CAP 16 CAP 5 - Part 2 - Typing Discussion

So we're getting down to the wire here, and I'm going to give one more post before I start the countdown.

What I'm interested in here is building a Pokemon that adds versatility to a sun core. What Pokemon can work with other Pokemon already in a Sun team and with Pokemon that might be good candidates given another Pokemon to add to that core. Here's what I'm currently thinking, and I think we've covered a lot of ground and its time for the 24 hour warning.

Electric / Grass adds a Pokemon that can pivot into Water moves, threaten every kind of Water type in Rain and most Hurricane users, can hold its own against Sand and has no truly critical weaknesses. I don't consider a weakness to unSTAB Ice Beam so compelling that it negates the effectiveness Grass presents against Water and Ground, since even if it doesn't resist both (Grass/Elec forfeits the Ground resistance) it still provides the offensive presence necessary against them.

Electric / Dark is a little tougher to manage down the road to make sure it isn't the latest and greatest Rain mon, but it does have serious potential as a physical attacker that has STAB on Pursuit to act as a trapper, and can be built in a way to make it very favorable to Sun. Essentially it locks onto a specific threat to sun while providing general utility against Rain without opening up an Ice weakness in exchange for a little more weakness to Ground, a threat that can be managed in several ways that include items as well as abilities.

Grass / Dragon is difficult to sell on a one on one basis, however the point of this direction is we're forming a core. Grass / Dragon interacts well against Water and Ground moves, and while it does cry out for Ice Shard bait, the only common user is Mamoswine. Mamoswine and Sun share an interesting relationship, but perhaps the best thing about it is with Grass / Dragon you can add Rotom-H to your core as an Ice resist that can threaten waters with Electric STAB. It also provides a Ground immunity that can aid you in the third part of the core formation, Heatran.

It's true that Rain Pokemon can hit all 3 of the Pokemon SE with Water+Ice coverage. But there are already a slew of Pokemon that resist Water/Ice, its just they all prefer Rain. The problem isn't that Sun doesn't have a viable Water/Ice resist, it has the most populous type in the game to draw on if it needed that, and there's even a few Water-types with Fire Moves (Hiya Tikibro.) In Sun the Water weak isn't even really a problem for Heatran/Rotom-H. The problem is getting Ninetales back in, and by making an Ice move prediction even a considered option for a Rain team to use in normal battle situations, you give Ninetales a chance to switch in or enable Rotom-H as an Electric pivot.

Another typing I'm considering for the slate is Grass / Dark. Grass / Dark is a great typing that is held by mons I find awesome, but that just can't compete in OU. The typing just isn't that conducive to sun sweeping, as proven by Shiftry, and you really don't want to be initially slower than the premiere U-turn user in OU Cacturne. Grass / Dark fuses the purpose of Electric / Dark with the water and ground resistances that make Grass favorable, and it doesn't have any potential optics issues that an Elec / Dark with an explicitly "Grass" ability might generate.

The key characteristics I find in all of these types is that a) they threaten Rain and water types as pivots or enablers of pivots b) Built properly they can have an excellent orientation towards our goal, c) they have no SR or EQ weakness, and even if they have an Ice weakness their presence means Ninetales has an attack to switch into to reset Sun and d) they bring new STABs to the table to enhance Sun's offensive presence on their own and through the cores they enable.

Finally, a brief word on mono-types. While I'm not specifically excluding them, the problem is they already exist in droves, including various sun sweepers (Tangrowth) and Rain attackers (Jolteon) and as of yet none of them have been able to alter the metagame, so I feel we need a dual-type to achieve the goals of the project.

EDIT: After a brief discussion I have decided to add Electric / Ice into the mix. While this is weak to SR and EQ, I feel it has enough going for it directionally that it would be worthwhile to slate. It's neutral to water and threatens it, it resists Ice so it easily takes the most common coverage move for Water-types, it has no 4x weaknesses, and given a proper niche it could combine with Venusaur's Fighting resistance and Chandelure's immunity. Ground types in OU are often critically weak to Ice and the typing also gives us a method to take down the Latis. I feel it is a decent neutral type which provides a unique balance of weaknesses, resistances, and capabilities that can be built on towards the goal of the concept.

