Name - These Shackles Make Me Mortal (Rewritten from 2MN's submission for CAP24)
Description - A Pokemon of brutal, unimaginable power, who by some combination of lacklaster/actively detrimental ability, dubious typing, and poorly optimized movepool, balances out into something appropriate for a competitive metagame.
Justification - Archetype: Over the course of Pokemon's lifespan, a lot of Pokemon have been created with a lot of philosophies. One of the more interesting ones is obscene power tempered by critical flaws. This has been manifested in a lot of different ways, and ended up in a lot of different places. Pokemon like Slaking, Archeops, and Regigigas have been chronically locked to the bottom tiers by their shortcomings outweighing their upsides, while the glass cannon Deoxys-Attack has remained firmly in Ubers, despite its tissue paper defenses making it fold to even weak, resisted attacks.
These are examples of what not to do, though. The examples of what might qualify as an incredibly powerful Pokemon with critical weaknesses that actually hit the sweet-spot for competitive play could be as extreme as Kyurem-Black, a Pokemon with Ubers-tier stats held back by a pool match-up with hazards, a lack of effective STAB attacks, and poor defensive typing, to any number of consistently powerful pokemon with a 4x weakness, such as Landorus's ice weakness, Ferrothorn's fire (and fighting, really) weakness, Charizard and Volcarona's cripping 4x Stealth Rock weaknesses, or even the wide variety of fast, frail pokemon, especially those weak to important priority.
The goal of this concept is to strike that perfect balance: A pokemon which, at a glance, should be incredibly powerful, but nonetheless is a balanced roleplayer in the CAP metagame.
Questions to be Answered -
- How do different kinds of strengths and weaknesses interact? Are we better off creating a pokemon whose weaknesses directly offset their strengths (like how Kyurem's attacking stats are held back by its poor movepool), or should they be 'unrelated'?
- How strong can be a pokemon be while remaining balanced, and in what ways? Would it be better for the Pokemon to do one thing incredibly well, or could it be given a wealth of different strengths all at once?
- Conversely, how bad can a weakness be while still allowing a Pokemon to remain usable? It's hard to imagine a usable pokemon with Truant (outside of the Entrainment gimmick builds),
- What sorts of weaknesses have not been previously explored or seen in competitive play? There are some weaknesses which are tried and true - OU has been overrun with fast, powerful, and frail pokemon since the earliest generations. We could make something like that, and it would fulfill the concept, but it wouldn't be an interesting approach.
Explanation - Obviously, as mentioned, this is based on 2MN's submission for a previous CAP. However, it is a concept I personally think is very interesting. It really fascinated me, in Gen V, when the decision was made on release that Kyurem-B was totally fine in OU, in spite of its monstrous 700 BST and awe-inspiring (especially at the time) 170 base attack. It turned out to be a completely correct decision, and three generations later, it remains in OU, somehow having struck that perfect balance. Its since also been joined by Hoopa-Unbound, which with a similar 680 bst and obscene attacking stats, panned out as even dropping to UU (from which it is currently banned, so at least it has that going for it). In general, I'm big on interesting gameplay, and laser focused weaknesses to target definitely lead to more interesting gameplay, in my opinion.
Description - A Pokemon of brutal, unimaginable power, who by some combination of lacklaster/actively detrimental ability, dubious typing, and poorly optimized movepool, balances out into something appropriate for a competitive metagame.
Justification - Archetype: Over the course of Pokemon's lifespan, a lot of Pokemon have been created with a lot of philosophies. One of the more interesting ones is obscene power tempered by critical flaws. This has been manifested in a lot of different ways, and ended up in a lot of different places. Pokemon like Slaking, Archeops, and Regigigas have been chronically locked to the bottom tiers by their shortcomings outweighing their upsides, while the glass cannon Deoxys-Attack has remained firmly in Ubers, despite its tissue paper defenses making it fold to even weak, resisted attacks.
These are examples of what not to do, though. The examples of what might qualify as an incredibly powerful Pokemon with critical weaknesses that actually hit the sweet-spot for competitive play could be as extreme as Kyurem-Black, a Pokemon with Ubers-tier stats held back by a pool match-up with hazards, a lack of effective STAB attacks, and poor defensive typing, to any number of consistently powerful pokemon with a 4x weakness, such as Landorus's ice weakness, Ferrothorn's fire (and fighting, really) weakness, Charizard and Volcarona's cripping 4x Stealth Rock weaknesses, or even the wide variety of fast, frail pokemon, especially those weak to important priority.
The goal of this concept is to strike that perfect balance: A pokemon which, at a glance, should be incredibly powerful, but nonetheless is a balanced roleplayer in the CAP metagame.
Questions to be Answered -
- How do different kinds of strengths and weaknesses interact? Are we better off creating a pokemon whose weaknesses directly offset their strengths (like how Kyurem's attacking stats are held back by its poor movepool), or should they be 'unrelated'?
- How strong can be a pokemon be while remaining balanced, and in what ways? Would it be better for the Pokemon to do one thing incredibly well, or could it be given a wealth of different strengths all at once?
- Conversely, how bad can a weakness be while still allowing a Pokemon to remain usable? It's hard to imagine a usable pokemon with Truant (outside of the Entrainment gimmick builds),
- What sorts of weaknesses have not been previously explored or seen in competitive play? There are some weaknesses which are tried and true - OU has been overrun with fast, powerful, and frail pokemon since the earliest generations. We could make something like that, and it would fulfill the concept, but it wouldn't be an interesting approach.
Explanation - Obviously, as mentioned, this is based on 2MN's submission for a previous CAP. However, it is a concept I personally think is very interesting. It really fascinated me, in Gen V, when the decision was made on release that Kyurem-B was totally fine in OU, in spite of its monstrous 700 BST and awe-inspiring (especially at the time) 170 base attack. It turned out to be a completely correct decision, and three generations later, it remains in OU, somehow having struck that perfect balance. Its since also been joined by Hoopa-Unbound, which with a similar 680 bst and obscene attacking stats, panned out as even dropping to UU (from which it is currently banned, so at least it has that going for it). In general, I'm big on interesting gameplay, and laser focused weaknesses to target definitely lead to more interesting gameplay, in my opinion.