CAP 16 CAP 5 - Part 5 - Stat Limits

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Birkal

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We've been at this for a pretty long time in #cap, and I wanted to make an important observation for those following this thread. Nowhere have we found that CAP 5 needs to be a bulky sweeper in order to fulfill our concept. So when setting stat limits, it is important to consider the implications of the limits you are supporting in terms of a resulting bulky sweeper. I've seen a lot of suggestions for leaving limits loose and letting the stat spread submitters decide, and I guarantee you that road will wind up with a bulky attacker, because everyone will want to tank Latios, OHKO other threats with certain moves, not die to non-STABed neutral physical attacks, and so on. What we need to do is one thing, and do it well.

I'm going to help jas pound the nail into the coffin of high speed. I don't think there is a single convincing argument on the table for why we should allow it. I hope you all realize that by "outspeeding Latios", you now effectively outspeed a myriad of other Pokemon, including all other dragons and base 100's. There aren't too many walls in OU that are faster than Latios, and those that are (Latias), are often tempted to run some bulky attacking spread of their own (SubCM comes to mind). There is no way to outspeed Latios with stats without entirely throwing off how CAP 5 interacts with other Pokemon and their speed.

People bring up all these situations about CAP 5 trying to beat Latios. You have to consider that we're more or less screwed from the get go if it decides to use Trick or Hidden Power Fire in the sun. We're not going to beat 100% of its sets; embrace that. Let's please stop pretending that we can. This pretend match of switching into Specs Latios isn't going to happen every match (or even most of them), so let's stop basing our Pokemon's stats off of one move on one set. If you look at our list of things we want to threaten, all of them are dedicated Special Attackers. It's pretty obvious that all we need here is Amazing ST, and the rest will more or less fall into place. Maybe some attack to fight back with, sure. But we don't need oodles of speed; that path is destined for a bulky attacker, and that doesn't really address the concept and our decisions up to this point.
 
Allow me to put one more argument in in favour of high speed, before I too lay it to rest. @Jas, high speed does not only allow us to outspeed and potential KO Lati@s with Crunch. (And apparently my spread can't, I only used those numbers arbitrarily.) What it does is that it also let's you get off a faster Rest than anyone else. That Specs (or +1) Draco Meteor that nearly KOed us is now fully healed off and at -1, that DM will not do anything. In a scenario like this, where our recovery also outspeeds standard Lati@s sets, we can do without having gargantuan attack. Enough attack to 2hko is fine, because you can continue to match up like this against Lati@s without ever having to worry about eating two attacks in a row.

Of course, this brings in a whole other can of problems, because such fast and full recovery on a bulky mon just spells disaster for every special attacker in OU that has no coverage that deals with CAP5. But, just want to throw it out there. Higher speed allows lower attack stat, because of the lesser need to score straight up ohko's because your utility options also benefit from your speed. (Heals, spin, etc.)
 

DetroitLolcat

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It seems that we're definitely building a consensus with the Special Tankiness, which should be at least on the upper end of Excellent to Fantastic, with Amazing potentially in the mix, so it seems we can move on from discussing where the Special Tankiness stat limit should be as it seems we've narrowed ourselves down to a pretty tight range between the upper edge of Excellent and the lower edge of Amazing. Feel free to keep discussing those limits, but be aware that as a community we have a pretty significant consensus of where we want our Special Tankiness to be.

The more salient issues to be discussed further are the Physical Sweepiness and the Physical Tankiness, as the Special Sweepiness is going to be low given the posts preceding this one. Physical Tankiness is the easier of the two topics to handle, so I'll begin this post discussing Physical Tankiness. We want to be able to handle resisted attacks, but we don't need to be using this Pokemon as a Physical wall. On IRC, CAP5 is often compared to Gliscor because it's a Pokemon that prefers a weather (Sand, in our case Sun), prefers one side of the attacking spectrum (both Physical), and prefers one side of the defensive spectrum (Gliscor Physical, CAP5 Special). Now, I'm not saying that we're building a Gliscor of the Sun, but it's hard to argue that this Pokemon is not going to fill a somewhat similar to Sun teams that Gliscor filled for Sand teams in the earlier days of this metagame. My personal belief on Physical Tankiness is that CAP5 should be able to shrug off resisted Physical hits but should not be able to wall neutral or super-effective attacks, and it does not take a huge degree of Physical Tankiness to get that job done. CAP5 should avoid Physical contact outside of moves like Waterfall, Earthquake, and Power Whip that it resists. CAP5 can take an Adamant Life Orb Earthquake from Landorus-Therian (the strongest resisted attack that would commonly threaten CAP5) with about 132 Physical Tankiness, so I don't see why we would need much more than Above Average to Good Physical Tankiness. Furthermore, we can still contend with many more common Physical attackers without 132 or more Physical Tankiness, so a limit of 135 or so makes sense. On the lower end, I'm open to pretty low Physical Tankiness, as since we're giving ourselves so much leeway on Special Tankiness we can manipulate the HP, Defense, and Special Defense stats reasonably to fit our stat limits. Blatant mini-maxing in order to cram ridiculous stats within the limits will not be tolerated (think 140 HP/30 Def/120 Special Defense or 140 Attack/5 Speed), but the limits we end up on will be lenient enough not to disenfranchise the "low PT" crowd and the "High PT" crowd.

