CAP 19 CAP 19 - Playtest [Tournament Finals]

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jas61292

jas61292

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The CAP 19 Plasmanta Playtest has officially begun!

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After 89 days of debate, discussion and polling, we have now completed our second CAP project of the 6th generation. Thanks to the leadership of Pwnemon and our Topic Leadership Team, we are now pleased to present Plasmanta. For the inaugural battle, Pwnemon chose to face Typing Leader srk1214. Both players brought the Gyarados/Plasmanta pair up that we focused so much upon, but in the end, it was not Gyarados, but Pwnemon's Plasmanta itself that finished off srk's last few mons for the victory. You can see the inaugural battle in full here.

And now, Plasmanta is available for public use on Pokemon Showdown.

Once you're there, hop onto the Teambuilder to make a team for the CAP 19 Plasmanta Playtest ladder. Remember, you don't need to use Plasmanta on your team; any Gen6 XY Overused team will do just fine. Once you're ready, get on the Playtest ladder and try out your team. Throughout the next two weeks, you'll face plenty of opponents who are testing the new metagame that features the hard hitting Plasmanta.

The Plasmanta Playtest Ladder will only be available for two weeks, meaning that its time will be over on November 1st. The top eight users on the ladder will compete in a tournament to win global voiced status on Pokemon Showdown (+), and consideration towards the brand new CAP Contributor badge. Use this thread to post your impressions and thoughts on the new metagame. Share whatever tidbits of advice you may have. Best of luck on the playtest ladder!

Want to learn more about the Create-A-Pokemon Project? Check out the CAP Site for more information.

EDIT: This is a mistake, global voice status will NOT be given.
 
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So having just experienced the first day of testing and currently being at the top of the ladder, can I just comment how completely unimpressed I am with CAP thus far. Not only have I not yet been conflicted about punching a Plasmanta to death ever, I haven't struggle yet to dispose of it and his team mate (even in multiples). Plasmanta + teammate is not only fragile, the presence of Psychic on Plasmata make Plasmanta the perfect pokemon to break the combo, so if two players bring in Plasmanta, it results in the most boring games I've ever seen, because neither player wants to play anything.
 
Gah, sorry. We forgot to explain that the Playtest Champion will be crowned a bit differently this time around. At the end of the two weeks of playtesting, we'll be taking the Top 8 battlers on the ladder to compete in a single elimination tournament for the title! Should allow us to showcase a few of our ladderers while spectating some intense matches. More details on the tournament will arrive at that time. Work your way to the top, and don't hesitate to ask if you have questions.
 
Birkal said:
Gah, sorry. We forgot to explain that the Playtest Champion will be crowned a bit differently this time around. At the end of the two weeks of playtesting, we'll be taking the Top 8 battlers on the ladder to compete in a single elimination tournament for the title! Should allow us to showcase a few of our ladderers while spectating some intense matches. More details on the tournament will arrive at that time. Work your way to the top, and don't hesitate to ask if you have questions.
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The amount that this should be permanently implemented. No more drama or last minute laddering. You're the real champ here.
 
After my first several matches, I remain unconvinced that Plasmanta has fulfilled its concept. Like NumberCruncher said, I have never hesitated to knock out an opposing Plasmanta when I had the chance. Furthermore, I find that I'm not really using my own Plasmanta as a sacrifice to bring in a partner; I'm often trying to conserve it just as I try to conserve any other member of my team. While Plasmanta performs adequately by itself, I don't think it really fits the einherjar concept.
 
Is anyone planning on making a small (PC) sprite for Plasmanta? It currently shows up as a question mark icon in the small team previews during battles.
 
Elite Lord Sigma said:
After my first several matches, I remain unconvinced that Plasmanta has fulfilled its concept. Like NumberCruncher said, I have never hesitated to knock out an opposing Plasmanta when I had the chance. Furthermore, I find that I'm not really using my own Plasmanta as a sacrifice to bring in a partner; I'm often trying to conserve it just as I try to conserve any other member of my team. While Plasmanta performs adequately by itself, I don't think it really fits the einherjar concept.
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While I can't say too much about you wanting to KO it at all times, I think you are approaching this from the wrong angle when talking about how you approach using it yourself. The fact that you don't want to let Plasmanta die is not a bad thing. If you did want it to die, that would be a much bigger indication of a failure than the reverse. Rather, the goal was to make the opponent hesitant about KOing it, and how it performs in its intended role is much more about what happens after it is KOd, not the way you play prior to it happening. In my experiences, the set up opportunities after its KO are real, but not necessarily as good as we would have liked.

