CAP 16 CAP 5 - Part 5 - Stat Limits

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ginganinja

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The trouble is, raising the speed to outrun Terrakion and Keldeo actually removes some of the better checks and counters to CAP 5 (currently). Fighting types with CC do an excellent job at checking Cap 5, outrunning Terrakion and Keldeo means that CAP 5 can defeat both with Power Whip. The more we boost our speed, the more shit its going to beat, and the harder its going to be to check it.
 

erisia

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Just some points to think about, considering our choice of Harvest as the primary ability. Firstly, if CAP5 is using a berry, it isn't going to be using a Life Orb, so we need to make sure that CAP5 has a high enough Attack stat to significantly threaten Latias and Politoed without any boosting items. Second, I agree that offensive Ninetales should be able to 2HKO CAP5 most of the time, so that the mandatory Fire type of Sun teams can be a better response to Lum sets, so this places an upper constraint on Special Tankiness. Third, we must consider that if Lum-Rest or Sub-Sitrus become popular strategies, then CAP5 will only have room for one Dark STAB on its moveset, so Pursuit should preferably be able to outpace Recover on offensive CM Latios at least; again, without a Life Orb. So overall, this points to a decently high Attack stat, around the Base 110 level imo. This corresponds to either a high-Good PS if we're aiming between Politoed and Heatran or a low-Fantastic PS if we're aiming to outspeed Latios. I have no reason to think that Fantastic PS would be broken for CAP5, so long as we are sensible with coverage attacks and there's a much lower limit to accommodate low-Speed stat spreads on the polls.

Again, I am adamant that we should provide fairly large BSR ranges so that stat spreads show more diversity, to avoid situations where we end up having only BST 600's in a poll like Aurumoth again. :p
 

Rhys DeAnno

Slacking Off
There seems to be a lot of debate about speed. The way I see it, there are really three reasonable directions to go in, and all of them can necessitate a different approach to our PS and ST:

Slow: (Below 70 Base Speed)
This is my favorite idea. With a slow spread, we would want Rank 9 (Amazing) or possibly even Rank 10 Special Tankyness to absorb double specs Ice Beams from Politoed. This would incidentally let us take Dracos from Latios very comfortably. We would have lots of room for a good Attack stat without having high PS and we wouldn't have any worries about anyone speed creeping us and messing up a matchup. I would like to be outsped by Wobbuffet if we go this path (under 33 base speed).

Medium: (Between 70 and 110 Base Speed)
This could be ok too, but I think it might be more difficult to do our jobs. In this range we still need to take 1.5 Specs Dracos from Latios, but we probably are figuring on outspeeding Specs Politoed and only eating the single Ice Beam. For a speed like this we probably would want an Amazing ST to take the Dracos comfortably. The danger here is we would still be looking to invest in HP and Spdef, which leaves us very vulnerable to being outsped by Specs Politoed. We would need 102 Base Speed to avoid being outsped by Politoed's Modest Specs set with no speed investment ourselves, and such high speeds are going to impact our PS and encourage a lower Attack stat which will make it more difficult for the CAP to accomplish its goals. For this path I think around 80-99 Base speed is optimal for force significant investment on Politoed and to be able to beat it with modest investment ourselves.

Fast: (Above 110 Base Speed)
Here our CAP is taking a much different approach from the other two ideas, investing fully in speed to outspeed Latios. Here the CAP only needs to take one Draco in many cases and a lower ST of Rank 7 (Very Good) or 8 (Fantastic) is probably advisable. A speed this high though will beat the majority of the BW2 meta and give us a proportionately high PS to our Attack. This will encourage a fairly low attack stat, and will leave us in situations where if we mispredict with Pursuit after the switch in we will do low amounts of damage and may be KOed in return. This setup is also worse at dealing with Politoed than the other two, since our lower ST and investment in Speed will make those Specs Ice Beams very painful.

Edit: Conclusion

When setting our BSR and Bias limits, we should decide if we want to leave the doors open or shut on these three setups. Upper limits on our ST will generally limit how slow we are able to be, and Upper limits on our PS will generally limit how fast we are able to be. If we want to rule out Slow at this Stage, we would do it by setting a limit on ST around the low side of Rank 9. If we want to eliminate Fast, a limit on PS in the Average (Rank 3-4) Range would probably do that.
 
Just some points to think about, considering our choice of Harvest as the primary ability. Firstly, if CAP5 is using a berry, it isn't going to be using a Life Orb, so we need to make sure that CAP5 has a high enough Attack stat to significantly threaten Latias and Politoed without any boosting items. Second, I agree that offensive Ninetales should be able to 2HKO CAP5 most of the time, so that the mandatory Fire type of Sun teams can be a better response to Lum sets, so this places an upper constraint on Special Tankiness. Third, we must consider that if Lum-Rest or Sub-Sitrus become popular strategies, then CAP5 will only have room for one Dark STAB on its moveset, so Pursuit should preferably be able to outpace Recover on offensive CM Latios at least; again, without a Life Orb. So overall, this points to a decently high Attack stat, around the Base 110 level imo. This corresponds to either a high-Good PS if we're aiming between Politoed and Heatran or a low-Fantastic PS if we're aiming to outspeed Latios. I have no reason to think that Fantastic PS would be broken for CAP5, so long as we are sensible with coverage attacks and there's a much lower limit to accommodate low-Speed stat spreads on the polls.

