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CAP 8 CAP 8 - Part 1 - Concept Poll 2
- Thread starter cyberzero
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First off, Did anyone remember the ability Magic Guard? You know, that wonderful but pretty neglected ability that prevent indirect damage from things like Hail/Sandstorm. Yeah here's a fun idea slap let's slap that ability your non-Ice type "Snowdra" and kiss your fears of indirect damage good-bye. Not only did we solved the problem with Hail damage, but also added EM's concept into the mix with no ill effects as well. You know what, we could add Mag/Plus idea as well and make it a pivot point for Hail teams thus killing three birds at once. Wouldn't that be a good idea?
The poll will close in due time, but at least 24 hours is necessary.
I maintain that we're going to be really hard-pressed to focus on building a Pokemon around an ability. Additionally, we've really already done this... several times. We're not learning anything new from having a Pokemon that makes great use of an otherwise underused ability so why is this being backed so much? Because there will never be an official poll to decide what ability this Pokemon will be based around, we're going to be going back asswards fighting over what it'll be in the polls that'll come before ability. And that could end up fucking up the goal of the Pokemon if it has X ability but the typing supports Y, a Style Bias that might be better suited for Z and so on.
In fairness, Kingdra of the Snow has its own issues. We'll most likely want Ice as primary typing. People are going to desperately attempt to avoid a Mamoswine - heaven knows we don't want to do what's been done - and will probably be horribly opposed to an SR weakness (over the entire course of CAP, only Pyroak has ever had to deal with an SR weakness... I'm kind of hoping we break the trend at least once). See how we're slowly narrowing down the available typings? Additionally, we'll probably end up making a new ability to back it like Hail Swift Swim to further help it along as a Hail juggernaut. Not saying it will happen, but the trends are trends. Though I do think this might have an interesting effect on the metagame.
All said and done - and failing Pivot Point's miraculous comeback - I will back Snowdra from hereon. Just saying.
In fairness, Kingdra of the Snow has its own issues. We'll most likely want Ice as primary typing. People are going to desperately attempt to avoid a Mamoswine - heaven knows we don't want to do what's been done - and will probably be horribly opposed to an SR weakness (over the entire course of CAP, only Pyroak has ever had to deal with an SR weakness... I'm kind of hoping we break the trend at least once). See how we're slowly narrowing down the available typings? Additionally, we'll probably end up making a new ability to back it like Hail Swift Swim to further help it along as a Hail juggernaut. Not saying it will happen, but the trends are trends. Though I do think this might have an interesting effect on the metagame.
All said and done - and failing Pivot Point's miraculous comeback - I will back Snowdra from hereon. Just saying.
Infinite Attack.
Still Voting For EM's Neglected Ability.
Aside from all other arguments, for or against "Snowdra", that have already been made by other posters (thus I'm not just going to repeat them all over again) I feel that in the long rung "Neglected ability" just has greater overall potential.
Aside from all other arguments, for or against "Snowdra", that have already been made by other posters (thus I'm not just going to repeat them all over again) I feel that in the long rung "Neglected ability" just has greater overall potential.
However, as Gothic Togekiss pointed out, we can select and implement Neglected Ability even if Hail-Kingdra is selected it by giving it an ability such as Magic Guard; the two don't have to be exclusive. Plus, there's also the problem Neglected Ability has of not only attempting to build a Pokemon around an ability as Mag has pointed out, which is difficult enough, but also leaving us knowledgless of what ability we're going to be attempting to build it around until after we've already decided the typing, in effect making us essentially completely blind and guideless during that part of the process. This is a great hindrance, which takes away from some of the potential of the idea. Considering this, I can't see why Neglected Ability has the most actually realizable potential of the available concepts; after all, all the potential in the world is meaningless without an actual concrete goal to focus it towards.
I've changed my mind, and I've voted for the Pivot Point. It'll be considerably more difficult to create, which is why I've chosen it over the Para-buser.
Also, I don't like the Kingdra of Snow. I feel that Snowdra would have to have around 140 base Special Attack to be of any use, due to Blizzard being weaker in Hail than Surf is in Rain, the low PP, and the lack of neutral coverage. It would also encourage use of some of the most already overused Pokemon in existence, like Scizor, Tyranitar, and Stratagem.
Also, I don't like the Kingdra of Snow. I feel that Snowdra would have to have around 140 base Special Attack to be of any use, due to Blizzard being weaker in Hail than Surf is in Rain, the low PP, and the lack of neutral coverage. It would also encourage use of some of the most already overused Pokemon in existence, like Scizor, Tyranitar, and Stratagem.
If we give a pokemon Magic Guard we can't just turn around and say 'lol Hail sweeper'. It's just 'lol sweeper with Blizzard!'.
