CAP 37 - Part 5 - Primary Ability Discussion

[Jomakl]

Wonder Skin

This would be an ability moreso leaning into the defensive utility. Decreasing the accuracy of all Utility Moves as well as Defog and the likes to 50%, makes pressing something like Will-O not entirely free. The opp has to consider the miss chance which would incentivize them moreso to directly attack 37 which would then give BB more opportunities to fish for a burn. There are some very specific funny things this ability does as well such as making Parting-Shot 50% accurate which could make it stuck against 37.

Unfortunately defog is one of the moves that never misses and therefore cant be altered by wonder skin, although i still like the idea of the ability

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Unfortunately defog is one of the moves that never misses and therefore cant be altered by wonder skin, although i still like the idea of the ability

wait did they change that? i could've sworn

anyway, expanding on wonder skin, here are the relevant moves that you'll see in cap that are affected by it:

• taunt
• toxic
• will-o-wisp
• thunder wave
• glare
• trick/switcheroo
• encore
• parting shot
• strength sap

this list is pretty much exhaustive, anything else either doesn't have an accuracy check or is just never used at all. so, from this, we see that while wonder skin doesn't affect defog, it can help provide much safer switch-in opportunities against status-inflicting mons, deny kitsunoh crucial healing, prevent pecharunt and malaconda and other parting shot users from pivoting, provide insurance against taunt and encore, and (best of all) hilariously fuck over trick choice users. taunt effectively gives opposing pokemon exactly one (1) chance to do any of these things in the first place, and wonder skin turns it into a coinflip

(edit: for the record i posted this at the exact same time that robraf was editing their post, i didn't just ape their list)

 

[Scepticskep]

Filter / Solid Rock

- What synergy does this ability have with Beak Blast? How does it encourage pro-concept interactions?
Beak Blast's burning effect enables it to have longevity and put pressure on physical attackers, but our typing leaves some holes in that gameplan. 3 of our weaknesses in Fairy, Ice and Electric are common as both STAB and coverage across the metagame. Against strong physical attackers with super effective STAB ( Hemogoblin w/ E-Speed) or coverage ( Great Tusk w/ Ice Spinner/Supercell Slam/Head Smash) can potentially take CAP 37 off the board before the burn takes effect on them.
Few abilities are able to cover our matchups into all of these types, but Filter/Solid Rock creates an effective path to increase our ability to take hits and be an effective wall or utility mon. Abilities of this group have found previous success on defensive stand-outs like Necrozma-DM or Mega Aggron, both showing how these abilities when combined with a strong defensive typing can lead to significant field presence. Not only this, but it also improves CAP 37's spotty matchup into special attackers alongside physical attackers.

- How does this ability help us find a spot on a team or set us apart from similar pokemon?
Having a stronger matchup particularly into Rock/Ice/Electric coverage allows CAP 37 to separate themselves from the other bulky flying types in the tier ( ). Certain physical attackers run coverage like Ice Spinner, Supercell Slam, or Stone Edge specifically to counter these "bulky flying types), who lack consistent counterplay outside of Tera. With Filter/Solid Rock, CAP 37 becomes far less scared of coming in on a potential super-effective move from a physical attacker (note: Filter/Solid Rock are particularly good on Pokemon that lack 4x weaknesses like CAP 37). This also enables CAP 37 to stay on the field to provide utility on the team like Knock, hazards or more depending on the route we take.

- If this ability is centered on switch-in opportunities or status resilience, what matchups are you focused on "tuning"?
This ability can provide better switch in opportunities for CAP 37 with both physical and special attackers running the 4 types it's weak to. Improving switch in opportunity on mons that run these types can additionally provide space to Tera after switching in. Filter/Solid Rock also interacts with Tera beneficially as it can bolster the benefits of a defensive Tera typing even further. These all vastly increase the number of matchups CAP 37 can switch in or stay in on comfortably.

I'd also like to provide support to Thermal Exchange and Water Absorb as they provide resilience to status or certain non-contact moves, which benefit CAP 37's playstyle by warding off certain counterplay.

 

[AzothBend]

On forced switches: There is broad agreement that switching out of CAP37 should be made difficult in some way. However, it is largely seen as unecessary to use our ability slot to capitalize on a forced switch (perhaps the correct framing is "increase the threat to the opponent of switching out"- see this post by Shock3600 on the distinction). There was some discussion of "pinning" the opponent being a pro-concept interaction (see this post from Amamama), but the broad consensus seems to be that this is something that can be dealt with later. Overall I'm skeptical of many of these abilities based on the discussion we've had, but If you want to make an argument for one, I'd recommend focusing on the pro-concept angle.

Showing support for Stakeout/Analytic. I think the calculus is very simple. If you're goal is to utilize Beak Blast to its full potential (i.e. spread Burn), these abilities are a great bet. Much has been said about how the kit so far is tailored to threaten out a bunch of physical attackers. That's a great pocket in which 37 can reside. But it also means 37 probably won't be getting many Beak Blast Burns when anything that could proc the effect prefers to switch out.

How can we incentivize them to stay in and take the burn? Well, we make it so they absolutely do not want to switch out. Pinning the opponent down, forcing them to choose between a burn on their physical threat or giving up HP on their defensive bulwark. This is especially potent when combined with Taunt to deny any recovery. With this approach 37 is always able to make progress on a turn.

Guaranteeing and maximizing progress should be a concern here too. Much has already been said about how our typing may be a bit of a hindrance to how long 37 can be on the field. While it has notable resists, it's also holds some pretty notable weaknesses to common special move types. It's especially susceptible to status like Burn from many Pokemon on paper it should check. This is in tandem with a Stealth Rock weakness that complicates our interaction with Knock Off. Overall, short of some adjustment in the later stages, 37 seems like a Pokemon that could easily fizzle out quickly. All the more reason to lean into bursts of damage with these abilities.

 

[Shock3600]

Gonna make a post showing support for Stakeout over Analytic, comparing them with the questions.

