CAP 30 - Part 2 - Primary Ability Discussion

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dex

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I've seen a lot of talk about Triage in this thread as an unused ability that is uniquely powerful. Given the uptick in Revenankh usage, I would not consider Triage to be absent in the CAP metagame. Rev takes great advantage of Triage as a bulky setup sweeper. Is it optimized? Perhaps not, but I would consider Triage to be anti-concept.

Edit: Since I'm on the topic, thought I'd edit in something we talked about on Discord. I think similarly of Galvanize, Technician, and Poison Heal as I do of Triage. CAP 25 was pretty much all about optimizing abilities (that time, through moveset), and I don't see what we have to learn from any of those abilties.
 
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There is an important point I want to bring about CAP 30's design that seems to be overlooked, especially to those that worry about powerful abilities and that is how CAP 30i is limited by it's item restriction. People have brought that it allows us to make a knock off absorbing synergy but no one talks about how this limitation allows us to work with more liberty due to not having to worry about how some items might make the Mon busted.

Here are two examples:

Stakeout is an ability that heavily punishes switch ins and could easily get out of hand due to its high damage outputs. Normally it would also limit either our coverage or stats which might highly lower the potential for the other form to become successful. However, due to CAP 30's item restriction, the only thing boosted by it will be its STABS and just by 1.2, as opposed to the universal boosts of life orb and choice band. This means that we can give 30i better stats and a good enough movepool without limiting either form, as even with great coverage, it will not get the boosts from 30i's item.

Corrosion is also another ability that scares some people, which could also limit CAP 30's movepool as certain move combinations like sub protect could be quite annoying to deal with. However, due to 30i's inability to hold defensive items such as leftovers or even heavy boots, corrosion can be handled more properly, meaning less limitation of the mon's movepool.

Im not saying that we can slap any ability into 30i and not show restraint, but I believe that 30i's lack of item versatility allows us to use a wider selection of abilities for it.
 
EDIT: Was gonna edit in other stuff, but I am tired.

Just going to bring up a few abilities that haven't been discussed a whole lot, and then give my opinions on the ones that are being discussed.

Analytic: Last seen on Starmie and Magnezone, both of which have abilities that they would rather use a lot of the time, and Starmie is pretty fast. Its power boost is lower than Stakeout's, but it also works when the opponent doesn't switch out but moves before us. Does not constrain us very much, was definitely not optimized by prior users, and has the potential to succeed in the meta.

Berserk: Last seen on G-Moltres and Drampa. G-Moltres does not have reliable 50% recovery, and Drampa is ass. Optimal use of this ability definitely requires reliable recovery. May not qualify because it technically is used in the CAP metagame on G-Moltres on HO, but I'd argue it doesn't interact with it much, and is definitely not optimized. Not super constraining either: I can see this on both offensive and defensive mons (imagine Chromera with Berserk instead). Has the potential to be very successful.

Emergency Exit: This is an obvious weird one that may take a lot of effort to truly optimize. I don't even know what that would look like. I'm not even sure whether Golisopod optimizes it. Maybe we'd want to not be rocks weak with this? How this would work with reliable recovery? Definitely a ton of room for creativity here, which is exciting but daunting at the same time.

Flare Boost: Special Guts but only with burn. It is only available on Drifblim, and it doesn't even use it. Obviously not optimized. Does constrain us to be a special attacker. May also need to hold Flame Orb, which would both prevent us from using it on 30i and force an item on 30b; while this is not definitely true, it may take some effort to design a Flare Boost mon that doesn't necessarily want to hold Flame Orb, a la Guts Colossoil. Can deter opponents from clicking Scald, Lava Plume and Wisp, but relies on the opponent for activation in this case. Could be very successful on the right mon, but may also prove to be too situational.

Marvel Scale: Only available on 2 NFEs and Milotic. Milotic is a pretty good user, but given it's RU, it definitely does not optimize it. Similar problems to Flare Boost in that it may force an item, but Marvel Scale is more flexible in that any status will activate it (including sleep from Rest). Has the potential to successful. See Flare Boost for further talking points.

Quick Feet: Only available on a bunch of trash mons. As Dragapult and Zeraora have shown, even with average offenses, a high speed can catapult a mon up the viability rankings. Third ability in a row that has the "does this force an item?" problem. Quick Feet also does not negate the attack drop from burns, so it may constrain us to special attackers. See Flare Boost for further talking points. Def not optimized, and has the potential to be incredibly successful.

Sand Force/Solar Power/Hydration: These obviously do not all have the same effect, but I've grouped them together in the "weather abilities that don't see much use" category. If not explicitly constraining during the CAP process, they will definitely be constraining when trying to build with CAP 30. Not the biggest fan of these, but thought I would bring them up to see other's thoughts. Definitely have the potential to be successful though; imagine Suicune with Hydration.

More to come in edits.
 
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Tadasuke

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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 don’t like Water Compaction. It’s far too situational to be reliably useful. Not to mention, with the most common water-type move being Scald, we’re essentially locking ourselves into being specially-based, so it’s restrictive too. Watch us come in on a predicted Pex Scald and immediately be hazed. It’s just bad.

Steam Engine is in a similar boat, although obviously it has a slightly broader set of activation conditions, and a massive speed boost is more immediately useful than a defensive boost. That said, fishing for a fire or water move is still unreliable at best.

I’ll probably post something about abilities I do actually like later.
 
Alright then, let's see what the best users there are for these abilities and what they do...
  • Contact Based Abilities:
    • Poison Touch: Holder poisons targets. The highest ranked Mon with this is Seismitoad, which I believe runs Swift Swim for rain teams. How will CAP 30 benefit from the poison, instead of the other status effects like Burn, Paralysis or Badly Poison?
    • Cursed Body: Holder inflicts the Disabled Effect on the contact move of the one who hit it. The highest ranked is Dragapult, and I've certainly never seen anyone run its HA for a competitive set. How effective is this 30% activation?
    • Effect Spore: Inflicts a random Status Condition except Freeze. According to Bulbapedia, this also locks CAP30 with a Grass Type.
    • Long Reach: Contact moves don't make contact. Decidueye is too frail and not fast enough, but that is manageable and the most flexible option.
    • Cotton Down: Lower Speed of everyone. Eldegoss' stats are trash; as mentioned before by someone, this is good for speed control.
    • Stamina: Raises defense when hit. There's already a FlashCAP - Gen7's Chispera, who has a set based on Stamina+Calm Mind=Stored Power. Is there another way to use this apart from that?
  • Effectiveness Based Abilities:
    • Tinted Lens: Increases not-so-effective damage by 25%. This will help the offenses of CAP 30 if chosen.
    • Filter/Solid Rock: Reduces Super Effective damage by 25%. Mega Aggron and Pre-IA/CT Rhyperior show these abilities to their fullest. CAP 30 will most likely be a Wall or help it survive from a bad defensive Typing with this.
  • HP Threshold Abilities: The main question here will be 'how do we maintain longevity to use the boosts granted by our ability?'
    • Berserk: +1 Sp. Atk for every attack below 50% HP. Moltres-G has neither reliable recovery nor good coverage, Drampa can retire; CAP 30 will also be a Sp. Attacker.
    • Blaze / Overgrow / Torrent / Swarm: Boosts Fire/Grass/Water/Bug moves by 50% when below 1/3 HP. We have our Starter Trio, so this is probably going to lock CAP 30 with a Bug Type.
  • Abilities Trigger By Specific Moves:
    • Steam Engine: Fire/Water triggers +6 Speed. The typing of CAP 30 will have to resist both those typings to make it effective(maybe Dragon Type?), while at the same time have to be slow to make it less broken.
    • Water Compaction: Water triggers+2 Defense. See Stamina for my question.
    • Rattled: Bug/Dark/Ghost/Intimidate triggers +1 Speed. I've covered this before, but to summarize, this will probably be useful to lure in U-turns, Knocks Offs, maybe Poltergeist? I'm also seeing CAP 30 to be a Special Attacker, so that the attack drop from Intimidate won't affect it much.
Among the above, Long Reach, Tinted Lens, Filter and Rattled, have my vote, on the fence with the HP Abilities, and nope for the rest.
 