On Physical Sweepiness, the Speed stat is a polarizing issue. High Speed almost mandates a high Physical Sweepiness limit, as 111 Speed (a very popular value based on community input) requires only 85 Attack to get all the way up to 149 Physical Sweepiness. On the other hand, low Physical Sweepiness also needs to be on the table as those who do not prefer 111 Speed will almost certainly go with a Speed lower than 77 in order to undercut Heatran, a Pokemon that should counter us. Further still, there are great arguments as to why Speed should be below even Scizor to allow it to better counter us, and Base 54 Speed requires 104 Attack to reach 100 Physical Sweepiness. Since Speed is a polarizing issue that splits the community pretty evenly, it would not be fair to impose overreaching or under-reaching Physical Sweepiness limits that force high Attack, high Speed, both, or neither. However, if the case for low Physical Sweepiness starts to outweigh the case against, I will adjust the limits accordingly.

I believe that a moderately low, say, Above Average, Physical Sweepiness is what we need to accomplish this with. We do not want to make a bulky sweeper capable of just going 252/252+ and tearing through Pokemon such as Terrakion, Keldeo, and Volcarona after Stealth Rock. Furthermore, high Speed seems largely unnecessary, as it will greatly raise our BSR while still mandating pretty high Attack to KO Latios, and by that point we can scrap the idea of a Special tank and just call ourselves a bulky sweeper with great Special Defense to boot. On the flipside, I believe that Good Physical Tankiness is the way to go so that our typing doesn't turn into a liability. We do not want to be Earthquake bait, and letting ourselves be 2HKO'd by Landorus-T is dangerous and turns a Pokemon that should not be greatly threatening us into a major threat.

For the limits I'm considering now, I'm looking at 200-240 Special Tankiness, 90-140 Physical Sweepiness, sub-35-75 Special Sweepiness, and 100-135 Physical Tankiness. These are preliminary values, and whether or not there will even be lower limits is still up in the air, so don't let these numbers scare you too much. I know there are plenty of arguments for values outside these numbers, so please let me hear them. These are not set in stone at all, and there is still a day to advance your points.

Speed is the most critical outstanding talking point, so that should be the next topic of discussion. Special Tankiness and Physical Sweepiness are heavily predicated on our Speed, so everyone, please help us build a consensus on Speed. There are currently two camps on Speed, a 111+ camp and a very slow camp, which makes it difficult to set limits. Let's make Speed the next talking point since it's the largest impediment to determining narrow enough stat limits.

I do not wish to stretch the PS limit to incorporate high Speeds in tandem with high Attack, but if a strong enough case is made for a strong Physical Sweepiness, I will definitely consider it. Also, to wrap this discussion up soon, this thread will close at 8:00 EST tomorrow night.
 

Stratos

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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.
I think this is the wrong way of looking at it—speed and attack are necessarily joined; otherwise, why would we have the Sweepiness stats? The way i see it, since everyone is looking at 90-115 attack, the debate over "speed" is how much of a sweeper we want to make this thing, which does fit in with the thread. besides, there's never any discussion in the subs thread. Don't put a gag order on speed tier discussion, Korski, this is the right place to talk about it (and though it's a smart tactical move for you to try to do this, since popular opinion is for a low sweepiness, it'd be more 'right' to actually make a case for high sweepinesses)

edit: well fuck, didn't see lolcat had posted

I am leaning personally towards 35 speed—just enough to outrun reuniclus and wobbuffet but not fast enough for anything else. We'll already have the Special Tankiness to take on the threats we want to (latis, toed) and I don't want to beat anything we didn't want to by being able to stall it out with Rest and avoid 2hkoes. However, a 100/35 spread (which is reasonable) gives you a PS of only in the eighties. As such, i'd like to see the PS limit dropped lower than it currently is. oh, regarding high speed, yilnath said it best:
Of course, this brings in a whole other can of problems, because such fast and full recovery on a bulky mon just spells disaster for every special attacker in OU that has no coverage that deals with CAP5.
 

Deck Knight

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In regards to Physical Sweepiness:

I'll reiterate again that Sweepiness stats are a factor of both Attack and Speed.

Above Average is way too low for Physical Sweepiness - our rating at least goes above that.

By way of example let's say a spread submitter just wanted to tie Politoed, which is bad for a multitude of reasons, but lets just use 70 Speed as our base to calculate Sweepiness. You break into "Good" (125-150) Physical Sweepiness at 100 Base Attack. If you want to outspeed Politoed by a single point, Above Average places your maximum attack at 94.

