CAP 16 CAP 5 - Part 1 - Concept Assessment

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reachzero

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First of all, two closely-connected thoughts.

This concept is worded in such a way that it will not be immediately evident in every single battle featuring this CAP. That is really important, because it is (almost) unprecedented. Except for Arghonaut's Decentralizer, no other CAP concept has been like that. Tomohawk grabbed momentum in every single battle it was featured in. Colossoil actively discouraged the secondary in every single battle he was used in. This concept doesn't work that way. That is a really, really big deal. Where you will see the impact of this concept is over five battles, ten battles, twenty battles. It's not about one battle, it's about usage. So when we talk about the metagame, we need to talk about more than "viability". I liked Yllnath's post quite a bit (read it right now if you haven't already) because he really emphasized how usage is competitive, how it's all about getting the best chance to win. If a Pokemon is "viable", it can be used in OU without being a complete liability. However, usage is a zero-sum game. We talk in percentages, slices of the pie. A Pokemon or a type may become individually usable, but this does not mean a real percentage change if the change drives up the usage of the prominent Pokemon or types. Countering a type doesn't necessarily drive its usage down at all, it may even drive it's usage up. Why? That's brings us to our second point.

OU team building is different in BW than it was in DPP, or in BW UU, or any other metagame, excepting perhaps VGC and Smogon Doubles. The BW OU team building process is very greatly defined by team tropes. I know that we could probably distinguish between more tropes than these (like Rain stall vs Rain offense), but for simplicity's sake, let's say there are eight basic tropes: Sand, Rain, Sun, Hail, dedicated anti-Weather, Dragonspam, true heavy offense, and Baton Pass chains. The most dangerous match-ups for a team of a particular trope are basically the same no matter which one is actually used: generally there is one particular trope that gives your trope considerable problems, for which you need to have specific Pokemon that perform well against that trope. As an example, using Celebi on a Sand team. However, almost as large a threat are teams of the same trope. For a Baton Pass team, the trope is so rare that the threat of facing an opposing BP chain is negligible. However, for a popular and powerful trope like Sand or Rain, facing a same-troped theme is guaranteed. All of this to say, having Pokemon that fit on a troped team that perform very well against other Pokemon of the same trope is a massive premium, and boosts rather than hinders that trope considerably. No one wants to use a Sun team that is helpless against enemy Heatran and Volcarona. Inanimate Blob brought up Gastrodon and Toxicroak as two good examples of Pokemon that do well against Water types (and are actually dangerous against Rain teams). This is an ideal example of what I am talking about, since both of those Pokemon are used almost entirely on Rain teams, specifically to help those Rain teams beat other Rain teams. Boosting Rain will always boost Water usage, no matter how well a Pokemon counters Waters.

A lot of discussion in this thread has gone into how to make underused types more "viable". I believe this is misguided. Suppose we created the perfect Rapid Spinner. It made Stealth Rock so difficult to keep down that it could be almost completely ignored as a factor. This would theoretically make Fire types much, much more "viable". And it probably would. But it would also make Dragonite, Thundurus-t, Salamence and Kyurem-b many times more powerful with it. Usage is a zero-sum game, so if you want an underused type to gain usage, you have to make sure that the change you are using to do it does not boost the dominant type in the process. If you want to decrease the usage of Water types, CAP5 has to do more than be anti-Water, or even anti-Rain. It has to be significantly more advantageous to use outside of Rain than on Rain, or risk doing the exact opposite of what the concept is intended to do.

So think big picture. Don't worry so much about what CAP5 does in one game. Worry about what the metagame looks like over the course of five, ten, twenty. That is what a usage-based concept is all about.
 

Yilx

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Like I said in IRC, reachzero's first paragraph puts across what I wanted to say but I couldn't I'm not very strong in word-fu.

Another point I'd really like to bring up is:

Making a mon weak to a specific type =/= Increasing the usage of that type. Do you see people running Fire-types more often to curb the increase in usage of Scizor and Ferro? No, people slap Flamethrower on Blissey and HP Fire on Latias/Celebi instead.
 

sandshrewz

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Starting off with a jas# quote, haha.

jasnumbers said:
what Pokemon single-handedly effect type usage?
Weather starters etc you know which Pokemon can have such a great impact on the metagame. For a single Pokemon to be able to influence and entire type usage, it would have to be very metagame defining. A Pokemon made to, for example, check rain / xyz-type Pokemon will not be able to single-handedly affect the type usage. There will be ways to get past check and counters with teammates. It can dampen them a bit, but it won't be enough to have such a great impact as a single Pokemon.

I'm probably going to run along the lines of reachzero's post. In order to affect type usage, it has to influence a large group of Pokemon. This cannot be simply done by making a counter or threat to reduce the usage of xyz Pokemon. For example, back in DPP, despite the presence of Gliscor and other various Lucario check and counters, Lucario remained strong in OU. It might not be able to bypass them, but teammates can. A team can center around Lucario to support it and bring the checks down. Whether or not the teams are always succesful in paving way for a Lucario sweep, it did not have a huge negative impact on Lucario usage.