With that said, I do not believe that we necessarily succeeded as well as we could have. I find that, while the loss of Plasmanta often gives Gyarados good set up chances, more often Gyarados is more useful overall when Plasmanta is alive. I attribute that to the fact that we put a good amount (maybe too much) effort into making them work well together. Rather than being two independent Pokemon that happen to have the connection in the post KO set up opportunity, they ended up as two Pokemon that just generally work well together.

Of course though, it is still very early in the playtest. I am not putting too much stock in what I have seen so far, since every playtest starts with a period of everyone using the CAP and using the rest of the team to counterteam it. I'll be more interested in how things go later when not everyone necessarily has dedicated Gyarados counters and whatnot.
 
jas61292 said:
While I can't say too much about you wanting to KO it at all times, I think you are approaching this from the wrong angle when talking about how you approach using it yourself. The fact that you don't want to let Plasmanta die is not a bad thing. If you did want it to die, that would be a much bigger indication of a failure than the reverse. Rather, the goal was to make the opponent hesitant about KOing it, and how it performs in its intended role is much more about what happens after it is KOd, not the way you play prior to it happening. In my experiences, the set up opportunities after its KO are real, but not necessarily as good as we would have liked.

With that said, I do not believe that we necessarily succeeded as well as we could have. I find that, while the loss of Plasmanta often gives Gyarados good set up chances, more often Gyarados is more useful overall when Plasmanta is alive. I attribute that to the fact that we put a good amount (maybe too much) effort into making them work well together. Rather than being two independent Pokemon that happen to have the connection in the post KO set up opportunity, they ended up as two Pokemon that just generally work well together.

Of course though, it is still very early in the playtest. I am not putting too much stock in what I have seen so far, since every playtest starts with a period of everyone using the CAP and using the rest of the team to counterteam it. I'll be more interested in how things go later when not everyone necessarily has dedicated Gyarados counters and whatnot.
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Based on this, and from what I've seen of everything it has, we did a better job making Plasmanta a "Perfect Partner" than the previous attempts, so I guess that's good :P. still, I think the fact that he can be useful when dead at least makes Plasmanta at least somewhat of a success.
 
jas61292 said:
While I can't say too much about you wanting to KO it at all times, I think you are approaching this from the wrong angle when talking about how you approach using it yourself. The fact that you don't want to let Plasmanta die is not a bad thing. If you did want it to die, that would be a much bigger indication of a failure than the reverse. Rather, the goal was to make the opponent hesitant about KOing it, and how it performs in its intended role is much more about what happens after it is KOd, not the way you play prior to it happening. In my experiences, the set up opportunities after its KO are real, but not necessarily as good as we would have liked.
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I know that at least during the inaugural battle, srk's entire goddamn team was destroyed by Landorus-t coming in and spamming EQ, but I was extremely afraid to KO anything with it because Gyarados would come in and whup my ass (well, it wouldn't have because apparently it was dd bounce waterfall but i didn't know that). So at least during that battle, I felt the exact pressure that we had tried to create when we made plasmanta. Of course it's not going to be perfect and in my honest opinion if you expect it to work that way more than like 10% of the time you're expecting too much because thats just not how pokemon usually work, but for such a ridiculous concept even the modicum of success it did have is vindication to me
 
To be honest I built the team, knowing it was weak to Scarf Landorus-T, primarily because I didn't believe it would be used in a project we explicitly designed to take advantage of things like Scarf EQ. That's my bad for playing what I assumed the playtest meta would look like, rather than what the meta actually should be (Scarf Landorus-T is still good).
 
jas61292 said:
While I can't say too much about you wanting to KO it at all times, I think you are approaching this from the wrong angle when talking about how you approach using it yourself. The fact that you don't want to let Plasmanta die is not a bad thing. If you did want it to die, that would be a much bigger indication of a failure than the reverse. Rather, the goal was to make the opponent hesitant about KOing it, and how it performs in its intended role is much more about what happens after it is KOd, not the way you play prior to it happening. In my experiences, the set up opportunities after its KO are real, but not necessarily as good as we would have liked.
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The problem is that we haven't made the opponent hesitant to kill the CAP. We've just given him incentive to do it with a non-traditional counter. In my experience, I've always been encouraged to kill CAP with random nonsense, like Fighting types with no super effective coverage and Manetric. In normal circumstances, I'd never even consider keeping either of those in against a special sweeper with Poison/Electric typing, but knowing that he wants a Gyarados to come in behind it actually encourages the KO rather than dissuading it. Heck, I've seen matches where Water types stayed in against Plasmanta just so they could punish Charizard for coming in on those sorts of teams. If the goal of this CAP had been to create a pokemon who's counters weren't determined by its typing, I would say Plasmanta is probably as good a success as any (It also would have made for a more interesting topic tbh). However, we wanted a Pokemon that makes the opponent hesitate to kill CAP, and what we created instead was a pokemon that made the opponent excited to kill CAP with whatever nonsense was in front at the time.
 
