CAP 24 CAP 24 - Part 2 - Typing Discussion

[Deck Knight]

Welcome to CAP 24's Typing thread! Our typing leader is none other than SHSP. Please follow his posts closely. Do not immediately jump into proposing typings.

Our concept is listed in the CAP24 summary. Here is Drapionswing 's, Topic Leader for CAP24's concluding post from Concept AssessmentL

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!

- - - - -

CAP 24 So far:

Concept:

• Name - Snow or Shine (or Sand)
• Description - A Pokemon that abuses 2 weather conditions for different effects
• Justification - Currently in CAP, there is only one form of weather that is really worth using: rain, and only one really type of weather abuser: offensive sweeper. This concept means to address both of these issues by creating a new niche for two weather conditions. This concept would fill the archetype of a weather abuser, but I feel it also fits into the Actualization category as it would also aim to create a new role for a weather abuser for 1 or more different weather conditions.
• Questions To Be Answered
  • Why are hail, sun, and sand underrepresented in the current metagame?
  • What makes rain the best weather condition currently?
  • How can this CAP encourage the use of other weather conditions? What do hail, sun, and/or sand need? Sweepers? Setters? Walls?
  • What weather effects are underutilized? How can we successfully use these effects?
  • How can one Pokemon utilize different weather conditions for different effects and sets?
  • Should this Pokemon be able to function outside of weather-based teams? If so, what niche would it need to fulfill? If it sets it's own weather, is it enough to abuse the weather condition on its own?
• Explanation - For those who don't fully see how a not-sweeper weather abuser could work, take Lileep in LC for example. Lileep, mainly back in BW and XY as sand is quite uncommon in SM, is on most sand teams, as it can abuse its Rock-typing to boost Special Defense, the passive damage from sand, and its access to Recover and Toxic to become a weather abusing wall. Another possible interaction would be running Ferrothorn on rain teams to semi-nullify its Fire weakness. Not only typings are underexplored though! There are many moves, items, and of course abilities that can be used to abuse different weather conditions in a way that no Pokemon really does currently.

Topic Leader: Drapionswing

Topic Leadership Team:
SHSP: Typing Leader
Drew: Ability Leader
reachzero: Stats Leader
mxmts: Movepool Leader

 

[SHSP]

Heyo everyone, SHSP here ready to get typing started for this project. Typing can be a tricky stage, as there's a lot going on with a concept in its early stage, as well as typing being the foundation of the CAP itself.

For this concept specifically, typing is going to be the first stage where we have to find balance between Sun and Sand. The "missing pieces" both weathers need have to work together in order for CAP 24 to succeed, and that stems from typing. This CAP's typing has to fit both Sand and Sun, and I envision that as the major difficulty in this process. The weaknesses in the two weathers may be easy to handle alone but struggle to coexist with the other weather's goal. They may work well together, but have several different options to choose from to handle one or the other. We need a solid understanding and foundation of where we should decide to go with CAP 24 before we try to pin a typing on a concept that can be taken in several different directions. In order to take our first steps towards this, I'd like to start by asking us some questions about the weathers individually before thinking about combining them:

1: Now that we've narrowed down to Sun and Sand, what areas and roles do these two weathers struggle or lack in? Are any of these holes in their team frameworks shared?

2: What typings address the weaknesses of Sun/Sand teams individually?

3: Is it better to have a different typing than the common Pokemon on current Sun/Sand teams, or to stack typings with existing abusers?

 

[Escavalier Royale]

I decided to make a list of typings that could be useful.

Rock: This type gets the SpD boost from Sand, which is something some want to explore. It also benefits from Sun weakening Water moves. This is imo the best typing to include.
Flying: This typing originally came to my mind in terms of flavor (you know, Sky, Weather, Flying) but when paired with Rock it could legit work good for sand. It ditches Rock's weaknesses to Ground and Fighting which can give defensive synergy with TTar and Exca (although it still has a Water weakness). Looks interesting. However I do not really see how it can contribute a lot to Sun.
Fire: Fire mons get their STAB boosted in Sun. Pretty self-explanatory. Also benefits from Sun weakening Water moves.
Grass: Makes most sense with Chlorophyll flavor-wise. However, Grass also has a type advantage over Rain's Water, and gets STAB on SolarBeam and SolarBlade. Last argument is more valuable than the first of course.
Ground: Not damaged by sand and doesn't stack as much weaknesses with TTar and Exca as Rock and Steel. It also can use Sun's weakening of Water moves to defensive advantage.
Steel: Great defensive typing in general and it doesn't get damaged by sand. Also isn't weak to water. However, it has poor defensive synergy with Exca and Lando other than that and actually suffers from Sun's Fire boost. Only listed for the sake of completion.
1) Sun would like a STAB that gets boosted in Sun, so it would appreciate more firepower (pun intended). Sand would also like more breaking potential. However, unlike with Sun, Sand's breaking potential will solely rely on the mon's attacking stats as Sand does not boost the damage of any types. Somebody was talking about sun wanting more speed control, but I don't really get how it is very lacking in that.
2) See my list above.
3) The naive answer would be to have different typings to keep the team varied. However, having the same type allows the breakers to weaken each other's checks in the long run. However, with limited weather turns, we can't really afford a long run effect. Defensively, it's a bit tricky. For example, Rain's core of PeliPertDra all have the Water typing while not sharing a single weakness. However, with other types that'll be a little harder.