The example is just to show that simply check and countering things aren't going to leave a hole in usage stats. Probably anyway, haha. A more effective way of doing so would be by influencing playstyles. Was it reachzero who mentioned the pro-sun thing ?_? I really like supporting sun as a playstyle to dampen rain a bit, and hence reducing Water usage. A Pokemon that support the sun playstyles could make sun teams more viable and easier to use against weather teams, since they often face difficulties against opposing weather teams. The sun playstyle is an example, but perhaps a good one as to how to reduce the use of Water-types by not nerfing rain but making sun better. Support a playstyle that can weaken a dominant one. A playstyle covers a huge range of Pokemon, often from the same type, weather or not. A possible way is to have a Pokemon that supports a particular playstyle that's 'inferior' and hence uses more of the less used types. The Pokemon does not have to be of a type that is considered less-used, perhaps even opposite. By supporting a playstyle, it can level the playing ground of the playstyle to some extent, probably not completely since there's limitations working with a single Pokemon.

By supporting the playstyle, it encourages use of that playstyle and if some of its disadvantages can be patched up, it might then become as good as some other more popular playstyles. It doesn't have to mean crippling the rival playstyle, however. The playstyle could be supported in such a way that its still the same Pokemon that contribute to that playstyle that remain to define the playstyle. If the playstyle is better supported and easier to use, those Pokemon attributed to the playstyle can then rise, and such Pokemon are usually of the same or similar type and belong to the less used types.

What I'm suggesting is, it can be a Pokemon that influence any playstyle, doesn't have to be sun. However, sun seems like a pretty likely route though. The next question could be, how do you support a playstyle and meet some of the needs of the playstyle? Going back to the sun example, Ninetales has a hard time against other weather inducers. A Pokemon that can help Ninetales guard against them, not neccessarily KO them like a Dugtrio, could be helpful. Rapid Spin or not, that's a possibility but might not be the focus. It can help to keep sun up temporarily or simply support Ninetales with whatever tools to keep it alive. There's a huge variety of ways to support a playstyle to make it more viable.

Pretty much just working on reachzero's post lol >_> so back to the topic of usage. A Pokemon that can influence usage can also influence playstyles.
 

Rhys DeAnno

Slacking Off
I think a more interesting, and possibly more fruitful way of achieving this concept is to instead, make CAP 5 the kind of Pokemon that makes the target types a liability rather than just countering them.
I think this is a really good point. If we build a pokemon in the counter archetype and want it to affect usage, we need a pokemon that doesn't just wall the target types, but actively set up on them. This means when those types use their STAB choice moves, or lack effective coverage attacks, their team is going to possibly be left with a huge problem to deal with and might have to sack something or worse to fix it.

As a silly example, imagine if Roserade had 121 Base Speed and Solar Power. A set running Sunny Day/Weather Ball/Leaf Storm/HP Ice can switch into a choiced Hydro from Politoed or Keldeo, set up Sunny Day on the switchout, and probably end up killing something.

A pokemon like this discourages Rain as a playstyle by making a lot of its best Water types setup fodder for changing the weather and putting a dangerous threat into play. At the same time, the Roserade wouldn't be as effective against non-Rain teams, with less chances to setup and a higher probability of being walled by an enemy Heatran. Using the Roserade would be better on Sunny Day, but at the same time Roserade tends to be walled easily by Sunny Day teams so would be discouraging to use due to the mirroring argument brought up by reachzero.

You might see some otherwise weatherless teams happy to run Roserade as a "soft" weatherchanger/sweeper, and you might see some Sun teams running it as a Rain counter. Rain teams however would gain nothing from Roserade except a deadly foe; this would probably lower Rain's usage and the usage of waters overall. An important thing to remember from this example is that super-Roserade did not need a weatherchanging ability to have a huge effect on the weather meta, since it was in effect using its weather move as a set up sweeping move, and had the ability to set up on highly used pokemon of the opposing weatherstyle.

Of course, its relatively easy to make up this sort of pokemon when targeting rain and waters, but creating something to setup on Dragons that Dragmag teams wouldn't want to use to beat enemy scarfLatios is a little bit tougher :P
 
First of all, I must stress that Yllnath and reachzero raise excellent points. They explained the matter better than I could, so let it suffice that the underused playstyle focus is one I believe will prove most successful for us.

Secondly, I'm afraid there is no decreasing Water usage without addressing Rain. The two are joined at the hip, bring down Rain and Water usage will (pardon the pun) sink.

Third... there is something that I find nobody raised yet. Dragon types, Fighting types and Rain (particularly H-Pump/Hurri/Thunder spamming teams, as opposed to Rain Stall) all have a common feature to them. They're pretty much deadly offensive forces, complemented by Steel to patch up their weaknesses to other offensive forces. Therefore adding to what Yllnath said, I think improving Stall to make Hyper Offense itself a liability can be just the promotion of a playstyle we need. Not sun or hail, but Stall. We just need to find that one member the stall teams lack, that 'one final push'.

Fourth - Theorymon's example is also very potent, and I urge you strongly to consider it. What would happen to Dragons if after wasting a turn setting up and hopefully KOing a single Pokemon they were ALWAYS KOed back by a powerful Technician STAB Ice Shard user? Who, if they chose to switch instead, could set up and sweep an entire team in turn? They'd be getting the treatment that Weavile is getting from Scizor now - fast and powerful but too frail. Only Latias could MAYBE go bulky enough, whereas all the others would be doomed. There goes your Dragon usage... it's just an example but it's one way to do this, and certainly better than creating a Steel that could tank the Outrages and Draco Meteors.