What synergy does this ability have with Beak Blast? How does it encourage pro-concept interactions?
While in theory they do similar things, boosting damage for switches, the fact that beak blast is (almost) always boosted by analytic actually kind of gets in the way despite being part of the appeal. If we chose a typing that we are worried was never going to click beak blast, relying on another stab entirely, then I think analytic would be a nice little boost while also making it harder to switch into our coverage as well- therefore pushing the opponent to stay in. But I just don't think its really filling the holes we care most about right now. Stakeout by comparison, very clearly pushes our opponent to simply stay in and eat the burn. The fact that the dark typing helps make specific contact moves more rewarding to click into us helps balance out the Stakeout factor to me, making it a risky (from a design point) option, but one that feels possible to balance around.

How does this ability help us find a spot on a team or set us apart from similar pokemon?
Neither of these meaningfully change our role on the team or help us fit. It is a big push for our concept, but is not that much more optimal, from a team building perspectie, than simply having bigger damage. At the end of the day, it just solidifies our place as a big damage breaker. Stakeout here I do think gives us a more unique team role, acting like a psuedo pursuit. A stakeout beak blast is going to be good at landing damage both on the physical pokemon we switch into, and the flying resists that can try and take a beak blast. Being better at forcing damage on specific targets is going to give us a more unique role in the builder than analytic offers.

 

[Askeia]

I think the fact that Beak Blast almost always gets the Analytic boost is a huge point against it. May just be my own bias, but I personally think that pseudo-unconditional power boosting abilities are uninspired, especially in CAP. We have all the flexibility in world in the stats section to tailor to whatever damage rolls we want, so the only thing an ability like Analytic is doing is just lowering the amount of Atk stat we need to give our CAP later down the line, which ironically just makes us weaker overall.

I think Stakeout and Water Absorb are the abilities I like most at the moment. The former punishes defensive switches, and the latter gives us a positive Ogrepon matchup, as well as giving us 3 unique immunities.

 

[TheShowdownHero]

Throwing support behind Analytic and Thermal Exchange
Analytic due to the extra power being a very cool concept,and depending on how the rest of the process goes would be good for actually wanting to click said move
Thermal Exchange for practically the same reasons as DaddyBuzzwole's nomming it,Being immune to wisp is the main one i actually think goes in its favor
Filter is a great concept too,so super effective moves deal less damage.
Shed skin and or natural cure would be good so moves like thunder wave and or Wil o Wisp don't mean as much,so even if you get burned,slept,paraed,frozen now,you still aren't down a pokemon

Adaptability could be a interesting idea for similar reasons to analytic,being higher damage,but specfically having it work for stab moves only incetivizes you to click beak blast.

• What synergy does this ability have with Beak Blast? How does it encourage pro-concept interactions?

Adaptability makes your STAB attacks deal even more damage,and we are a flying/dark type,and beak blast is a flying type,so this would cause it to do more damage

• How does this ability help us find a spot on a team or set us apart from similar pokemon?

Essencially,the other dark types are either specail based,or do not have any meaningful damage on their stab moves(Or are primarily defensive.)

• If this ability is centered on switch-in opportunities or status resilence, what matchups are you focused on "tuning"?

The idea behind adaptability is it would dial up the damage of beak blast to 11,and for the matchups,its mostly its defensive matchups this would help with

 

[Gekokeso]

I have been shilling this ability for about a week now and now that im more free I can actually talk about it.

Opportunist

So, one of our biggest "issues" when it comes down to the general effectiveness of 37 is that a lot of pokémon can elect to start setting up in front of us. A particularly good strategy this generation comes down to the usage of tera in front of what is supposed to be a check to tank the hit and setup in front of it. Some particularly good users of this strategy are the likes of Revenankh, Gliscor and Snaelstrom. But what if we took advantage of the opponent's setup to boost our attack, especially our Beak Blast without having to run any boosting move whatsover?

Enter opportunist, the underexplored cousin of the much more famous Unaware. Opportunist allows us to really mess up with physical attackers, especially defense boosting ones, as not only their boost power up your moves, but also means that if they click a boosting move and they attempt to switch out, the replacement needs to tank a move from a boosted 37, decentivising boosting against it. Lets run a couple of what if scenarios shall we?

All 3 of these mons can attempt to ID / Bulk Up to break past us with a tera, but with opportunist we are constantly gaining defensive boosts to be able to stay firm no matter what tera they try to use to break past us.
All of these can are disentivised from clicking sd as they get a losing position and their teammates have to deal with a stronger 37 to deal with.
(SD facade) Mons like these three can try to setup and outmuscle 37, especially dragonite who can try to get as many boosts as possibly on 37 to make up for a potential burn. Opportunist takes away that opportunity by making the user's beak blast stronger and thus deincentivising setting up against it.
These are threats we can't check due to our typing, but with tera we can check them in an emergency as if they try to setup we can hit them hard enough to punish the setup.

 

[Dogfish44]

oh god this became a long ramble

I'll start with something I've mentioned on Discord, and then I kind of want to skewer a few suggestions to force commentary into the thread? I've yet to be comletely convinced that we need to use our ability slot to solely improve switch-in opportunities by turning neutralities into immunities (I feel as though our likely synergy with Glowking really demands more attention here rather than being forgotten because it's a New Thread), especially when some of the immunities being called for sort of ignore our concept.

---

First, the incredibly pro-concept (and, yes, pro-boring) option: Sturdy.

Sturdy has a really obvious synergy with Beak Blast - at 100% HP, it means our Flying STAB is always going to be usable (well, practically speaking). This is already useful, and means 1/4 of CAP37's standard kit won't be dead weight into the wrong team. That's honestly kind of important towards CAP37's viability.

Sturdy has a known weakness to Hazards, requiring the user to wear Boots. CAP37 already most likely wants to wear boots, which means that requirement is less distressing. CAP37 also is the first CAP to have a conceptual reason to *want* to be hit by Knock Off, and improving that gambit from our opponent's perspective likely increases the number of times we get to interact with Beak Blast. Sturdy is one of the few abilities that actively encourages our opponent to use the common contact-chip-damage moves against us, and allows us to punish those decisions.

---

With a boring option there, let's add in... well, yes! I've seen a lot of posts advocating against status, but nobody actually saying 'hey, Comatose is good for this'!

