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CAP 38 - Part 9 - Secondary Ability Discussion

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Spammernoob

Spammernoob

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CAP 38 So Far


Please pay very close attention to Guingil's posts during this thread and remain on topic. DO NOT begin by posting massive lists of abilities!

Some general rules for this discussion:
  • Custom abilities are banned. No exceptions. Posts suggesting custom abilities will be deleted.
  • There are ability banlists for the different stages of ability discussion. Posts suggesting banned abilities will be deleted.
  • Flavor abilities do not have any place in this thread. Do not bring up flavor reasoning. Posts that rely on flavor reasoning will be deleted.
The following abilities are banned from this discussion:

Arena Trap
As One
Aura Break
Bad Dreams
Battle Bond
Beads Of Ruin
Beast Boost *
Chilling Neigh
Commander
Dark Aura
Dauntless Shield
Delta Stream
Desolate Land
Disguise
Dragon's Maw
Dragonize **
Embody Aspect
Fairy Aura **
Flower Gift
Forecast
Full Metal Body
Grim Neigh
Gulp Missile
Hadron Engine
Hunger Switch
Ice Face
Illusion
Imposter
Intrepid Sword
Mega Sol **
Moody
Multitype
Neuroforce
Orichalcum Pulse
Piercing Drill **
Poison Puppeteer
Power Construct
Primordial Sea
Prism Armor
Protosynthesis *
Quark Drive *
RKS System
Schooling
Shadow Shield
Shadow Tag
Shields Down
Soul Heart
Spicy Spray **
Stance Change
Sword Of Ruin
Tablets Of Ruin
Tera Shell
Tera Shift
Teraform Zero
Teravolt
Toxic Chain
Transistor
Turboblaze
Unseen Fist **
Vessel Of Ruin
Victory Star
Wonder Guard
Zen Mode
Zero To Hero

* These abilities will only be unbanned on a concept which is based around this ability - Such as an Ultra Beast or Paradox Pokemon
** These abilties will be treated as fully banned for the remainder of SV CAP, and will be pending review next gen.
These abilities are banned by default and should not be discussed barring exceptional cases. If you believe one of these abilities should be considered, you can make a post trying to explain why an exception is warranted in this specific case and if both the TL and Ability Leader agree, it will be allowed. If the TLT disagrees with the unbanning proposal, they should be considered fully banned and should not be further discussed.

Bulletproof
Color Change*
Defeatist
Dry Skin
Earth Eater
Flash Fire
Fur Coat
Good As Gold
Gorilla Tactics
Huge Power
Ice Scales
Libero*
Levitate
Lightning Rod
Magic Bounce
Magic Guard
Magnet Pull
Mimicry*
Motor Drive
Parental Bond
Protean*
Pure Power
Purifying Salt
Regenerator
Sap Sipper
Slow Start
Stall
Storm Drain
Truant
Volt Absorb
Water Absorb
Water Bubble
Well Baked Body
Wind Rider

*These abilities can only be considered for an unban if the Ability stage is done before typing.
Comatose
Drizzle
Drought
Electric Surge
Fluffy
Grassy Surge
Innards Out
Misty Surge
Prankster
Psychic Surge
Sand Stream
Snow Warning
Speed Boost
Stamina
Steam Engine
Supreme Overlord
Toxic Debris
Triage
Ball Fetch
Battery
Costar
Friend Guard
Healer
Honey Gather
Illuminate
Pickup
Power Spot
Power of Alchemy
Propeller Tail
Receiver
Run Away
Stalwart
Symbiosis
Telepathy

-----

Fully Banned Abilities group + Soft Banned Abilities group + flavor ability-only group

Fully Banned Abilities group + Soft Banned Abilities group + secondary ability group + flavor ability-only group

Primary ability group + secondary ability group


-----

Ability banlist PRC threads:
 
Hello, everyone! Long time no see. It’s your friendly neighbourhood Ability Leader, Guingil, back again, ready to enter one of the final competitive stages of the process… deciding on a Secondary Ability! (or if we need one)