NumberCruncher said:
The problem is that we haven't made the opponent hesitant to kill the CAP. We've just given him incentive to do it with a non-traditional counter. In my experience, I've always been encouraged to kill CAP with random nonsense, like Fighting types with no super effective coverage and Manetric. In normal circumstances, I'd never even consider keeping either of those in against a special sweeper with Poison/Electric typing, but knowing that he wants a Gyarados to come in behind it actually encourages the KO rather than dissuading it. Heck, I've seen matches where Water types stayed in against Plasmanta just so they could punish Charizard for coming in on those sorts of teams. If the goal of this CAP had been to create a pokemon who's counters weren't determined by its typing, I would say Plasmanta is probably as good a success as any (It also would have made for a more interesting topic tbh). However, we wanted a Pokemon that makes the opponent hesitate to kill CAP, and what we created instead was a pokemon that made the opponent excited to kill CAP with whatever nonsense was in front at the time.
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Kind of doesn't help everyone knew exactly what was going to come up next after Plasmanta so infact they weren't thinking about just countering Plasmanta but countering Plasmanta AND Mega Gyarados. I think we probably shouldn't have made Plasmanta just the perfect setup for Gyarados but rather try to have found a way so that any Pokemon could really come out after Plasmanta so that the opponent wouldn't be prepared for it.
 
From a quick go i gave to Plasmanta, one problem i noticed is that he is checked / countered by a tad too many things to be the big offensive threat that we intended him to be. For example, assuming a set of STABs / Hidden Power Ice or Fire / filler, Latios, Latias, Hippowdon, Excadrill, Mamoswine, Chansey, Kyurem-B, and Tyranitar all can check or counter the CAP relatively easily, in addition to more Ground-types and Ferrothorn, depending on the type of Hidden Power. This problem would have been solved if we had Moonblast or Defog, the first of which covers Dragon-types, Tyranitar, and Ground-types somewhat, allowing the CAP to use Hidden Power Fire on the last slot, to have much fewer checks in general, and the latter of which makes the CAP useful even when walled.

So, even if the CAP is an alright Pokemon individually, it doesn't really lure in effectively the specific Pokemon we wanted it to, because it's not that hard to wall or check.
 
alexwolf said:
From a quick go i gave to Plasmanta, one problem i noticed is that he is checked / countered by a tad too many things to be the big offensive threat that we intended him to be. For example, assuming a set of STABs / Hidden Power Ice or Fire / filler, Latios, Latias, Hippowdon, Excadrill, Mamoswine, Chansey, Kyurem-B, and Tyranitar all can check or counter the CAP relatively easily, in addition to more Ground-types and Ferrothorn, depending on the type of Hidden Power. This problem would have been solved if we had Moonblast or Defog, the first of which covers Dragon-types, Tyranitar, and Ground-types somewhat, allowing the CAP to use Hidden Power Fire on the last slot, to have much fewer checks in general, and the latter of which makes the CAP useful even when walled.

So, even if the CAP is an alright Pokemon individually, it doesn't really lure in effectively the specific Pokemon we wanted it to, because it's not that hard to wall or check.
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wasn't that kind of the point, though? That the opponent would rather let plasmanta be an annoying little mosquito buzzing around their head than kill it, even though they could kill it easily? even as far back as concept assessment, i said that the more of a threat cap19 posed, the less likely the opponent would be to hold off on killing it. We managed to make a pokemon which is viable in OU but the opponent would rather sponge its hits than KO it; i'd call that "concept accomplished"
 
Pwnemon said:
wasn't that kind of the point, though? That the opponent would rather let plasmanta be an annoying little mosquito buzzing around their head than kill it, even though they could kill it easily? even as far back as concept assessment, i said that the more of a threat cap19 posed, the less likely the opponent would be to hold off on killing it. We managed to make a pokemon which is viable in OU but the opponent would rather sponge its hits than KO it; i'd call that "concept accomplished"
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Except they aren't letting Plasmanta buzz around, becuase the monster they use to OHKO Plasmanta also KOs the next Pokemon in line.
 
