CAP 17 CAP 6 - Part 1 - Concept Assessment 2

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Birkal

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I was going to write a fairly long post, but Doug more or less covered everything I wanted to. I fully believe that CAP 6 should be judged based on whether or not Belly Drum is its best set. I believe that an appropriate strategy here would be to go "all out" on CAP 6 in terms of stats, abilities, and typing. We should be giving CAP 6 plenty of opportunities to switch in to resisted or immune attacks. We should allow it to tank a hit and plow through most (if not all) of the metagame at +6 Attack. The nature of this particular project is this: Belly Drum is inherently not a good move due to its high-risk nature. If we minimize that risk through the creation process, perhaps we can allow the move to shine.

We talked about this in the last thread, but I think there are two concepts that we should think about while going forward in the process. One is that CAP 6 should be relatively self-reliant. One of the biggest disadvantages of Belly Drum is that it requires quite a bit of team support to pull off. If we can create a Pokemon that can do the work on its own, that will make it a lot more tempting as a candidate for a teammate. Moves like Wish, Substitute, Protect, and other self-support moves should be considered highly. If it can make KOs without hazard support, that's also a form of self-reliance. The more we can stray away from being a crutch, the better.

The second is that CAP 6 should be able to force lots of switches. nyttyn touched on this above, but I want to make it clear that forcing switches is the best thing we can do for CAP 6. If it can snag that free turn to set up a Belly Drum, then it doesn't need to risk the opponent murdering it at 50%. Furthermore, many of the moves we talked about in the last thread are excellent for forcing switches. Soak, Doom Desire, Reflect Type, even something as simple as Confuse Ray can all force the opponent out and grant a free turn. If we can focus on piling on those moves, then I think we will find a lot more success in the popularity of a Belly Drum set.

Finally, I feel that a fair strategy moving forward here is to limit CAP 6's movepool in order to "nerf" it. Ultimately, I believe that we will fail this concept if CAP 6 ends up using a plethora of other sets and opts out of Belly Drum. If we can help it, it'd be great if Belly Drum was the main set, and any other movesets were used for surprise effect. I'd consider something like an All-Out Attacker set (or even a Choice Set) coming out as the preferred moveset a failure. We need to make sure that CAP 6 doesn't have the sheer offensive versatility to perform one of those sets better than Belly Drum. Because if we focus and center our abilities, stats, and typing around Belly Drum, AND limit our movepool, then Belly Drum will be the preferred option.
 
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First time posting, long time cap follower. Don't know how much I'll be able to post after this, but just an idea I had - miltank was thrown around as a poke to base CAP6 off of, which is cool. But what about Flygon as a poke to think about - Flygon has some qualities a bellydrummer would love (good coverage with just its stabs; takes very little damage from hazards; ok speed and attack; not weak to most priority (is ice shard that common? kinda not), though obvs resisting all common priority would be best. Flygon also causes lots of switches, or at least he did back in DPP, since he has 2 immunities (no thunderwave!) and a few nifty resists.

Looking at Birkal's post above, I realize flygon might have a slightly too good a movepool, but I still think he's a good example of pokemon to think abt that gets people away from imagining that CAP6 has to be an superlinoone. Imagine if flygon had bellydrum - he'd be the only dragon with it, he'd still be less good than other faster, or bulkier, or more powerful dragons in a lot of situations, but i bet bellydrum would be his best set, and he could be a great wallbreaker with it. If you could give him more speed he'd be a great sweeper!

I'm not saying to make flygon with a big belly. flygon comes to mind because it has a lot of great qualities for a belly drummer (except the belly) and it would be a totally unique niche.
 
Well, I have to say, this concept assessment has been pretty fun, and I like that we've been able to hammer out so much. We have tied CAP 6's balance to its concept by aiming to make Belly Drum the focus of its best set, but not necessarily have that be its only set. To recap some of the points made as to how we might go about doing this:
  • CAP 6 should have opportunities to set up. Volcarona and Cloyster are examples of Pokemon that lose a lot of defensive capability, yet succeed as sweepers (well, Volcarona more than Cloyster). One clear way to achieve this is to have CAP 6 force lots of switches.
  • CAP 6 should have focused defensive attributes, rather than necessarily relying on statistical bulk. Typing is the most obvious stage to realize this, but of course abilities and moves can help.
  • CAP 6 should have a limited, focused movepool.
  • CAP 6 should be largely self-reliant.
  • We should look at Miltank and Flygon as primary benchmarks.
We started the thread talking about CAP 6's abstract build, but there was some disagreement on that aspect. It should be okay at this point, since we have an overarching goal, which provides a context for these discussions in the future.

 
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