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Before we start off this little cocktail party of misery, disagreements and flavour-related outrage, allow us to recap what we have decided upon in the previous thread, and let me impress upon you all, right now, that the typing will ultimately decide the way that this Pokemon is played. And I don't think I need to remind you that some typings are better for some roles than others, so you ought to think very carefully and make a particularly good case for whatever you happen to be supporting, both in terms of the roles that it favours and also in terms of its advantages in terms of Risk/Reward.
What I am looking for at the moment, primarily, is a typing that is stronger offensively than it is defensively; that is to say, one that constitutes a good pair of offensive STAB moves, which lend themselves well to 3- or 4-move coverage, while at the same time giving a large number of weaknesses, not just to attacking types but also to passive damage. At the same time, make sure that resistances balance weaknesses.
Anyway here are some things to be looking for:
Passive damage weakness – SR, sandstorm, spikes, even U-turn or Pursuit, whatever it might be
Good overall STAB combo – that means it should have both a wide coverage over the OU metagame and
STAB that cannot realistically be spammed endlessly for maximum impact – That means no dragons (oh fine if you want)
Lots of weaknesses and resistances – It should be a risk to switch in, but that doesn't mean it should be impossible to do so
STAB on notable risky moves – eg. Sucker Punch, Focus Punch, anything with a negative effect in essence (though I don't really like Sucker Punch but whatever)
Note that I am not only going to slate typings that adhere to all of these exactly – I'd like to get a balanced slate if possible, and the above is a list of things that seem to further the ambition of Risk/Reward. On the other hand, if you have your own arguments aside from these, please feel free to present for evaluation.
I have my own ideas on the typing, but I'd like to see what everyone else can come up with first.
I'm going to quote this because I feel like it's a really great guide, and I believe the typing that fits it best is Electric / Fire.
Let's look at that list of criteria one by one, and see how Electric / Fire measures up.
Passive damage weakness: Weak to every form of hazard damage and both damaging weathers, including taking 25% from SR. Weak to Toxic and leech seed. We have this pretty well covered.
Good overall STAB combo: Electric / Fire has incredible coverage against many of the Pokemon in OU and confers access to extremely powerful, highly risky STAB moves like Flare Blitz, Overheat, Magma Storm, Wild Charge, and Thunder. Our CAP would be very versatile going into the stat spread discussion, too, because Electric / Fire can hit from either side of the spectrum very effectively.
STAB that cannot realistically be spammed endlessly for maximum impact: Fire has a large number of key resists and is hurt by Rain, while Electric has common immunities and also a number of key resists.
Lots of weaknesses and resistances: Weaknesses to water, rock, and a 4x weakness to ground are assuaged by useful resistances to Fire, Electric, Grass, Steel (4x), Bug (U-Turn), and Flying.
STAB on notable risky moves: Already covered this above, but both STABs have access to a number of risky moves.
Fire / Electric is absolutely amazing for our purposes here and I hope everyone votes on it because I've been trying to have a Fire / Electric CAP made since Krillowatt. Won't someone please think of the FlareBlitz.
I think Ghost, Dark, or Flying are good for a risky 'mon defensively; all 3 have immunities but are notably pretty bad defensive types (alone that is; I understand Tomohawk's very good). They all can be very scary offensively, especially given their good 2-move neutral coverage options, but can be easily dealt with by prominent OU pokemon. Ground is another option like this, but tends to be a very sturdy type defensively due to its good resistances and few weaknesses.
Offensively, types with immunities and/or very good resists, but also good targets in OU seem to fit. Ice, ground, psychic, electric, fighting, water, fire, rock, and grass are a couple of notable ones, but a couple have too much ease switching in generally. (Water and grass mostly)
Ice is notable for offensive prowess but frality, which fits the concept, while psychic is a vulnerable and coverage-poor type with notable niches, so both of these are interesting, and they'd work fairly well together. However, I don't think they're the best choice; Jynx is a very risky 'mon as is and it just isn't very successful due to being unreliable offensively, defensively frail, and being too slow- all "risk factors" people have mentioned with the intent to explore here.
Well, considering I now see that Fighting/Dragon was a complete brainfart by me (I was tired, ok...) I have decided that we may as well narrow down our search field methodically and neatly, to reduce the amount of possible outcome types.
Criteria 1: Weakness to Passive Damage
This excludes Flying as a type, for the obvious reason that it immunizes CAP4 against Spikes + Toxic Spikes; this also excludes Rock, Ground, and Steel as typings due to the fact that they protect against sandstorm. I'm going to exercise a bit of judgement here and say that CAP4 shouldn't resist Stealth Rock due to its overwhelming prevalence. This excludes Fighting from being part of CAP4's type unless the secondary typing is Fire, Ice, or Bug.
In addition, this may entail that CAP4's typing cannot contain Fire or Poison, the reason being that having it contain said types would grant it an immunity to passive damage through Burn or Poisoning; such an immunity would reduce the risk of switching in CAP4 against a truckload of stall commoners including Jellicent, Heatran, Politoed, and Gliscor, to name a few.
Criteria 2: Typing should not give CAP4 much weakness or resistance to common priority
The most used priority in the OU metagame right now (well, really the only priority that's even semi-common in the OU metagame right now) is Bullet Punch, Mach Punch, and Extremespeed. Now, this automatically excludes anything weak to both Bullet Punch and Mach Punch, as it's impossible to cover them both with one secondary type; as the types that they share in super-effectiveness are Ice and Rock, this means that both Ice and Rock can't be part of CAP4's typing, though Rock is banned so Ice is the only notable loss. In addition, Fighting also hits Normal, Dark, and Steel super-effectively. As such, CAP4's typing cannot include Normal or Dark unless the secondary typing is Poison, Psychic, Bug, or Ghost. In terms of resistance, resistance to Dragonite's Extremespeed would come from Rock, Steel, or Ghost typing; because of this, Ghost should not be part of the typing (it also gives it an immunity to Mach Punch, which is unfavorable). Fire, Electric, and Water are the types that get lost for resisting Bullet Punch. It should be noted that these filters are a bit flexible due to the fact that the criteria does not call for complete neutrality to all common priority.