Fifth - Others have spoken about Stealth Rock before. I'd just want to stress that if we can address Stealth Rock adequately, then removing it from the metagame will single-handedly make all the otherwise Stealth-Rock weak mons more viable, hopefully leading to their increased usage. This doesn't mean we need Magic Bounce or something - using the above example, if CAP5 was even x4 weak to Stealth Rock, like Volcarona - but also, like Volcarona, threatened to sweep at a moment's notice if allowed to setup, nobody could afford the TURN to cast Stealth Rock. Especially if it had Taunt (to counter Whirlwind and status and other such threats).


So in short, I see two approaches that this could take, pushing Stall to the top of viability this meta, or making an excellent revenger/setup sweeper that preys on the current top threats. There's probably more, but these are definitely doable - and they can either depend on weather or be largely independent from it, so we're free to decide that at a later stage.
 

Base Speed

What a load of BS!
Well then.

So it's fair to say that there's quite a lot of weather discussion going on here. Of all the ways to approach the concept, I'm very much in agreement with Jas and Reachzero on the idea of a sunmon. Reach has really quite beautifully explained how it fulfills the various aspects of the concept. Sun teams deal well with steel types and can with the right tools tackle water types too. Creating a 'mon that encourages sun and gives them the right tools to patch up their weaknesses is a great idea.
However, I'm don't think CAP5 should be a 100% dedicated sun mon. It seems one dimensional to me if we focus entirely on this - sun sets are good, but the ability to perform outside of it is to me a necessity, otherwise rain would become the best way to shut it down. Furthermore, I'm keen to discourage drought or chorophyll as abilities, despite them immediately coming to mind for a sunmon. Why? Because they'll have the double whammy problem of potentialally making CAP5 broken and out competing Ninetales and Venusaur - two pokemon who would fulfill the concept if we raise their usage.

I'm also quite the fan of the anti-stealth rock approach. Once again the logic behind how it'll fulfill the concept seems sound to me, giving rock weak types a bit more breathing space might see their usage increase. Again I don't want CAP5 to be focused entirely on this. While I'm very conscious of the give-CAP-everything approach that saw Aurumoth fail, it would be good to see CAP5 have anti-hazard sets and sun-sweeping sets, but not both simultaneously. That's not to say that sun couldn't somehow help in an anti-hazard role - balance would need to be found.

Theorymon provides another valid, yet largely different approach. I won't repeat his post but the idea of making types liabilities seems like a good one. How would we go about this? A powerful dedicated dragon or water slayer that could set up and sweep if it catches a dragon out? I also wonder if it's possible to use this in tandem with previous ideas without it becoming broken. Does anyone have any thoughts on that?

In terms of approaches I'm not so fond of, I've yet to see convincing logic for either sand or hail fulfilling the concept - I fear these are a hangover of sorts from weather's popularity in the concept submissions, though I'll keep an open mind and see if anyone can give a good explanation for them.

And then there's my least favorite approach of them all, something I really want to just shut down entirely, is the creation of a Swift Swim user to stop rain's use via the Swift Swim + Drizzle clause. I strongly dislike the idea of achieving the concept on a technicality, using a smogon induced clause. It teaches us nothing about building a pokemon and even though it would create a rain free meta, I believe other approaches could have more significant effects on type usage.


Lastly, for pokemon that single handedly effect type usage, weather's been done to death answering this question. I'd like to raise the possibility of Terrakion as one of these pokemon. Don't get me wrong, I doubt it's having an effect of the same magnitude that the weather starters are, but still it's such a strong offensive presence that it's making having a fighting type weakness a more liability for pokemon, and for most non steel types this liability isn't worth it) and making a rock weakness in today's meta even worse. I wonder what other people think of this one, because it's really not as clear cut as some of the other examples people are going for.
 
Pardon me if it's already been decided, but I feel the very first thing we should do is decide whether we want to increase the usage of certain underused types or decrease the usage of certain popular types. I feel trying to do both of these at the same time would be too much for CAP5 to do and might end with the same results as the last. The way we approach the rest of the project has a large dependency on this decision.
 
If you reduced de usage of Dragon and ground types you will get a indirect increase of electric types to counter Politoed, skarmory...

However, if we reduce dragon an ground and try to increase electric (doing a ice/flying cap for example) we will get a huge decrease of water types. Probably not Politoed but Gyarados, Keldeo, Cloyster, Starmie...
 
If you reduced de usage of Dragon and ground types you will get a indirect increase of electric types to counter Politoed, skarmory...

However, if we reduce dragon an ground and try to increase electric (doing a ice/flying cap for example) we will get a huge decrease of water types. Probably not Politoed but Gyarados, Keldeo, Cloyster, Starmie...
The issue with this is the fact that the Electric-types that could come up and become more used...already exist.

Rotom-W has a niche - it's amazing both on and off Rain teams, but more so because of its ability to effectively Volt Switch, or run status moves. It wouldn't really rise because of its ability to take on anti-Dragon Pokèmon.

The other Pokèmon able to take on a potential anti-Dragon Pokèmon would be Jolteon...which also is used mainly on Rain teams. And the easy counter to both of these Pokèmon are is also a Water-type, Gastrodon.
 

Nyktos

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Pardon me if it's already been decided, but I feel the very first thing we should do is decide whether we want to increase the usage of certain underused types or decrease the usage of certain popular types. I feel trying to do both of these at the same time would be too much for CAP5 to do and might end with the same results as the last. The way we approach the rest of the project has a large dependency on this decision.
The concept is specifically to do both.
 