Again, I am adamant that we should provide fairly large BSR ranges so that stat spreads show more diversity, to avoid situations where we end up having only BST 600's in a poll like Aurumoth again. :p
I'm agreed with most of this - base 110 Atk is a little more than I think necessary but it's in the right ballpark. I've already said that I don't think we need to outspeed Latianything so I'm sticking to my advocation of a 100 - 150 PS range, but I do think that between Politoed and Heatran is the absolute ideal.
The only point I'm not so sure about is this -
Third, we must consider that if Lum-Rest or Sub-Sitrus become popular strategies, then CAP5 will only have room for one Dark STAB on its moveset, so Pursuit should preferably be able to outpace Recover on offensive CM Latios at least; again, without a Life Orb.
Firstly, I'd say a fast Pursuit isn't worth much - Pursuit is only really doing significant damage on the switch, so Lati@s would have to be pretty wrecked already for Pursuit to finish it off before it Recovers. The absolute only attack it would be worth outspeeding Lati@s with would be Crunch - which shouldn't be finding usage as its only Dark STAB if CAP5 can pack potential options of Pursuit or Sucker Punch instead.

Secondly, I don't think we need to address CAP5's four-moveslot-syndrome too much - if packing two Dark STABs and being a more effective Lati counter means it has to sacrifice a utility moveslot (Rest, Sub or, less probably, Rapid Spin) then great. It would be a step in the direction of limiting it to doing exactly what we want it to do - and as long as we make sure it's worth more as a situational Lati counter/Spinner/everything we've discussed than a LumRest/SubSitrus staller (which should be no trouble considering its easily exploitable weaknesses and potentially mediocre speed) then we can be sure it won't find more use in the latter roles than the ones it's intended for (I'm already having night terrors about a SubSeeding CAP5 - anybody who's ever taken on SubSeed Exeggutor in NU will know what I mean about this).

I am fully agreed that BSR ranges should be fairly wide - clearly there are quite a few minor disagreements occurring within ranges of about 50 points (I.E. the debate between high Excellent/Fantastic and Amazing ST) rather than more significant disparities, so allowing this to reflect in the Stat Spread Submissions and have it argued out there seems optimal.
 
I hope someone hasn't asked this already, but do we want the stats to make it to be a counter to politoed, so that we can set up sun, or do we want it to come in after the sun has been set up and then stall, sweep, support, make hot pockets, or whatever we are planning for it?
 

jas61292

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So, I'm going to try and lay this whole high speed thing to rest. The main argument in favor of being fast is outspeeding Latios so that we don't need to take 2+ Dracos in order to stop its Specs set. Instead, we can just take one, and take it out. The problem there is that we still need to take a single Draco Meteor. Well, 100/100 special bulk can take a Draco Meteor, and is good enough to cover our other threats when invested. Sounds good right? Not too high. But wait. That's max invested. We want to outspeed, so that means we need to invest in speed. Ok. So what if we just run 252 HP / 252+ Spe? Well just bumping the HP up by 5 to 105/100 bulk does the trick. But wait. Stealth Rocks. Make that 115/110. Yup, that's right; Fantastic level special bulk. The same level being supported by some for a slow wall build.

But wait, there's more. What was the point of taking a hit and outspeeding? To KO it before it can get off that second Draco Meteor. But just to survive the hit and outspeed it we have fantastic stats and have used all our EVs. Even assuming Stealth Rock, if we are going to KO with Crunch uninvested, you need 132 Atk. 132. 153 if you don't want to assume rocks. That might sound absurd, but remember, if you are investing in Atk, then you are not surviving to get the chance to attack.

So, lets summarize: to function as intended, you need something to the effect of 115/132/??/??/110/111. I'd like to think the problems with that are self evident. If you have a Pokemon with 132 Atk and 111 Spe, do you think someone is ever going to use it as a speedy bulky guy to beat Latios? Hell no. It will be 252 Atk/252 Spe Sweeper. Trying to say that a limited move pool would fix this is a farce. You don't care about a limited movepool when you sweep through anything that doesn't straight up wall you.

So yeah, sure you might be able to make high speed sound good when you can arbitrarily assign 252 EVs to whatever stat you are talking about at the time, but when you put it together, it either fails to achieve anything, or becomes so obscenely powerful all around that it is more attractive to do something completely different.
 

alexwolf

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So, I'm going to try and lay this whole high speed thing to rest. The main argument in favor of being fast is outspeeding Latios so that we don't need to take 2+ Dracos in order to stop its Specs set. Instead, we can just take one, and take it out. The problem there is that we still need to take a single Draco Meteor. Well, 100/100 special bulk can take a Draco Meteor, and is good enough to cover our other threats when invested. Sounds good right? Not too high. But wait. That's max invested. We want to outspeed, so that means we need to invest in speed. Ok. So what if we just run 252 HP / 252+ Spe? Well just bumping the HP up by 5 to 105/100 bulk does the trick. But wait. Stealth Rocks. Make that 115/110. Yup, that's right; Fantastic level special bulk. The same level being supported by some for a slow wall build.

But wait, there's more. What was the point of taking a hit and outspeeding? To KO it before it can get off that second Draco Meteor. But just to survive the hit and outspeed it we have fantastic stats and have used all our EVs. Even assuming Stealth Rock, if we are going to KO with Crunch uninvested, you need 132 Atk. 132. 153 if you don't want to assume rocks. That might sound absurd, but remember, if you are investing in Atk, then you are not surviving to get the chance to attack.

So, lets summarize: to function as intended, you need something to the effect of 115/132/??/??/110/111. I'd like to think the problems with that are self evident. If you have a Pokemon with 132 Atk and 111 Spe, do you think someone is ever going to use it as a speedy bulky guy to beat Latios? Hell no. It will be 252 Atk/252 Spe Sweeper. Trying to say that a limited move pool would fix this is a farce. You don't care about a limited movepool when you sweep through anything that doesn't straight up wall you.

