CAP 17 CAP 6 - Part 1 - Concept Assessment 2

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Pwnemon said:
We make a Pokemon that again can't be revenge killed or walled, but the only way it can break walls is with Explosion. No, this isn't just some gambit to make it so I get to do explosion anyway, it's the idea I stole from Korski. This is more of a wallbreaker than a pure sweeper, but it follows much of the same principle, and to balance the fact that it doesn't directly win games, we would focus on making it easier to set up. It would also have very interesting in-battle applications, being adaptable on the fly: busting holes in slower teams to end a stalemate vs sweeping more offensive teams with priority once it's BDed; sacrificing itself to take out a troublesome Skarmory, or waiting until Skarmory is gone so it can clean house? Priority and Explosion are both pretty lame without an Attack boost, so I feel we could definitely make it want to run Belly Drum, and I'm excited about the teambuilding and battling prospects of such a Pokemon.
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I think this is an interesting idea to run on. CAP 6 will never be able to compete with the likes of Moxiemence etc if it's vying for a late sweeper role. CAP 6 needs to be able to take out what an average offensive OU Pokemon can't at +2. I'm not saying we should decide on Explosion jut yet but it could be one way to distinguish CAP 6.

No matter what route we take, we have to be prepared not just for revenge killers, but Pokemon with Sturdy or phazing moves. If we've ruled out late game due to competition (and I think we have) we need to focus on how CAP 6 can function well mid game once cores have been softened and proper team support is in play. Wallbreaking should be a focus.
 
Looking at this thread, it seems we are building a Toxicroak with Belly Drum. Toxicroak can recover HP without spending a turn just for that, has a decent defensive typing, is strong and has a nice but risky priority move. Isn't that what we want for our CAP? If we make it the perfect sweeper with very high stats and STAB priority, then it will simply be broken. However, making it an offensive Pokémon that can be countered and has good set up chances thanks to its typing and/or ability instead of purely by its stats is the way to go, IMO.
 
Hi there! Please forgive me if I can be annoying or anything with this post but maybe the move chosen wasn't exactly the best when the concept rolled in here. The hardest challenge to overcome here is there are a lot of OU Pokes that can perform better on sweeping/wallbreaking without the need to setup, so the only viable niche CAP 6 could fill would inherently involve OUTCLASE them or die (and we're not building an Uber)... As long as I know the current OU metagame has enough muscle to stop/cripple walls and there are is a clear trend to make things "click n' win", therefore CAP 6 current concept development would suffer from a extremely narrow "viability area".

Neither bulk/speed/typing can make Belly Drum effective enough to blaze through OU as ALL it's counters reside naturally on the tier: Powerful bulky attackers, priority users AND scarfers... The approach must be focused on side roles that COULD be exploited by CAP 6 teammates instead on relying on it's own "sheer power" to steamroll the opposition as it could NEVER happen.
 
This Pokémon needs opportunities to safely use Belly Drum. Why not give it moves that would convince the opponent to switch? If you can predict a switch-in accurately, you can use that idle turn to set up.
If it has either a decent stat-lowering move to use on the opponent or something that causes sleep/confusion, you're basically asking your opponent if they feel lucky enough to defeat the Belly-Drummer without switching in to something else that plays to its weaknesses, because they know there's a chance that you'll accurately use the turn they switch in to Belly-Drum. It isn't really giving them the power when the active Pokémon after Belly Drum is screwed either way.

Other than that, I agree that this Pokémon needs good HP and sufficient clerical support so that is doesn't insta-faint while not emphasizing speed and making priority moves the optimal offensive choices to put the stat points where they really matter, but that much feels like it warrants either a "NO DUH, YVELTAL", or a "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU"
 
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Well, it looks like everybody wants to prioritize priority moves over Speed. A fast Belly Drummer would have problems with Choice Scarf users and even faster Pokemon. When I suggested the Speed route, I imagined that it would be really fast, maybe resist priority, and be revenged by Choice Scarf users. I'm not sure that being revenged by Choice Scarf is really such a horrible thing. However, it's true that many Choice Scarf users tend to stick around a long time. Efficient defensive mechanisms seem to be the superior way to go.