EDIT in underline: The numbers for 140 (which is the middle of Good for an upper limit) for Speed Tying Politoed are 112/70 and 105/71. Realistically you're going to want to outspeed Politoed by at least 6 base points so it doesn't just slap 12 EVs another way, which makes the maximum 103/76.

With these numbers you are simply not going to credibly threaten a Latios that does not switch without either jacking SpD all the way to the moon so you have the investment available for Attack, or reliying on something like Sucker Punch to take it down. But there's a bigger problem: Beating Latias is arguably harder than beating Latios, because Latias likes to run moves like Recover, Substitute, and CM (which is relevant because you can't Sucker Punch while it uses CM but it will get Leftovers Recovery from the failed attack).

Remember we use Lati@s to mean *BOTH* - and Latias takes physical hits at least a little better than Latios on its offensive sets, nevermind defensive ones. It's possible to outrun Politoed and threaten Latias with these numbers, but it means you're either stretched or you make up for it by ensuring your Special Tankiness rating is extremely close to the proposed upper limit of 240 to compensate.

There has been contention about Speed, but the limit you're intending to set in an attempt to prohibit people who want 111+ Speeds is creeping too low into hurting people who want 80-something speeds to not deal with stupid Politoed Speed wars. Personally I'd recommend a PS rating around 160 (the middle of "Very Good"). The maximum Attack you can have while outspeeding Latis with such a limit is 89, which is insufficiently threatening, and the maximum Attack stat you can have while tying them is 90.

The low speed end is really irrelevant. Even with "Above Average" if someone is set on 30 Speed, they can pump their attack up above Deoxys-A and never hit the limit. Conkeldurr by way of example has "Above Average" BSR with 119.2184. It has a CB Set, and a CAP with those kind of stats would be able to do that too, and if we think such a set is counterproductive, low speed spreads can easily get around that.

I should also note the Special Sweepiness is essentially making SpA a dump stat under any scenario, but 45 SpA or something isn't going to look terribly out of place except against spreads that are using speed as their dump stat and abusing the exponential nature of the sweepiness rating to have decent SpA scores with bottom barrel speeds. Though I will say for posterity that a 75 Limit makes the highest SpA for 30 Spe stand at an amazing 75. Heh.
 

Bughouse

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As the stat spread I have been playing with fits in the range LolCat has proposed:

200-240 Special Tankiness
90-140 Physical Sweepiness
35-75 Special Sweepiness
100-135 Physical Tankiness

I have very little productive left to add. I think these are reasonably lenient while still restricting us exclusively to good options for CAP5. For the love of God, people, please make optics-ok spreads. It's doable in these limits. :)
 
There has been contention about Speed, but the limit you're intending to set in an attempt to prohibit people who want 111+ Speeds is creeping too low into hurting people who want 80-something speeds to not deal with stupid Politoed Speed wars. [...] Even with "Above Average" if someone is set on 30 Speed, they can pump their attack up above Deoxys-A and never hit the limit.
I think that this is the most important point about Speed in the context of the stat limit discussion. I definitely think that Korski's post was somewhat misinterpreted as a way to make "his side" allowable, when really it was the opposite. I see people quite eagerly going for "Poor" Special Sweepiness... yet the likes of Weavile and Excadrill have Below Average Special Sweepiness. Some have even suggested "Bad" Special Sweepiness, going below the likes of Forretress and Ferrothorn! Is this really the kind of "sweeping capability" we're somehow trying to avoid when making CAP 5? Let's be real here. What we do with CAP 5's Special Sweepiness is not realistically going to alter CAP 5's threat lists severely, because Scizor will always be horribly weak against Fire, Gliscor will always be horribly weak against Ice, etc. And in the end, after all the fervor to pigeonhole ourselves into the One True Speed Range, the resulting limits would still technically be prone to abuse. This is precisely why we have one dude making the slate to ensure that a well-reasoned spread wins. Korski's post was about promoting discussion, not stifling it.

Personally, I would like some more discussion about the middle ground, or at least acknowledgment of it. People have gone into two "camps" of super-fast versus super-slow, but some of us think that perhaps there are a handful of key threats that might be worth outrunning. For instance, there is a difference between being countered by Scizor and being an utter liability to it, and I'm not sure CAP 5 should be a Pokemon that Scizor can use to steal momentum and grab some Stealth Rock damage. This might almost necessitate using Volcarona, when on real sun teams it's not entirely a staple.

I still think that it would be sufficient to pit Speed against special bulk in the stat submission stage. That is, submissions would be either very slow and have something like Amazing grade ST, or have some amount of Speed and lower Excellent/Fantastic ST. I'm personally not much of a fan of making the stats do all the work that we want to do.

As an aside, I'm kind of puzzled by all the arguments about Sucker Punch. It's as if Latios has Substitute, Choice Specs, Calm Mind and Draco Meteor all at once. CAP 5's matchup against Latios will always be somewhat shaky, but I doubt that it is as shaky as people are letting on.