Ignus

Copying deli meat to hard drive
Theorymon's post about heatran in ubers is a really good point. Making a pokemon a liability is probably the easiest way to decrease the usage of pokemon of a certain type. Think about some of the pokemon in OU right now. Jellicent makes free turns with it's great typing and water absorb. Ferrothorn does much of the same. CAP 5 should be able to create these opportunities on water, dragon, steel, and fighting types (whichever we decide to focus on) and then in return set up for the less used types of the meta.

What it comes down to is: what can create free turns against the stronger of types and then pass that momentum to a less used type efficiently? A good example would be something along the lines of:

Motor Drive into Baton Pass
Walling the shit out of something->u-Turn/volt switch
Rapid Spin for easy switch ins
Wish
Choice band/specs Trick

Anything that eases prediction creates free turns. Just something to think about
 

erisia

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To follow up Ignus' point, Storm Drain + Baton Pass would be a fearsome tool for dealing with Water-types, in particular. Especially if our CAP was able to threaten the majority of Water-types with, say, STAB Thunderbolt, Giga Drain, or just a coverage option like unSTABed Grass Knot. Storm Drain + Volt Switch (possibly STAB) would also be pretty useful in this regard, so long as CAP was able to deal with Ground-types in a respectable manner. I can't really think of any other ways of dealing with Water types that would lead to generating more momentum, outside of stupid stuff like Shell Smash / Quiver Dance alongside a Water-immunity.
 

ganj4lF

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To follow up Ignus' point, Storm Drain + Baton Pass would be a fearsome tool for dealing with Water-types, in particular. Especially if our CAP was able to threaten the majority of Water-types with, say, STAB Thunderbolt, Giga Drain, or just a coverage option like unSTABed Grass Knot. Storm Drain + Volt Switch (possibly STAB) would also be pretty useful in this regard, so long as CAP was able to deal with Ground-types in a respectable manner. I can't really think of any other ways of dealing with Water types that would lead to generating more momentum, outside of stupid stuff like Shell Smash / Quiver Dance alongside a Water-immunity.
This would be awesome to lower the usage of the Water type, however nothing keeps from Baton Passing onto Latios / ScarfKeldeo / whatever and nuking everything on the switch. You're forgetting the part of the concept that says "increase the usage of a lesser used type", which Baton Pass + Storm Drain (or a similar ability) doesn't address at all.
 

jc104

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OU team building is different in BW than it was in DPP, or in BW UU, or any other metagame, excepting perhaps VGC and Smogon Doubles. The BW OU team building process is very greatly defined by team tropes. I know that we could probably distinguish between more tropes than these (like Rain stall vs Rain offense), but for simplicity's sake, let's say there are eight basic tropes: Sand, Rain, Sun, Hail, dedicated anti-Weather, Dragonspam, true heavy offense, and Baton Pass chains. The most dangerous match-ups for a team of a particular trope are basically the same no matter which one is actually used: generally there is one particular trope that gives your trope considerable problems, for which you need to have specific Pokemon that perform well against that trope. As an example, using Celebi on a Sand team. However, almost as large a threat are teams of the same trope. For a Baton Pass team, the trope is so rare that the threat of facing an opposing BP chain is negligible. However, for a popular and powerful trope like Sand or Rain, facing a same-troped theme is guaranteed. All of this to say, having Pokemon that fit on a troped team that perform very well against other Pokemon of the same trope is a massive premium, and boosts rather than hinders that trope considerably. No one wants to use a Sun team that is helpless against enemy Heatran and Volcarona. Inanimate Blob brought up Gastrodon and Toxicroak as two good examples of Pokemon that do well against Water types (and are actually dangerous against Rain teams). This is an ideal example of what I am talking about, since both of those Pokemon are used almost entirely on Rain teams, specifically to help those Rain teams beat other Rain teams. Boosting Rain will always boost Water usage, no matter how well a Pokemon counters Waters.

A lot of discussion in this thread has gone into how to make underused types more "viable". I believe this is misguided. Suppose we created the perfect Rapid Spinner. It made Stealth Rock so difficult to keep down that it could be almost completely ignored as a factor. This would theoretically make Fire types much, much more "viable". And it probably would. But it would also make Dragonite, Thundurus-t, Salamence and Kyurem-b many times more powerful with it. Usage is a zero-sum game, so if you want an underused type to gain usage, you have to make sure that the change you are using to do it does not boost the dominant type in the process. If you want to decrease the usage of Water types, CAP5 has to do more than be anti-Water, or even anti-Rain. It has to be significantly more advantageous to use outside of Rain than on Rain, or risk doing the exact opposite of what the concept is intended to do.

So think big picture. Don't worry so much about what CAP5 does in one game. Worry about what the metagame looks like over the course of five, ten, twenty. That is what a usage-based concept is all about.
While I think the post contains some good points, and is expressed with your usual eloquence, I find some of this reasoning worrying to say the least. While I agree that it is possible for a counter of a type to increase the usage of said type, I don't think it can happen in this way at all. While a pokemon can both support and counter the same type, and while triangles such as Fire/Water/Grass can cause the increase of said type, I don't think it happens for the reasons stated in your post.

A Pokemon being strong against rain can only negatively impact rain. Full stop. (edit: if the pokemon is good in rain, that helps rain, obviously - try to look at the two things - being good in rain and against rain - separately, as I do not believe one implies the other. Many pokemon are both good in rain and against rain, in which case the balance might lean either way) If you use a pokemon strong against rain teams on your rain team to help in mirror matches, you're negatively affecting the other rain team, and you're (probably) negatively affecting your own team's performance against teams of other varieties. Any positive effect for your team is at best balanced by a negative effect on the opponent's rain team. Say, for example, if every rain team was forced to carry a CAP 5 just to deal with other rain teams; every rain team would be weaker in relation to other team styles.