Summary of filters, as of Criteria 2:
Typing cannot include: Flying, Rock, Ground, Steel, Fighting (w/o Fire, Ice, Bug), Ghost, Ice, Normal
Typing should not include: Fire, Poison, Normal (w/o Poison, Psychic, Bug, or Ghost), Dark (w/o Poison, Psychic, Bug, or Ghost), Electric, Water
Criteria 3: Typing Should Contain Risky STABs
Here, I'm just going to copy+paste a list made by jagged angel a couple of pages back:
Dark - really is the best type for risky attacking moves: Sucker Punch, Beat Up and Foul Play can all be excellent/awful depending on the circumstances. Sucker Punch is basically the quintessential high risk/high reward attack. 10/10
Fighting - The best Physical Fighting moves all have risks: Close Combat, Superpower and especially Hi Jump Kick. Then there's the immunity for Ghosts. This is a very strong typing for risky moves! 10/10
Bug - As much as I love the support for Bug, its only vaguely risky move is Pin Missile, which might hit only twice (28BP), or up to 5 times (70BP). It would only be vaguely competitive with Technician or Skill Link as an Ability. Megahorn's only drawback is shaky accuracy, which is not the kind of risk Birkal and capefeather have said they are looking for. 4/10
Dragon - has Outrage, Draco Meteor and Roar of Time (LOL) but these are still pretty spammable once Steels are gotten rid of. 6/10
Electric - has Wild Charge and Volt Tackle which cause recoil. Note that these are both Physical moves. Electric moves are also absorbed by Volt Absorb and Lightningrod, as well as being risky to use with Ground types on the opposing team. 7/10
Fire - V-Create, Eruption, Flare Blitz, Heat Crash and Overheat are all strong but risky options, and there is a good array of negative effects to choose from. There's also the risk of giving the opponent a Flash Fire boost. 8/10
Flying - Bounce, Brave Bird and Fly all have potential, but only Brave Bird could be considered a strong STAB. 5/10
Ghost - Curse, Hex and Shadow Force all have potential, but none have been used very effectively so far. We would likely need a strong supportive ability for Curse and Shadow Force, such as Shadow Tag. 4/10
Grass - Bullet Seed, Leaf Storm, Grass Knot, Wood Hammer, Solarbeam and Petal Dance have all been used for sweeping sucessfully, and all have risky aspects. Good array of options. 9/10
Ground - Bone Rush has variable hits, but other than that the main risk of Ground moves is the many Flying types/Levitators that abound. 7/10
Ice - Icicle Spear and Avalanche are the only really risky moves for Ice STAB. 6/10
Psychic - Future Sight, Psycho Boost and Stored Power all have risks but are still strong attacks. There's also the risk of a Dark type switch-in and a Pursuit Trap - that's a major risk!. 8/10
Rock - Head Smash and Rock Blast are both competitive, yet risky possibilities. 7/10
Steel - Doom Desire, Gyro Ball, Metal Burst and Heavy Slam can all do some good damage, but with risks. It's a pretty weak typing offensively though. 6/10
Water - Water Spout is the only real possibility 3/10
Normal and Poison I discount for being too offensively weak for OU. No one is seriously considering them!
While I disagree with Jagged Angel on a few parts, on the whole this gives us a convenient look at potentially risky STABs that each type has. As one can see, the types that really just don't fit the bill are:
Bug
Dragon
Ghost
Water
I know that everyone is so crazy about Bug-Types right now, but it's time to face the truth: If we're looking at STAB risk moves, Bug-Types have literally NO possibilities that don't rely on probability risk. Even Pin Missile, which JA claims to be the only legitimate bug move we're looking for, relies on probability. Bug typing could still work, but it would have to be paired with a typing with really phenomenal risk moves like Dark or Fighting.
Summary of filters, as of Criteria 3:
Typing cannot include: Flying, Rock, Ground, Steel, Fighting (w/o Fire, Ice, or Bug), Ghost, Ice, Normal, Water
Typing should not include: Fire, Poison, Normal (w/o Poison, Psychic, or Bug), Dark (w/o Poison, Psychic, or Bug), Electric, Dragon (w/o typing with good risky STABs), Bug (w/o typing with good risky STABs)
Alright, before I introduce the final filter, I want to display the list of types with nothing against them.
The fraction on the side represents the number of Weaknesses/Resistances, respectively. This brings me to the last criteria:
Criteria 4: Typing Must Have Lots of Weaknesses and Resistances
If we look at the types from the list with attention to their weaknesses, Psychic/Dark gets thrown out of the window, obviously. The two with the largest amount of "reactiveness" are Bug/Dark and Grass/Dragon. Of these two, I'd like to throw my support behind Bug/Dark. While Bug doesn't have a great array of risky moves, Dark's arsenal more than makes up for it. It's also more vulnerable to hazards than Grass/Dragon and would be harder to switch in due to said hazards and its slightly less-relevant resistances (Grass, Ground, Ghost, Dark and Psychic as opposed to Grass/Dragon's Ground, Water, Electric, Grass).
I know this post is going to inspire controversy, but I'm just stating facts.
I do suppose the main problems for Fire/Electric is that it can become too good if we give it the right stats and moves, specifically those of a sweeper's frame. It's too early to really call out on the CAP being able to set up too easily when we haven't even decided what role this thing will have as a riskmon. Regarding rain, there are many Scarf users that could easily OHKO CAP4, factoring in Stealth Rock damage, meaning that we wouldn't have any issues of its major weaknesses becoming moot should we give it an appropriate base speed and a lack of moves that boost speed. Either way, there's plenty of room left with which way this CAP is going, so with all due respect, those judgements of Fire/Electric typing are rather inaccurate at this point in time. Much likewise, I think that the discussion process as well will be distinct enough from Mollux's should we focus solely on the risk vs reward aspect of the CAP rather than the typing itself. Similarities will appear, as most same-typed Pokemon would naturally do, but I firmly believe the discussion itself would deviate from CAP3's enough to act completely in its own life.
With the discussion soon to be closed, I'll take my leave and avoid further promotion of Fire/Electric before it turns into an argument. I appreciate your consideration and I hope you at least slate it to give the slate a more diverse variety than just Bug and Dragon-types.
Like many have already begun, I believe we have begun whittling away at the types deemed "not risky" enough. Leaving us mainly with Rock, Fire, Ice, Electric, Psychic and Bug.
While I like the Fire/Electric typing (and love Rotom-H), I think it has far to many common resists to be as effective as we would like. A weakness to water, ground, and rock does not really outweight the 7 amazing resistances it has (Bug, Grass, Fire, Ice, Steel, Electric, and Flying). Not only that, but it already has STAB on two thirds of the easily spammable Fire-Electric-Ice coverage we all love to use. Simply give it HP Ice and any player would be hard pressed to stop it.
Now on a different note, and while I may be beating the dead horse, I really think we all should give a closer look into the Fire/Psychic typing proposed earlier. In my opinion it takes all the benefits of the Fire/Electric typing, and simply adds more risks to it, giving a far better sense to the risk-reward concept we are aiming for. It has evenly balanced resistances and weaknesses (6 common resistances to 5 common weaknesses), all the traits we are looking for in terms of reliable STAB but still risky typing, the inability to endlessly spam its STABs, weaknesses and resistances to priority, susceptible to many forms of passive damage, and has inheritantly risky moves to use. I think this is our ticket to a the perfect risk-reward Pokemon. And, not only does it have offensive potential (like many have been focused on), but it also has the ability to be an extremely useful and risky supporting Pokemon; which was one of the ideas many wanted to explore in the original making of the concept.