I really liked aaronarium's analysis of Guts - it lets us soak up status to have competitive merit and more role compression, but it means we desperately need to be running two items at once, with one causing us a lot of awkward chip over time (and there's rarely a reason to use Knock Off on a Flame Orb mon that's already burnt). Comatose skips the damage boost to instead simply absorb status effects, giving us more switch-in opportunities - without being excessive, and without removing Beak Blast opportunities.

---

Right, skewering! These are abilities where I can't yet see myself voting for them from the current arguments presented in the thread.

• Thermal Exchange - I'll be blunt, so far I'm reading this as 'shiny new toy'. If we want to block burn (and exclusively burn), then the ability Water Veil does that. Like, I don't see why this is getting as much love as it is when it's "Water Veil, but it also helps us against mons that we can't burn with Beak Blast". If anything, that feels worse for the concept! I'd rather go for something genuinely impactful (Comatose), or something that doesn't feel like it's going to constrain our stats stage (Water Veil) for no good reason. I'd love to see a play loop where the +1 from Fire is actually helpful for Beak Blast's conditional?
• Sticky Hold - I would rather give us Truant. Removing Knock Off as a move opponents want to use against us is removing a chance to follow our concept at a very basic level. I also don't see any reason to be actively competing with Shox for the slot of 'Knock Off Absorber that uses Knock Off'.
• Analytic - This is an inferior Stakeout that feels less conceptually relevant beyond 'make Beak Blast good'. I don't think Beak Blast needs much more to be usable (It's already pretty good, see STABmons), and it loses the primary advantage of Stakeout, which is the pinning 'switching out will require you take a lot of damage in comparison to just suffering the burn'.

And then other thoughts!

• Stakeout - This is fun! Like, it is pro-concept - it discourages the primary way of avoiding our conditional burn. It also eats up a lot of our power budget. I'm okay with that fact, because Stakeout is the strongest ability when it comes to preventing our counterplay being 'just switch out'.
• Wonder Skin - this ability is interesting in that it threatens multiple Pokémon whose primary counterplay to us would be to disrupt in a range of ways (Kitsunoh, Dragapult), and who are often good Burn targets. This encourages these mons specifically to use U-Turn to exit the matchup, lending a perfect opportunity for BB - by pressuring our opponent into a difficult position.
• Water Absorb - this one's honest about the objective of 'beat Ogerpon'. Whilst I don't like losing Flip Turn burns, very few Flip Turn mons in CAP really care about a burn to begin with, so I think we can live. This one has similar issues to Thermal Exchange (forcing Water-types out just brings in... mons that we can't use our conditional effect against), but at very least our threat of Burns still impacts certain Pokemon.
• Opportunist - And there's the good spice! I'm just going to echo the entire post - Opportunist actively encourages Beak Blast (and its secondary effect) by discouraging using us as setup fodder, since one way to break Beak Blast is to just KO in a single shot. This means that these mons are incentivised towards their contact-based options from the outset, which means we have more opportunities to Burn, and more opportunities to pressure things out.

 

[Darek]

Just wanted to throw some support behind Analytic specifically:

A lot of people have been grouping Stakeout and Analytic together when I really don't think it's correct to do so. While they do similarly punish the opponent for switching out, the fluctuations in power that Stakeout creates versus the consistency Analytic provides ultimately results in different outcomes for CAP37. Stakeout, as many users have already pointed out, is fantastic for pinning the opponent in favorable matchups, demanding they either trade horribly into Beak Blast or eat a ton of damage switching out. Analytic provides a similar effect to a lesser degree, but excels in enabling CAP37 to apply more direct 1v1 pressure in more matchups. The ability to turn Beak Blast into a functional 130 BP STAB demands a lot more respect from Flying-neutral Pokemon like Darkrai or Tornadus, allowing an Analytic CAP37 to effectively pin more Pokemon than Stakeout would. As such, Stakeout and Analytic carve out distinct niches where Stakeout is maximally effective in a smaller pool of matchups, whereas Analytic is strong in a wider matchup pool.

Another distinction between Stakeout and Analytic is that Stakeout likely limits the movepool that CAP37 wants to click. This is because the opportunity cost of clicking a move like non-attacking moves on a turn that the opponent likely switches is very high. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it incentivizes CAP37 to click Beak Blast more often, but does consequentially pigeonhole CAP37 into highly offensive roles. Because Analytic provides more consistent pressure, it loses a lot less from not attacking on the turn the opponent switches, and can continue to exert pressure into soft checks where Stakeout would not be able to. For instance, suppose the opponent brings in Gliscor against an Analytic CAP37 on a turn where it does not attack. While CAP37 may not effectively 1v1 Gliscor, it can threaten nontrivial damage with an Analytic Beak Blast, pressuring the Gliscor to respond to it as opposed to clicking Spikes. The same likely cannot be accomplished with Stakeout. Stakeout demands that the user get value by attacking the turn the opponent switches, heavily limiting the moves and roles that CAP37 wants to fulfill. Consequently, Analytic again positions itself as a less extreme, more flexible version of Stakeout.

Lastly, one should note that the effect of Analytic cannot reasonably be accomplished with stats alone. Analytic does not deny CAP37 from having a high attack stat in of itself, and should this level of power be desirable, it would be very difficult to justify this level of power through stats alone(we're talking 180+ attack). Furthermore, Analytic's conditional activation favors CAP37 towards clicking Beak Blast over its Dark STAB in matchups where it is naturally faster. If purely utilizing a high attack stat, the Dark STAB will almost always be more favorable in these situations due to the capability to move first. Then, to compare with Stakeout once more, it is quickly apparent that the power budgeting limitations of Stakeout likely prevents a Stakeout CAP37 from ever having the same 1v1 potential of an Analytic CAP37. By increasing the attack stat to very high levels to compensate the lack of Analytic, we will quickly run into issues where a Stakeout CAP37 is doing far too much damage when the opponent switches.

Ultimately, I find that Analytic and Stakeout are both pro-concept abilities that both deserve to be slated, although I personally like Analytic a lot more.

 

[ausma]

I’d like to take this opportunity to heavily, heavily advocate for Stakeout.

