On to poll 2!
This will be an Instant Runoff Vote (IRV), the details of which are outlined
here.
Order does matter in your votes! This means that you can upvote your favorite and downvote your least favorite, and that you may choose to vote for as many or as few options as you like.
Bold your votes and nothing else! A typical vote might look like the following:
Most Preferred
Second Most Preferred
Third Most Preferred
Any comments that the voter has would go below the votes in non-bold text. Bold text is used to determine what the user's votes are, so none of the supplementary text should be in bold.
CAP uses automated scripts to count votes. For this reason, it is very important for all ballots to be submitted correctly.
If you do not compose a legal ballot, your post will be subject to moderation.
- The scripts count bold words in ballots, so do NOT bold anything in your ballot other than the options you are voting for.
- Do NOT put any formatting other than bold in your post.
- Only one option per line.
- Spelling of options must be EXACTLY correct and must match the spelling listed above.
- Capitalization and spaces are ignored by the vote counting scripts, but you probably should not depend on it.
Composing a proper ballot is easy. Enter BBCode Edit Mode (the A in the upper right corner). Copy/paste the options directly from the OP to your ballot
as plain unbolded text. Delete and/or rearrange the options to suit your preference and the poll type. Bold your vote text using bold tags or re-enter rich text mode, highlight your vote and click B. Spelling or formatting errors may spoil your ballot, so be careful!
Please post only your votes in this thread. Do not respond to other posts, or your posts will be moderated and you may be warned. You are allowed to say whatever you like in relation to your vote at the bottom of your post, but please do not look to begin a discussion. Keep those comments to #cap on IRC.
When voting,
use only the name of the author! The available options are as follows:
Quanyails
reachzero
Yilx
SubwayJ
DougJustDoug
Birkal
and here are their concepts in full, please make sure you've read them thoroughly before voting!
Name: Show Me Your Moves!
General Description: A good user of moves with effects not frequently used in the OU metagame.
Justification: There are many moves in Pokémon with great effects, but they often end up unused. Moves such as Gravity, Snatch, and Safeguard have potential in OU, but they are neglected for several reasons: the moves are apparently overshadowed, have poor distribution, or are inefficient compared to another strategy. This CAP uses a combination of typing, ability, and stats to make these underused moves not only feasible, but also capable.
Questions To Be Answered:
- What mechanics of Pokémon determine how viable moves are?--not only the Pokémon's typing, stats, and ability, but also its interaction with playstyles and momentum.
- What new strategies might emerge by giving a new OU Pokémon underused moves?
- What challenges do Pokémon that use lesser-used moves face compared to ones that use a more standard moveset?
- If the Pokémon has options of staple OU moves (high-powered STABs, offensive stat-boosting moves, reliable recovery, Substitute), will those moves be useful to it, even if it's specialized toward a separate and distinct strategy?
- Can underused moves increase other underused moves' viabilities?
- Can one user of a strategy unrecognized in a metagame massively influence a pre-existing playstyle?
Explanation:My inspiration for the concept stems from Sigilyph. Take the move Cosmic Power. It is a defense-boosting move, and it is avoided by OU user Jirachi, as even though Jirachi can wall and/or stall with this move, it is susceptible to multiple threats. First, it can be the recipient of a status effect that limits its walling capability. Additionally, opponents can put a Substitute up and boost their stats, while Jirachi is unable to break the Substitute without giving the opponent an advantage in terms of boosts. Using Cosmic Power Jirachi makes it a sitting duck.
However, take a look at Sigilyph. This Pokémon is able to remove the flaws of using Cosmic Power through a combination of other lesser-used moves. Any status conditions it receives can be given to the opponent with Psycho Shift, and as it gains stat boosts with Cosmic Power, Stored Power increases in damage, making Sigilyph not only a sturdy wall, but also an offensive threat to non-Dark-types. It can Roost off any damage it does receive and thus continue boosting. That is just one possibility Game Freak has granted to the Pokémon metagame. Many moves that appear flimsy on their own chain well with other moves, and a Pokémon's typing, ability, and stats will increase their viabilities. Users of lesser-used moves can reveal an unexplored niche in the metagame and restore the viability of a lesser-used playstyle, giving fresh life to OU.
