CAP 10 Krilowatt Playtesting

[Rising_Dusk]

I'm wondering though. I believe the more general consensus is that the concept failed, even though we delivered a good competitive pokemon.

What, no. The concept has not failed, it is actually surprisingly well-executed. When over 60% life, I can switch my Krilowatt into any form of Salamence and make it run away like a scared little girl to take more SR damage later. I can switch my Krilowatt into any Gyarados and threaten to fry it at virtually no cost to myself. I can do this with Lucario or basically any Pokemon before they know my Krilowatt's set. That is accomplishing the concept.

It is simply made in such a way that it promotes being offensively-minded too much. Magic Guard is great, but when you're using it, Life Orb becomes the item of choice, and we all know where it goes from there. If we got rid of Magic Guard, ExpertBelt might be popping up to give some added damage against the things we're countering. However, ExpertBelt is a lot more manageable than Life Orb - it only boosts super effective hits and only by 20%. Basically, the presence of Magic Guard completely shifts the way it's played, even if it can function well as the utility counter it was designed to be.

 

[Wilson]

What worries me about looking at Krilowatt is that it represents something I feared for the CAP project from around the time of Stratagem.

It seems that the CAP pokemon are just too powerful. They are more unpredictable, have better stats, and certainly have better movepools and abilities than the real Pokemon in the OU metagame. I think as more and more CAPs are released the CAP metagame will cease to be a mixture of OU and CAP pokemon and simply be CAP pokemon fighting other CAP pokemon.

That isn't inherently bad, but I think it defeats the purpose of the CAP experiment. Wasn't this project created in order to know more about the metagame? Having a CAP-only metagame could be fun and all, but I think it'd be completely unrealistic compared to the standard OU metagame.

Just my rant.

 

[beej]

I really don't know where anybody is getting the idea that Krilowatt is broken, or even that it does too much with one set. I'm currently running a set with Trace that is designed to plug in holes on my team, and I've found that it works magnificently without covering too many threats at once. The simple fact of the matter is that due to typing and moves, a Pokemon is always going to be able to counter certain threats no matter what it does, so if it can counter a threat I customize it to beat, but it also covers a few other threats because it does intrinsically, I don't think that has to do with any flaw in how it's designed.

Also, responding to Yllnath, how on Earth does it "counter" Gengar, Lucario and Salamence? At most, I see it being able to switch into Fire Blast from Salamence (or potentially Outrage it if has Trace) and threaten it with Ice Beam while outrunning Lucario. You don't *even* outrun Gengar. Pretty much all three of these Pokemon are going to pound you with their Life Orb-backed attacks situationally, and the most you can ever hope to come close to covering at once is two if you plug one defense, because one is physical, one is special, and one can go either way.

Anyway, maybe some of you have found some special offensive set that is overwhelming in some way, but I certainly haven't seen it in my adventures on the ladder, and I've peaked at #3, so...

 

[SinisterSamurai]

The problem was that we used the same creation process as usual (with minor changes, whatever)

This CAP had a big difference from the rest right of the CAPs, and it showed up right in the beginning. My CAP history may be off, so correct me if I'm wrong.
The first three CAPs had a very general concept of "Lets build it and see what happens." CAP4's concept was to be a utility(?) pokemon. CAP5 was an attempt to break the stereotype on typing. CAP6 was a way to shake up the top of the OU. CAP7 was an attempt to explore scouting strategy. CAP8 intended to bring a neglected ability to OU, and CAP9's intention was to destabilize secondary effects strategy.

The concept of Krilowatt was very different in one particular aspect. It's supposed to counter a lot of pokemon, but not a lot at once. This concept was one of the first to imply both a minimum functionality as well as a maximum functionality. Several people are calling Kril a success because it meets the minimums of the concept, while others are calling it a failure because it exceeds the maximums of the concept.