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dex

Hard as Vince Carter’s knee cartilage is
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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.
 
A few thoughts on two abilities I am very uninterested in:

I think we are currently in the wrong meta for Long Reach. Especially considering most of the contact abilities that it interacts with are abilities on this under-used abilities list. It does fit the concept as an ability we can be optimizing, but its application is so niche that it might just feel as though we are giving one form no ability at all. Correct me if I'm forgetting any, but the only relevant mons this would interact with are :ferrothorn: :volcarona: :cyclohm: (EDIT: :zapdos: and :garchomp: exist) and someone with Rocky Helmet? Its just way way too niche to be picking this early for this concept.

The other ability I'm not too interested in here is Water Compaction. It is a cool ability, but it has an extremely narrow effect. It needs to be hit by a water type move to raise its defense, meaning that it has 2 good applications I can think of right now.
1 - Naturally wall Water types, forcing them to switch, and when they switch from Water to something else, they have to face a threat with boosted defences (but then I would rather just use Storm Drain or a similar immunity)
2 - Wall physical waters because of the effect of this ability, directly punishing... :arghonaut: and maybe Urshifu if we're so naturally resistant to water that the fact that Surging Strikes ignores defense boosts is irrelevant.
3 - Body Press the waters? But who and why, none are weak to Fighting?

I think Stamina is a less restrictive and much more general in its usage and application compared to that.
 
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Astra

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I've been thinking about this for a bit now, and I've decided that I believe we shouldn't choose an ability that only activates based on luck, which would include Poison Touch, Cursed Body, and Effect Spore. Basing our process around optimizing an ability that has a low chance of actually activating feel very difficult. I think it would also open up a lot of questions that would only causes issues in the creation process. As we are aiming to optimize an ability, we would obviously have to choose the typing, stats, movepool, and more based at least somewhat around an ability, but since these abilities are luck-based, would we have to account for that? If we do, how would we even do that? If we don't, would we even fully succeed with our goal? Choosing any three of these abilities I feel would cause a lot of unwanted discourse on what to do with how all of them require some luck to actually be used. Additionally, trying to optimize something that is luck-based is something that would be incredible tough because, well, how can you optimize something that might not even happen?

I've already discussed Long Reach in one of my posts, but after some discussion on Discord, my opinions on it have swayed a tad bit. While avoiding damage and status caused by contact moves altogether does sound very useful, the amount of usage such damage and status methods seen in the CAP metagame brings up some questions. Most Rocky Helmet users usually have another item that they are able to run, so choosing Long Reach could very well just cause those Pokemon to run the alternative and making the utility of Long Reach useless. Moreover, when it comes to abilities, the only viable Pokemon in the CAP metagame that can cause contact damage is Garchomp and Ferrothorn. For abilities that can cause status upon contact, the only viable Pokemon are Zapdos, Volcarona, Cyclohm and Moltres, some of these being a lot less viable than others as well. There's not a lot of Pokemon that falls into these categories, and the metagame could very well just shift and cause these Pokemon to see less usage, making it questionable whether or not Long Reach will actually see its utility be used effectively.

Upon learning that Cotton Down appears to include all damaging moves rather than just contact moves like Gooey and Tangling Hair, I can say that I have more support for it. My points before about it still stand, but since it includes all damaging moves, it opens up the amount of utility it can bring especially in a fast-paced metagame like CAP to so many interesting levels worth talking about.

Stamina I think would be a pretty neat ability to choose for our process as well. It's a pretty cut and dry ability, but Defense boosts simply from damaging moves can have a lot of cool applications, from maximizing the user's capabilities as a tank potentially both physically and specially to more unique techniques like becoming a great user of Body Press. Its simplicity yet uniqueness I believe can spark a lot of discussion on how to optimize it.

I feel the same way towards Tinted Lens as I did before. I'm not too fond of it because it can been seen as just a pure damage buff, but I wouldn't be as disappointed if it's chosen because it's one of more unique damage buff abilities we have at our disposal.

My opinions on Filter and Solid Rock (and Prism Armor, since it's also literally the same effect) are also pretty unchanged since I referenced them. Similarly to Tinted Lens, it's basically just purely a defense buff, though, also similarly to Tinted Lens, it's a unique way to give a defense buff to a Pokemon. My view on the fact that such abilities would restrict us to just defensive capabilities (and Tinted Lens's restriction to just offensive capabilities) still stand. I would very much prefer that we choose an ability that can provide us with discussion on potential offensive and defensive capabilities and utility.

Berserk does seem interesting on paper, though I feel like the limits of our optimization and discussion would be pretty low. Besides that, I feel indifferent the most on this ability, so I don't have much else to say.

Blaze, Overgrow, Torrent, and Swarm is in a similar boat as Berserk: interesting at a glance, but not a lot of room to get creative with our optimization and discussion. It doesn't help that these abilities, alongside Berserk, force you to put yourself in a usually undesirable position, that being at low HP.

Steam Engine a bit of a weird choice, especially with how much I think we can do with a potential +6 boost in Speed from moves of a fairly popular type (and Fire-type moves), but I also feel pretty indifferent with this one. Going to need to think about it a bit more.

My opinion on Water Compaction remains unchanged. Interesting concept that kind of contradicts itself in the context of the CAP metagame with its lack of physical Water-type moves but allows us to get really creative with other aspects such as stats.