Now seems like a good time to take stock of what CAP38, our mini-Eternatus, was supposed to do and what we have achieved until now. spammernoob’s initial post during Concept Assessment 2 mentions the following qualities of Eternatus that we aim to emulate:
Spammernoob said:
Vital to implement
  • Premium speed tier; outsped by select offensive Pokemon, but outspeeds most of the tier.
  • Ability to flex EVs for bulky or offensive sets
  • Access to powerful permanent progress tool (Toxic)
  • Powerful STABs + Coverage combo (Poison / Fire / Dragon)
  • Access to reliable recovery (via moves)
  • Limited setup options (Meteor Beam analogue)
Good Direction
  • Above-average all-around stats
  • Lack of key utility (non-Tspike hazards, hazard removal, pivoting)
  • Resilience against a relevant form of passive damage
  • Balanced Offensive / Defensive typing
Unnecessary
  • Typing provides Tspike absorbing utility
Click to expand...
Click to collapse...
In terms of ticking boxes, we have done a good job here. Yet another framework to assess our progress is to see if the various kinds of sets we want are indeed viable. These were the ones delineated by our TL at some stage or another:

High priority: LO Offensive / 2A Defensive
Medium priority: Meteor Beam
Low priority: Cosmic Power* (*not guaranteed yet)

The winning stat spread talks about both offensive and defensive benchmarks with differing investment, so I think we’re set for the highest priority sets. However, there might be some wiggle room for the lower priority aspects before we go into movesets, which can be provided in this stage. Thus, my first question and only question here is:

Is there a need for a Secondary Ability to help us emulate some aspect of Eternatus?

This might seem like a pretty limiting question, but often, the Secondary Ability stage seems to be defined by the curiosity to explore alternate routes from a base kit rather than a need per se (Shox was an exception). This time, however, we have a model in Eternatus, which has its own clear limitations we are trying to ape. Is there a use case that we have left open through our choices until now, which Secondary Ability is required to fill? Are there some sets?

Important to note here is that if the consensus view is that a Secondary Ability isn't required, the TLT can decide that going to polls isn't necessary. If we do decide that a Secondary Ability is required, we will go to polls without NCA (No Competitive Ability) being a polled option. This is due to the new policy regarding Secondary Ability, which the curious can read up on here.

Looking forward to a great discussion! And remember, specific ability suggestions are NOT open yet!
 
In my opinion, no.

Eternatus's thing is that it's flexible despite the limitations of its kit, so giving 38 another competitive ability would probably be deviating from its mould. And for the low priority option, I doubt at this point there's a pressing desire for Cosmic Power when our bulk is bias towards one end and not equal, which was its appeal.
 
Hard disagree on a secondary ability, Eternatus only has one ability,so i personally think this one should only have one ability,too.
Especially since this ability is actually a really good one,one that not only makes us immune to status,but also makes us immune to our stats being reduced by the opposing pokemon too.

So overrall I'm essencailly agreeing with what Ayecrusher King is saying in that there should be no competive ability.
 
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We should absolutely not have a secondary ability. Eternatus functions with solely pressure as its option so ability variety is counterintuitive to the goal of trying to emulate it. Offensive abilities with our current spread will not lead to a balanced pokémon, absolutely not. We saw this happen in the previous CAP with Obliteryx and how Analytic pushed its already strong design into being even stronger than it needed to be, so for this concept it will probably be even worse with our current set of options such as our speed. Defensive abilities are a dumb thing to try as well given Flower Veil is already this powerful so opting for a secondary option will not lead to said option being used unless its something crazier than Veil like GaG or Psalt, both which are tremendously more powerful than what we already have.
 
Eternatus uses one ability therefore we should use one ability would be a pretty superficial reading to me. If a secondary ability is really needed to help emulate Eternatus' set versatility, I see no problem with that. However... I don't really think that's the case. Achieving a reasonable balance among disparate sets is hard as hell but we've done an okay job of it thus far to the extent that such things are predictable. I see no reason currently to use a secondary ability to aid that. I also have a concern that if the opponent has to flip a coin and pray as to whether their thunder wave is gonna connect against the 131 speed mon, that might feel a little icky icky. I realize there are abilities that self reveal but at that point, among abilities that compete with but don't outshine flower veil, it's slim pickings.
 
Guys, we do not need a secondary. Don’t let CAP’s flair for the extreme stop us from achieving our emulation of Eternatus in ability. Let’s just skip secondary altogether.
 