As another aside, some of us are still waiting on some of the people who really supported both this typing and this ability to speak up about what their thoughts are, because that might help get us on the same page.
 

Nyktos

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It's a fairly small thing, but if the upper limit for SS is already going go as high up as 240, I'd like to see that pushed up just a little bit more to, say, 245. As far as I can tell, going just a bit over 240 is required to guarantee surviving two SpecsToed Ice Beams with max/max+ investment. While I don't think a 2% or so chance to get 2HKO'd is exactly a nightmare, it would be nice to be able to avoid that when it requires such a relatively a small increase.
 
One important thing that I haven't seen too much (correct me if I'm wrong) is the fact that one of our abilities is Harvest. Now, in my experience in NU with Tropius and Exeggutor, you try to stay away from more powerful movesets in favor of Stall/Walling. Now, while I'm not saying CAP5 has to be a bulky, stalling Pokémon for Harvest to work, it certainly benefits from it more than if it is a sweeper.

In order to Harvest to work, the Pokémon has to either be at or below 50% health for Sitrus Berry or 25% health for the pinch berries (or statused for the Lum Berry). As such, CAP5 needs to be able to take a hit in order to be put down to this level. Additionally, CAP5 can go a few routes after being put down to these levels, which I will cover.

Route 1: Anti-weakness. Now, this is probably the least common route that we will see CAP5 take, but it is a viable one nonetheless. Certain berries, such as the Yache berry, help to provide CAP5 a 50% damage decrease in one super-effective hit. With Sun, this could effectively relieve CAP5 of a weakness. This route could actually help with both sweepers and walls, but is overshadowed by other sweeping items like Choice Band, Life Orb, and even the pinch berries.

Route 2: Setting up. This is where the pinch berries come into play, actually. By getting down to below 25% health, CAP5 is able to increase one (or more) of it's stats nearly exponentially through a combination of Sun, Harvest, and Protect. But, being at 25% health gives it one glaring weakness - priority. Unless CAP5 comes with its own priority and outspeeds, the opponent will more than likely kill CAP5. Even with priority, specifically Sucker Punch, tanks such as Conkeldurr will be able to survive one or even two hits, even if CAP5 is physically sweepy. On the alternative route, these pinch berries could be used, strangely, as walling berries - if you come in on a good switch, you could help CAP5 become an immense physical or special wall with Protect and the potential Synthesis. Just saying. :3

Route 3: Sitrus Berry. This berry is, essentially, straight up walling potential at its max. By being able to constantly stay above 50% health, CAP5 can increase its survivability a huge amount. It could, say, Toxic the opponent, and then Protect stall for a long time if super-effective moves don't come into play. Additionally, it helps to deal with constant switching into Spikes and Stealth Rocks.

Route 4: Lum Berry. This berry can seriously go both ways. Sweepingly, it helps you to absorb status repeatedly and become a powerful offensive pivot against Pokémon who depend on status. Additionally, it helps you to deal with Toxic Spikes. Wallingly, the Lum Berry helps Pokémon to become effective Rest healers, similar to Vaporeon, and also take status as it comes that could hurt other Walls. You could also set-up using the Lum Berry against the aforementioned Pokémon who depend on status.

Looking at the potential options, I would rather use CAP5 as a more defensive Pokémon, considering the range of berries available to that lifestyle are more abundant than for offensive Pokémon.
 
My proposal:

PT: <120

120 should be the upper limit for a number of reasons. Sure, our CAP can have enough bulk to take resisted hits, and neutral hits from weaker pokemon even, but too high a PT would prompt people to invest in their Defense, and so we create a CAP which is effectively a wall which has the potential to be overpowered, especially when taking into consideration its attack stat. This is obviously something we don't want. The best PT we can get with 120 as a limit is 111/62,(119.6307) which is a good amount (maybe too much :/) to not be taken down by certain physical moves which this CAP can resist, whilst also making the user invest in other stats which would be more important/useful. An argument was brought up in #cap about not needing too high a PT because there's literally nothing physical we should be wary of, bar a possible Choice Band Earthquake from a pokemon such as Garchomp. Below Average and Above Average should be the area we're aiming for with our PT.

SS: <80

Now, I'd rather a lower SS than 75, but we need to take into consideration fast spreads. 111 Speed, which has been mentioned a couple of times for outspeeding Lati@s, means that a Special Defense of 35 is still above 70. Now, this brings me onto the next point about abusing stat limits. We don't want speed of less than 40, there's no precedence of that in OU, and it shows a sign of manipulating the stats too much in order to get what we want, and potentially overpower this mon. If we're going with a fast stat spread, which I'm opposed to, but if we are, than an 80 upper limit would allow 41/111.

ST: <245

This can depend on the speed stat of your spread. A slow speed would allow more room for needed special bulk, whilst a fast speed would need less physical bulk, as you're moving first, and so can use potential moves such as Rapid Spin or Wish with ease, whilst not taking another turn of damage. The highest special bulk you could have without passing 245 would be 92/151, which is still very high but would be expected on a slower spread. Regarding the suggestion of having Excellent ST, I feel that would be too low to substantially counter Lati@s and Politoed, amongst others. Don't forget that Latios has 242 SS. For our spreads, I'd expect a high Fantastic or a low Amazing.