Additional: I had a small compilation of 'interesting' moves that originally was in my Justification, but it became too lengthy. The moves included in it are Reflect Type, Soak, Aqua Ring, Telekinesis, Role Play, Whirlpool (and clones), Entrainment, Imprison, Heal Block, and Power Trick.
Name: Setting the Pace
General Description: This Pokemon plays very differently against Pokemon slower and faster than it, exploring the concept of speed benchmarks.
Justification: Speed is one of the most defining aspects of a metagame. How "fast" or "slow" a metagame is largely defines the style of play and the usefulness of various moves, yet the concept of speed benchmarks remains largely unexplored. Pokemon fundamentally relate to other Pokemon on the basis of "faster" and "slower", and this concept would teach us about that relationship. Speed is a complex subject, since maximizing a Pokemon's speed is not always the best way to maximize that Pokemon's effectiveness, yet there are certain Pokemon that make such a great impact in terms of their maximum speed that they must be accounted for. Many Pokemon need to decide how much speed is enough, and understanding speed benchmarks will help us to understand that decision-making process.
Questions To Be Answered:
- How do the important speed benchmarks in a metagame get set?
- How do they react to new Pokemon that directly relate to those benchmarks?
- Which moves and strategies most greatly impact slower Pokemon?
- Which moves and strategies most greatly impact faster Pokemon?
- How does the utility of a tactic change based on the speed of the Pokemon involved?
Explanation: A speed benchmark is the number that separates a slow-slow Pokemon from a merely slow one, a slow Pokemon from a midrange one, etc. For instance, Breloom and Politoed set the benchmark that no Pokemon of middling speed wants to dip below for OU at 263. In DPP, Tyranitar set this number at 245. Many moves such as U-turn, Baton Pass, and Substitute play very differently depending on the relative speed of the Pokemon and its opponent. Scizor is especially representative of this issue, as a slow Pokemon that commonly uses Bullet Punch and U-turn, both of which are moves that greatly impact and are impacted by Scizor's effective speed. Essentially, this Pokemon would tell us about the effect of speed benchmarks by playing very differently against Pokemon faster or slower than it, setting such a benchmark. The actual speed number is unimportant to the concept.
Name: The Big Dipper
General Description: A wallbreaker that focuses on breaking your opponent's core through other means outside of brute force.
Justification: In the current meta, there exists many ways to "break" your opponent's core, through downright brute force through wallbreakers like Mamoswine or Specs Keldeo in the Rain. This mon specializes in dismantling your opponent's core and neutralize it.
Instead of using brute force, this mon breaks your opponent's core by neutralizing parts or all of it before they notice or by forcing your opponent into a situation that they have to sacrifice part of it in order to prevent themselves from losing the game.
We will be exploring if there be other ways to run a "Wallbreaker" outside of outright brute force. Maybe through status? Misleeading your opponent into a false sense of security?
Basically, it's a wallbreaker that does not utilize huge attacking stats with high powered moves to break through your opponent's team core, but rather through other means; by the time your opponent knows their core is broken, they are already dead.
Questions To Be Answered:
- What defines a "core"? Celetran, Toed/Ferro/Jirachi, etc are all considered "cores", but we do not have a standard "definition" for one. Is it just a triplet of Pokemon that work together very well in unison, or a pair that has perfect coverage on the meta?
- What defines "Wallbreaking"? Most think of this as just using things like Rock Gem SD Terrak to break through Gliscor or using LO Mamo to just punch holes in your opponent's walls in general. However, can we do more past that?