Similarly, I still feel the same way towards Rattled. It's an interesting ability to build around, especially in metagame with Knock Off spam, lots of U-turn pivoting, and the occasional Ghost-type spam. Especially with the potential for it to be assigned to CAP30i, I believe the process can be really fun and engaging.
 
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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.
Here's my opinion on how these processes will develop:

Top tier:
Poison Touch
: It has a lot of interaction with every stage. What stabs pair best with a chance to poison? How do we circumvent the abilitys uselessness against poison and steel types, and magic guard/certain abilities? Would an offensive or defensive route pay off, and what are the most threatening moves that could be paired with regular poison? There is a very full process here.

Berserk: I like this one a lot. I think it has plenty of things to think about for each other stage, as well as unique spins on roles based on its unique boosts. A straight upgrade to the starter pinch abilities. Playing known roles in a unique manner is what CAP does best.

Stamina: This is right up CAPs avenue. It plays into defensive qualities and also offensive ones. Like the other two, I see it being involved in all conversations from typing to movepool.


Mid tier:
Filter/Solid Rock
: This ability is decent. It obviously interacts most with typing, skewing its matchup chart slightly and optimized typing always opens up a mon to success. Outside of that- it doesnt feel like it has many other threads to work with. I think this is a slight downgrade of Stamina, a more interesting ability with higher, less generic impact.


Scary Tier (Mid):
Cotton Down
: Has a lot to explore, I dont think we fully understand the potential of this ability- it opens up a few playstyles right away and Im sure there'd be more layers to it when diving in further. Personally, I dont know if I like its panic button feature to gimp sweepers even when it gets KOed, so I don't know whether Id like to do this one..

Effect Spore: Very similar to Cursed Body- a very haxy on-hit ability that can remove mons from the game completely. Would require careful handling- but I don't see why its worth doing this when there are other strong and similar abilities listed that don't have this problem.

Tinted Lens: I think this has potential as it interacts with some poor-coverage attacks to cause them to deal more damage. The offensive route I think is self explanatory in how problematic it could become, and while I dont think we are messy enough to push it too far it might be awkward finding a sweet spot for this mons offensive potential.


Low tier:
Steam Engine
: I put this down here only because I dont think Steam Engine would have too much impact on the way we go about the process outside of our speed stat and picking a typing non-weak to Water and Fire. I think it would have to play mostly as a mon that wont rely on getting a Steam Engine boost, while probably not trying to be a 6-0ing monster if it does get it- so it comes across as an ability that would be secondary to the other form's ability.

Water Compaction: Its very comparable to Steam Engine's process, but activates less.

Cursed Body: I listed this as one of the most busted abils before- I think after further consideration I don't like where this ends up. It mainly exists to flip matchups based on chance which is very weird and the counterplay is nonexistent.

Long Reach: The mildest ability on the list. I feel this is a flop when it comes to being interesting.

Blaze + clones: Rarely active, I would prefer a more solid relationship with our ability. Once activated, the mon is not long for this world also. its basically a straight downgrade to Berserk in every way, but the most important way it downgrades is in interactivity

Rattled: The second mildest ability. Doubling down on knock off seems great at a glance, but the spectrum of knock-offers is so wide that it wont stretch to meet this challenge. Secondly its not great vs u-turn, as defensive counters will not be caring that you outspeed and the opponent will still remain as the player with the momentum. Intimidate still does work if you're physical and special attackers probably wont get switched in on by intimidaters either, though it would prevent you from being rk by Landorus-T. It would be wonderful if it just did more than conditional +1 speed.
 
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Let's get some Rattled love out here! I've been a staunch supporter of it (dare I say that I'm the first one to mention it seriously for 30?) for the entirety of the time it's been brought up in discussion, on the Discord and in the forums. So without further ado...

What does Rattled do and where might I find it?
Rattled is an ability that boosts the Pokemon's speed by 1 stage if it gets hit by a Ghost-, Dark-, or Bug-type attack. Rattled also gets proc'd if the Pokemon with Rattled is subject to Intimidate. Rattled is seen on a myriad of baby Pokemon, such as Ledyba, Magikarp, and our own Brattler. The 4 fully-evolved Pokemon with Rattled are Persian-Alola, Dunsparce, Granbull, and Sudowoodo.

In what aspects do Rattled's current users fail?
Babies notwithstanding, Rattled's current users are both really, painfully bad and yet still have better abilities to use. Persian-Alola will use Fur Coat on defensive and offensive sets alike due to its abysmal defense and the strength of the ability. Dunsparce has a movepool that synergizes with Serene Grace to a degree that Jirachi envies, and even though its stats are garbage, it will still always run Serene Grace as a result. Sudowoodo much prefers Rock Head for a recoilless Head Smash, or even Sturdy if it desires to run a Rock Polish set. Granbull doesn't exist, but it still always ran Intimidate even when offensive, for similar reasons to Persian-Alola. Moreover, even if the 4 fully-evolved Rattled users did prefer Rattled over their other abilities, they are so painfully bad stat-wise that they are all Untiered or PU in their respective gens. TL;DR bad stats, better abilities.

What routes can we take with Rattled?

So, let's get the obvious out of the way. Rattled is going to punish Knock Off and U-Turn. I don't have in mind or know in what capacity it should do so, but it's very reasonable to assume as such.

What I find to be an altogether more alluring prospect isn't just a mindless "haha fuck u pult uturn" bot (relevant conversation), but instead a Pokemon that can force 50/50s to more easily allow Pokemon who very much appreciate their item slot to be fit on a team. If 30b/30i has a balanced enough spread (being deliberately vague here) to function without the +1 boost, yet can still leverage the boost to a degree where you'd have to be wary about clicking a move that procs Rattled at preview, your entire gameplan can be altered as you don't have to be as existentially terrified that the opposition just continues to click Knock/U-Turn.

What are the downsides of Rattled?
Rattled is going to be dependent on its movepool, typing, and stats to work
, and heavily so on the last one. I will concede that, and I would be worried by that... if the concept was literally anything but "Optimized Ability."

The fact of the matter is that a lot of the abilities being discussed here are differing levels of power. However, I am firmly of the belief that almost every single one can work to the same degree of viability simply because the aim of the concept is to optimize the ability.

The other downside that I can think of right now is potentially that Rattled is a little fishy as you're hoping your opponent is carrying a move that procs it or Intimidate. However, as I said, a balanced stat spread would still combat this to an extent.

I'm half asleep as I'm writing this so I'll probably wake up and edit half this post haha, but I'd love to see y'all's thoughts on this ability. Cheers!
 
An ability I wanted to bring up is Dancer. It’s extremely unique as it basically gives you a second attack under certain somewhat common conditions and it’s only user oricorio can’t use it effectively in either a defensive or offensive fashion. A threatening mon with Dancer almost automatically forces 50/50 and stop sweeps in their tracks before the build momentum.
 
