CAP 24 CAP 24 - Part 1 - Concept Assessment

[Sereg]

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

The fact that weather turns run out makes me think that it makes more sense to go mostly offensive.

EDIT:

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

Despite what I've just said, as we discussed earlier, having the mon perform different roles on different weathers is a good thing. In addition, trying to explore multiple aspects of weather is a good thing. Sand's buff to Special Defense for rocks, buff to Shore Up and chip damage give us things to work with fr stalling tactics that should at least be explored. Even if we don't make a stallmon (I do think a stallmon will be difficult), making a mon that becomes bulky and takes advantage of that in one of the weathers would be a good thing to explore IMO.

 

[S. Court]

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

Absolutely no. The main weather setters we have right now are a bit of a momentum sap for all weather teams need (Malaconda has U-turn, so that COULD help a bit with this problem) so that means you'll waste a turn of two to bring CAP24 to the field. That'd leave us with... 5-6 turns of weather? It's not exactly easy to try weather defensive approaches when you only have some few turns to exploit it. Besides, if stall/defensive approaches would work right now with the weather abilities nerf, we'd see Pokemon like Rain Dish Tentacruel working in this metagame, but it's not the case.

With that in mind I think the best way to take advantage of that is sticking to a more offensive approach (Let's just look of how well works rain right now)

 

[Drapionswing]

Just dropping a 24 Hour Warning.

 

[Escavalier Royale]

8)
This would be an interesting way to use weather--but then again, honestly, does any non-Stall player want Stall to become more relevant? Everyone outside of the user hates that playstyle (except Hoopa-U users who use it as free rating).

Also, it will probably be counterproductive. Stall's main purpose is to stay alive for as many turns as possible while the opponent slowly dies, but as weather has limited turns, this becomes near impossible unless the mon dedicates a moveslot to setting up its weather and Stall is surprisingly strapped on moveslots (like Toxapex who wants to run Toxic, Toxic Spikes, Scald, Haze, Recover, Knock Off and Baneful Bunker all at the same time but has to choose between 4.)

There's a difference between a weather-abusing wall like Lileep and a weather-abusing stallmon, with the latter concept dying because of the end of permaweather. It'd be nice if we could actually make it work, but I'd say to give no priority to it. If we are done with the other uses and we can easily make it stall too then I wouldn't prevent it, but I won't make decisions during the process we wouldn't make if we didn't want a mon that could stall.

 

[CharSiuEmboar]

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

Absolutely not. Regardless of how competitive it may well be, the issue I have with Stall is that it's just so unfun to play against, and something that I sincerely hope the design ethos of Pokemon in general begins to stray away from. I don't mind a bulkier team, but I can't ever find myself agreeing with a stalling playstyle; stalling is very rarely good in real life, I'm not entirely sure why it should be celebrated or encouraged in a game we play for fun.

I don't have a problem with encouraging bulkiness; in Sun, Pyroak, Malaconda and even Revenankh can do well (Rev gets Triage Moonlight, in such a team), and Sand gives bulk to Shore Up, and Rock-types like Crucibelle and it's Mega, but I really, really don't want to play against something that's going to further encourage stall. This isn't a dig at Stall players, I understand its difficulties, and the skill required to play it off, but I really find it un-fun to play against, and don't want to waste my time playing against it.

The only way I could conceivably "explore" stall tactics would be to learn about stall in order to dismantle Stall Cores by using the power of Sun or Sand boosted Wall Breakers like Char-Y, or Mega-Garchomp.

Edit; Escavalier Royale; could you expand on the lack of priority? For example, a Sun Team could well benefit from having a Revenakh work alongside with it's Triage Moonlight rather than a Triage Drain Punch.

 

[Professor Mesquite]

8.) Do you think stall tactics are something we want to explore during this process?
I don't believe we should be looking to Stall tactics for two primary reasons: temporary Weather and minimal gain. The only weather based Stall benefits are SpDef boost to Rock types in Sand and type weakening in Sun and Rain. This does not mean bulkiness should not be explored. Setup during one weather type and sweeping in the other would be brilliant to explore.