EDIT 2: Scrap Elec / Ice. Grass / Fighting is my final choice. It adds a valuable SR Resistance to a Sun team, can be tailored in a way to differentiate it from both Breloom and Virizion, we had previous established that Fighting types are not something we have a problem with conceptually, and after discussions about Elec/Fighting I just feel like if I'm going to go with Fighting it should be attached to something that naturally resists Water and Ground, because those resists are more fundamentally needed on a Sun team than other playstyles. Double Grass relieves pressure from Venusaur to be the Water attack sponge, and a 2x unSTAB Ice Beam weakness from most Rain attackers is entirely manageable - and a predicted Ice attack is just a chance to switch Ninetales back in.

tbh I'm leaning more towards Dark / Grass right now. The Ground weakness of Electric / not-Grass is increasingly worrisome, and considering this, the Ice weakness doesn't sound so bad by comparison. Nonetheless, if the slate looks like that, I'm going to have a hard time deciding. This is going to be a good poll series :)

I know I talked a lot about it in my first post, but I want to go into a bit more detail on Dragon/Grass. I remain thoroughly unconvinced it has much, if any real positives for this concept, and comes along with a large amount of negatives.

Now, looking at the posts trying to sell this typing, the most important thing that sticks out to me is that they try and sell it as a defensive pivot vs rain, but at the same time try and write off the Ice weakness as unimportant. Sure, the typing resists water. But that means nothing when every water type still kills it. This is not a type that generally checks water except for those few unique sets that can beat it. This is a typing that straight up loses to every Pokemon that it wants to pivot on if they choose the right move. The fact that the rest of your team resists Ice (which Venusaur and Dugtrio and the like would like to remind you they don't), does nothing to circumvent the fact that you cannot even risk doing you job without dying.

The other hugely worrying thing is that being Dragon in general simply causes the propogation of more dragons. Dragons are always good, and a Dragon that beats Dragon will just see a lot of use. It won't decrease the use of others. Now, some say that beating dragons is not the goal of this type. Even so, you still propogate dragon use. Add a good dragon to OU but have it unable to beat other dragons. What do you get? A huge amount of dragons. Even if we are successful in lowing the usage of water, if we do so with a dragon, a significant amount of the Pokemon usage that comes in to take itse place will be dragon, either in the form of CAP5, or in the form of dragons that beat it.

Finally, I feel that most of the arguments in favor of Grass/Dragon are simply generic things that almost any type could fill, or is not specific to sun. Arguments about spinning or trapping or the like that have nothing to do with the typing, and most suggested types do just as good, if not a better job of theses things. Additionaly statements that the typing itself would be nice for sun are offset by the fact that the typing itself would be wonderful for rain or sand or weatherless as well. Claims to the contrary are either ignoring the fact that Pokemon like this are used all over, or only work if we assume that we will be genally inferior to existing similar Pokemon that thrive in the other weathers, and yet somehow are sucessful in sun.

Overall, there is really little Grass/Dragon actually does right for this concept, and what it does do is done just as well, if not better by the other part Grass typings, which lack the major downsides that Dragon provides.

I'm going to make one last plea for the type i really do find necessary somewhere on the slate: FIGHTING/ELECTRIC. This is a typing intended to seize momentum vs sand (only stopping defensive momentum, not creating it) and keep momentum vs rain (not able to switch in to tank hits, but able to dish them well)

What does this bring to the plate?