An ability I wanted to bring up is Dancer. It’s extremely unique as it basically gives you a second attack under certain somewhat common conditions and it’s only user oricorio can’t use it effectively in either a defensive or offensive fashion. A threatening mon with Dancer almost automatically forces 50/50 and stop sweeps in their tracks before the build momentum.
I don't think "somewhat common" is enough. To begin with, the list of relevant moves is pretty small. Quiver Dance is only seen on Volcarona and Dragon Dance is only seen on Haxorus and the occasional Dragonite. Swords Dance does see a decent distribution with Pokemon like Garchomp, Weavile, and Hawlucha primarily running Swords Dance sets, and others like Rillaboom and Scizor bringing them out on occasion as well, but unless you're up against HO, there's actually a decent chance that your opponent has none of these and probably has one at most, meaning that a Dancer-focused CAP isn't going to be using its ability very much, if at all. If it does manage to pull it off, and survive either boosted priority attacks or an Unburden Hawlucha flying at its face, it can potentially hit back and achieve its goal of shutting out the setup sweeper. This is potentially nice as a kind of anti-HO backup option, but the specificity of this situation is too high for me to consider Dancer as a good candidate for a "leading element of CAP 30’s functionality".
 
The more I analyze other metas, the less I'm interested in Filter/Solid Rock. Turns out that Ubers's/Anything Goes's Necrozma-Dusk-Mane already uses, appreciates, and I'd say close to optimizes the similar ability Prism Armor. While versatile enough to run offensive Dragon Dance sets, Necrozma-Dusk-Mane is often called upon to use a defensive set, complete with recovery and hazard setting. Importantly for the discussion of Filter/Solid Rock, it has driven AG's Zacian-Crowned to use Assurance instead of Crunch for the higher power if NDM switches into Stealth Rock.

Regarding the Blaze/Overgrow/Torrent/Swarm camp, I recall Substitute-using Volcarona variants using Swarm instead of the usual Flame Body to get better Bug Buzz (and maybe Savage Spin-Out?) calcs.

Addressing an ability mentioned significantly earlier in this thread that I did not catch earlier, I'm not interested in exploring Analytic for this CAP. Regardless of how rare Analytic is in other metas (and, for that matter, I still recall offensive Analytic Starmie as common in UU), we cannot forget how commonly Volkraken already uses Analytic. Volkraken's example shows that Analytic does not need to be optimized to be good enough for CAP, as the last time I checked, Volkraken's most common item was Choice Scarf (and yes, it uses Analytic on Scarf sets). Turns out that the 1.3× damage boost on switch-ins already makes Analytic good enough.

Of the abilities mentioned in Tadasuke's post, I'm personally the most interested in Cotton Down, Berserk, Rattled, Cursed Body, and Tinted Lens. I'm uninterested in Stamina because I feel it already gets explored in metas like Almost Any Ability often enough, and unlike Tinted Lens, there is no feel of risk or excitement when it comes to balancing this ability out on an OU-level mon (at least for me). I'm interested in Berserk and Cursed Body because of their unsatisfied demand for better movepools on users, and Rattled looks like all it needs is better stats on users, but Cotton Down looks the most intriguing to me because forcing slowdowns on opposing attackers definitely looks like it has potential, especially on pivots and less passive defensive mons (a la any defensive Balanced Hackmons set that can successfully prevent opposing mons from spamming V-Create on them).
 

dex

Hard as Vince Carter’s knee cartilage is
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Since it's been mentioned multiple times in this thread, I think there is a clear disconnect on the utility Solid Rock/Filter provides to non-defensive mons. It should be clear, but not a single mon has run this ability with good viability in either OU or CAP, and an Ubers mon running it holds little bearing on the CAP metagame.

Let's take a look at the mons that run the ability:

Necrozma-Dusk-Mane: Necrozma Dusk-Mane uses Prism Armor for a variety of reasons. Obviously, the main reason is its defensive sets, which check a good host of the mons in Ubers. However, it is still capable of running offensive Dragon Dance sets, using Prism Armor to afford it setup opportunities in the face of super-effective attacks.

Rhyperior: Rhyperior has shifted to a more defensive role this generation in UU, but in past generations it was an offensive powerhouse that used Solid Rock as a means of staying on the field even in the face of a check. Solid Rock essentially boosted its breaking capability by allowing it to tank super-effective hits to make up for its lackluster speed.

Necrozma: Necrozma has never played a defensive role on any team. It uses Prism Armor to give itself more opportunities to setup and sweep, making it a particularly hard mon to revenge kill. Here, Prism Armor increases Necrozma's sweeping potential.

Aggron-Mega: Mega Aggron has run all sorts of sets throughout the generations and tiers, from tank to wall to Curse Sweeper. Filter allows Mega Aggron to make use of its beastly defenses without serious investment to stay on the field and accomplish its goals, whether that be setup, firing off a Heavy Slam, or setting up hazards. This is also a notable example as Mega Aggron had its item slot eaten by its stone, so there is a comparison here to CAP 30i.

As can be seen, Solid Rock/Filter is absolutely not just a defensively-minded ability. It gives a number of archetypes a nice boost. Some non-defensive niches that really appreciate it are setup sweeper and tank, so I don't think the ability really limits us all that much. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk on Solid Rock/Filter.
 
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.
One quick thing I wanted to point out is that Cursed Body can activate on any damaging move, not just on contact like Effect Spore.

Basing our process around optimizing an ability that has a low chance of actually activating feel very difficult.
I want to push back on this specifically around Poison Touch. A 30% chance of activating doesn't seem huge, but 30% chance of inflicting burn has made Scald one of the most commonly used moves in competitive play. There's an element of risk to its use, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I agree that Cursed Body and Effect Spore are a bit more luck based and difficult to build around, but I don't think a 30% chance on contact moves of our choice is a significant detriment to the process or our ability to create a cohesive final product.

I like Pipotchi's tier approach so I'll be replicating that (also I'm pretty aligned in tiers too).

Top Tier:
  • Poison Touch
    • I've spoken about this at length so I won't go on.
  • Berserk
    • Berserk is an interesting one, I definitely think G-Moltres verges on viable here but I think there's different implementations to make this usable without becoming too busted. I think that playing around Berserk is interesting, not too frustrating and gives us a plenty of design space despite the special leaning.
  • Filter/Solid Rock
    • I agree with Dex that this does not have to necessarily be a defensive ability. I quite like this as well because it opens up our typing choices to include options that we may not usually consider due to high risk weaknesses.
  • Tinted Lens
    • Similarly, I like Tinted Lens as it may help elevate some more uncommon typings and moves that aren't typically viable. I like how Tinted Lens doesn't restrict us in future stages but is still a potent option that will drive good discussion.
  • Stamina
    • I honestly just love the idea of more viable defensive boosting options, I know there's plenty in things like Skarm, and Body Press helps here a lot, but Stamina is a great option for reliable boosting that can lead to some fascinating builds.
  • Rattled
    • Rattled has had a bunch of discussion already, and if chosen I think the question of "what do we do with our +1 speed" will continue to lead to an engaging process. Punishing Knock Off/U-Turn is an appealing option without a doubt.