Considering that much of our build is designed around optimally spreading burns but also taking advantage of opportunities where we can’t, Stakeout is perfectly engineered to suit our concept of leaning into the conditional nature of our move while maximizing value when that condition is not met. In many ways it can serve as a powerful checkmate that complements our typing’s ability to switch into common Physical attackers like Kingambit, where we can ensure that our “fail” condition is one that can still have desirable value.

However, aside from just being intuitively pro-concept, there’s something else about Stakeout that I would like to highlight. Since we are working around a defensive build, our base damage output is not going to be reliable, which is not ideal when we are clicking a move that just deals flat damage when the burn is not successfully dealt. Purely defensive Pokemon typically exert pressure through disruption, such as status, item manipulation, or side conditions, hugely in part because their damage output is not great outside of super-effective targets. In order for a defensive build to succeed, the Pokemon itself has to have utility that is either very difficult to contest or is reliable to shore off a Pokemon’s potential passivity. Crucially, Stakeout lets us emulate the interaction of landing the super effective hits necessary to exert pressure when attacking, which is vital in ensuring that even when we fail to spread burn, we will succeed at being defensive by limiting how many options there are to mitigate the spread of burn. Reliability in your disruption is very important for a Pokemon with a defensive build, and Stakeout grants that reliability by forcing the desired burn target/opponent in general to directly contend with the burn of Beak Blast and make the reliable progress you would want of a defensive Pokemon.

Another distinction between Stakeout and Analytic is that Stakeout likely limits the movepool that CAP37 wants to click. This is because the opportunity cost of clicking a move like non-attacking moves on a turn that the opponent likely switches is very high.

I wanted to take a second to address this as well. While yes, it’s true that Analytic would let our moves have boosted value even if a switch-out isn’t active (which is particularly useful if something tries to take advantage of us for a setup opportunity), I personally don’t see it as that big of a problem considering that there are other ways to either make consistent progress or disrupt attempts at maneuvering around CAP 37. This could also even force the Stakeout condition by another means, such as making use of moves like Encore that would force a switch in another way.

The 1.3x boost is obviously not negligible even on a defensive Pokemon, but being able to cleave open a switch and make meaningful progress as a defensive Pokemon that is able to fully speck itself into being defensive is a game-winning quality, while also allowing us to operate more reliably as a defensive Pokemon that primarily uses Beak Blast to spread status. It’s also one that I think lets us more directly explore the relationship Beak Blast has between its ability to dish Burn and its flat damage output. Analytic would be safer, but Stakeout would give us much more of a nuanced discussion around how CAP37 makes use of every component of Beak Blast.

I also support slating Analytic, fwiw, I just wanted to point this out.

edit: I’d also like to give my support to Guts, which lets us not only address the issue of opposing burn as counterplay but also grants reliable damage boosting to Beak Blast as well. My thought is we could use it in the way Bulk Up Ursaluna runs it, where it’s a tool that converts a common form of counterplay into a strength that also addresses one of the issues of Beak Blast as a conditional move on a defensive Pokemon (same reasons I mentioned earlier).

 

[the_strikelasercl4w]

WIP

Got in trouble for poll jumping this one earlier, but now is my shot! STAKEOUT. Also I would like to slate Magic Bounce I will come back to elaborate more later, but I'm pressed for time

 

[dex]

I believe that this Pokemon is put in an excellent place to have a strong ability. I think its typing is not exactly perfect at achieving its goal, that is forcing progress with Beak Blast, which is fine because we have power budget available to us. I think that ability is a good place to spend that power budget. Therefore, I would like to ask to unban discussion on and submit Magic Bounce for consideration.

Magic Bounce achieves a simple purpose for CAP 37: it denies status moves, which do not interact with Beak Blast. So, what Pokemon does this improve CAP 37's matchup into? Unsurprisingly, quite a few. Arghonaut and Ting-Lu now have a much more difficult time setting up spikes. Dragapult and Kitsunoh can no longer burn CAP 37. Slowking-G can no longer paralyze it. Magic Bounce is, in all honesty, a very centralizing ability. There are no ways around this. However, I think with where this CAP process is at, implementing Magic Bounce in a meaningful, balanced way is achievable. It would no doubt require taking some allowance of power budget from the Moves and Stats stage, but the fact remains that Magic Bounce does interact in a positive way with Beak Blast and I believe that CAP 37 currently struggles to justify its own usage over other Flying-types, even with Beak Blast. Magic Bounce gives CAP 37 a clear route to viability and a definable niche.

Edit: crazy someone just asked for this to be submitted as I was writing this post. The timing is immaculate.

Gonna also give thoughts on all submitted abilities similar to what I did for typings.

Abilities I really like:

Analytic: I really like how this ability always activates with Beak Blast, it feels tailor-made for the move. While some may play this off as cheap, I think the power it gives CAP 37 goes a long way towards defining the mon in a good way. Maybe it does turn it into a bit of a Beak Blast bot, but I think that's a totally valid path to go down.

Opportunist: At first I thought this ability was a meme. Then I thought about it and I no longer think it is a meme, I just think it is straight up good. It, like other abilities I am a fan of, interacts with Beak Blast is a real way, effectively denying setup. I think it's a little lower power than people think it is (there are definitely matchups where this ability does nothing) but I also think it is just strong enough in the matchups it does have an impact on and lets us go wilder during Moves and Stats.

Intimidate: I think Intimidate is actually really good on CAP 37 because it allows it to switch into the physical attackers it wants to be in on more often. I think it would work, work well, and give CAP 37 a more definable place amongst the meta's Flying-types.

Abilities I kinda like:

Stakeout: Stakeout is fine, I just don't know if it's actually as good as Analytic. I think I prefer the guarantee. Stakeout is acceptable and does have enough mechanical difference that they are distinct, though, so I think this one is more down to preference.

Filter / Solid Rock: CAP 37 will need to take some hits to fulfill a tank role. Filter / Solid Rock help it do that. I think the concept is pretty straightforward here. These abilities are low in power level, giving Stats room to make up the difference.

Mold Breaker: At first, I didn't really see what this did. But, then I thought about the fact that Mold Breaker ignores Multiscale. Cresceidon is a Pokemon that CAP 37 is going to loathe. Ignoring its Multiscale and potentially dealing massive damage with Beak Blast makes Mold Breaker a viable option by itself.