I don't think we should constrain ourselves to one ability purely because Etern only has Pressure. Its a box legend, so it only has Pressure, and one might note that a lot of the earlier Box Legends later got secondaries (shoutout Regen Ho-Oh). There's a strong case that our design doesn't need a secondary, but just like, lets examine our motivations here, and not conflate "replicate how etern's set looks by only having one ability" with "our design is satisfied with Flower Veil".
 
Well, now that Apple Acid (likely) died, I suppose the question to ask is how we feel about defensive sets at this juncture. I feel like it's clearly the weaker of the two main sets right now, and given that we only have Leech Seed / Toxic in assumed utility, I'm not super convinced 2a + utility will actually be real (3a w/ defensive investment is probably ok at this point copium).

I guess given that, the question Guingil asked basically comes down to:
  • Do we think defensive CAP38 can justify a spot on teams (over competition like Mollux, as well as more offensive CAP38 sets)?
  • If the answer to part 1 is no, can a secondary ability fix this without significantly impacting offensive sets?

It's definitely possible the answer to the first question is yes, and we can move on, though I'd have to see more evidence to be convinced. It's also possible the answer to both questions is no, in which case skipping this stage and trying to solve things in 1.0 Movepool would be the solution. I do not expect we will get a particularly high-power utility move though (given that Wisp was not selected in our stat spread, and Salt Cure was removed from discussion) so I really recommend not trying to kick the can down the road if you think defensive sets need something here.

Gekokeso said:
Defensive abilities are a dumb thing to try as well given Flower Veil is already this powerful so opting for a secondary option will not lead to said option being used unless its something crazier than Veil like GaG or Psalt, both which are tremendously more powerful than what we already have.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse...

Is this even true? Flower Veil is primarily anti-Paralysis, something that offensive Pokemon and teams generally are less equipped to deal with than defensive ones. I bet someone will misconstrue this as me saying Para is useless vs defensive Pokemon (maybe not now that I put this here), which is obviously not true, but there is a reason Pokemon like Slowking-G are commonly thrown into Thunder Wave. As for the other benefits of Flower Veil, I suppose it boosts our matchup slightly into Dragapult / Kitsunoh and Webs, and easier switch-in to Moonblast? Hex resistance is nice, but definitely not irreplaceable.

Well, the point is that I don't think we need to go crazy to find something defensive sets can use, if we decide we want to.


TheShowdownHero said:
Eternatus only has one ability,so i personally think this one should only have one ability,too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse...
I disagree with this line of reasoning because it seems very short-sighted. Divorcing the ability from the context of the rest of the Pokemon, and the context of the metagame, doesn't seem like a good way to approach things for this concept.

The concept is: "This Pokemon replicates or is inspired by a strategy, play pattern or niche used by an Uber Pokemon."
If we need a secondary ability to do this, then we should have a secondary ability, regardless of how many abilities Eternatus has.

Anyways, I wrote this yesterday, but seems no one wants a Secondary ability lol
I guess we pray we can figure something out for defensive in Movesets.
 
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I mean,spammernoob has a point here,but what kind of ability would cap 38/eternatus lite even want that isn't flower veil? Im sure I could be convinced if the right ability was brought up,but as things stand its a mix of "Eternatus has only one abilitys,so we should only have one ability" and "What ability would even be as good as flower veil on it?"
 
Guingil said:
Is there a need for a Secondary Ability to help us emulate some aspect of Eternatus?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse...

The decision of whether or not to have a secondary ability should be based on whether you are satisfied with CAP38's current traits compared to Spammernoob's list of Eternatus's traits outlined above, or believe the moveset stage would be a better path to close any gaps.

I believe at least one of a secondary ability or strong utility move(s) should be added. In particular, it should be a tool for permanent progress. I have an easier time thinking of extra moves for that, but there should be some more exploration of abilities before dismissing the option. The main one on my mind is Corrosion, though that might be too strong to add this late in the process.

Spammernoob said:
  • Do we think defensive CAP38 can justify a spot on teams (over competition like Mollux, as well as more offensive CAP38 sets)?
  • If the answer to part 1 is no, can a secondary ability fix this without significantly impacting offensive sets?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse...