So yeah, sure you might be able to make high speed sound good when you can arbitrarily assign 252 EVs to whatever stat you are talking about at the time, but when you put it together, it either fails to achieve anything, or becomes so obscenely powerful all around that it is more attractive to do something completely different.
Let me show you a calc:

Specs Latios DM vs 160 HP / 96 SpD / 252 Spe (EVs) and 80 HP / 130 SpD (Base Stats): 74.19 - 87.39%, guaranteed survival after SR.

Also the point of outspeeding Latios is to Rest before taking the second DM, effectively walling Latios, as long as it doesn't use HP Fire in sun. So we don't need an absurd Attack stat, just enough to 2HKO max HP Latias imo, which is a base Attack of 103 as i have mentioned again. I repeat that as long as we don't give to the CAP good coverage options, the attacking set will not outshadow the bulky pivot, if an offensive set gets any use to begin with. As Erisia said the CAP will rarely want to use Life Orb as this would just waste Harvest's potential, and without LO, even with maxed Attack its power is going to be mediocre and its coverage terrible. The CAP would still prefer a bulky pivoting role even with good Attack and good Speed.

Finally, while ginga is right in saying that if we become faster than Terrakion and Keldeo we are going to lose two checks, but those Pokemon were both in the list we want to threaten and be threatened by, let's not forget that. The CAP will still struggle to switch into any of Terrakion's moves and will be revenge killed by any Scarf Terrakion/Keldeo, while switching into Keldeo won't be something easy either, because of Secret Sword.
 
PT: 105-135
I think PT Should be at an "above average" range possibly creeping into the "good" range. Its fine if it has good defense because it won't matter to all of the types that are supposed to counter it since they are super effective and very capable of pulling off OHKOs anyway. I say keep it pretty high still so that it can tank hits from non super effective attacks and SE priority moves like ice shard and mach punch.
So for PT I say 105-135.

ST: 200<
For ST, we need to keep it very high in order to tank multiple hits from a Latios using HP fire or draco meteor. I would say get it "fantastic," but I would encourage "amazing"
So for ST I say >200.

PS: 75-120
For PS I would suggest below average a little bit into above average. It needs pretty good attack, but not much speed since it is a defensive pokemon.
So for PS I say 75-120

25-75
For SS I suggest Bad-poor rating, again its a defensive pokemon and doesn't need much speed and definitely doesn't need special attack. We don't want to give people the ability to easily OHKO CAP5's counters like scizor with HP fire, it ruins the purpose of it countering CAP5. Its SpA needs to be pretty low for that since it will be in sun.
So for SS I say 25-75

For the record, I based these on my own calculations, but for each one I used poor speed. I was pretty generous and gave extra room for more speed in PS and SS, just incase. I calculated most of these with 30-50 base speed cause I felt that since it was a defensive pokemon, it really didn't need I and I felt speed and special attack could be sacrificed for the desired bulk and enough attacking prowess to counter the lati's.
 

Ignus

Copying deli meat to hard drive
A lot of where we define our stat ranges needs to take into account the possible scenarios that harvest puts into play. For example, a Sitrus berry mon with protect creates a situation where you can almost never be KOed by something that does less then 50% of your health. This means you can effectively switch into many of the the threats we want to counter; and, in some situations, don't want to counter; with little to no worry of death. This is what really makes harvest such a strong ability, it artificially creates turns with a pseudo recovery. This means we'll have to be very specific on our numbers, or, create a situation where our PT is so low that we're OHKOed by everything we want to counter us or put at least below 50% health, or 62.5% with leech seed. Because of this I would suggest a Poor to Below Average PT With an Excellent ST. If we aren't careful, threats outside of our jurisdiction will be threatened to the point where nothing can be done against it.

Offensively, however, we have more leeway. Sun does not particularly need a physically offensive pivot, but the option is there to threaten our opponents to a greater extent if we're afraid CAP will have too many switch ins. I don't really have much of an opinion on this side of it.

However, SS must stay low. The threat of cheap hidden power baits is strong in this one, and must be limited to an all in strategy that's so dumb its makes you cry in every other situation outside of what you're meant to counter.

All around, we should stay generally low to average. Harvest is potentially one of the best abilities in the game and using it for so many different things creates us free opportunities without even needing investment to back it up. Moving up too much will give us too much power in the combination of our ability and bulkiness to create situations where we can simply not be killed. Harvest is to good of ability to do otherwise.
 
Okay, lemme have my say.

PT: Below Average/Above Average

Somewhere in that region. CAP5 has to at least take a few weak physical moves, but it's not necessary to bulk up the mon too much; our main targets are Lati@s and Politoed, both who prefer special moves than physical moves.

ST: Fantastic

I'd even accept amazing, although fantastic is preferable, and the bare minimum of what is required. We're dealing with Lati@s, and attacks will be strong. So, Special Tankiness is in order to halt their attacks and force a switch. To add to this, our mon must be able to take at least 2 or 3 Draco Meteors, since we could be hit with one on the switch. Regarding Ignus' suggestion, I really do think that Excellent is too low. I've been coming up with different stat spreads, and the minimum ST I had was 218. That's upper Fantastic.

PS: Below Average

And no, this is not due to the attack stat, but rather the speed stat. This mon should hit hard(ish), but there's really no need to OHKO Lati@s with Sucker Punch or anything like that. Investing in special bulk is more important. I'd say the attack stat should be <100 even, there is simply no need for anything higher. It's the same with speed too; what's the point of outspeeding Politoed, or outspeeding Lati@s? There's no need because we can just take the hits and then counter or force the switch.

SS: Poor

Yes, we have the potential to go Horrible or Bad, but there is no precedence for this in OU. Not only that, but we want to keep the stats fairly reasonable. That means no absolutely horrible SpA for the sake of increasing another of your stats.
 