Comatose: This ability is a lot stronger than people realize it is, and I think it'd have far reaching impacts on Moves and Stats. However, that's not really a knock against it. It is a less centralizing version of Magic Bounce, in some ways, but without the definition Magic Bounce provides. I just prefer Magic Bounce.

Thermal Exchange: I liked this ability a lot before I realized Wisp doesn’t boost attack. I'm wary of just handing out type immunities, so this strikes a nice balance for me by giving CAP 37 its much-discussed burn immunity. The fact that CAP 37 does largely still lose to the best Fire-type in the tier is not that much of a concern to me. No ability really gets around Hemogoblin.

Abilities I kinda don't like:

Wonder Skin: I get it. I also hate it. Making things coin flips is just not how I want this CAP, or any CAP, to play, and that is what Wonder Skin does. It would probably work, which is why it isn't in the lower category, but I would strongly dislike this CAP.

Water Absorb: It's a Scald immunity. That's really it. It feels pretty forced on this mon given the direction we are headed and I just don't think it's even that good beyond gimping Ogerpon-W, a Pokemon we already do somewhat ok into.

Abilities I really don't like:

Guts: I don't think Guts does enough. People like to point out SS Colossoil (which is not a very good mon) as an example of a Guts mon that didn't run Flame Orb. I don't think this is a mold we want to target. Additionally, Colossoil at least had the ability to run Flame Orb. This Pokemon has no such chance. I think Poison and Paralysis (no one wants these statuses) are too debilitating to effectively use Guts off of other secondary effects either.

Sticky Hold: Disincentivizing one of the moves we purposely wanted to incentivize is crazy work.

Sturdy: Frankly, I think this leans too hard into Beak Blast's burn chance. Making a suicide burner just doesn't appeal to me.

Wandering Spirit: Doubling up on contact effects seems unwise. We are already punishing contact moves enough.

Tinted Lens: Maybe it's not the greatest reason, but we've already seen what Tinted Lens does on a physical Flying-type. I just don't think replacing Brave Bird with Beak Blast teaches us much new.

Thick Fat: Considering that this Pokemon loses to the tier's best Fire-type despite this ability, I just don't think it does enough.

Steelworker / Steely Spirit: I think this CAP can do much more interesting things with its moveslots than use a subpar coverage type for its assumed moves.

Rocky Payload: See above.

Download: I really don't see the value of this compared to Analytic and Stakeout, which are much more consistent.

Screen Cleaner: This might as well be a flavor ability it's so meaningless to CAP 37.

Cloud Nine: See above.

Cheek Pouch: It's a Flying-type, it's running boots.

 

[viol and bass]

Probably should have done this earlier since a bunch of them have come up already, but I am allowing discussion on soft-banned abilities. Keep in mind that the barrier to entry for most of these is higher, and for some of them it is significantly higher.

It's early days but I'd love to see more feedback posts. I'm considering asking a few ability-specific questions to get community feedback on specific issues I see or to help differentiate options (I am a discussion enjoyer, sue me), but that'd probably be tomorrow sometime if at all.

One other note: Thermal Exchange doesn't boost your attack from Wisp, from what I have read. Still neat.

 

[escarlata]

Sticky Hold: Disincentivizing one of the moves we purposely wanted to incentivize is crazy work.

Since I suggested Sticky Hold, I want to defend my suggestion.

In my post suggesting the ability, I talked about how losing boots makes it really difficult for us to do our job of wanting to click Beak Blast, especially against U-turn due to the charge telegraphing exactly what we are using. Sticky Hold partially fixes the U-turn matchup by allowing us to ignore hazards.

Here I want to follow up by talking about how the burn aspect of BB is just outright bad at discouraging Knock Off.

One of the biggest strength of our typing is that we have a really good matchup into Dark and Ghost types, since we don't have Fighting weakness, which many Dark types like to carry. Ghosts usually don’t carry Knock since it provides redundant coverage, so on offensive mons it’s usually seen as Dark STAB or as coverage on something else.

Most users of Knock Off already don’t want to click it after we switch in
We are working with a typing that excels at switching into Dark STAB attacks, which means that chances are high that we are getting Knocked on the switch. There is already no incentive for them to click Knock Off again into a resist. BB is not doing anything here.

Some of the main STAB users of Knock Off include Weavile, Tyranitar and Meowscarada. If we were to switch into Knock Off, they are not going to click it again; and if were to switch into anything other than Knock Off, chances are we are in Triple Axel/Stone Edge OHKO range, so they are not going to follow up with Knock Off either. And there’s also Colossoil who doesn’t care about the burn.

Many users of Knock Off are outright Flying weak
BB being Flying type is already a huge disincentive for the opponent to click Knock Off on us. Think about who are the best users of Knock Off in the meta: Tusk, Pon, Argo, Malacoda, Valiant etc. They are already not going to click Knock Off on us, not because they are afraid of the burn, but because they are just going to get OHKOed by our 100 BP STAB SE move. In this case, Beak Blast is outright worse at discouraging Knock Off than Brave Bird because the latter doesn't have negative priority.

Similar to the previous scenario, if we were to switch into something that is not Knock Off, they either have something that threatens the 2HKO on us, or they are switching out in fear of the damage coming their way.

Utility users of Knock Off don’t care about being burned
I initially thought that we have a bunch of mons in this category, but there really isn’t. The common users of the moves are just Clefable and Torn-T, both of which would be happy to click Knock on us and take the burn.
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tldr;
The burn as BB is never discouraging Knock Off in the first place, so leaving that as a pseudo-weakness makes no sense.

Yes, we decided that Knock Off is something that we want to punish, but our matchups as Dark/Flying means that nothing is going to click Knock Off against us in the first place unless it's on the switch.

And removing the pseudo-weakness to Knock Off on the switch means we can capitalise on our defensive typing to come in and actually use BB more often, while patching up the U-turn matchup a bit more.
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As an addendum, since soft banned abilities are now allowed as I was starting to write this, I'm going to preemptively show some soft support for Magic Guard for the same reason, but I'm too tired to write specific reasoning for it at the moment.