I really don't know where anybody is getting the idea that Krilowatt is broken, or even that it does too much with one set. I'm currently running a set with Trace that is designed to plug in holes on my team, and I've found that it works magnificently without covering too many threats at once.

What you are doing here is trying to use Krilowatt as the concept suggests. I'm sure there are several successful pokemon that could be designed to plug a hole, even if that pokemon would generally be more successful in another role.

Now, try to use krilowatt outside of it's concept designed role. If you look at it as "Just another OU Poke," rather than "The hole-plug pokemon," is it more successful? How much does it destabilize the standard OU metagame? As a genuine point of curiosity, after having tried both styles, which do you feel is generally more successful?
The general opinion here seems to be that while Krilowatt can certainly customized to fill gaps in your team, it's generally more successful to customize your team around the gaps in Krilowatt. On the other hand, you are one of the few people who even mentioned using it to fill a gap.



As far as suggestions towards future CAPs, the only thing I can loosely recommend is to always allow "No Secondary Ability" as a voting option in all Secondary Ability polls, even if they are out-voted earlier. When our choices for Secondary Ability were reduced to being between Poison Heal and Magic Guard, I noticed (or maybe just pretended to notice) several posters mentioning that neither option was really preferable.

 

[Scoopapa]

It's occurred to me that we probably shouldn't have given Krilowatt such great offensive STABs if we wanted it to not counter a lot of things at once. Water is probably the best neutral coverage type besides Dragon, and Electric hits one of the things that resists it Super Effectively. Together the two are resisted by Grass and Dragon, which are both hit super effectively by Ice. With three moves, you cover just about everything in the game, and you still have a fourth slot to hone in on specific threats after that. I think this is the crux of why Krilowatt can deal with so much with only a single set.

In retrospect, we really should have given Krilowatt a typing that would be good defensively but poor offensively. This way, it would have had to rely on non-STAB moves to hit important targets and wouldn't have the ability to cover most of the metagame with just its STAB moves. By relying more heavily on non-STAB moves, it would be less equipped to beat things that it wasn't customized to beat. Types such as Steel, Poison, and possibly Grass seem to fit this bill better than the amazing offensive STABs Water and Electric.

 

[TPM]

IMO,we should have gone with Electric/Poison, and made the abilities Magic Guard/Levitate, forcing people to make a tough choice of what they wanted to be immune to.

 

[PK Gaming]

I also support Rising Dusk. It isn't a failure and Krilowatt can still be salvaged.
Magic Guard is far to powerful on something like that. LO boost without the damage? Doesn't care about status? Abusable speed? It makes Krilowatt a fantastic sweeper.

Simply get rid of Magic Guard and call it a day.


I've used it for a day and trace Krilowatt rocks at countering those threats I hate to play my team around.

 

[SJCrew]

You can use Krilowatt as a filler utility counter for something else on your team to sweep, but the LO set has way more utility in general. I'd use a utility counter set just to see how well it does, but when we're talking about serious team building, there's not much point when Krill is an offensive threat in and of itself. You'll benefit way more having it check almost everything than having it hard counter 1 or 2 Pokemon that might not even be on your opponent's team.

The existence of Krilowatt in and of itself makes the metagame quite different, and you'll likely not see much of Gyarados and the like for the simple fact that everyone knows it's there. Might as well lop LO on it, maximize your coverage, and call it a day.

 

[bubbly]

Magic Guard = not good idea

It seemed possible before, but in hindsight, LO is just too strong on it.
Rising dusk, in your post you seem to have Krill countering some major threats all by itself:) I think we need to face the possibility of some changes to Krill

 

[callforjudgement]

I've been trying a Trace Krillo as a Porygon2 replacement on my OU team, but it's been rather underwhelming; building Krillo like that, it's rather narrow and doesn't do everyting that Porygon2 did. In other words, I feel that trying to make Krillo stick to its original concept, it isn't really OU-power, although I'll try other builds first to make sure. (In particular, I'd like to see if it works better as a physical attacker than a special attacker; the threats I'm trying to counter are Heatran, Magnezone, Salamence, Gyarados above all.) The Earthquake/Earth Power weakness is rather crippling for that purpose; the real pain is that it has serious trouble countering more than one Pokémon without being heavily customised; that's what we wanted, of course, but that concept renders it relatively unsuitable for OU play if used "properly".

