CAP 9 CAP 9 - Secondary Typing Discussion

[familyguyman]

Of the types on which people have focused so far, I favor Fighting for its Stealth Rock resistance, excellent STAB, and cancellation of meaningful weaknesses with the primary type. I would be reasonably happy with this result.

However, I would like to recommend that we take a second look at Dragon. Many people seem to think that choosing this type automatically takes the Pokemon down a glass-cannon, offensively-oriented road. Also, I understand the objection to another Dragon-type right after Cyclohm. However, Dragon has several strengths which I think require consideration.

1.) Strong defensive typing. Steel has been largely written-off because it would give CAP9 a 4x weakness to Fighting. I agree with this reasoning. However, Steel was first suggested because it is such an overall strong type defensively. Dragon is similar in this regard, without the crippling Fighting weakness. A Dark/Dragon CAP9 would have the following:

Resistance: Dark, Electric, Fire, Ghost, Grass, Water, Psychic (immune)
Weakness: Bug, Dragon, Fighting, Ice

This is not exactly Empoleon, but it is an excellent selection, one which would allow CAP9 to repeatedly switch in to opposing attacks from numerous threats. This creates compelling synergy with one of the project's other primary goals: minimizing the impact and relevance of entry hazards. And while it is not itself resistant to Stealth Rock, I believe that this has been overemphasized thus far, since there is a lot more to "the secondary" than just that. Adding an ability like Levitate, Magic Guard, or even Soundproof to a Dark/Dragon could still give phaze-reliant stall teams absolute fits.

2.) Strong offensive typing. This is not as good a case as the above, but Dark/Dragon is still excellent from an offensive standpoint, even if it's no Kingdra or Revenankh. Dark and Dragon are collectively resisted only by Steel, and Dragon adds a useful super effective STAB against such persistent threats as Salamence and Flygon, giving CAP9 added relevance against teams other than the obvious Stall.

3.) Flavor. A Dark/Dragon CAP9 would allow us to explore two rich, hitherto underexplored typings in terms of flavor concepts. As several users have pointed out, Dragon has always meant one or both offensive stats reaching at least base 100 and a diverse movepool of non-STAB attacks including potent options like Earthquake, Fire Blast, and Surf. Dark on the other hand, has remained nebulous, used mostly on dual-type Pokemon with no really consistent thread between them. Murkrow and Darkai suggest that it may be tied to the night, so what about a "sleeping dragon" Pokemon? This plays to a stat spread less focused on hyper offense (which everyone seems to agree CAP9 should avoid), and would invite an interesting new take on both of these types. By contrast, Ground and Fighting are both well-explored.

To me, the best argument against Dragon is simply the risk of similarity to Cyclohm. It would be another secondary Dragon, and Cyclohm did already have Shield Dust, overlapping slightly with this concept. This seems like a really inadequate criticism, as the goal of CAP9 is to produce an interesting and relevant new contribution to the metagame. CAP has reused types before, such as between Revenankh and Arghonaut, so I would not hesitate to do it again if it is the best choice for CAP9. I believe that, in this case, it is.

Adding Dragon would make it vulnerable to Latias who is a strong Trick user. I think it would be counter intuitive and it provides very little help with secondary moves. Defensive typing is nice but Steel was suggested for it's Toxic immunity, resistance to Stealth Rock and Sandstorm. Not solely for being a good defensive type.

Dragon, to me, is redundant in style with Dark, both geared towards offense in this case.

 

[Donny Mae.]

I think Dark and Normal whould be good, although it sports a x4 fighting weakness, it becomes Immune to ghost attacks.

 

[Fuzznip]

I feel that Poison will make a fantastic secondary typing for our Dark-type CAP. It provides several useful resistances, immunities, and in my opinion, offers more than most of the other types. Below will be why I feel Poison should be considered.

Dark/Poison

The biggest thing Poison offers is it nullifies Dark’s weaknesses to Bug and Fighting, and Dark keeps its immunity to Psychic moves that would otherwise hit Poison super effectively. Also, Dark/Poison will only have one weakness to worry about in Ground-type attacks. Even though it may be a common offensive attack, it can be easily dealt with by using resistant Pokemon, Flyers, Levitators, etc (hmm Levitate...).