Let me show you a calc:

Specs Latios DM vs 160 HP / 96 SpD / 252 Spe (EVs) and 80 HP / 130 SpD (Base Stats): 74.19 - 87.39%, guaranteed survival after SR.

Also the point of outspeeding Latios is to Rest before taking the second DM, effectively walling Latios, as long as it doesn't use HP Fire in sun. So we don't need an absurd Attack stat, just enough to 2HKO max HP Latias imo, which is a base Attack of 103 as i have mentioned again. I repeat that as long as we don't give to the CAP good coverage options, the attacking set will not outshadow the bulky pivot, if an offensive set gets any use to begin with. As Erisia said the CAP will rarely want to use Life Orb as this would just waste Harvest's potential, and without LO, even with maxed Attack its power is going to be mediocre and its coverage terrible. The CAP would still prefer a bulky pivoting role even with good Attack and good Speed.

Finally, while ginga is right in saying that if we become faster than Terrakion and Keldeo we are going to lose two checks, but those Pokemon were both in the list we want to threaten and be threatened by, let's not forget that. The CAP will still struggle to switch into any of Terrakion's moves and will be revenge killed by any Scarf Terrakion/Keldeo, while switching into Keldeo won't be something easy either, because of Secret Sword.
Sure, but if Latios is running a Scarf and a Modest nature it's going to outspeed and go for a possible Draco 2HKO after rocks (two Dracos in a row, accounting for stat drops, from Modest Latios do up to 97% in total to your spread - and threatens to 2HKO after rocks well up into Fantastic ST ratings without full investment) - and a definite sunshine HP fire 2HKO. If, in battle, you fail to spot the damage difference between a Banded Draco/HP Fire and a Scarfed Draco/HP and you don't switch because you're all like 'lol CAP5 outspeeds Latios, hard counter' your CAP5 might just die. And even if you do switch, you're still in a worse position that you were when you started - CAP5 has taken a huge hit and can't switch in safely any more, something else on your team has switched in (probably on rocks) and taken a -2 Draco or a HP Fire or, worst case scenario, that Latios you thought was Scarfed is actually running an Expert Belt to troll you and it continues to ravage your team, CAP5 having done exactly nothing to stop it. Of course, we could always have CAP5 outrun Scarfed Modest Latios too. It'd only take 252 Speed EVs. And a positive nature. And a base stat of 160.

Hmm.

So yeah, Choice Scarf (which is definitely viable on Latios, and if it's not that common now it will be in the playtest if it's a good response to CAP5) screws with the outspeeding argument. Why not just go for more special bulk and less speed? It accounts for more of Lati@s's potential sets, leaving them only gimmicks like HP Bug to check it with, and it messes much less with what CAP5 should be threatening. I'm not going to type it out again, but I listed quite a few of CAP5's supposed threats that it really shouldn't be outspeeding on the last page - how the hell are Heatran and Ninetales going to topple this thing if they can't go faster, for example? I'm completely in agreement with Jas on this one. We really aren't losing anything or creating any unwanted potential roles by making CAP5 slow and massively specially tanky, but we are ensuring it's a hard answer to Lati@s and we are ensuring it can be checked by its threatlist. What's not to love?
 

alexwolf

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Sure, but if Latios is running a Scarf and a Modest nature it's going to outspeed and go for a possible Draco 2HKO after rocks (two Dracos in a row, accounting for stat drops, from Modest Latios do up to 97% in total to your spread - and threatens to 2HKO after rocks well up into Fantastic ST ratings without full investment) - and a definite sunshine HP fire 2HKO. If, in battle, you fail to spot the damage difference between a Banded Draco/HP Fire and a Scarfed Draco/HP and you don't switch because you're all like 'lol CAP5 outspeeds Latios, hard counter' your CAP5 might just die. And even if you do switch, you're still in a worse position that you were when you started - CAP5 has taken a huge hit and can't switch in safely any more, something else on your team has switched in (probably on rocks) and taken a -2 Draco or a HP Fire or, worst case scenario, that Latios you thought was Scarfed is actually running an Expert Belt to troll you and it continues to ravage your team, CAP5 having done exactly nothing to stop it. Of course, we could always have CAP5 outrun Scarfed Modest Latios too. It'd only take 252 Speed EVs. And a positive nature. And a base stat of 160.

Hmm.

So yeah, Choice Scarf (which is definitely viable on Latios, and if it's not that common now it will be in the playtest if it's a good response to CAP5) screws with the outspeeding argument. Why not just go for more special bulk and less speed? It accounts for more of Lati@s's potential sets, leaving them only gimmicks like HP Bug to check it with, and it messes much less with what CAP5 should be threatening. I'm not going to type it out again, but I listed quite a few of CAP5's supposed threats that it really shouldn't be outspeeding on the last page - how the hell are Heatran and Ninetales going to topple this thing if they can't go faster, for example? I'm completely in agreement with Jas on this one. We really aren't losing anything or creating any unwanted potential roles by making CAP5 slow and massively specially tanky, but we are ensuring it's a hard answer to Lati@s and we are ensuring it can be checked by its threatlist. What's not to love?
Sry but your arguments are very weak. Any competitive player never uses Modest Latios, and you should be able to tell the damage difference between Specs and Scarf. So the only scenario were Scarf Latios 2HKOes is with HP Fire in Sun, but Specs HP Fire in sun 2HKOes every slower spread than Latios, no matter how good special bulk you give it, where with more Speed than Latios you can take the first HP Fire and then hit back with Crunch. So each stat spread (good special bulk and great speed, huge specail bulk and mediocre speed) handles better one of the two choiced sets, and both have almost the same usage, so it is a tie, as far as handling Latios goes.