PS: <140

Again, this depends a lot on speed. If we're going for a fast speed, than only a 78 or 79 attack is needed. If we're going slow, it allows more room for a larger attack, somewhere in the region of 85-105. We need to be able to hit Lati@s hard, Politoed included, but there certainly shouldn't be any OHKOs, that could be too powerful.

Now, my main concern is Lower Limits. Speed is the main reason why I am opposed to Lower Limits; it affects the SS and PS hugely, and if we were to go ahead with Lower Limits, that would discount many viable spreads due to their dwindling speed. For example, if 90 is the agreed Lower Limit of PS, than a base 30 speed mon needs 123 atk, meaning that it could potentially become a bulky sweeper, or just way too overpowered. An abscence of Lower Limits has worked fine for previous CAPs (excluding Krilowatt), and I don't see the need to change it now. If it gives you the freedom to abuse the stats, than so be it; your spread won't get slated.
 

alexwolf

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I think this is the wrong way of looking at it—speed and attack are necessarily joined; otherwise, why would we have the Sweepiness stats? The way i see it, since everyone is looking at 90-115 attack, the debate over "speed" is how much of a sweeper we want to make this thing, which does fit in with the thread. besides, there's never any discussion in the subs thread. Don't put a gag order on speed tier discussion, Korski, this is the right place to talk about it (and though it's a smart tactical move for you to try to do this, since popular opinion is for a low sweepiness, it'd be more 'right' to actually make a case for high sweepinesses)

edit: well fuck, didn't see lolcat had posted

I am leaning personally towards 35 speed—just enough to outrun reuniclus and wobbuffet but not fast enough for anything else. We'll already have the Special Tankiness to take on the threats we want to (latis, toed) and I don't want to beat anything we didn't want to by being able to stall it out with Rest and avoid 2hkoes. However, a 100/35 spread (which is reasonable) gives you a PS of only in the eighties. As such, i'd like to see the PS limit dropped lower than it currently is. oh, regarding high speed, yilnath said it best:
The problem with this train of thought Pwnemon is that Speed is not only linked to offense. Speed helps both offense and defense (it doesn't matter to what degree it helps each), while the current system sees Speed only as an offense value.

Finally, i agree with your limits about PS Lolcat, but can i ask you if it would be possible to raise those limits to 150? This way the CAP could have 112 Speed with 84 Attack, enabling it to 2HKO Latios with Punishment. Why Punishment? Because it is the only way the a fast CAP would have to beat CM Latias. Also by running Punishment we would make sure that the CAP wouldn't be able to take a generic offensive role as a Dark STAB move of 60 with an Atk stat of 84 just doesn't cut it, even with 112 Speed.
 
Personally, I'm with the speed freaks. To be honest, I'm kinda tired of slow CAPmons, and we've never seen the likes of a fast wall since Krilowatt iirc.

With that in mind, here are my suggestions for the stats limits:

Physical Tankiness: 95-105 (Below Average/Above Average)
Physical Sweepiness: 143-167 (Good/Very Good)
Special Tankiness: 200< (Fantastic or better)
Special Sweepiness: <99 (Below Average or worse)

These probably look hipster compared to everyone else's, I know, but if I were to explain, I'd probably end up repeating what other people have said already, so... yeah. Those're my suggestions.
 

DetroitLolcat

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Now that we're starting to get the stat limits under control, we should also discuss the big kahuna Kakuna of base stats in CAP: the Base Stat Rating (BSR). I'm opposed, and from the looks of it so is the IRC community, to letting this Pokemon become too powerful, but with the limits that I've outlined plus the assumption that we will all be reasonable with "dump stats" and optics, it doesn't seem like we will have much of a problem with BSR. The numbers I'm brainstorming at the moment involve a lower limit of 260 and an upper limit of 320. These limits are pretty lenient yet ensure that CAP5 will be able to get the job done.

It is honestly pretty difficult to exceed a BSR of 320 (which is in the middle of Very Good by the way) and also difficult to drop below a BSR of 260 given the limits outlined in the previous post, and although those numbers are expected to change slightly before the end of this thread, they will not be far off from the actual stat limits. Even if you hit the maximum for each of the stats listed above, as long as you don't use a bloated HP stat or stretch every value to its absolute highest, you'll stay under a BSR of 320. And even if you do exceed the number, given the spreads I've been toying with it's not difficult to drop below the maximum. 320 is also below the average BSR for CAP Pokemon, so any cries about the Pokemon being broken can be put to bed pretty easily for those concerned with optics.