In a similar vein, some users have made a pitch for making an explosive midgame wallbreaker rather than a pure all-or-nothing endgame sweeper. This is a pretty appealing option, since it would largely avoid the competition for a sweeper role. It would also lessen the need for really specific team support like Dual Screens and/or Memento. Again, though, I kind of wonder whether the threat of Choice Scarf revenge killers to CAP 6's viability is somewhat exaggerated, since we heard these kinds of lines in CAP 4 and that led to weird things.
 
Sorry if this was already mentioned, but I have very little time to put out my thoughts.

I think that it should be in the best incentive to avoid the CAP from having priority moves. This being to avoid the obvious Belly Drum + Priority Move sweeper set, and overall it might make the CAP stale. Something bulky is something I had in mind, with a decent typing against the common attacks and maybe even an ability to assist in keeping you healthy. Essentially a variant of Toxicroak, but balanced around the damage and power of Belly Drum
 
capefeather said:
In a similar vein, some users have made a pitch for making an explosive midgame wallbreaker rather than a pure all-or-nothing endgame sweeper. This is a pretty appealing option, since it would largely avoid the competition for a sweeper role. It would also lessen the need for really specific team support like Dual Screens and/or Memento. Again, though, I kind of wonder whether the threat of Choice Scarf revenge killers to CAP 6's viability is somewhat exaggerated, since we heard these kinds of lines in CAP 4 and that led to weird things.
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I think another notable weakness for Mr.BellyDrum, beyond Choice-mons, will be phazers. Anything that forces or persuades a switch will be the death of him if he has to give up his stat boost and he has no health support to safely restart the process of Belly Drumming. The other big threat will prolly be revenge killers, as falling victim to the techniques used by the more common revenge killers would be a problem for anyone. Trying to work around them or avoid them would, once again, threaten his stat boost, and would risk rendering him useless if he can't reset later. Speed vs priority moves becomes a problem when there're Terrakions with Quick Attack out therewho could do Mr. BellyDrum in before he can fight back in any scenario.
 
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i just want to say i think we have two big options here:
1. A mon which can set up "easily"
or
2. A mon which upon setting up, is basically a win condition (assuming a VERY limited number of threats are gone)

basically, if it doesnt do either of these, it is never worth using, if it does both its broken.

Belly drum would appear to naturally point itself towards the second, as it is harder to set up than other moves, but more powerful once it does set up, however that doesnt mean its our only option. Option 1 can easily be achieved by being able to set up on several very common threats, forcing the opponent to either play absurdly conservatively or risk giving a turn to set up. It doesn't need to be able to set up on everything, but it should be able to set up in most to all games for this, but a set up would likely only net one kill or something similar, or would need to have several pokemon removed from their team already to completely sweep. Option 2 would be achieved by some ability to beat common revenge killers combined with few to no pokemon which can wall it. This would likely be used with something like priority or a speed boosting ability combined with good coverage.

So yeah, basically my point is we need to make sure we get one, but not both of these, think of it sort of like the build triangle discussed during prc.
 
Pwnemon said:
We make a Pokemon that again can't be revenge killed or walled, but the only way it can break walls is with Explosion. No, this isn't just some gambit to make it so I get to do explosion anyway, it's the idea I stole from Korski. This is more of a wallbreaker than a pure sweeper, but it follows much of the same principle, and to balance the fact that it doesn't directly win games, we would focus on making it easier to set up. It would also have very interesting in-battle applications, being adaptable on the fly: busting holes in slower teams to end a stalemate vs sweeping more offensive teams with priority once it's BDed; sacrificing itself to take out a troublesome Skarmory, or waiting until Skarmory is gone so it can clean house? Priority and Explosion are both pretty lame without an Attack boost, so I feel we could definitely make it want to run Belly Drum, and I'm excited about the teambuilding and battling prospects of such a Pokemon.
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This is definitely an unexplored role in OU, but is it a role that could even be useful in OU? Why would I want to sacrifice 50% of my wallbreaker's HP just so it can potentially break one wall while sacrificing itself? OU has Pokemon like Swords Dance Landorus-Therian or Choice Band Kyurem-Black that can pretty much guarantee one kill per game without using Belly Drum or Exploding. Furthermore, OU's current Physical wallbreakers almost automatically steal the match's momentum, as they usually force the opponent to sacrifice a wall and bring in their revenge killer the next turn. I cannot imagine using a Pokemon in OU that needs Belly Drum and Explosion to succeed when Landorus-Therian and Kyurem-Black exist.