Mid Tier:
  • Cursed Body
    • This has dropped for me as people have pointed out how it can be frustrating to play against. I totally understand that, but a think a few key examples like taking a Knock Off and then stopping the continual use of Knock Off to drive momentum sounds great. So not the best choice for us IMO but I think this ability does have potential to create an interesting final result.
  • Cotton Down
    • Cotton Down is one of the strongest abilities in the running, and I do think we could build something excellent here - but I feel there's a risk of a viable Pokemon who has such reliable speed control could feel very oppressive to play against. Things like Poison Touch can get shut down by Steels and Poison types, Cotton Down's ubiquity is a bit of a detriment to being a top option.

Bottom Tier:
  • Blaze / Overgrow / Torrent / Swarm
    • Eh? I actually like these abilities in terms of teambuilding and play if I can use them effectively, but there's only really one way to make these viable - get to low health and boost. It doesn't teach us that much, plenty of starters have always been able to do this and they just dont have the stats to execute it well.
  • Effect Spore
    • This is lower than Cursed Body for me because its double the luck - and double the frustration. It is exponentially harder to build a Mon around inflicting a range of statuses because which ones do we think we can capitalize on the best?
  • Long Reach
    • I mean I get the appeal but I don't think we learn much from this, and chip damage strategies punishing attackers I actually think lead to more interesting matches. Just ignoring Rocky Helmet/Iron Barbs/Rough Skin doesn't seem like enough to justify this ability.
  • Steam Engine
    • This falls firmly into "cool but better in doubles". I mean I like stopping Scald spam, but building an entire mon around trying to get a switch into a Water/Fire move I think is risky.
  • Water Compaction
    • Worse stamina thats much more difficult to activate.
 

Astra

talk to me nice
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I want to push back on this specifically around Poison Touch. A 30% chance of activating doesn't seem huge, but 30% chance of inflicting burn has made Scald one of the most commonly used moves in competitive play. There's an element of risk to its use, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I agree that Cursed Body and Effect Spore are a bit more luck based and difficult to build around, but I don't think a 30% chance on contact moves of our choice is a significant detriment to the process or our ability to create a cohesive final product.
Funnily enough, quziel and I were talking about this earlier. Unlike Cursed Body and Effect Spore, you do have control with your own luck, and that could make the process less stressful having to optimize it. I'm still on the fence because in the end, it's still luck-based, but I do agree now that it would have some interesting applications.
As can be seen, Solid Rock/Filter is absolutely not just a defensively-minded ability. It gives a number of archetypes a nice boost. Some non-defensive niches that really appreciate it are setup sweeper and tank, so I don't think the ability really limits us all that much. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk on Solid Rock/Filter.
While this is true, Solid Rock, Filter, and Prism Armor's effect and impact on all of those archetypes is basically the same: take overall less damage in order to perform their role better. Sure, it's probably gives us the most freedom with role creation, but when it comes to actually optimizing it, is it possible that we can go beyond the utility of purely beefing up the user? I just personally think that choosing such an ability sacrifices a lot of freedom room for one part of the process in order to give another part a huge boost in creative room, but that's something that I think we shouldn't aim for.
 
  • 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
I really like Solid Rock, as a offensive mon' with many weaknesses could be covered more easily or a defensive mon' could have it's weaknesses covered up to give opponents a harder time to check it.

Berserk would definitely limit the movepool a lot with it being catered to specifically special attacks, so I'll call it a meh but the concept is quite interesting.

Cursed Body, Effect Spore, and Poison Touch are interesting in concept, but the 30% chance of it activating seems a bit lackluster in my opinion.

Tinted Lens I favor a lot, because it means that resistances are virtually nonexistent for CAP 30's attacks.

Blaze / Overgrow / Torrent / Swarm is... cool and held back, but could definitely work. It's definitely optimizable, but because of the HP requirement and the requirement to get below 1/3 HP is very situational.

Rattled/Steam Engine I like in concept, but the fact that you have to be hit with a certain type of move is very easy to avoid, and getting a good predicted switch-in takes a lot of well... prediction. However, because of the amount of U-Turn and Knock Off in the meta, Rattled is a better option despite the +1 speed boost compared to Steam Engine's +6.

Cotton Down/Stamina is another ability I like a lot! The fact that it doesn't have a 30% chance of activating is amazing, as direct damaging moves is what is needed to activate it.
 

D2TheW

Amadán
My thoughts on stuff

Rattled: Not a fan of this one tbh. The concept of how it would work is nice in theory, incentivizing your opponent to not click certain moves and punishing them if they do. However, the first problem with rattled is that a one stage speed boost simply isn't that big a deal. The second is that it's so situational and while there is utility in stopping your opponent from clicking the likes of knock and U-turn, if we're useless unless they click those moves, cap30 will be pretty crap game to game. Hence, we have to make it useful when rattled isn't being procced and to be honest, I struggle to see how this doesn't end up being a generically good/decent mon with a situational gimmick that pops up now and then. While fucking over pult is cool, I feel like this might be outclassed by...

Weak Armour: Surprised I haven't seen much mention of this so far, considering how much traction rattled has gained. Weak Armour has some pretty significant advantages over Rattled, namely a larger pool of moves to proc the boost, and that boost being +2 rather than +1. The defense drop does rather force us into a more offensive role but that's not inherently a bad thing. I think there's some interesting design space in offensive mons that boost their speed whilst making themselves weaker to priority, in a similar vein to scale shot chomp/haxorus, by either playing into the priority weakness or working around it. I'll admit, I'm not huge on this one myself as it suffers similar issues to Rattled but I do think it deserves some discussion, especially since a fair few people are in support of Rattled.

Poison Touch: I really like this one, it's a deliciously obnoxious ability. It doesn't pigeonhole us into a specific role and is useful for all sorts of roles; as long as it gets to click contact moves consistently and you don't regularly attract statistical anomalies (:psygrump:) Poison Touch should be useful game to game. An interesting ability that should lead to an interesting process.

Filter and clones: Another one I really like, it's an interesting and unique defensive boon that we can definitely leverage to make an interesting cap with a unique defensive profile. I also like that while it's a defensive boost, that doesn't preclude us from making a more offensively inclined mon. Plenty of offensive mons would absolutely love to be able to stay in on more things, especially set up mons.
+2 252 Atk Weavile Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Filter Dragapult: 235-279 (74.1 - 88%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252 Atk Weavile Ice Shard vs. -1 0 HP / 4 Def Filter Garchomp: 291-345 (81.5 - 96.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252 Atk Zeraora Plasma Fists vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Filter Urshifu-Rapid-Strike: 220-261 (64.5 - 76.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

0 SpA Clefable Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Filter Urshifu-Rapid-Strike: 222-262 (65.1 - 76.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Every move listed here either kills or has a roll to kill without filter ftr. There's absolutely more examples but I feel like this is enough as a quick demonstration of it's use.
Overall just cool abilities that I think we can do a lot with and explore a lot about.