Now, what you say about rain counters increasing rain usage might turn out to be coincidentally true for nearly every OU viable Pokemon. That's because most of the rain counters are inherently strong IN rain. Every OU viable water-immune pokemon is either water-typed, or recovers an absurd amount of health each turn in rain. Ferrothorn becomes almost impossible to take down thanks to its reduced fire weakness. Imagine, however, if this wasn't the case. Imagine if we had given Mollux Water Absorb (ok perhaps not the best example, as it would be a pretty good sun check too, and thereby help rain to an extent). Imagine if we made a decent version of Cradily. Something strong against rain that doesn't actually prefer rain. I think this is wholly possible. If some people use it on rain, so freaking what? It still weakens rain either way.


edit: ok apparently not at my most coherent (tip: don't post while slightly drunk), so here's the tl;dr - mirror matches can only ever affect a playstyle negatively. If an anti-rain pokemon gets used on a rain team for mirror matches, it's doing its job properly. The key is to be good against rain, but not to benefit from rain directly.
 

jas61292

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First off, I want to say that I think reachzero's most recent post is incredibly important, and I would urge everyone to read it. While I understand jc104's concerns, I think a lot of the points it makes, especially with regard to usage being a zero sum game, are crucial for this concept. We don't need a Pokemon that causes every single battle to have a reduced amount of a certain type. It does not need to directly counter, or directly buff the types we are affecting. But we do need to make sure that, over the metagame as a whole, we are having an effect. This means, not only reducing the usefullness of one type and increasing that of another, but that the reduction and increases actually translate into usage changed. It doesn't matter if Fire/Ice/Grass/Poison/whatever is better in the metagame. It matters that they are more used, and this means we need to make sure that any reduction in a top type's usage is at least partially filled in by a lower type. Reducing the use of Water alone would not be enough to fufill our goals if the usage they lose is transfered purely to dragons.

With that said, I do think we have had plenty of good ideas out there about how to go about this concept, and I would like to shift the focus away from trying to figure out different ways to do the project, and onto comparing the ones we have already come up with. The ideas that have been discussed so far include:

The direct approach: Counter a top type, lose to a lesser used type.

The more extreme version: A Pokemon that makes a top type a liability agains when it is around, but is destroyed by lesser used types

Sun mon: A Pokemon that increases the usefulness of sun teams, thereby increasing use of sun Pokemon (Fire/Grass), and decreasing use of Water.

Hazard controler: A Pokemon that helps increase use of lesser used types by helping make Stealth Rocks less of a factor. This one is not itself really a full direction, as it fails to address over half the concept, but it a start that, if elaborated on or combined with another method, could have merit.

Help a playstyle: Similar to the Sun mon, but takes a less direct approach, by going with a playstyle that does not directly opposes one of the top typings as much as Sun. This is less direct, but gives more freedom as to what types to go after on both sides. While a perfectly valid option, we would need more direction before going with it.

There were also a few other things brought up, but I believe these were the most talked about. (Though, please speak up if you feel I left anything major out). Up until this point we have mostly been talking about these directions in isolation. What I would like to do now is compare and contrast.

Of the different project directions brought up in this thread, how do you think they compare with each other?
Which are most likely to be successful? Least?
Are any too restrictive? Too broad?
Do you believe any of them are more conducive to interesting discussion than the others?
What types would each method be best for dealing with, both positively and negatively? Conversely, what method would be best for increasing/decreasing the usage of the different highly/lesser used types?

My goal at this point is to find out what method, of those we have thought up, you all think we should use to go about this project. We need a direction, and, if possible, I would like see if we can reach a general concensus on what will be the best. I know it is unlikely that we will be able to get everyone to agree, I at least want some direct comparison, rather than just looking at the different suggestions in a vacuum.
 
It seem to me that the hazard control strategy might work by itself, but rather indirectly. If CAP 5 is successful at keeping stealth rocks away, then we would hope to see more of a use of flying, fire and ice type Pokemon. If this holds true, the flying and ice would threaten the fighting and dragon Pokemon, respectively.

This may be a bit indirect, and I feel that a hazard control strategy is one that we would add onto another strategy to boost its capabilities (like the sun team mon). I feel like this concept almost has to be paired with another, and that it would have to be decided if we want hazard control to be a way we help a play style.

Also, the direct approach and extreme version sound like general descriptions of the Perfect Nemesis concept. If we decide to go with either of these, how do we ensure that the "lesser" type is used instead of one Pokemon. Does it matter if only one Pokemon's usage goes up as long as it is of an underused type, or do we need multiple Pokemon of a type to be brought up?

If we need to bring up multiple Pokemon of a type, might I suggest something that spreads status? If we have a Pokemon that is hitting everything with burns, would the fire type usage rise? Would the same happen with poison and poison types? This might fit into another strategy, but a status spreader might be a strategy worth considering.
 
I think that the Sun Mon has the best potential as of now. This is because we have decided on the types to raise and lower in usage as well as have a solid approach to tackle that task. This pokemon would fulfill our goal by encouraging sun over water, which would boost fire/grass type usage and lower water usage. Also, The More Extreme Version would also work if we have a bit more detail. We should at least decide what types we would focus on if we take that avenue.

