Alright pals, it's been great reading the discussion so far! There's been a ton of really outstanding and viable abilities that have gotten attention so far, which is a huge relief after leading such a restricted stage for CAP 29. With that said however, I do think we'd stand to benefit by narrowing our focus a bit and weeding out a few abilities that aren't exactly optimized for this process.
Below I'll be listing the abilities or categories of abilities that will be
banned from discussion for the time being. This isn't to say that none of these abilities will have a chance to make it onto either form, but rather I'd simply like to focus more heavily on abilities that are more appropriate for this stage of the discussion.
- Water Bubble: Doubling the strength of any move of a specific typing is a lot to deal with in terms of balancing throughout the project, especially with regards to something as potent as Water-type moves. On top of that, gaining a resistance to Fire-type attacks and immunity to being burned pushes this over the edge for me. This will stay on the banlist for the time being.
- Flower Veil: While gaining an immunity to both non-volatile status conditions and having your stats dropped by the opponent is something that can be incredibly beneficial to us, I'd rather not have our first ability necessitate a specific typing. If we wind up becoming a Grass-type after our typing stage I'd be more than happy to reopen discussion on this ability. However, for now this is too limiting for me to feel comfortable with it being discussed further.
- Item Based Abilities: Even though there's an incredibly wide variety of ways to actualize these into a fun and intriguing process, these abilities are rife with limitations. We've already got a form that's restricted to using one item, and I don't think we'd have much to gain from forcing that onto the base form as well. Being unable to run crucial items like Heavy-Duty Boots, Leftovers, or Choice items on either form imposes more of a restriction on us than I'd like. Additionally, with Knock Off being one of the most ubiquitous moves in the meta right now I'd doubt we'd be able to use any of these to their fullest potential.
- -ate Abilities: While these are strong and potentially provide us with a pseudo third STAB, I don't think we're going to be learning much from them that wasn't already thoroughly explored in Gen 6 and Gen 7 OU metas. I believe these have seen optimized users already, and I'd much prefer to cover new ground.
- Field Dependent Abilities: First of all, I don't think field effects are that strong of a playstyle in the current meta. Second, optimizing anything based on a field effect just screams partner concept to me, and that's something I'd prefer to avoid.
With all that out of the way, I'd now like to start taking a closer look at a few abilities that have a lot of potential for fulfilling the concept well. For the time being, feel free to bring up any arguments for or against the following abilities. I'll be back with another post later diving into more specific questions, but for now I'd just like to get more thorough discussion started on these.
- Contact Based Abilities:
- Poison Touch
- Cursed Body
- Effect Spore
- Long Reach
- Cotton Down
- Stamina
- Effectiveness Based Abilities:
- Tinted Lens
- Filter
- Solid Rock
- HP Threshold Abilities:
- Berserk
- Blaze / Overgrow / Torrent / Swarm
- Abilities Trigger By Specific Moves:
- Steam Engine
- Water Compaction
- Rattled
Sorry to put this out in such a rush, I'll be back with more specific and tailored questions within the next 24 hours.
I'd like to go through these and give my opinion on each.
Poison Touch: As we have seen through G-King, the Poison status is actually amazing at making progress against a bulkier enemy. I would love to see this ability maximized, though it is somewhat restrictive on stats and movepool considering it locks us into being physical (not that that's a bad thing by any means).
Cursed Body: I think Cursed Body is another ability that is really interesting. It's actually somewhat used in Monotype on lead Froslass as a means of generating momentum, and that ability to create momentum through contact would be something we would want to maximize through this ability.
Effect Spore: Effect Spore is an ability I am less interested in, purely because of the RNG involved. If the status it inflicted was constant, I would be more interested, but because it is not, it is a much more difficult ability to manage and build around throughout the rest of the process.
Long Reach: While I think Long Reach is interesting, in application I fear that it would be too niche to justify building a whole process around. We would probably end up with something that has Long Reach more as a bonus than truly optimizing the ability, kinda like Kerfluffle with Natural Cure.
Cotton Down: At first, Cotton Down seemed sort of meh to me, but after thinking about it, I'd love to see it used as a way to deny sweepers, and I'm sure there are other applications for it. Color me interested.
Stamina: I don't think Stamina has the same breadth of options as the abilities above it, and would lead to a constrained process. It's interesting and really unique, but I don't think the design space is there for it to really make a good process.
Tinted Lens: As previously mentioned, Tinted Lens is stupid strong. I know I posted somewhat in favor of it, but I am a little frightened by the limits it puts on the rest of the process. I'm interested in hearing other's opinions on it, I still have not made up my mind.
Filter/Solid Rock: In case you haven't read my first post or haven't seen me in Discord, I
love Solid Rock. It may seem like a defensively-oriented ability, but it really fits on all kinds of mons, from bulky setup sweeper to breaker to wall. Remember, Necrozma uses this ability, and that is by no means a defensive mon. There are a lot of ways to go about making an optimized Solid Rock mon, and I think it leaves the most room for the rest of the process to go about optimizing it.
Berserk: This is another ability I really like. Though it could be somewhat constraining on moves/stats, it isn't so strong as to be too limiting, and I think it would make for an interesting process overall. I do think that it could suffer somewhat from having a limited design space, but other than that, it's a super interesting ability.
Pinch Power-up Abilities: These I am less interested in. While I do think they are doable, I don't think that it's necessarily the right choice. It takes a lot of setup to really make use of these abilities, and I don't think they're consistent enough to make for a healthy process.
Steam Engine: Steam Engine is intriguing to me. Coming in on a water type attack usually means coming in on one of GKing, Slowking, Toxapex, Urshifu, Krilowatt, and Barraskewda. (the other water types of the tier, Fini and Pelipper, make this ability seem great). Assuming we would take this in a special direction because of Scald Burns, that would leave us faced with two of the tiers best special walls, a Haze user, and 3 powerful breakers. Overall, I think it can be done, but the way to get there is not super clear to me.
Water Compaction: I have pretty much the same issues with Water Compaction that I do with Steam Engine. Sucks that Urshifu would ignore the defense raise.
Rattled: I think this ability is really overhyped. +1 Speed is nice, but not that nice when you get it off a U-Turn and they just pivot to a counter. Knock Off giving a speed raise is ok when thinking about Weavile and Zeraora, but most users of Knock are bulky and don't care about the speed boost anyways. Getting the speed boost off of Shadow Ball is interesting until you realize you'll have to come in on Specs Pult multiple times in a match, and that is less appealing. Overall, the +1 Speed is not enough to justify this ability to me, not to mention the fact that it would be really limiting on the Typing stage. My opinion is that Rattled just is not worth the effort to make work, and the amount of tuning needed to make it work would probably result in a mon that would win without Rattled.
All in all, of the abilities mentioned above, I support
Poison Touch, Cursed Body, Cotton Down, Filter/Solid Rock, and Berserk, I feel iffy about
Long Reach, Stamina, and Tinted Lens, and I don't support
Effect Spore, Pinch Abilities, Steam Engine, Water Compaction, and Rattled.