Speaking of being only resistant to one type of move, Poison/Dark also has great defensive synergy. Each of them provide helpful resistances and immunities towards each other like stated above, so if this CAP turns out to be defensive, it'd be tough to take down.

Toxic will now be worthless, as it just gives CAP9 the perfect opportunity to switch in and start whatever it needs to do. Also, if CAP9 does turn out to be defensive, the opponent can no longer neuter it with Toxic, like many defensive Pokemon are vulnerable to. If Poison is immune to Toxic, then it will obviously be immune to Toxic Spikes, which is definitely worth it.

Leech Seeders, such as Celebi and Breloom, will now be threatened due to the fact that their STAB Grass-type moves are no longer hitting CAP9 for neutral damage. Also, they each will be hit super effectively by STAB Poison-type moves, even though Poison is generally a terrible offensive type. Many Grass-types in general will have a hard time combatting Dark/Poison, and many of them use a lot of secondary moves, like Roserade for example.

 

[viol and bass]

While I initially supported ground as the main typing, I think the fact that we chose dark as the main type means that using purely typing to stop secondary effects is no longer an option. Which means that the ability will likely be the main factor in stopping secondary effects. Now, if we choose something like volt absorb, motor drive, flash fire, water absorb, or even something like sticky hold, we would be stopping a single secondary effect but not really achieving the goal of the concept. Which is why I believe that the ability will have to encompass more secondary effects, probably in the form of a custom ability.

Now, you may ask why I'm talking so much about the ability in the secondary typing thread but my main point is this: If we're probably going to be stopping a large variety of secondary effects with the ability, there's no reason to justify the typing based on the secondary effects that it stops. This, for instance, eliminates the main argument for dark/ground.

If you disagree with me about the ability, please suggest how this could go another way.

Edit: I support dark/poison due to having only one weakness and absorbing toxic spikes.

 

[zorbees]

Hmm, it doesn't seem like Steel has any support, so I'll at least state my points and see what happens.

Weaknesses: Fire x2, Fighting x4, Ground x2
Resistances: Normal x1/2, Ice x1/2, Rock x1/2, Psychic x0, Steel x1/2, Dark x1/4, Ghost x1/4, Dragon x1/2, Poison x0, Flying x1/2, Grass x1/2
Neutralities: Bug x1, Water x1, Electric x1

Sure, the weaknesses are pretty bad, but the resistances are incredibly good. Normal, Ice, Rock, Steel, Dark, Ghost, Dragon, and Grass are all pretty useful resistances. It helps fulfill the concept because it allows CAP9 to take attacks from the secondary users if it mispredicts. For example, the ability to take a Latias Draco Meteor is huge. Ground typing also leaves us with Water, Grass, and Ice weaknesses which I believe are pretty bad weaknesses to have, especially in addition to Fighting and Bug. Fighting is pretty good weakness-wise with only Flying and Fighting to worry about, but Fighting offers few resistances (just Rock, making the Dark resist stronger, and canceling the Bug weakness).

The fact that it doesn't have a good dual-STAB is pretty negligible. Lets take a look at how many Pokemon use both STABs compared to those who don't.

Do: Flygon, Heracross, Infernape, Kingdra, Magnezone, Mamoswine, Rhyperior, Rotom-A, Scizor, Tyranitar, Weavile.
Don't: Aerodactyl, Bronzong, Dragonite, Empoleon, Forretress, Gengar, Heatran, Jirachi, Latias, Lucario, Metagross, Ninjask, Salamence, Skarmory, Starmie, Tentacruel, Zapdos.
Sometimes do: Breloom, Celebi, Gliscor, Gyarados, Swampert, Togekiss.

