CAP 24 CAP 24 - Part 1 - Concept Assessment

[SunshineFuture]

choose one of our 2 weathers as a self sustaining one (probably hail or sun) and the other as a weather fully there to add to an existing weather (could be sun or sand but almost definitely not hail).

I’m confused by what you mean. Could you explain this?

To not make it a one-liner, I will say that I agree with Drew and Reach. Making CAP24 ONLY viable in weather is a very VERY bad idea. I think what we should aim to do is something akin to Tyranitar (doesn’t have to be a setter but you get the point). It should always be linked to a weather, but it shouldn’t be god awful without it.

 

[Drew]

I’m confused by what you mean. Could you explain this?

To not make it a one-liner, I will say that I agree with Drew and Reach. Making CAP24 ONLY viable in weather is a very VERY bad idea. I think what we should aim to do is something akin to Tyranitar (doesn’t have to be a setter but you get the point). It should always be linked to a weather, but it shouldn’t be god awful without it.

Basically the idea would be to take one weather and make CAP function indepedently with that weather like Tyranitarr or Mega Charizard Y and use the other weather to create a specialized abuser a la Kingdra or a more defensive style but you get the idea.

 

[Deck Knight]

Mod Note: A Mega CAP is outside the scope of this particular project. When we did what became Crucibelle it was understood at the outset of the project, including the leadership selection and concept stage that each discussion would be calibrated for Mega mechanics.

As we have no process-friendly way to account for a Mega evolution mid-way, it is outside the bounds of discussion.

 

[SunshineFuture]

Basically the idea would be to take one weather and make CAP function indepedently with that weather like Tyranitarr or Mega Charizard Y and use the other weather to create a specialized abuser a la Kingdra or a more defensive style but you get the idea.

But wouldn’t that mean one ability would be a summoning ability? Because if so, it’d be hard to do it without boxing us in. With Sun, we already have two Pokémon that compete viably (Malaconda and ZardY), and with Hail, all we can really do is Veil, which doesn’t really explore anything, unless we use it in a defensive way rather than an offensive one, which I don’t know if it’s possible, since even if we design it so that it uses it defensively, its teammates certainly won’t. Honestly, I would prefer going for Veil in that scenario, but I’m still not completely sold. If you would like to elaborate, go ahead. :D

 

[Drew]

But wouldn’t that mean one ability would be a summoning ability? Because if so, it’d be hard to do it without boxing us in. With Sun, we already have two Pokémon that compete viably (Malaconda and ZardY), and with Hail, all we can really do is Veil, which doesn’t really explore anything, unless we use it in a defensive way rather than an offensive one, which I don’t know if it’s possible, since even if we design it so that it uses it defensively, its teammates certainly won’t. Honestly, I would prefer going for Veil in that scenario, but I’m still not completely sold. If you would like to elaborate, go ahead. :D

Not necessarily. From how I see it making a weather abuser that can work on its own doesn't need to have a summoning ability. Just take a look at Ponyta in LC, which is able to summon sun to boost its STAB, increase recovery of Morning Sun, and eliminate the charge up turn for Solar Beam. I feel making a Pokemon like Tyranitar, Charizard-Y, or Ponyta is certainly possible and would help to secure CAP24 a niche for all (or most) metagames to come. if you have any other questions contact me on Discord because i don't want to clog up this thread.

 

[JayHeaven]

5. We should definitely not limit cap24 to only weather as it limits what could be built with it. Having a mon that only works in weather would be there can only be a certain type of archetype that fits that mon and that is not what a cap mon should be able to do.

6. I think hail is the worst for weather for this concept because it is heavily unexplored and not much has been done with hail yet. It isn’t that hail is bad, it is just that we have more knowledge of how the other weathers have functioned.

 

[snake]

5.) Do we want to limit Cap24 to weather teams or let it have a use outside of them, similar to Tyranitar/Mega Charizard Y?.
I think limiting CAP24 to just dedicated weather teams will be really awkward and hard to achieve. One single Pokemon isn't going to save Hail as an archetype. Sun and Sand might become a little better, but I think it'd be interesting if the Pokemon really shines under the weathers we make it for, but at least has a niche outside of those weathers.

6.) Excluding rain, what do you think is the worst weather to explore for this concept and why?
It honestly depends on what we really mean by "Hail teams." From what I can tell, people in this thread have been split over Hail teams being Aurora Veil teams and Hail teams with Slush Rush abusers (similar to a Rain team's composition). If we want to build around Aurora Veil, a legitimate way to "abuse" Hail, then I'd say that Hail is better than Sun. If we don't want anything to do with Aurora Veil, then Sun is by far much easy to work with.

No matter what though, I cannot see us not building around Sand. It already has two good setters (Tyranitar and Hippowdon) and one good Sand Rush abuser (Excadrill), which Sun and Hail cannot boast. Sand can in a sense "pick up the slack," because we'll have to addressing more problems with Sun and (non-Aurora Veil) Hail teams. Right now, I'm not so sure if Sun + Hail is much of an option.

 

[Escavalier Royale]

I've seen some people say (like Deck Knight) we should try to make CAP24 fit in a core with one of the weather setters. Just bringing to your attention that we have proven to be terrible at building cores. (Voodoom turned out to have better synergy with another mon, Volkraken didn't really care about whether it was in the core or not, and Plasmanta was like a combination of the two) So maybe we should try to look more at CAP24's role on weather teams ratter than its role in the core of it and a weather setter.

Also, weather mons are not entirely limited to fullweather teams; they just shine even more there. Kingdra can be used on your HO team when it sets its own Rain Dance; however, it usually can't afford a turn to set up (and the power drop from not using a Choice Specs is also quite notable). Even more reason to make it a bulky mon.

Edit: fixed some typos, why is my phone's keyboard so hard to work with ;-;

 

[Project_Mars]

I've seen some people say (like Deck Knight) we should try to make CAP24 fit in a core with one of the weather setters. Just bringing to your attention that we have proven to be terrible at building cores. (Voodoom turned out to have better synergy with another mon, Volkraken didn't really care about whether it was in the core or not, and Plasmanta was like a combination of the two) So maybe we should try to look more at CAP24's role on weather teams ratter than its role in the core of it and a weather setter.

Also, weather mons are not entirely limited to fullweather teams; they just shine even more there. Kingdra can be used on your HO team when it sets its own Rain Dance; however, it usually can't afford a turn to set up (and the power drop from not using a Choice Specs is also quite notable). Even more reason to make it a bulky mon.

Edit: fixed some typos, why is my phone's keyboard so hard to work with ;-;

I think the main difference is that the previous CAPs were made to work with a specific Pokémon while these would more likely care more about a specific ability (i.e. Drought in general vs just MegaZardY or just Malaconda)

 

[Magic Mayhem Maiden]

5.) Do we want to limit CAP24 to weather teams or let it have a use outside of them, similar to Tyranitar/Mega Charizard Y?
i would want it to be usable outside of the weather so we can have a Pokemon that is viable and can be more used instead of just being a weather pokemon. The only reason why the rain abusers are good, even if they are bad outside, are that rain is just much that good.
6.) Excluding rain, what do you think is the worst weather to explore for this concept and why?
Here are some possible things the CAP could do:
Sun: Fire Type Chlorophyll, A Better Sun Setter, Growth User, Bulky Harvest Mon
Sand: Sand Setter, A Sand Force Wallbreaker, Sand Rusher?
Hail: Non-Ice Type Hail Setter w/ Aurora Veil, Slush Rush User
Countering Rain (I Guess): Bulky Mon with Freeze Dry, Bulky

I think sand is the worst because they already have good pokemons in the sand. You could make sand more viable with more pokemons, however.

 

[Collin Whittaker]

Forgive me for returning to an earlier question, but this is my first foray into the CAP process and I wanted to sample other responses before.

4.)
I think the ability Forecast (especially when coupled with access to Weather Ball) has strong, underutilized abuse potential. Form change to match weather (supposing strictly a type change) could allow an appropriately-equipped pokemon to act both reactively and proactively.

Reactively, for Rain, Sun, and Hail, the corresponding type gained by Forecast is resistant to itself (i.e. Water type resists Water attacks, etc.). This means that a pokemon with Forecast (supposing it doesn't sport abysmal stats a la Castform), can be used defensively in response to a weather-based sweeper, and can do so reliably for multiple weather types. This ability to respond to sweepers can be honed if a pokemon had a secondary typing in addition to its Forecast typing (for example, a Grass-[Forecast Type] pokemon would resist water attacks in Rain even more strongly, while only neutrally resisting fire-, rock-, and ice-type attacks in their corresponding weather). The ability Could 9 here would act similarly if given a typing biased against a certain form of weather.

Proactively, a pokemon with Forecast could, especially with access to Weather Ball, become a versatile and powerful attacker, able to fit on various weather teams, as it could reliably gain STAB on four different attacking types. With Weather Ball, there is even a sort of click-and-forget sort of thing that could be seen, as even supposing a pokemon switched in to change the weather you were trying to abuse, you would still get off a STAB, potentially boosted attack in the new weather to punish them for it. The great disadvantage to abusing Forecast this way, of course, is that you either: have to have another pokemon set your weather for you (acceptable), operate strictly reactively (pretty high variance), or waste momentum and a moveslot setting your own weather (terrible).

5.)
I think the CAP should be able to operate on non-weather teams, even if its only extension beyond doing so is as an answer to weather teams.

6.)
Hail is probably the worst to explore as it has what seems to have the worst support (setters, etc.), and we therefore stand to fail to achieve a pokemon that can utilize two weathers effectively if the CAP doesn't carry hail hard enough by itself.

 

[Quanyails]

6.) Excluding rain, what do you think is the worst weather to explore for this concept and why?

The question is not asking "Which weathers should we make better?" but rather how much we see their users take advantage of the weather's benefits. Hence, Drew's and boxofkangaroo's posts are excellent as references for this question.

I don't think any of the three remaining weathers are a bad choice for this concept, but we'd have a better shot at making a 'mon for Sand and Sun than Hail. Hail comes across as being limited in what we can do to fully explore rather than improve. We've already seen users of Aurora Veil and 100%-accuracy Blizzard, but I'm curious about how else we could explore those benefits more besides "making better users". Additionally, the other benefits rely on an external source of Hail to be effective. If we partner CAP 24 with a setter, we're doing something similar with Volkraken's concept (making an lesser-used 'mon more effective in OU), and partner concepts haven't had a history of success in CAP. Otherwise, we could... manually set Hail? Honestly, that sounds like a fun way to set up, but we could do that with other weathers, too, with the same benefits as well as any other weather-exclusive benefits.

 

[S. Court]

5.) Do we want to limit CAP24 to weather teams or let it have a use outside of them, similar to Tyranitar/Mega Charizard Y?

At least in my opinion, I think the whole idea of a weather abuser is flawed from the starting point because the lack of weather abusers is not the main trouble. The main trouble is the lack of weather setters don't drain momentum (and by extension, turns) to keep the pressure weather abuse needs. With this in mind, I think CAP24 should work outside of weathers as well because the concept itself could tend to not work properly.

6.) Excluding rain, what do you think is the worst weather to explore for this concept and why?

Hail would be the worst choice: Really limited abilities choice, we'd need to choose a type is doomed from starting point (Ice) and people will sure prefer to use a Hail setter as an Aurora Veil user rather than abuse Hail itself.

 

[Professor Mesquite]

5.) Do we want to limit Cap24 to weather teams or let it have a use outside of them, similar to Tyranitar/Mega Charizard Y?.

I think we should try to have CAP24 have a use outside of them, but see its full usage in weather teams. Most weather team counterplays currently either abuse the opponent's weather or replace it. With CAP24's ability to abuse multiple kinds of weather, it would fill the niche of combatting multiple kinds of weather nicely and would encourage its usage for countering weather teams. However, this would make CAP24 too specific if it only functioned on anti-weather teams, and should, therefore, be able to perform without weather as well.

6.) Excluding rain, what do you think is the worst weather to explore for this concept and why?

I think the worst weather to explore for this concept would, to my disappointment, be Hail. Being able to run under Sun and Sand would be best for exploring the many properties of those weathers, and perhaps, make Hail viable as a counter to CAP24. Sun and Sand are typically more powerful and require greater counterplay in the meta, as well as providing more openness in the creation process.

 

[Mova]

6.) Excluding rain, what do you think is the worst weather to explore for this concept and why?

If we're looking at what to explore, rather than improve, I would have to say that hail is our worst option to explore. It has the worst setters and few abusers to work with. As stated before, sun and sand are much more powerful and have more options to utilize, even if we focus more on a Pokémon's offensive capabilities in these two weathers.

 

[Project_Mars]

Forgive me for returning to an earlier question, but this is my first foray into the CAP process and I wanted to sample other responses before.

4.)
I think the ability Forecast (especially when coupled with access to Weather Ball) has strong, underutilized abuse potential. Form change to match weather (supposing strictly a type change) could allow an appropriately-equipped pokemon to act both reactively and proactively.

Reactively, for Rain, Sun, and Hail, the corresponding type gained by Forecast is resistant to itself (i.e. Water type resists Water attacks, etc.). This means that a pokemon with Forecast (supposing it doesn't sport abysmal stats a la Castform), can be used defensively in response to a weather-based sweeper, and can do so reliably for multiple weather types. This ability to respond to sweepers can be honed if a pokemon had a secondary typing in addition to its Forecast typing (for example, a Grass-[Forecast Type] pokemon would resist water attacks in Rain even more strongly, while only neutrally resisting fire-, rock-, and ice-type attacks in their corresponding weather). The ability Could 9 here would act similarly if given a typing biased against a certain form of weather.

Proactively, a pokemon with Forecast could, especially with access to Weather Ball, become a versatile and powerful attacker, able to fit on various weather teams, as it could reliably gain STAB on four different attacking types. With Weather Ball, there is even a sort of click-and-forget sort of thing that could be seen, as even supposing a pokemon switched in to change the weather you were trying to abuse, you would still get off a STAB, potentially boosted attack in the new weather to punish them for it. The great disadvantage to abusing Forecast this way, of course, is that you either: have to have another pokemon set your weather for you (acceptable), operate strictly reactively (pretty high variance), or waste momentum and a moveslot setting your own weather (terrible).

Forecast is banned from all stages of Ability discussion, though, due to it trivializing the typing stage of the Process.

 

[jas61292]

Personally, I think hail is a great weather to explore for this concept. While in the abstract, it might have the least to work with, it also is by far the least explored, which to me is a far more important aspect. It makes very little sense to do something that we know will work better, only to have us just make something we already have seen before.

And it is for that reasons that I actually think Sun is probably the worst choice here. Sun has numerous mechanics to work with; perhaps more than any whether between the large number of abilities and things the benefit both Fire and Grass types. However, Pokemon that utilize sun are also perhaps the most common. We have seen sun be very successful as an archetype in the past, and we know exactly how it can function. Furthermore we have actually done a project to make a Sun mon in the past. While the concept might not have directly focused on it, the entire project of Malaconda was about creating a Pokemon to help sun. Sure, that was a long time ago now, but to me personally, project wise, Sun has the least to offer us.

 

[Professor Mesquite]

Personally, I think hail is a great weather to explore for this concept.

I agree, but there are so few existing mechanical uses of Hail outside of its best two users, Ninetales-Alola, Vanilluxe, and Beartic. While I'd like to see Hail VERY much, I'm not sure what we could do more than a non-PU version of Vanilluxe or a better Beartic. I don't know what kind of room for expansion Ninetales-Alola, outside of a Pelipper-esque Hail Setter with U-Turn, which I wouldn't be against (but this doesn't fit Drew's concept)

The way I could see Hail being used is, not to skip ahead, one or more of these concepts:
-Hail Stall (Perhaps with Ice Body)
-Blizzard Spam
-Slush Rush Speed Sweeping
-Aurora Veil Screen Setter
-Weather Ball User (???)
-Snow Veil Evader (Pretty much banned)

What we could do is combine multiple of these if we want a successful Hail user. I'd be interested in seeing what other niches could be filled by Hail.

 

[DetroitLolcat]

I like the idea of using Hail, but we have to make sure not to get too cute with this. Hail has been an extremely unviable playstyle for four consecutive generations until Aurora Veil was introduced. Aurora Veil was placed on a Pokemon with Snow Warning and it's still only on the fringes of viability.

Hail is not going to work unless this Pokemon can abuse Aurora Veil greatly. Hail Stall is not viable. Snow Cloak is not viable. Blizzard spam is not remotely worth it. To put how bad Blizzard spam is in perspective, there was a metagame - Gen 5 UU - where Abomasnow was the only weather setter in the tier. Snow Warning lasted infinite turns in Gen 5. Blizzard spam and Hail offense was still a bad strategy. It didn't work when it was the only weather in the metagame, and it's not going to work now. It's likely this Pokemon will need access to Aurora Veil to successfully abuse Hail, or at the very least be an extremely powerful Slush Rusher. But Hail's problem isn't that Aurora Veil isn't good enough or that there aren't enough Pokemon to take advantage of it, it's that Alolan Ninetales is an exceedingly shitty weather setter. It's faster than every other weather setter (thus automatically losing the weather war turn 1), it doesn't beat many other weather Pokemon (really only Pelipper, who would just switch out anyway), and has to rely on manually setting up Hail to get Aurora Veil up if the other team has weather. Ninetales' complete lack of bulk and recovery (including Leftovers recovery) makes it difficult to set up Hail multiple times in the same match. Pelipper has reliable recovery. Tyranitar is extremely bulky. Malaconda is extremely bulky and can restore HP. Charizard Y is deceptively bulky and has reliable recovery. Ninetales is weak to Stealth Rock and gets obliterated by priority moves.

If we want to go the Hail route, which is not a bad decision by any means, we need a true Hail abuser (read: Slush Rush with crazy good offensive stats) or a better Aurora Veil setter. And I'm largely in favor of the latter.

 

[Airwind]

5.) Do we want to limit Cap24 to weather teams or let it have a use outside of them, similar to Tyranitar/Mega Charizard Y?.
Of course, we should focus in what CAP 24 can do outside of weather because what if x pokemon decide to set the weather and we lost the momentum and having only one set in a pokemon is really bad.

6.) Excluding rain, what do you think is the worst weather to explore for this concept and why?
I think the worst weather we should explore is sun due it has a ton of abilitty to abuse just imagine a fire pokemon with chlorophyll and with growth it would be to OP because fire is a better type if we see how many walls are weak to fire.

Sand idk about this one I will not like to see it because I'm a little scared how will increase tha usage of landorus, celesteela, ferrothorn, tomhawk, excadrill and diancie mega. Which are already top tier and that will make the metagame minus healthy and you must have a counter to sandstorm for them and having a weather to take care in the building is bad leaving the creativity of building more little and for last it would make us a centralized metagame which is bad.

For my hail is the best weather to explore thanks the posibillity and the ez to counter it and ice pokemon are weak to hazzards we all know that aurora veil is good but is not that OP that people think of is just 5 turns of protec which is not that great and we have strong fire wallbreakers. And it also will help to balance the metagame because we have a ton of flying pokemon that are top tier.

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

If the goal for hail is to abuse blizzard on a setter it's hard to ask why not make it have no guard to patch up more than one move or to have refrigerator hyper voice that has near the same power without worry of teambuilder issues.

I really think having a ultity setter designed to chip something to death maybe spreading burns/hazard control to scare steels that ice spam struggles vs

 

[Drew]

I like the idea of using Hail, but we have to make sure not to get too cute with this. Hail has been an extremely unviable playstyle for four consecutive generations until Aurora Veil was introduced. Aurora Veil was placed on a Pokemon with Snow Warning and it's still only on the fringes of viability.