- How will a specific Pokemon get around rigid defensive cores or switch into strong offensive cores? Good typing and stats? Or perhaps a specific movepool that allows it to do both?
- Can we do this without turning the mon into "just another" setup sweeper? Or is that one good way of doing this?
- How will this Pokemon preserve it's "surprise" factor even when people prepare for it?
- Is there a way to cause your opponent to be "losing" without them knowing it? Like bluffing a Expert Belt Scizor as a CB Scizor through the match and setting up SD to get a clean sweep when the time is right?
Explanation: For most teams, the moment a key mon in a specific core goes down, the rest of the team falls apart very easily because of their pivot or specific wall being gone. Because of this, most people would try to keep their core alive as much as possible; be it through good plays and prediciton or just using as much recovery as they can.
However, if there was a mon that specialized in taking these "cores" apart, people would have to prepare for it. However, preperation and guessing can only get one so far; not everything in a match will go according to what one predicts. Putting hax aside, surprise factors and gimmicks are called so because that is their limit. It will be interesting if there was a mon that could turn it's "gimmicks" into deadly ways to puncture your opponent's team.
Name: Blunt Force Trauma
General Description: An offensive threat who gets no effective use of its STAB.
Justification: Looking at the on-site OU analyses, currently 2 pokemon have sets that do not utilize a STAB move with 75 BAP or higher. Those pokemon are Blissey, the infamous pink blob, walling special attackers to the moon and back since gen II, and Scizor, reigning crown of OU posing a strong threat since the release of Platinum. Of those two, we essentially have one pokemon in the entirety of OU who does not utilize a decent STAB move on a regular basis (that being Blissey, not Scizor). We really have no insight, for this generation anyways, as to how a pokemon without the ability to use its STAB competitively would work in the metagame. The main goal here would be to see what it takes in terms of stats, movepool, ability, to make a STABless pokemon effective.
Questions to be Answered:
- How are coverage moves chosen for a STABless mon?
- What is the difference between having a good typing and having a good STAB in the OU metagame?
- How do checking and countering interact with a pokemon who relies entirely on coverage?
- In terms of power, just how much does that 1.5* boost to moves affect a pokemon?
- How much is a pokemon put at deficit from the beginning, just by not having decent STAB moves?
- What steps must be taken to overcome this deficit in terms of movepool, stats and ability to keep this pokemon effective in the OU metagame?
Explanation: The best example of what fulfills this concept well would have to be gen 3 Gengar, the ghost who couldn't use its STAB. This lack of same typed moves, didn't hold it back however, as Gengar stayed well in OU. Something that can do just that in Gen 5 would be a loose goal for this concept.
Now when I say "gets no effective use of its STAB" that is pretty vague. What I mean by this is that the pokemon in question may have STAB, but it just can't use it properly for whatever reason. A Grass-Type pokemon with Vine Whip is hardly going to be using it, despite the same type of the user and the move. Likewise, a pokemon with 20 base Special Attack won't be using Energy Ball to a great extent. Overall this pokemon just cannot use its STAB moves and stay relevant.
A pokemon who completes this concept, in my opinion, will also have a very different effect on teams than conventional attackers. It won't be used for its great attacking type, but rather it'd be an offensive pokemon who is looked for other specific attributes when teambuilding.
Name: Last Man Standing
General Description: A pokemon that performs particularly well in last pokemon endgame strategies, without being an overpowered all-purpose setup sweeper.
Justification: Endgame planning is a big part of competitive battling strategy, and in previous generations, last pokemon strategies were a legitimate factor in competitive play. But the art of the "last pokemon comeback" has waned in the 5th generation. There are many OU pokemon capable of pulling off a sweep with proper team support, but very few OU pokemon (if any) are best suited to sweep when they are the last remaining pokemon on the team. By making a competitive BW pokemon that can excel as a last pokemon, we will explore and analyze a wide variety of endgame scenarios, and learn more about endgame planning and positioning in general.