Ultimately, the main categories of function are: Slow Sweeper, Fast Sweeper, Setup Slow Sweeper, Setup Fast Sweeper, Hazard Setter, Stall, Wall/Counter, Phazer

I can't see Hazard Setter or Phazer being specific or benefited by weather, so we got the 4 sweepers, stall, and wall to fit onto our two weathers, and I think stall is simply not as conducive to being paired with a sweeper, so were we to choose a stallmon, it would simply be yet another bulky staller in the weather. Other posts better explain than I how bad that is.

 

[Escavalier Royale]

Edit; Escavalier Royale; could you expand on the lack of priority? For example, a Sun Team could well benefit from having a Revenakh work alongside with it's Triage Moonlight rather than a Triage Drain Punch.

Oh, I didn't mean priority moves--I meant giving priority to adding Stall factors to the Pokémon. In other words, if we are going to add stall factors at all, add them when everything else of the mon is already finished and we have the opportunity to do it without messing it up. Sorry for the confusing.

 

[Quanyails]

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

I agree with Escavalier Royale in that we should leave the idea open. If it happens that we give CAP 24 the tools to become successful on a weather stall team, cool! We shouldn't make it our target, though. I'm more interested in using the defensive benefits of weather for other purposes. '3'

 

[Mova]

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

Absolutely not. Automatic weather only lasts up to 8 turns, and there is little to no way that a Pokémon, as bulky as it can be. We should try to focus more on the versatile offensive capabilities that Sun and Sand can utilize, such as speed- or power-boosting abilities. Also, stall is not a fun style to play against.

 

[Deck Knight]

As far as "stall tactics", the issue is that weather is of limited duration and, somewhat ironically, Hail would have been the best weather for it but only with Ice Body, which is fairly limiting.

This is a separate question from whether CAP should have recovery. There are a slew of Pokemon that employ a Recovery + 3 Attacks set and many of them are dangerous offensive Pokemon like ZardY and Kyurem-B.

Weather, especially Sun and Sand lend themselves to more offensive play. In Gen 4 and 5 TSS (ToxicSpikesStorm) was one of my favorite archetypes. Unfortunately it relied a great deal on permanent sand and winning the late-game weather war, and as if OU had not shifted enough to harm the strategy, Colossoil and Fidgit undermine it so thoroughly that using precious turns to stack hazards or phaze seems counterproductive.
While I think the merits of each support is a good discussion to have later, the only "stall tactic" weather lends itself to is Pokemon that utilize weather-associated healing to extend longevity and give them a chance to extend or safeguard a sweep.

"Using Screens defensively" has also been brought up in Discord, and the strange irony of moves that effectively double a defense is they tended to be used with Hyper Offense more than Stall. This again seems to stem from the limited duration of these effects and perhaps that stall is already so passive that more defense is not a high priority. Even with a focus on Sun and Sand, there's nothing precluding us from considering a support that operates best in the last remaining non-Rain weather.

In summary, to the extent possible I would like CAP24 to avoid more stall-oriented support capabilities, but have no issue with much more offensive varieties of support. A Pokemon that can effectively utilize Z-weather's speed boost is something interesting to explore, very few Pokemon outside Manaphy currently do it.

 

[Sereg]

With Deck Knight's response in particular, and some others as well, I can clarify that I don't think a fully stall mon is the way to go. It is very hard to pull off with weather, especially with the limited turns you have it up. (I mean, if we somehow find a way to manage it, it would be cool, but let's not make this more difficult than we have to).

That said, I think having bulk and recovery is a good thing as it lets us explore the weather more fully and do different things with each weather. Sand's special defense boost for rocks and powering up of Shore Up are great things to make use of, for example.

 

[DetroitLolcat]

I would stay far, far away from stall tactics. At the very least, we should make this Pokemon fundamentally offensive in nature. This isn't Gen 5 where Rain Stall and Sand Stall were formidable playstyles; weather now has a short number of turns to work with. A playstyle based on lengthening the game is incompatible with short-term, time-restricted tactics. Let's compare the offensive and defensive benefits of the two weathers with which we're playing:

As you can see, both weathers have significantly better offensive effects than defensive ones. Yes, it's possible to make a stall Pokemon that can perform well in different weathers. It is not possible, however, to make a Pokemon that becomes significantly at better at stalling because of the weather. A 50% Special Defense boost in the Sand for 5-8 turns is nice, but it already restricts us to a pretty mediocre defensive typing and isn't going to make the Pokemon that much better at stalling. An extra Water resistance is nice, but it's not enough to make a Pokemon that much more viable on a stall team. The purpose of this concept is to abuse weather conditions; that cannot be done on a stall Pokemon.