On the flip side, 260 seems like the absolute minimum CAP5 needs to get the job done against Latios and the like, and is about as low as the "CAP5 should stick to Special walling" crowd can make their spreads before it just fails at doing its primary job. 260 leaves it with either reasonable offenses or moderate Speed so CAP5 can still attack with some potency, but allows the group of people who prefer poor Physical Tankiness to drop that number down a few notches.

So yeah, if there are any qualms about the BSR limits I'm proposing, now would be the best time to discuss those! Don't neglect my previous post as well, as I'm sure there are still some people who would like the individual stat limits to be adjusted in some way. Remember to concentrate not just on the upper limits, but also on the lower limits. If you believe some of my lower limits are too high/low, feel free to bring that up. Same goes with the upper limits too!

As of this post, this thread will close in 23 hours.
 
As with all my spreads I have never gotten a 300 or higher on my BSR so I have no problem with the limit.

The minimum however is a bit iffy (don't know what that means but it sounds like it fits here) for me. If a viable spread can be achieved with a BSR lower than 260, then it isn't fair if it gets disqualified. The doubts I have about my own doubting though is that I think a spread below that that is good and doesn't have outrageously high HP is highly unlikely and it prevents us from having a lot of outrageously high HP spreads submitted. While it won't help with that vompletely it will help. Honestly though, it does say that if you have a bad spread that has bad stats in general, there is no point in posting it. Its because of these reasons that I will not protest the minimum.

I agree with you completely, and I agree with your signature. Swampert is my favorite, too (tied with metagross for favorite) and I do like cats.
 

jas61292

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First off, looking at the limits in the first post you made on this page, I would have to say that I think they are good for the most part. I would personally like to see PT be a bit lower, since I think it is unwarrented to have it near that limit, and bulk for the sake of bulk is not good. However, as is I don't think that is is too ridiculous. Additionally, I have seen some people ask to increase some of the limits, specifically PS, and I would very much advise against it. Right now you can go faster but sacrifice power. I think the power level at higher speeds is perfectly acceptable, and increasing the limits will only allow values that are too strong. 140 is plenty. That said, I know it was mentioned on IRC, but I want to reiterate that you don't need to se limits for the lower end of the spectrum, and I would very much advise against it. Limiting how low one offensive or defensive value can go automatically makes it harder to change up the other. Anything that has something too far below what we want can be weeded out anyways before the slate. I think it is much more important to establish here is how high is the highest we will tolerate and then let the spread makers figure out the rest.

Now, while I think the specific limits were fine as is, for overall BSR, I would suggest lowering the lower limit. Now, techincally, I don't think we need one at all, but if you do want to put a lower limit in place, I would advise you to push it down to 250. I know that I myself, and multiple other people want a slow, specially bulky build, and alone, that is not a problem. However, I personally don't want to ride the limit on physical tankiness, and would prefer a spread closer to 100 in that regard than the higher limit. In addition, I don't see a need for a lot of power either. While we need to be able to hit things, I see no need to have a great attack stat. However, when you combine those two things, it may become very hard to reach a minimum rating of 260. While I believe there are some such spreads that are otherwise reasonable, it is impossible to reach the limit without raising SpA to a level that I would consider undesirable. I know this will probably not effect the majority of spreads, but as you said, we don't want this Pokemon to be too powerful, so if someone can come up with a reasonable spread that falls in the 250s, which I think is quite possible, than we should let them.
 
I'm pretty sure I can fit something into the currently proposed limits. In general I'm in agreement with jas on the issue of Speed, so nothing to add here. More speed just pushes CAP5 towards being a status-immune bulky attacker or an immovable setup wall - the reasoning alexwolf has given 'you then LumRest before the 2nd Draco Meteor' is a strategy I'd rather not see CAP5 doing, because then it can work out that way and better against too many of OU's special attackers overall.

That said, I don't think of Speed as a dump stat like some others would prefer. I could run low Speed but I see merit in outspeeding Politoed and underspeeding Heatran. If CAP5 has the kind of Speed that it'd need to invest in it to counter Politoed but invest in bulk against Lati@s that it can't outspeed then we might further make the players specialize and make a choice 'who to counter', right? It's with this in mind that I want to see CAP5 get a reasonable speed stat.
 

nyttyn

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I'm pretty sure I can fit something into the currently proposed limits. In general I'm in agreement with jas on the issue of Speed, so nothing to add here. More speed just pushes CAP5 towards being a status-immune bulky attacker or an immovable setup wall - the reasoning alexwolf has given 'you then LumRest before the 2nd Draco Meteor' is a strategy I'd rather not see CAP5 doing, because then it can work out that way and better against too many of OU's special attackers overall.

That said, I don't think of Speed as a dump stat like some others would prefer. I could run low Speed but I see merit in outspeeding Politoed and underspeeding Heatran. If CAP5 has the kind of Speed that it'd need to invest in it to counter Politoed but invest in bulk against Lati@s that it can't outspeed then we might further make the players specialize and make a choice 'who to counter', right? It's with this in mind that I want to see CAP5 get a reasonable speed stat.