1) Tyranitar Pivot. Yes, yes, i know that "we're trying to counter Rain here," but Sand is the more problematic weather for Sun teams simply because Ninetales has such a damn hard time switching in. If you honestly think that we can make sun good just by letting it beat rain, uh, go play some more OU. Nothing on your standard sun team can consistently, reliably force tyranitar out and let tales in, which really is a problem. A fighting type would resist both of Tyranitar's STABs while being neutral to its coverage moves and let Tales come in to regain favorable weather
2) Stealth Rock Resistance. Sun has such a problem with being unable to function defensively because of SR-weak cores. Having a staple member with an SR resistance would take a lot of defensive pressure off of this archetype.
3) Beats Heatran. A strong fighting STAB has the not-insubstantial purpose of being able to take on Heatran and win, which is something none of the other types currently on the slate can do.
4) Threatens Waters. Self-explanatory really, but a strong Electric type attack would press the offense against Rain, and a fighting type backup stab would make any switch sans Rachi incredibly unsafe.
5) Strong VolTurn core with Scizor. Scizor is a really fucking helpful pokemon for Sun teams: It kills most dragons (which we all know sun hates), it provides a secondary win condition if Venu falls, and it provides a dragon resist and good physical bulk, two things sun teams usually lack. Also, it has coverage issues with mostly steels, which its sun partners bust down. It's unfortunately held back because sun teams are strapped for options: scizor just doesn't fit with all the slots we need, it can only pivot vs Tyranitar and others once, and furthermore since sun struggles with hazards, a Volturn core doesnt help with that. With an elec/fight on the team, hazards hold scizor back less, Heatran holds scizor back less, Tyranitar can be taken by a different pokemon, and Scizor can apply the offensive pressure it needs to. Basically, the fighting STAB would take the place of rotom's water STAB where water is neutered so hard. This also removes the problem of the Latis, as this CAP could simply pop out and let Scizor take its place, so no need to worry about that.

As for why this typing won't be used on rain teams: It likes to play defensively vs Sand; rain teams prefer to play offensively vs sand. It's not helpful vs sun. And as reach already expressed, being good in a mirror match is always a net neutral at best for a playstyle.

As for why this typing won't be used on Sand teams: It likes to play offensively vs rain; sand likes to play defensively vs rain. It's not helpful vs sun. And as reach already expressed, being good in a mirror match is always a net neutral at best for a playstyle.

I don't get your reasoning at all pwnemon... In the part where you explain why the Electric/Fighting mon would not benefit rain and sand teams more than sun teams you say that rain likes to play offensively against sand, where this Pokemon likes to play defensive vs sand and other similar stuff. Where did you get this? Electric / Fighting has very good offensive STABs and can keep momentum too with Volt Switch. Does this suggest a defensive role? If it will prefer to play more offensive or defensive will be determined later, but its typing favors offense.

tl;dr I just don't get why this Pokemon will only work in sun's favor and not in everyone's favor, so if you mind explaining it would be nice...!

So far Electric/Grass and and Electric/Dark seem to be the best typings. Grass/Dark is great offensively against rain teams but it sucks defensively and cannot make an effective pivot; not in this meta at least.

EDIT: One more thing that i want to remind to everyone is that if we make a Grass-type, we have to make sure that it will be able to work well with Venusuar, sun's mvp. If it doesn't work so well with Venusaur then it will be a failure, because sun teams will pick Venusaur over it and therefore all our efforts will be in vain.

The Fighting type is a great addition to this Pokemon in that giving Sun a boost against Sand may not do much to help out Sun if it only forces Rain users to switch to Sand. The type I would like to see discussed is Grass/Fighting.

Grass/Fighting has a few bonuses to it that help it dump Rain, help itself against Sand, and most importantly, benefit Sun. The qualities I see in Grass/Fighting are as follows (pwnemon I like your list idea so I will use it for my own purposes!):

1. Stealth Rock Resistance

Making this Pokemon resistant to Stealth Rock is going to strengthen this Pokemon's role as a defensive pivot if we choose to go that direction and give Sun something that both Sand and Rain have: a Stealth rock resistant tank. Sun teams naturally have plenty of Pokemon weak or neutral to Stealth Rock, so giving this Pokemon Grass/Fighting as a typing would ease the hazard burden that most Sun teams have.

