I'm with Jas and Pwnemon on this one. Read their posts in this thread, if you haven't already.
I don't know if Dark/Grass is the best typing for this concept, but it is the typing we chose and we need to work with it, not against it. Too often CAP gets into the habit of trying to solve every problem posted in every thread. That just isn't feasible. This is Pokemon. No single pokemon beats everything, and no single pokemon makes a team function perfectly. And even if we did want to make a pokemon to beat everything, we certainly wouldn't use Dark/Grass typing as the basis for that. As others have stated, we are weak to a slew of common attacking types and we are 4x weak to the most common switching move in the game. This is not the typing for the next world-beater pokemon. But it IS a typing that can do a few things very well, and more importantly, those few things it can do well can fill a vital role in making Sun teams better.
Note that I didn't say we can make Sun teams awesome. I didn't say we can make sun teams beat Rain or Sand hands down. We can make Sun teams BETTER than they are currently. And if we do that, we should be able to fulfill the chosen Concept for this CAP, as we hypothesized in the Concept Assessment.
The beauty of it is that we can do that if we just work with the obvious stuff that our typing is screaming for anyway. Many posters in this thread are trying to get too clever with our threats, checks, and counters. I realize it's hard to dial back expectations and simply identify obvious stuff. But that's exactly what we need to do.
I am operating on the assumption that we have general consensus on a few things:
We want CAP 5 to be an effective "answer" for the Latis.
I'm not using the word "counter" here, because every dweeb in Smogon loves to get into pedantic definitions about what is a "counter" or not. And I'm not going to get into that bullshit. It's a waste of time. Suffice to say, we want CAP5 to be able to make Sun team owners have almost no fear of Lati@s ever again. Do not bring up stupid gimmick moves Lati@s can run, like HP-Bug or whatever, as an argument that we can never "always beat" Lati@s. I'm talking about common cases here, and yes, I think we have every right to expect we can kick the shit out of Lati@s and not look back.
We have established that Lati@s is a big problem for Sun teams, and there is no current answer for it. Our typing is very well-suited to the task of handling the Latis, so let's set it in stone right here and now: CAP5 will be a one-stop shop for handling Lati@s in all its common forms. We are all aware of the challenges that presents us, and there are a limited number of ways to deal with Lati@s in a definitive manner. But we do have options. Some options have great synergy with our typing, and some don't. But this isn't the thread to deal with the specifics of how we'll do it. We're simply committing to do it over the course of the project.
We want CAP 5 to be better on Sun teams than it is on Rain teams.
I have a feeling this assumption will have to be addressed when we pick abilities, by choosing abilities that work well in Sun or work poorly in Rain. Regardless, this isn't an Ability discussion thread, so I'm not going to get into details about abilities. I don't think there is much we can do in terms of defining threats to ensure CAP5 is better in Sun than Rain. Anything we threaten or get threatened by is equally likely to be faced by all teams, so we can't really impact this assumption at this stage of the project. But I suspect we'll be talking about this assumption at great length in the near future.
We want to help Sun teams deal with lack of team slots.
This is important, and I think it will dictate how we build this pokemon more than many people realize. The extension to that is it will deeply affect what we need to threaten to fill the required role.
Someone posted the following template for a relatively standard Sun team:
- Ninetales
- Venusaur
- SR Handler (Bouncer or Spinner)
- Dugtrio
- Firemon
- Filler
Perhaps you disagree that is a good template, but I'm operating on the assumption that it's fairly representative of a normal Sun team. Usage stats also back up this template, so I'm going with it. If that is the sun team template, then we really don't have many viable options to replace and improve one of the five "locked up" teamslots. In fact, I think we only have one teamslot we can replace and improve with CAP5.
Obviously we're not getting rid of Ninetales.
Obviously we're not going to be a Fire-abuser (even if we give it Fire coverage moves), because of our typing.
I guess we could technically try to replace Venusaur, but I'm hard pressed to see us improve upon what Venusaur does for a Sun team. At best, we make a Venusaur clone; more likely we'd make a cheap imitation. Venusaur is pretty much irreplaceable.
With Dark typing, we can be a very effective Pursuit trapper, but we won't be able to trapkill the big threats that Dugtrio is most valuable for currently. Ttar and Heatran come to mind, but there are many others. We can threaten those pokemon if we want, but we won't be able to trap and kill them like Duggy can. The capability to completely destroy threats like Tar and Tran is incredibly useful. So in all likelihood, we shouldn't kid ourselves into thinking CAP5 will be able to replace Duggy on Sun teams. I still think we should make CAP5 a Pursuit-trapper for other reasons, but we won't be freeing up a teamslot by doing so.
So that leaves us with one vital role we are capable of filling and improving: Stealth Rock Handler. Sun teams despise Rocks, and need an answer for it. Our typing is very good for this role, maybe too good. Technically, we could handle rocks with an Ability, and ultimately we'll settle that in a later step. But for purposes of driving to conclusions about Threats and Counters, I'm assuming if we have intentions to fill the Rock Handler teamslot we'd most likely end up doing so with a move, which means Rapid Spin.
Obviously, a Dark type spinner is amazing since it hits STAB SE on every common spin blocker in OU. Jellicent is pretty much screwed against CAP 5 anyway, by virtue of our perfect typing opposition to it (acknowledging non-STAB Ice Beam is an option for almost every Water type we face, but let's just get used to that, OK?). Gengar is in for a world of hurt against CAP5, despite its resistance to our Grass STAB. If Gengar is dumb enough to come in, I doubt we'll make CAP 5 frail enough to fear unstabbed HP-Fire, so the dastardly Ghost is hosed unless it's running an odd Sludge Bomb set. Even if we don't make CAP5 a spinner (and we may not), our typing pretty much assures that we'll dominate the OU Ghosts.
My big question along this line of thinking:
If we end up filling the role of SR Handler, is there anything currently dealt with by existing Sun team SR Handlers that we MUST deal with to fill the role, that is NOT already indicated by Dark/Grass typing or already handled by other members of Sun teams? I'm keenly interested to hear answers to this, because I think it is far more relevant to this Threats discussion than some of the random scenarios presented by others.
The point of this long post is not to predetermine the outcome of our later steps. I am simply laying out some assumptions that most of us seem to agree on so far, and discussing the direction those assumptions point us in in terms of threats. If we continue to adhere to those assumptions through the project, I think we have a good chance to end up with a pokemon that does the following:
- Completely eliminates Lati@s as a problem for Sun teams
- Handles Stealth Rock hazards better than any current Sun team member
- Improves the effectiveness of Ninetales and Fire-abusers on Sun teams
Read those again and think about how big a deal it would be. If over the course of this CAP we successfully do those three things, that's enough. Hell, some people may argue it is TOO MUCH. But all three of those are possible by just going with the natural flow of our typing. We just give it things that our typing likes and we beat the stuff our typing indicates that we should beat. We don't need to do anything weird to handle Steel pokemon that laugh at our STABs. Nor do we need to wall U-Turns or give CAP5 a bunch of fast, high-powered coverage moves.
If we stick to the obvious indications of our typing, we have a legit shot at making a pokemon that does the stuff listed above. I'm not saying we WILL do those three things, but I think there will be a strong bias for us to do so, if we continue to stick to the assumptions I mentioned earlier. And if we do those three things successfully, we can pat ourselves on the back and call it a day. Right now, we need to not over-complicate things and not try to do too much with this pokemon.
"Perfect is the enemy of good."