Questions To Be Answered:
- What is "the endgame" in competitive pokemon? What does that term really mean?
- What are the most common endgame scenarios in current BW OU play?
- What are good endgame strategies?
- Which existing pokemon are most helpful in successfully executing endgame strategies?
- What is the difference between a generically good pokemon and a good "last pokemon"?
Explanation:
This concept came about when we were talking in #cap about Curselax in the 3rd generation. Back in the day, Snorlax was a great pokemon that could play a variety of roles on OU teams, but it was notorious for its ability to stage comebacks as the last unfainted pokemon on a team. When talking about BW, we remarked how there really is no "modern day Snorlax" that can reliably perform as a last pokemon. Sure, there are plenty of pokemon that can sweep at the end of a game, and there are plenty of stories about endgame comebacks based on luck or other battle factors -- but there is no well-known "last pokemon" in BW OU play.
Focusing on the last pokemon is a vehicle to allow the CAP community to discuss endgame play in general, which is often mentioned, but has never been analyzed in detail. This will be an opportunity to involve oldtimer battlers from previous gens and mix them with new battlers from the current gen, as we dissect endgame planning, attempt to resurrect a strategy from yesteryear, and make it relevant and balanced in the wild world of current competitive play.
Name: Inspiration through Translation
General Description: This Pokemon performs a role in the current Overused metagame identical to that of another Pokemon’s role within another metagame.
Justification: The state of the Overused metagame is about as solidified as it is going to get for the fifth generation of Pokemon. However, many of its players are still unhappy with how the metagame plays, and opt out to play other tiers and metagames (both past generations and other current tiers). In choosing the metagame that is widely celebrated, and pinpointing a Pokemon’s role that brings success to that metagame, is it possible to convert our current Overused metagame to become more enjoyable?
Questions to Answer:
· What makes a desirable metagame? What doesn't?
· Which metagames exhibit desirable characteristics? What makes them that way?
· Which Pokemon lend themselves most towards making that metagame desirable?
· What roles of those Pokemon are absent in our current metagame? Why are they absent?
· How can we revive or rebuild that role within the current Overused metagame?
Explanation: If you’re familiar with Voodoom’s concept (CAP 11), this follows the same rhythm in that it attempts to build a Pokemon with the assistance of a currently existing Pokemon. Where they differ is that Voodoom worked at forming a core, while this concept aims to replicate a Pokemon’s role from another metagame into our current Overused metagame. The goal here is to teach us about the “enjoyability” of a metagame, which is something we haven’t delved into in the past. What makes a metagame fun? What are the reasons for that?
I’m purposefully leaving this concept vague in order to give us maximum flexibility. This concept is open to literally any metagame. We could dive all the way back to second generation and look into forces like Curselax and Zapdos. We also have the flexibility to work with a current metagame that differs from Overused, such as Underused, Neverused, or even something obscure like Balanced Hackmons. The role that the Pokemon performs can be as centralizing as Kyogre in current Ubers, or as obscure as Scraggy being a late-game setup sweeper in Little Cup. Our goal would be to discuss which metagames are fun, and more importantly, why they are so enjoyable. Once we pinpoint that down, we can work towards creating a Pokemon that would shift Overused in that direction.
As a result of the vagueness, we may need to have some extra polls and discussions here, similar to how we voted on which Pokemon to pair Voodoom up with during CAP 11. Those extra topics and discussions give us a bit of a break from the typical CAP process, which also leads into some curious conversations. Our conversations will also be subjectively based around obscure concepts like fun and enjoyment, which should allow us to learn more about what kind of a metagame we’re all striving to play. This concept will lead to conversations that we've never had before as a Create-A-Pokemon Project, and that’s worth exploring.
----------------------
CAP 6 so far:
Leadership Team:
capefeather - Topic Leader
reachzero - Typing Leader
DetroitLolcat - Stats Leader
DarkSlay - Movepool Leader
Pwnemon - Ability Leader