The purpose of Belly Drum is that we don't have to use high-powered moves or a large Attack stat to become the undisputed most powerful Pokemon in OU. Whether we build a wallbreaker, sweeper, sweeper that can break walls, or wallbreaker that can sweep, we do not want to be heavily susceptible to any damage other than the 50% loss in HP from Belly Drum. If I'm using Belly Drum to raise my Attack, I plan on killing shit. A good Belly Drum Pokemon should be able to win a game 5-0 or set its user back 6-5 depending on how well it's played and played against.

capefeather said:
In a similar vein, some users have made a pitch for making an explosive midgame wallbreaker rather than a pure all-or-nothing endgame sweeper. This is a pretty appealing option, since it would largely avoid the competition for a sweeper role. It would also lessen the need for really specific team support like Dual Screens and/or Memento. Again, though, I kind of wonder whether the threat of Choice Scarf revenge killers to CAP 6's viability is somewhat exaggerated, since we heard these kinds of lines in CAP 4 and that led to weird things.
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The reason, in my opinion, why there are fewer midgame wallbreakers than sweepers in OU are that there is no need for wallbreakers because of monstrosities like Kyurem-Black, Landorus-Therian, and even Alakazam (though that's obviously a Special wallbreaker). If we don't make a sweeper to compete with the likes of Dragonite and Breloom, we have to make a Pokemon that competes with the fearsome Kyurem-Black for a team slot. Frankly, I believe it's easier to make a sweeper than a wallbreaker because having to compete with a 170 Base Attack Dragon with immense bulk and Outrage, Fusion Bolt, and Dragon Claw is not a winning strategy, especially when we'll have to be even more susceptible to revenge killing than Kyurem-Black is. I agree with your point that a wallbreaker would require less team support than a sweeper, though.

The comparison to CAP4 is not valid, however. Although this is speculative, a major reason why Aurumoth is not very susceptible to revenge killing is that Aurumoth rocks great HP and Defense, so standard Physical priority attacks cannot pick it off at 50%. Even strong Physical attacks from OU's revenge killers couldn't take down a full-health Aurumoth, but it's highly likely that these moves will take down CAP6 after it uses Belly Drum. No Pokemon with less than 50% HP is going to enjoy even being on the field against an opponent faster than it or one that packs a priority attack. CAP6, by virtue of its concept, will be more susceptible to revenge killing than any Aurumoth or any Physical sweeper in OU. We could stack CAP6 with a typing that resists common Scarfed attacks and priority attacks, give it moves to deal with common Scarfers and priority abusers, and even tack on a nice Ability and we'd still be susceptible to getting KO'd while setting up or revenge killed. I'm not advocating giving CAP6 all these tools, but being revenge killed is the greatest of our worries, no doubt.
 
I plan to wrap this up tomorrow (21-24 hours), so if anyone has more stuff to say about the precise role we should have CAP 6 fill, or the general build (in terms of stat/typing/movepool combinations) that CAP 6 should have, or anything else, by all means.
 
Addressing the issue of speed v. priority, my strong gut response is to go with priority. Concerns of not getting ideal power seem a little silly as movemon will, ideally, have maxed out attack. Even bp 40 is going to hit like a truck when coupled with +6, especially if technician is used (that's a whole different discussion though). As far as coverage goes, I can think of seven different types with priority attacks. The risk of being dominated by other priority users is answered in two words; extreme speed. Sure, the solutions aren't all entirely perfect, but if they were then we'd have to ban the thing from ubers.
 
I agree with DLC in that we should try to go the Sweeper route instead of the wallbreaker route. In our current metagame, we don't need to look further than Kyurem-B to learn about wallbreaking which can, no matter how perfect we can make this CAP perfect for BD (without making it Uber), do wallbreaking better because Cube doesn't need to lose 50% of its health to be effective.

The sweeper route does bring up a few learning points. Such as, how much risk (vary riksy) can be placed upon the player before a sweeper is simply not worth using anymore? Belly Drum was chosen for its high risk/high reward properties so I don't see why we shouldn't play with that mentality and try to fulfill the second "way" to fulfill this concept as imanalt posted. Also, I personally would find it a refreshing change of pace to go a sweeper route instead making another Bulky Attacker especially when Belly Drum is a perfect move to go against this trend.
 