I think an important aspect to each typing that everyone should consider before the vote is which types gives us the least chance of becoming too powerful and the greatest chance of remaining risky. This is so important for a couple reasons. Most importantly, we can't control the result of future votes so say we selected the typing that i had suggested which is grass/flying. When proposing it i knew it was a good offensive type but didn't think it would be op because i was envisioning it being a special attacker. But bmb pointed out that it could be a physical attacker and spam brave bird and wood hammer which would be very powerful.
So in order to do this i think we should look at a few key factors of each typing that has been suggested.
1. Does this typing have many moves that have a high base power?
This would obviously eliminate dragon typings as their move pool has the potential of being much too strong but there are other typings that could potentially fall under this category. However, the fact that only one type resists dragon makes its moves that much more powerful.
2. Can this typing (combination) be stopped by enough types seen in ou?
This is equally as important as a typing with a type coverage that is too effective has little risk once it switches in. Obviously the initial switch in is where a great deal of risk should lie but this should not be the only task that is difficult to perform on this cap.
3. Does the amount of weaknesses equal the amount of resistances?
Now when i say this it doesn't mean that there has to be the exact same amount but it should be roughly equal in terms of useful resistances and debilitating weaknesses. For example a fighting resist would be valued more than a poison resist and a rock weakness would be more debilitating than a ghost weakness.
4. Does it have enough weaknesses to passive damage and trapping?
This would obviously take into account stealth rock, spikes, toxic spikes, toxic, thunder wave (which actually is something that hasn't been mentioned much. This is a huge advantage for ground types), hail and sandstorm damage, and pursuit trapping
I think the best typing is one that can answer yes to every one of these questions but still have enough bright spots to be able to exceed and that is what we should consider more, rather than the reward we will receive from having amazing coverage and strong attacks.
I'm really liking Bug/Psychic, Fire/Electric, and Bug/Dark. In my opinion, these types best fit the criteria as stated several times. Personally, I believe Fire/Electric fit the bill the best, because of the risk involved is so high. The high amount of passive damage that this type is weak to, weather weakness, and of course the number of types it is weak to. But, this is balanced out by all of the resists this type has, the great coverage of the two stabs, and important resists. This typing really is great. I love how risky fire/electric moves are in general.
Oh look at this guy! Posting stuff even though he's an off and on member! *shot*
Okay, i was looking down the chart list until i found something:Normal/Fighting
Passive damage weakness –While it takes half damage from SR, Pursuit, and U-turn, It has nothing much else going for it in the immunity department. We could say something about guts, but that will come later.
Good overall STAB combo – Any move that a normal can't dent, a fighting type move will surely help. But this also means that you won't be hurting any ghost types anytime soon.(coughScrappycough)
Lots of weaknesses and resistances – This typing has a neutral resistance to most types, but luckily it has resistances to Rock(meaning 1/2 SR damage), Bug, Dark, and an immunity to Ghost moves. Unfortunately, the only priority moves it resits are Sucker Punch and Shadow Sneak. But who says that this typing wont get Extremespeed?
STAB on notable risky moves-Oh boy. While the normal side has Return,(Which, may i add, can easily NOT be included in the movelists during judging), the Fighting type side has as follows: Close Combat, Focus Blast, Super power, Focus Punch, DynamicPunch, Final Gambit, Superpower,Hammer Arm, Hi Jump Kick....you get the idea. Normal moves aren't without their faults either, With moves like Head Charge, Double Edge, Last resort, Hyper Beam, and Giga Impact. If we allow Return, we can ignore these choices, but wheres the fun in that?
I've come to my conclusion for a good typing, and I'm going to go with Fire/Flying, two underrated types that have great offensive synergy but terrible defensive synergy. It can function in any weather, really, as in Sun its Fire Blast/Flare Blitz is stronger, while in Rain it can boost its Hurricanes at the expense of the other STAB.
Passive damage weakness- Oh, God, does it have this. This Pokemon's primary opponent is passive damage, meaning that this Pokemon has to play to its resistances to Fighting, Ground, Steel, Bug, Fire, and Grass. This is high-risk in that not even bulk can save it. It's either you switch this thing in well or you don't. Most of the time, this Pokemon is going to take some serious damage switching in, but it also has 2 4x resistances and an immunity, which can always be expanded through abilities (which I fully support, but that's an argument for a later discussion).
Good overall STAB combo- Of course! It hits just about anything neutrally besides the Rock type, and hits five types super-effectively. Though five might seem unspectacular, note that those five types are Steel, Grass, Bug, Fighting, and Ice. Four of these types are very important in OU, so CAP4 would have some nice coverage, but nothing that's overpowering. Tyranitar laughs at this combo, and so do Fire-type Pokemon like Ninetales that benefit from Sun's Huricane nerf and great Special Defense.
STAB that cannot realistically be spammed endlessly for maximum impact- Good luck beating Tyranitar.
Lots of weaknesses and resistances- Five resistances, one immunity. Anything else should be considered a weakness because of the 4x Stealth Rock weakness.
STAB on notable risky moves- Hurricane, Fire Miss, Overheat, Fly(?), Magma Storm, Suicide Bird.
Great STAB combo and the ability to go risky with both Physical and Special attacks plus Death by Rocks makes Fire/Flying the best typing for the job!
I posted my suggested typing discussion earlier, and now it's time for me to give my two cents on some popular typing pairs mentioned.
Bug/Psychic: I like this type pairing. I already explained why I like the Bug type for this project, and the Psychic type adds some unique weaknesses and resistances while granting a key 4x resistance against what is commonly known as one of the most dangerous offensive typings in the metagame (Fighting). Psychic has a few "risky" moves as well, complimenting the Bug type even further. It's just a natural pair I see working.
Bug/Dragon: This is a typing that I like, but am unsure if it's really more beneficial to the concept than Bug/Psychic. It provides even more resistances than Psychic, namely a wider array that include some very useful resistances (W/F/G core and Electric) while adding two very popular weaknesses that must be addressed (Ice and Dragon). However, I do have some lingering concerns about the overall power of Dragon STAB: I am a firm believer that a Pokemon that is designed to be risky shouldn't have access to a typing that has a ton of neutral coverage. Pokemon such as Breloom and Toxicroak, Pokemon that I believe we should be using as models for this project, often have a good number of checks to it that need to be eliminated in order to gain maximum potential. By utilizing a typing that only has one resist, we're eliminating a good number of potential checks, and potentially allowing CAP4 to rely on just one of its typings to get around mostly every Pokemon in the metagame. It's a good typing, but does have some drawbacks compared to the other Bug typing available.
Psychic/Electric:In the past, this was a selection that I would have liked to be selected for this project. I've already said my peace on Psychic, and it's a generally fine typing. Electric is a typing that I really wanted as a secondary typing for this project (my dream typing was Bug/Electric for this project, but I got too many "it will remind people of Galvantula" to suggest it, so I just stuck with discussing Bug broadly). Resistance to Bullet Punch is really neat, especially for the "Breloom" build, and it provided a nice Flying resistance coupled with a key Ground weakness. However, looking at the offensive side of Electric, it's much like Dragon in that it is a very effective, broad offensive typing that hits around 14 out of 17 types for neutral damage. It's a very effective typing in the metagame as well (just ask Thundurus-T about the effectiveness of spamming Electric STAB). That kind of neutral coverage (especially considering that Psychic hits the three types that Electric cannot) is something I don't want: I want at least a few resists to this Pokemon, so that the player feels some sort of risk even when switching in his or her Pokemon after a faint. It's a typing I'd end up being okay with, but IMO, the Bug mixes are superior.