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The only actual polls in between now and ability are typing and style bias. There are so many abilities we can use that I think it's safe to say no matter what typing we pick we can use a good 'neglected' ability with it. Not to mention we will have plenty of discussion time for this with Ability Discussion and Concept Assessment. You'd be kidding yourself if you actually thought that having typing before ability makes the concept any less viable.
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The only actual polls in between now and ability are typing and style bias. There are so many abilities we can use that I think it's safe to say no matter what typing we pick we can use a good 'neglected' ability with it. Not to mention we will have plenty of discussion time for this with Ability Discussion and Concept Assessment. You'd be kidding yourself if you actually thought that having typing before ability makes the concept any less viable.
The concept is inherently less viable because it doesn't give any direction At All. It's possible to arguee that pretty much any Ability is neglected. Ok, I'm not talking about Pickup, or something uber common like Levitate but you could argue that Flash Fire is a neglected Ability cos it's a great one and only 1 OU poke has it, you can argue similarly for Serene Grace, or Mountaineer or Solar Power or Static or Synchronise or Shadow Tag or Bad Dreams or Effect Spore or Shield Dust or Magic Guard or Wonder Guard or Anger Point or Forecast.
With everyone having different ideas about what Neglected Ability they want, I have strong fears that the typing and style bias polls are going to be all over the place.
Yes, we have a Concept Assessment stage but you're kidding yourself if you think the community will come to a consensus on a particular Ability (or even a slate of 10) without a poll or 3. It's just not going to happen. Thus, this concept doesn't fit well with the current process.
If you believe otherwise, please explain how we can choose the typing for a pokemon that is supposed to be Built Around some as yet unnamed Ability?
With everyone having different ideas about what Neglected Ability they want, I have strong fears that the typing and style bias polls are going to be all over the place.
Yes, we have a Concept Assessment stage but you're kidding yourself if you think the community will come to a consensus on a particular Ability (or even a slate of 10) without a poll or 3. It's just not going to happen. Thus, this concept doesn't fit well with the current process.
If you believe otherwise, please explain how we can choose the typing for a pokemon that is supposed to be Built Around some as yet unnamed Ability?
This is very true. If it has Magic Guard instead of being an Ice-type, how is using Blizzard on it any different from using Fire Punch on Groudon? (for example)
To make matters worse, people wouldn't even use Hail. We would just end up with people using "Snowdra" as an ordinary sweeper with Ice Beam and not caring about the whether.
Why did we even need a concept that's heavily focused on underused abilities anyway? Don't we already do that sort of thing in past CAPs or in general? Wasn't Rev, Argh, Kit, and possibly Fidgit not enough to quench your thirst for underused ability use? The concept within itself seem like a sly and creative way to make sure that CAP8's abilities are those people considered neglected. Speaking of that how does one considered a ability neglected anyway? Does one considered abilities like Poison Heal and Flash Fire neglected? Do we go by numbers of ability holders or by quality of the pokemon with said ability?
Edit: Damnit, Jagged_Angel beat me to the punch on my last point.
Edit: Damnit, Jagged_Angel beat me to the punch on my last point.
It doesn't need to come to a concensus for typing or stat build. Those polls should pretty much be all over the place. They sure are for most of the other CAPs. There are plenty of neglected abilities and I'm sure we can find one that works well with whatever typing we choose.
It is not possible to argue that almost any ability is neglected. Failing that, I trust cyber as a TL to weed out the abilities that don't fit. (Solar Power technically is neglected btw).
I think I'm just going to flat out state for the purpose of this concept that any ability that is on a pokemon in the OU tier is clearly not neglected. And then there are abilities like Snow Warning that have a niche in OU play and thus aren't neglected. So no Flash Fire. No Levitate. No Speed Boost, etc. Custom abilities are obviously out of the question. I think this leaves us with plenty of abilities left to pick from (though of course I don't feel that they are all 'neglected').
EDIT- Wow a convenient same time post from GT. Obviously making Arghonaut/Kitsunoh was not enough for me and others. I [personally] would like to see how an even more underused ability affects how a pokemon can be made and what it would do on a nonsucky pokemon. Of course, I can't speak for the people who actually voted for me.
It is not possible to argue that almost any ability is neglected. Failing that, I trust cyber as a TL to weed out the abilities that don't fit. (Solar Power technically is neglected btw).
I think I'm just going to flat out state for the purpose of this concept that any ability that is on a pokemon in the OU tier is clearly not neglected. And then there are abilities like Snow Warning that have a niche in OU play and thus aren't neglected. So no Flash Fire. No Levitate. No Speed Boost, etc. Custom abilities are obviously out of the question. I think this leaves us with plenty of abilities left to pick from (though of course I don't feel that they are all 'neglected').