The speed tier gives CAP38 as a whole a solid niche over other status absorbers, but the limits on utility and reliance on coverage favors offensive sets. I would agree that the primary benefit of our ability is Paralysis protection, which is a bigger threat to offensive pokemon and does more to solidify the offensive sets' niches. A secondary ability could provide a sidegrade that helps give defensive sets more options without throwing anything else out of balance.
 
I think yes, 38 should get a secondary ability. The main thing about Flower Veil is that though it is intended to provide defensive utility, CAP38's typing already allows it to avoid Toxic, which would otherwise cripple it. On a very defensive Pokemon, not much other status immunity would affect it, rendering Flower Veil redundant. This in turn discourages use of defensive CAP38, as players would prefer to use a Pokemon whose defensive utility is largely boosted by its Ability (:slowking-galar:Slowking-Galar, :equilibra:Equilibra, :Rillaboom:Rillaboom, :Zamazenta:Zamazenta, etc.)
 
I’m fine with a secondary ability as long as it’s defensive-angled. I think that side is really what we want to target. To be clear, I think Flower Veil is getting run on 75% of sets, including most defensive ones, but having another option (like Heatran’s Flame Body to its Flash Fire) would be good.
 
I think that yes, a secondary ability is warranted, as the defensive set is terribly lacking, and theoretically a defensive ability could benefit the defensive set. HOWEVER, I haven't found a single ability that I think adequately addresses our problems without making the offensive set a monster. Generic defensive buffs aren't as defensively skewed in their benefits as people are thinking. If a generic defensive buff is too weak, it's pointless, and if its too strong, it sees usage on the already absurdly broken life orb and meteor beam sets. A secondary ability is a solution, I'm just not sure if it's the best solution compared to movepool tweaks or more sweeping changes in PPL.
 
it's a no from me. eternatus is, both literally and metaphorically, skin and bones. almost everything in its kit is actively working towards one of its roles, with basically no frills or extras. it doesn't have multiple abilities. it doesn't have any high stats that aren't invested in by some set or other. it doesn't have coverage outside of the one thing it really needs. if we choose a secondary ability that has a different impact on our offensive and defensive roles than flower veil, it means that in many scenarios either that ability becomes fluff or flower veil becomes fluff. eternatus is not a mon that deals in fluff

now people might worry about defensive sets, but i don't think that's actually an issue here. i think our ability has about as much of an impact on our defensive sets as etern's does on its. we should wait until movepool stage and find our utility there instead of getting ahead of ourselves
 
I'm in the camp of no Secondary. The primary form of support for it at this juncture is how the Defensive set feels lacking, but we must keep in mind that 38 currently has basically no high impact utility in its kit at this point, since we kicked that particular can down the road to Movesets. Adding higher impact moves during the Moveset stage is both the stronger option for tackling the Defensive set, and also much easier than weeding around in the brush for some niche ability that doesn't conflict with Veil or disproportionately buff Offensive sets.
 
I'm not opposed to saying yes to gaining a secondary ability so long as it is there solely as a low impact (arguably even lower than Flower Veil) ability that is there to boost defensive variations of 38 as currently 38 without trying to poll jumping, is lacking any guaranteed utility outside of the bare minimum.

The main argument that I'm seeing against no ability is that Eternatus only has 1 ability and we should follow suit. Personally this feels extremely weak of an argument as we've so far gone against 38 having a signature move to replicate Dynamax Cannon in a true 1:1 fashion and it shows we can still remain similar to Eternatus but adjust to our needs for an OU CAP setting.

If we end up being too certain on trying to identically replicate Eternatus with a "bare bones approach" but with this idea, fail to balance the set versatility Eternatus has then have we truly succeeded in making a Mini version?
 
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I am in agreement with Spammer's posting before regarding a secondary ability and my opinion on this is yes.

(Edit - Removing specific submission, sorry!) In regards to options that specifically might help alternative defensive sets, I would like to propose a secondary ability slot to give the defensive set an option for non-movepool defensive utility that does not also introduce anything too new to what has already been established. There is definitely an opportunity cost balancing factor that I believe giving a passive progress-making ability compared to increased utility movepool options that the defensive set should have to take if it wants to use the secondary (losing the status immunity). Not trying to polljump in this statement but I am of the stance that we need to keep the movepool restricted or we are going to end up with a CAP that otherwise does not really have any fundemental flaws, as we are already lightning-fast, bulky AND strong in Stats, a usable typing and coverage already locked in to be generally perfect into the meta. We should give the defensive set something, but in this stage and not the movepool.
 