 

[Just A Shroom God]

We are at least a semi-defensively-oriented mon that isn't always able to switch in freely, so we'll want to choose an ability that either makes us more threatening while we're on the field or increases the amount of times we can get on the field.
Threatening:

Analytic and Stakeout are both good at directly increasing your damage output while on the field. I like Stakeout over Analytic, but both of them work just fine.

Guts is the only option I can see realistically competing with Stakeout/Analytic. It both gives us many switching opportunities and increases our threat level should we get status'd, which is awesome. On the other hand we're suggesting additional inconsistency for a beak blast user, which yeah.

Sturdy is cool...? but I think it runs into the issue of compounding our knock weakness, making it so that we no longer want to bait knocks as much. Plus, since we're not directly increasing our damage, bulky mons are still free to just kind of ignore us, and special attackers have an easy switch. Definitely an ability that could Do Things unlike, say, Thick Fat, but idk.

Switchins:

Magic Bounce and Opportunist are just two sides of the same coin, really. Both of them limit what opponents can do while you're on the field other than hit you, and both provide more entry points for the 'mon, which I think is cool. Both abilities but Magic Bounce in particular do kind of warp our process from their strength, though.

Intimidate is the switching-in counterpart to Stakeout, it just increases the amount of times you'll be able to enter the field. I think personally that this is a really boring route to take considering we have a much more fun way to punish physical attackers, but there's no denying that it would be effective.

Natural Cure/Shed Skin/Thermal Exchange all protect us from status, which will undeniably be useful. They're less powerful than magic bounce, but that also comes with the benefit of not needing to design around magic bounce, and they open up some switch-ins that Guts doesn't, namely paralysis users.

Filter is... ok. We don't have a lot of weaknesses outside of special attackers that we don't want to be letting in anyway, but damage reduction will always be good on this mon.

Water Absorb is just us hard countering wogerpon. I don't really see why we need to do that exactly, since we already have a decent matchup.

Sticky Hold: As the last remaining barb clef user on ladder pls have mercy. also something something disincentivizing knock bad.

 

[Apagogie]

Just want to warn that Stakeout is an extremely powerful pseudo-trap ability which can negatively impact the quality of the games by forcing a key glue Pokémon to stay in to die. We also have to be careful not to create a wallbreaker by accident.

This is the damage of an 80 base Attack Mandibuzz (I do not think we will realistically go much lower):
252+ Atk Stakeout Tera Flying Mandibuzz Beak Blast vs. 244 HP / 36 Def Gliscor: 276–326 (78.4–92.6%) — 37.5% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock.

 

[shnowshner]

Yeah Stakeout is one of those nightmare abilities that screws with balance to an alarming degree. The damage on switches is absurd to the point that having a lower Attack is almost a necessity, but also presents the problem where our damage is certainly lacking if we don't force a switch. And if we aren't good at dealing damage what switches can we force exactly? CAP 37 as least has a typing with two immunities and unique move that aid us in forcing the opponent out. At this point if we gave 37 Stakeout I envision it being a highly polarizing Pokemon that lives and dies on the number of strong matchups it's able to take advantage of, rather than a more consistent threat that doesn't need the opponent to switch in order to dish out meaningful damage.

I prefer Analytic over it for this reason, it's accomplishing a similar goal with far less ludicrous power, giving later stages more room to breathe. I don't think it activating for Beak Blast almost every time is a bad thing, we aren't limited to a single move so it's not a free damage-boost across the board, just one that acutely targets our main selling point.

 

[a fairy]

Some quick thoughts before I put up my ability of choice...
Can't say I'm a huge fan of the "double down" abilities (Sturdy, Sticky Hold as examples) - I'm worried a fair bit that our 'mon will never get burns off if we too aggressively overplay its "don't touch me!" energy. I prefer Analytic over Stakeout personally, but that's off a few quick handcalcs and my understanding of the abilities. I quite like the "don't try to status me" stuff like Comatose/Magic Bounce/Wonder Skin, and the defensive options in WAbsorb/Filter/Solid Rock are interesting options to me (positive tone indicator). I don't know what to think about Opportunist, admittedly.

So, now, it's time to formally put up the one, the only, Mold Breaker. I know dex mentioned it already and it's gotten a fair amount of attention in Discord, but nobody's formally nominated it, so as someone who hasn't had much thought on abilities yet, I'm here to be the standard bearer. I quite like Mold Breaker getting around stuff like Mulitscale/Good as Gold(not that we really need it)/Purifying Salt/similar stuff, and it allows us to use our ability in a means of creating a more full Pokemon - not one that just clicks Beak Blast (though it does help somewhat with that), but rather something that can break through Cresceidon, doesn't burst into tears when it sees Equilibra, and hey, being even better against Gholdengo ain't a bad thing. I also enjoy what it does in the MU against Garganacl, though I think CAP37's probably still forced out against it anyways.

 

[kenn]

I figured I would give my thoughts on all the abilities that have been suggested so far as I don't have any other abilities to offer up myself (formatting inspired by dex so s/o to him)

Abilities I really like

• Thermal Exchange - I really do think that having an innate burn immunity as well as punishing the Fire-types by gaining a +1 Attack on "contact" from their STABs allows 37 ways to get onto the field and immediately threaten the foe. While not getting the +1 Attack on Wisp means that Kit and Pult don't feel the pressure as much, 37's SE Dark STAB is enough to still threaten them and blocking Wisp gives 37 that in to switch in and threaten the aformentioned Ghosts.
• Opportunist - This one has grown on me the more it is discussed in CAPcord, but one of the biggest issues 37 has rn besides status is how to we get the foe to hit it and this kinda forces that in that we "boost" alongside anything trying to set up so they have to hit us to make actual progress and forces those "pins" that Robraf has mentioned in the thread previously as well as in CAPcord.
• Stakeout/Analytic - Both of these are similar enough that I am bunching them together here; however, both are different in how 37 plays with them. Stakeout causes those pins to be very palatable and reachable by forcing the opponent to attack and take a burn or by punishing them just switching out to their "counter". I do see that this is a very pro-concept ability, but I also understand the chunk of the power budget this path would take which can be limiting when it comes to stats and movepools. I am less inclined to go all in on this, but I do like it. As for Analytic, I think it is straightforward in "automatically" boosting Beak Blast since it is -3 priority, but I do think it does have the downside of innately wanting us to be slower which can mess with potential Taunt shenanigans down the line or only gaining the boost if we force a switch a la Volkraken.