So, at the moment, I don't really know how to answer this question. I'll leave this up to other contributors.

 

[DetroitLolcat]

Typing is one of the most interesting and difficult parts of this concept because of the enormous differences between what Sun teams need and what Sand teams need. We decided that Sand needs more “breaking” ability; essentially we’re rehashing Volkraken’s concept (Major Third) but with Tyranitar and Excadrill as the core. Sun is a bit of a hodgepodge: we have two good setters but both have severe limitations: Charizard Y cannot use Heat Rock and Malaconda is a relatively weak Pokemon with a defensive typing that is MUCH worse now than when it was designed.

Sand teams have two immediate problems as is. The two best Pokemon in the tier – Landorus-T and Tomohawk – laugh at Tyranitar and Excadrill. Only the rare Ice Beam Tyranitar has a chance against Landorus-T, and both are sitting ducks against Tomohawk. Remember, even though defensive Tomohawk cannot do a whole lot to Tyranitar without Aura Sphere, Tomohawk’s ability to waste Sand turns is extremely valuable against Sand Offense. Secondly, Tyranitar and Excadrill are both horrendously weak to one of the best revenge killers in the tier: Ash-Greninja. This is to be expected, as the Pokemon with the best means of abusing Sand are Rock-, Ground-, and Steel-type. To make this Pokemon a true star on Sand Offense, we need to make sure the typing patches up Tyranitar’s and Excadrill’s weaknesses.
To ensure CAP24 can function well on Sand teams, it should be able to immediately come in and scare Landorus-T and Tomohawk. It also shouldn’t have to surrender to Ash-Greninja every time it comes in. We should try to make CAP24 resistant to Ground, not weak to Flying or Water, and preferably not weak to Fighting.

Now, Sun has some issues of its own. The lack of Speed control is an issue. Heatran destroying every sweeper under the sun (haha get it?) is an issue. The fact that the Sun setters are a lot weaker in practice than on paper is an issue. I think there are a lot of different ways to take the Sun part of this Pokemon, so typing is not as important for Sun than for Sand. There are a few things that a Sun abuser might like: for example Resistance to Fire and Ground in order to defeat Heatran. This is counteracted by the fact that Fire and Grass are by far the best typings that abuse Sun. So with Sun, we might be between a rock and a hard place. We can’t abuse powered-up Solar Beams and Solar Blades and still switch into Heatran freely. It’s difficult for one Pokemon to both bomb off all-powerful Fire Blasts and switch into Heatran’s Earth Power or Tectonic Rage.

Look at the interplay between what Sand wants and what Sun wants. A Pokemon with Fire STAB might be great for Sun, but bad in Sand because of the Ash-Greninja weakness. A Grass-type that can switch into Landorus-Therian’s Earthquake won’t be able to switch into Heatran’s Magma Storm. A Pokemon with STAB Solar Blade likely won’t find Tomohawk’s Air Slash all that fun to take.

What I’m saying is that we’re not going to be able to get everything we want through the Typing stage. There isn’t a single typing that fills the holes on Sun and Sand team archetypes. So, what compromises do we want to make? I think defensive typing is more important than offensive typing for this Pokemon, because we can patch up mediocre STABs with great coverage.

I think the ability to switch into Landorus-T and Tomohawk is the most important thing for CAP24 to be able to do. I think the next-most important thing is to switch into Heatran, and the third-most important thing is to avoid the Ash-Greninja revenge kill. I'm partial to the Flying type for the Earthquake immunity. I think Grass and Fire have redeeming qualities as well.

 

[Deck Knight]

1: Now that we've narrowed down to Sun and Sand, what areas and roles do these two weathers struggle or lack in? Are any of these holes in their team frameworks shared?

What both team types suffer with commonly is a good answer to the more dominant Rain. Rain has good Pokemon to fit each element of an archetypal team whereas Sand and Sun have gaps.

Sun's issue with Rain is that it's setters, ZardY and Malaconda suffer a price for setting sun. Drought Malaconda has a very bad case of 4MSS, and it would really prefer to be receiving sun than setting it. considering it can act as a slow pivot and a speed control utility (via Glare) with reliable healing with Harvest Sitrus Berry, a setter that can free Mala up to fill a utility / support slot would be a good way to patch Sun's biggest hole.

Sand on the other hand has two great setters (and Gigalith is a thing I guess). Hippowdon is bulky and has recovery, Tyranitar is bulky and massively threatening offensively, plus it can pursuit trap. While the weakness overlap is unfortunate, Hippowdon can force out physical attackers and Tyranitar can force out (and Pursuit) special attackers. What Sand really needs is a good offensive breaker to share the workload with Excadrill, preferably a special attacker because the few Pokemon that do work well as special walls really hate Excadrill and / or Tyranitar.

This makes role compression very important later in the process, and to the extent typing does impact some roles (like utility) more than others, our typing should be flexible enough to do this. Fortunately both of these roles are very offensively oriented so they don't conflict much save a setting role precludes using the other weather as an additional support without manual setting.