If you look through that list, many of the top OU Pokemon do not use both STABs (I only included dual-typed Pokemon by the way). Out of the top 13 most used Pokemon (counting Rotom-A as one Pokemon), only 4 almost always use both STABs, and only 2 others sometimes do. Note that all of the top 13 Pokemon are dual-typed. I do not see that many advantages to a Ground or Fighting STAB that helps the concept (Ground scares Jirachi and Metagross, Fighting scares Blissey, both scare Heatran. While Steel doesn't scare any directly, its defensive prowess helps it take Latias, Roserade, Celebi, and Cresselia more easily, although it does give some problems against Bulky Grounds, but they'll likely get up their Rocks anyways.) that Steel doesn't do. Ground absorbing Thunder Wave is nice, but since all three of these typings (Ground, Fighting, Steel) in addition to Dark seem to be using physical attacks, the fact that Will-o-Wisp would cripple this Pokemon makes me think that we will be using some ability that helps against Status. Sure, no Poison Heal is bad, but Guts is still there (Flame Orb use can prevent other statuses) as is Shed Skin.

EDIT: Poison seems to be gaining support, so I'll address that now. Poison-type compared to Steel-type is not that much different. They both are immune to Poisoning (meaning Poison Heal is out of the question) as well as having bad secondary STABs. The differences are as follows.

Poison: Only a Ground weakness, but not as many good resists. Absorbs Toxic Spikes on impact.
Steel: Ground, Fire, and x4 Fighting weaknesses, but a ton of useful resistances. Immune to Sandstorm.

I feel that the useful resistances really help against the common Secondary users more than Toxic Spikes absorption and less weaknesses. To all of those who are scared to use something because of crippling weaknesses, look at Pokemon like Salamence (who too has 3 common weaknesses, one being a 4x weakness) and Lucario (no 4x weakness, but it dies to most Super Effective hits anyways). The weaknesses can help keep this Pokemon in check while it is still useful due to its Dark STAB and multiple resistances. I feel too many people are righting off the Steel-type purely because of the bad weaknesses when Steel has other merits that should be looked at.

 

[Robo-Ky]

For a more offensive typing, I will formally recommend Fighting. It provides excellent STAB coverage along with Dark, gives it only two weaknesses to Fighting and Flying, and adds a Stealth Rock resistance. As for checking common secondary users, Blissey would become CAP9's bitch (if we choose to make it physical of course), and, to a lesser extent, Smeargle. This would be in addition to the number of other secondary users it already checks (Rotom formes, Azelf, Cresselia, etc.).

Should we make this more of a defensive Pokemon, Poison would be a great choice. This typing leaves it with only a weakness to Ground, a number of helpful resistances, as well as immunity to Toxic and Toxic Spikes, two major handicaps to defensive Pokemon. Also, I agree with Fuzznip, as this Pokemon would be incredibly easy to switch into Toxic users, potentially making the status effect far less viable in the metagame.

I think Dark and Normal whould be good, although it sports a x4 fighting weakness, it becomes Immune to ghost attacks.

Sorry to break it to you, but immunities aren't everything. Dark/Normal would be completely redundant, as Dark already sports a resistance to Ghost, while the Normal type would add a crippling 4x Fighting weakness and no extra resistances, which is a huge price to pay for a Ghost immunity.

 

[Deck Knight]

I see two serious options here, but have more and more come to the decision that Dark/Fighting is the way to go.

Why Fighting?

Fighting offers several offensive and defensive benefits. The first is neutralities. Fighting nulls the Dark main typing's Bug weakness, leaving it with only Fighting and Flying weaknesses. Dark also synergizes with Fighting by removing the Psychic weakness. As rare an attack type as Psychic is, not being vulnerable to it is a plus.

Fighting also brings with it Rock resistance and by proxy, resistance to Stealth Rock.

The Dark and Fighting STAB combination is resisted only by Heracross, and with access to STAB Brick Break, CAP9 could break down many strategies employed by secondary pokemon without losing too much offensive power.

Finally, in contrast to Ground, which I also like, Bulky Waters and Celebi have no immediately effective means to exploit a Dark/Fighting typing. In fact, Skarmory is the sole secondary user that can make use of Dark/Fighting's weaknesses, and it could be potentially addresses with Counter, powerful special attacks, or brute force, seeing as it can't Roost in the face of a STAB Focus Punch, and doesn't actually resist Fighting to begin with.

 

[Nik S D]

Dark/Steel...that's a hell load of resistances...not that I support it, of course. I'm still going for Dark/Ground. Fighting comes in a strong second for me, though.