As for other possible approaches that we might've left out, I think Deck Knight's Anti-Dragon Pro-Sun and The Cannibal mons could have potential if we don't mind making CAP5 a type that we could be trying to lower the usage of.
 
First off, there are a lot of really good ideas have thrown out there. I support Theorymon's idea of a pokemon making dragon type a liability. For instance, if we use Citeandprune's idea of a Stab Technician Ice Shard user (I always encourage the use of Ice), it would considerably reduce the effectivness of dragon sweeps.

The problem with creating a pokemon while looking at the dragon type, is that if we remember, dragons are really only super effective against other dragon pokemon. The benefit of a dragon type pokemon is the neutral power it provides. Reducing the dragon type, does not necessarily mean raising the usage of other pokemon types. The niche that dragons fulfill on a team is one that impacts the natural power creep of the game. And the dragon type tends to set the standard of that power creep. Therefore limiting the dragon type, does not mean bringing up another type as the concept encourages. Limiting the dragon type means bringing up a lost play style from last gen, stall. Unless, that is, we make CAP 5 so broken, that every team must have one, as well as every team must have a CAP 5 counter which would be a lesser type.

I have a few thoughts on the water/steel/fighting types, but they are still forming in my head. I shall post later on those types.
 
Guys, maybe we've been going about this the wrong way. Though it might seem paradoxical, what if CAP5 was a really strong Water, Steel, Fighting, or Dragon type? Just like Thundurus polarized the metagame, making it so that every team needed to have a response to it, CAP5 could be such a threat that teams will need to respond more strongly against the type we choose for CAP5. In effect, while this project would create a powerful addition to the type that we're trying to hinder, the net effect will be the overall reduction of that type's potential.

Jas, this may be a promising avenue of thought that we had overlooked. Thoughts, anyone?
 
I personally believe that the direct counter and the more extreme version methods are the easy ways out for us and won't let us learn as much from the process. We just end up making a pokemon that will just be a bit of number crunching that performs well against the pokemons we want them to perform well against. There is no challenge here.

Sun-mon is somewhat in the middle. If we're creating a sun-mon that is intended to help the current sun-playstyle become good, that could be very interesting. If we just make a solid strong pokemon and slap on Drought, the project becomes incredibly boring again.

Hazard controller and Help a playstyle are my preferred options. Going back to my own post, and more importantly, Reach's post, he very nicely stated that this pokemon doesn't have to be an important key aspect of each battle. The only thing that counts is, that in the end, after a week or 4, we get new usage stats and a shift in popular typings have taken place. Indirect sun-mon (so no Drought for it's own), Hazard controller and Help a playstyle for me all fall under the indirect approach of trying to shake up usage in the metagame.
When going with either of these 3 concepts, we will have to be focused the entire project on choices we make to make sure that we somehow aid/boost an underused typing/playstyle to become a competitive choice. It will lead to much more interesting discussion along the entire project.

I'm usually very iffy of anything weather related in concepts. I feel that if the dozens of actually listed weather concepts (that get tossed up every single time in the submissions) didn't win, and we pick something different, we should just steer away from weather-related things. I feel those things always get brought up in every CAP because sun or hail fans wanted the weather concept to win and are now instead turning the regular concept back into the weather concept.
Even now, I still think that just making Ninetales 2.0 will not learn us shit about what affects usage in the metagame, or how we can work on indirectly making less competitive playstyles more competitive to the point that it deserves teamspots enough that usage rises.

Aiding the current sun pokes to become good, is completely different, and is really focused and could be just what we need as a turn around from the much more broader concepts we've had lately. Hazard control for that reason also has much potential.

Even though I'm the one who's brought up offensive cores or helping underused playstyles like stall or BO become valid, I also know that this is too broad to just start with. Then we also need another discussion on what playstyle to aid. Or who to form a core with. etc. Because just going into the typing stage only know we're going to aid .. a .. playstyle. Shitstorm guaranteed.

So in my opinion, the most interesting approach would be the aid a sun-team (with clear restrictions set by TL/TLT that it will not be Ninetales 2.0), or hazard control.
Interestingly enough, I think these two method mesh well to the point that I'd even think it's valid considering both approaches in one. Just removing SR from the field 90% or more of the time will make life easier for a bunch of sun-team members, after all.
 

MCBarrett

i love it when you call me big hoppa
Of the different project directions brought up in this thread, how do you think they compare with each other?

I'm going to have to say that all of these directions look pretty solid, however there are definitely some that need to be developed more, and others that we will have to be very careful in order to be successful.

Which are most likely to be successful? Least?

The direction that is most likely to be successful is the sun mon. It really just is a perfect fit for this concept but I think it may be a little too easy for us. However, I really like jas's description of this direction because it really shouldn't be something that necessarily abuses the sun like venusaur or the other chlorophyll users do. I think something that would be given chlorophyll and could take out things like latios one on one would be incredibly overpowered and centralizing. It should be something that provides offensive, defensive or hazard support to patch up a sun team's weaknesses to make it more successful. I think this is a direction we could patch into one of the others as well. Something I thought of was something along the lines of starmie in terms of stats and support abilities but that could be used effectively in the sun.