2: What typings address the weaknesses of Sun/Sand teams individually?

Dragon combinations are the best for avoiding the steamrolling from boosted Water moves without benefiting per se from Rain itself. Although Water Pokemon often also pack Ice moves, in the context of Sun and Sand, most of your setters are being targeted by the STAB. Dragons much prefer Sun to Rain because Sun allows any dragons with Fire coverage to roast Steel-types that resist Dragon STAB, and sun itself doesn't come back to bite them because they resist Fire moves and Solar Beam / Blade.

A more sun-specific typing it would benefit from is Fairy, which allows Sun to deal with the Dragons that, as I just outlined, resist bascially anything Sun can throw at them. Fairy is a less dangerous typing to use than Ice for this purpose because Fairy types do not inherently have Sun backfire against them (Ice is weak to Fire and Sun prevents freezing.)

Sand on the other hand wishes it had a much more threatening Grass type that doesn't mind Sand than the overly passive Cradily. Yes, Ferrothorn can be used in Sand... but surprise, mons 4x weak to fire prefer Rain! Torterra could be an option but it's in that weird zone of being a slow jack-of-all-trades and its 4x Ice weak and no direct defensive buff from Sandstorm or type synergy make it difficult to use with Tyranitar or Hippowdon. Such a Grass type could threaten Mega Swampert out with the right build and if I must get specific with a dual typing, Rock/Grass in Sand has little to fear from Pelipper given its neutrality to Hydro Pump and Hurricane and the SpD buff from SS.

3: Is it better to have a different typing than the common Pokemon on current Sun/Sand teams, or to stack typings with existing abusers?

There is a strong argument to be made for Sun for a Fire typing that adds an element of Speed Control the archetype currently lacks, as all its speed control Pokemon are currently Grass types. Scarf Volkraken can act as a breaker / speed control hybrid here, the problem is Scarf Volkraken loves the Rain just as much as the Sun, maybe more because it can roast any Ferrothorn on an opposing Rain team even while Rain is up.

Sand on the other hand needs a Pokemon that can complement Excadrill's typing offensively. Garchomp does this to an extent, and Celesteela switches in on Ground type attacks aimed at Exca, but Exca doesn't really have an offensive special attacking counterpart to form a breaking core. Sand is a bit more lax in its typing needs because it can already pull from the large array of viable Ground, Steel, and Rock types in CAP, however the role of a viable Pokemon to add to Sand needs to be offensively inclined.

 

[NumberCruncher]

1: Now that we've narrowed down to Sun and Sand, what areas and roles do these two weathers struggle or lack in? Are any of these holes in their team frameworks shared?

As discussed in the last topic, Sand needs a good breaker and sun could use some speed control that isn't just another Fire or Grass type with a million weaknesses. In addition, Sand and Sun both lack utility options unless you're acting generous and counting regular Venusaur.

2: What typings address the weaknesses of Sun/Sand teams individually?

Sun could honestly use a mon that doesn't just lose to the first Dragon type it runs into, so Fairy, Dragon, and Ice all seem like appealing options. It also would like a defensive typing that isn't weak to everything and isn't a Water or Steel type that's going to get eviscerated by your own Sun. Poison and Dragon, for instance have very tempting resistances.

Sand abusers tend to be really bad against Water and Fighting types. Offensive Water and Fighting types have priority that basically negates Sand's gimmick, and bulky Water and Fighting types just wall the strategy. This is incredibly problematic in a format pretty much defined by a bulky Fighting type that also takes no damage from Earthquake. I therefore conclude that CAPs main contribution to Sand should probably be busting up Tomohawk and Water types. Electric is a very tempting typing for just such a reason, but types like Fairy, Flying, and Psychic can also get the job done. Grass and Ice are problematic, as Ice types get shut down by Bulky Water types and Grass types get shut down by Hawk. The beauty of this is that if its good against Tomohawk, it pretty much guarantees that CAP will have at least some place in the metagame outside of weather abuse, which concept assessment said was ideal.

3: Is it better to have a different typing than the common Pokemon on current Sun/Sand teams, or to stack typings with existing abusers?

The mon should probably not share typing with the rest of the Sun/Sand teams for reasons stated above, though I would like to point out that Grass/Rock actually doesn't share many of the same weaknesses that the rest of the Sand/Sun team abusers have, but this would be the only typing that seems even remotely viable for this topic of all the different combinations of Fire/Grass with Ground/Rock/Steel. Unless we're specifically trying this combination for synergy, I would avoid these types.

 

[snake]

1: Now that we've narrowed down to Sun and Sand, what areas and roles do these two weathers struggle or lack in? Are any of these holes in their team frameworks shared?

Sun lacks good speed control. Venusuar is the best thing Sun has, and in all honesty, it's not that great. It get worn down too fast with Life Orb, Hidden Power Fire is pretty pathetic coverage even under Sun, and it faces some pretty hard 4MSS. No other Chlorophyll sweepers are viable, and teamslots get pretty constricted on Sun-based teams. Sand, on the other hand, would much rather prefer a strong breaker to bust past Pokemon like Tomohawk and Landorus-T, which wall Tyranitar and Excadrill pretty well.