Personally I think CAP6 will best be served by a bulky and speedy build with good type resistances and relevant STAB priority. Belly Drum sacrifices the bulk to make CAP6 extremely powerful. While Regenerator is out there, I also like Quick Feet as a way to get the drop on Scarfers if CAP 6 is paralyzed, or Iron First because it boosts several priority moves and coverage moves without being a blanket power increase. Bullet Punch / Mach Punch / Drain Punch / E-Punches and Meteor Mash all would benefit from that specific power boost.

The ideal way I think this works is to force a switch to set up, then use a combination of power and priority to eliminate weakened threats mid-game.
 
To me, the move Belly Drum screams sweeper. I think the most logical Pokemon for the move is a fast one with at least decent attack. If we give CAP 6 enough bulk to survive hits at 50% hp, then it would be much better as a bulky wall, not a Belly Drum user. Most people prefer to play a Pokemon to its strengths. A Belly Drum set makes no sense on a defensive Pokemon. A fast Pokemon with Belly Drum and no priority but good coverage would be a huge threat with its ability to plow through any Pokemon after a turn of setup. It would still be far from overpowered, though, since it would be checked by priority attacks after it has set up and by moderately powerful attacks before it has set up. The Pokemon would be used as a setup sweeper who needs to wait for just the right moment to setup. That seems like the most logical way to use Belly Drum.
 
I still am iffy on designing a Mon in a way that will inherently discourage use of the move we're trying to incourage. When we chose Belly Drum it was never because we were expecting to create a flat out pivot. The enemy should be TERRIFIED of CAP getting the chance to set up in the first place. Look at disable Gengar. Terribly squishy. However, if it gets the chance to set up a substitute, it becomes many times more threatening to the opponent. Straight out bulk is not the way to go here. We have the choice to set the typing of CAP in such a way that in can set up on those that we need it to challenge. LET it force switches. We have the option of NOT using belly drum and instead capitalizing on the newfound momentum of forcing out a wall. We don't need to bulk ourselves up in every situation in order to be an effective set-up pokemon. Our shield must be small and directed, because our sword is so damn huge. Being straight-out bulky is too much of a blanket solution (and an ineffective one!) to be balanced. We will end up disappointing ourselves by either compensating for Belly Drum by overbuffing or by undershooting our goal of a balanced, threatening pokemon. I'm not expecting a glass cannon. I'm just expecting our defenses to be directed in one specific direction in order to set up and capitalize.
We HAVE to be careful. We won't get the numbers perfectly, and so we HAVE to arrange our concept in a way that will be useful no matter how badly or how well we get the numbers down. We have to be careful, so let's start doing that now. We can't just be "bulky." We have to figure out where defenses need to be located. That, is what makes this concept difficult. We can't just have an unused move and call it a wonderful project. It needs direction.
I should have made my opinion clearer earlier >.<
 
Ok so just a quick post to make my opinions formally heard.

Firstly, I'd like to add myself to the group of people who dislike the idea of mid-game wallbreaking and Explosion (particularly Explosion). I don't think the niche can be filled better by a Belly Drummer than by existing OU pokemon with more reliable moves or more power off the bat (Kyurem-B, I'm looking at you). Reliance on Explosion makes this even worse. Why would I want to use a pokemon that's difficult to set up if, even after that, it can only do its job by dying? The risk I'm taking isn't being paid off by a big enough reward and it's just not competitive compared to existing pokemon. We have to go for a win condition here, I think. Something that can at least put a sizable hole in the opponents team if you successfully set it up, a 1-for-1 wallbreaker will not suffice.