2. Resistance to Water and Electric

Water and Electric are two types commonly used by Rain teams, specifically high-powered Special attack by Pokemon such as Thundurus-T, Keldeo, etc. Giving this Pokemon resistances to Water and Electric (and enough bulk to handle coverage moves) will let it better handle Rain teams. Pokemon like Keldeo can rip through Pokemon without Water Absorb, Dry Skin, Storm Drain, or a resisting type, so unless we stick on an ability that defeats Water-type Pokemon we will not be able to adequately handle the high-powered Water moves commonly seen on Rain teams. The Electric resistance provided by the Grass type allows our Pokemon to handle Thundurus-T, Jolteon, and Politoed's various Thunder buddies, strengthening this Pokemon's role as a Rain counter.

3. Can attack Water-type Pokemon right off the bat

Grass typing means Grass STAB. Being able to sponge a hit from something like Keldeo or Politoed doesn't mean much it we can't hit back with Giga Drain, Power Whip, Horn Leech (notice how many Grass STAB moves give this Pokemon semi-reliable recovery!), or whatever STAB Grass moves we decide to give this Pokemon. Furthermore, we would not need to bloat this Pokemon's attacking stats if we can just hit Water types super-effectively, so we can focus on giving this Pokemon the defensive stats to weather the rainstorm of OU. Though Jellicent isn't the spinblocking titan of OU, beating OU's bulkiest Ghost will clear the way for this Pokemon or a teammate to Spin away the hazards that hamper Sun's usefulness.

4. Increased potential for a Sun-benefiting ability

This is more of a flavor argument, but Grass types commonly have abilities like Chlorophyll, so giving this Pokemon a Grass typing will bring Chlorophyll into serious consideration for later. Excuse the minor polljump, but giving this Pokemon Chlorophyll creates the incentive to use this Pokemon on a Sun team.

5. Can beat Heatran if paired with Rotom-W

Though this typing fails to switch into Heatran at will, if we pair this Pokemon with Rotom-W or another slow U-Turner or Volt Switcher, we can take Heatran's attack and then retaliate with a Fighting-type attack to theoretically OHKO the Sun counter.

6. Beats Dugtrio barring the rare Aerial Ace

Resists Earthquake, resists Stone Edge, and has ways around Reversal (Leech Seed anyone?). Instead of living in fear of Dugtrio, Grass/Fighting would let CAP5 switch into Duggy with impunity unless Duggy decides to use Aerial Ace, which is a pretty rare move for Dugtrio since it kind of needs all four of its moveslots for Stealth Rock, Earthquake, Stone Edge, and Reversal.

7. Is not demolished by Sand.

The Fighting type gives this Pokemon a resistance to Stone Edge, Crunch, Pursuit, and Earthquake, the four most common moves on Tyranitar and Hippowdon. Super-effective coverage on those Pokemon and Terrakion (plus a neutral hit on Landorus) gives this Pokemon the ability to grapple with Sand just as well as it grapples with Rain. Common Sand abusers will not be able to break this Pokemon and thanks to the neutrality to U-Turn and resistance to Volt Switch, VoltTurn Sand teams will have just as much trouble.

8. Weaknesses are all covered by natural teammates or good defensive stats.

The most critical weaknesses of this type are Flying and Ice, but in reality, this is not a significant issue. The only common spammer of Flying moves outside of the rare Acrobatics Gliscor is Tornadus, who is both an uncommon presence in OU and is not a 100% counter to a Grass/Fighting CAP5. In Sun, Tornadus will only be able to hit CAP5 with Hurricane 50% of the time, so a Tornadus user will have to risk a 50/50 chance to kill this Pokemon with Hurricane or else switch out. Meanwhile, an Ice weakness is not the end of the world because most Ice moves in OU are coverage moves on Pokemon such as Starmie, Politoed, Landorus, Thundurus-Therian, etc. Giving this Pokemon adequate Special Defense would offset this Pokemon's Ice weakness. Look at Specially Defensive Celebi for example: Specially Defensive Celebi can take plenty of Hidden Power Ices or weak Ice Beams despite its weakness, so we are not necessarily screwed against Ice. The only common Ice Pokemon in OU, Mamoswine, is weak to both of this Pokemon's STAB types, so even the strongest Ice types in OU cannot defeat CAP5. Fire is another salient weakness on a Grass/Fighting CAP, but that's where this Pokemon's teammates come in. Sun teams commonly use three or four Fire resists per team, so it's not critical to resist Fire. Even if this Pokemon was neutral to Fire, the power of Sun would boost Fire moves to a point where it wouldn't really matter whether or not this Pokemon was weak to Fire.