2: What typings address the weaknesses of Sun/Sand teams individually?

By far, the largest weakness that Sun and Sand is Ash-Greninja. The ability to fire off strong Specs-boosted Dark Pulse against Venusaur, Hydro Pump against other Pokemon (even in Sun it does an uncomfortable amount of damage), and Water Shuriken to pick off Excadrill in Sand and Scarfed Fire-types in Sun, Ash-Greninja is terrifying for these two weathers. In addition, the recent rise of Arghonaut makes U-turn very effective on Ash-Greninja, and even max defense Malaconda takes a lot of damage from Ash-Greninja.

In this light, CAP24 cannot be weak to Water at all. Sun and Sand teams already struggle enough with Ash-Greninja; stacking this weakness on makes the problem worse. There is a flaw in the argument where Sun's 0.5x multiplier and Sand's Special Defense buff should patch up our weakness to Water-types. If that were the case, then Heatran under the Sun and Tyranitar under the Sand would be suitable answers to Ash-Greninja. After all, 91 / 106 and 100 / 100 special bulk is nothing to sneeze at. But they aren't:

252 SpA Choice Specs Greninja-Ash Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Heatran in Sun: 288-342 (74.6 - 88.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Greninja-Ash Hydro Pump vs. 80 HP / 0 SpD Tyranitar in Sand: 408-480 (113 - 132.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Greninja Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Heatran in Sun: 218-258 (56.4 - 66.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Greninja Hydro Pump vs. 80 HP / 0 SpD Tyranitar in Sand: 306-362 (84.7 - 100.2%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO

While we could give CAP24 more special bulk than those two, the more bulk we invest into CAP24, the less offenses we can give, which is not good. Since Water-types aren't on the table for this project, I actually think a Grass typing is what CAP24 needs, as it resists Water-type attacks. Before you say "But Sun has enough Grass-types," that's also a flawed statement. Sure, Grass-types commonly have abilities that take advantage of the Sun, but how many of them actually good? Venusaur is decent at best. Victreebel is worse than that. Do you know that Tangrowth had Leaf Guard? In actuality, Sun has barely any good Grass-types save Malaconda, but it's not the offensive picture that Sun-based teams need right now. Now, Grass-types are heavily damage by the Fire-type boosted moves under Sun, but with how many Fire-type nukes in the CAP Metagame, that damage boost becomes largely overkill.

252+ SpA Choice Specs Volkraken Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Venusaur: 608-716 (201.9 - 237.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Volkraken Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Venusaur: 372-438 (123.5 - 145.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Volcarona Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Venusaur: 372-438 (123.5 - 145.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Blacephalon Flamethrower vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Venusaur: 330-390 (109.6 - 129.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Basically, Sun's boost to Fire-type moves should NOT discredit Grass typing from CAP24.


But what about Sand? Well, Sand struggles with Landorus-T and other Ground-types, as Excadrill and Tyranitar are both weak to STAB Earthquake, Earth Power, and Thousand Arrows. Thus, a Grass-typing would be very useful for these teams. Now, I mentioned Tomohawk earlier, and I know that Grass-typing makes us weak to Tomohawk's Air Slash, but this can be mitigated with a secondary typing: we give it a STAB that's super effective against Tomohawk. I don't think it's time to detail my preferred the secondary typing yet, but it's worth mentioning that Tangrowth is usually used for a Ground-type resist that doesn't mind taking Sand damage, and it loses hard to Tomohawk. Thus, if Grass typing is picked, a secondary typing that adequately threatens through Tomohawk would be necessary. For now, it's more important that we acknowledge that Grass-typing is a surprisingly good typing for this concept.

Dragon-types also resists Water-type attacks, but I think Grass-types fit much better onto these teams, especially because Sun lacks a good offensive Grass-type abuser, as Venusaur barely cuts it nowadays.

3: Is it better to have a different typing than the common Pokemon on current Sun/Sand teams, or to stack typings with existing abusers?

As I have detailed earlier, Sun would appreciate a Grass-type that's better than Venusaur, and Sand would appreciate a Ground-type resist that doesn't get destroyed by Tomohawk. Again, Grass / [insert typing that beats Tomohawk] fits the bill for this concept.

 

[Professor Mesquite]

1: Now that we've narrowed down to Sun and Sand, what areas and roles do these two weathers struggle or lack in? Are any of these holes in their team frameworks shared?
Sun struggles in different ways depending on bias towards Fire or Grass. Fire struggles against Pokemon that resist Fire, Rock, Dragon, Water, and Fire. Water is weakened by Sun, but Rock remains Super Effective, Dragon is Unaffected, and enemy Fire Pokemon get damage boosts against you. In MnM, Drought [CharY] Blacephalon is incredibly powerful, but struggles against bulky fire types CharX. Grass in sun is wrecked by Fire, no way around it. Fire is boosted and is Super Effective against Grass, making it one of the best counters to Solar Beam Sweep. It is noted then, that both Dragon and Fire resist the primary offensive measures of Sun.

Sand struggles in one word: Rock types. Rock types are the only type that explicitly benefits from Sand (Ground and Steel avoid chip damage, but frankly that doesn't matter too much in the long run). This SpDef boost makes Special Attacking Sand Sweepers very difficult to make, despite how cool the concept sounds. Sand struggles then, in creating a viable offense outside of an already good attacker made bulky or fast.

2: What typings address the weaknesses of Sun/Sand teams individually?

Fire provides a resistance to the Solar Counterplay of Fire and Grass, and Fairy, Water, Fire, and Rock are the only types to protect against Dragon and Fire without a weakness to the other.

Steel and Ground are perhaps the best strict offensive types in Sand, as they take no chip damage and are supereffective against Rock. Naturally however, Rock is good in Sand.

3: Is it better to have a different typing than the common Pokemon on current Sun/Sand teams, or to stack typings with existing abusers?

Fire or Grass is a must on Sun teams, as they are the types that get offensive boosts in the Sun, and Stall was not well received by the community. Fire, Ground, and Rock are all weak to Water, so they can be considered for a defensive Sun mon. Again, Fairy, Water, Fire, and Rock are considerable on Sun to combat Dragon and Fire.

Sand talks about the three types Ground, Rock, and Steel, which have the common weaknesses of Water (2:0:1), Grass (2:1:0), Fighting (2:0:1), and Ground (2:0:1). The grass weakness has to worry about our Sun traits, and Water is weakened by Sun, so we have Fighting and Ground to fear. Flying, Bug, Fairy, and Ghost are the best defensive types against that combo, especially Flying and Bug. Fighting gets an honorable mention to counter Rock.

----

Seeing this, I consider these types valuable for Sun and Sand:
Sun: Fire (Damage Boost and much more), Grass (Solar Beam/Blade), Dragon (To resist Fire and Grass), Ground (To counter Fire and benefit from Water weakening), Rock (To counter Fire and benefit from Water weakening), Fairy (To counter Dragon), and Water (To counter Fire)

Sand: Rock (SpDef Boost, no Chip, Sand Force STAB), Steel (Great Defensive Type, no Chip, Sand Force STAB, counter Rock, counter Grass Counterplay), Ground (Great Offensive Type, no Chip, Sand Force STAB, counter Rock), Flying (Great Defensive Type, Counter Fighting, Ground, and Grass Counterplay), Bug (Counter Fighting, Ground, and Grass Counterplay), Fairy (Counter Fighting Counterplay), Fighting (Counter Rock), and Ghost (Counter Fighting Counterplay)

It is notable that there is overlap. Rock benefits from both weathers, and both Ground and Fairy act as great counters to traditional counterplay.

Now there is something to worry about: Grass weakness. Grass finds prey amongst the types that use Sand, and Solar Beam shines in the Sun, so a Grass resisting type should be considered necessary. This gives us reason to include Fire, Grass, Dragon, Flying, Bug, Poison, or Steel in our final combo, with all except Poison receiving other benefits.

My personal recommendations, therefore, are in order:
Rock (Best), Fire, Grass, Flying, Fairy, Ground, Bug, Dragon, Ghost, Steel, Fighting, Poison, Water
With recommendation against:
Dark, Normal, Psychic, Electric, Ice (Worst)

Recommendations Against Because:
Dark has no reasonable benefits
Normal has no reasonable benefits
Psychic is primarily Special, which is difficult to use in Sand
Electric is weak to Ground, an everpresent type in Sand
Ice is weak to Rock, Steel, and Fire. A sad moment for my favorite type.

Note: I use this format when talking about type effectiveness: (SE:NVE:NEUTRAL)


EDIT:
Seeing as many people are not only including typing favorites, but type combo favorites, I shall post mine as well.
Rock/Grass
Fire/Grass [Pyroak already has this, so maybe not]
Fire/Rock
Fire/Fairy [A new Unique Combo!]
Fire/Flying
Rock/Fairy
Rock/Dragon
Grass/Flying
Rock/Flying
Fairy/Ground [A new Unique Combo!]
Grass/Ground
Fire/Ground
Fire/Bug
Bug/Dragon [A new Unique Combo!]
Grass/Ghost
Fire/Ghost

I'm a fan of Unique Comboes especially, as they give a new avenue to explore not just for CAP, but for Custom

 

[SunshineFuture]

Something else to consider is the Dragon type. It resists all of the elemental types (Fire, Water, Grass and Electric), which I think are going to be beneficial in the long run, especially Water and Electric. It also is neutral to all other types aside from itself, Ice and Fairy, none of which make up for any weather teams, barring Dazzling Gleam Koko, (apparently) the occasional Pajantom, and Aloltales if you're facing Veil (which I don't think is going to be a great matchup regardless unless we outspeed Aloltales, and iirc it isn't super good rn anyway). In terms of use on teams, it can serve as a nice rain check on Sun teams while also working as a neutral hit on everything but Steel, with its weaknesses meshing well with Ttar and Excadrill, who can handle Ice and Fairy-types who would come in CAP24's way. Fire also catches my eye, as it abuses Sun very well due to the power boost, as well as pairing well with Malaconda, who can spin hazards away. Fire in Sand is good for blowing away things that traditionally wall Sand teams, such as Tapu Bulu, Celesteela and Cawmodore (sorta). With defensive uses, it resists itself, but is generally weak to Rain and hates the Ground weakness. However, I think these two can balance each other out with a Fire/Dragon type, packing a quad resistance to Fire and Grass, while being neutral to Water and Ice, two other common types on Rain Teams. It thrives both in Sun and Sand, meshing well on both, especially if we give CAP24 a method of speed control.

Fairy is another thing that is good for this CAP, although moreso in Sun than in Sand. In Sun, it deals with Dragons that usually wall us out. It also is great against Tomohawk. The only major downside is a weakness to Steel, which everything on Sand shares barring Excadrill. Grass is also appealing for the reasons snek mentioned above. A Grass/Fairy type works well on both Sun and Sand, with the former being a ground resist for Sand while also benefitting from Sun with Solar Beam/Blade, while the latter helps with Tomohawk and Dragons. Alternatively, Dragon/Fairy is a choice which has less benefits in Sand, but is a better typing overall, while also not having a Fire and Flying weakness.

 

[Wulfanator]

1: Now that we've narrowed down to Sun and Sand, what areas and roles do these two weathers struggle or lack in? Are any of these holes in their team frameworks shared?

A weather setter that doesn’t share weaknesses with the rest of the team

Tyranitar and Excadrill are the iconic duo associated with sand teams. It is unfortunate that they share a ground and fighting weakness. As stated before, Landorus-T and Tomohawk have a field day with these Pokémon either by scaring them out or wasting sand turns. It would be great to have a typing that doesn’t have to worry about these weaknesses.

Sun weather setters are all fire types (with the exception of Malaconda). This means that entry hazards are a constant threat, especially for Mega Charizard Y. While it would be nice that a sun weather setter have STAB fire moves for maximum potential, it is not essential. Plus, sun already gives a 50% boost to fire moves which means any Pokémon carrying fire moves basically has STAB fire without the weaknesses of being a fire-type. It would be nice to have another sun weather setter that doesn’t worry about entry hazards.

Sand users that aren’t rock-, ground-, or steel-type

One of the things I didn’t know about weather before this CAP was that some abilities negate the damage turn of sand and hail (i.e. sand rush, ice body, etc). Similar to what I said about sand setters, a sand user that doesn’t worry about the weaknesses already present on most sand teams (ground and fighting) would be a strong addition.



2: What typings address the weaknesses of Sun/Sand teams individually?
The two types most associated types with sun teams are fire and grass. Fire and grass often cover the weaknesses of one another, but there are 3 types that, in the sun, pose potential problems. Fire (with 50% boost in sun), Flying, and Poison are the biggest weaknesses that threaten sun teams due to fire and grass not covering these weaknesses. Rock resists all three which is most ideal. Ground could be decent as it resists poison and rock.

Sand teams often have a hard time dealing with fighting, ground, and water moves. Flying deals with fighting and give a ground immunity. Ghost gives two immunities which would offer more diversity than a flying-type. Grass mitigates the ground and water weaknesses, but there is the issue of it being weak to fire on a sun team.


3: Is it better to have a different typing than the common Pokemon on current Sun/Sand teams, or to stack typings with existing abusers?

It is considerably better because it would allow sand and sun teams to have a more diverse composition like rain. Rain thrives because it is not limited to what types to included. Water, grass, steel, flying, and electric are all better because of rain. The objective of this Pokémon needs to be creating that same variety in sand and sun.

Edit:
After dwelling on the topic for a day, a few effective type combinations come to mind...

(Goal: deals with fighting weakness of sand and the weaknesses sun teams face)
Rock/Ghost (immunity to fighting & normal, 4x resistance to poison, 2x resistance to flying, fire, & bug)
Ground/Fairy (2x resistance fighting & rock)
Dragon/Poison (4x resistance to grass, 2x resistance to fighting, poison, bug, fire, water, electric)

(Other types to consider)
Rock/Fairy
Rock/Psychic
Rock/Dragon
Rock/Flying
Rock/Grass
Ground/Dragon

 

[Mx]

1- This has been said before, Sun lacks Speed control (in particular, there are no viable Chlorophyll users, which gives it a massive disadvantage when compared to Rain and Sand) and Sand doesn't have a reliable way to break through common walls like Tomohawk and Landorus-T. However, as Deck Knight said, they both lack a good answer to rain. Sun might have Malaconda, but it is still heavily pressured by a lot of common Rain abusers, such as Tomohawk and Pelipper, and can be 2HKO by even some of the threats it's supposed to check like Ash-Greninja with U-Turn. Therefore, I believe that we should try to aim to have a decent match-up against Rain teams (or at least to not be dead weight against them)

3- (Answering this one first, as it is very important when addressing particular types) Trying to have different types than other common abusers is very important, as one of the main problems of both Sun and Sand is how many weaknesses their abusers stack with each other, so finding a way to deal with that has to be of our main priority in this stage.

2- While the roles of breaker and speed control can be reasonably achieved with almost any typing, checking Rain is not as easy. This makes types that resist Water (Dragon/Grass/Water) one of our most interesting choices. Funnily enough, the one that does this the best is Water itself, thanks to its additional resistance to Ice, a common coverage type. However, the fact that the power one of our STABs would be halved under the sun makes it an overall dubious choice. Of the other two, Dragon appears to be the better choice, as Sun already should be carrying a Grass-Type in Malaconda, and it's Fire resistance could prove to be very valuable to check opposing Volkraken. Additionally, other mons usually found on Sand and Sun team, like Excadrill and Volkraken are able to switch into Fairy-Types with relatively ease.

As for my thoughts on other types:

Rock: One of best options in my opinion. While it's weakness to Water is a huge issue, if its paired with another Water-resisting type and has a decent SpD stat, it should be tank hits from the likes of Ash-Greninja pretty well actually under the sand. This can also be useful in the sun, because while you might not get the SpD boost, Water moves' power is halved there, and Rock provides useful resistances against Flying and Fire.

Ground: It doesn't have the SpD boost to help tank Water, even when paired with something else, nor the useful resistances to Flying and Fire. This makes it an inferior choice when compared to Rock in my opinion.

Flying: While trying to avoid stacking weaknesses is very important, I don't really see Ground and Fighting as a very threatening type for us in particular. There are many available teammates to deal with them, such as the omnipresent Landorus-T and Tomohawk, Rotom-W, Zapdos, Celesteela, Tapu Bulu, and many more. Besides, if we go special, Lando-T and Tomohawk should not give us that much of a trouble.

 

[Mr Holiday]

Honestly, Question 1 has already been discussed at length, both here and in the Concept Assessment thread, by people better able to discuss it. As such, I'll focus on Questions 2 and 3.

2: What typings address the weaknesses of Sun/Sand teams individually?

Grass comes to mind immediately, due to resisting Water, Ground and itself (and Electric, but that's not as big of an issue). Water tends to be a problem for Sand teams and, to a lesser extent, Sun teams, since Rock, Ground and Fire are all weak to Water. Likewise, Ground hits most Sand teams hard, can check or counter Fire types on Sun teams, and can even make use of our Sand against us by not taking damage from it. Grass is, again, very harmful to Sand teams, but is thankfully curtailed by the boost to Fire type moves in the Sun. Because it resists all three, Grass strikes me as a natural fit to our concept, and this is only helped by it's synergy with Sun and relatively neutral (Outside of taking damage and reduced Solarbeam damage) relationship to Sand.

Rock is another fairly obvious contender, though for differant reasons. It benefits directly from Sand and can threaten Fire types hoping to take advantage of our Sun. Rock is also a generally strong attacking type, and with the proper stats and moves can go a long way towards providing the wall breaking power Sand teams need. Rock, however, is not without it's flaws, as it is vulnerable to both Tomohawk and Landorus-T, not to mention opposing Water and Grass Types. If we went with Rock, we would have to find a solution to these issues, but I don't think we should let that prevent us from considering Rock in the first place.

Another type that stands out to me is Dragon. Dragon has a wide array of resistances and neutralities, and while it isn't particularly helped by Sun or Sand, it isn't hurt by them either. In terms of addressing weaknesses, Dragon resists Water, which benefits both Sun and Sand, and also resists Grass and Fire Types that might want to take advantage of our Sun. As such, while it doesn't have as many obvious benefits as Grass or Rock, I think Dragon merits some consideration as well.

While Fire seems like an obvious choice for CAP 24, I'm honestly a bit dubious of it. Yes, Fire gets a boost int he Sun, and yes we could conceivably build a Pokemon that, through the stacking of Sun and other boosts, could nuke all of Sun and Sand's problems away, but I'm not sure that follows the spirit of our concept. By itself, Fire doesn't seem to do much to help Sand teams out, and the whole point, as I understand it, was to make a Pokemon that works well with/compliments both weathers, not a Pokemon that uses one weather to remove all of another weather's problems. I'm not saying we shouldn't consider Fire, just that by itself, Fire seems pretty shaky to me, and I'd personally like to see more of an explanation for why it should be considered.

3: Is it better to have a different typing than the common Pokemon on current Sun/Sand teams, or to stack typings with existing abusers?

I'm honestly on the fence about this one. On the one hand, having a greater diversity of Types, and with that a greater diversity of weaknesses and resistances would greatly benefit most Sun/Sand teams, which tend to consist largely of Fire and Grass, and Rock, Ground and Steel Types, respectively. Anything to make these teams less predictable and force the opponent to think a bit harder about their strategy is going to help these teams out. On the other hand, we have to keep in mind that this is one Pokemon, and it can't do everything. Could we find a Typing that plugs all of the holes for a Sun team or a Sand team? Without question. Can we find one that plugs all of the holes on both teams at once? And if we did, would it be a good Typing in the first place? That, I'm not so sure of. On the third hand (branching off of the second hand, because they're related), CAP 24 doesn't necessarily have to fix all of Sun/Sand's problems by itself. It has a team to rely on, and while it can patch the more glaring holes of a team, I think it would be a mistake to assume that we need a CAP that can fix every conceivable problem a Sun/Sand team might encounter.

I might add more on to these thoughts later, either as an edit or in a follow up post. Either way, this is what I've got for now.