Abilities I like

• Magic Bounce - If Stakeout is a big chunk of the power budget, this is the deluxe Chunky Chips Ahoy cookie. While I do like that Magic Bounce is the epitome of "must hit 37" the centralization of this ability coupled with the implementation of it within the metagame is...precarious at best and downright awful at worst. I do like this ability a lot in how 37 avoids all status moves aimed at it, but the balancing act that will occur with this makes me feel a tad uneasy were it to win (if even slated)
• Filter/Solid Rock - Having an inherently defensive ability for 37 is not a bad idea and in the case of these 2, weakening the SE hits from the likes of usually special types (Fairy, Ice, and Electric) makes me like this as a generally good choice and possibly a safe one. However, I do think this may be better suited for a secondary choice rather than a primary as I think 37's problem to solve with its ability rn is status "absorption" or gaining "come at me bro" energy.
• Comatose - This feels like a less-amped version of Magic Bounce that just denies status altogether and strictly just makes sure we never have to worry about anything detrimental. The only reason I don't like this is it feels more generically-good like Regen or something to fix our status immunity and I like more targeted abilities, but it does accomplish the need for some way to deter status.

As for the rest of the abilities, they either don't ring a bell for me (Cheek Pouch, Tinted Lens, the "third STAB" abilities) or don't seem impactful enough for a primary ability (Wonder Skin, Guts, Sturdy) to be worthy slating personally.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

i originally only mentioned opportunist as an afterthought, but the more i think about it and the more other people elaborate on it, the more i'm convinced that it's probably the best direction we should take. thermal exchange is still my second favorite option because of just how much of a problem burn and fire-types are for this guy. wonder skin is another one i like and would recommend slating but i have doubts about its actual impact and the introduction of rng is rarely (some might argue never) a healthy thing

as for stakeout and analytic, i think they would be ok decisions and should definitely be slated but after thinking about it for a while i don't particularly vibe with either one. analytic is consistent, but i think it might be too consistent to mesh with the rest of the concept. sure, you're punishing switches, but you're also boosting beak blast whether they switch or not, so there's not really the extra layer of troublesome decision making that beak blast is trying to force opponents into; if your choices are "switch and get hit harder" or "stay in and get hit harder anyway and also possibly burned" you're going to choose the switch almost every time. stakeout is more pro-concept, but i don't like the level of power it grants. people are underestimating how strong this ability is on anything that isn't complete dogshit, and how low the rest of the power budget will have to be to compensate. stakeout also feels like it risks hijacking the concept and making every future step more about "we have stakeout, how do we balance that" than "we have beak blast, how do we supplement that"

 

[Guingil]

Some thoughts. There might be some polljumping here, which I'd appreciate being called out on. Been circulating this Venn diagram on Discord, which captures some of the interactions of interest for Beak Blast and our typing. Take it with a grain of salt, as it's assuming some positive situations for us (for example, we can't really switch into Ivy Cudgel from Wogerpon, but can do it for its other moves, and hence it is put in that category).

I also do not highlight things impacted by Taunt in the diagram, as it depends on our speed tier, but BOY is it significant. Also see: Corviknight/Gliscor/Skarmory not being able to do much, even if they switch in.

Power-boosting abilities:

Stakeout: I'm kind of torn(adus) about this ability. Mid- to high- Taunt has extremely good synergy with a Stakeout boosted attack, in which you deny recovery or status-based counterplay. Forcing things to hit us more because of the "pin" has been brought up, but rather than thinking about the double damage in a vacuum, it is more important to think of the Pokémon likely to switch into our boosted Beak Blast or Dark STAB. These are some calculations for these Pokémon, assuming 100 Base Attack and a boosting nature:

Calcs

252+ Atk Stakeout Mandibuzz Beak Blast vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable: 262-309 (66.4 - 78.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Stakeout Mandibuzz Crunch vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Shox: 267-315 (56 - 66.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ Atk Stakeout Mandibuzz Crunch vs. 252 HP / 52 Def Garganacl: 183-216 (45.2 - 53.4%) -- 1.2% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Stakeout Mandibuzz Beak Blast vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Multiscale Cresceidon: 136-161 (37.3 - 44.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

252+ Atk Stakeout Mandibuzz Beak Blast vs. 248 HP / 248+ Def Moltres: 231-273 (60.3 - 71.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ Atk Stakeout Mandibuzz Crunch vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Zapdos: 192-226 (50.1 - 59%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ Atk Stakeout Mandibuzz Beak Blast vs. 248 HP / 152+ Def Venomicon: 213-252 (57.1 - 67.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ Atk Stakeout Mandibuzz Beak Blast vs. 40 HP / 0 Def Hemogoblin: 336-396 (101.5 - 119.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252+ Atk Stakeout Mandibuzz Crunch vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Corviknight: 168-198 (42.1 - 49.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

252+ Atk Stakeout Mandibuzz Crunch vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Equilibra: 246-291 (60.2 - 71.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

So do we really disincentivise switching to achieve the pin better? Hemo dies, we beat Moltres if we get a faster Taunt, and we can kill Clef in some situations with the Taunt mindgames. That's 1 + .5 + .5 interactions that we flip with Stakeout. Lot of the mons that survive can hit us back (Clefable, Shox, Cresceidon, Garg, Zapdos) while we assume the risk of taking this hit by clicking Taunt to prevent their recovery. I personally think we need a higher outcome ceiling for making the "pin" argument valid. But then we need to balance by giving it fewer opportunities to do this high-impact thing often, which, then, pushes us really into the Trade.png concept.

We also somewhat weaken our endgame interactions, but Spammer nicely described this as "changing the decision matrix", or, in my more layman understanding of it, we focus our interactions on high-impact early to midgame interactions, rather than building up towards endgame interactions with smaller steps of the kind described in this post.