 

[Brave]

ok, really the biggest problem with the concept of Krillowatt is Magic Guard. Trace was fine but Magic guard allows it to counter far more threats at one time than it should. Trace was perfect for Krill because it allowed it to simply counter specific threats like CS Heatran or anything like salamence which relies on its high attack but is weakened because of indimidate. Magic guard has basically turned it into Starmie with better STAB and bulk. if we really need a second ability, than i would recommend something like Cloud Nine, which can be use to stop weather teams which ordinarily can't be stopped effictively because the only pokemons with the ability or air lock are in Ubers and NU. This way it can still counter weather teams without being too OP from Magic Guard.

 

[beej]

What you are doing here is trying to use Krilowatt as the concept suggests. I'm sure there are several successful pokemon that could be designed to plug a hole, even if that pokemon would generally be more successful in another role.

Now, try to use krilowatt outside of it's concept designed role. If you look at it as "Just another OU Poke," rather than "The hole-plug pokemon," is it more successful? How much does it destabilize the standard OU metagame? As a genuine point of curiosity, after having tried both styles, which do you feel is generally more successful?
The general opinion here seems to be that while Krilowatt can certainly customized to fill gaps in your team, it's generally more successful to customize your team around the gaps in Krilowatt. On the other hand, you are one of the few people who even mentioned using it to fill a gap.

As far as suggestions towards future CAPs, the only thing I can loosely recommend is to always allow "No Secondary Ability" as a voting option in all Secondary Ability polls, even if they are out-voted earlier. When our choices for Secondary Ability were reduced to being between Poison Heal and Magic Guard, I noticed (or maybe just pretended to notice) several posters mentioning that neither option was really preferable.

You are basically trying to make the case that, because our Pokemon can do something other than fulfill the role we designed it to fulfill, that we have failed. You may disagree with me, but I really don't care if a Pokemon can do other things (maybe even better than what it was supposed to) and be more prominently used in that role as long as it's not destabilizing anything. I've been using my team with Krilowatt plugging a hole, and it does it excellently well with Trace. So when you say that one is "more successful", you're really not basing it off of anything other than lots of people using Life Orb Krilo and talking about how cool it is. I would like to take this moment to say how awesome Trace Krilowatt is, and how it remedies the weaknesses in my team perfectly. AND how it got me to peak at #2 on the leaderboard (passed #3). So how's that for success?

As far as saying that No Secondary Ability should be allowed every time, this is discrediting the role of the TL, and one's ability to make a decision. While the TL is required to use only what is suggested by the community and they generally will be influenced by public opinion, it's ultimately their preference as to whether they want to provide a group of people who want something with that option. I didn't want NSA and therefore I didn't provide it, and even if people disagree with that choice for this Pokemon in retrospect (as time passes, I may even disagree with it) that was fully within my power and it should have been.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

You are basically trying to make the case that, because our Pokemon can do something other than fulfill the role we designed it to fulfill, that we have failed. You may disagree with me, but I really don't care if a Pokemon can do other things (maybe even better than what it was supposed to) and be more prominently used in that role as long as it's not destabilizing anything.

I feel that you should. While I agree that it can serve as a utility counter for a lot of things, it is not nearly as consistent as it could and should be because the presence of Magic Guard has limited its defensive movepool (ie. No Reliable Recovery). I've actually tried Porygon2 over Krilowatt in some cases and found it to be a more consistent and reliable utility counter to Dragon Dancers and things vulnerable to Trace specifically because it has Recover and can keep itself healthy over the course of a match.