CAP5 is attempting to free up team slots for sun teams, correct? And CAP5's intended roles, thus far, are to threaten both water types and the latis while having a typing and ability that means, overall, it only works out for sun teams, right? It's already extremely niche and limited, and you're saying you want us to "specalize?" We're already specalized up to the nose - if you're going to endorse lower speeds, endorse them for better reasons then "We need to choose who to counter."

FYI this is all irrelevant anyway because if CAP5 can counter the Latis, it can by default counter Politoed by way of typing and stats. Like, I cannot imagine how, under any circumstances, CAP5 could have a stat spread that wins against the Latis but loses to the Toed.

In addition, what's up with the arguments against a fast CAP 5 being a "Bulky Sweeper?" If it gets fast speed we should only give it enough base attack to go for a 2HKO against the Latis (Preferrably in the 70% range but more realistically we're going to see 52-58% range with base 80 attack or something). Fast CAP5 has merits (and thus, potential power issues) in that it can simply just lumrest off any damage that the Latis and water types can throw at it, thus forcing them out and racking up hazard damage while at the same time admittedly sacrificing momentum as a downside. It's a far cry from "bulky sweeper" people are making it out to be - unless CAP5 has an attack stat on the level of Conkeldurr or so, which we won't be able to afford with any fast speed under a reasonable PS, I don't see how CAP5 could possibly be a relevant bulky sweeper with speed. You can get far more bang for your (saws)buck with a plethora of other options - physical all-out offense CAP5 will pretty much 23/6 be outclassed except in a few niche scenarios which aren't even worth considering.

To pre-emptively counter arguments that this will be overpowered, you have to remember Rest has rather limited PP. Any physcial attack or SE attack with even decent attack will threaten the KO via PP stalling, and a critical hit will probably flat out kill CAP5 long before that (you have a pretty damn good chance of critting with a 8 PP move, much less one with Rest's PP level). Speedy builds will use LumRest exclusively for eating dmeteors and random specs hpumps. And of course STAB flamethrower and ice beam ruin your day (the former doubly so since CAP5 thrives in the sun). There will be plenty of ways to adress CAP5, I don't think we should be worried about speedy builds being overpowered.

tl;dr speedy aproaches valid, 140+ PS or bust.

edit: oh goddamnit 80/111 falls just short by the howthefuckisthissoclose margin of .263. 141+ PS or bust.
d-d-d-double edit: oh yeah and 90 SS so we don't have to do stupid 10 spatk shenangins. (90 SS allows for up to 47 SpAtk, which allows for the fairly realistic number of 45.)
 

erisia

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Okay, I haven't got much time to work on this tonight, so these are the kind of ranges that I'd like to see for the BSR ratings.

PT: 50-140
As stated earlier, CAP5 needs about 132 PT to avoid the 2HKO from Adamant LO Landorus-T's Earthquake after SR and a Sitrus Berry activation. I think it could potentially be harmful to let CAP5 become any physically bulkier than this, as it survives stuff like Scarf Salamence Outrage after SR, which it should really have no business taking. In addition, higher PT values could make it too easy for CAP5 to stall out certain physical attackers with Lum-Rest. I really don't want the PT to go any higher than this limit, but it can go lower if people want. So long as it isn't OHKO'd by stupid stuff like the aforementioned Politoed Ice Punch, then I'm fine.

ST: 170-260
CAP5 will absolutely need a ton of special bulk to take on Latios with any sort of reliability. 170 is the bare minimum for me, as this is enough to avoid the OHKO from Specs Draco Meteor or Sun HP Fire without hazards, assuming a fairly low HP stat with 252 EVs of investment. Any lower, and we start to compromise CAP5's ability to do its job effectively, as it would have to pick and choose the Latios sets that CAP5 has a chance to switch in to. 260 feels like a good maximum to me, as it allows CAP5 to avoid the 2HKO from Sun HP Fire after SR, assuming a fairly low HP stat with 252 EVs of investment and a double-Sitrus berry activation. However, it still allows offensive Ninetales to at least 2HKO it, as well as other Fire types such as Heatran, even if we go fully defensive. Any higher, and we start to compromise the ability for Fire types to come in and check it, as Lum-Rest will make it too difficult for them to break through. Overall, I think that this is a good range that encompasses everything that could fulfill our goals, depending on the other stats.

PS: 60-200
There is a reason for having such a ludicrously wide range. If we decide to go the slow wall route, then 60 PT allows us to have about a Base 70 Attack alongside Base 30 Speed. We aren't really able to go below that Attack stat without compromising CAP5's ability to use its Dark STABs, especially given their already low Base power. Meanwhile, I believe that 30 is the minimum Speed to go with, mostly for optics reasons. On the other hand, an upper limit of 200 allows us to go the "offensive response" route with Base 109 Attack and 111 Speed. The Speed is obviously for outspeeding Latios, while I don't think we could really go with a higher Attack in combination with that Speed without diverting focus away from CAP5's role as a supporter. As higher Base Speeds don't impact the PS that much, this should really be a hard upper limit. Obviously spreads that attempt to go the 160 / 70 route or similar to abuse this upper bound wouldn't be slated.