Fire/Electric: Defensively, I can see this. Key weaknesses, some cool resistances. That's fine. Offensively, this couldn't be more powerful in terms of coverage. We should be striving for an offensive typing where both typings individually are resisted by a good number of different Pokemon evenly, so that one particular typing can't just be spammed to wipe out 5/6 of the opponent's team. I can't think of two typings paired together that, offensively, could just wipe out a bunch of Pokemon without much fear of repercussion. You would just have to look at Team Preview, and it would pretty much decide which offensive STAB you should use, since more than likely one of Fire/Electric is going to hit a majority of the opposing team for super effective, or at least neutral damage. It's too neutral. I don't like this one bit.
That's it for now, since these four pairings seem to be discussed the most. Thanks for the contributions guys!
Not necessarily. If the typing is weak against Stealth Rock, then there's an inherent risk involved in switching in in most cases. If you switch into an immunity but take Stealth Rock damage, you still took 25% damage, not 0% damage. This is why I liked the idea of following up a Stealth Rock weakness with immunities or at least double resistances.
MCBarrett said:
Does this typing have many moves that have a high base power?
Base power is not an indication of overall power. It's just an indication of how the mon might use coverage moves. High base power can be compensated for in stats.
I have to say I really agree with this, and it has convinced me to gun for Bug / Psychic. There's something pretty about neutral coverage through three moves (which can be achieved here with Fighting-type coverage), and it is especially relevant for this concept, since now the player chooses between three or four moves to hit different targets. I think Bug / Dragon could still be cool if it ended up becoming similar to how White Kyurem plays in Ubers, but OU doesn't have the Bug weakness spam in the same way that Ubers has the Ice weakness spam. Otherwise, I fear Dragon may just eclipse Bug in terms of CAP 4's coverage, and the Bug STAB may not really be used.
I want to go in-depth about the differences between Bug/Dragon and Bug/Psychic. I think both are excellent choices, but I want to make sure users voting with an informed decisions rather than a gut reaction. I'm only going to be talking about those two typings because I think they're going to be making a significant showing in our polls. Let's review the weakness/resistance chart of each in relation to one another:
Bug/Dragon
Unique Weaknesses: Ice / Dragon
Unique Resistances: Water / Electric
Bug/Psychic
Unique Weaknesses: Fire / Bug / Ghost / Dark
Unique Resistances: Psychic
As you can see, the secondary typing of Dragon has more resistances and less weaknesses. I think this is something that is important to note. Please recall that this concept is about reward just as much as it is about risk. If a Pokemon does not have enough reward in the Overused metagame, then it is not worth making the risk. In relation to the tier, Bug/Psychic has five notable weaknesses (I'm excluding Dark-type because no OU STAB users have any interest in staying in against Bug-type STAB). On top of it, Psychic is not really a notable resistance. If a Psychic-type is limited to two moves, it can easily favor HP Ghost for significantly better coverage. What I'm suggesting is that Bug/Psychic is significantly weaker than Bug/Dragon. While some might consider this a good thing, I absolutely implore you to consider that we need to add some sort of reward if we're going to make this risk worth risking.
Bug/Dragon, on the other hand, has an optimal blend of options, in my opinion. It features some key resistances that give you some great chances to switch in. In a weather-dominated metagame, resisting both Water-type and Fire-type is extremely noticeable. It also adds a significant risk because both of those two types (especially Fire-types) can tack on HP Ice to get around its normal counters, now including CAP4. The risk is now there: you can risk whether or not they have HP Ice, and if they're going to select it or not. Having that Electric-type resistance is also important to give you some good switch-ins in the rain (still have to risk HP Ice/Ice Beam). It also gives you a pretty good switch-in to Rotom-W, which I don't think any Bug-types in OU currently resist (correct me if I'm wrong). In terms of weaknesses, Ice-type priority is probably the best kind of priority for CAP4 to be weak to. It's not incredibly common, but it would give us some hard counters. Being weak to Dragon-type moves could lead to some interesting revenge kills from scarfed dragons, so there is also risk involved in that (are they running scarf, CB, what?).
Finally, I want to talk about the riskiness of Dragon-type moves versus Psychic-type moves. Again, I worry that Psychic-type moves have too little pay-off in order to be worth the reward. You have good STAB moves like Psychic and Psycho Cut, but nothing incredibly powerful (120+). You have Psycho Boost, sure, but that's a signature move and I'm not sure how bmb feels about including it; don't count on it. Other than that, you have Stored Power, which is a risky move, but pretty much only when combined with Shell Smash (unless you can somehow pull off two QDs). I will give that Psychic-type has a pretty big array of support moves, but those usually end up making their way on movepools one way or another. Since both types are Bug-type, they could potentially end up with some statusing moves, so that is pretty even grounds.
In terms of Dragon-type STAB, you have two big moves: Outrage and Draco Meteor. If you somehow are able to argue that Outrage isn't a risky move, I'd love to read that. By using the move, you've now locked yourself into a move that you cannot switch out of AND you can't switch out either. It leaves you as a sitting duck to be revenged; it's a very risky move (but it obviously has high reward). Draco Meteor is also massive power in one turn, but the lose of SpA is certainly a risk. If you mispredict and the opponent switches in to a special wall, you've now successfully given them a free turn. Basically if your entire argument against Bug/Dragon is "dragon spam", then you are sadly misinformed. We could easily make a Dragon-type that doesn't spam, since it's mostly stats, movepool, and abilities that allow dragon spam to be what it is. When considering Bug/Dragon, focus on its risky moves and many weaknesses and resistances.
There are, of course, other differences between the two types. My biggest fear is that Bug/Psychic doesn't offer enough reward, whereas having a secondary Dragon typing certainly does offer reward to the risk you are talking.
GRs Cousin and birkal make some very compelling arguments in favour of their types. It's strange though, when birkal presents the expanded array of weaknesses Bug/Psychic has over Bug/Dragon, and argues to start looking at the reward because we're taking too much risk already - with words he can turn around the match up in his favour entirely.
Bug/Dragon must eliminate Steel types before sweeping, but once they've been either eliminated or sufficiently weakened, there's no risk to hitting Outrage because you'll be KOing something every turn. Similarly with Draco Meteor, you'd be firing off the move knowing for certain that you will dent something hard, and it's the enemy that takes the risk. The Dragon moves you advertize as risky have well known drawbacks to them and the strategies developed to handle those are tried and true - so much that players can follow their plan easily, just from looking at how many Steels the enemy's team got.