 

[familyguyman]

@zorbees (big post so I didn't want to quote)

The weaknesses are huge for Steel types. In OU only Magnezone has a secondary type that does not resist Fire, Fighting or Ground. Bronzong's only clear advantages over Registeel are neutrality to Fighting and immunity to Ground.

A Steel type needs a strong secondary type or else it will have a lot of trouble. Earthquake is probably the most threatening offensive move. Fire is one of the best offensive types and Fighting is used in high BP moves by strong Pokemon. You can not leave this many weaknesses and hope to survive defensively.

 

[ReysonTheNoble]

I was thinking Fighting since we all apparently decided that we don't want immunities on this CAP. Offensively, Fighting is amazing, and it opens up a different way to punish Trick users. Not all common users of Trick are vulnerable to Pursuit. Examples of them are Metagross, Jirachi, Kitsunoh, and Bronzong. So when a STAB Pursuit isn't good enough, use STAB Focus Punch. Hitting the switch-in can be just as useful as hitting the switch-out. It also makes it less predictable.

Fighting is also a great defensive type here. It boasts a resist to our current Bug weakness, along with a resistance to Rock, which is great for our CAP. Combined with Dark, our CAP would only have two weaknesses: Flying and Fighting.

As a second place, I'd vote Ground, for reasons I've stated before, and many others have restated them in this thread. The only reason I would choose Ground over Fighting is to beat Fidgit, and to a lesser extent, Kitsunoh.

 

[Nik S D]

I was thinking Fighting since we all apparently decided that we don't want immunities on this CAP. Offensively, Fighting is amazing, and it opens up a different way to punish Trick users. Not all common users of Trick are vulnerable to Pursuit. Examples of them are Metagross, Jirachi, Kitsunoh, and Bronzong. So when a STAB Pursuit isn't good enough, use STAB Focus Punch. Hitting the switch-in can be just as useful as hitting the switch-out. It also makes it less predictable.

Fighting is also a great defensive type here. It boasts a resist to our current Bug weakness, along with a resistance to Rock, which is great for our CAP. Combined with Dark, our CAP would only have two weaknesses: Flying and Fighting.

As a second place, I'd vote Ground, for reasons I've stated before, and many others have restated them in this thread. The only reason I would choose Ground over Fighting is to beat Fidgit, and to a lesser extent, Kitsunoh.

Hold up, when did we "all decide that we don't want immunities"?

 

[Umbreon Dan]

Unless I'm mistaken-in which case, please correct me-but "Stop" means to end something, to make it inactive. In what way does setting up tons of status affects "Stop" secondaries?

wha...?

Poison is a good enough typing, except I would rather be weak to Fighting and Flying than to Ground. Offensively, it's worthless (Celebi is weak to Dark already and breloom would most likely be at least 2HKOed by a fighting attack).

Dragon really isn't a good defensive type. We intended Cyclohm to be defensive and gave it Hippowdon stats. It's a terrible wall though because of its weaknesses. Steel is just awful.

Hold up, when did we "all decide that we don't want immunities"?

maybe when 75% voted dark

 

[HD]

Steel does basically nothig for this concept. The only thing it does is a)sandstorm resist, b)toxic immunity and c) sr resist. Other than that, it does nothing. Steel is a horrible STAB, and doesn't hit any of the secondary move users for super effective. Steel/Ground also has a some of the most common weaknesses: 4x Fighting, 2x Ground, and 2x Fire. The STAB, as mentioned, is horrible. So what if it has resistances? This Pokemon is starting to look very offensive.

I put my support into Poison. As mentioned, it absorbs Toxic Spikes on impact, and takes random Toxic's thrown around, giving trouble to Stall teams (Steel does this aswell, except for absorbing Toxic Spikes). Poison is a godly defensive typing, being weak to only ground and psychic (and psychic is nuetralized by our primary typing, dark). Also, Posion and Dark complement each other wonderfully. Poison resists the fighting and bug weaknesses of Dark, and Dark has the psychic immunity. This is why I support the Poison typing.

