CAP 17 CAP 6 - Part 7 - Secondary Ability Discussion

[alexwolf]

That's more because Meinshao has the defences of a wet paper bag than because of its ability. We still have just enough attack to hurt stuff from where we are. 92 is only just short of Ferrothorn's 94 (Granted he has significantly higher base power moves) but even so I would not be surprised if people used Regen in conjunction with Scarf for some sort of weird weak late game scarf mon to pick things off that are low on health. or to just generally annoy stuff throughout the match.

None of the abilities talked about so far have really swayed me either way. Technician seems like we might be doing too much, Motor Drive is kind of out of the question, Wonder Skin is frankly ridiculous when phazing is one of the few ways to get rid of our boosts... I'm still in the NCA camp because I just think Intimidate works. The only other ability that's been mentioned and I would support as of right now is Limber because it stops us being screwed over by a random Twave that gets launched at us.

What about Volt Absorb, Lightningrod, and Iron Fist DHR? The first two allow us to setup on T-Wave users, Thunder Jirachi, and Forretress, but without having the danger of a potential Speed boost, while Iron Fist slightly helps against revenge killers (you can take a look at the calcs i have in the first page if you want).

Technician should never be chosen as it's a very strong ability that could power up a ton of our moves and has a really high chance of making non-BD sets more potent than BD sets. To further illustrate how bad for the concept Technician would be, only the potential of a 150 BP Gear Grind makes the ability anti-concept. With a 150 BP STAB move, the CAP would have a move with the same power as Terrakion's Close Combat. And of 'course Technican Bullet Punch, Mach Punch, Aerial Ace, and a ton of other moves would encourage an all out attacking set.

Flash Fire not only very situational and doesn't help us deal with Pokemon we are supposed to, but it also removes Choice Scarf Heatran as a check to the CAP, which can't do 50% to the CAP anymore (HP Ice: 41.49 - 48.96%).

I am in favor of Regenerate too, but i know that people consider it too strong for a secondary ability (which is completely justified) so i won't really talk about it.

 

[Todd]

The situation you've described shows exactly how Regenerator provides no direct assistance to setting up. In contrast with Intimidate - weakening a physical attack gives your Substitute a chance not to be broken - therefore actually directly helping set up.
For example, Ferrothorn can break CAP's substitutes with Gyro Ball:
0 Atk Ferrothorn Gyro Ball (150 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def (custom): 61-72 (25.31 - 29.87%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
But after Intimidate, it cannot:
-1 0 Atk Ferrothorn Gyro Ball (150 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def (custom): 41-48 (17.01 - 19.91%) -- guaranteed 6HKO
So Intimidate can be more useful for Substitute than Regenerator.

The other issue in the situation you describe is that CAP didn't Belly Drum! So Regenerator didn't help CAP fulfil its role at all. Yes it might get another chance to try and set up, but that set up isn't going to be any easier as a result of Regenerator. In your example, Blissey can just Seismic Toss every time to keep breaking CAP's subs. If we want to give CAP more chances to set up, we can achieve the same result with Wish support. If we really wanted an Ability that meant CAP had to switch out in order to have another chance of sweeping, Natural Cure would be better than Regenerator - but neither of them actually helps it Belly Drum.

What I think our Abilities need to do is either directly help set up, or directly help sweeping. Since Intimidate already helps with setting up more than any other proposed Ability, I think we should choose an offensive Secondary Ability.

Jagged_angel, your argument is very narrow in scope. When you talk about Ferrothorn and Blissey, you make the assumption that they are always going to attack, all the time. This is foolish. A Ferrothorn that does nothing but gyro ball a CAP 6 gives it the chance to set up a belly drum without even having to substitute; not all players would take that chance. Similarly, Blissey is not always going to seismic toss; if she's runnning low on health, she might heal, or switch out to avoid being set up bait/getting straight KOd by an unboosted CAP 6 attack. In short, your argument fails to take into account the simple skills of prediction and counterprediction. This is what regenerator would help with; prediction, and easing the damage a failed prediction would do, which does in fact help set up belly drum, by letting you scout out the perfect opportunity to use it, the perfect storm of subsitute vs. failed support move or whatever the situation may be. It's about actually thinking about how the game would be played, as opposed to running calcs in a vacuum. And yes, wish support would accomplish the same, but constantly switching in a wisher and consistently pulling it off makes you either very lucky or very dead.

Further, the situation you supply with ferrothorn is but one pokemon. What about a tentacruel? Say the tentacruel is laying down some t spikes or rapid spinning, so you switch in. Now, tenta could switch out to avoid being killed or set up on, in which case you may substitute, but if he calls your bluff and scalds, your SOL, and intimidate wouldn't have helped you there. You can then switch out and heal off the some of the entry hazard+sub damage, and try again under more favorable conditions.

But still, Regenerator does run the risk of making it a bulky pivot, or as was pointed out, a pretty decent choice band haymaker. So still supoprting NCA, although regenerator still wouldn't be terrible.

