CAP 16 CAP 5 - Part 2 - Typing Discussion

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.

I would like to make a suggestion: This CAP should not be of any of the types we are trying to lower. This means no Dragon, no Steel, no Water, and no whatever else the other overused types are (let's say Fighting).

Why am I saying this? Simple: by making CAP5 any of these types, we've already failed in our objective to lower these types, since we're using them. In my view at least, using these types to lower overused types is hypocritical.

tl;dr sometimes fighting fire with fire (purely metaphorical in this case, since Fire is one of the types we're trying to RAISE) isn't the solution.

Also, can someone tell me which overused types we agreed on other that Dragon, Steel, or Water?

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).

A few thoughts on several things that have been proposed:

Dragon/Grass - Simply put, I worry that this is limited in that I think it essentially requires Chlorophyll to adequately fulfill our requirements (good against other dragons, but only better than them on a sun team). This isn't the thread for abilities so I won't go into the arguments on whether or not we should give CAP 5 Chlorophyll, but I'm certainly not 100% convinced that we should and if we decide not to, this typing is going to be extremely difficult to work with. Also, the Ice weak really does suck.

On the other hand, though, I really don't buy the arguments that we can't make a Dragon because we don't want to boost Dragons. The fact is, Dragons are good on sun teams, thanks to their ability to hit hard in any weather while appreciating the boost to their Fire-type coverage moves that sun provides. Dragons aren't universal on sun teams mainly because they're non-essential and, as mentioned many times in this thread, sun is strapped for slots. Since freeing up some slots is clearly a major goal, we're likely to see more Dragons on sun teams. It simply comes down to whether CAP 5 itself will be that Dragon of choice.

Water/something - I think this is an interesting idea, and similarly to Dragon I don't think the argument that we shouldn't make a Water-type because "we want to weaken Water-types" really holds...uh, water. If we weaken rain, the overall usage of Water-types will fall, even if we add another good Water-type to the meta. (Even if every sun team uses CAP 5, rain teams often have three Water-types, so anyone who switches from rain to sun is likely running fewer Waters than before.) There are some solid points in favour here: Water can obviously switch in reasonably well against other Water-types, and does well offensively against several common sand Pokémon. If we can find a way to make it bad in rain and good in sun, I think this is a perfectly reasonable avenue. (And I do believe that is possible.)

Anything weak to Rock - Yeah this is just a terrible idea. More Stealth Rock-weak Pokémon is the last thing sun needs.

I'm still having trouble seeing the merits in grass/dragon, even after reading most of Korski's insanely long post othe subject. One thing I do like that he mentioned was that it would be mostly a defensive pivot, since grass/dragon offensively is insanely redundant and ineffective against rain. Think of yourself playing with a rain team against a dragon type, what do you bring in? Definitely not something weak to grass, you bring in ferrothorn or jirachi, both of which resist grass. And since nothing else wants to take a powerful dragon stab anyways grass coverage finds itself being pretty useless, especially on a sun team that is filled with it.

Now, Korski's post did mention the 4x resist of water which will definitely help but think of how easy this is to play around with a 4x ice weakness. Again, you're playing with a rain team against a sun team with a dragon/grass mon. Everything is ohko'd or out sped and 2hko'd in the rain by your specs keldeo except our grass/dragon friend. What do you think your opponent is going to do? Gee that's a tough one, he's bringing in the 4x resist and you're gonna go for hp ice and destroy the only defensive presence on his team. You could even be e-belt and bluff choice to ko next turn, it's just too easy to play around with every offensive rain threat having ice coverage. I think if you want a defensive pivot with a 4x water resist water/grass outclasses grass/dragon by miles. And, even though this lends itself to rain at first sight it is possible that we can use its ability and move pool to make it more beneficial to sun teams. I'm not saying I fully support this typing but I think it does the job of 4x water resist pivot much better than grass/dragon could ever hope to do.

The problem I have with Electric/Fighting is that it's EQ weak. (Same for all other Electric/..) When you mention Electric/Fighting as a way to deal with Ttar and his cronies because said mons are problems to sun, I'd actually think Grass/Fighting makes more sense. Grass/Fighting has the added benefit of taking resisted hits from Water, helping it out to do well against both opposing weathers by virtue of it's typing alone.