---​

Up until now I think we've sort of been looking at speed, priority and bulk in abstract. After messing around with some custom battles I've come to the conclusion that we actually need a healthy combination of all three. Working off the assumption that we're to have relatively low base attack, in order to encourage Belly Drum to be used: I think priority alone doesn't get the coverage and power it'll need for a sweep (you'll find yourself outpaced and KOed if you try to use non-priority moves on a slow priority user and Extremespeed aside, the moves themselves are weak even at 4x), reliance on speed gives you coverage and power but leaves you susceptible to other priority users and some degree of bulk is simply a must for set-up.
I'm not advocating huge amounts of any one of these (for reference, I was using a hackmon Miltank in my custom battles), but I do feel we must make the three work in tandem to be successful: enough bulk to set up if you're smart, priority to beat other priority, scarfers etc and enough speed to outpace anything you can't beat with priority before it hits you.

This approach might seem uncounterable, but only after the Belly Drum has occurred. To me, that's not broken so long as there's still fairly high levels of challenge in getting Belly Drum done. If we really wanted, we could engineer some situation with coverage where you have to pick a small handful of pokemon you can't beat when choosing your coverage moves.
 
Alright so I think people are going about CAP6's risk-reward investment all wrong. Attempting to make it more rewarding after the single most rewarding move in the game is just flat out redundant at best. We don't need to give it more power - while priority and the like is helpful, we don't necessarily need that either. What we need are opportunities.

Let us take Volcarona for example. It is absolutely alergic to the most common move in the game, Stealth Rock. It takes 50% JUST for swapping into the field while rocks are up, which is a scenario so common that a vast majority of damage calculations are done so with it in mind. That in combination with how damn hard it is to use Rapid Spin nowadays would lead one to believe Volcarona is worthless, even in spite of the massive reward a successful Quiver Dance can give you.

So why is it, exactly, that Volcarona still sees use? Many would say because Quiver Dance outweighs the Stealth Rock quadruple weakness, but that's not why. The reason why is because it has scenarios where it just flat out wins, period, even at 50% HP. And it has enough of those to not make it a liability. Let us take Scizor as our example here - Scizor absolutely cannot do anything to Volcarona. Volcarona resists every single attack Scizor has, threatens a burn due to every one of Scizor's moves being contact, and worst of all it can kill Scizor in one hit. Volcarona doesn't just beat Scizor - it flat out counters it.

Same case for Ferrothorn. Against both pokemon, which are might I remind you highly common, Volcarona can do whatever it wants for a turn, because in almost every scenario Scizor and Ferrothorn can't even scratch Volcarona and risk an OHKO in return.

The question here isn't "how do we make CAP6 the best sweeper in the game post-drum?" The question here is "How do we give CAP6 the opportunities it requires to use belly drum?" Even with a very low attack stat, I believe that by targeting a number of popular OU pokemon and making it so that CAP6 flat out beats them (most likely by targeting quadruple weaknesses, as Volcarona does against Scizor and Ferrothorn, and by having sufficient bulk, the right ability, or typing to be untouchable by the pokemon CAP6 aims to counter, as Volcarona does with Flame Body, Fire/Bug typing, and good physical bulk), we can make CAP6 actually usable instead of building up to be a nightmare game-ender that can't actually set up to be a nightmare game-ender.

All the power in the world isn't worth a damn thing if you can't get there.
 
I have many points to cover, but I'll try to be as concise as possible.

On "we need to make Belly Drum the crux of all our sets!", I'm pretty sure some people would call me crazy, but even though we selected Belly Drum as the focus of our set we DO NOT NECESSARILY HAVE TO SHOEHORN IT ONTO ALL OF OUR SETS. Let me bring up an example in Scizor. If someone sees it they'd pretty much expect "U-Turn/Bullet Punch!", but if it suddenly sets up SD they have given it a free turn and god save them if their Scizor check is low on health/able to be KOed at +2. If people see DrumCap and think "Oh, it's going to Belly Drum" and eat a coverage move/STAB hit instead, something is going to hurt. This is where mind games can come into play too. However, I digress; I'd just like to emphasize on this as I feel a lot of people think we absolutely must have Belly Drum on all of our sets.

Another point I'd like to bring up is "we need a chance to +6, not decide our power/speed/bulk after we +6". If you look at common setup sweeepers, there's one thing in common that they all have; they have just enough bulk to take the hit off a defensive mon, they have enough offensive power to force the opposition out (checks/counters here) or a combination of some other factors. Immunities, typing and coverage mainly have been brought up as feasible options for this, some people going as far as to naming specific mons that we want to set up on, but I feel that we should mainly focus on being able to force out a variety of mons. A good example of this is Mamoswine; there are very few mons in OU that would willingly stay in against this behemoth in fear of getting destroyed by it's amazing power.