 

[The Leprechaun]

I'd like to throw 2 rain based abilities into the mix: Rain Dish and Hydration. My logic here is that because of its steel typing, it may already be well placed on a rain team and these two abilities greatly help to set up on defensive threats, hydration, obviously nullifying all status and rains dish, allowing sub sets to be more viable. Because they must be used on Rain teams, these abilities remain niche as well as being more useful than intimidate on some teams. However, intimidate will remain the better ability in most instances.

 

[Ahhhhhh......Clefable.]

So, this is more out of curiosity, but what about Adaptability? It certainly isn't as useful for this CAP's purpose as Intimidate, but it does provide extra power once BD is set up and, with the generally low base-power moves provided by CAP's typing, it could prove to be helpful. I mean, we have Meteor Mash and Brave Bird (potentially) as high-power attacking options, but outside of those, CAP's usable STAB moves don't rise above 80 (except for Acrobatics, whose success relies on an item slot.) I wonder if the extra power provided by Adaptability would be beneficial to CAPmon and Belly Drum, boosting his low-power moves, or if it would make Belly Drum an inferior choice to plain attacking sets? I certainly don't think it will over-power CAPmon or change the concept, it just might provide a useful alternative to Intimidate should a player decide to choose a more offensive (and risky) ability option.

I apologize if this has already been discussed elsewhere - if it has been, I overlooked it.

 

[cjrocker]

I'd like to throw 2 rain based abilities into the mix: Rain Dish and Hydration. My logic here is that because of its steel typing, it may already be well placed on a rain team and these two abilities greatly help to set up on defensive threats, hydration, obviously nullifying all status and rains dish, allowing sub sets to be more viable. Because they must be used on Rain teams, these abilities remain niche as well as being more useful than intimidate on some teams. However, intimidate will remain the better ability in most instances.

I don't know if we want to associate CAP with any kind of weather, but a similar ability like Shed Skin or Natural Cure might work. Status becomes less of an issue, but we don't have to worry about weather potentially ruining the concept (i.e. a Belly Drum sweeper and not a Rain sweeper who happens to have Belly Drum.)

 

[Stratos]

OK, time is up, the slate is in:

Iron Fist
Regenerator
Volt Absorb
Wonder Skin
No Competitive Ability

Yes, I'm aware most of these abilities had more detractors than fans. When almost everyone's posting against instead of for abilities, it's hard to make a slate v__v so i tried to just take all the abilities that got people talking. I'm going to take just a little moment here to address the abilities I've slated, since I haven't done this yet:

Iron Fist:

This ability got support mostly for increasing the power of our priority moves without boosting our best move (ie Drill Peck), so that we would have the same calculations against defensive Pokemon. This should be considered as a solid option because we are right now revenge killed by a large majority of the tier, and this can be fixed in two ways: stronger bullet punch or extremespeed. The plus side to a stronger bullet punch is that its type coverage is less all-consuming, so we can still have type-reliant revenge killers (such as keldeo) without being revenged by everything or nothing.

Regenerator:

The argument that anything without u-turn, hazards, or good SE coverage is ever going to be a bulky pivot holds no water, so avail yourself of that fear. It also does give the CAP more opportunities to set up. However, it is, as its opponents have pointed out, at least on the surface anti-concept because it requires we switch out and belly drum require we not.

Volt Absorb:

This ability is really great because even if it is not used nearly as much as intimidate, you almost get the benefit of a Volt Absorb Pokemon anyways. Opponents will be afraid to spam volt switch with even an intimidate cap6 in the wings, as long as it has never been revealed. It is this kind of mind-game that I personally said I wanted from a secondary ability in my earlier post in the thread. Most of the arguments against Motor Drive seemed to be about the +1 speed more than the electric immunity, while the arguments for stressed the electric immunity, and Volt Absorb had been put forth, so this is the one I slated.

Wonder Skin:

In a similar vein to Volt Absorb. This ability isn't nearly reliable enough that anyone would actually try to use it to set up a sweep, but at the same time, it's just reliable enough that it discourages the opponent from trying to use NAMs to stop the cap from sweeping. So, while largely ineffective, the mindgame it provides gives CAP6 and CAP6's team some breathing room against defensive threats.

No Competitive Ability:

This is the way most of the posters have been leaning (which is also why i didn't bother pointing out the negatives in the above abilities, since you'll all do it yourselves). Needless to say, this is the option if you think Intimidate is the only ability cap6 needs to be successful.

 

[capefeather]

Like Pwnemon, my assessment of the thread was that there was a lot of discussion on abilities, but little in the way of really strong support for a specific ability, or even really strong aversion to a specific ability, for that matter. This left me with not much to say, even though there had to be a slate at the end. There's nothing to do to the slate that I can see, since each option tries to achieve different things, while other suggestions achieve something that a slated option does (especially those immunity abilities). The only real issue is a speed-boosting ability, but I guess it's not really worth pursuing. I doubt it will matter in the end.

26 hours for nothing, I know. This kind of came out of nowhere for me because the last time I got to check these forums was this morning.

I bet nobody expected this one coming: