CAP 23 CAP 23 - Part 2 - Typing Discussion

[HeaLnDeaL]

Here's my thought of some typings... Feel free to argue for or against my thoughts.

Red = Typings that have been well supported in the thread that I think have critical flaws that prevent them from being ideal; I expect many to disagree with these two and I look forward to hearing more supporting arguments for them. However, in good faith I couldn't just not share the huge problems I personally have with these two.

Yellow = Mostly under discussed typings that I'm not sure on. Discuss more please.

Green = Typings that I'm very likely to slate, so if you hate any of them then now is the time to argue against them and to argue well. If there's something here that I missed that you really liked anyway, feel free to defend it some more.

Ground/Fairy: When it was first proposed, I kinda liked this. Immunity to volt switch, good offensive capabilities... but as it's been discussed more in the thread, I just think this typing is too offensive and not defensive enough. It has absolutely amazing offensive stabs that 4 times out of 5 will be more attractive to spam than to use a trapping move. Defensively, it has a number of faults and doesn't check a wide variety of mons that would ever switch into a trapping move. It doesn't deal will bulky pivots that would take a trapping move, outside of the one exception of Toxapex but even that could cripple it with scald.

Dragon/Fighting: Dragon/Fighting has most of the typically good Dragon qualities but Fighting gives it two more very problematic weaknesses (psychic, flying) and gives it the 4x weakness to fairy. I don't think it has the defensive properties to thrive, but at least it doesn't care much about multiple switch ins with its stealth rock resistance. Fighting lets some fat switch in such as Chansey or even Magnezone be dealt with, but it leaves things such as Clefable, Toxapex, Pyroak, Tomohawk, etc very easily able to deal with it. No, we don't want to beat every fat mon. I however think that Tomohawk and Clefable should not be beating us up to the degree that Dragon/Fighting would get beat up. If Tomohawk wasn't king of CAP, this typing would be so much better. But as it stands, I don't see it working out well. Fairy AND Flying weaknesses makes this almost impossible to work with in the meta.

Fairy/Steel: I think this typing is... I'm not sure to be honest. It has a good range, it's not weak to Volt Switch or U-turn, it resists hazards... It fits a lot of things on our list. But I don't think this typing has been discussed enough and I would like to hear more. My initial worries are that too it just walls too much thanks to incredibly good, expansive resists. This means that the number of mons that wish to come in to beat it drops by a fair margin. It's a typing that potentially metagames the metagame. But I want to hear more, specifically about how this typing addresses the needs of our trapper.

Ground/Steel: This typing is quite similar to Fairy/Steel, keeping Steel as the defensive blessing while adding Ground as the offensive tool. The defensive capabilities isn't quite as strong as Fairy/Steel and most notably it gives us an additional weaknesses to Water and Fighting. Ground/Steel targets a number of fat bulky things that CA leaned us towards trapping, but Prince Landog in particular is a problem and the typing doesn't particularly shine against many pivots. But, it still meets many things on the checklist and in particular has the nice immunity to Volt Switchers, preventing things such as Cyclohm from taking a Anchor Shot and pivoting out with Volt Switch. More discussion on this would be appreciated.

Fairy/Ghost: This typing has barely barely been discussed. I think it takes typing "range" by a different perspective, as least defensively. It has two weaknesses to relatively uncommon offensive types in Steel and Ghost, only one resist, and three immunities. This overall leads it to being something that has a neutral match up against the vast majority of the metagame. It's got great neutral coverage and a bit better SE coverage than Dragon/Ghost. I'm really, really unsure of this and would like more discussion, notably on whether the neutral defensive matchup against 90% of things is an acceptable approach if we're trying to trap a wide range of opponents. And, well, we might not have many resists to switch in ourselves but the typing isn't easily exploited once in since its weaknesses are to two types that are rarely run as coverage... Again, really not sure where my head is at on this one at the moment.

Ghost/Normal: This is pretty similar to the above but it's offensive capabilities are very very much weakened. But it shares the general "neutral match ups vs almost everything" idea that hasn't been discussed much.

Grass/Steel: Another very under discussed typing that I just think has some potential and is worth more discussion. It lacks offensive powers of many of the other typings but well if we're trying to trap bulky things this typing really only struggles vs Pyroak and Mollux... but are those too big of threats for us to ignore? I'm slightly reminded of Ferrothorn by this typing and I find it kinda humorous how much more effective it would be if it could trap... But that', again, a defensive trapping role and CA seemed to point us towards mostly offensive. While this typing has notable defensive range and the ability to handle a large portion of the metagame 1v1, does it have the offensive capabilities to back this up? This is arguable the only typing I'm discussing rn that is so drastically defensive over offensive but I'd just want to cover my bases and have it discussed.

Dragon/Steel: This typing I think is a solid candidate. It's weakness to ground in the ground common metagame is problematic, but as Heatran shows this is not a auto-lose quality. But while Tomohawk is King, Landog is Prince and he certainly puts a thorn into this typing's side. That said, few other things deal with it very well; the list is much shorter than the list of easy go-to mons for Dragon/Fighting. This typing somewhat pidgeonholes STAB anchor shot, but there are definitely options to take.

Ghost/Ground: I'd like to see more discussion on this typing. 5 weaknesses to relatively common types worries me, but the defensive merits do exist as well. Both Electric and Fighting immunities are very valuable and the give us potential. Stealth Rock Resistance is great. The typing isn't weak to King Tomohawk or Prince Landog. Pyroak and Ferrothorn become perhaps the premier switch ins, but the super effective and neutral coverage of ghost/ground is certainly impressive. I think I like the typing, I think it can deal with a variety of things that switch into its trap move.

Dragon/Ghost: I like this typing. It has good matchups vs volt turn, it is exploitable with five weaknesses but has both many resistances and good *neutral* coverage that give the typing a lot of range. This is "range: the typing." All of the worrying about it being OP is just over inflated and I have to side with nyttyn on this issue. If this typing gets Spirit Shackle, yes it will likely use it a lot. But the concept is about trapping, and having some types slated that actually encourage us to activate a trapping effect is nice. There's SO many directions this typing (or any ghost typing) could go. We could have a moderate attack stack and higher special if we're genuinely worried about Spirit Shackle STAB being too good. But I don't see that fear as based on anything too solid right now. Again, I think nyttyn brought up a relevant point by talking about Revenankh. Rev has godly offensive STABs and a priority Drain Punch to boot. He's a great mon but he's far from Broken. I firmly do not believe that Ghost is some godly offensive typing that will bring cataclysmic destruction to the CAP metagame. If this was the case, then why doesn't the meta see many Ghosts as it is?

Dragon/Fairy: At first I was very iffy about this typing, but it's grown on me. It's exploitable by other Fairy-types and walled by Steel-types, which potentially gives us good luring opportunities and I can see Anchor Shot or Z Fire potentially being two of many options to us later on. There's not many Ice or Poison types n the meta while 7 resistances and 1 immunity to typings that are mostly common is quite nice. It has range against a large number of defensive pivots and overall just has a lot of neutral match ups that let luring be effective. It's a typing that I feel has range and it has all of the defensive benefits of Dragon and the offensive option of fairy stab, which quite frankly is just terrific in the current metagame. It's somewhat similar to Dragon/Fighting insofar as it pairs a useful offensive STAB with Dragon, but the weaknesses of Dragon/Fairy and much more manageable in the metagame than those of Dragon/Fighting.

 

[S. Court]

Ground/Steel: This typing is quite similar to Fairy/Steel, keeping Steel as the defensive blessing while adding Ground as the offensive tool. The defensive capabilities isn't quite as strong as Fairy/Steel and most notably it gives us an additional weaknesses to Water and Fighting. Ground/Steel targets a number of fat bulky things that CA leaned us towards trapping, but Prince Landog in particular is a problem and the typing doesn't particularly shine against many pivots. But, it still meets many things on the checklist and in particular has the nice immunity to Volt Switchers, preventing things such as Cyclohm from taking a Anchor Shot and pivoting out with Volt Switch. More discussion on this would be appreciated.

Ghost/Ground: I'd like to see more discussion on this typing. 5 weaknesses to relatively common types worries me, but the defensive merits do exist as well. Both Electric and Fighting immunities are very valuable and the give us potential. Stealth Rock Resistance is great. The typing isn't weak to King Tomohawk or Prince Landog. Pyroak and Ferrothorn become perhaps the premier switch ins, but the super effective and neutral coverage of ghost/ground is certainly impressive. I think I like the typing, I think it can deal with a variety of things that switch into its trap move.

I want to point a problem with Ground typing: water weakness, and that's a problem when some of the pivots we want to trap are water types and would hava a -in theory- favorable match up against CAP23: Alomomola, Mantine, Toxapex, Gastrodon, Slowbro, Tapu Fini (altough I think Fini use Moonblast instaed Scald, so we can skip it) and Argonauth. The main point is we should be sure CAP23 has at least a neutral match up against common pivots, and those one can actually give some troubles. I know it's not possible to have a favorable match up against ALL pivots, but at least we should try not add unnecessary weakness to common types.

Steel/Dragon has the same trouble with Ground, but iirc, only Landorus-T is the only defensive pivot and by extention, the only CAP23 should try to aim, so I guess that's more bearable... The other side of course, is this pivot is incredibly common, so that'll suppose a trouble, and in the end of the day, it can't be trapped due to U-Turn

 

[Okamu]

Opportunity cost. If trapping moves aren't sufficiently powerful in their own right, they will not be used. Trapping on a move is, first and foremost, a secondary benefit that you can, sometimes, make use of. Due to the fact they are +0, your opponent can swap out, or stay in, and thus you have no control over what you trap - unlike pokemon whom have trapping as abilities, and thus know they have ways to 100% ensure they will trap the opponent. This makes a huge difference, and if damage did not matter, you'd certainly see mean look and friends see some use.

The fact of the matter is that the trapping effect alone is not good enough to justify a presence on a pokemon's incredibly limited moveslot, and especially not when you have to give up an entire turn to use it, during which you have no control over what your opponent does beyond guesswork.
...
Basically, we need to see trapping as a secondary effect that, if we get the right trap, we can abuse to great effect. It is not good enough to be a primary effect, and the fact that virtually nothing (outside of a gimmicky Tapu Fini set that I'm farily certain is a myth) runs Wrap and friends or Infestation and friends is literally all I need to point to. They don't even have bad distribution! If damage didn't matter and trapping was desirable on its own right, Infestation Mew would be a thing for example.

So, I'm just going to go ahead and say that I ardently and firmly disagree with this statement and a few others which are similar, for a variety of reasons which I may not be able to fully express right now. However, I shall try.

To start off, I don't disagree, nor do I think anyone else here would, that some Pokémon will be better to trap than others, simply based on typing vs. typing and coverage moves. This is simply an undisputable fact. Type A beats Type C, so Mon A in the same tier as Mon C will likely be good against it (though there are exceptions). I believe this line of thinking, in all of its correctness, is what led to the above statement. The correct trap can be abused greatly.

No duh, dude. We all knew that like ya said man. What's your problem with that quote then?

Ok, here's my problem with it. The statement implies that trap moves have no use outside of doing damage UNLESS you JUST SO HAPPEN to get a lucky great amazing awesome outstanding trap. Whoop-dee-doo. But the fact of the matter is, I don't see that line of thinking as true. I'd encourage anyone who hasn't to go give jas's earlier post a read. It's a good one that shows a different aspect of trap moves: using them as mental bait. Sure, a trap move by itself is maybe lackluster. However, with the right context (in this case typing), a trap move can become a powerful type of coverage that forces the opponent to make decisions they don't want to make, especially when paired with powerful alternative options in STABs. (Side Note: I'm going to ignore binding moves in this post because I personally view them as not worth the time of day since we decided on a non-defensive route via concept assessment. I simply don't see the use in having an offensive mon SEVERELY sacrifice damage output for a shorter trapping effect. The post I've quoted has a great argument against them, and I encourage reading that as well)

This STAB-coverage pairing is particularly the reason why I personally dislike Ghost and Steel-typed submissions. By granting STAB to the trapping move, you are eliminating an alternatively powerful STAB option that could be used to great synergistic effect with the trapping move. If you make TrapCAP share STAB with AS or SS, then you have the issue of only one other STAB type to use alongside other coverage moves. Admittedly that doesn't sound too bad on the face of it, but think a bit harder. If TrapCAP has a stronger STAB option and just one strong coverage option as well, there aren't going to be terribly many reasons remaining to throw out the trap move (e.g. only if it's SE or the secondary STAB is resisted) when you could be doing more damage via other methods, which let me remind, is what the person I'm quoting said is still the main draw of trapping moves.

In a similar vein of thought, this is why I think that TrapCAP's typing wants to be weak to at least one of the types that AS or SS can hit for SE damage. The ability to make the opponent want to bring in their fairy or psychic mon, but hesitate in case of getting trapped by a SE hit and then forced into a situation against one of its counters/checks. Alternatively, should they stay in with some other mon, they risk downing a powerful STAB attack from TrapCAP. That is personally the situation in which I see the trapping effect of AS and SS being most useful. Simply being able to spam a trap move until you maybe do enough damage among all the other pokemon on your team that the opponent ends up with a mon TrapCAP is good against being trapped in... Forgive me if this seems harsh, but that hardly seems like an efficient use of trapping moves, and most definitely doesn't appear to be an "effective" use of them, which is what the concept is gunning for. I would rather focus on getting the most out of the trapping effect then simply treating it as a happy side effect. Doing the latter, to me, seems like a great disrespect to the process of investigating what we can get out of trapping moves.

If my position is still hazy (which is perfectly reasonable, those last paragraphs were rough for me), allow me another approach, specifically the one of fear vs. expect, and my personal take on it. From what I can tell, many people are interpreting the idea of "fear" as insinuating that TrapCAP would run a set or two that don't utilize trapping moves. I must admit, that although I agreed with that position originally, I no longer view it as a logical path to take. Instead of fearing whether or not TrapCAP is running the trap move or not, I feel we should focus on creating the fear of when the trap move is coming out. When giving a trap move STAB, my biggest fear is that it will encourage indiscriminate use of the trap move. Okay man, but like, what's wrong with that? Don't we want to encourage the use of trap moves? Yes, yes we do want to encourage their use; HOWEVER, we're supposed to be encouraging their effective use. By allowing the trap move to be freely spammed as the primary STAB move, the opponent really doesn't have to think about whether they're going to face a trap on the switch-in or not, because the trap becomes, essentially, the default option. This is especially the case with Ghost/Dragon, as the only other STAB options either have some kind of drawback (Draco Meteor /Outrage) or aren't even stronger than SS (Dragon Pulse/Dragon Claw). There is no reason for the trap move to not be expected in the situation where it has become the default. This grants the opponent quite a bit of power then, as they know almost certainly what is going to happen. There is no lure incentive (Ghost in particular as a type isn't great at being a lure for much) that might make the opponent reconsider what they want to switch in. There is no incentive to pause about if another strong STAB attack is incoming, because the trap move is already STAB.

Essentially, the problem boils down to this: Do we want to use trapping as a handy side effect and focus on doing damage with the trap move, or do we actually want to try and make the most out of the trapping effect. If the former, then sure, I have no problem with making the trap move STAB. However, if we are truly going to aim for effective use of trapping, I can't help but feel that there is a better way than just hoping the opponent is either stupid or worn down enough to send in something we would want to trap.

 

[WolfGamez]

Here's my thought of some typings... Feel free to argue for or against my thoughts.

Red = Typings that have been well supported in the thread that I think have critical flaws that prevent them from being ideal; I expect many to disagree with these two and I look forward to hearing more supporting arguments for them. However, in good faith I couldn't just not share the huge problems I personally have with these two.

Yellow = Mostly under discussed typings that I'm not sure on. Discuss more please.

Green = Typings that I'm very likely to slate, so if you hate any of them then now is the time to argue against them and to argue well. If there's something here that I missed that you really liked anyway, feel free to defend it some more.

Ground/Fairy: When it was first proposed, I kinda liked this. Immunity to volt switch, good offensive capabilities... but as it's been discussed more in the thread, I just think this typing is too offensive and not defensive enough. It has absolutely amazing offensive stabs that 4 times out of 5 will be more attractive to spam than to use a trapping move. Defensively, it has a number of faults and doesn't check a wide variety of mons that would ever switch into a trapping move. It doesn't deal will bulky pivots that would take a trapping move, outside of the one exception of Toxapex but even that could cripple it with scald.

Dragon/Fighting: Dragon/Fighting has most of the typically good Dragon qualities but Fighting gives it two more very problematic weaknesses (psychic, flying) and gives it the 4x weakness to fairy. I don't think it has the defensive properties to thrive, but at least it doesn't care much about multiple switch ins with its stealth rock resistance. Fighting lets some fat switch in such as Chansey or even Magnezone be dealt with, but it leaves things such as Clefable, Toxapex, Pyroak, Tomohawk, etc very easily able to deal with it. No, we don't want to beat every fat mon. I however think that Tomohawk and Clefable should not be beating us up to the degree that Dragon/Fighting would get beat up. If Tomohawk wasn't king of CAP, this typing would be so much better. But as it stands, I don't see it working out well. Fairy AND Flying weaknesses makes this almost impossible to work with in the meta.

Fairy/Steel: I think this typing is... I'm not sure to be honest. It has a good range, it's not weak to Volt Switch or U-turn, it resists hazards... It fits a lot of things on our list. But I don't think this typing has been discussed enough and I would like to hear more. My initial worries are that too it just walls too much thanks to incredibly good, expansive resists. This means that the number of mons that wish to come in to beat it drops by a fair margin. It's a typing that potentially metagames the metagame. But I want to hear more, specifically about how this typing addresses the needs of our trapper.

Ground/Steel: This typing is quite similar to Fairy/Steel, keeping Steel as the defensive blessing while adding Ground as the offensive tool. The defensive capabilities isn't quite as strong as Fairy/Steel and most notably it gives us an additional weaknesses to Water and Fighting. Ground/Steel targets a number of fat bulky things that CA leaned us towards trapping, but Prince Landog in particular is a problem and the typing doesn't particularly shine against many pivots. But, it still meets many things on the checklist and in particular has the nice immunity to Volt Switchers, preventing things such as Cyclohm from taking a Anchor Shot and pivoting out with Volt Switch. More discussion on this would be appreciated.

Fairy/Ghost: This typing has barely barely been discussed. I think it takes typing "range" by a different perspective, as least defensively. It has two weaknesses to relatively uncommon offensive types in Steel and Ghost, only one resist, and three immunities. This overall leads it to being something that has a neutral match up against the vast majority of the metagame. It's got great neutral coverage and a bit better SE coverage than Dragon/Ghost. I'm really, really unsure of this and would like more discussion, notably on whether the neutral defensive matchup against 90% of things is an acceptable approach if we're trying to trap a wide range of opponents. And, well, we might not have many resists to switch in ourselves but the typing isn't easily exploited once in since its weaknesses are to two types that are rarely run as coverage... Again, really not sure where my head is at on this one at the moment.

Ghost/Normal: This is pretty similar to the above but it's offensive capabilities are very very much weakened. But it shares the general "neutral match ups vs almost everything" idea that hasn't been discussed much.

Grass/Steel: Another very under discussed typing that I just think has some potential and is worth more discussion. It lacks offensive powers of many of the other typings but well if we're trying to trap bulky things this typing really only struggles vs Pyroak and Mollux... but are those too big of threats for us to ignore? I'm slightly reminded of Ferrothorn by this typing and I find it kinda humorous how much more effective it would be if it could trap... But that', again, a defensive trapping role and CA seemed to point us towards mostly offensive. While this typing has notable defensive range and the ability to handle a large portion of the metagame 1v1, does it have the offensive capabilities to back this up? This is arguable the only typing I'm discussing rn that is so drastically defensive over offensive but I'd just want to cover my bases and have it discussed.

Dragon/Steel: This typing I think is a solid candidate. It's weakness to ground in the ground common metagame is problematic, but as Heatran shows this is not a auto-lose quality. But while Tomohawk is King, Landog is Prince and he certainly puts a thorn into this typing's side. That said, few other things deal with it very well; the list is much shorter than the list of easy go-to mons for Dragon/Fighting. This typing somewhat pidgeonholes STAB anchor shot, but there are definitely options to take.

Ghost/Ground: I'd like to see more discussion on this typing. 5 weaknesses to relatively common types worries me, but the defensive merits do exist as well. Both Electric and Fighting immunities are very valuable and the give us potential. Stealth Rock Resistance is great. The typing isn't weak to King Tomohawk or Prince Landog. Pyroak and Ferrothorn become perhaps the premier switch ins, but the super effective and neutral coverage of ghost/ground is certainly impressive. I think I like the typing, I think it can deal with a variety of things that switch into its trap move.

Dragon/Ghost: I like this typing. It has good matchups vs volt turn, it is exploitable with five weaknesses but has both many resistances and good *neutral* coverage that give the typing a lot of range. This is "range: the typing." All of the worrying about it being OP is just over inflated and I have to side with nyttyn on this issue. If this typing gets Spirit Shackle, yes it will likely use it a lot. But the concept is about trapping, and having some types slated that actually encourage us to activate a trapping effect is nice. There's SO many directions this typing (or any ghost typing) could go. We could have a moderate attack stack and higher special if we're genuinely worried about Spirit Shackle STAB being too good. But I don't see that fear as based on anything too solid right now. Again, I think nyttyn brought up a relevant point by talking about Revenankh. Rev has godly offensive STABs and a priority Drain Punch to boot. He's a great mon but he's far from Broken. I firmly do not believe that Ghost is some godly offensive typing that will bring cataclysmic destruction to the CAP metagame. If this was the case, then why doesn't the meta see many Ghosts as it is?

Dragon/Fairy: At first I was very iffy about this typing, but it's grown on me. It's exploitable by other Fairy-types and walled by Steel-types, which potentially gives us good luring opportunities and I can see Anchor Shot or Z Fire potentially being two of many options to us later on. There's not many Ice or Poison types n the meta while 7 resistances and 1 immunity to typings that are mostly common is quite nice. It has range against a large number of defensive pivots and overall just has a lot of neutral match ups that let luring be effective. It's a typing that I feel has range and it has all of the defensive benefits of Dragon and the offensive option of fairy stab, which quite frankly is just terrific in the current metagame. It's somewhat similar to Dragon/Fighting insofar as it pairs a useful offensive STAB with Dragon, but the weaknesses of Dragon/Fairy and much more manageable in the metagame than those of Dragon/Fighting.

I largely disagree with dragon/ghost typing, and severely dislike any typing with ghost. My main problem is that if we give CAP23 a ghost typing, it is really for one reason, STAB Spirit Shackle. Sure, ghost typing takes neutral damage from many types, but so do a lot of other types, like Dragon. Another worry is how powerful Spirit Shackle could be, and while I do like the idea of making it Special focused so Spirit Shackle is utility, it would make it a waste of a moveslot. Spirit Shackle doesn't do anything for a Ghost type, other than be STAB. Ghost types don't lure in pokemon that are threatened by being trapped by Spirit Shackle. You can lure Ghost types, but then it would just be better to use more powerful STAB, like Shadow Ball. With a Dragon and/or Fighting typing, you can lure fairies and trap them with Anchor Shot or lure psychic types and trap them with Spirit Shackle. Ghost typing doesn't do anything thing for this mon and should be avoided.

For many of the same reasons, I also dislike a Dragon/Steel typing. The Steel typing makes it unable the lure fairies well, and gives Anchor Shot too much power with STAB. Since the majority of Steel types are Physical, it could easier become too powerful.

 

[Squawkerz]

I largely disagree with dragon/ghost typing, and severely dislike any typing with ghost. My main problem is that if we give CAP23 a ghost typing, it is really for one reason, STAB Spirit Shackle. Sure, ghost typing takes neutral damage from many types, but so do a lot of other types, like Dragon. Another worry is how powerful Spirit Shackle could be, and while I do like the idea of making it Special focused so Spirit Shackle is utility, it would make it a waste of a moveslot. Spirit Shackle doesn't do anything for a Ghost type, other than be STAB. Ghost types don't lure in pokemon that are threatened by being trapped by Spirit Shackle. You can lure Ghost types, but then it would just be better to use more powerful STAB, like Shadow Ball. With a Dragon and/or Fighting typing, you can lure fairies and trap them with Anchor Shot or lure psychic types and trap them with Spirit Shackle. Ghost typing doesn't do anything thing for this mon and should be avoided.

For many of the same reasons, I also dislike a Dragon/Steel typing. The Steel typing makes it unable the lure fairies well, and gives Anchor Shot too much power with STAB. Since the majority of Steel types are Physical, it could easier become too powerful.

Can't really say much because im on mobile, I don't think Ghost typing automatically equals spirit shackle. It could have Anchor Shot, who knows?

 

[HeaLnDeaL]

How can our STAB have too much power from an 80 BP when we don't even know our attack stat? Saying STAB Anchor Shot or Spirit Shackle is too powerful is entirely conjecture at this point.

I fully recognize that there are two BIG camps here in this thread. One favors using trapping as coverage in hope that the coverage itself allows it to lure; after all, if the surprise is know then it's not a surpise. The other favors STAB because it gives a reason for the move to actually by run. After all, there are so so so many mons with trapping moves in the game already and very few actually work, so why not try to make it as attractive as possible? (would be something this second camp would ask.

There flat out, without a shadow of a doubt, will be typings that reflect both camps in the slate. That is undeniable.

But I'm mildly sick of these two camps going at each other's throats. The simple truth is that the main ideas both of these camps are advocating for are not mutually exclusive, not even by a long shot. We can have a STAB trapping move on a mon that still has surprises (look at Heatran for god's sake). And sure, there are ways that a non-STAB trapping move can function as a highly compressed coverage move as well. And there's even some chance for multi turn trapping moves, potentially (or at least they aren't ruled out even if this typing discussion has largely ignored them, so we'll see I guess).

We want the same thing; to create a mon that is successful at using trapping moves (preferably without being OP). If both of these sides would work together, I think we'd be in a happier place. I don't want the typing poll to divide us and I'm just trying to close any wounds before they get too deep.

We will have Ghost typings. We will have Steel typings. We will have typings with neither Ghost or Steel.

Alright, carry on with discussion. I don't want to hear for another wasted second anything about STAB Spirit Shackle or STAB Anchor Shot being too good. It's a fluff reason at this point because everything that could be said about that has been said, probably most efficiently by Jas. We have limited time in this thread and I'd rather not waste any more by having people repeat the same talking point that won't change anyone's mind. Almost any other talking point, especially those that relate to the concept and trapping mechanisms, is still valid. I'm hoping banning dissing or cheering for STAB trap moves will actually drive the conversation forward because it's been in a rut for a while.

 

[Mova]

Even though people seem to already have several typings in mind, I'd like to bring up Water/Dragon for this CAP's typing. Fellow users like HeaL have mentioned it on Showdown, and I have to admit that it could allow the CAP to use Anchor Shot for coverage against Fairies, as several Dragon typings imply. I don't really have much to say on it right now, other than that it has decent resistances and only two weaknesses: Dragon and Fairy.

To those saying that STAB Shackle and Anchor are "too powerful," we have not even disucssed stat builds yet; as such, we cannot assume anything about BST or stat spreads at this time.

 

[nyttyn]

re: Dragon Types listed in Heal's post:

I don't think they'll work the way people are expecting, simply. The idea here is that we lure things that want to destroy dragons and in turn take them down with Anchor Shot (or in some cases, Spirit Shackle), making them fear the trap move. I think this ignores the reality of things that Anchor Shot (and for ghost, Spirit Shackle) would actually let us beat.

Running down the list of everything dragon lures in, from just the better mons in the tier...

Tapu Koko: Steel Neutral. This does not fear anchor shot. Any sets that run dazzling gleam will beat a non-steel dragon type CAP outright, with HP ice being a bit more questionable. But with both the option to u-turn out and a blistering 130 speed it's extremely unlikely we'll beat, this is a unfavorable matchup for everything but dragon/steel.
Tapu Lele: Choice Scarf sets dunk us if they get in, plain and simple. Other sets will depend on our speed, with us losing if Tapu Lele gets in without being hit. In most scenarios it's kind of a coin flip when it comes in if it can butcher us or not, assuming that it's faster, which isn't exactly ideal (and will likely be all choice scarf leles, and will depend on our speed for non choice scarf, but having to push the 96+ speed tier with full investment requires a LOT of bulk or power lost.)
Mega Mawile: Dragon typed CAP 23s cannot beat this, plain and simple, outside of some bullshit like earthquake.
Syclant: Literally any move smashes this, but we lose if it's faster outside of steel type dragons which MIGHT survive earthquake. And it will be faster, more than likely.
Clefable: CM sets pose a massive threat as they're both bulky and hit back hard. I think this one's kind of dependent on the exact stats, but we have to be pretty goddamn specially bulky not to get chunked by moonblast here. Steel secondary typing wins tho.
Celesteela: Wins basically 100% of the time outside of perish song nonsense.
Cawmodore: All dragon caps lose horribly to this.
Heatran: Only ghost dragons can even hope to take it on and if lava plume burns it's all over.
Navithan: Calm mind sets win outright, dragon dance sets have a pretty miserable time against ghost/dragon.
Skarmory: We have about as much chance of beating this as I have of winning Smogon Tour.
Tapu Bulu: Somewhat depressingly the band set can butcher just about every dragon, but is in turn butchered by anchor shot. Kind of depends on who's faster here (though i will note we require steel to threaten a OHKO at any reasonable level of attack - otherwise it hurts, but not as much as would be ideal.)
Tapu Fini: Beats out anything that's not /steel secondary typing. Loses to /steel secondary.

So yeah uh, our prospects against the things we supposedly lure in to threaten with anchor shot aren't actually all that good! Dragon/steel fares somewhat better, but for the most part I don't think Anchor Shot actually accomplishes all that much on a Dragon CAP 23, simply because all of the things it lures in and beats are kind of coin flips at best.

So, in short, I think any dragon type except for Dragon/Ghost and Dragon/Steel is a mistake, simply because in that case the trap move they're running is anchor shot which isn't actually all that effective even against the things it hits for SE.

Also I think Dragon/Steel is a mistake because it loses to Landog and Tomohawk and wow that is a really bad idea on top of all the dragon hate (I mean heatran can get away with it but heatran doesn't also auto lose to dragon hate, which CAP has a lot of!).

That kind of just leaves Dragon/Ghost and I think it's not a good idea in a meta with so much dragon hate, but it'd be ok I guess. Of the other ghost typings I prefer Ghost/Fairy since we can work around its lack of resists with the fact that its lack of wekanesses mean we can make up for it in ability, movepool, and stats. Ghost/Normal is just a crap Ghost/Fairy (beating other ghosts is not worth sacrificing a better secondary typing), Ghost/Ground's weaknesses are incredibly crippling considering they're prevalent on bulkier pokemon which we'd like to be able to beat (and competes with the fantastic Ground types CAP already has to offer which is worrisome).

Also I suppose a minor shout out to Grass/Steel for being the only defensive typing I think would actually work, albeit I think we'd look incredibly similiar to Ferrothorn if we took that route and that's kind of boring, on top of running the very real risk of just being shitty Ferrothron, just like how Plasmata was shitty Heatran.

I think Fairy/Steel would wind up just ignoring its Steel stab and turn into some sort of ungodly defensive tank that makes the heavens themselves quake in fear (fucking Klefki is used in ubers that's how outrageous Fairy/Steel is). Concept failed and we've unleashed a god beast that makes Tomohawk and Illusion Aurumoth jealous to boot.

I think Ground/Steel just loses to too many common defensive pivots and doesn't really accomplish much with Steel offensively since there are surprisingly few things ground can't hit that steel would be good against. Like...Tomohawk dunks and is only hit for neutral, Landoog resist steel, Celesteela resists steel, you get the idea. It's actually kind of surprising how often ground resistant or immune mons are also either resistant to or dunk steel.



tl;dr dragons, outside of dragon/ghost, arent great but also i dont think dragon/ghost is a good idea because there's so much dragon hate, but it's probably the best of the dragon typings and the only one i remotely support. also fairy/steel is probably distractingly good?? up with ghost/fairy, grass/steel is ok but might be a worse ferrothorn.

 

[Hys]

Grass/Steel: Another very under discussed typing that I just think has some potential and is worth more discussion. It lacks offensive powers of many of the other typings but well if we're trying to trap bulky things this typing really only struggles vs Pyroak and Mollux... but are those too big of threats for us to ignore? I'm slightly reminded of Ferrothorn by this typing and I find it kinda humorous how much more effective it would be if it could trap... But that', again, a defensive trapping role and CA seemed to point us towards mostly offensive. While this typing has notable defensive range and the ability to handle a large portion of the metagame 1v1, does it have the offensive capabilities to back this up? This is arguable the only typing I'm discussing rn that is so drastically defensive over offensive but I'd just want to cover my bases and have it discussed.

With Grass/Steel, you don't need to always use Anchor Shot with it. Both Steel and Grass typings have some extremely powerful moves that for some reason people forget about, such as Wood Hammer, Power Whip, Heavy Slam and Gyro Ball. With this typing, you also have access to many support-oriented moves such as Spikes, (a move that shows up on Grass and Steel type pokes more than any others), Leech Seed, Aromatherapy, Synthesis, Spiky Shield and Stealth Rocks just to name a few. No other type combination mentioned has that sort of utility, allowing trapCAP to pull off a utility trapping set, an offensive trapping set or a non-trapping offensive or utility set. Not only do you need to figure out if it's carrying a trapping move at all, but you also need to learn if it's an offensive or a utility trapper. Most of the bulky Water type pivots such as Alomomola, Tapu Fini and Toxapex are unable to even touch Steel/Grass as a typing, and they annoy many of the other typings suggested that lack a secondary Dragon type. The 2 most common pivots in Magearna and Lando-T are unable to deal serious damage with their BoltBeam/AV and Flyinium/Rockinium sets. The matchup vs Tomohawk isn't bad either, since its best way of touching Grass/Steel is a fighting move, which is extremely uncommon. Don't even mention the matchup vs Fidgit, Clefable, Tangrowth, Celesteela and Cyclohm without flamethrower, Ferrothorn and Krillowat, all pokes who get walled to hell and back. This typing as a whole has very visible counter play, and good and bad matchups vs some common fire-type pokes such as Mollux and Pyroak.

Of all the typings listed that have a possibility to be selected, this one has the most options in the future, and that should not be forgotten

 

[Panic Station]

Except Steel is the defensive focus in the typing. A defensive focus which is needed. Cap23 is not going to be the first guy out of the gate. And once it switches in it needs to survive long enough to accomplish its concept. A trapper that dies before it can trap anything is not a trapper, it's a joke.

Which is why Ground/Steel. It gets on the floor without having to freak out over hazards and other potential setbacks (and yes, I consider dying quicker due to poison a setback), tanks any hits coming its way, then traps it and slaps it.

 

[LucarioOfLegends]

Alrighty, time to state my thoughts without being overly angry at one specific move.

Dragon/Ghost: Other than the fact that it would most likely get "the move that shall not be named", there are things I generally like about this typing. Plenty of resists, some interesting immunities, and spinblocking is a really nice added bonus. What worries me is that it has such a large neutral coverage that it has to rely on this neutral coverage to hit most things that we are targeting, since the things that we actually hit supereffectively are not bulky. Sure this isn't a problem if using super powerful dragon moves like Outrage or Draco Meteor, but against super bulky Fairy and Steel types such as Tapu Fini, Celesteela, Clefable, and Skarmory we have to rely on at most an 85 BP physical ghost STAB to break through that really bulky stuff. Maybe a Z-move if were lucky. Just that low power, even with STAB, means we would likely have to throw a significant portion of our spread into our Attack stat, which could seriously undermine other part that really need it. While it'd be resistant to Knock Off if we use a Z-crystal consistently, Pursuit trapping on this would also be a pretty damn big deal. It'd probably be one of the most consistent forms of punishing a failed trap move, and it'd most certainly hurt.

Dragon/Fairy: My personal favorite. Very much similar to Dragon/Ghost defensively, but trades hitting Fairy and Steel types neutrally for hitting Tomohawk, our biggest roadblock, supeffectively. Fairy is also a very dominant type in the metagame offensively, so I feel this best incorporates offense and defense into one delectable package. Of course, we are unable to dent most fairy and steel types in return, but I feel that this isn't too terribly bad since it can just be solved with coverage.

Dragon/Steel: A typing that sounds good on paper, but I think has some notable flaws. For Positives, The number of resistances it can offer is quite huge and it doesn't let many mons in. However, I think that Ground weakness is just a massive turn off point in my opinion, since we'd have to put considerable bulk on to make it not fall to Lando-T on turn one. Ironically, I don't think that it actually promotes Anchor Shot, since its other possible options like Heavy Slam can beat it in power, and the actual significance of Anchor Shot's trapping effect is debatable in my opinion.

Fairy/Ghost: I just think this leans far too into offense and doesn't invest enough into its defense as a typing. Don't get me wrong, its offensive abilities are possibly absurd, but only one resistance and three immunities can seriously cut into its bulk and limit its number of times to switch in. Trapping a wide range of opponents you need to be able to take the hits that they can dish out relatively well, and without large bulk investment I don't think that it will have enough bulk to be able to fight them easily.

Steel/Fairy: On the other side of the spectrum, we have a mon that is far too defensive. For once, I actually agree with nyttyn about how unnaturally overpowered this mon could become defensively. It very much just has the potential to completely ignore its trapping move and just turn into an obnoxious defensive mon that resists everything and just stalls out stuff with Toxic. Even if that doesn't happen, think that it just doesn't synergize very well with the trapping moves, and would likely just run something else entirely for the straight up power.

Grass/Steel: This just really doesn't do anything for me, and probably wouldn't specifically do much for the concept. Yea, its pretty great defensively, with two weaknesses and a boatload of resistances, but I don't think it would be able to break through most of the bulky mons we would want to target from this concept with its STABs. Grass and Steel are decent, but really aren't that great for hitting a lot of the mons. Failing to punch through bulky grasses and Tomohawk I think is super crippling for the concept especially.

Ground Types: Putting them together since I generally see the same problem with all of them. I just generally don't like this primary typing because of how much it struggles offensively and defensively against the bulky mons that we are specifically targetting for the concept. Quite a significant number of bulky Pokemon, such as Tangrowth, Tapu Bulu, Tomohawk, Mega Slowbro, and Arghonaut, which we'd be trying to trap don't really care at all for being hit by a ground type move, and can pretty much blow the CAP away in retaliation with their STAB moves. With so many of those mons being able to beat it, although we are specifically trying to beat them, this seems like a very bad typing for this concept.

 

[jas61292]

Just want to address a couple of types in HeaL's post that I have some thoughts on:

Dragon/Fighting: Dragon/Fighting has most of the typically good Dragon qualities but Fighting gives it two more very problematic weaknesses (psychic, flying) and gives it the 4x weakness to fairy. I don't think it has the defensive properties to thrive, but at least it doesn't care much about multiple switch ins with its stealth rock resistance. Fighting lets some fat switch in such as Chansey or even Magnezone be dealt with, but it leaves things such as Clefable, Toxapex, Pyroak, Tomohawk, etc very easily able to deal with it. No, we don't want to beat every fat mon. I however think that Tomohawk and Clefable should not be beating us up to the degree that Dragon/Fighting would get beat up. If Tomohawk wasn't king of CAP, this typing would be so much better. But as it stands, I don't see it working out well. Fairy AND Flying weaknesses makes this almost impossible to work with in the meta.

First off, as I have mentioned earlier, Dragon/Fighting is my favorite type for this CAP, and so unsurprisingly I strongly disagree with much of this assessment. I actually believe that Dragon/Fighting is a fairly strong defensive typing. Its easy to look at a type and say "it has bad weaknesses X, Y and Z" but really, what matters is not that, but which Pokemon carry those moves. All three types mentioned share one thing in common: they are uncommon as coverage. While they are certainly all great types to have STAB on in the CAP metagame, very few Pokemon will run these moves unless they are of those types, making them far easier to plan around. Our goal is trapping, but to make trapping effective we want to be able to deal with what we trap, and that means having a good idea of the Pokemon that will want to come in on it. I'd much rather have weaknesses to types like these than other types, because the Pokemon that run them all share certain traits that we can plan for in other stages when figuring out what to actually do about what we have trapped.

Secondly, I think the lack of SE type matchups with a number of bulky guys is not a bad thing. Again, we are aiming to trap them, and so we just need to find a way to beat them once trapped. That is not something we need to deal with at this stage, and may very well be more suited to movepool or ability. Rather, we simply do not want a type that puts us at a significant disadvantage, and of the Pokemon mentioned above, Clefable is the only one to not take neutral damage from a STAB. Super effective hits are nice, sure, but neutral hits with very high base power STAB moves are more than effective enough. When it comes to typing, that is really all we need.

Finally, as far as Tomohawk, I have been saying a lot on PS that I think the worry about this mon is really overblown. We have not even gotten to our threats stage yet, so acting like it is necessary to beat is really not in line with how this project works. Yes, we want to trap bulky things, but Tomohawk is not the only bulky mon in the meta, and is we do not beat it, that is perfectly fine. And I personally find the idea that we would struggle to be sucessful with Fairy and Flying weaknesses absurd. The reason those types are considered good is because so many other Pokemon that are good have those weaknesses. So long as we have a role that we do well we can easily thrive despite them. And as I mentioned before those specific types are almost exclusively run as STAB, making our switch ins predictable. I see this as a major plus, not a minus.

Fairy/Ghost: This typing has barely barely been discussed. I think it takes typing "range" by a different perspective, as least defensively. It has two weaknesses to relatively uncommon offensive types in Steel and Ghost, only one resist, and three immunities. This overall leads it to being something that has a neutral match up against the vast majority of the metagame. It's got great neutral coverage and a bit better SE coverage than Dragon/Ghost. I'm really, really unsure of this and would like more discussion, notably on whether the neutral defensive matchup against 90% of things is an acceptable approach if we're trying to trap a wide range of opponents. And, well, we might not have many resists to switch in ourselves but the typing isn't easily exploited once in since its weaknesses are to two types that are rarely run as coverage... Again, really not sure where my head is at on this one at the moment.

Dragon/Ghost: I like this typing. It has good matchups vs volt turn, it is exploitable with five weaknesses but has both many resistances and good *neutral* coverage that give the typing a lot of range. This is "range: the typing." All of the worrying about it being OP is just over inflated and I have to side with nyttyn on this issue. If this typing gets Spirit Shackle, yes it will likely use it a lot. But the concept is about trapping, and having some types slated that actually encourage us to activate a trapping effect is nice. There's SO many directions this typing (or any ghost typing) could go. We could have a moderate attack stack and higher special if we're genuinely worried about Spirit Shackle STAB being too good. But I don't see that fear as based on anything too solid right now. Again, I think nyttyn brought up a relevant point by talking about Revenankh. Rev has godly offensive STABs and a priority Drain Punch to boot. He's a great mon but he's far from Broken. I firmly do not believe that Ghost is some godly offensive typing that will bring cataclysmic destruction to the CAP metagame. If this was the case, then why doesn't the meta see many Ghosts as it is?

Ghost/Ground: I'd like to see more discussion on this typing. 5 weaknesses to relatively common types worries me, but the defensive merits do exist as well. Both Electric and Fighting immunities are very valuable and the give us potential. Stealth Rock Resistance is great. The typing isn't weak to King Tomohawk or Prince Landog. Pyroak and Ferrothorn become perhaps the premier switch ins, but the super effective and neutral coverage of ghost/ground is certainly impressive. I think I like the typing, I think it can deal with a variety of things that switch into its trap move.

Pairing these three together because the biggest issue I have with them is one in the same. Their coverage is simply too good for our purpose. Fairy/Ghost is perfect neutral coverage except against Pyroar, who is irrelevant. Dragon/Ghost is perfect neutral coverage except against Bisharp and Normal/Fairies, the only two fully evolved of which (Wigglytuff and Mega Audino) are irrelevant. Ghost/Ground on the other hand doesn't have as good coverage on first glance, but of the things that actually resist it, only Mandibuzz, Staraptor and Mega Pidgeot are even worth thinking about.

Good coverage is certainly something we want, but I say these are too good because we need to be able to deal with the things we trap. When you have near perfect coverage, the things that want to switch in do so relying entirely on stats and ability, not typing, meaning there will be no real common thread tying them together for us to take advantage of. While I certainly get the allure of a STAB trapping move, even if I disagree with it, I think these three typings are basically just generically strong offensive typings that fail to actually do anything worthwhile with regard to handling the concept.

Grass/Steel: Another very under discussed typing that I just think has some potential and is worth more discussion. It lacks offensive powers of many of the other typings but well if we're trying to trap bulky things this typing really only struggles vs Pyroak and Mollux... but are those too big of threats for us to ignore? I'm slightly reminded of Ferrothorn by this typing and I find it kinda humorous how much more effective it would be if it could trap... But that', again, a defensive trapping role and CA seemed to point us towards mostly offensive. While this typing has notable defensive range and the ability to handle a large portion of the metagame 1v1, does it have the offensive capabilities to back this up? This is arguable the only typing I'm discussing rn that is so drastically defensive over offensive but I'd just want to cover my bases and have it discussed.

Of all the types that could have STAB on a trapping move, this is probably the one where I think it would be the least of a problem. Defensively it is very good, as everyone knows from Ferrothorn, but it obviously draws fire types due to its glaring weakness. Offensivly, its not as solid as most other suggested types, but I actually think it is fairly respectable for our purposes. A number of things will resist both STABs, but among relevant Pokemon they all are Fire or Steel types except Zapdos, Thundurus, Cyclohm and Plasmanta, and the latter two of which share a very common weakness with Fire and Steel types. As I have mentioned before, I think it is a good thing to have a number of Pokemon that want to switch in who all share certain traits. The clear weaknesses leave open plenty of options of how to potentially deal with things that are trapped, while potentially still leaving things enough of a mystery that the opponent will never know for sure what things can safely be switched in and trapped, and which ones cannot. In short, this type does a lot well defensively, while doing enough offensively to allow us to leave our options open at other stages of the project, which is a very good thing.

Dragon/Steel: This typing I think is a solid candidate. It's weakness to ground in the ground common metagame is problematic, but as Heatran shows this is not a auto-lose quality. But while Tomohawk is King, Landog is Prince and he certainly puts a thorn into this typing's side. That said, few other things deal with it very well; the list is much shorter than the list of easy go-to mons for Dragon/Fighting. This typing somewhat pidgeonholes STAB anchor shot, but there are definitely options to take.

Somewhat of a middle ground between the previous two groups, Dragon/Steel has much stronger coverage than Grass/Steel, while still being very strong defensively, but at the same time, its coverage is nowhere aproaching those of the part Ghost types. Literally every Steel type that does not have a secondary Rock, Fairy or Dragon type resists this combo, but nothing else ever will. But, while this might seem like it makes switch ins predictable, I really don't think it does to the same extent as Grass/Steel or Dragon/Fighting, because, as a Steel type yourself, you are going to resist a ton of those guys in return. Based on typing alone, few common steel types would really be interested in switching in, unless they could easily set up, which is probably something we want to avoid anyways. As such, in actual play the switch ins for this typing would probably be not that much more similar than those for Dragon/Ghost and its ilk.

Dragon/Fairy: At first I was very iffy about this typing, but it's grown on me. It's exploitable by other Fairy-types and walled by Steel-types, which potentially gives us good luring opportunities and I can see Anchor Shot or Z Fire potentially being two of many options to us later on. There's not many Ice or Poison types n the meta while 7 resistances and 1 immunity to typings that are mostly common is quite nice. It has range against a large number of defensive pivots and overall just has a lot of neutral match ups that let luring be effective. It's a typing that I feel has range and it has all of the defensive benefits of Dragon and the offensive option of fairy stab, which quite frankly is just terrific in the current metagame. It's somewhat similar to Dragon/Fighting insofar as it pairs a useful offensive STAB with Dragon, but the weaknesses of Dragon/Fairy and much more manageable in the metagame than those of Dragon/Fighting.

Finally, this typing is quite interesting, and I actually quite like it. No STAB on trapping moves, which I think is a plus, though not as clear a coverage role for them, which is not terrible, but not as ideal as I would like. Similar to Dragon/Steel, everything that resists this type combo falls into the single group of Steel types, but unlike the above this typing actually is vulnerable to them in return, meaning such Pokemon actually have incentive to switch in. Defensively, it is a fairly strong type overall, with lots of common resistances. And, as mentioned one of its main weaknesses pairs well with its offensive shortcomings to help us plan around when it comes to dealing with what we trap. Overall, while I think it has some minor shortcomings, I do believe it is a very good option for this project.

 

[Hesh Kadesh]

Except Steel is the defensive focus in the typing. A defensive focus which is needed. Cap23 is not going to be the first guy out of the gate. And once it switches in it needs to survive long enough to accomplish its concept. A trapper that dies before it can trap anything is not a trapper, it's a joke.

Which is why Ground/Steel. It gets on the floor without having to freak out over hazards and other potential setbacks (and yes, I consider dying quicker due to poison a setback), tanks any hits coming its way, then traps it and slaps it.

Except Colossoil and Tomohawl gibs it typing wise, and at least one of which is seen on like 50% of teams.

At least with say Ghost/Normal you're taking less effective hits against your weakness and are not facing the common Fighting or Ground type moves.

To reinforce that, it is also immune to Arghonaut's Circle Throw

 

[Sereg]

From what I can tell, Rock doesn't resist bug, as much as I expected it to.

Whoops! You're right! Too used to thinking of Rock beating Bug that I forgot that's only true offensively.

I largely disagree with dragon/ghost typing, and severely dislike any typing with ghost. My main problem is that if we give CAP23 a ghost typing, it is really for one reason, STAB Spirit Shackle. Sure, ghost typing takes neutral damage from many types, but so do a lot of other types, like Dragon. Another worry is how powerful Spirit Shackle could be, and while I do like the idea of making it Special focused so Spirit Shackle is utility, it would make it a waste of a moveslot. Spirit Shackle doesn't do anything for a Ghost type, other than be STAB. Ghost types don't lure in pokemon that are threatened by being trapped by Spirit Shackle. You can lure Ghost types, but then it would just be better to use more powerful STAB, like Shadow Ball. With a Dragon and/or Fighting typing, you can lure fairies and trap them with Anchor Shot or lure psychic types and trap them with Spirit Shackle. Ghost typing doesn't do anything thing for this mon and should be avoided.

For many of the same reasons, I also dislike a Dragon/Steel typing. The Steel typing makes it unable the lure fairies well, and gives Anchor Shot too much power with STAB. Since the majority of Steel types are Physical, it could easier become too powerful.

Ignoring the comments on STAP trapping moves being too powerful as requested, the idea that STAB Spirit Shackle is the only reason for a Ghost typing is ridiculous.

A Ghost typing gives us two additional immunities, including to one of Tomohawk's STABs, helping us come in easier and making it harder to take us out before our trap does its job. They let us spinblock, which is good for a trapper. They resist U-Turn, preventing escape from being more of a problem than it already is. They have a STAB that chases away other Ghosts who otherwise give trappers problems. They are immune to counter-trapping. There are other pokemon that have an immunity to their STAB meaning that trapping is better to ensure we hit what we want to. Saying that STAB Spirit Shackle is the only good point about a Ghost typing is just silly.

 

[Buzzer_Error]

On Fairy/Steel: I'm hardly 100%, totally, monomaniacally convinced that it's The Best Typing™ for CAP 23, but I feel like I ought to make at least a token effort to defend it.

I think Fairy/Steel would wind up just ignoring its Steel stab and turn into some sort of ungodly defensive tank that makes the heavens themselves quake in fear (fucking Klefki is used in ubers that's how outrageous Fairy/Steel is). Concept failed and we've unleashed a god beast that makes Tomohawk and Illusion Aurumoth jealous to boot.

Steel/Fairy: On the other side of the spectrum, we have a mon that is far too defensive. For once, I actually agree with nyttyn about how unnaturally overpowered this mon could become defensively. It very much just has the potential to completely ignore its trapping move and just turn into an obnoxious defensive mon that resists everything and just stalls out stuff with Toxic. Even if that doesn't happen, think that it just doesn't synergize very well with the trapping moves, and would likely just run something else entirely for the straight up power.

I certainly don't disagree that we could make a horrifying defensive behemoth with a Fairy/Steel typing, but I don't think this line of argument is necessarily all there is to say here.

All three extant Steel/Fairy types have top-tier abilities that I think make their typing look slightly better than it actually is. Mega Mawile would be underwhelming in the extreme without Huge Power (and the extra utility of Intimidate pre-Mega), Magearna can really rack up boosts with Soul-Heart, and most of Klefki's value comes from Prankster. A judicious ability selection for CAP 23 would go a long way to avoiding making an over-bulky nightmare.

Meanwhile, from the movepool side of things, Fairy/Steel STABs have a couple of unique advantages for the project.

• There are few enough strong Steel-type physical moves that we could delimit the role of Anchor Shot very effectively, if we chose that as a trapping move. Want to encourage the use of Anchor Shot? Choose a high-Attack stat spread (and force the CAP to rely on the imperfectly accurate Play Rough for a Fairy-type STAB, if we want to give it Play Rough at all). Want to discourage Anchor Shot spam? Go for a special spread instead, and make the CAP use Anchor Shot for trapping and its Fairy STABs for power.
• While it is a lovely coverage type, Fairy is limited in its move options (basically Play Rough, Dazzling Gleam and Moonblast, along with the one-use Twinkle Tackle) and it has some big gaps in its effectiveness (especially on the physical side). Steel doesn't do much to patch that up.
• Put together, this means that it would not be difficult to make a Fairy/Steel CAP that's incentivised to use its STABs for trapping or for offense, without making those STABs recklessly overpowered. This could also force players to make a choice between a more offensive role, with whatever coverage we choose to give the CAP (or ensure that coverage has to be tailored to the team, rather than spamming powerful moves), or a more defensive one that needs Anchor Shot for trapping and a Fairy move for Colossoil, but is in turn forced out by Celesteela or Landorus-T.

Fairy/Steel does have a load of resistances, but many of those resistances are ones we're actively pursuing (e.g. Dark, Bug, potentially Poison), and Ground and Fire are hardly niche weaknesses.

This absolutely isn't to say that we couldn't screw up a Fairy/Steel CAP 23, more to suggest that it's not an inevitability. Equally, this isn't to say that Fairy/Steel is a bad typing masquerading as a good one. I think it can absolutely be a pro-concept typing provided we pair it with the right choices in the ability, movepool and stats stages.

 

[Project_Mars]

Regarding the great neutral matchups that Fairy/Ghost and Normal/Ghost provide, it does seem possibly pro-concept (albeit a double-edged sword), going by the list of points made at the end of the concept assessment:

4. Opponents should expect a trapping move set but fear a) the other moves CAP23 will run and b) non-trapping sets. (i.e. a) "Now that I've been trapped, is A, B, or etc. going to happen?" and b) "I've been playing around CAP23 like it's been running a trap move, but it's really not!")

Having a strong offensive neutral typing could possibly help by giving us good options for A, since we could potentially go with either a boosting set or a coverage Z-move set to change up how it deals with certain types of prey, and has a good enough neutral game to make B a possibility.

However, the main issue with the above mentioned typings, and the Ghost Typing for this concept in general, is just how weak Ghost's options for physical attacks are. This is an issue because we are apparently biasing TrapCAP to be physical due to Anchor Shot/Spirit Shackle. The only options for physical ghost moves are Phantom Force (two-turn attack so not really worth it), Shadow Force (Giratina exclusive, so not happening. Also a two-turn attack, so not really worth it), Spectral Thief (Marshadow exclusive, so not happening. Also a reason why Marshadow got banned, so probably not happening here), and Shadow Bone (which is perfectly acceptible as it has roughly the same base power and a 20% chance to lower defense). So the options for non-trapping Ghost/x typed TrapCAP sets would basically be: Running Shadow Bone over Spirit Shackle, Non-existant as Spirit Shackle is pretty much always run as the Ghost-type option, or a surprise Special set (which would likely require a boost to succeed, but is possible)

 

[Panic Station]

Except Colossoil and Tomohawl gibs it typing wise, and at least one of which is seen on like 50% of teams.

At least with say Ghost/Normal you're taking less effective hits against your weakness and are not facing the common Fighting or Ground type moves.

To reinforce that, it is also immune to Arghonaut's Circle Throw

And you're still getting crippled by Stones, Toxic Spikes, VoltTurn, etc. as Normal/Ghost. You're trying to tell me to ignore the draw of my suggestion.

Our ideas have different priorities and I don't think either of us is going to sell the other on those different priorities.

 

[Hesh Kadesh]

That's putting words in my mouth.

Also, i think it's kind of funny that you think that in comparison to the two most popular mon in the meta are able to hit STAB super effectively against your typing is roughly akin to suggesting that any mon who is hit neutrally by SR is "crippled" then sure.

It's not like CAP has like 10+ viable spinners/defoggers in the first place anyway.

 

[HeaLnDeaL]

This is your roughly 32 hour warning until this thread closes.

Discussion of typing options is still very very much encourages, specifically the yellow typings on the top of this page but pretty much anything else is fine. Stop talking about STAB trapping moves being too powerful (or being absolutely required, for the flip side of the equation). I banned that discussion a while back and still had respectable community members ignore the ban. So uh yeah stop it, it's a dead end on discussion at this point since everything that could be said about STAB SS or AS has already been said.

I also have an additional set of questions for you guys. If these questions pick up a lot of discussion that is unresolved by the deadline then I will probably extend the deadline.

1) How do we encourage the use of a trapping move? As in, how can we make a trapping move attractive to be on a set?

2) How do we encourage the use of the trapping effect? As in, how can we make sure a trapping move we have benefits from the trapping effect rather than just KO things without exploration of trapping?

3) How do we make sure our trapping move and our trapping effect aren't just inferior options to other strategies? I say this with specific respects towards the idea of trapping something that switches in, having it be unable to switch out the next turn, and switching CAP23 out itself into something that deals with what came in (this strategy as one of the main benefits towards using trapping moves has been discussed a lot of PS). Is this entire strategy just inferior to pivot moves in the first place? After all, a pivot move used against something switching into a mon means that the pivot mon's teammate coming in won't take any damage, but in the scenario described with the trapping move there is a very high chance that CAP23's incoming teammate will take damage. Or does having the option to either switch out kind of safely OR use a hidden coverage or Z move on the target make up for this?

4) It is very, very hard to design a lure made for a very specific subset of Pokemon and have it actually work as a lure. For example, the Dragon/Fighting typing is meant to lure in Fairies with Anchor Shot. This approach means that CAP23 has to have enough set variation to not use Anchor Shot most of the time so that the Fairies actually have a reason to come in. How can we maintain the balance of having both a viable trapping set and other sets that singularly or collectively are more common/more viable than trapping so that the lure is actually possible? And if the trapping set is too good and the lure fails as a result, then doesn't that mean it's basically just a bunch of generically bulky mons that come in to check CAP instead of the intended Fairy types? Transitioning into question 5...

5) How do we take advantage of a wide range bulky mons and should we try to? Does attracting a wide range of bulky mons mean that CAP will struggle to deal with them all? Or does it mean that CAP will be able to selectively pick a few of them and more effectively lure them (more effectively than if we target one group and are never able to lure them since they always see it coming)? If we want to somewhat deal with a wide-variety of bulky mons coming in, what traits should CAP23 have? (Note: This does not mean we're trying to single handedly beat a large variety of bulky mons, specifically in a single set).

Please, use answers to the above questions to try and support or argue against specific typings if possible.

 

[S. Court]

1) How do we encourage the use of a trapping move? As in, how can we make a trapping move attractive to be on a set?

Basically making it makes enough damage to be usable and being able to fit in CAP23's moveset, that'd be with 1) Being its strongest STAB option to make a respectable damage or 2) Being a crucial move to cover one of CAP23's weakness (this is why I think Dragon/Fairy is a good alternative, AS will cover its weakness to Fairy as long it doesn't have too much options to cover this weakness in its moveset)

2) How do we encourage the use of the trapping effect? As in, how can we make sure a trapping move we have benefits from the trapping effect rather than just KO things without exploration of trapping?

Being sure it have a good match up against as much Pokemon with the desired role CAP23 wants to trap as possible, that'd be a good amount of resistances against the common types of pivots/walls, a decent amount of coverage moves (or strong STAB options) to exploit them with Z-Moves or maybe using them as setup bait. It's important CAP23 doesn't be deadweight against offensive teams, but we have to be careful its match up against them doesn't become too favorable against Offense after a setup

 

[david0895]

1) How do we encourage the use of a trapping move? As in, how can we make a trapping move attractive to be on a set?

Probably the best option is to give the STAB bonus to the trapping move or at least, CAP23 should have a typing that can appreciate this move as a coverage.

2) How do we encourage the use of the trapping effect? As in, how can we make sure a trapping move we have benefits from the trapping effect rather than just KO things without exploration of trapping?

If we look at Heatran, it is an effective trapper thanks to its coverage moves (Earth Power and Solar Beam) boosted with the Z-crystals; so a strong coverage could be the ideal solution.

4) It is very, very hard to design a lure made for a very specific subset of Pokemon and have it actually work as a lure. For example, the Dragon/Fighting typing is meant to lure in Fairies with Anchor Shot. This approach means that CAP23 has to have enough set variation to not use Anchor Shot most of the time so that the Fairies actually have a reason to come in. How can we maintain the balance of having both a viable trapping set and other sets that singularly or collectively are more common/more viable than trapping so that the lure is actually possible? And if the trapping set is too good and the lure fails as a result, then doesn't that mean it's basically just a bunch of generically bulky mons that come in to check CAP instead of the intended Fairy types?

If the trapping move will be STAB, we could give to CAP23 a stronger option like Shadow Bone or Spectral Thief and Meteor Mash or Heavy Slam.
If not, we could give it a coverage good enough to outclass partially the trapping move, for example on the Dragon/Fighting type, if we add Earthquake and Fire Punch to the coverage moves, CAP23 will not forced to run Anchor Shot.

 

[Sereg]

1) How do we encourage the use of a trapping move? As in, how can we make a trapping move attractive to be on a set?

Well, one option is to boost the trapping move in some way. This can be done with ability but as far as typing is concerned, it can be done with STAB (but this is not required!). That would suggest a Ghost or Steel typing, but STAB on a binding move isn't something to rule out completely, though admittedly, that would be too small a boost to make much of a difference in their case. In any event, that supports the Ground typings of those still under discussion.

The other option is coverage, though I don't think luring is the best way to go about this. Basically, if we choose a typing that is only walled by typings weak to Steel and/or Ghost, then we can hit the types that otherwise wall us and have a trapping move in one. Again, this could be done with sand-tomb, possibly with Groundium Z, but that's a bit underwhelming. This supports Dragon/Fighting, I guess, even if it's not one of my favourites.

Next, we can make it so that trapping supports our STABs. This includes types known for moves that are ruined by the opponent switching and especially types that some mon, and especially some typings, are immune to. This particularly supports Dragon-typings, and especially Dragon/Fighting and Dragon/Ghost, but also Ghost/Normal and Ghost/Ground.

Next, we need to find a way to discourage the thins that ruin trapping.The most important of these is Volt-Turn. Volt-Switch can be blocked, allowing us to trap more mon than in any other scenario and thus, makes trapping a better strategy. This can be done with an ability, but for typing, it suggests a Ground typing. Similarly, a resistance to Volt-Turn is valuable, if less so. This encourages Dragon/Fighting, Ground/Steel, Dragon/Steel, Ghost/Ground and Ghost/Dragon. Similarly, we want to chase away Ghosts and, especially if we're using binding-moves, it would be great to spinblock, encouraging a Ghost-typing and especially Ghost/Normal. The need for a trapper to come in at any opportunity and often repeatedly suggests that a Stealth-Rock resistance would be nice, which suggests Ground/Fairy, Dragon/Fighting, Fairy/Steel, Ground/Steel, Ground/Steel, Dragon/Steel and Ground/Ghost.

Finally, if we want a niche for Fairy Lock, it would be good to encourage the niche of Fairy Lock, a damaging Fairy move and Fairium Z, suggesting a Fairy-typing, or at least, a typing that lures in Fairy-weak mon (so, Dragons and Dark types). This encourages Dragon/Fighting, Ghost/Normal, Ghost/Ground and especially Dragon/Ghost.

2) How do we encourage the use of the trapping effect? As in, how can we make sure a trapping move we have benefits from the trapping effect rather than just KO things without exploration of trapping?

As I said above, the easiest way is for their best STAB moves to have disadvantages that become apparent when switching. This is especially rue with STABs that some mon (and especially typings) are immune to. This particularly supports Dragon-typings, and especially Dragon/Fighting and Dragon/Ghost, but also Ghost/Normal and Ghost/Ground.

3) How do we make sure our trapping move and our trapping effect aren't just inferior options to other strategies? I say this with specific respects towards the idea of trapping something that switches in, having it be unable to switch out the next turn, and switching CAP23 out itself into something that deals with what came in (this strategy as one of the main benefits towards using trapping moves has been discussed a lot of PS). Is this entire strategy just inferior to pivot moves in the first place? After all, a pivot move used against something switching into a mon means that the pivot mon's teammate coming in won't take any damage, but in the scenario described with the trapping move there is a very high chance that CAP23's incoming teammate will take damage. Or does having the option to either switch out kind of safely OR use a hidden coverage or Z move on the target make up for this?

The example mentioned is a strategy that really requires Fairy Lock, which means encouraging the niche of Fairy Lock, a damaging Fairy move and Fairium Z, suggesting a Fairy-typing, or at least, a typing that lures in Fairy-weak mon (so, Dragons and Dark types). This encourages Dragon/Fighting, Ghost/Normal, Ghost/Ground and especially Dragon/Ghost.

That said, to prevent spamming of attacks and to encourage the trapping strategy, the easiest way is for their best STAB moves to have disadvantages that become apparent when switching. This is especially rue with STABs that some mon (and especially typings) are immune to. This particularly supports Dragon-typings, and especially Dragon/Fighting and Dragon/Ghost, but also Ghost/Normal and Ghost/Ground.

4) It is very, very hard to design a lure made for a very specific subset of Pokemon and have it actually work as a lure. For example, the Dragon/Fighting typing is meant to lure in Fairies with Anchor Shot. This approach means that CAP23 has to have enough set variation to not use Anchor Shot most of the time so that the Fairies actually have a reason to come in. How can we maintain the balance of having both a viable trapping set and other sets that singularly or collectively are more common/more viable than trapping so that the lure is actually possible? And if the trapping set is too good and the lure fails as a result, then doesn't that mean it's basically just a bunch of generically bulky mons that come in to check CAP instead of the intended Fairy types? Transitioning into question 5...

Honestly, I don't think we should in the first place. If less than 50% of the sets use a trapping move, the mon is not very well-defined as a trapping move user. And if more than 50% of the sets use a trapping move, then it' not going to work well as a lure, as the opponent will know they are probably going to take a SE hit if they switch in.

I think a better approach to this idea is if the mon that would beat the non-trapping sets are too afraid to switch in as they know that the cap usually carries Anchor Shot or Spirit Shackle which will hit them for SE damage should they try switch in. That said, a 4x weakness to these pokemon is a problem due to the likelihood of taking hits from them before we've had a chance to hit them with a trapping move. As such, while this would normally support Fighting/Dragon the 4X weakness is too much IMO. It does provide some support to Ghost-typings, due to their vulnerability to their STAB, but also Dragon-typings, other than Dragon/Steel and Dragon/Fairy.

5) How do we take advantage of a wide-ranging bulky mons and should we try to? Does attracting a wide range of bulky mons mean that CAP will struggle to deal with them all? Or does it mean that CAP will be able to selectively pick a few of them and more effectively lure them (more effectively than if we target one group and are never able to lure them since they always see it coming)? If we want to somewhat deal with a wide-variety of bulky mons coming in, what traits should CAP23 have? (Note: This does not mean we're trying to single handedly beat a large variety of bulky mons, specifically in a single set).

Basically, it means that a pretty good defensive typing is a good idea, as we have to be able to tank a wide range of attacks.

 

[rmch99]

I remember discussing at one point using the mons we trap as a setup opportunity, but I haven't seen anything else related to that, is that no longer a potential plan? Because that would more strongly suggest a defensively-focused type combination, such as Dragon/Steel - and especially a type combination immune to Toxic, looking at my earlier post.

 

[Sereg]

I remember discussing at one point using the mons we trap as a setup opportunity, but I haven't seen anything else related to that, is that no longer a potential plan? Because that would more strongly suggest a defensively-focused type combination, such as Dragon/Steel - and especially a type combination immune to Toxic, looking at my earlier post.

I support that, but I got the impression it was an unpopular idea due to the decision to go more offensive with nuke moves and the ability to rest away Toxic and the fact that it eats into our move slots.

 

[jas61292]

1) How do we encourage the use of a trapping move? As in, how can we make a trapping move attractive to be on a set?
2) How do we encourage the use of the trapping effect? As in, how can we make sure a trapping move we have benefits from the trapping effect rather than just KO things without exploration of trapping?

Answering these together because I think their answer is really one in the same. I mean, technically, you can answer the first question without answering the second simply by making the move a strong offensive move, but that only really works if you make it its best option of a given type. And it absolutely will not work if the move is bad coverage or weak, like the binding moves. Without looking at how to answer question 2, question 1 is mostly meaningless as we will have, in my opinion, failed at the concept if our Pokemon only traps because its moves happen to do so, and not because it actually does anything with it.

Quite simply, in order for us to encourage the actual use of a trapping move in a constructive way, we must make the move useful for other reasons besides its offensive capability. As someone who fully believes that binding moves are still a viable path for us to take, I really do not believe this is something that needs to be addressed fully in the typing stage. What makes trapping good is what one can do with it, and while a good typing can provide more opportunities to meaningfully trap, it can never by itself make trapping attractive, as trapping is all about what comes after, which, while affected by typing and ability, is a function more of stats and movepool than anything else.

3) How do we make sure our trapping move and our trapping effect aren't just inferior options to other strategies? I say this with specific respects towards the idea of trapping something that switches in, having it be unable to switch out the next turn, and switching CAP23 out itself into something that deals with what came in (this strategy as one of the main benefits towards using trapping moves has been discussed a lot of PS). Is this entire strategy just inferior to pivot moves in the first place? After all, a pivot move used against something switching into a mon means that the pivot mon's teammate coming in won't take any damage, but in the scenario described with the trapping move there is a very high chance that CAP23's incoming teammate will take damage. Or does having the option to either switch out kind of safely OR use a hidden coverage or Z move on the target make up for this?

First off, to address the comparison to pivoting moves, in no way is trapping in this manner inferior. Situation-ally, maybe, but not overall. In order to get the same switch advantage effects of trapping moves with U-Turn, you need to use it on the same turn that your opponents switch. If you have the advantage and should force them out, using U-Turn is great if they switch, as you get to bring in a check to whatever they switch in and grab some chip damage. However, if you predict wrong and they do not switch, you just switched out what might be your best check for something, and are forced to bring in something else, sometimes right into a powerful attack. With trapping moves on the other hand, if your opponent switches to a check, you can switch out yourself the next turn, basically with a similar effect to a fast U-Turn, as you know for certain what they will have out, and can choose what takes the hit. However, unlike U-Turn, unless they can outright KO you, them not switching is never going to be an advantage for them, because they are now locked in, allowing you to pick whatever move you want against them next turn.

In short, pivoting moves grant either a switch advantage and chip damage with no downside, or a switch disadvantage and chip damage with the major downside of giving a free turn to the opponent (note that this is assuming the pivoting move itself is not what is threatening the opponent, such as the case of a Landorus-T facing a Crucibelle. A situation such as a Scizor being in on a Malaconda is a very different story.) On the other hand, trapping moves grant either a trade of blows with you ending with the switch advantage or a trapped opponent you can likely defeat in exchange for a free turn. In essence, it is simply a case of different risks and rewards.

So, yes, having the option to either switch out safely or use hidden coverage or whatnot does absolutely make this viable, because, 1) it was already viable anyways, so long as the move itself was not a complete waste and 2) because it takes the different risk/reward situation, and adds a ton more reward (the ability to beat certain Pokemon who seem like they should force it to pivot out) without adding any risk.

4) It is very, very hard to design a lure made for a very specific subset of Pokemon and have it actually work as a lure. For example, the Dragon/Fighting typing is meant to lure in Fairies with Anchor Shot. This approach means that CAP23 has to have enough set variation to not use Anchor Shot most of the time so that the Fairies actually have a reason to come in. How can we maintain the balance of having both a viable trapping set and other sets that singularly or collectively are more common/more viable than trapping so that the lure is actually possible? And if the trapping set is too good and the lure fails as a result, then doesn't that mean it's basically just a bunch of generically bulky mons that come in to check CAP instead of the intended Fairy types?

You and I debated this a lot last night, and I knew there was a reason why your argument just seemed wrong to me, but it was probably too late at night for me to think straight enough to come up with it. But as I have thought about it throughout the day today, I realize why the argument above doesn't really work. Because, while in theory is sounds quite simple (you don't switch a Pokemon into something that could kill it), it simply runs against the reality of how competitive Pokemon has been played for the past two decades.

The idea that if a Pokemon can hit decently hard back at thing the things that threaten it, then those things won't swtich in, is not a situation that has ever manifested itself in actual competition. Perhaps the best example of this is one that goes back all the way to the beginning of the Pokemon series: Water types. Since day one, nearly every single Water type in the game has had access to Ice type moves. What's more, Ice type coverage is great for Water types as the combination of the two is only ever resisted by fellow water types (and Shedinja). If the argument presented in the question held any water, this would basically mean that Grass types would never switch in on Water types, despite the clear type advantage, because they could be hit with an Ice move. But that is simply not the case, and never has been. Rather, they do switch in because the majority of the time that you switch in, it is because the opponent's Pokemon is threatening to what you have out, and you switch in expecting them to use the move that is strong against your current Pokemon. Yes, opponents can predict. And if they do, good for them. But you simply cannot be successful playing Pokemon by assuming you will be out-predicted at every step. The player that always has their Water type use Ice Beam against Fire types because they might switch to a Grass type will not be very successful. Nor will the player who never switches out their Fire type to a Grass type because they fear the Ice Beam. Successful players will sometimes switch and sometimes stay in. They will sometimes use Ice Beam and other times use Surf. It all depends on the state of the battle and the risks they are willing to take. But, as a general case, yes, people will switch in the Grass type.

That is no different than the case with Dragon/Fighting or any other type. Yes, a Fairy that switches in could be hit by Anchor Shot (or Flash Cannon/Poison Jab, if you want to look at a real Fighting/Dragon Pokemon), but in general, they are switching in because something weak to Dragon or Fighting, or otherwise about to be KOed by those strong STABs, is switching out. And in general this means that a Dragon or Fighting move is incoming. The only real difference for us is that, if taking an Anchor Shot puts you into KO range and you are slower than your opponent, then you would have no further recourse. How good this ends up being is largely a function, not of typing, but of how much power we put behind the attacks. But suffice it to say that, unless we are faster than them all and strong enough to threaten KOs on them all easily, there will never be a case where fairies will not want to switch in, because that is how people play the game. Taking advantage of that fact is a big part of why I think types like this work so well for the concept.

5) How do we take advantage of a wide range bulky mons and should we try to? Does attracting a wide range of bulky mons mean that CAP will struggle to deal with them all? Or does it mean that CAP will be able to selectively pick a few of them and more effectively lure them (more effectively than if we target one group and are never able to lure them since they always see it coming)? If we want to somewhat deal with a wide-variety of bulky mons coming in, what traits should CAP23 have? (Note: This does not mean we're trying to single handedly beat a large variety of bulky mons, specifically in a single set).

I really do not think we can or should be trying to deal with a wide range of bulky mons. We should be looking to draw specific mons to trap and dealing with them specifically. It is one thing to draw in bulky mons, but another thing to actually be able to take advantage of it. The idea seems to be that we provide a number of good coverage options along side great neutral coverage, to let us beat some, but not all bulky Pokemon. What I fail to see is what at all this has to do with trapping. If you have great neutral stabs and good coverage options to back them up, what are you really doing as a trapper? Why aren't you just a generic offensive sweeper or something? Honestly, the whole idea of a Pokemon that can attract "a wide variety of bulky mons" but manage to be able to beat a number of them anyways just sounds to me like a pipe dream more likely to turn out as either an overpowered sweeper/tank or an underpowered jack-of-all-(offensive)-trades, master of none, depending on how we approach things in other stages. It reminds me a lot of the Aurumoth project and its "we don't want counters, just checks" philosophy, and we all know how well that worked out.