Expanding on the previous paragraph, there are also mentions of people talking about "taking hits after +6", "being fast enough after +6" and "need priority to kill OPPOSING priority and random scarfers". While valid points, I would like to bring up a counterargument against these points; this is why we play Pokemon with 6 members on a team, not one; if those priority/random scarfer mons are sufficiently weak enough, we can pick them out BEFORE setting up to +6, unless we give it such abysmally low offenses that we need +6 to actually do anything; I hope that does not become the case. With regards to "taking hits" after +6, I do agree that we need some form of bulk to be able to take at least something like Skarm's Brave Bird before going down; we do not want to be "surviving" Keldeo's Hydro Pump or something like that because face it unless you have resistances that shit's going to destroy you anyway. Speaking of resistances, this is the thing I feel we should build on; with a good set of resistances we do not have to rely on ridiculous bulk like 120/110/110 to actually stay in and tank a hit or two before going down, even after +6.

The third thing I'd like to bring up is the concern about the "build circle" and the people going "we need x stats, y coverage and z typing to sweep with this". Not only is this a very shallow way of looking into the concept, we will restrain ourselves too early by deciding on things like this. "We need to OHKO terrakion with +6 Extremespeed!" and "At +6, we can..." should be taken into thought sparingly; like nyt has said, we can't set up at all if we don't get a chance to. Rampardos, Darmanitan, Haxorus, Porygon-Z, etc all have AMAZING power behind them but they lack the opportunities to set up. I want to avoid having a mon that will eventually have the phrase "with it's counters removed, under the right conditions with the correct support, it'll wreck teams" brought up because it can be said for ALL pokemon, hell even Spinda. While considering good teammates is not something I want to discourage, we should look into ways of being able to set up on our own without having to over-rely on "ideal conditions" too much. Even delibird can 6-0 if I have 3 layers of stealth screens and dual rocks while having MagDugGoth support.

Talking about the "build circle" there are a select few mons that go out of the way to barely meet all 3 conditions; one mon that's good to look at for our concept is Miltank. With a spread of 95/80/105/40/70/100, it can actually do work as both a defensive and offensive mon. For reference, here are it's most commonly used spreads off TIBot:
Impish:252/4/252/0/0/0 20.633% | Careful:252/4/0/0/252/0 13.176% | Careful:252/0/4/0/252/0 10.580% | Jolly:4/252/0/0/0/252 7.996% |
As you can see, it actually runs 252 Atk as it's 4th set, as even though it only has 80 attack, a 150 BP move in the form of Return, Recovery in Heal Bell and Milk Drink, setup in Curse, support in SR, etc... with just enough bulk to take hits decently well (95/105/70) and usuable offense (80/lol/100). A Sap Sapper boost really helps a good sweep too.With this, I think we should look at Miltank as a benchmark, not something to be based around.
 
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Great post from Yilx with many good things to consider. We should be making a Pokemon that can use BD, but if every set has to, all surprise value is gone and CAP 6 will never have a chance to set up.

Miltank is a good Pokemon to look at. It has the tools to run offensive or defensive sets. But Miltank is stuck in NU because it doesn't fill either role very well. I really, still believe we need to make a defensive Pokemon and force switches defensively. Basically, if we make CAP 6 have decent offensive presence before it sets up, the opponent will counter the same way whether we set up or not; bring in a Pokemon that checks CAP 6 due to defensive typing. But if CAP 6 is defensive in nature, what can the opponent counter with? Bring in something that can set up on a defensive mon? Or bring in a check to the belly dum set? Do they bring out their wall breaker or their scarfer?

If we go this route, so much more control is in the players hands. CAP 6 can fake a defensive role and switch later in the match or focus its EVs and move set on offense from the start. But either way we'll make sure it has the tools to make BD viable without being too gimmicky. Any other route, I believe will leave CAP 6 over its head with competition.
 
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This discussion has brought up a lot of great points, but I'd like to suggest a simple framework for handling problems in discussions in future steps for CAP6.

1) Try to make CAP6 as good and powerful as possible, within reasonable bounds of the OU tier. Go nuts with offense, defense, speed, priority, etc -- make this as amazing as we can (within OU norms, of course).