9. Theoretically counters Ferrothorn

Leech Seed immunity, Grass resistance, and Fighting STAB. Knocking out Rain's best defensive pivot and half of its sweepers make this Pokemon Rain's bane. In conclusion, Grass/Fighting provides this Pokemon the tools necessary to boost Sun as a playstyle and severely hamper both of Sun's rival weathers.

Sure thing, alex

Basically, it's what Theorymon said in the concept thread about heatran. When you're using a fight/electric against a sand team, you can never press the advantage with your typing, because landorus is just waiting to come in and go to town on your butthole. As such, even though its typing is ideal for /scaring out/ many sand staples—jelli, ferro, ttar, terrak—it can never actually net any KOes because it leaves sun wide open. It's thus forced to act as a pivot, gaining momentum, but never applying pressure. Playing defensively.

Vs rain there is no such impediment. A fight/elec has many good type matchups again—toed, tenta, keld, torn. The difference being if you look at the sand matchups, they're things that elec/fight can switch in on and force out. With rain, it's things elec/fight canNOT switch in on, but CAN kill without repurcussion (applying pressure). Playing offensively.

As for why rain would not use cap5 against sand? Rain typically tries to hammer sand with tons of strong stab moves, keeping the pressure on, so sand sweepers can't switch in. A fight/elec is like handing over all that offensive pressure on a silver platter. It may not be unrecoverable, but it's not worth it either.

As for why sand wouldn't use cap5 against rain? I take it back, can't think of a good reason not to. Honestly though is that that bad? Sand beating rain? We'd still be increasing the usage of sun more, since cap5 sucks against sun. And giving rain such a beatdown, to boot, would really accomplish the concept.

Just because Pokemon that are commonly used in sand teams can revenge kill you doesn't mean that a Pokemon can't take an offensive role. By the same logic, Terrakion is forced to play defensively on sun teams when against sand teams, because after it kills something it will be forced out by Scarf Lando. But this is not true in the slightest as we all know. Having a way to deal with Landorus is one of Sun's duties, and if left unchecked it will be a problem no matter what the sun team does. The Electric/Fighting mon will be able to force a ton of sand members out, by typing alone, while also preserving momentum with Volt Switch, and possibly trapping with Pursuit. If this sounds defensive to you then i don't know what else to say.

It is true that it will be harder to switch in against rain teams, but this doesn't instantly translate to playing offensively. There are a ton of factors that will decide how easily this Pokemon will switch-in, and many useful abilities and stats that will allow for easier switch-ins.

I agree with you one this one!

I agree with this too.

Finally, everything you say is based on the concept that rain teams play offensively against sand teams, and that sand teams play defensively against rain teams. This is very generic and not always true, and therefore not very reliable to base your arguments on. There are many rain teams that play defensively against sand teams (rain stall vs sand offense or balance) and many sand teams that play offensively against rain teams (any fast offensive sand team).

Virizion does have some noticeable flaws that prevent it from being a Rain counter. For starters, it's not a Sun abuser and has absolutely no way to abuse the Sun or carve itself a niche on a Sun team. We will be building this Pokemon so that it can use the Sun as a weapon. Furthermore, Virizion is lacking in power. It loses to Heatran 1v1, loses to Tornadus 1v1, loses to Ferrothorn 1v1 if it's packing Gyro Ball, loses to Starmie 1v1 thanks to Psyshock, etc. Virizion has neither the movepool nor the attacking capability to adequately deal with Rain. Compound those failures with no way to deal with status (Burn, Toxic, or Paralysis immediately destroy Virizion) and Virizion loses its niche in the world.