On the other side, I would say Direct Approach and Extremecould be a little too broad to be successful. I'll provide an example for this in the form of celebi in the current metagame. Specially Defensive Celebi is pretty much the best counter to common rain threats besides Tornadus right now. You would think people would be scared of using as many water types with this thing running around as it takes literally no damage from things like rotom-w, barely any from offensive threats like keldeo and specs politoed and it can hit them back for super effective damage while giving support to its team through thunder wave etc. at the same time. However, people aren't too scared of celebi because it can be dealt with by a multitude of common threats such as mamoswine, tyranitar, scizor, jirachi etc. This is the problem with these directions. In order for it to work, imo, we not only have to counter the common type that is in question, but we can't be shut down by common threats, even if they are uncommon types like mamoswine and tyranitar. If our rain counter is beaten by another common threat we won't have to resort to something such as an underused poison type to defeat it. We simply throw the counter's weakness onto our rain team and continue to spam specs hydro pumps from keldeo without a problem. And with this obstacle, I fear that we will try to give great stats, and secondary typings to take on the common pokes in OU that will likely counter us, and we will be making that does well against everything in OU which completely defeats the purpose of this concept. This may seem like the easy way out at first glance but I think if we don't look over every avenue with this direction we will just end up being dealt with by things we do not want to be countered by.

Are any too restrictive? Too broad?

Kind of already answered this above but I don't think any are too restrictive so that's good

Do you believe any of them are more conducive to interesting discussion than the others?

Definitely. I think both directions which are kind of underdeveloped at this point could bring some great discussion later on. These would be the Hazard Controller and the Help a Playstyle.

The former option will provide some discussion and research into how controlling hazards in some way will truly affect both common and uncommon threats. With something like guaranteed no stealth rocks make things volcarona unstoppable? Or would it have very little effect at all? Would this absence of stealth rocks backfire on us and benefit the types we are going after such as dragon? What would our perfect rapid spinner be like in terms of stats, movepool, typing etc? Would lower used types like ground and rock become even less used because stealth rock is no longer helpful? I think these are all some good questions to look at going forward with this direction.

The latter option really intrigues me because we would get to delve into underused play styles such as hail and anti-weather (weatherless) to see what would make them more usable in the current metagame. Would making an underused play style more viable make rain less effective? Would we just replace sand or sun as the "Next Best"? What type of poke would make playstyles such as hail and anti-weather more effective? Would it take out opposing counters through offensive coverage? Would it wall certain threats to these teams? Would it be viable to use this mon in other playstyles? Could we make an underused type more viable or would we just make common types more viable on these teams? I think these are all good questions to look at for this direction. However, as you can see, these options have many variables and although they will most certainly challenge us and bring some great discussion to the table, we may put lots of time and energy into just figuring out it will likely not succeed.

And I kinda touched on the last two questions in my other answers and its getting late. Maybe I'll come back to it at another time but I think these are some things people should consider before deciding which way we should go with this.
 
The Direct Approach and the Extreme Approach are by nature very similar and share a key weakness, Hidden Power. If we take the direct approach and make CaP5 counter dragon types and lose to say grass types, there will inevitably be some dragons or teammates of dragons that switch their hidden powers to grass or use a grass coverage move just to counter CaP5. Perhaps this isn't as big of a deal as I'm making it, but it's still something to consider if we decide to go down this route.
That being said I think this is the most open in terms of what types we want to raise/lower the use of, as we can choose any two types to affect and build CaP5 around that.

Sun Mon is a path that gives us a clear goal, but restricts us to buffing fire and grass and nerfing water. Nothing wrong with that, but if people want to counter fighting and boost dark usage, we might as well pick another avenue. However, if we do choose sun mon we must be careful not to simply replace key sun abusers, meaning chlorophyll sweeping, fire stab abusing, and setting up sun, are roles which we should avoid. That means we would need fill a role that sun currently does not have any good abusers of. We also would need to decide if sun mon is good only in sun, or if it functions perfectly fine out of sun, but really good in it.

Hazard Controller is definitely something that we would need to pair with something else if we decide on this one. Though the question is what? The direct and extreme approaches would not likely have time to deal with hazards if they are focused on countering their respective types. This leaves Sun Mon and Help a playstyle as possible partners. A combination of hazard controller and sun mon would give an extra boost to fire types by helping to alleviate their weakness to rocks. Possibly acting as sort of sun version of Starmie or Tentacruel, a fine spinner outside of a sun, but even better in it.
 
Apologizes if someone has said this already, but I believe a major reason for the dominance of Dragon, Water, Steel, and Fighting types is largely due to the prevalence of Stealth Rocks. Dragon's best counter, Ice, is weak to it. Similarly, Fire is hit hard by rocks, limiting its capacity to check Steel types. Fighting and Steel both resist Stealth Rocks, which just shows how much the move overcentralizes the metagame. What I think could be a solution to the problem is have something like a Fire-Flying Pokemon with Magic Guard (perhaps a physical attacker with Flare Blitz and Brave Bird, but that might be too powerful) that could ignore rocks and come in safely and force out or kill most of the Pokemon in OU. I think trying to use weather to counter the aforementioned trend will actually increase the use of rain teams because the best counter to weather is weather.
 

ganj4lF

Nobody is safe from the power of science!
is a Team Rater Alumnus
Okay, let's comment a bit the roads we can take.