Doable, puts us on an interesting path, but quite high-skill/high-risk (welcome back Skill Issue and Which Road Leads to Rome?) as it does not solve issues only an ability could.

Analytic: Initially hated this, thinking it's not really interacting with the concept and just rewards the non-conditional part of Beak Blast. But Darek's post really highlights the difference and advantage over Stakeout. An important possible "change", aside from the general benefit of the boost, is guaranteeing some KOs into things that we want to target in the endgame, like Offensive Tusk or Zama.

Analytic becomes more interesting if we have a good speed tier for Taunt, so we give the boost only to Beak. Hilarious in this case if it also ends up mitigating the effects of Paralysis somewhat, by also giving the boost to our Dark STAB ​

Does not really change our functioning, but gives us a power level only achievable with "icky" stats/Life Orb, which we are not running ever. Also interesting is the question of how much power we need, given that we can deny recovery with Taunt.

Status-protection abilities:

Must start by saying that Taunt pressures a lot of the mons which can status us once we are in, so the problem narrows to switching into status, and if we can help with Kitsunoh and Dragapult, which are Pokemon we could otherwise target.

Thermal Exchange/Water Veil/Comatose: Will-o-Wisp does not activate the +1 Attack, and thank god for that. Unfortunate that we mog our fellow Kanto bird Moltres now, but we still lose to Hemo, possibly Ram with its Thunder. My one gripe is that this ability does not directly interact with Beak Blast's conditionality and is more generically a patch-up, but that's... fine from a viability standpoint. Not as much from exploration of conditionality. Water Veil's more distilled, gives us more in the power budget.

Same for Comatose, really. Good, but not in an interesting way. Not specific to the two Ghosts, so lower in my rankings than Thermal Exchange.

Wonder Skin/Magic Bounce: Statistical mindgames are fascinating, seen in how Flame Body/Static are used to disincentivise U-turn or other contact moves with the threat of catching the user with a switch-in. However, I feel like in these games the "punishment" for the opponent is pretty high (a status), compared to the comparatively lower cost of a miss for Wonder Skin. So the implementation space is narrower, in that if we want to punish we have to manually do it with a move instead of relying on the passive effect entirely. Only possible when 37 is in, against the designated targets Kitsunoh or Dragapult. Let us consider this scenario. Is the Kitsunoh clicking U-turn, Will-o-Wisp, or hard switching? Probably hard-switching, unless the game state is such that they can't (no resources), or Kitsunoh is more expendable than the thing they will bring in. This is very much in line with Beak Blast's functioning. But the thing is, 37 only needs to lose one gamble to lose a lot of this ability's use, and our "punishing" ability is affected by losing the gamble as it is manual.

Taunt interacts nicely with this, as already mentioned by others. The possibility of getting a free turn here and there on lower-threat situations (like a Parting Shot) is nice as well. Might encourage clicking into us with U-turn, but I doubt that is chosen often over a hard switch into our specific targets. So I consider it decently interacting with our exploration of conditionality, but low-powered enough that we save a lot of our power budget.

Magic Bounce is the opposite in that the punishment is too severe, and any Magic Bounce Pokémon becomes defined by it, rather than Beak Blast or its conditionality. So no.

Guts: Guts here is basically "No Competitive Ability" until we are hit by an opponent's status move. I have used this strategy on Collosoil as well as my beloved Defog Conkeldurr before, so of course I personally see some merit here. I don't think we Orb ourselves here, given our switch-in difficulties. It interacts somewhat weirdly with Taunt, but I see a world in which you take the risk of getting statused more freely, in order to then hit stuff hard and deny their recovery with Taunt. But at that point, is Facade not comparable in power to STAB Beak Blast? IDK, have to mull over this more, but something seems wrong.

Great for the power budget, I think. Marvel Scale is horrible as it discourages contact (why he say f me for).

Prankster: Was surprised it hasn't come up more in the discussion. There are two paths with this, in my mind, and the guaranteed one is with the universally assumed move Taunt. We fast Taunt Kit and Pult, so they cannot Wisp us. But I think the problem of choosing to click between Taunt and Beak Blast leaves us in a situation in which we choose, most of the time, to prevent the more debilitating option (Burn over the damage of U-turn), so that leaves our opponents actually freer to click U-turn and get some chip on us. Not a nice option to boost our usage of Beak Blast. I believe our status prevention from the target mons should be passive, rather than active.

It can gel with other moves, especially recovery, and a priority option does synchronise well with Beak Blast, and we need some health to make full use of it.

Denying Kitsunoh's Burn and Sap due to Trace Prankster not affecting our Dark type, either through it switching on us, or slow pivoting from an untraceable Poison Puppetteer Pecharunt, is insanely funny though. Unlikely to occur, but funny.

Shed Skin/Natural Cure: I believe we want to stay in for short durations, Beak Blast, and blast off. Shed Skin requires longer durations, and Natural Cure solves the issue too late because we have to switch out knowing we have failed to make an impact. Not ideal.

Longevity/utility abilities:

Regenerator: Unlikely to be popular, but hey, we have a use case of Tornadus-T as a Flying mon working around the need to use Heavy Duty Boots with this ability, which could be huge. Even if we do run Boots, we get health, which could free up a moveslot, help us run our Beak bluffs better, or, when we do lose these Boots due to Knock, the cost isn't as high. Also somewhat mitigates the health loss from two statuses.

I think Regenerator is always likely to be pro-concept for anything, so not much to say here, but I did want to bring it up.

Opportunist: I understand that the appeal of this is switching into setup attackers when they are setting up, and not having to click Taunt to keep pace with a set-upper and Blast them instead. I feel this carves out a very unique niche among the abilities provided, and the endgame pinning situations are great. My only worry is that this rewards us for switching in on a predict, but given our general difficulties with switching and the list of things we can switch in on being pretty hard-hitting as well, we run the risk of being hit hard enough to die the next turn. But this can probably be balanced with manufacturing situations where opponents feel comfortable setting up, maybe?

I feel it's a more interesting pin than Stakeout. Interacts with workarounds around Beak Blast, so that's nice as well.
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