Also, the idea of a core of Grass/Fighting-CAP5/Scizor/Heatran (the latter is already common on sun teams and is there to take the fire attacks) is actually pretty amazing. This core would work out much less efficient with Electric being the type over Grass. Water would hit all neutrally or worse. EQ would hit two of them SE and the other neutral. And EQ is already a major issue, with Ninetales dying to it, and Venusaur's secondary poison typing neutering it's ability to tank EQ's.

Like many others here, I think that Grass/x is the way to go here. A 2x Ice weak when fired off through non-stabbed HP-Ice's or Ice Beam 90% of the time is still pretty manageable. Especially when you can't look at CAP5 in a vacuum. There's always team mates to tank Ice Beams. On Sun teams, Ice Beams are free switch-in oppertunity's actually.

From Grass/x, I'd be most in favor of a typing that doesn't make it lose it water resistance or EQ resistance. Grass/Fighting even adds a SR resistance, something also lacking on sun teams. As a defensive pivot, being able to switching in and out often without dying from SR is a huge boon to a team that can't take switching lightly, because of common SR weaknesses.

Regarding Grass/Dragon, jas already said pretty much everything I'd reply with. I'll only add that I'd definitely prefer Celebi over a Grass/Dragon, settling for x1/2 Water resist but only a x2 Ice weakness, really solid all around stats, plenty offensive options (including Earth Power for Heatran if need be) and a huge support movepoll. Celebi could be Venusaur's Grass partner and core Grass type for sun teams - if sun teams could afford the moveslot.

That's why I think Grass/anything is redundant for our purposes, especially Grass/Dragon. So I'll be supporting the part-Electric typings, and just as Deck said, the weakness can be addressed at later stages, via ability or even item (or Electric can always use Magnet Rise, right?).

The one exception to this I'd consider is Grass/Fighting. If that gets slated, it has a chance to beat both Rain AND Sand and be Stealth Rock resistant, which is a boon. However, what srk said before still holds. There's a Grass/Fighting type named Virizion with awesomely tailored stats and strong moves that could stop Rain. Where does Virizion sit? UU. So yeah, I'm skeptical in regard to actually pulling this off.

Virizion is awesome in stats, but we're likely going beyond just tailoring a few good stats. This is somewhat poll-jumping, but everyone so far has been making this exact same assumption. If we get something like Rapid Spin, we have a niche that let's us act as both a defensive pivot and as the team spinner, saving up two team spots. Like you said, on paper, Virizion has everything that would've made it the most awesome rain stopper. I don't see any reason why that should stop us from making a CAP with the same typing. If anything, it should encourage us, as from theorymonning and looking at Virizion as an example, there's definitely potential in the Grass/Fighting typing. It's just that Sun teams are strapped for team spots. So where this CAP will have to differ from Virizion, is that it's capable of fulfilling a few roles for sun teams, finally freeing up some spots on sun teams to get down to it's core business. Abusing sun to sweep opposing teams.

I think some posts and typings are neglecting the fact that Ninetails its outclassed and outmatched by many things in OU and thats its saving grace is its ability, Drought. Sun teams are essentially planing with five pokemon due to Ninetails uselessness. To rectify this CAP-5 needs to have typing that pairs well with the weakness of the fire type–specifically rock and water as presented by the most commonly used weather starters in Tyranitar and Politoed.

To effectively check Tyranitar CAP-5 should be a Fighting type. This type could easily switch into Tyranitar's dual STAB with little consequence, playing offensively forcing the Tyranitar to switch thus applying pressure on the sand team lest it wants to loose the weather war. Offensively and defensively I feel that fighting types provide the best check against sand, specifically where Tyranitar is the sand starter. The fighting type also adds a stealth rock resistance which is valuable to a sun team, reducing the penalty of switching CAP-5 in and out.

As for dealing with rain there are two types that should be taken into consideration when pairing them with the fighting type. These types being Electric and Grass, the former being an offensive check to rain team while the latter is a more defensive check.

The Electric type although makes it harder for CAP-5 to switch into water moves it can effectively check common pokemon found on rain teams with its strong Electric STAB. Its similar to the fighting type when checking sand on this regard. The electric typing also gives CAP-5 a neutrality to Hurricane, though uncommon this neutrality should enable to the pokemon to take a hit (if necessary) and damage (if not, knock out) the threat at present. The electric type however give CAP-5 a weakness to Earthquake/Earth Power, moves commonly found on sand teams forcing out CAP-5, forfeiting offensive momentum something the electric typing aims to gain. This also compounds the weakness of ground moves that sun teams usually have.