The Sunmon is a cool concept, gives us a clear goal in terms of what type we want to target and what type(s) we want to boost, which is something valuable since I feel the other concept are a bit too vague in this regard. It is broad in the sense we can achieve this in many ways, however we must keep in mind reachzero's post, especially the part where it ways that the pokemon must be advantageous in sun much more than it is for the other playstyles, which makes the concept kinda tricky. For example, one of the most crippling flaws of Sun is that its weather inducer is weak to Stealth Rock, however giving Sun an easy way to keep Rocks off the field can only work if it's unusable for the other weathers / playstyles (Dry Skin Rapid Spinner? Just a random idea) since otherwise Kyu-B, Thundurus, DNite and whatever become instantly huge threats that probably overshadow the Sun's improvement. I won't exclude the possibility to give Sun a better weather inducer, since it automatically fulfills the "conditions" of reachzero's post (it doesn't work well outside Sun, while boosting significantly that weather, and indirectly Fire types), however I recognize that it might be the least interesting way to pursue. The concept's chances to succeed or fail, and its broadness, depend entirely on how we decide to achieve the goal of buffing Sun, so answering jas's questios is a bit tricky; however it is also for the other concepts, and given the clear focus of this one, it is likely to be a good way to build our CAP, in my opinion.

The Direct Approach is the one I don't like at all. We already have many examples of those kind of pokemons (see Celebi, Gastrodon) for Rain teams, but they fail to achieve their goal as successfully as, say, Heatran for Sun teams. Countering defensively Rain (which is the most discussed type, so let's talk about this first) is very tricky thanks to the different ways they can exploit their weather. You have to consider Thunder, Hurricane, Secret Sword, Ice moves in general, the chances of a Scald burn, and their probable Ferrothorn ready to set-up on you if you cannot threaten it. The other most used types all have ways to go past their weaknesses, so this approach is both challenging, fairly unlikely to succeed, and uninteresting (since we've already seen many examples of this kind of pokemon). Maybe I'm overstating things, but that's my first impression.

On the other hand, the Extreme Approach is maybe the most interesting one. There are only a few pokemon that can single handedly threaten a type, and they are likely to fail thanks to other defects in the case of Water (Thund-T, which is probably the closest thing to this concept we have is crippled by SR and is generally weak defensively, as it is Jolteon). Building such a pokemon would help us learn how to counter a type as a whole offensively, which I think is quite a big deal. I don't know if it's likely to succeed or not, however since CAP is more about the journey than about the destination, I think this is a good way to proceed in our CAP.

Hazard Controller is interesting but it has a quite high risk of backfiring, as described previously. I would avoid this concept, although not as strongly as the Direct Approach.

Help A Playstyle is concept with unpredictable outcomes since its extreme broadness. If someone can come up with a clear direction to pursue this, it can be a good alternative. Otherwise, I'd stick to the previous mentioned entries, specifically either the Sunmon (which is a restriction of this concept, so not too far from it) or the Extreme Approach; both of them have their advantages without the sheer amount of unpredictability that a concept like this can present if not provided with a clear path to follow.

Just my two cents.
 

jc104

Humblest person ever
is a Top Contributor Alumnus
First of all, these options aren't mutually exclusive. I honestly believe we should be doing ALL of them (except possibly sunmon), but of course some are more important than others:

I'm going to go against the mold here, and say that by far the best method is the direct approach. Yllnath described this an an "easy way out" - is this concept not difficult enough for you already? Isn't an easy option exactly what we need? Isn't an easy option an effective option? OK, I understand this might not promote "interesting discussion", but when we complicate things in CAP, we tend to get them horribly wrong. The CAP voting crowd is extremely fickle, and struggles to stick with one plan throughout. This most basic approach is the safest way to go about this. If we look at water-types, for instance, the best way to deal with them is simply to take water-type moves really well (immunity, ideally). Rain actually has fairly little to do with it - you don't want to benefit from rain at all, otherwise rain teams gain an advantage. The Extreme Approach is just us doing a good job of the direct approach; it's the ideal result of the direct approach. These two approaches should be our main focus when it comes to inhibiting types.

Helping a playstyle (such as sun) is a good idea. We should be trying to inhibit one playstyle (rain) in favour of others for the first part of our concept. We might also achieve the second part by doing this. However, we must be careful not to limit our CAP to a single playstyle, for that will severely limit its usage and effectiveness with respect to the concept. This is a particular concern when it comes to sun, which is currently somewhat rare as a whole playstyle - think how common one pokemon is likely to be, even if it's used on 100% of sun teams. I actually think that buffing SAND instead might be a better move - sand is already relatively common, and seems to have the upper hand against rain right at this moment. I mentioned this in my last post, but Cradily is an excellent example of the kind of pokemon we want to create (save for its general weakness). Cradily prefers sand as a weather condition due to its rock typing, benefits little from rain, and yet takes on rain attackers very well thanks to storm drain (grass typing is perhaps not the best choice, as it leaves cradily weak to ice and fighting, although it does let cradily smack waters around). It isn't inhibited or benefitted by rain or sun at all, which would make it usable on other types of team if it were generally a better pokemon. Even when being used on rain, it's still inhibiting rain. It's also worth mentioning that Tyranitar is both a Dark type and a Rock type, and promotes other rock-types - sand boosts uncommon types as well as sun.

Hazard controller could be great or awful depending on what we decide to do. If we're trying to inhibit dragon-types, it's a pretty awful idea (dragonite, salamence, kyurem-b...), and if not, it's a great idea. I see this being largely movepool-based (e.g taunt, rapid spin) or possibly ability-based, so it could easily be tacked on without too much concern.

edit:
The Direct Approach and the Extreme Approach are by nature very similar and share a key weakness, Hidden Power
This is actually quite an important point; I believe it should still work, as long as we are careful not to give our CAP a 4x weakness. A 2x super effective hidden power is only as strong as a 2x resisted STAB Hydro Pump in the rain.
 
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