BUT ALSO...

2) Try to make Belly Drum its *best* set.​

My bet is that it is almost impossible to build an OVERPOWERED OU pokemon where Belly Drum is its best set. If the pokemon is *too good* by having too much attack or bulk or coverage or speed or whatever -- then it won't need to use Belly Drum -- it would be better to use it as a general wall, a coverage hitter, a revenge killer, etc. However we accomplish #2, if we can ensure that Belly Drum is its best set, I think we pretty much force the pokemon to be balanced.

Some people seem to think that we could build a pokemon that will be a Belly Drumming monstrosity ripping all of OU to shreds. My guess is if we do build such a pokemon, we will discover it is simply a monstrosity -- it will be much more reliable and versatile without hassling with all the risk/reward bullshit associated with Belly Drum. I don't think we should be nerfing aspects of this pokemon when we think it will be too good with Belly Drum, we should nerf aspects of this pokemon when we think it will cause the pokemon to NOT USE BELLY DRUM AT ALL.

This is a big distinction, and I think it will help regulate discussion on the project going forward.

If we get caught up in debating every claim of "It's broken!", we'll get nowhere on this project. Sure, we have to deal with accusations of brokenness on every CAP, but I think it will be even more pronounced on this CAP. We're going to be slinging around battle strategies involving a pokemon with a +6 Attack boost, which probably means it will have an effective attack stat of 1000 or more. Big numbers like that freak people out, and I'm sure the boo-birds will be out for blood. And I think it will be incredibly hard to discuss which claims are valid or not, because we have very little game experience with attacking power of this magnitude, coupled with bulk, speed, priority and all the rest.

I think we need a better benchmark for dealing with concerns that CAP6 is "too good" -- and I think that benchmark should be the following:

CAP6 is "too good" if Belly Drum is not its best set.​

That is much easier to debate, IMO, than general claims of brokenness. Rather than having people point to all the pokemon KO'ed by CAP6 at +6, or pointing to how many hits it can take at 50%, and screaming "See, it's broken!" -- I think it is better to focus overpoweredness claims at CAP6 itself. Simply look at what the pokemon will be able to do WITHOUT Belly Drumming, and if it can do other things better, then we probably made the pokemon too good overall.

That is NOT to say Belly Drum should be its ONLY set. As Yilx explained very well, we probably want to give this some other sets to keep the opponents guessing, or for specialized use on certain teams. If we do it correctly, by giving this other sets we can actually make the Belly Drum set better. But most OU pokemon have a set that stands out above the others, and for CAP6 the Belly Drum set is the #1 goal. If we do that, I think we'll avoid making an overpowered pokemon AND we'll achieve overall project success.
 
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While I think Yilx and Doug have made fantastic points here, I just want to take a step back once more and look at the kind of approaches people have been thinking about, specifically the need for priority. Personally, I look at all the calls for priority, and I think people are looking at this project in the wrong light. Look at Linoone; it has Belly Drum, STAB Extremespeed, coverage for Ghosts and Rocks, and its stuck in NU. Now obviously, it has a couple major flaws. It has low power, so that +6 is absolutely necessary to do anything, it has pathetic bulk, so setting up is hard to do, and it lacks coverage for Steels, so it can be walled, even at +6. Yes, Linoone is not the perfect Belly Drum user.

Yet, when I hear the way some people talk with regards to it, it seems to me like people believe that the best way to make a Belly Drum user work is to make Linoone, but without those problems. Frankly, that is just an ill-advised way to approach a problem. Yes, if you take a Pokemon and remove its flaws, it will be good. It will also be overpowered. Every Pokemon has flaws, even the top OU Pokemon. "But..." you might say, "we don't have to fix all the flaws." That is true. We don't. But is that really an interesting way to go about this project? The way I see it, either we fix to little, and it still sucks, or we fix too much and it is overpowered. Either way, we won't learn that much because we wouldn't really be doing anything different than before. To make a comparison, last CAP project, we tried to make a Pokemon that helped improve the Sun playstyle. Now, if we had wanted to, we could have very easily made a better Ninetales, or better Venusaur. Same role, but with better stats, typing and/or movepool. But what would that have shown us? That better Pokemon are better, and that teams of better Pokemon are more common. Personally, I don't find that very interesting. Instead, we tried a new role, one that didn't exist for those teams before. And, in the end, it worked out. It wasn't the strongest Pokemon, but it did everything it needed to do, and in doing so, it made the team better in ways unrelated to just becoming stronger than existing members.