The Grass type is very much an opposite to the electric type despite their common purpose, defeating water types. Grass typing allows CAP-5 to switch into water moves and immediately threaten the opponent out for previously stated reasons. The grass typing is also more useful when confronting sand teams, allowing CAP-5 to check Tyranitar and Hippowdon (something the fighting type cannot do). A virtue of being a grass type is the innate resistance of ground moves–this fact is especially important on a sun team where that weakness may be common between team members. The weaknesses brought by the grass type are many, specifically to Ice Beam and Hurricane. The former being on present on all water types and the latter being present on niche but powerful pokemon (i.e Tornadus-I)–there is little CAP-5 could do against Hurricane, however on a sun team the switch-in to an ice move should be plentiful.

I support both dual typings of Grass/Fight and Electric/Fight, my preference is for the Grass/Fight type as it checks rain and sand better defensively. This typing also promotes superior synergy between CAP-5 and Ninetails, its weather starter. CAP-5's resistance to Rock, Ground and Water and in turn Ninetails resistance to Ice proves this to some extent. If CAP-5 were to have Rapid Spin (or support moves of similar merit) the support CAP-5 would give to a Sun team would be invaluable.

I am hesitant to support anything weak to fighting due to the ubiquitous presence of powerful fighting types, Terrakion and Keldo being stand outs among them due to their affiliation with weather and/or outright strength. Their strong STAB moves often spell out disaster for sun teams and a CAP-5 that is weak to fighting would not help this problem.

tl;dr (open) tl;dr (close)

Grass/Fight & Electric/Fight for CAP-5

I'm still in full support of the typings Dark/Electric and Grass/Electric myself. To the people worried about buffing one unfavorable weather or another, we could just avoid giving it elements that allows it to thrive or do something it normally can't in one weather; a good example is Volcarona being able to function in both Rain and Sun due to the inclusion of Hurricane in It's movepool and rounding up a FWG core with ferro and any water. I shan't expand on this to avoid poll jumping, but I strongly feel that some people are overthinking the impact of weather. I can easily argue that by virtue of typing, anything grass typed would benefit from rain as it douses their fire-type weakness. I can argue that anything weak to water is buffed by sun because it dries up water-type attacks.

What dark-type does is allow us to hit psychics and ghosts like Latias and Jellicent hard and give us a handy immunity to switch-in with. Some might argue it will increase fighting-type usage, but I would like to reinstate the same thing I've been repeating through this CAP; making a mon weak to a type does not increase it's usage. This is also aimed at the people arguing for Grass/Dragon on ther basis that it'll increase ice usage; I bring up the examples of Hp fire latias and flamethrower blissey again.

But I digress. If we really feel like taking on water-type usage, we can go grass/electric. Although it leaves us open to Hurricanes unlike Dark/Elec, it also lets us counter most of rain and it's "abusers". It also lets us switch in on some earthquakes and maybe survive Landorus' boosted Earth Powers, something not every mon can claim to do.

Am making this post with my phone, so some of it might be quite incoherent; I apologize for that and the lack of the man with the seven scars.

I'm in complete agreement with the grass/electric pivot that is needed to make a successful CAP able to tackle rain and sandstorm, making holes for that under used grass type to exploit.
Momentum is a critical issue in weather and the ability to turn that momentum around by defending and threatening common water types and ground types will make for a reliable 'check'/pivot. It is not weak to earthquake either, but neutral, being a grass type. Useful when in a team that has a lot of ground weaknesses.

Dragon/Grass is still extremely susceptible to ice, no matter how you spin it. It is not just a momoswine with ice shard we need to worry about but with rain having the ability to hold defensive cores it can reliable harbour and use choice scarfers with ice beams/etc that waters do enjoy for coverage. It will simply increase the importance of ice coverage in rain teams.

I have an answer to this (I'll have to poll-jump a bit and assume Pursuit though). An Electric/Dark type doesn't give it any characteristics that make it less viable on Rain (or Sand), but it is outclassed on them. Rain can use Scizor or weavile as a Pursuit trapper, and Sand has Tyranitar and Scizor. The Electric typing also is out classed on Rain, because Rain already has Pokemon like Rotom-W and Thundurus-T, who lack a Ground weakness (less relevant if we give this CAP Levitate). As for beating the Lati@s, I'll link my earlier post, where I explained how Sun has a hard time using any of the common Lati@s counters, quite a few of which fit better on Rain. And this type also has the advantage of not compounding the common type weaknesses of Sun, other than Ground. Basically, an Electric/Dark type would be mainly used in Sun, because it will face strong competition under other weathers from Pokemon that do not fit well on Sun teams.