While Psychic grants good neutral coverage with Bug, it still gets walled by Steels like Dragon, but it also has the Dark immunity to contend with. That, and its Pursuit weakness. That's a more interesting threat, and it leaves the opponent some room to maneuver, assuming their trapper is alive even after the Steel went down (unless they're running Scizor as the only Steel >.>)
I suppose the riskiness factor beyond Outrage and Draco Meteor cannot be denied, since firing them while the enemy can still tank them will get you killed, but it's a very black-white risk scenario. Easy to figure out.
As for 'not enough reward', here I must plainly disagree. I'm staying true to what I wrote earlier - that during the Typing stage we can and should strive to make CAP4 risky. However high we set the bar here, we can still compensate in later stages, but if we go too easy on the Typing, there's no going back. This is why I'd prefer to error on the side of too risky than not enough, and the array of weaknesses Bug/Psychic presents is very adequate to the level of risk we're going for (it's not even as wide as Celebi's and Celebi is firmly OU for the FWG cores).
I agree with Birkal regarding the fact that dragon-type STAB in Outrage and Draco Meteor ends up being a good fit for this concept. However, I think a Grass typing would be better suited because Bug does not have very many moves that can be considered risky. I think of Contrary Serperior in this way, increasing your SpA with Leaf Storm is very appealing, but risky if you haven't removed Steels or Sap Sipper Pokemon. Serperior's lack of coverage really can render it ineffective. Therefore, I think Grass/Dragon is the way to go.
I still think Bug/Ground gives us a very good balance between risk and reward and should, therefore, be taken into consideration for this concept. I'm gonna use MCBarrett's guidelines to explain more in depth why.
Does the typing have many moves with a high base power? A whopping grand total of two. Megahorn (120 base power, 80 accuracy, no added effect), and Earthquake (100 base power, 100 accuracy, no added effect, completely ineffective against Flying-type Pokémon or Pokémon with Levitate). One thing though: Many Ground-type Pokémon get Rock-type coverage as well, but assuming this were to be CAP 4's typing, I don't think it should get such moves, as it would run the risk of becoming somewhat overpowered. Remember that we're trying to balance risk vs. reward.
Can this typing combination be stopped by enough types seen in OU? First off, two questions. Do its counters have to be OU? I think it'd be interesting to see how the usage of lower-tier Pokémon could possibly change if the best counters for a Bug/Ground CAP could only be found in, say, UU, or something. Also, what is "enough" counters defined as? Anyways, Flying-type Pokémon are the bane of this typing. If you want a list, though, here's one: Skarmory, Salamence, Gyarados, Dragonite, Flygon, Gliscor, Rotom (especially Wash Rotom), Jellicent, Chandelure (ballooned), Gengar, Thundurus, Tornadus, Landorus, and the list goes on and on... Also notable is how well weather would be able to counter this typing. Sun, specifically, presents a perfect scenario of risk vs. reward: do you stay in against a Fire-type Pokémon to try and net a kill while risking being KO'ed yourself, or do you switch out and let the Pokémon set up, potentially having your switch in take the fall? Bug/Ground provides near-perfect coverage against most Sun abusers (who are all, either, Grass or Fire). Charizard is another hard wall to this typing, as Ground is unable to hit it and Bug is nearly inconsequential due to Fire/Flying being basically immune to it.
Does the amount of weaknesses equal the amount of resistances? Let's look one by one, starting with the resistances:
-Fighting - as common an attacking type that Fighting is, any Pokémon relishes the ability to switch in on a Fighting-type move and take only half damage. It should be noted, however, that many Fighting-type Pokémon can get around Bug/Ground's resistance by packing a powerful Rock-type coverage move like Stone Edge or Rock Slide. A resistance to Fighting-type attacks also means a resistance to Mach Punch and the rare Vacuum Wave.
-Ground - resistance to Earthquake, 'nuff said.
-Steel - even though it's rare to see Steel being used heavily as an attacking type, it's still an useful resistance to have because of how common Bullet Punch Scizor is. Outside of that, however, a Steel resistance isn't really useful. Resists Bronzong's and Ferrothorn's Gyro Ball, I guess, but Ferrothorn would much rather hit you with Power Whip anyways.
-Electric - another useful resistance as it gives you full immunity to Volt Switch, Thunder Wave, and Thunder.
Now, on to the weaknesses:
-Flying - the biggest of all its weaknesses. Basically any Flying-type Pokémon can come in and wreck Bug/Ground, not only with STAB Flying-type moves, but also because of Flying's full immunity to Ground-type attacks and resistance to Bug. Many Flying-type Pokémon can also come in, force a switch, and set up during the switch, making Bug/Ground inherently risky to use due to all the powerful set-up sweepers that roam the list Flying-type Pokémon. Levitators can fall under this category, too, I guess, but they don't get the resistance to Bug-type moves that Flying gets.
-Fire - as I mentioned before, Sun teams pose an interesting question for Bug/Ground typing: do you try to kill by staying in and risk the possibility or being killed yourself, or switch and allow your opponent to set up or hit whatever comes in? Remember that Volcarona only takes neutral damage from Earthquake. Charizard is basically immune to both STABs, as is a ballooned Heatran. Getting burned, by the way, is not something a physically-biased type combination like Bug/Ground particularly enjoys.
-Water - this one is kind of self-explanatory in my opinion. In a metagame that sees most of its life under a constant deluge, a Water weakness of any kind is fatal for a Pokémon to have. Getting hit by Scald, apart from dealing a nasty chunk of damage (in or outside of rain), also has the added chance of burning the Pokémon. Jellicent, anyone? Rain also means 100%-accurate Hurricanes, something that a Bug-type never wants to be hit by. A water weakness also leaves the Pokémon weak to Aqua Jet.
-Ice - another self-explanatory weakness. Being vulnerable to Ice Beam and Blizzard (which has 100% accuracy in Hail) is crippling for any Pokémon as half the world carries one or both of those moves. Also with this weakness comes a vulnerability to Ice Shard.
That's 4 resistances (1 of which is kind of mehh) vs. 4 very common weaknesses.
Does it have enough weaknesses to passive damage and trapping? Again, what defines "enough" weaknesses and when when do they amount to so much that risk overrides the reward? Think of a double weakness to Stealth Rock. I think this typing combination is decently balanced in that regard. The only passive damage it doesn't have to worry about comes from Sandstorm, which actually acts as a positive due to its secondary Ground typing. It's not exactly damaging, but as I mentioned before, Ground also grants the Pokémon an immunity to Thunder Wave. Additionally, Ground typing neutralizes Bug's weakness to the ever-present Stealth Rock. Outside of that, however, it's hurt by every type of passive damage in the game. Burn, as stated earlier, basically renders the Pokémon useless, since all the type combination's raw power comes from two physical moves.
Someone said earlier that we want the Pokémon to not only be a risk to play, but to also be able to generate risk for the opponent. I think this type combination fulfills both of these requirements pretty nicely.