Tinted Lens: Very cool ability that I think we could make something very interesting. Lots of notable implications for later in the process such as defining the checks and counters for a mon that interacts with resists in a very unique way. I like this one.

Long Reach: This one is kinda meh but it's fine ig. There's definitely some mons like Weavile and Ursh RS that would prefer this to their regular abilities but idk, doesn't feel like there's a huge amount to work with here. Would like to see if anyone has some cool ideas for this that extend past safer triple axels/tail slaps/draining kisses.

Cursed Body: Don't like this one. It's only really useful on defensive mons and tbh, it's utility mainly comes in two forms. 1: it sometimes helps you better answer things you already answer by denying them opportunities to get crits or drops (looking at you dragapult). 2: You occasionally beat something you shouldn't through a cursed body proc and a quick prayer to a god of your choice. Not particularly interesting nor particularly useful imo. There are some weird interactions you can use for substitute shenanigans but that's quite gimmicky to be building an entire cap around imo. Another one that I've just seen no compelling evidence to use.

Stamina: Another ability that should give us an interesting process and has potential to be a good mon. One of the ones we're more likely to break imo but that's avoidable. Definitely a worthy candidate.

HP Threshold abilities: Likely to have pretty bad consistency issues (and also pult issues since the most convenient way of getting to blaze and it's clones is sub) but if we can sort those out (big if tho) we could probably make something decent.

Effect Spore: Similar to long reach, solid ability that just isn't very interesting imo. Not the worst candidate tho.

Water Compaction/Steam Engine: These kinda suck lmao, other people have already discussed the reasons why.

Cotton Down: This one's fucking weird ngl. Still it's undeniably got some very interesting uses such as murdering ho or acting as a bulky pivot that shows down whatever is in front of it before pivoting to a strong offensive threat. While idt it's quite as strong as some people have made out there's definitely potential here.
 
Top Tier
  • Rattled
    • Made a huge effortpost about this. I love it. Nuff said.
  • Poison Touch
    • Good ability. Bottom text.
  • Filter/Solid Rock
    • Lots of routes we can go here. I'd like it.
Mid Tier
  • Cotton Down
    • The only reason this isn't top tier is because I'm super scared that a mon with Cotton Down will just be able to do too much, straight up. Great ability and extremely scary ways to apply it.
  • Stamina
    • I'm pretty meh on this one, but cool effect, decent usage I suppose.
  • Berserk
    • I don't even know if this is something that we can consider as Moltres-Galar is ranked in OU right now.. but with that aside, I don't have very strong feelings on it either way.
  • Water Compaction/Steam Engine
    • Kinda fishy, but good effects when proc'd. I should probably rank this higher seeing as I'm such a big Rattled fan but something about it sorta stops me.
  • Tinted Lens
    • Kinda just feels like a "make a good mon" ability to me... but then again, it will almost invariably make a good mon, so I can't complain that much.
Low Tier
  • Long Reach
    • This ability is so goddamn meh. Like when I look at it I "meh" aggressively. You'd have to make this mon extremely weak to chip damage to make it worth it imo.
  • Blaze and Company
    • This isn't like Berserk where you have a proc that stays no matter what health level you're at, and can be re-proc'd, through means like Wish or recovery. Just super ass. You dish out one big hit and die. Also, there might be a legality issue with Blaze/Torrent/Overgrow, as they're only available on mons that are part of a trio, but this is CAP so.

Pls No Tier (any level of optimization would lead to an annoying, situational, and/or marginally useful mon)
  • Cursed Body
    • Overall it's super fishy, not only in terms of sitting there and fishing for a Disable, but also depending on the matchup, you're going to either depend on it to win or have it be only marginally useful.
  • Effect Spore
    • See Cursed Body, except more restrictive but with what I'd consider a better payout. I don't think anyone want sto see a viable Effect Spore user, as.... well, some people enjoy fun.

Editing to add my thoughts on Weak Armor: Weak Armor is fine, but I'm scared it'll be inconsistent (and I'm aware that's rich coming from Rattled's #1 fan). It kinda just seems like Weak Armor would be more of a condition the mon is under and not something that can be particularly controlled, by either the user or the opponent. I also don't like how you can almost smell the Aurumoth coming off of it. I'm not altogether convinced that I'd vote for this, but speed control abilities are cool, and it's more than likely that only 1 will be slated, so let's see.
 
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Brambane

protect the wetlands
is a Contributor Alumnus
Mentioned this on Discord, but I think given our framework making both forms share their BST, I agree with D2 that Weak Armor is stronger for the concept compared to Rattled. The ladder really boosts three advantages since special Dark and Bug-type moves are rare in the meta: proccing off Shadow Ball, getting Speed from Lando-t's Intimidate, and dodging the Defense drop. The trade off is +2 Speed instead of +1, and proccing off of ANY physical move. Weak Armor grants a lot more consistency since it targets everything that we would be with Rattled except Shadow Ball plus a wide assortment of common physical moves in the meta, including but not limited to: Body Press, Close Combat, Earthquake, Plasma Fists, Rapid Spin, etc etc. Since Lando-t is a physical attacker, you can still grab Speed from it, and you do so by responding to it as oppose to it responding to CAP30. The -1 Defense does have some implications limiting what moves we can switch in on; Double Iron Bash, Scale Shot, Triple Axel, and Surging Strikes would be suboptimal to say the least. HOWEVER! When it comes to increasing design space for stat spreads, there is a lot more room to optimize +2 Speed than their is +1; you can get away with lower base Speed/fewer Speed EVs while hitting the important fast benchmarks in the meta after proccing the ability. I do think it runs into the same problem Rattled does. CAP30 needs to strike the balance between good enough to use without proccing its ability and being overbearingly strong when it does. Finding that sweet spot is part of the challenge; Weak Armor gives us more room to locate it.

Poison Touch is a variance based ability, but done right imo. It has a lot more room for potential optimization than the 30% contact abilities like Effect Spore. The simplest reason is that it puts the initiative on the user rather than the opponent. Effect Spore, Static, etc are more reactionary; you you aggressively and proactively switch into something like U-turn or Knock Off and fish for the proc, but you are still reacting to what you think your opponent is going to do. Poison Touch is much easier to just throw out there and go fishing. Optimized, we should have our line in the water (keeping with the metaphor) a good portion of the time CAP30 is on the field. This is balanced by Poison having more common answers than other status: Poison, Steel, and Magic Guard are all metagame staples at the moments. As such, the ability has a built in strength and weakness for us to work around, which I love. It has lots of room for optimization, from multi-hit moves to unconventional contact moves that rely on fixed damage. And the effect in meaningful and useful in almost any game.

