is stronger for this CAP (Drought even strengthens incoming Fire attacks, mimicking the negative side of Dry Skin to a degree). The path Dry Skin takes us is far, far away from the FWG/rock-paper-scissors stuff that's popped up time and time again in the metagame and continues to play itself out even in Gen. V's weather wars. Unlike Drought, Dry Skin is only situationally activated; the psychological effect on opponents wielding Water moves is stronger and it's more difficult to strategize against. This can be used in a myriad of ways and for all sorts of playstyles, even if it's just to lure out the easily-exploitable Ground, Rock, and Psychic moves for immune or resistant teammates. Stats and movepool can complete a Fire-type with Dry Skin that could fit into an offensive Rain (Burn immune, resists most priority) or Rain stall team (4x Grass resist, Toxic immune), a Fire-type that could check bulky Waters (and Bronzong/Skarmory) for Sand teams, a Poke that could check VoltTurn abuse regardless of weather, or some combination of those or things I can't think of right now. Drought CAP can still counter Scizor and check Rotom-W all the same, but it can only be used in Sun by default, even if it's not on a Sun-based team, which plays exactly to capefeather's second interpretation in the post above, but at the same point steers this CAP in a direction that I find limiting. At this point, I would use Dry Skin CAP3 on any team to counter Scizor, Toxic-stall Chansey,
Thunderbolt set up on Starmie/Politoed/Jellicent, etc., but I would NOT use Drought CAP3 on any team.
Originally Posted by Fat Deck Knight
Like I said, I'm not opposed to either of these abilities coming up later, what I want to ascertain from the community is the primary means they want to use to, pardon the pun, dampen water types. If they want to explore another angle later, I think it would be a useful experiment to see how it impacts thinking on stats.
I think the promise is that if we let CAP have Drought now, we'll still get another chance to get Dry Skin later on. I think we should reverse that, heading into stats as we are, because of how crucial stats will be to this CAP's success and how great of an affect choosing Drought as the primary Ability will have on the formation of those stats. If we wait on Drought, the stats themselves will become useful in arguing for or against it as a secondary Ability, which will give people more concrete things to consider when discussing such an intense Ability. Choosing Dry Skin now gives will most likely give us more freedom moving forward while adequately addressing the bulky Waters as agreed upon in the Assessment thread. I believe we can accomplish both of capefeather's TL-approved interpretations, but not if we do the second one first.