EDIT- Wow a convenient same time post from GT. Obviously making Arghonaut/Kitsunoh was not enough for me and others. I [personally] would like to see how an even more underused ability affects how a pokemon can be made and what it would do on a nonsucky pokemon. Of course, I can't speak for the people who actually voted for me.
Not necessarily. After all, assuming that it's decided that Blizzard does need to be boosted to make this thing viable, there are numerous things we can do, such as give it an ability similar to Adaptability that changes it's modifier on Ice-moves to x2, or other such similar ideas.
Again, not necessarily, as we don't have to make it Ice. We can also give it moves like Superpower in order to handle Pokemon such as those. Denying it certain other moves as well will make it end up having different counters than the other members currently found on Hail-teams, in effect increasing the viability of it and other members on Hail teams by not compounding on the existing weaknesses of such teams, and instead making them more rounded out. As a result, there's no telling how it will effect the metagame until it's actually made.
Perhaps. But abilities such as Ice Body and Snow Cloak are also rarely seen in OU and thus would also qualify as Neglected Abilities.EM said:
However, the point is, the concept is "Neglected Ability." As a result, we should be picking a type that allows it to use a neglected ability as effectively as possible, and not just pick a neglected ability that goes with whatever happens to be the favorite-type. The fact that we can't do that, and have to wait until the ability step before we have an actual concrete focus to work with is in effect a hit to the effectiveness of the concept. As it stands, due to the lack of a unified focus, the typing will be decided primarily based on whatever's most popular with little else to guide us and we'll end up pasting whatever ability works best with that typing onto it, even if that ability is hardly desirable and wouldn't have been selected had we worked out the actual focus on the foundation concept, the ability, first, which means that this concept really isn't preferable with our current OoE.EM said:
Ability Discussion is too late; we would have already begun work on the Pokemon by then and having to work on a CAP without an actual focus to guide us is insane, definitely something that shold be avoided if possible. As for Concept Assessment, as I've already pointed out, based on its past performances, will at best narrow the ideas down to several potential abilities, with no actual concensus and due to that will have us going into Typing without an actual solid goal in mind.EM said:
And perhaps it will turn out fine, but without a guiding force during the other steps, something the other concepts have, it could also quite easily turn quite mediocre and thus I would prefer one of those other concepts which actually have a focus to guide us from the first step.
What constitutes "even more underused"? Prior to Revy, only Arbok and Seviper, bottom of the barrel NU Pokemon, had Shed Skin. Before Kitsunoh, only Stantler and Banette, more Pokemon of the NU variety, had Frisk. Prior to Argho, only Bibarel had Unaware. How do we get more underused than that? Why do we need to, having already proven it possible with such Pokemon? Should we not direct our efforts elsewhere, and investigate some other aspect of gameplay? From the current state of things, at least I'd definitely say so, with us already having proven this to be quite possible, having done so, and would thus prefer us to work on another aspect of the metagame, that needs more focus and attention, and we can learn more from.EM said:
Pivot Point is the idea i like
This is just ridiculous. How are we supposed to vote for a typing then. Shall we just roll a couple of 17 sided dice? Typing is always a pertinent part of CAP, I can't believe you would say that EM. Starting from Fidgit the typing discussion has always revolved around the Concept and been strongly influenced by it.
Fidgit: Poison to absorb TS and Ground to absorb more status making for a team player Utility poke
Strata: Rock to obviously break the clear cut slow physical stereotype.
Argho: Typing to resist/threaten the majority of the top 10 OU pokes
Kitsunoh: Typing for large number of resists/immunities to switch in and scout.
I'm sure you already know that so why would you say that typing is irrelevant for this concept?!
Obviously we can find an ability that would bolster Any typing. That's not the point.
The concept is supposed to provide Cohesiveness and Direction to the process so that CAPs aren't just thrown together from unnconnected polls. If you're saying that Neglected Ability means we have no direction until the Ability Poll, I strongly oppose your Concept.
heh like what? @Naxte
Do hail teams need more attention? Not really, they work fine. And... 'syclant'
Do we need a pivot pokemon? What's wrong with Heatran or whatever? They work just dandy. You can say, "we didn't make them so their impact isn't as relative", but the fact is that you can still analyze why they are such good 'pivots' and all that goes along with that. The fact the we can't just look back at a process for how they were made is irrelevant (I'm bringing this up because Mag argued this once), because I can say that we weren't really planning on basing Rev around Shed Skin, or Arghonaut around Unaware, or even to an extent Kitsunoh around Frisk (if we were we did a pretty bad job on this since Limber is much better most of the time). Arghonaut around Unaware is the only remotely viable argument, but I want to take this even further with Neglected Ability.