Now, there is a difference between "Stall tactics" and "Defensive tactics". Stall tactics are meant to wear the opponent down with passive damage. Defensive tactics are meant to mitigate the amount of damage a Pokemon takes so it can perform its role on a team for a longer amount of time. Plenty of offensive Pokemon use some defensive tactics; as Deck Knight said, there are offensive 3 Attacks + Recovery sets. Charizard Y appreciates the Water neutrality to help it switch into Bulky Waters and smack them with Solarbeams. But these are not stall tactics, and these are not stall Pokemon.

CAP24 should abuse defensive benefits from the weather. Maybe that's in the form of extra healing from Moonlight or Shore Up. Maybe that's in the form of good enough defensive stats so the Water resistance and Special Defense boost make a difference. But this Pokemon should not be built with stall teams in mind.

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

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

Maybe leaning closer to stall breaker than pure stall, but seeing You have only have one/two more turns of weather and can't get a clean kill on their switch in is kind of nice for a bulky pivot to go back into a weather setter.

Having shore up+ moonlight definitely encourages weather without relying on it to heavy and at the same time it could have the rock typing and flower gift to really make the most of the weather as a whole

But it would have to be something that can generate turns or helps provide ways to help safely reset if not itself(recovery, weather, plus crippling move toxic/t-wave taunt, then a stab) and a moveset like that could be really limiting at the same time if not given something insane like parting shot

 

[K. Roolest Shark]

8.) Do you think stall tactics are something we want to explore during this process?
No, Chansey does the stall tactic better imo. Even then it would have to heavily rely on the stalling in Hail.

 

[reachzero]

In the interest of discussing the needs of each Weather type before Concept Assessment runs out and because the stalling tactics question has already been sufficiently addressed by others, I thought I would bring up role structure and composition of typical Weather teams.

A typical strong Weather team looks something like this:


Primary Weather Setter + Secondary Weather Setter/Utility + Utility and Specific Threat Counter + Breaker + Speed Control + (Breaker or Speed Control)

Note particularly that the “utility” slots should almost always be off-type for the Weather, to avoid becoming indefensibly weak to attacks that are supereffective against the Weather type.

For example, a typical Rain team might look like:

Pelipper (primary Weather setter) / Tomohawk (secondary setter/utility) / Ferrothorn (utility and Greninja/Koko/Crucibelle counter) / Volkraken (breaker) / Mega Swampert (speed control) / LO Protean Greninja (breaker)

Rain is strong because it has good to excellent Pokemon in every one of those roles. By contrast, a Sun team might look like:

Malaconda (primary Weather setter) / Tomohawk (secondary setter) / Landorus-T (utility and Zygarde/Crucibelle/Medicham check) / Volkraken (breaker) / Venusaur (speed control) / Heatran (breaker and Fire immunity)

Note that Sun can hang pretty well with Rain in terms of setters and breakers, but struggles to maintain pressure because its defensive synergy is lacking and especially because Venusaur (by far the best Chlorophyll Pokemon) is a vastly inferior offensive force to Mega Swampert, with base 100 SpA compared to base 150 Attack and much worse type coverage. In addition, Venusaur’s modest 80/83/100 defenses pale in comparison to Mega Swampert’s robust 100/110/110. Sun could use an off-type utility Pokemon to some extent, but the huge deficiency when compared to Rain and Sand is absolutely in speed control, which is why I feel that building a speed control Pokemon would be a priority for Sun.