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Rysachi said:
as currently 38 without trying to poll jumping, is lacking any guaranteed utility outside of the bare minimum.
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Click to collapse...
so is eternatus. here is effectively the entirety of etern's utility movepool:
  • toxic
  • toxic spikes
  • dragon tail (mostly used in service of tspikes)
  • screens (very niche and used in service of offense)
  • 10% burn moves if we're being extremely generous
it only gets so much mileage out of its utility because ubers is inherently very constrained in terms of what you can and can't run and toxic absorbers mostly fall into "can't". we can't emulate that with an ability. even if we try and turn toxic into that nearly-unblockable progress tool, it's still absorbed or blocked by snael, scor, garg, clef, hatt, ghold, geezing, and flower veil variants of ourself. no ability we can give right now would be enough to properly mimic etern's toxic so we'd have to suss out our equivalent of it in movepool stage anyway
Rysachi said:
If we end up being too certain on trying to identically replicate Eternatus with a "bare bones approach" but with this idea, fail to balance the set versatility Eternatus has then have we truly succeeded in making a Mini version?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse...
etern's set versatility stems mostly from how customizable its stats are and how free its item slot is. move choice factors into it a little. i don't think there's any reasonable way to use the ability stage to subsidize any of these elements of our mon
 
I'll give a quick recap of thoughts and where we are at the moment:

  • There have been a lot of posts calling for no secondary. Many of these posts have relatively fuzzy reasoning though, re: emulating Eternatus' single ability option.
  • There have also been some posts advocating for the possibility of a secondary (including mine). These focus on the current balance between offensive and defensive sets. Mainly, the forecast is that offensive sets are in a good place, while defensive sets will struggle with our current options.
  • This means that, if we opt for secondary, our goal is to meaningfully buff defensive sets with an ability that is outclassed by Flower Veil on offensive sets. I think our options that do this are pretty limited.
  • I believe if we don't get a Secondary ability here, we will get some utility option to try to justify defensive sets. The utility discussion during Defining Moves was very messy though, and I think our options here will be pretty limited as well.
  • A complicating factor is that Art seems to be extended until ~Nov 9. Our agreement with the flavor side is that we can't slate abilities until Art poll closes, so if we decide to have a secondary, we will be waiting quite some time (tentatively ~Nov 12?).

In terms of paths forward for buffing CAP's defensive sets, we have 2 main options; adding a strong move that justifies defensive investment, or adding a secondary ability that justifies defensive investment. This is assuming, as well, that CAP38's defensive sets are difficult to justify (over offensive CAP38 sets, and other defensive options).

I have set up a [CAP 2] tier here under Unofficial Pet Mod Formats; CAP38 is under the working title "Spoob" (I hope the flavor people don't mind). Unfortunately, implementation is a bit buggy right now (no Obliteryx...), though whenever server is restarted, things should be fixed. The goal is to answer the following questions:
  • How does our defensive set feel with our current tools? (STABs / Mystical Fire / Earth Power / Recover / Leech Seed / Toxic)
  • If we opt to buff the defensive set via an ability, what abilities work well?
  • If we opt to buff the defensive set via moves, what moves work well?

In terms of process, the Art extension pushes us towards 2 main routes. The first is that we spend the next 1.5 weeks testing various setups on test server to gather data and decide after Art Polls close. The second is that we move forward with no Secondary ability and just try to solve things in Movesets. Given that the flavor side is the process bottleneck for 1.0, neither of these options will really slow down 1.0 release, so personally I'm more partial to taking our time here (if you remember from last process, there was some amount of downtime after Movesets where we were just waiting on Sprites / Shinies).

Given that our options are very narrow either way, I'm not super comfortable about TLT unilaterally deciding whether we get a secondary, but I'll have to think about it a bit more.
 