The others sadly don't have enough attention to warrant such responses, which is a shame because I like them.
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Obviously my description of what a neglected ability is isn't perfect, but can you guys just fucking trust the community for once and use some common sense?
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EDIT- @jagged:
We could have gone with plenty of other typings for Fidgit (there are plenty of typins a support pokemon can be, Poison isn't mandatory) or Stratagem or Arghonaut (this is basically a tossup since while there was no perfect typing for counter top threats, ie we could have gone with something like Fire/Ground or whatever) or Kitsunoh (Steel/Ghost was obviously the perfect typing [/sarcasm]). Hell, we could have gone with practically ANY typing for Stratagem.
If you can't stand not having a full direction for one and a half polls then I don't think that speaks badly for my concept (considering there are 13?/14?/15?/more? polls in the whole cap), I think that says something about you.
Do hail teams need more attention? Not really, they work fine. And... 'syclant'
Do we need a pivot pokemon? What's wrong with Heatran or whatever? They work just dandy. You can say, "we didn't make them so their impact isn't as relative", but the fact is that you can still analyze why they are such good 'pivots' and all that goes along with that. The fact the we can't just look back at a process for how they were made is irrelevant (I'm bringing this up because Mag argued this once), because I can say that we weren't really planning on basing Rev around Shed Skin, or Arghonaut around Unaware, or even to an extent Kitsunoh around Frisk (if we were we did a pretty bad job on this since Limber is much better most of the time). Arghonaut around Unaware is the only remotely viable argument, but I want to take this even further with Neglected Ability.
The others sadly don't have enough attention to warrant such responses, which is a shame because I like them.
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Obviously my description of what a neglected ability is isn't perfect, but can you guys just fucking trust the community for once and use some common sense?
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EDIT- @jagged:
We could have gone with plenty of other typings for Fidgit (there are plenty of typins a support pokemon can be, Poison isn't mandatory) or Stratagem or Arghonaut (this is basically a tossup since while there was no perfect typing for counter top threats, ie we could have gone with something like Fire/Ground or whatever) or Kitsunoh (Steel/Ghost was obviously the perfect typing [/sarcasm]). Hell, we could have gone with practically ANY typing for Stratagem.
If you can't stand not having a full direction for one and a half polls then I don't think that speaks badly for my concept (considering there are 13?/14?/15?/more? polls in the whole cap), I think that says something about you.
Eh, hail teams really aren't that great right now. And Syclant really isn't a great example, as I've pointed out earlier. At fist, we created a Pokemon in Syclant that was too much, and had to take away from its movepool and speed to make it not quite so broken. Having done that though, Syclant quickly went from overpowered to a rather mediocre sweeper, due to such factors no longer making up for its atrocious typing. Thus, as demonstrated by Syclant's current effectiveness, there is quite obviously much more we can learn about Hail and how to make it viable in the current metagame than by simply pursuing another with a neglected ability, which, by the success of Pokemon such as Arghonaut, we have proven quite capable of doing.
I do trust the community and know that it's full to all kinds of awesome people, some of whom have figured out solutions to complicated problems, such as X-Act's success in creating a movepool for Arghonaut. However, no matter how awesome the people have, or how much potential they have, without an actual direction to lead that awesomeness and potential towards, there's nothing even they can do, being surrounded by darkness with no guiding light until several important decisions have already been made.
Again, that's not necessarily a limit:
Naxte said:
There is an extremely large debate about the conflict between if EM's concept wins and the process not agreeing with it. In the even that it does win, there IS a Concept Assessment section in which we can briefly discuss some abilities that are possible, as well as discuss what our definition of "Neglected" will be. After making a decision, maybe a preliminary list of abilities, a type can be chosen that would hopefully be able to encompass the use of as many chosen abilities beforehand without one particular ability being biased.
This was actually the reason that I didn't want to vote for EM's concept, no offense. I fully support Naxte's words in saying that a crucial part, the typing, will have nothing to influence it, no guiding light. Once we actually do pick an ability, how would we pick a movepool? How would we find stats for it? Would we pick the ability on how neglected it is or on how a rare ability would be interesting to add to the metagame? There are a lot of tough questions with huge impacts and I'm not sure that the community would be able to answer them.
This was actually the reason that I didn't want to vote for EM's concept, no offense. I fully support Naxte's words in saying that a crucial part, the typing, will have nothing to influence it, no guiding light. Once we actually do pick an ability, how would we pick a movepool? How would we find stats for it? Would we pick the ability on how neglected it is or on how a rare ability would be interesting to add to the metagame? There are a lot of tough questions with huge impacts and I'm not sure that the community would be able to answer them.
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