Filter/Solid Rock are good abilities; I don't need to restate the arguments made for it above. A lot of room for exploration and it adds another layer of depth to the stats and typing stages, making it perfect for an ability first concept like this one.

Tinted Lens is similar in that it adds another layer to the typing/stats stages we haven't explored before, but is also adds something extremely unique to our defining moves. Tinted Lens is usually thought of as a wallbreaking/sweeping ability due to OMs and mons like Venomoth, but there is an untapped potential with Tinted Lens. By compressing offensive coverage using Tinted Lens, we open moveslots for utility options! If that sounds strong, that's because yeah it really fucking is, role compression is a fantastic trait to have. But this isn't OM where you slap a great ability on a great mon that already exists; we would be building with Tinted Lens in mind at every single stage, from typing, to stats, to moves. Making sure we don't over-optimize this ability is another engaging challenge for our process. And with Defining Moves part of the process, I think there is no time like the present for a Tinted Lens CAP.

Cotton Down is weird, but at least its consistently weird. Speed control is nice. Its best application seems to be as an anti-offense tool, although there is some wiggle room to give this ability offensive potential as well. I wish I could go more into it, but I find talking about this ability tough without some explicit polljumping; there are a lot of assumptions I am making in my head of how this can be optimized. The best way I can put it is there are unique combos you can do by being slower than your opponent one turn, faster the next, and being allowed to use whatever move you want during that turn to prepare. A very cool ability.

It wasn't mentioned in tada's post, but Competitive would be an awesome project imo. Rapid Spinners have declined recently, making Defog the premier form of hazard removal. With Landorus-t being so common as well, Competitive has ample space to interact with the metagame. There a number of different avenues with how this can be optimized, including the degree of offensive presence we would want CAP30 to possess to how it interacts with allied hazards. It does force us into the direction of special attacker, but that is such wide territory that there is more than enough room for multiple ideas to thrive.

As for the rest of the abilities being discussed, I think Berserk is fine. I am not excited about it, but I wouldn't be disappointed if it won. Stamina is cool too and was one of my favorites at the start of the process, but since then its appeal has kind of worn off on me. Again, I wouldn't be upset if it won but I am not really gunning for it either. The rest of the abilities don't appeal to me as much; they seem either too inconsistent (I would love Water Compaction if one of the strongest Water-type moves atm didn't ignore Defense boosts), too explosive, already well-explored (Blaze and co. have been around for years; even if they haven't been really optimized since Gen IV in OU/CAP, they have a lot of history) or just not worth building an entire project around (sorry Long Reach, maybe someday.)
 
High Tier:
  • Steam Engine: While I can see the arguements for why Steam Engine might be situational, I feel like saying its useless or never going to activate is stretching things. The ability to boost your speed by 6 stages is insane, and unlike other similar abilities, allows for our power budget to be used elsewhere without ignoring the abilities effect. Steam Engine also gives a unique type of pressure, pressuring the opponent to not use moves like scald, fire lash, and any other fire and water type moves, which I feel in particular works well for 30i and 30b, as you can either give it to 30i and have a pokemon that's strong against multiple common moves, or place it on 30b so its given more flexibility as well as giving 30b its own move to take advantage of over 30i.
  • Berserk: I really like this one. similar to Steam Engine, this ability allows you to change the pokemons effectiveness in certain matchups, but instead allows a defensive pokemon to win a war of attrition by gaining offensive prowess.
  • Poison Touch: While not a flashy ability, the ability to spread poison chip damage with any of your possible contact moves is a good utility option, and I'd be interested to see how it could be utilized effectively.
  • Filter/Solid Rock: Both are solid abilities that allow Defensive pokemon and Offensive pokemon alike to perform their roles better and longer. Not much else needs to be said tbh.
  • Cotton Down: A unique ability for sure, allowing for one sides offenses to easily gain an advantage over the others. While some are saying this ability would massively cripple hyper offense, I actually disagree, and feel it could help boost it by allowing the user and its teammates alike to offensively overcome pokemon that previously outsped them.
Mid Tier
  • Long Reach: While I do like the idea behind this ability and feel that it would never not be a useful ability, its simplicity hurts it a lot, and its reliance on other certain abilities being in the meta makes it feel a lot more difficult to justify.
  • Stamina: Useful but otherwise kind of boring, Stamina feels like it doesn't play into many fun ideas that haven't been recently done, such as bulky setup sweeper.
  • Tinted Lens: This one worries me. The ability to ignore most if not all resistances is a very powerful strength, and avoiding creating a pokemon that could easily shred through anything that didn't quad resist it feels like it would be a heavy burden on the process.
Low Tier
  • Cursed Body: A 30% chance to activate an effect that would wear off when switching out feels...very difficult to optimize. I don't quite think this is the ability for this CAP since its more a nice assist than something that can be built off of.
  • Effect Spore: Trying to bolster the effectiveness of an ability that has a 30% chance to either cause chip damage, cripple an opponents pokemon or turn an opponents pokemon into a sitting duck sounds very risky and unfun to play against.
  • Blaze/Overgrow/Torrent/Swarm: All of these sound too risky and underwhelming to be optimized, especially in comparison to all of the other options on the list. While they're not useless, Their usefulness is limited in scope.
  • Water Compaction: Where I struggle to see Steam Engine as too conditional, I can definitely see the flaws in Water Compaction. Considering that even less moves activate it and that its effect is basically outclassed by Stamina, theres really not to much to get out of this ability that others do better.
  • Rattled: This is in the same boat as WC, but I feel its honestly overrated simply because it requires so much and does so little. Fully optimizing the ability to the degree that people want it to reach feels like it constrains our type and stats heavily, and even requires us to specifically choose 30i over its other form to give it to, something which no other ability on the list really demands. And in return? +1 speed, which still requires a high investment into speed. I even think that Steam Engines less common moves overall are more of a boon to it than Rattled's more extensive list, as where Steam Engine can be tailored to match a smaller list of pokemon, Rattled's focus on some of the most common and useful attacks means that its matchup with many top pokemon has to be worked out as well as its ability to take hit after hit more often.
 
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shnowshner

You've Gotta Try
is a Pre-Contributor
Cursed Body

Disable is a really powerful status effect that can completely throw off the afflicted player's momentum and positioning, and Cursed Body can do this on a whim. Choice attackers are ruined by Disable and any Pokemon that runs one/two attacking moves can be put in a really bad spot. Not too keen on such a powerful RNG effect especially if we want to optimize it so that the effect has more chances (spoilers: probably means having recovery).

I'm also not sure if we need to explore this considering SubHex Cursed Body Dragapult was a big thing not too long ago, and considering how good Pult is now I wouldn't be surprised if it made a resurgence during meta shifts.