 

[Nik S D]

@ Umbreon Dan - Just because the main type is Dark, doesn't mean that everyone has given up on immunities. Hasn't most of this thread been about secondary types that have great resistances and immunities?

 

[Infiltrator]

Fighting is the best option here. Dark/Fighting will offer both defensive and offensive coverage, along with having great synergy to cover each of the other weaknesses and will be neutral to a lot of types.

Dark/Fighting also gain resistance from Stealth Rocks. I think Dark/Fighting is probably the best typing to fulfill its concept.

 

[Objection]

One more little point from me: Paralysis, among other things, has a chance to prevent a pokemon from doing anything. Unless we make a custom ability that, for example, increases both defences by 1 stage every time CAP9 gets fully paralysed, there is no way that CAP9 can benefit from paralysis any more than it would benefit from other status moves. This is why I believe immunity to Thunder Wave is paramount as far as typing is concerned and why I support Ground to the end.

If Ground is not picked as a secondary typing, I'm voting for Limber or Shed Skin as the primary ability. If after the abilities stage CAP9 is still not laughing at the move Thunder Wave (not the pokemon that use it), then I am dismissing it as a failure.

 

[Elegy]

A little complaint about Poison:

Poison does a nice job with the Toxic(spikes) immunity, the defensive synergy, the 1 weakness and etc. and i'm for that. But what about the opponent's Steel types? Its bad enough to rely on STAB Pursuit to solve your problems, but a Poison STAB would do nothing to the Steels who can easily set up on you faster than you can Taunt. How would you get around this?

 

[ReysonTheNoble]

@ Umbreon Dan - Just because the main type is Dark, doesn't mean that everyone has given up on immunities. Hasn't most of this thread been about secondary types that have great resistances and immunities?

Yes, but the chance to abuse those immunities has passed. Dark has absolutely no value when it comes to being immune to the "Secondary". So I assume we're going with a full offensive here, punishing the opponent for using secondary moves. Fighting accomplishes this well, providing a useful dual STAB combination as well as great defensive coverage so that it can keep switching in. Think about it, if Scizor didn't have good defensive typing, you couldn't abuse it to the fullest because it couldn't switch in all the time.

 

[Xyphang]

Currently, I'm liking Poison. Steel is horrible, for reasons already stated. I personally dislike the idea of using ground; it has which leaves poison and fighting. I'm leaning toward poison to take toxic and toxic spikes. Poison gives one weakness to the Pokemon, and covers two of them, making a more beneficial typing. Also, ground doesn't offer much that fighting doesn't besides thunder wave immunity. Fighting in close second for SR resist, offensive options, and, since Flying is barely used, a pretty good defensive typing as well.

 

[viol and bass]

A little complaint about Poison:

Poison does a nice job with the Toxic(spikes) immunity, the defensive synergy, the 1 weakness and etc. and i'm for that. But what about the opponent's Steel types? Its bad enough to rely on STAB Pursuit to solve your problems, but a Poison STAB would do nothing to the Steels who can easily set up on you faster than you can Taunt. How would you get around this?

Make it faster than most steel types?

 

[Objection]

A little complaint about Poison:

Poison does a nice job with the Toxic(spikes) immunity, the defensive synergy, the 1 weakness and etc. and i'm for that. But what about the opponent's Steel types? Its bad enough to rely on STAB Pursuit to solve your problems, but a Poison STAB would do nothing to the Steels who can easily set up on you faster than you can Taunt. How would you get around this?

By not relying on STAB of course! Just because CAP9 becomes Dark/Poison for example, doesn't mean it can't get and use Flamethrower or Earthquake. This is why when I argued in favour of Ground typing, I made little if any mention of the offensive typing.

I've seen this short-sightedness in CAP before. We always seem to focus on an "awesome" typing with "awesome" abilities and "awesome" stats and we don't even think about movepool until the movepool thread appears, by which stage it's a fight between "CAPX needs move Y t counter pokemon Z" and "Move Y would make CAPX broken". I thought the whole relaunch of CAP would've solved this problem or at least shown signs of improvement, but clearly I was mistaken.

Yes, but the chance to abuse those immunities has passed.