And don't ask again why the CAP would need the extra speed, as i have explained why many times in my previous posts, so go and check them. Finally, cut the irony (the bolded sentence), because it doesn't help your argument and the discussion in general.
 

dwarfstar

mindless philosopher
Is no one going to point out that you don't need to outspeed Latios if you can hit it with Sucker Punch? The idea here is to force it into a potential checkmate with Sucker Punch and Pursuit.
The arguments I was going to make have already been made by BrianFantana and jas. As much as I'd love a fast, deadly upgrade over Shiftry, that's not the role we're trying to fill here. We're going for a defensive pivot that can also smash Lati@s, and as far as I can see, we simply don't have enough EVs to make your proposal fit.
 
Just a question, why does this defensive Pokemon need to be slow? I understand it should be able to tank special hits, but that doesn't necessarily entail slowness.

Anyways, here's what I think:

PT: Above Average - Good: It should have somewhat-high Def in order to take neutral hits on the physical side, but not enough to weather hits from the things that are supposed to counter it.

ST: Fantastic: If we want to deal with Lati@s and Politoed, we're going to need a high Sp. Def. I think everyone else has noticed by now, but there aren't really any good special tanks that work best in sun. There are tanks that CAN work with sun, but also work with other weathers too.

PS: Below-average - Above-average: CAP5 should have decent attack and Speed in order to hold its own against opponents, but the main focus should be Special Tanking.

SS: Bad-Poor: Yeah, SpA is unnecessary for this guy.

Sorry if my ranking are reiterations of everyone else's but I'm sort of a noob at this part of the development.
 
Since Speed is such a huge component of both Sweepiness ratings, the proposed SS and PS are so far apart, probably only because of this one stat. I think that in terms of actual attack or special attack stat, people are very much in line with each other. No huge attack stat, but enough to get the job done, and a low enough S.Atk that even Hidden Power becomes not worth using. So the only open modifier here that remain is speed.

Look, we decided upon three sub-objectives to fulfil our concept (roughly.)
1) We'd try to up the usage of Sun teams in order to decline usage of popular rain teams. In order to do that, we have to make CAP5 the most usable on Sun teams: Hello Harvest.
2) We want to get rid of the biggest counters to Sun teams. We decided that these are mainly Lati@s and Toad: Hello this stage.
3) We want to give Sun teams some breathing room in getting more team slots available, so we want CAP5 to also take care of the spinning niche: Hello movepool stage.

So apparently our main goal is to take care of the Lati@s duo, bulky, hard hitting and fast dragons. If we have the stats to neuter Lati@s, Toad will be the even easier. In terms of strictly doing what is best for the concept, high speed to effectively remove Lati@s consistently, which is CAP5 main niche after all, high speed fits great with the concept.


I don't see the actual reason for the resistance against a blazingly fast CAP5. There's some reasoning that we now outspeed what would've be threats, and then names as Keldeo and Terrakion are brought up. Are these names even mentioned as threats in this post (and the entire threat for that matter?)

Some fighting types, those that wall our STABs all day long and laugh at them, most specifically, are listed as threats to us. Keldeo and Terrakion are really bad examples to be brought up in this thread. We can't switch into them, they can't switch to us. So as far as speed goes, we don't have to think about these two in particular anyway.

Now, as for the things on the list that CAP5 should threaten, it's remarkable how many of these guys are blazing fast.
Psychic types: especially Latios & Latias
Water types: most notably Politoed
Ghost types: Gengar and Jellicent
Electric types: Rotom-W, Jolteon, Thundurus-T
And CAP5 needs to threaten these guys, not just be a shaky check. In order for us to fulfil our concept; in order for sun teams to really muscle through their worst counters, Toad and Lati@s, CAP5 needs to consistently get them out of the way.


That's also why I find the counter-arguments of Sucker Punch/Pursuit trapping funny. This would be fine and dandy against some of the OU population.
But we're talking about two terribly annoying dragons, who would counter our entire team all day long, unless dealt with by this one pokemon, CAP5. And then we suggest to leave it to prediction whether or not we can fulfil the concept.

Just a little scenario:
Sucker Punch while he switches (or Calm Minds, mind you!), or pursuit while he stays in to do more damage. Both scenario's, we lost momentum and precious turns, probably lost some health, and did nothing to help our team or the concept.
And to stop any potential counter-arguments: I have a hard time believing that
a) we have a huge enough attack stat to kill Lati@s outright with Pursuit while Lati@s does not switch. (40 BP)
b) that when Lati@s does stay in, only to take a paltry Pursuit, we have enough bulk to live through two high powered attacks under all conditions, unless we always have a Sitrus Berry. (Note, we used Pursuit to attack Lati@s. You can't also have used Rest in the same turn, after all, so only Sitrus healing is available).


Now, to me, the only really valid argument against high speed is Jas his post. I don't agree with his stat spread and his reasoning that because of the spread, CAP5 will just go 252/252 Spe/Atk. A stat spread with much higher base speed and much lower Attack will make sweeping a lot harder, because you don't end up with potentially absurd attack stat levels.
Regardless, even the spread I'm thinking of will result in an INSANE BST. Taking Jas his spread: 115/100/60/45/110/140 and filling in some random low numbers for Def and S.Atk, we're talking about 570 BST. Sure, we could engineer a stat spread that still tanks Draco Meteor's but has lower BST, but such BST engineering is frowned upon anyway.


For me, it's only because of optics and CAP4 that I feel we should not entertain ourselves with high BST monsters for some CAP projects anymore. And honestly, we'll be making a BST monster anyway, because just between the HP, Sp.Def and Attack stat, we'll be looking at some major stat point allocation. We're also trying to deal with one of the monsters of OU after all!
But the resistance to high speed does come off as odd when looking at our sub-objective of (again) consistently getting Lati@s out of the way with CAP5 for sun teams to shine. There's nothing consistent about hoping to check with a Pursuit/Sucker Punch combo, after all.