Hail is not going to work unless this Pokemon can abuse Aurora Veil greatly. Hail Stall is not viable. Snow Cloak is not viable. Blizzard spam is not remotely worth it. To put how bad Blizzard spam is in perspective, there was a metagame - Gen 5 UU - where Abomasnow was the only weather setter in the tier. Snow Warning lasted infinite turns in Gen 5. Blizzard spam and Hail offense was still a bad strategy. It didn't work when it was the only weather in the metagame, and it's not going to work now. It's likely this Pokemon will need access to Aurora Veil to successfully abuse Hail, or at the very least be an extremely powerful Slush Rusher. But Hail's problem isn't that Aurora Veil isn't good enough or that there aren't enough Pokemon to take advantage of it, it's that Alolan Ninetales is an exceedingly shitty weather setter. It's faster than every other weather setter (thus automatically losing the weather war turn 1), it doesn't beat many other weather Pokemon (really only Pelipper, who would just switch out anyway), and has to rely on manually setting up Hail to get Aurora Veil up if the other team has weather. Ninetales' complete lack of bulk and recovery (including Leftovers recovery) makes it difficult to set up Hail multiple times in the same match. Pelipper has reliable recovery. Tyranitar is extremely bulky. Malaconda is extremely bulky and can restore HP. Charizard Y is deceptively bulky and has reliable recovery. Ninetales is weak to Stealth Rock and gets obliterated by priority moves.

If we want to go the Hail route, which is not a bad decision by any means, we need a true Hail abuser (read: Slush Rush with crazy good offensive stats) or a better Aurora Veil setter. And I'm largely in favor of the latter.

As a note Snover was a great Pokemon in Little Cup through Gen 4 and 5, and remains decent (defined as better than Malaconda is in CAP) through Gen 5 and 7. Additionally, Alolan Vulpix is a great Aurora Veil setter in LC and is a better example of a successful Veil setter than ATales in my opinion. just posting this to say that these 2 Pokemon prove that Blizzard spam can be successful if given the right opportunities. Only saying this to show a good hail abuser is possible without making just the perfect Veil setter or Slush Rush abuser, but I agree with the rest of this post

 

[Dogfish44]

Q5 has been answered by a lot of people - I agree with the consensus of "We shouldn't actively limit ourselves in the name of being weather only".

Q6 is the important one. If we're talking about the worst weather of the triad to support (excluding Rain, since we appear to be doing that as is), then we're effectively asking which two weathers we want to support. So, I want to posit the following question, which I tossed up on #cap but would get more people's attention in 'ere I reckon:

Which two weathers have the strongest overlap in terms of what they need?

It feels like some people are talking about CAP24 as being practically two mons split down the middle but we're going to be limited to one body, which is one shared typing and one shared statline.

Each decision we make for one weather limits our options for the other weather. If we want to make a Slush Rush abuser, then our Sand/Sun aspect is probably going to have to contend with a speed stat which will be middling at best. If we make a Fire Type with Chlorophyll, then we have to be happy that one of Hail/Sand can pick up on other aspects of the CAP. There's no point in trying to make a Defensive Shore Up user, if we also want a mon that abuses Aurora Veil for Hyper Offensive gameplay.

I'm not entirely sure which two weathers have the best synergy (my gut says that Sun and Sand are the most natural bedfellows, especially when we're considering shared weaknesses to Ground/Water), but I think we need to make sure that we're not going to try to create a mon which is impossible.

 

[david0895]

Which two weathers have the strongest overlap in terms of what they need?

I don't know if there are two weathers that stay together better than the others because all the combinations provide some utilities.
Btw, I agree that we have to clarify if CAP24 will be offensive or defensive

 

[Drapionswing]

And with that we've chosen our weathers!

With strong arguments supporting Hail, it was still thought of as the worst weather for us to explore during this process. People felt there wasn't enough to explore, and the synergy this Pokemon will have with both hail and other weather wasn't very strong. Therefore the weather we shall be exploring will be Sun and Sand. As well as this we've also decided that limiting CAP24 to whether specific teams is not ideal, as it could lead to consequences in the future and in the process. This is summed up very well by reachzero's post.

Before we continue on to the next point I want to stress that I want to avoid exploring Rain during this process as much as possible, this is due to both the nature of the concept and metagame as I feel we will not only have little to learn but will be wasting very strong potential with this concept.

Now onto the next and last question:

8.) Do you think stall tactics are something we want to explore during this process?