I realize that it's within your power as TL to say "No NSA", but I urge you to reconsider your not caring whether or not Krilowatt's better as something else. The very fact that it's better at something else suggests that its value as the utility counter we built it to be is inferior to that of the 'something else.' Not that anything can be done about this given the current state of the CAP process, but certainly you, in the position of the leaderboard that you're in, should be able to step back and say "Yeah, it does this other thing better and just isn't as reliable as it should be in what it should be able to do."

 

[Objection]

You are basically trying to make the case that, because our Pokemon can do something other than fulfill the role we designed it to fulfill, that we have failed. You may disagree with me, but I really don't care if a Pokemon can do other things (maybe even better than what it was supposed to) and be more prominently used in that role as long as it's not destabilizing anything.

I don't care if a pokemon can do things outside of its concept, just as long as fulfilling its concept is what it does best. Throughout the whole process of creating Krilowatt after the concept had been chosen, that concept was the focus of everything. We chose the typing based on the concept. We chose the abilities based on the concept. We chose the stats based on the concept. We chose the moves based on the concept. Therefore, the most logical end result is a pokemon that is extremely good at fulfilling its concept and mediocre/poor at doing anything else. Otherwise, what's the point of having a concept in the first place?

 

[Zystral]

'best' is entirely subjective. You will be hard pressed to find something that you can use to counter whatever you want that can fit your team so well, except for the case of perhaps Magnezone or Dugtrio.
Life Orb Sweeper Krilowatt is good, no doubt about that. However, the fact that it is still one of the most versatile counters around, and that more than likely a dedicated counter variant is more effective than a Life Orb/4 Attacks sweeper variant for your team means that Krilowatt has far from failed it's concept, it has just found a new job to be doing as well.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

I think it needs to be clarified that when I say 'best' or 'better', I am referring to usage statistics only. The 'better' variant of a Pokemon is the one that is used more than another. Sure, we don't have usage statistics for playtesting, but as I've played nearly every day of it so far, I can safely say that LO MG is being used a lot more than any other set. That said, I want to reiterate that Trace Lefties Krilowatt is awesome at doing what it is meant to do - utility counter the necessary threats for many teams. It's just that I feel that LO MG is 'better' and 'overshadowing' the Trace sets as it is used a ton more. Perhaps this will change with time, but I don't rightly think so.

 

[Dominion]

CAP10 did not fail. I think we have this inate fear of failure thus we are making the CAPs a tad too strong. Since all of the pokemon we make are forged around the already top pokemon (Such as Salamence, Scizor, etc), It turns out to be a tad more powerful than our over-all brainstorm says it will be.

CAP10 does do it's job, if not a tad too well. It isn't crippled as badly as it should be when it goes up against a pokemon it wasn't designed to counter. Salamence is beaten by almost any varient as many people have posted (This is ofcourse without considering crits or down-right bad luck).

So I can say this CAP is a success but I feel that we need to stop making these CAPs around the current metagame or perhaps pull back on something because other CAPs, including this one has shown that they always turn out a tad too powerful. They certainly aren't broken, but due to our nature to 'beat the current metagame' they sure do come off as such.

 

[Ezekiel]

I think it needs to be clarified that when I say 'best' or 'better', I am referring to usage statistics only. <snip> It's just that I feel that LO MG is 'better' and 'overshadowing' the Trace sets as it is used a ton more. Perhaps this will change with time, but I don't rightly think so.

While I do appreciate the fact that you're trying to back up claims with evidence, this is largely anecdote passed as stats: to the best of my knowledge, no one actually knows the usage percentages of LO/MG Krilowatt or Trace Krilowatt. Perhaps you've just been unlucky enough to be playing when a higher percentage of LO users are online; or, perhaps, people are going with the "obvious" option in the early stages of playtesting, and newer, stronger, more customized variants will appear as understanding matures. There's a myriad of secondary factors that could be affecting the data you've collected, and that's not even considering the many cognitive biases that all humans suffer from (frankly, I don't think you're being biased here, but such things must still be considered). I also think it's more than a little misleading, though very, very likely unintentionally so, to use the terms "best" and "better" when you mean "most commonly used" or "more commonly used"--to paraphrase Lewis Carroll, we must say what we mean so we can mean what we say.