Until both the full typing and all of the abilities have been decided on, the chance to abuse immunities has not passed. And as I said before, CAP9 can't punish someone for using a move with a secondary effect if CAP9 itself gets crippled by said secondary effect the instant it switches in. Cue the whole Thunder Wave argument again.

 

[petrie911]

Poison seems like a very nice type. The main thing is immunity to Toxic and Toxic Spikes absorption, and only a single weakness to the most common immunity in the game. Unless we give it levitate, in which case it no longer absorbs Toxic Spikes, but then CAP9 HAS NO WEAK! Grass and Poison are the only resistances it brings to the table, though.

Fighting is also an excellent choice. SR resist is never a bad thing, and most secondary users will have trouble with it. The type coverage of its STAB combo is, of course, amazing, and 4x Dark resist is...there.

Ground I'm less than thrilled about. Twave immune and SR resist are good, but Ground has a terrible set of weaknesses, and doesn't cancel any of Dark's. It makes you more likely to get hit hard if you switch into a Choice Tricker who decides not to Trick, and since many Trickers carry U-turn, the Bug weak could be problematic.

I'd say Fighting and Poison are the two best secondary types to use, with preference to Fighting.

 

[DougJustDoug]

I'm against Fighting for two reasons:

1) I don't see much specific help for the concept, other than the general claim "Fighting is a good type overall" -- which is true. Fighting is a really good type, in general. It rocks, we know that. Which is why...

2) We discuss Fighting or put Fighting on almost every CAP, it seems. There's no rule that says we can't make another Fighting CAP pokemon. But, we have done Fighting twice already, and we discussed it on a couple other CAP pokemon too. I feel the same way about Ghost -- "Ugh... do we need to have the same discussions AGAIN?...." For some project members, I guess it doesn't bug you. But, for me, it seems too much like "Been there, done that."

Yes, I know every CAP has it's own niche, and Dark/Fighting will be different than Fighting/Ghost or Water/Fighting. But, I just don't see learning too much more about Fighting itself. If I really thought Fighting added significant support for the concept, then maybe I would feel differently. But, it seems like Fighting is popular because Fighting is just a good overall type, which makes it decent on just about any pokemon we make. I'd like to push for something more than that. Fighting on this pokemon is too safe a choice. Let's push ourselves and try something with a little more edge.

Not Fighting... please.

 

[Nik S D]

Yes, but the chance to abuse those immunities has passed. Dark has absolutely no value when it comes to being immune to the "Secondary". So I assume we're going with a full offensive here, punishing the opponent for using secondary moves. Fighting accomplishes this well, providing a useful dual STAB combination as well as great defensive coverage so that it can keep switching in. Think about it, if Scizor didn't have good defensive typing, you couldn't abuse it to the fullest because it couldn't switch in all the time.

You make a good point. Anyway, I'm still hoping that immunities will show in the secondary typing-but it seems that Fighting is viable enough as well.

 

[Raikizen]

One more little point from me: Paralysis, among other things, has a chance to prevent a pokemon from doing anything. Unless we make a custom ability that, for example, increases both defences by 1 stage every time CAP9 gets fully paralysed, there is no way that CAP9 can benefit from paralysis any more than it would benefit from other status moves. This is why I believe immunity to Thunder Wave is paramount as far as typing is concerned and why I support Ground to the end.

If Ground is not picked as a secondary typing, I'm voting for Limber or Shed Skin as the primary ability. If after the abilities stage CAP9 is still not laughing at the move Thunder Wave (not the pokemon that use it), then I am dismissing it as a failure.

Honestly, for it's ability I am probably going to be strongly advocating Shed Skin. However, Ground is immune to Thunderwave. Yes. Fire is immune to Will-o-Wisp and Poison is immune to Toxic, also. For me, Ground only has its Thunderwave immunity going for it. That's it.

If you would notice, Pyroak is immune to Leech Seed and Will-o-Wisp. It does not do an amazing job of Stopping the Secondary however. It is the final combination of Typing, Ability, Stats, and Movepool that will truly allow it to do its job properly.

EDIT: After reading DJD's post, I'm really starting to pull towards Poison. Fighting is nice, but it is a bit safe. Poison would be an interesting turn.