For now, I'm still undecided whether I should weigh optics and CAP4 more highly than more effectively/consistently fulfilling our current concept. I find some of the arguments made by Alexwolf, even though his posts come off somewhat unrefined, to still be the most solid. So I'm still in favor of high speed; in other words. Below Average or so SS, and Excellent PS.
In terms of Tankiness, I agree with the sentiment so far: Somewhere along the lines of Fantastic/Low-Amazing ST (210-240ish range) and between Below Average and Above Average PT. I still think that PT should be a bit higher than some of the propositions, tanking non-boosted resisted EQ's was one of the major benefits listed when choosing Grass as a typing, and Sun teams happens to have many team members weak to EQ. So at least for me, I'd like at least a decent enough PT that you can also use CAP5 as a defensive pivot to take EQs for the team.

Edit: Another reason in favour of high speed is Gengar. If we really want to take our role is prime spinner for sun teams seriously, taking care of not being SubDisable walled by Gengar is far more efficient to do with high speed, as he'll have to deal with the threat of an immediate Crunch to the face.
 

ganj4lF

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I know I already made this argument in the previous threads, but I'd like to bring it out once again. Are we really going to do a pokemon with Rapid Spin that not only beats type wise every commonly used spinblocker, but even outspeed all of them bar none (except Pranksters) and traps them with Pursuit alone? This would be awesome for Sun, of course, but even for other teams that rely on SR removal, for example teams that rely on DNite, Salamence, Kyu-B, etc. Harvest is a great ability in the Sun, but an alright one even outside of Sun, thus I'm really worried that such a pokemon can be a big blessing for other kinds of teams, maybe an ever bigger blessing that it would be for Sun (also, if we're really aiming to replace the Forretress / Donphan role in a common Sun team archetype, the concern about physical, SR weak Dragons is even bigger).

Following this reasoning, even alexwolf (which is the main supporter of speedy CAP5, I guess) agreed that, with such a high Speed, we should not give Pursuit to it. However, in my opinion, not giving it Pursuit basically defeats our purpose of beating Latis, since the opponent can just switch out to a physical mon that takes pittance from CAP5's attacks and threaten it back (ScarfRachi? Scizor? You name it). This means that the Lati only has lost a minor amount of health (LO, SR, whatever) and it's ready to nuke your team again, while CAP5 did not achieve anything very significant and gave the opponent a free layer or U-Turn. CAP5 loses one of its main attractiveness without Pursuit, namely the ability to deal damage to the Latis even on the switch out. That's why I'd prefer a pokemon with a lower Speed stat, it's less prone to give us unwanted side effects that may be harmful for Sun teams more that the're helpful, and does not force us to give away one of the best moves to achieve our goal.
 
^ agreed

Sry but your arguments are very weak. Any competitive player never uses Modest Latios, and you should be able to tell the damage difference between Specs and Scarf. So the only scenario were Scarf Latios 2HKOes is with HP Fire in Sun, but Specs HP Fire in sun 2HKOes every slower spread than Latios, no matter how good special bulk you give it, where with more Speed than Latios you can take the first HP Fire and then hit back with Crunch. So each stat spread (good special bulk and great speed, huge specail bulk and mediocre speed) handles better one of the two choiced sets, and both have almost the same usage, so it is a tie, as far as handling Latios goes.

And don't ask again why the CAP would need the extra speed, as i have explained why many times in my previous posts, so go and check them. Finally, cut the irony (the bolded sentence), because it doesn't help your argument and the discussion in general.
Well yeah - but like I said even if you can tell the damage difference, you don't have many options; trying to tank the attack anyway risks the 2HKO (and is only viable at full health anyway) and switching is leaving you in a bad situation. Your supposed Latios check has become a liability. And as I said - if nobody is using Modest Latios now, they will if it becomes a way to get around CAP5. We need to consider potentialities as well as current sets. How much easier would it be if the threat simply wasn't there? Modest Latios sacrifices a couple of notable outspeeds (scarf Jirachi/Landorus/Terrak) for the chance to get around its one hard counter (and hit everything slightly harder) - doesn't seem all that unlikely to me.

The bolded sentence is what I really take issue with. It feels like I'm pointing out the obvious but we're free to draw up and use a stat spread that doesn't get 2HKOed by SE sun-boosted HP Fire (exact same bp as STAB Draco Meteor so we're clear) if we want to, especially considering how much easier this is with HarvestSitrus thrown into the mix. Saying that HP Fire always 2HKOs CAP5 doesn't make sense at the very stage of the process where such things are decided upon.

Anyway, I can see where you're coming from on this but I still think it's the wrong approach. My last argument (touch wood) against a Usain Bolt style CAP5 will be this - I think everybody agrees that CAP5 can't be both colossally specially tanky and fast as hell (hello Lugia), and with that considered I simply think the extra bulk is more necessary. CAP5 has a multitude of roles to fulfill - in a given game it might have the burdens of countering Latios, Toed, a misc Rainmon and getting off a successful rapid spin. That means it needs serious staying power, and it will take more than just fast recovery to achieve that (LumRest is only viable when the sun is up, for one thing). Anything fast CAP5 can do, tanky CAP5 can do more reliably.
 
So I'm just going address something I've noticed to be an issue.

The really low end PS ranges. I think we are going to need Good as a basis. After all a good PS stat is just 103 atk and 79 spe. All so known as enough atk to two hit ko max HP Latias, and 1 point higher base speed than Heatran. I think these should be our base minimums for offensive stats and as such we are going to need at least a good level PS stat.
 