Add to all this the fact that CAP has only conducted OU playtesting and has not yet moved onto the CAP metagame stage, I think it's extremely premature to say that CAP10 has failed to meet its goals. At best, I think we can say that Kril has--as usual, for CAP--become a strong sweeper, with a potent combination of characteristics and wide-ranging versatility, giving it a role beyond the strict limits of its concept. Does that mean we failed to live up to reachzero's concept? Maybe. However, until Doug and/or others have collected and posted concrete data on the matter, we have little room to say anything about success or failure.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

While I do appreciate the fact that you're trying to back up claims with evidence, this is largely anecdote passed as stats: to the best of my knowledge, no one actually knows the usage percentages of LO/MG Krilowatt or Trace Krilowatt.

If you play enough, you can get a good feel for it. No one actually knows for sure, but as I said before, I am speaking purely from experience. I've seen LO as an item far more than Leftovers, so much so that there's not a shadow of a doubt that it's used substantially more.

And yeah, I know there are a ton of things that can change what I and other people see. BEEJ was talking to me about how hype in general over Magic Guard plays a large role in what we see on the ladder, and I definitely agree. The reason we choose usage to describe the best sets, though, is because it is the only remotely impartial and quantitative model we can use to make such claims. Both Magic Guard and Trace are excellent abilities and Krilowatt that use either are excellent on myriad different teams. There's no other way we can claim X is "better" than Y.

Add to all this the fact that CAP has only conducted OU playtesting and has not yet moved onto the CAP metagame stage, I think it's extremely premature to say that CAP10 has failed to meet its goals.

It is important to remember that the CAP metagame is a "for the lulz" metagame that's very after the fact. A given CAP's success in the CAP metagame is completely irrelevant to whether it succeeded, was the best it could be, or whatever in the playtesting OU metagame. (Which is the goal of the CAP project)

 

[SJCrew]

SJCrew: krill is broken
Krilowatt used Ice Beam.
It's super effective!
Salamence lost 56% of its health.
Bobtheball4's Salamence fainted.

Bobtheball4: ya
Bobtheball4: i hate it
Bobtheball4: we should ban it
SJCrew: yea
Bobtheball4 switched in Jirachi (lvl 100 Jirachi).
Pointed stones dug into Jirachi.
Jirachi lost 6% of its health.
SJCrew: beej look what you did
Bobtheball4: ya
Bobtheball4: i hate you beej
Bobtheball4: you ruiuned it
Bobtheball4: !
BEEJ: lol
BEEJ: this was my plan actually
BEEJ: make it broken so that you all would suffer

I suspected this was his plan all along, but I hadn't actually garnered enough evidence up until now.

 

[Prius]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't many of the charactersitics Krill is displaying reasons that Garchomp was moved to Ubers? I mean sure, it probably won't sweep an entire team, but neither will mew tbh, and yet the one thing in common between the two is that they can do anything definitevely. Just saying.

 

[FlareBlitz]

Uh no. Until we give Krill Nasty Plot it won't be anything like Chompy. It's currently more like a bulkier, slower, weaker Starmie with better typing. To all of you who are saying that the all-out attacking Krill is broken, just replace it with an LO Starmie on your teams and I doubt you'll notice much of a difference.

 

[Yllnath]

O? Does Starmie also have the ability to take no damage from SR, the ability to switch into virtually anything without taking too much damage, the ability to ignore recoil damage from LO, etc? If so, please tell me how to make such a Starmie.
Krill has bulk to keep going and take repeated hits, and his ability to ignore all secondary damage is just over the top. Combine that with the power he gets when Life Orb is attached, and it's a far superior pokemon to Starmie.