I'm in agreement that our last major goal for this process is to beef up the potency of defensive sets, and the question in front of us is whether we do that with another ability, additional moves, or some combination of both. I think attempting to do so with an ability would be very complicated. Without getting into discussion of specific abilities, I'd argue there are exceptionally few options that benefit a hypothetical defensive set without also benefiting offensive sets, or overshooting / undershooting power level, or introducing unwanted variability ("is Thunder Wave a safe click here?"). Tackling this problem in the movesets stage would give us much more precise levers for adjustment. We can target the defensive set with greater accuracy by giving out utility moves that we know won't be used on offensive Life Orb or Meteor Beam sets, and when we fine-tune this mon in movesets and eventually PPL, I think we'll have a much easier time if we keep the variables limited to moves + stats instead of moves + stats + ability — a viable secondary ability can muddy the waters in terms of what's working well, what's not, and what's working too well. Sorta repeating myself now but I really think moves are just way better levers for adjustment this late into the process than abilities are.
 
Hi everyone, apologies for a little bit of delay. Thank you for your input! Thanks also to spammernoob for summarizing the key insights from the discussion and for talking about our current timeline.

My question was whether Secondary Ability can help us in some area where we were weak… and we have identified one such area: our defensive sets. Specifically, to replicate Eternatus’ functioning, we have always looked at 2 Attack + utility sets as being CAP38’s defensive ones. However, at the moment, the guaranteed utility moves are Leech Seed and Toxic (and maybe Toxic Spikes). Toxic and TSpikes contribute significantly to the Eternatus’ viability; however, it has been repeatedly brought up in the course of this process that their efficiency is tied to the mechanics of Ubers, and they might show far less value in CAP. This is partly why we got Flower Veil: having a blanket immunity to status emulates Eternatus' immunity to Toxic. Leech Seed, while decent, is also not moving the needle too much. The reduced impact of these moves means that defensive sets might need something else to be viable.

But this something can be an ability, or it could be moves. As some have rightly pointed out, an ability introduces more complications to a Pokemon’s kit than something more pinpoint-focused like a move. Take, as an example, Seed Sower. While this might seem like a more defensive ability at first glance, Choice Specs Seed Sower Grass-type STAB in Grassy Terrain hits like a truck and has, in fact, been adopted by Arboliva as a main set. I will add here that upon initial battles in the test server, our offensive sets already feel plenty good with 3 or even 4 attacks on Life Orb or Meteor Beam sets. Given our 127 SpA/131 Spe combination, going into anything but offense would require a decent upside.

For me, demonstrating that an ability cannot provide this upside and is thus unnecessary would need these two things:

1. The current kit + assumed options don't make the defensive set viable
2. A secondary (i.e., something that doesn't overshadow Flower Veil) doesn't make the defensive set more viable

If these two are sufficiently demonstrated, we can skip Secondary. However, demonstrating the opposite, that some ability can make the defensive set viable, takes us into murky waters. There is the question of doing this via moves instead, which is a more streamlined approach. Something like Corrosion improving the effectiveness of 2A + utility sets is almost a given, but it is also an ability at least as powerful as Flower Veil, if not more. On the other hand, if the ability is less powerful than Flower Veil, and given the vacuum that exists between offensive and defensive sets, it's an ability + move combination that would need to bridge this gap. Not just the ability alone. This again goes back to moves being an easier and more-defined starting location.

Hence, the TLT and I have decided on this: we will pause the Secondary Ability discussion until after movesets, focusing on making our defensive sets more viable. Going through moves also allows for a looser interpretation of a “defensive” set; it might very well be that a tank set with 3A + Recovery, rather than 2A, is the most viable one. Once movesets are done, we have a revisit for the necessity of a Secondary Ability. Finally, I will also say here that somehow brute-forcing multiple sets always comes with the risk of over-viability (look at Aurumoth on release, for example). If the offensive set is already good enough to stand on its own, and the 2A + utility defensive set is then equally as good because we want it to be, it can result in a scary mon that might get nerfed later. We have limited proof that the offensive sets are at that level of viability yet, but it is a risk we'll get more information about as we test more.

Given that our bottleneck for release is anyway the visual Flavor stages, this should not affect our release schedule and would be a more efficient use of our time. Given that we have a test server up and running, I think we'll be able to collect ample evidence for our arguments as well.
 
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