CatTurtle, Heatran is one of our threats. So if you're basing the speed of our CAP5 off Heatran, then it would make more sense to have a speed lower than Heatran's, so <77. Right now, I'd rather it be very slow speed or very high speed for our CAP, in order to either outspeed Lati@s or outslow our counters, Conkeldurr included.
 
CatTurtle, Heatran is one of our threats. So if you're basing the speed of our CAP5 off Heatran, then it would make more sense to have a speed lower than Heatran's, so <77. Right now, I'd rather it be very slow speed or very high speed for our CAP, in order to either outspeed Lati@s or outslow our counters, Conkeldurr included.
I support going with a very slow Speed for CAP5. That way, we're able to invest more in other attributes like Attack or Special Defense. Additionally, CAP5 is a Dark-type, and based on potential flavor alone, there's a good chance we'lll get Pursuit/Sucker Punch. If we can threaten Lati@s enough with either of these moves, then Speed is not going to be too much of an issue regarding CAP5.
 

erisia

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I'd just like to say that relying on Sucker Punch to out-manuveur Latios and Latias seems like a bad idea to me, as it's just so easy to play around. Latias can just use Recover, Substitute, or Calm Mind to bypass it, and even Latios packs some of these moves occasionally. The consequences of picking the wrong Dark type move at the wrong time could be disastrous for an unprepared Sun team. On an unrelated note, SubDisable Gengar walks all over a slower CAP without Crunch. I think it's important that CAP doesn't have to rely on prediction so much to beat Latias and Latios, when we're aiming to be as good as a response to them as possible.
 

Korski

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@Legend13, BrianFantana, etc.: This is actually not the thread for discussing particular Speed stats (or any actual stats, for that matter); we will hopefully be able to have that conversation during the stat spread submissions discussion. I suggest re-reading the OP and Detroitlolcat's post right below it to get a sense of what we're doing in this thread.

I said "hopefully" in the first sentence because a lot of folks in this thread are suggesting stat limits that pretty visibly match their own personal preemptive stat spreads. Anyone suggesting even max 150 Physical Sweepiness is intentionally shoehorning our CAP into a low Speed stat, considering our early adoption of a Pursuit-based physically offensive presence (95 base attack is probably the lowest number to consider for that stat). On a similar vein, the extreme paranoia surrounding Hidden Power, which has lead to some laughably low SS proposals, is exacerbating the limit to Speed on top of it all. We will be completely unable to have a legitimate Speed discussion with such limits, and the arguments for low PS especially are pretty transparent about it, which is disappointing.

If the goal is to strong-arm everybody into submitting only nominally different spreads, then we can go with the limits that have already been proposed, and everyone can submit their own slightly modified versions of 100/105/50/40/130/30 spreads. Then we can have a boring, predetermined stats discussion to match it. I don't think someone should have to lay out their entire argument for high Speed in this thread just to get a shot at submitting the spread he/she thinks is best. We should be looking at upper limits to determine which attributes we want to encourage, not to create a few tiny windows every spread has to squeeze into. We have not in any official way chosen a defensive pivot, and quite honestly, the limits proposed so far in this thread, which only support slow spreads, look more like full-on walls than anything else, which was certainly never the plan.

You can argue that "we don't need Speed," but try and hold off a couple days until we get to the right thread for that. In this thread we want a bigger picture set of limits than the ones your own favorite stat spread conforms to.

EDIT: this is also not the thread for "don't worry we'll have Sucker Punch." This is entirely poll-jumping and arguments like BrianFantana's 40 posts in this thread do nothing but distract from the goal of this thread.
 
CatTurtle, Heatran is one of our threats. So if you're basing the speed of our CAP5 off Heatran, then it would make more sense to have a speed lower than Heatran's, so <77. Right now, I'd rather it be very slow speed or very high speed for our CAP, in order to either outspeed Lati@s or outslow our counters, Conkeldurr included.
Herp derp. You are totally right. Still it should at least be able to out speed Bulky Politoed, which would mean you'd want at least 71 speed, which results in the same the PS rating of good as a minimum.

Also we should ideally be able to both tank the required 1.5 Specs Draco Meteors and be able to out speed Ppolitoed on the same set. I need to go back do more calcs on what limits need to be where in order to do so but I do think it would go a long way to making CAP5 a viable addition to Sun teams.
 

alexwolf

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The bolded sentence is what I really take issue with. It feels like I'm pointing out the obvious but we're free to draw up and use a stat spread that doesn't get 2HKOed by SE sun-boosted HP Fire (exact same bp as STAB Draco Meteor so we're clear) if we want to, especially considering how much easier this is with HarvestSitrus thrown into the mix. Saying that HP Fire always 2HKOs CAP5 doesn't make sense at the very stage of the process where such things are decided upon.
That's the problem, we are not free to give to the CAP as much ST as we want, unless you want to make it an unkillable special wall in general. Do you even know how many ST is needed to tank two Specs sun HP Fire from Latios after SR? You need a ST of ~270 to do this, so no, it is not a viable option.

I know I already made this argument in the previous threads, but I'd like to bring it out once again. Are we really going to do a pokemon with Rapid Spin that not only beats type wise every commonly used spinblocker, but even outspeed all of them bar none (except Pranksters) and traps them with Pursuit alone? This would be awesome for Sun, of course, but even for other teams that rely on SR removal, for example teams that rely on DNite, Salamence, Kyu-B, etc. Harvest is a great ability in the Sun, but an alright one even outside of Sun, thus I'm really worried that such a pokemon can be a big blessing for other kinds of teams, maybe an ever bigger blessing that it would be for Sun (also, if we're really aiming to replace the Forretress / Donphan role in a common Sun team archetype, the concern about physical, SR weak Dragons is even bigger).