Pwnemon said:
wasn't that kind of the point, though? That the opponent would rather let plasmanta be an annoying little mosquito buzzing around their head than kill it, even though they could kill it easily? even as far back as concept assessment, i said that the more of a threat cap19 posed, the less likely the opponent would be to hold off on killing it. We managed to make a pokemon which is viable in OU but the opponent would rather sponge its hits than KO it; i'd call that "concept accomplished"
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From my understanding, it was the opposite. We wanted to build a very threatening Pokemon that required a very specific set of Pokemon to handle it, Pokemon that Mega Gyarados could turn into a liability, thus creating a win / win situation. If the CAP is just buzzing then it's not attracting this specific amount of Pokemon as it's not threatening enough to dictate the pace of the game. And, in order to not have conflicting roles with Mega Gyarados, we decided to make the CAP a wallbreaker instead of a sweeper, even though the final product is not an effective wallbreaker.

tl;dr we needed moar ''power''.
 
You're all gonna think I'm a loser but I lurked the entire Plasmanta thing bc I didn't think I'd contribute enough and I didn't know enough ;-; anyways, I'm really excited for this, and good luck to all.

To make this seem more constructive, some pokemon I've been seeing a rise in are Choice Trick Gothitelle (seen both Specs and Scarf) as well as dugtrio. Both trappers are effective at getting rid of Plasmanta, but seeing how it's often better to keep the new CAP around than killing it, since Gyarados loves setting up on both trappers, it's kind of weird to see how effective they can be. Thoughts on the two?
 
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Cheek Pouch said:
You're all gonna think I'm a loser but I lurked the entire Plasmanta thing bc I didn't think I'd contribute enough and I didn't know enough ;-; anyways, I'm really excited for this, and good luck to all.

To make this seem more constructive, some pokemon I've been seeing a rise in are Choice Trick Gothitelle (seen both Specs and Scarf) as well as dugtrio. Both trappers are effective at getting rid of Plasmanta, but seeing how it's often better to keep the new CAP around than killing it, since Gyarados loves setting up on both trappers, it's kind of weird to see how effective they can be. Thoughts on the two?
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On the contrary, Cheek Pouch. Lurking is very important for your first 1 or 2 CAPs so you can learn about the project.

I've barely played the playtest, but so far, I think Plasmanta just really doesn't make the opponent hesitate to KO it. They aren't really scared of a Mega Gyara sweep, because they can easily switch out to something that beats Mega Gyara even after a Dragon Dance, like Unaware Clefable.
 
I haven't gotten around to play testing yet (soon though), but I can assume that many, if not the majority, of the people currently play testing Plasmanta are people who either worked on or connected to the project. This would mean that any given opponent would already know its strategy, compromising any success. I feel that once it gains more traction and other people start using it, the less people will know its intended purpose and it will catch teams off-guard. Even if the concept itself does fall short in the end, it is possible that Plasmanta could still be powerful in a new role. I am very happy with the selected movepool and stat distribution for this exact reason. For a really niche and difficult concept like this one, any success is a win.
 
The project was so focused on achieving synergy with Gyarados, it never really stopped to ponder what happens when Plasmata can't perform its main goal.

IMO that failing's what's leading to a lot of underwhelmingness behind plasmata. Sure, the playtest is still new, but Plasmata just...lacks. It doesn't have wicked mad ghetsis's hydreigon coverage, 131 SpAtk still stings but doesn't quite compare to other wallbreakers like MegaZard Y (and the predictable offensive movepool leaves it easy to switch into), its bulky but doesn't quite compare to other bulky mons like tyranitar (though it does have a lovely set of resistances and an immunity), and its speed certainly leaves much to be desired.

It doesn't have the overwhelming strength most predictable attackers have, and it doesn't have the mindgame options that other, more coverage-blessed wallbreakers possess.

I can't put my finger on it, Plasmata feels like it just falls short, like BW Arcanine.
 
^ I agree with this.

I'm also laddering on "I'll Win CAP Tour" so there's that in regards to voice tour.

Elaborating on the above comment, I feel like Plasmanta has a defined role, but not one the CAP team suspected. It was intended to be an annoyer, getting in little damage here and there until it died, where more often than not, a sweeper (Gyarados) would begin their rampage. The amount of Plasmanta teams without utilizing this is startling. Plasmanta takes on the roll of a hard hitter, utilizing it's stabs to pave through pokemon. While I wouldn't label Plasmanta as a failure, I'm not seeing it live up to be a true success.
 
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