I see a HUGE problem with some of these types being brought up. Some people are forgetting we've decided we want to reduce not just Water and Dragon, but also Fighting and Steel. While Steel suggestions are not as common, there's too many suggestions going around about Fighting and Dragon types. I just want to post all my thoughts on these along with Grass, so it may be poorly organized but I'm just spitting out everything I can think of.

Dragon-

I'm going to start off by just reiterating what jas originally said. Trying to stop Dragons on the other team using your own Dragon just raises the usage of Dragons. One Dragon doesn't all of the sudden make every Dragon ever hide away in UU. It's like if (for example) Mewtwo got moved down to OU. Everyone would use him, and he'd still get usage in Ubers also, which just boosts the usage of a type. Using Dragon for a counter to Dragons is extremely situational- you'd essentially need to be scarfed with full investment in speed to be guaranteed to pull it off. With the way everyone seems to be posting, this could go either way, Offensive or Defensive, so in the end we could make a Defensive Dragon that was made to counter Dragons. Doesn't sound that logical, now does it? It seems like the only Dragon posting is of Grass/Dragon, which just brings up more problems. We're trying to find a way of stopping Water, Ice, and Electric all at once. Giving a pokemon a 4x weakness to one of them isn't helping. More on Grass types later.

Fighting-

I have some extreme reservations about this type. You could argue for days about how Fighting is the best type behind Dragon, if not the best type. While it may have some potential towards rain teams because of an SR resistance, I still generally don't like the idea of using a Fighting type to stop common types, seeing as it is one of them. It's like a lesser version of the Dragon situation, but most fighting types hit so hard with STAB moves that other Fighting types not named Gallade, Toxicroak, or Heracross can't reliably come in on without being threatened to get 1-2HKO'd. And honestly, the only thing you're getting out of a fighting type besides an SR weakness is the ability to stop Ferrothorn and Hydreigon only if it is for some reason chosen over Lati@s. Other than that, you're destroyed by STAB Psychic moves Lati@s might have, most likely crippled by a Scald to the face from Politoed or whatever Bulky Water they're probably running, and really only have something going for you if you're grass typed also, which again will be talked about later. I could MAYBE deal with dragons only because they usually get great coverage and resist Water and Electric, but Fighting doesn't do that. Fighting does have the Rock resistance for Stone Edge from Sandstorm teams, but it doesn't resist Ground anyways and once again is really relying on it's dual typing to give it some backbone.

Water-

While I've only seen a few suggestions of these, it kind of concerns me that we're using a water type on a sun team to counter rain teams. Honestly, if it's good enough, rain teams are also going to use it anyways just because it's Water typed. The only suggestions I saw for water we're Water/Grass and Water/Fire, both of which could operate on Rain teams just as well as sun teams. I don't have much more to say on Water, pretty sure it's not getting anywhere anyways.

Steel-

Steel is probably the "Big 4" type I mind the least. It's not being brought up much anyways, but I just want to say it's neutral to Water and Electric attacks and resists Ice. Somebody could probably come up with something good here.

Grass-

I have the most concerns when it comes to this type. Adding another Grass type to a Sun team is not going to help. It's just going to compete with Venusaur for a team spot, and if Venusaur beats it out the project is lost and a complete waste of time. The only way anything Grass typed is going to get a team spot along side Venusaur is if it has so much pumped into its Defensive stats and has Leaf Guard or some defensive ability, or is so amazing at utility to the point it can set every hazard, spin them, have heal bell, and roar/whirlwind at its use. We know all these most likely won't happen. Grass typing is taking a HUGE risk with the project. It could become a worse Venusaur. Everyone might use it anyways just because it's a CAP Pokemon, and it could just open up some other problems in slot syndrome where you're losing valuable coverage or resists just because you wanted to throw another Grass type on the team. I would prefer if we stay away from Grass completely and fully.

As of right now, I'm giving all my support to Dark/Electric. It's got the ability to threaten Water types, trap Lati@s, hit Scizor neutrally, still somewhat threaten Sandstorm teams outside of Ground types, and is not weak to SR.
EDIT: Like what Deglas said about Dark/Electric too.