 

[bubbly]

I just tried replacing Kril with Starmie, and its definitely not as useful as the CAP.

I agree with someone further up the page that many of the CAP's are just getting excessively powerful. This is for a few reasons - one is the process. At each stage that affects the battling (apart from movepool, where there is at least some good move bans), in general the best stuff to fit the concept is chosen. These are usually extremely strong abilities (e.g. Shield Dust, Magic Guard, Trace, Unaware), and great type combinations, because these two in particular are almost always chosen to maximise its direct ability to fulfil the concept (disregarding their secondary effects - in this case, Krill's brilliant offensive typing).
The second reason is I believe just that we love making pokemon which will be the pinnacle of each area of specialisation - which is much of the point of CAP. I'll take Colossoil as an example. Its abilities both affect status horribly, making using a status on it potentially suicide. But, it also has obscene stats, and a movepool as wide as the Pacific ocean.
Partly this rests in the reasonable dislike of creating new abilities/moves - its hard to fulfil these concepts with existing options.

As a short term fix, I'm going to throw myself behind getting rid of Magic Guard. I have a lot of respect for the Trace variants, which I prefer to use when plugging holes in general, but in most cases MG is just a much better option (not least because its pretty much guaranteed to be a big help, whereas Trace is sort of situational).

 

[Rising_Dusk]

O? Does Starmie also have the ability to take no damage from SR, the ability to switch into virtually anything without taking too much damage, the ability to ignore recoil damage from LO, etc? If so, please tell me how to make such a Starmie.
Krill has bulk to keep going and take repeated hits, and his ability to ignore all secondary damage is just over the top. Combine that with the power he gets when Life Orb is attached, and it's a far superior pokemon to Starmie.

Starmie can Rapid Spin, Starmie can Recover, Starmie has the ability to cure itself of Paralysis without the use of a move and without having to switch into a Pokemon with Natural Cure. Starmie also has a phenomenal base 115 Speed stat, coupled with a larger base 100 Special Attack stat, that with a Life Orb, hits substantially harder than Krilowatt. Sure, it takes recoil damage, but it can also Recover. For the record, Starmie also has Hydro Pump.

The only stuff that is unanimously superior to Starmie on Krilowatt is, take a guess, it's bulk. That was intentional, and there's nothing wrong with that because it gives it the bulk to survive high-power super-effective attacks and counter threats like Salamence and Gyarados - top-tier threats in the metagame.

Saying that "it's a far superior pokemon to Starmie" is complete bull and you know it. Starmie is not a Utility Counter, so trying to force it to be one is going to result in catastrophe no matter what.

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Before I continue this post, I am going to reiterate that Magic Guard does not make Krilowatt broken, it simply draws its focus away from the concept. That is the only reason we should consider removing it at some point in the future.

I agree with someone further up the page that many of the CAP's are just getting excessively powerful.

CAPs are intended to be top tier threats in the metagame, rivalling Pokemon like Salamence, Tyranitar, and Scizor. Regardless of an enormous movepool, the competitively used movepool of a CAP is very specific and generally relatively predictable. Keeping that in mind, sure, movepools could use to be a bit less extensive, and I am fairly sure that Doug will be addressing this in a PR thread at the end of Krilowatt Playtesting. Let's save that discussion for that thread.

Lastly, I'd like to suggest that Krilowatt is perhaps the CAP most deserving of an enormous movepool because of the job it has to fulfill. There are a lot of things that in retrospect bother me about Krilowatt's movepool as an avid OU player, but 'cest la view. It's a threat like any other and it's not too hard to deal with it. The best way to beat Krilowatt is to just punch it to death. Its life isn't going back up after you take it down unless you epic fail and let someone wishpass to it or it uses Rest.