I think what we should take out of looking at Linoone is not that it has problems we need to fix, but that inherently, the idea of a Pokemon so reliant on its STAB priority to function after Belly Drum is doomed to fail. Maybe it is possible to "fix Linoone" without breaking it, but it is not the kind of direction that actually teaches us anything worth learning. Instead I believe that trying to go with natural speed or awesome bulk to take on fast threats would be a better project direction. Every Pokemon needs flaws, so while yes, without powerful priority as a main attack some scarfers might beat us if we go the speed route, for example, that is not a bad thing. It is just an unexplored approach that I believe is more likely to be successful, or at the very least, informative, than trying to remake what we have already seen.
 
Honestly, in my opinion, it would be nice if our CAP had a way to recover the lost health which it lost without having to switch out and lose its stat changes. Obviously, leftovers is the simplest way to do this, but the boost wouldn't be significant enough unless the opponent was incapacitated by Encore or Parafusion or something else I haven't thought of yet. Alternatively, we could use Wish or Softboiled to heal it up, although I personally think Softboiled would be too much for it. Overall, I think it may be useful to give this Pokemon a way to regenerate health it has lost from belly drum at the risk of losing momentum.
 
thecanvashat said:
Honestly, in my opinion, it would be nice if our CAP had a way to recover the lost health which it lost without having to switch out and lose its stat changes. Obviously, leftovers is the simplest way to do this, but the boost wouldn't be significant enough unless the opponent was incapacitated by Encore or Parafusion or something else I haven't thought of yet. Alternatively, we could use Wish or Softboiled to heal it up, although I personally think Softboiled would be too much for it. Overall, I think it may be useful to give this Pokemon a way to regenerate health it has lost from belly drum at the risk of losing momentum.
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I'm not sure if that's the best plan. Not only would reliable recovery along with a few moves that every Pokémon that can learn TMs (namely Toxic, Protect, and Substitute) can use in addition to bulk from typing, stats, or abilities open up quite a few options that would likely be more reliable or consistent than a than a Belly Drum set, but it defeats the purpose of the concept by essentially turning Belly Drum into a superior Swords Dance without exploring the other aspects of the move.
An idea I'd like to bring up is the possibility of exploiting Belly Drum's HP drop rather than compensating for it.
 
I think to Doug's point this is a project where we should err on the side of overreaching so that we can actually test the thesis involved in this project. "Linoone without the flaws" is never going to exist because by its very nature, Belly Drum + Priority is going to max out at a 3 attack set. Even if we did replicate Linoone and assumed Normal STAB, Extremespeed means you have two moves for super-effective coverage. There are some good coverage combinations to be sure, but nothing that can hit all of OU for SE. Even neutral combinations like Normal + Fighting + Ghost will fail to net a lot of OHKOs without support (Partial Fighting type might change this, partial Ghost type won't because Shadow Claw is an awful STAB).

I realize typing is in the next step but I really don't think we should be too flighty here. Extremekiller Arceus has the benefit of absurd 120/120/120 Defenses, and this CAP won't approach anything like that. Similarly, a build somewhat like Kangaskhan that has decent Speed, Bulk, and Attack (without insane amounts of any characteristic) isn't going to be an unstoppable force either even with a theoretical better typing. On the faster and frailer end you could buff Ambipom's defenses by 15 and still have something manageable. There's enough opposing priority in OU as well as fast, powerful attackers or Scarfers that could defeat CAP 6 that I think we should really explore the outer limits on the concept and not feel like we're playing with something so inherently break-prone.
 
Because of all the things that are more reliable as wallbreakers, I think we need to go the path of something that is basically an auto-win if it sets up, but is almost impossible to actually set up with. That is why I think we should give it priority AND speed to beat most priority users, but make it extremely frail and completely dependent on something like Latios giving it screens+memento support. (Ironically, this CAP is going to fulfill risk vs reward wayyyy more than Auromoth ever will)
 
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