That is obviously the biggest challenge for taking this path, how to ensure it doesn't help rain teams... But there are many ways around this road block. Water being one of the most versatile types, what better way to counter it than with its own adaptability? Water already resists fire, so it gets no defensive boost from rain without a rain-related ability. So, if we were to take some useful thing the water type can do other than rain boosted STAB attacks and abilities that function in the rain, then rely on the cap's primary typing (fire, grass, bug for all I care etc...) for its attacks. Water becomes its defensive/utility type, while generally assuming the role of a different type. It would use moves that don't do what rain teams need, fill a role that rain teams don't want, etc... Eh, it's just a thought. As you said, its been suggested a few times, but it doesn't look like one of the more popular typings for this cap. While I support Water for this cap, I also think it might not be as practical as other types and might just be a more stylistic/mind-screwing choice.

I'm starting to get really annoyed by arguments about not being able to use one of the popular typings for this mon because then inherently that typing itself must become even more used and we will not have accomplished something.

Seriously misguided logic. The OU metagame usage statistics is nothing more than a pie chart.
X% is rain, Y% is HO and Z% is Sun offense. (There being a few more playstyles, but ok.) X is split amongst a few Waters, a few Steels, a bit Fighting, Electric, etc. Y Has a few Dragons, Steels, Fighting, etc. Z is split amongst mostly Grass, Fire, Ground and Steel.
CAP5 Fighting-type enters the metagame.
A month later, the metagame has settled, new statistics come in. The only group composition to have drastically changed is Z, it now has a Fighting type in almost all the matches that the Sun playstyle was used. For every percentage that Sun has been played more in comparison to last month, percentage-wise, other playstyles must have diminished. (100% being absolute and all) That means that Rain has been played less relatively, HO has been played less. One fighting on one team has indirectly increased the usage of 5 other pokemon on the Sun team, and decreased the usage of all the common pokemon on opposing playstyles.

That is what we are trying to accomplish here. No matter what the type of CAP5 itself is, if it somehow manages to make Sun a more used playstyle, with that playstyle gaining more usage relatively to all other playstyles, the usage of 5 other pokemon with underused typings will get boosted too. And the usage of the commonly found pokemon on other playstyles will have gone down, for the usage of the playstyle that allows them to be on a team in the first place will have gone down.


Please remember that usage has nothing at all to do with pokemon. In any game, there's usage statistics. Ken and Ryu have always been leading usage polls in Street Fighter for example. Usage is nothing more than a statistic in the competitive metagame OU. That's what we're trying to impact. One pokemon's typing will never ever impact it to the point that it alone can bring up one typing and leave it at that, even if it's Arceus-like strong. Even if CAP5 ends up being the solitary #1 most used pokemon.
Why? Because you have to build a team of 6 pokemon. If we build CAP5 to really always have a best fit with Sun teams, the 5 pokemon in his team will also get a ride to the OU top. As simple as that. And usage statistics are always relative to the amount of battles played monthly. Ff 2000 battles were played last month, of which 100 used sun teams, and 2000 battles this month, of which now 750 sun teams, all other teams now have their usage percentage spread in the remaining 1250 battles used. In other words, usage goes down for Water/Dragons/Steel/Fightings/etc. that are commonly found on those teams.


I'm sorry the post is longer than has to be, but this is really important to realize for everyone. For this discussion and for all discussions to come in further stages. Even if you see CAP5 more on a day to day basis, and even if it's a Dragon. It's still bloody likely that overall, in metagame usage statistics, the Dragon typing will have declined in usage. Period.

Pwnemon, I understand the points you make for Elec/Fighting, I do. It's what got me inspired to think about and back Grass/Fighting. But since writing down the benefits of Grass/Fighting, I have no idea how I can back Elec/Anything anymore. Sun is weak to Rock and Ground quite some bit. You've brought up how Sand is actually just a great a nemesis to Sun as Rain is, if not bigger. You attempt to resist Stone attacks from default sand most with Fighting and most notably SR too. Yet all these guys love EQ to death too. And just seeing a Sun team in team preview, aside from Heatran possibly having balloon, EQ is perfectly spammable as it often does neutral or better damage to the lot of them. That weakness is just compounded upon with Elec/Fighting.

I don't feel Grass/Fighting is necessary for the water resistance, that's just nice. Like you said, the fact that we aim to get Sun up more as the weather condition gives everything neutral to water a pseudo-resist all of the sudden. However, that ground resist is amazing for Sunteams, with just one member being able to take care of the popular QuakeEdge combo.