Okay, maybe it's just going over my head, but every time I see somebody advocating anything Dragon, my immediate instinctual reaction is just to disregard them and their post completely because they obviously have no idea what they're talking about. Clearly I'm not understanding the whole story here, because there are somehow some really smart people who somehow think that Dragon is a good idea.
Here's my beef with Dragon. Yes, it has some "risky" moves that fit the concept. But, and this is a big but, these moves are ones that have already been explored thoroughly by the OU metagame. We already understand the risks and rewards associated with those moves and with using that type in that way. Going Dragon isn't teaching us anything that we don't already know. Or at least that's how it seems to me. Like I said, it's perfectly possible I'm just missing something, but I'd just please like for somebody to explain to me what that is. I just don't see how we'll learn something here just by perfecting exactly what we already know works and how.
For a moment, let's think of risk and reward here on a more meta level, not in terms of the typing alone but in terms of the CAP process itself. If we go with Dragon, that's a very low-risk option to take in terms of this concept, and that means that the reward for the project is going to be lower in that we won't learn as much. In the spirit of the concept, I'd much rather we pick a typing that's riskier for the process so that we have the opportunity for greater reward, to learn more rather than just further solidify what we already know.
EDIT: As a side note, Birkal, bmb did say over IRC that he would indeed be willing to consider allowing Psycho Boost because of just how well it fits the concept.
After all this heated discussion, I think Bug/Psychic would be my choice, as it is riskier than Bug/Dragon, which is what the concept is about, and the other statements above my post in favour of Bug/Psychic help me solidify my point. In terms of CAP, we need a Psychic pokemon. Here's who would be on my slate:
My responses (and questions) to the commonly proposed typings:
(I'm going to be stating the obvious, such as weaknesses and resistances specifically, to make sure I don't miss any)
Weak to Bug, Dark, Fire, Flying, Ghost, and Rock.
Resists Grass, Ground, Psychic, and doubly Fighting.
Bug moves have little riskiness, but Psychic has a few options (Psycho Boost may be up for consideration later), and the existence of an immunity in Dark puts all Psychic attacks at risk.
I find the double Fighting resist extremely valuable, but is it valuable enough to tank Fighting-type attacks while still sporting an SR weakness? Why should we use this CAP over a risky Ghost instead? How much would a U-Turn weakness affect this CAP? I feel that Bug nicely balances out Psychic’s weakness to Dark, and may cause some prediction mindgames with Pursuit and Crunch/Sucker Punch. However, does a Psychic STAB work in favor of an offensive Pokémon in OU? If we’re thinking of Terrakion, how can we be certain that the reward of taking out such sweepers outweighs the risk of letting a Dark-type, say Tyranitar, come in for free? That would be a mindgame in itself.
Weak to Dragon, Flying, Ice, and Rock.
Resists Electric, Fighting, Ground, Water, and doubly Grass.
Again, Bug moves mostly aren’t risky skill-wise, and most Dragon moves have proved spammable.
I find the resists of Fighting, Ground, Electric, and Water extremely useful, while leaving it open to Rock and Flying means the opponent will often have to predict correctly, too. The Dragon weakness will encourage more Dragons and Steels on either side, I think. As for the Dragon moves, we could design them to not be spammable, or give it only non-spammable moves. However, can we make absolutely certain that a future poll won’t go against that, and make it broken? Due to the SR weakness, I think Draco Meteor isn’t as safe an option as one would assume, and Birkal does make a good point about Outrage. However, Asylum_Rhapsody makes some good points as well: it’s a given that we have time-tested strategies around both, including on other SR-weak Pokémon, and that we may just adapt those to this CAP if it gets the moves.
Weak to Bug, Fire, Flying, and Rock.
Resists Dark, Ghost, Grass, and Ground. No double resists, but one immunity to Psychic.
Bug moves aren’t really risky. The abundance of risky Dark moves could help offset this, and there are plenty of risks in using a Bug move to set up, if we want to go that route later. Dark also provides STAB risky priority.
Do we want to give this CAP an immunity? How much would a Psychic immunity affect this CAP? How much would a U-Turn weakness affect it? As for the moves, do we want it to set up? Otherwise I don’t see much riskiness in the offensive Bug type, unless Megahorn is its sole Bug attacking option (not suggesting this). Again, the SR weakness does offset the benefit of switching in for free, as capefeather pointed out.
Weak to Fire, Flying, Grass, Ice, and Water.
Resists Fighting, Ground, and Poison. No double resists, but one immunity to Electric, so T-Wave and Volt Switch. Immunity to passive damage in Sandstorm.
Bug moves aren’t generally risky. Ground gets EQ (if we give it EQ) and is risky only due to Flying-types and Levitators. Again, we can choose whether or not to rely on Bug set-up moves to sweep. RavensNation posted a far more in-depth analysis than I have.
Do we want to give this CAP an Electric immunity? It would need excellent prediction to get in safely in the Rain; if it even wants to, Thunder would be its sole opportunity. That could lead to some nice mindgames. This combo is not SR weak, which I feel may be against the idea of risk (though I don’t want it to be completely useless, so this can be a good option).
(This is only because I brought up Ghost while talking about Bug/Psychic.)
Weak to Dark, Fire, Flying, Ghost, and Rock.
Resists Bug, Grass, Ground, and Poison. Immune to Fighting and Normal.
For the final time (phew!), Bug doesn’t have very risky moves. Ghost also isn’t very risky, and provides STAB priority.
Do we want to give this CAP two immunities? Particularly to the Fighting type, which is the main selling point of Bug/Psychic: does this take away too much risk? It forces prediction upon Terrakion, that’s for sure, but less so if it’s already Choice-locked. That brings up a good question: do we want to design this CAP to set up on Choice item users through immunities? If that’s not in line with the risk-reward concept, I’d stray from most immunities. (Of course, would the opponent Choice lock him/herself into a move s/he knows you have an immunity to, and if so, aren’t you within your rights to abuse that?)
Back to the CAP: it’s still weak to SR, so it can’t realistically switch in more than once to tank a resisted Choice-powered move, and some such moves may 2KO it. It also encourages the Pursuit/Crunch/Sucker Punch trapping mindgames mentioned with Bug/Psychic, so we still have some risk here.
Weak to Bug, Dark, Ghost, and Ground.
Resists Electric, Fighting, Flying, and Psychic.
Electric and Psychic is a very risky offensive pair, as both STABs have immunities and in Electric’s case can even help the opponent out. In addition, there are several risky options for Electric and a few for Psychic.
Do we want a CAP whose STABs are both completely ineffective against some Pokémon? That does add risk, and extra mindgames if you spot such a Pokémon in team preview. This type combo also allows for the Pursuit/Crunch/Sucker Punch mindgames. How effective is this offensive pair in OU; is the risk of giving them a free switch outweighed by the reward of coverage? Is this coverage too powerful in neutrality, as DarkSlay suggests?
Weak to Rock and Water, DOUBLY WEAK to Ground (which also is immune to Electric STAB).