Effect Spore

This can cause both Sleep and Paralysis which are two different ways to cheese a matchup and I kinda hate it. At the same time, it punishes U-Turn, Knock Off, and Urshifu. I am very torn on this.

Back in Gen 7 NU I think there was a Vileplume suspect and it got banned in part because Effect Spore was really annoying to play around and could make its best answers suddenly useless, which is perhaps the most relevant this ability has ever been imo. We could probably learn a lot from that example in regards to how we should approach such a volatile ability, if at all.

Poison Touch

The last important user of this ability was Alolan Muk, which was quite strong as a Pursuit trapper and Specially-defensive tank in UU, with a small niche in OU. Pursuit was really good on it alongside Poison Touch as it could both damage and status an opponent as they switch out, or simply have a shot at dealing extra damage on targets which decided to stay in. Add in Dark/Poison typing and Knock Off and you had a surprsing powerful attacker that was good at both dishing out damage to frailer Pokemon while also able to cripple bulkier targets with -12% max HP each turn.

I think Seismitoad having Poison Touch despite Water/Ground typing should also remind us how we don't have to match typing with ability. Yes it'd make thematic sense for a Poison type to use this and there are obvious synergies, but is that optimal? Overall I would love to work with what I feel is an underrated ability that uses an unexplored status effect to its advantage.

On that note the abilities I think would be the most rewarding for the process are Poison Touch, Cotton Down, Berserk, and Weak Armor. I also believe that Merciless, Thick Fat, Filter, Rattled, Aroma Veil, and Stamina would result in perfectly capable final products but are either less consistent in practice (Merciless & Aroma Veil) or simply not as inherently exciting as those above (Filter & Thick Fat). Tinted Lens is fine if everyone really wants it. The rest I feel are the most likely to have us regret our decision later either by being too underwhelming or just being completely unfun to play against.
 
on the previous questions.

Before going through the list of abilities that Tada posted I want to suggest including additional categories in this list.
Imo these categories should be added: Pure Damage Boosting (abilities such as Adaptability, Tough Claws, Iron Fist or Steelworker would fall in this category)
Conditional Boosting (either add to move triggered abilities or own category) (abilities such as Competitive/Defiant, Flare Boost, Quick Feet, Super Luck, Angerpoint, Stakeout and Merciless)
We could further divide this category into triggers by moves, triggered by ability, triggered by item and triggered by „other conditions“ but some of these have several triggers.
Anyway now let’s dive into the list of abilities Tadasuke provide
  • 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
Poison Touch Fucking cool ability, that I want to see on a CAP someday. It definitely has some interesting design space and would be cool to make work. Up until now the only mon that used it was Alomuk, which worked as a defensive Tank and pursuit trappet. Id be interested to see what other avenues can be explored with ptouch, which imo are incredibly varied and provide the freedom to lead to a lot of different products.

Cursed Body/Effect Spore I’ll group these two bc they do similar things. Of both I like cursed body a lot more bc it has much less rng involved and is much clearer in what we are going to build around and how to abuse it. I am not entirely a big fan of this but between Gengar or Sinistea being able to cheese more set up and Froslass being able to provide a set up sweeper with a free turn or two it has some cool examples how it works and what we could do with it.
If effect spore where only one status I’d say it’s fine but I’d rather use poison point, than enable the rng fest This would lead to.

Perish Body kind of falls into the Same mold as the above as it triggers its effect upon being hit. Cursola is an abhorrently bad user of it so there’s definitely room to optimize, but I feel it veers too close into chromeras bad ability concept, where we already discussed it.

Long Reach seems kind of weak compared to a lot of other available abilities, and it’s certainly not at the power level of say stakeout or even Stamina, but I think it would be a neat pick, considering that some mons like Melmetal, Weavile, Urshifu R and in general physical pivots would really love this ability, even if it doesn’t really make them stronger, bc it would allow them more item freedom. I think it’s cool that with this ability you can improve some Pokémon, without actually raising or even while dropping their raw powerlevel.

Cotton Down/Stamina I think these two are neat. They both improve the MU of it’s User , when hit by a move. Stamina is slightly weaker, but I’d prefer it bc it is more targeted and gives more direction to where it should go. Cotton Down feels too broad bc it’s basically universal (unless you use toxic or hazards to kill this mon) i still think it offers some interesting paths forward so I’m not opposed though.

I think in this category Poison Touch is my clear frontrunner. Stamina would be my next pick. I think these two have the best mix of cool effect, that you can actually leverage and potential counterplay and generally have broad applications, that offer a lot of ways forward.

Filter/Solid Rock make us think about the value of Defensive vs Offensive typing and I think that’s cool. Otherwise I feel like they are a bit tame, especially bc:

Tinted Lens is a fire ability, that I’m really hyped about to finally put to use.
It basically asks the same questions and I think we will have an interesting project around it both trying to figure out, what is optimal regarding a mon, that barely will have type specific Switch uns and balancing the power of this ability (also rip tinted lens Miasmaw. You would have done great.)
 
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Zephyri

put on your headphones and burn my city
is a Top Artistis a Forum Moderator
since flower veil got banned :sob:, im going to put some support behind poison touch, its a very cool ability that gives us a ton to work with and it's going to be useful in every game you play with it. some other abilities i think are cool:

weak armor: i love love love this so much uhstgrghuryy!!! weak armor has a ton of design space, punishes the ever common knock, leads to super interesting gameplay, and is sorta just rattled but better lol. vullaby in LC was a really cool example of how you can have interesting gameplay w this sorta mon; a slow defensive pivot that suddenly turns into a fast offensive one was super cool because it totally changed how it was played; it enabled vullaby to sweep bcs brave bird was high power and had limited switchins but also made it more vulnerable to the plethora of priority moves in the meta, not to mention that if it was unable to get the kill from bbird it was sorta screwed. in general im a huge fan of this ability and i really really want it to get slated

tinted lens: cool af, sorta maybe broken as well. theres prob a ton wed have to do to limit it because the idea of "basically 0 good switchins" is kiiiiiinda just OP but i think wed have some interesting discussions and itd definitely be a fresh presence in the current meta

filter/solidrock: theres def a lot of potential with these abilities and i think they have some cool implications for offensive mons in specific; the ability to live a hit from a "check" is huge because it means you can just straightup win if you're able to finish it off. we're probably most likely to make smthng "good" but not broken out of this one because its sorta tame but at the same time it has legitimate not-situational not-one-specific-MU-only benefits

berserk: the entire concept of "you cant hit me" is really cool and sorta unexplored with both of its main users. it seems offensive leaning at first, but theres a ton of potential for a defensive gliscor-esque sorta-sweeper mon as well. it doesnt define our roles from the getgo and although it implies a stat bias it makes up for that imo
 
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