SS: <100
Since it's been decided that we don't want CAP5 to break through its counters and checks with Hidden Power (or any other Special move, for that matter), we can pretty much make Special Attack our dump stat. Thus, there's no real need for a lower limit other than for optics reasons. Meanwhile, an SS limit of 100 allows for high-Speed spreads to get away with Special Attack stats that don't screw over optics, such as 54 / 111.
 
Route 2: Setting up. This is where the pinch berries come into play, actually. By getting down to below 25% health, CAP5 is able to increase one (or more) of it's stats nearly exponentially through a combination of Sun, Harvest, and Protect. But, being at 25% health gives it one glaring weakness - priority. Unless CAP5 comes with its own priority and outspeeds, the opponent will more than likely kill CAP5.
If CAP5 gets a set-up move (like Swords Dance) in its movepool, then maybe it could use Harvest-Custap for unlimited priority? Imagine priority +2 Power Whip/Crunch, that ought to be good. Maybe hard to set-up, not even sure if that's exactly how Custap works, but it could be something. (Mind you I'm not aiming to poll-jump, just giving examples.)
 
If CAP5 gets a set-up move (like Swords Dance) in its movepool, then maybe it could use Harvest-Custap for unlimited priority? Imagine priority +2 Power Whip/Crunch, that ought to be good. Maybe hard to set-up, not even sure if that's exactly how Custap works, but it could be something. (Mind you I'm not aiming to poll-jump, just giving examples.)
Custap Berry: If the holder has 25% HP or less and uses a move, then it will consume the Custap Berry, and the move used will move before all other moves in the same priority bracket for that turn only.

So technically this is a viable idea for any move that you would want to gain priority on, but one downside would still be priority, since it would be in a higher priority bracket.

This does, though, help to support that Harvest can still be hurt by priority in most contexts, and so, in order to add counters, I recommend a PT of 100-150 or so, since most priority is physical.
 

DetroitLolcat

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Well, it looks like it's time to close up the stat spreads. I've heard a myriad of arguments from every side of the debate, and I think that the limits I proposed in the previous couple posts really captured the sentiments of the community and moved the discussion from determining the limits to refining them. Over the past day, we were able to narrow down what we desire as a community, and now's the time to set some finite limits to move this discussion to the next step. Although there isn't a 100% community consensus on every issue, it's natural that not everyone will have their entire viewpoint implemented, or else there'd be no point to the limits discussion! Physical Sweepiness and Physical Tankiness are still a bit contentious, but there's enough unity in the community to devise limits that, in my opinion, will satisfy a wide majority of us all. Furthermore, I've decided not to use lower limits on PT, PS, SS, or ST, as they are a bit silly in design and can overly restrict the BSR.

So, enough introduction, let's see the numbers!

Physical Sweepiness: Limit is 145
Physical Tankiness: Limit is 135
Special Sweepiness: Limit is 75
Special Tankiness: Limit is 245

The BSR lower limit is 250, and the upper limit is 320.

The four changes I made were to Physical Sweepiness (raise by 5), Special Tankiness (Raise by 5), abolishing lower limits for four stats, and the lower limit to overall BSR (lowered by 10). I felt that there were plenty of arguments for numbers above 140 for Physical Sweepiness, and although I don't feel comfortable with raising the limit to 150 or more, a large number of people would have their competitively valid opinions thrown away if the PS limit was not relaxed. Although some arguments proposed raising the limit past 150, 160, or higher, I felt 145 is a proper interpretation of community consensus. Special Tankiness also could use a slight boost, as we can guarantee a much safer spread with the minor increase in ST, such as Politoed's Specs Ice Beam, etc. The BSR limit was lowered because after hearing that many users made great spreads with BSRs below 260, and most spreads became acceptable from a competitive and an optics standpoint after passing 250, so that felt like the more appropriate limit.

Well, this post caps off a wonderful discussion of CAP5's stats, and although I can't please everyone, I hope I presented my arguments reasonably enough to satisfy the crowd. Thank you all for a great discussion, and now let's move on to stat spreads!

:D
 

jas61292

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So, as you guys know, under our knew system, section leaders make the slates, but they are run by the TL before they go to a vote, and the TL has the power to modify or veto it. However, it was never formally decided what, if any power TLs would have regarding decisions that are made without a slate, such as here in stat limits. Based on the reasoning for the system we made, it seems logical that the TL would have a say here as well. However, we really have no system in place for the TL to do anything to the limits, should they deem them to need chaning.

Fortunately, that is something we can deal with next Policy Review session rather than now, because I have no problems whatsoever with these limits. I feel they are free enough without allowing anything too ridiculous. While I personally might have set certain ones a few points differently, that is just personal interpretation, and I don't see anything wrong here. So lets get to the submissions!
 
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