Resists Bug, Electric, Fire, Flying, Grass, Ice, and doubly resists Steel. Immune to Burns.
Electric STAB is automatically very risky in this case, as its primary (and extremely common) weakness also happens to be immune to it. Fire has plenty of risky options, and both STABs have the chance of activating a boosting ability for the opponent.
This is an extremely powerful combo. When I saw this, I first thought the double weakness to EQ was going to make the reward not worth the risk; however, I understand the case that with its myriad resistances and great neutral coverage, this isn’t risky enough. I feel this would spark plenty of mindgaming fun (no pun intended), if we can make certain it cannot sweep the entire opposing team by spamming a STAB move, and that it doesn’t become the sole concern of the opponent’s game from the glance at team preview. The weakness to SR certainly cuts down on the possible switches, which in turn cuts down on the chance that the opponent will KO it with prediction.
Of course, the immediate prevalence of this CAP typing once it's finished will result in a rise in Ground-types, lessening the viability of spamming. But will that prevalence ever fade?
(I felt I needed to mention this typing, as my previous post supported it.)
Weak to Electric, Ground, and Rock.
Resists Bug. Doubly resists Fire, Ice, and Steel. Immune to Burns. (Could partially function in both Rain and Sun, though with only one STAB, so may not be designed to function in either one.)
Fire moves have plenty of risky options, as well as the possibility of boosting the opponent. Water isn’t really risky, but could boost the opponent.
I first liked this combo because I couldn’t get behind a doubly SR-weak Fire/Ice CAP, but I still wanted something that wasn’t walled by Steels. However, I don’t know if this is risky enough either. Offensively, Dragons wall it flat (unless it gets some HP Ice or other Ice move), and so do other Fire/Water CAPs, in its Fire STAB. Which brings up: Do we want this CAP to wall itself? If it’s going to be a bulky sweeper (which I think I’ve heard it might be, though that may be poll-jumping), will users of this CAP be able to counter others of this CAP without taking up an extra teamslot? That allows for more flexibility and mindgames, in my opinion, but more centralization as well. Will it all come down to a speedtie determining who gets to drown the other with Water STAB first? I’d hope not.
(Of course, both Bug/Dragon and Bug/Ghost may fall into this trap as well.)
TL;DR: Does the combo have myriad useful weaknesses and resistances? Does it cause mindgames offensively? Does it avoid such great coverage that would otherwise force the opponent to carry counters or immunities to it, overcentralizing the metagame? Does it allow for plenty of different and flexible routes, given that we cannot control the outcomes of the future polls?
So far I'm shifting support to Bug/Psychic, Bug/Dark, and Bug/Ground. I'm feeling the Bug Bandwagon, and for good reason. However, I still like Fire/Water; I’m just not sure what that would do to the metagame.
As a relatively inexperienced player, if I asked any questions that have painfully obvious answers (certainly a possibility past midnight), feel free to PM me about them or simply ignore me.
I know that, as this is the CAP, and a risk-reward sweeper at that, that this Pokémon will become a huge concern for teams once in playtesting and will somewhat centralize the metagame around countering it for a while. Hopefully with the right typing, everything will balance out.
I was going to suggest Bug/Water, as it resists Fighting, Ground, Ice, Steel, and Water, and is weak to Electric, Flying, and Rock; also, type-wise only, in OU only Jellicent, Gyarados, the Keldeos, Tentacruel, Salamence, and Dragonite resist both STABs.
However, as has been pointed out, the STAB moves aren’t in general very risky; it might have to base risk in a set-up, and I think that may constrict our future options too much, or some key poll may go wrong for this idea.
If anyone else thinks it’s a good idea, please defend it; but I feel the lack of risky STAB moves may have already made it invalid for this concept.
EDIT: Reread and changed the phrase "that it forces the opponent" in my TL;DR section to "that would otherwise force the opponent" in order to avoid confusion.
Thanks to GR's cousin's list, I analyzed some of these that probably don't work: Fire/Electric, Bug, Electric/Physic and Dragon/Fighting. For Fire/Electric, my main concern is it being too powerful. It has great coverage and if we turn it into a sweeper, it can decamiate teams with great neutral coverage. Pure Bug doesn't have many "risky" moves aside from low-accuracy moves. Dragon/Fighting, however, has lots of risky moves but too good coverage. It beats Steels who wall Dragons, allowing for Dragon spam. Finally, Electric/Physic. It doesn't have many risky moves aside from: Wild Charge, Volt Tackle, Psycho Boost. (that's all I can think of) Don't hesitate to criticise if I got something wrong!
I'm going to suggest Psychic/Ghost as typing for CAP4 for the following reasons:
Passive damage weakness – The type is susceptible to all forms of passive damage: stealth rock, spikes, toxic spikes, hail, sandstorm, leech seed, poison, burn. Ohh, and look at that, a 4x weakness to Pursuit!
Good overall STAB combo – Just between its STABs, it could hit Fighting, Poison, Ghost and Psychic super effectively. Most of the other types are hit neutrally.
STAB that cannot realistically be spammed endlessly for maximum impact – Spamming one of its STABs is just begging for a Pokemon with immunity to freely come in. Also, without access to strong coverage moves, Dark types and STeel types could wall it all day.
Lots of weaknesses and resistances -
4x weak - Dark, Ghost
2x resist - Poison, Psychic
immunity - Normal, Fighting
That's it. Everything else hits it for neutral damage.
STAB on notable risky moves – The fact that Normal and Dark types are immune to one of its STABS, and Steel - types, the premier defensive types, resists both, gives an inherent risk in using any of its offensive options. Its support moves have risky/situational moves, such as Destiny Bond, Confuse Ray, Spite, Mirror Coat, etc.
I would like to propose Grass/Psychic for this discussion.
It has 6 weaknesses not counting poison (Fire, Ice, Flying, Ghost, Dark, and x4 to Bug) and 6 resistances (Water, Electric, Ground, Fighting, Psychic, and Grass).
It has no passive damage immunities other than leech seed, takes neutral damage from Stealth Rock, and is weak to U-Turn and Pursuit, but resists Volt Switch.
Offensively, Grass and Psychic don't synergize as well as Bug and Psychic do, but they do still retain fairly good neutral coverage in OU, and nether can be considered spamable. Grass and Psychic have 6 moves with 120 BP or higher, of them 4 are Special and 2 are Physical. Of those Wood Hammer, Leaf Storm, Psycho Boost, and Petal Dance have a non probability or weather based risk, (Especially Leaf Storm, and Psycho Boost, as the SpA drop would probably leave it more vulnerable to Pursuit Trapping or Sucker Punch).
There are some other interesting risky moves here as well. Most notably Stored Power and Ingrain. Ingrain is an incredibly risky move, that arena traps the user, leaving it open to super effective hits, but also prevents it's stat boost from being phased out by Roar, Dragon Tail, etc. Stored Power becomes stronger as you collect stat boosts on any stat. These two moves could synergize very well together, giving it the potential to become unstoppable after it has set up.