A Sand team might look like:

Tyranitar (primary Weather setter) / Excadrill (speed control) / Assault Vest Tangrowth (Greninja/Zygarde/Keldeo check, etc.) / Celesteela (Landorus-T/ Tapu Bulu/Tomohawk/Mega Pinsir/Syclant counter) / Tapu Koko (to pressure Tomohawk and set up Hawlucha) / Hawlucha (speed control, breaker)

Note the surprising lack of breakers, and the likelihood of being walled by full stall in particular, and Tomohawk commonly. Sand honestly plays more semi-Sand with Excadrill than like a full Sand team due to the lack of Sand-based breakers (since Landorus-I is banned). As a result, I feel that building a breaker would be a priority for Sand.

 

[david0895]

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

No. Since weather needs to be resetted, the switches will be forced, making them predictable

 

[TKGriffiths]

Stall as an archetype, no. Weather stall hasn't been a thing by definition since weather became temporary.

I think getting temporary bulk in the form of being a rock type in sand, and 2/3 recovery in shore up is a good concept to explore though, not even necessarily on a purely defensive pokemon.

 

[Reviloja753]

I think that we should walk a rather fine line with stall. On the one hand, I personally want to explore Sand’s SpDef boost. It lets us make a bulky Pokémon when the stats aren’t amazing. However, I do not think we should try to make a complete stall Pokémon. Without permanent weather, it basically is impossible. In terms of bulk and Sand, a fast Pokémon with good defense and okay special defense that is amazing in Sand, for example, is a fun way to use Sand’s bulk boost without full on stall. Likewise, I think Shore Up is something to explore as well. Basically, no to stall, but I think we shouldn’t neglect the bulk boosting aspects of Sand.

 

[snake]

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

As many people have said, no, this isn't what sun and sand need. Sun really would enjoy better speed control, and Sand would enjoy much better breaking potential. Stall tactics don't really have a place with that.

However, again as many people have pointed out, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't discount defensive potential with common sand and sun cores. For example, offensively checking common threats to sun + sand teams would be "defensive potential" that we really should be thinking about for this project. Recovery through weather-based moves sounds interesting as well. I'm not so sure about Rock's Special Defense boost, given that Pokemon on sandstorm teams would appreciate a non-Rock-type, but it's an option. Anyways, on this offensive Pokemon, defensive potential will be important.

 

[reachzero]

Let me clarify what I mean when I write "speed control" as a need for Sun. Speed control is the method a team uses to avoid being overwhelmed by very fast Pokemon like +1 Aurumoth or Volcarona. There are several different forms this can take, so I'd like to avoid the potential miscommunication that "speed control" by necessity means "Chlorophyll user".

Let's look, then, at some existing methods of speed control.

One is, obviously, Chlorophyll, but this is already well-known and needs little explanation.

Choice Scarf users are a very typical form of speed control, and Heatran and Victini provide a nice pattern for what a good one might look like for Sun teams.

Priority attackers provide excellent speed control because they don't get into the kind of speed wars that complicate many other methods.

Prankster users like Whimsicott, Thundurus and Klefki provide unusually strong (and annoying) speed control.

Sticky Webs is one of very strongest and most defining forms of speed control.

Bulky Pokemon with Thunder Wave (P2, Chansey, Jirachi) can be strong speed control Pokemon.

Don't equate speed control with Chlorophyll just yet!

 

[Professor Mesquite]

I’m going to kindly disagree with the premise of fast Sun, damaging Sand. A dangerous Sand team only benefits from Sand Force, and is weakened by Rock SpDef buffs.

Both weathers are good for either bulky setup or sweeping- things like growth and SpDef make both weathers good for boosting, and the many damage boosts for sun and sand force in sand.

I don’t suppose either is particularly good for targeting stall due to the weather itself, rather than being an aspect of stats and movepool

 

[Drapionswing]

It's time to conclude the Concept Assessment! With all the questions generating great discussion it's time to move forward!

So what we should be expecting and focusing on with CAP 24:

• We will be focusing on Sun and Sand.
• Focus on filling in missing pieces to both weathers.
• We shall be avoiding stall tactics in weather.
• CAP24 should have a niche outside of weather teams.

We also learned some very important pieces of information, such as the traits that make Rain incredibly strong(A Big variety of abusers, and setters). As well as what is missing from our weaker weathers.

And with that we will be moving onto the Typing Discussion! The discussion in this thread has been really great and I can't wait to read more in the later stages!