Following this reasoning, even alexwolf (which is the main supporter of speedy CAP5, I guess) agreed that, with such a high Speed, we should not give Pursuit to it. However, in my opinion, not giving it Pursuit basically defeats our purpose of beating Latis, since the opponent can just switch out to a physical mon that takes pittance from CAP5's attacks and threaten it back (ScarfRachi? Scizor? You name it). This means that the Lati only has lost a minor amount of health (LO, SR, whatever) and it's ready to nuke your team again, while CAP5 did not achieve anything very significant and gave the opponent a free layer or U-Turn. CAP5 loses one of its main attractiveness without Pursuit, namely the ability to deal damage to the Latis even on the switch out. That's why I'd prefer a pokemon with a lower Speed stat, it's less prone to give us unwanted side effects that may be harmful for Sun teams more that the're helpful, and does not force us to give away one of the best moves to achieve our goal.
While you do have a point ganj4lF, and i know that i said that i probably think we shouldn't give Pursuit if we give it enough Speed to outrun Gengar, i thought about it better, and Pursuit seems as a bad idea for both fast and slow versions. Even if the CAP is slower, it will have such a big ST that Gengar would be unable to 2HKO it with Focus Blast unless it is holding Life Orb. Just something to consider... Anyway i don't think that the Pursuit argument has anything to do with what the stat limits we want to have.

As Korski said and some people have forgot (me too at some point) the thing we want to do at this stage is to have a reasonably wide array of stats to pick from for the next stage, not set extremely low limits that only reflect everyone's personal favorite stat spread. So for example, even though i favor a high Speed stat for the CAP, i know and recognize that a spread with mediocre Speed (70-90) has merits and would be an acceptable Speed stat for a stat spread submission. This is why i am going to change my stat limits as shown below:

Physical Tankiness (PT)

85 < PT < 115. This stays the same as i think it reflects well what everybody is thinking, while giving enough different options for different stat spreads depending on whatever specific threats everbody wants the CAP to check or be checked by.

Special Tankiness (ST)

190 < ST < 230. I changed this a little bit, it was 190 to 210 before. This is to account for the people that want a more slow but more specially bulky CAP, and imo 230 is as far as the CAP's ST should go, otherwise it just walls too much stuff from the special side.

Physical Sweepiness (PS)

125 < PS < 190. This was changed, it was from 170 to 190 before. Once again i only posted limits that were designed for my stat spread and other similar stat spreads, which is not right. The current PS limits allow for a reasonable maximum PS of 190, meaning that the CAP won't be able to have a higher Attack stat than 105 if it wants to outspeed Lati@s, while the lower PS that i want gives Attack and Speed stats of 95 and 75 respectively. 75 is the lower CAP's speed should go, in order to outspeed min speed SpecsToed, and 95 is the lower that Attack should go, in order for the CAP to be able to 2HKO 252 HP Latias with Crunch with little or no EV investment at all.

Special Sweepiness (SS)

35 < SS < 90. Those stat limits are supposed to keep the CAP's SpA remains small enough to not OHKO Pokemon such as Scizor after SR when univested, but include the possibility of a high Speed stat. The minimum limit is for the lowest Speed possible (75) and the lowest SpA possible (10), which may be a bit random so don't look into it very seriously. The only things i want to make sure for the SS is that it accounts for the possibility that we might chose a high Speed stat for the CAP.

As for the BSR, here is how i believe it should look like: 290 < BSR < 335. Those BSR limits acount for stat spreads with very low SpA stats and mediocre Atk and Spe stats (95 and 75) and for stat spreads with a lot of Speed but still small SpA.

This is all i wanted to say, so the only thing i want to ask from everyone right now is this. Post the limits you want based on not only what your stat spread looks like, but also based on what other acceptable stat spreads look like. If you think that a big Speed stat is an acceptable option but not what you want, don't remove it from your limits just to make sure that the stat spreads will be more close to what you want. This is not the time to convince the others to go with your stat spreads, this is the time to see what are the acceptable stat limits for the CAP, as the thread's title says.

EDIT:
3) OHKO it before it hits you again and KOs.
This is not necessary jas. As long as the CAP can outspeed Latios and tank one DM after SR it will be fine. In the next turn it would use Rest as DM gets weaker and weaker, thus forcing Latios out or finding an opening to Attack, or if Latios used HP Fire then the CAP will still be able to deliver a fatal blow to Latios, preventing it from safely switching in again or walling anything.
 

jas61292

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Yllnath: While I see you tried to show an example of how fast speed could work without being broken, your sample spread you try and use to justify still fails based on the exact criteria I outlined. In order for a fast, non-wall spread to work, it needs to do three things: 1) Surivive a hit from Specs Latios on the switch in, 2) Outspeed Latios, 3) OHKO it before it hits you again and KOs. By lowering the power like you suggested, you fail to achieve the last thing. Even switching EVs around, it is just not possible. In order to achieve this you would either need to bump bulk up to the level of a wall (in which case you should not be giving it such speed and power), bump up the power significantly (which is the exact opposite of what you did to get this sample spread), or bump up speed to a level at which you practically outspeed Latios and Latias uninvested, which, once again, should be fairly obviously undesirable. The point I am trying to make is not that a specific fast spread is bad, it is that there is no way to do a fast spread that is not over that top that would fit this concept. It just doesn't exist as far as I am concerned.

Korski: Based on the last few sentences above, I would disagree with you as far as setting the limit high. You say to give them room so that we can have a variety, but I say that anything over a certain threshold would either be too strong or not fit the concept. Variety of that sort is useless. Rather, lets set the limits at a level that is actually consistant with our project goals, so whatever variety we get is worth having. This is not the thread to argue on specific values, but it is the one to talk about overall biases, and we should not leave the limits open just so that we can do in the submission thread the kind of stuff we should be deciding here.
 
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