I think that this Typing matches the concept really well, and hope that more of you shall start promoting it in the last few hours we have on this thread. I apologize to BMB and the mods for adding on another proposal to the already massive list, but I felt that this was so close to the concept that it needed to be thrown out there.
EDIT: As a side note comparing this to the many Dragon type suggestions, I would like to point out that Petal Dance functions the same as Outrage, and that Leaf Storm/Psycho Boost function the same as Draco Meteor, but have much worse neutral covrage, meaning that the other player is more likely to have something that can tank a hit on the switch and fire back, (or in the case of Psycho Boost, switch to a Dark type and take no damage). Dragon on the other hand has a tendency to take at least a noticeable chunk out of any non steal type. This typing is also weak to Dark, leaving it vulnerable to Pursuit Trapping Revenge Killers such as Weavile. That, and fact that Grass/Dragon and Bug/Dragon both have an (arguably) better defensive typing, makes this a much riskier proposal, and I think the movepool potential for Grass/Psychic is much better, giving it a larger selection of potential sets to achieve victory.
Bug/Dragon must eliminate Steel types before sweeping, but once they've been either eliminated or sufficiently weakened, there's no risk to hitting Outrage because you'll be KOing something every turn. Similarly with Draco Meteor, you'd be firing off the move knowing for certain that you will dent something hard, and it's the enemy that takes the risk. The Dragon moves you advertize as risky have well known drawbacks to them and the strategies developed to handle those are tried and true - so much that players can follow their plan easily, just from looking at how many Steels the enemy's team got.
I could agree to a degree with your point, however the fact that Bug gives a weakness to Stealth Rock can counterbalance this point quite a bit. It won't be able to switch in with ease as Latios does just to spam Draco Meteor, since every time your opponent switches to a Steel type you 1. give him a free turn and 2. lost 25% of your health without reaping any sizable advantage. Think about Kyurem - apart from its mediocre defensive typing (which is partially compensated by its above average defenses, also), it's often a pain to just switch in with it, and if your opponent has a good Specially Defensive Steel you're wearing down your poke much faster than he is (okay, let's pretend for a second Kyurem doesn't have access to Roost, but since we will decide the moveset for CAP4, that's a non-issue).
About Outrage, well, you're making the risk associated with it smaller than what I think it is. Let's say your opponent lost its Steel type for some reason. Locking yourself into Outrage will probaby mean that you KO something, but you will get revenge killed basically 100% of the times (unless you eliminated all Scarfed revenge killers AND all priority users your enemy has into its team, and yeah, most of them will suffice since our CAP4 will be at 75% health at best thanks to SR weakness). So it's an one-for-one trade, and your opponent chooses what he will loose, again not that terrible. As an actual example, think about MoxieMence, you kill something then your opponent brings in his Mamoswine/Latios/Scarf Hydreigon/Terrakion/Weavile/whatever and revenges it. If your opponent lost all of those threats beforehand, well, it's a job well done by the rest of your team, but that's not taking away the risk factor from a SR weak poke that need heavy team support to sweep.
I agree somewhat on the rest of your post, I'm not denying Bug/Psychic will be a good typing for our CAP4, but Bug/Dragon could be good too.
I honestly believe that the ideal risky typing should not able top hit a major of OU with STABed super-effective damage, but instead through a combination of stats ability, movepool and resistances be able to come in and immediately threaten the opponent, while at the same time not be super difficult to counter. The first type that comes to mind is Psychic. I think that if paired with a complementary type such as Fire or perhaps as many have already stated Bug, we should get the risky reward aspect down.
I would like to propose Psychic/Flying
Passive damage weakness – Weakness to both damaging weather types and SR, neutral damage from U-turn, super effective damage from Volt Switch and pursuit
Good overall STAB combo – This STAB combination hits Fighting, Grass, Bug, Poison for super effective STAB that cannot realistically be spammed endlessly for maximum impact – The only moves here that would be spammed from this typing would probably be Hurricane or Brave Bird. Maybe Psychic/Psyshock if all Darks were removed Lots of weaknesses and resistances –
Weaknesses - Dark, Rock, Electric, Ice and Ghost
This means Sucker Punch, Pursuit, Volt Switch, Ice Shard, Shadow Sneak and the extremely common BoltBeam
Neutral - Normal, Fire, Water, Poison, Flying, Bug, Dragon, Steel
Resistances - Grass, Fighting, Psychic
Immunity - Ground STAB on notable risky moves –
Brave Bird - Recoil will rack up with stealth rock damage. Nuff' said really.
Hurricane - 70% accuracy without rain. The 100% accuracy in rain can be remedied by giving it a hindering ability such as Air Lock or Cloud Nine.
Sky attack - Low PP and 2 turn attacks are extremely risky and even if the ever rare power Herb was used, it would still only get one use which just is not worth it.
There are few risky Psychic type moves. None of which are worth mentioning because of their low(ish) base power OR can only be learned by Deoxys and its formes and should stay that way.
NOTE- the Ground immunity is made up for by the SR weakness and most Pokes that carry a Ground type move, also have a Rock type as well.
I should point out that my favourite type is Bug and that either Bug/Psychic or Bug/Dragon would be excellent choices :) I am, however, steering more towards Bug/Dragon just because I think it would look cooler
I'd like to throw my support behind Bug/Psychic, for a number of reasons. While having plenty of opportunities to switch into the Fighting and Ground type attacks that are so common within the metagame (as well as the occasional Grass or Psychic move), it has has several weaknesses, often to the coverage moves that the former Pokemon carry. 4 resistances vs 6 weaknesses makes for an extremely volatile type defensively, and could make for some interesting mindgames depending on CAP's stats (should Infernape use Close Combat to hit Tyranitar or catch CAP on the switch with Fire Blast?) It also has a weakness to Sucker Punch, which may encourage its use if it becomes one of the best ways of dealing with CAP.
Offensively, its STABs have surprisingly good coverage in combination, but when spammed mindlessly, can be switched into fairly easily. This ensures that CAP's user must predict correctly to make the most out of it, introducing more risk. While people say that being walled by Steel-types is bad, bear in mind that Ferrothorn, Jirachi, Lucario, and Metagross, all take neutral damage from one of its STAB attacks, and remaining candidates such as Scizor, Genesect, Heatran, and Magnezone, are all hit extremely hard by Hidden Power. As such, the best switch-ins to CAP's STABs generally have a significant weakness that can be exploited either by a Hidden Power on the switch (encouraging risk through prediction and choice of Hidden Power), bluffing Hidden Power depending on whether CAP can outspeed these threats, or simply switching to a teammate as they come in. STAB U-Turn also throws a wrench into the opponent's works.
Overall, I think that Bug/Psychic is a great typing for testing out the risk vs reward concept. While it's not as powerful overall as Bug / Dragon (my second favorite choice!), we can make up for it by being more generous in terms of movepool and abilities, ensuring that there's suitable reward for using it.