My typing idea, to an extent, entails building a better Virizion: one that doesn't lose to half of the average Rain team and fits onto a Sun team. Throwing some examples out there, what if Virizion had Leaf Guard? What if it had Stealth Rock? What if its Special Attack and Physical Defense stats were swapped? What if we gave it Fire coverage to better function in Sun? What if it had Bulk Up? Horn Leech?

Though I digress in the above paragraph, you have to wonder what we could do with a Grass/Fighting Pokemon? We could make it so it doesn't take 50% from resisted Earthquakes and instead has the ability to contend with the Pokemon it's designed to counter.

The one flaw with a Grass/Fighting CAP5 is that it should not function well in Rain. However, that's where the stats and ability come in: we can tailor stats to where it cannot just be a Rain staple or give it an ability that makes it irresistible to Sun teams. One word of caution that I would like to extend to everyone is don't worry about making Sun 'too good'. We're probably never going to be able to have Sun outclass Rain by creating just one Pokemon. I've heard on IRC that we need to limit this Pokemon in ways to make Sun not a broken playstyle, yet there is little evidence that one Pokemon could turn Sun into the new Rain pre-Aldaron's Proposal.

What's wrong with the concept of a defensive Pokemon?

I feel like Cresselia is one of those pokes that is perfectly tailored to this CAP. It singlehandedly defines any remote viability behind the term "Sun Stall" while countering pretty much every dragon and encouraging the use of Bug-Type and Dark-Type moves as well as Toxic to take it down. The only thing that Cress doesn't do that this challenge might want is discourage Water-types. This is pretty much only because of its reliance on Moonlight, so we know to avoid that much. I think Electric-Type is a good place to start. Maybe even a Mono-Electric defensive pokemon could work.

But I think this concept delves into what people are saying. In order to dissuade the usage of dragons, this CAP is either going to be ridiculously bulky or ridiculously fast.

much of homeslice's post is completely incoherent, but i will attempt to dissect it anyway. my points will specifically be about the two typings suggested, fight/grass and fight/elec

Fighting is the seventh most common type in OU, behind water, dragon, steel, ground, psychic, and flying. Three of the OU Fighters, Conkeldurr, Toxicroak, and Lucario, are hanging on by their fingernails. This leaves three good OU Fight Types in Keldeo, Breloom, and Terrakion. Frankly i'm not entirely sure why it was listed in the concept. w/e

let me get this straight. you are arguing that strong STAB moves which dissuade frail pokemon with neutral typings from coming in is a /weakness/ of the fighting type? or is this lumped in with the previous quote, in which case ^

and a tyranitar pivot, and a Heatran counter, and a threat to rain

you can't win em all. on the bright side, you can volt-switch out when lati@s comes in to whichever pokemon is appropriate for the situation. worth noting that the only truly threatening lati set—subcm—doesn't run psychic moves

i find it amusing that despite the presence of two strong special fighting moves (aura sphere and focus blast) you polljump to the assumption that this CAP will necessarily be physical if it is fighting type, and use it as an argument against the type. Furthermore i am amused by the fact that you support Elec/Dark, a typing that is getting so much traction largely for its ability to pursuit trap bulky waters—an ability that is completely neutered by a scald burn.

let's talk about that now. you are convinced that it's either cap5 or venusaur unless cap5 is the god of all things support. need i remind you that many successful sand teams run both landorus and gliscor—which have the exact same typing. Both terrakion and tyranitar are Rock typed. Lots of rain teams use Tenta, Keldeo, AND toed, also Ferro AND Rachi. Just because two pokemon share the same type doesn't mean they have the same role. Venusaur is a sweeper, Grass/Fight is a defensive pivot and rain counter.

this deserves its own response. "traditionally, dragons do x and fights dont" is a completely flavor argument that has no place in a competitive discussion like this.

Fighting/Grass does. Fighting/Elec resists half of that. Sun provides a water resistance.

I find it amusing that "a neutral switch-in is no switch-in at all" is your argument here, and yet you support electric/dark, which is a neutral switch in on almost all of the pokemon it is intended to beat (latios, latias, politoed)