 

[TKGriffiths]

First of all I would like to ward us off from a fire typing. It stacks weaknesses to problem pokemon like Lando and Ash-Greninja which we should be looking to threaten in some way. The reduction of its water weakness is a red herring - EVERY type takes the reduced damage from water moves in the sun. Pokemon already weak to water are in the very worst position to take advantage of this boon due to being 2HKO'd anyway through their inherent weakness.

Furthermore, we don't need a fire typing to take advantage of boosted fire moves. Heatran (and to a lesser extent x4 resistant pokemon like Volcanion/Volkraken) also don't really care whether your fire move has STAB behind it or not because it will be doing pitiful damage either way. Perhaps it's more useful to gain powerful non-STAB fire-type coverage move under sun, rather than a one-dimensional STAB nuke that is easily walled?

 

[jas61292]

As the first question here points out, what we really need to be doing here is figuring out what these two weathers lack and trying to fill in. Both have plenty of Pokemon that can use them, but many of those Pokemon cannot preform on a high enough level. That being said, the failures of these team archetypes is not the lack of any Pokemon that can take advantage of them well, but rather the fact that there are not enough to make them into a competent team. So then, with regard to the third question, I think it is important to only have a shared typing existing Sun/Sand mons if those Pokemon are the weaker links of their teams.

Now, as far as how these teams currently function, and what they could really use, I think DetroitLolcat did a great job laying out the circumstances. Sand has perfectly fine setters along with Excadrill, who is more than good enough, but they lack that much else, and could really use a third member of that core to cover the few Pokemon that give Exca and T-Tar massive trouble (Tomo, Lando and Gren). Sun, on the other hand, has some decent, but not amazing, setters, and not a lot else. Sure, there are more than enough strong Fire types to launch powerful Sun boosted attacks with, but there is no Pokemon that can really abuse other aspects of Sun very well.

So, to bring this back together with what I said in the first paragraph, I think we should probably avoid trying to use the same typings as our good Sand mon, because they have common weaknesses that they would prefer to see covered. Both avoiding doubling up and looking for something that is not weak to Tomo or Lando would be ideal. On the other side of things, Sun is perfectly fine on the Fire side of things, but doesn't really have any other aspect thoroughly covered, and its so I wouldn't limit ourselves any further than that.

While I'm not going to start rattling off types right now, I do think DLCs suggesting of Flying type is a good one to look at. Ground in general, especially Lando-T is a huge issue for the sand guys, and Sun's Fire types don't like it either. Starting off with a focus there and then adding on a secondary to deal with some of the other issues might be a great way to go about things.


In addition to all that, there is one other thing I want to bring up with regard to typing. I really do not think we should be looking so hard at Grass type, from the Sun side of things. Yeah, yeah, grass traditionally benefits from sun, but there is really nothing intrinsic about Sun that actually helps Grass type. Just because real Pokemon that have sun abusing abilities are Grass types, doesn't mean that we have to be if we end up wanting to use them. And furthermore, while Sun may eliminate the charge up of Solar Beam and Solar Blade, it does not make them any more powerful than any other type's STAB 120 Power moves. And, of course, an opposing whether setter switching in can always make the use of Solar Beam a big mistake. Now, this is not to say that we should avoid Grass type. I know others have mentioned how it can potentially work well for the sand side of things with regard to its water resist. I'm just saying that we shouldn't let the fact that classic sun abusers like Venusaur are Grass type make us thing there is some advantage to Grass types in sun, when really, the fire weakness they possess really makes it more of the opposite.

 

[BARABOY]

1: Now that we've narrowed down to Sun and Sand, what areas and roles do these two weathers struggle or lack in? Are any of these holes in their team frameworks shared?
For sun teams, as stated multiple times, speed is an issue. Almost every mon with Chlorophyll is unusable, with the debateable exception of Venusaur. Additionally, sun teams are often primarily special attack oriented. So, if something that has a high special defense comes in, like Chansey or Toxapex, there's not much the team can do.

For sand teams, most pokemon that utilize sand are weak to ground, fighting, and water. Defense can also be an issue, as sand teams often are focused on special defense to reduce the threat that water poses, and the fact that steel, ground, and rock have special defense boosted in sand. Because of this, fighting and ground types can walts in and destroy the entire team. Ground types in particular are huge threats because they also benefit from the special defense boost in sand.

Lastly, both sun and sand are destroyed by rain. If the opposing team has a Pelipper, there's not much you can do at this point.

2: What typings address the weaknesses of Sun/Sand teams individually?
Firstly, being either ground, rock, or steel is a must, and franklyunavoidable, as we don't want residual sand damage to murder our pokemon. Grass is the most obvious contender for both teams, as it deals with water types for each weather, as well as the deadly ground type for sand. Plus, grass can hold its own in rain, which as previously stated, is a major problem for both sun and sand.

Fire is a type that has been brought up many times already due to fire types performing poorly in sand. Flying types have a similar issue that I don't think anyone has brought up yet. Flying is weak to rock, which is boosted by sand. However, It's immunity to ground is something that could definitely be utilized in a sand team, and a rock weakness isn't nearly as bad as fire's crippling weakness to both ground and rock.

3: Is it better to have a different typing than the common Pokemon on current Sun/Sand teams, or to stack typings with existing abusers?
We can be a little experimental, but we shouldn't stray too far, especially considering sand teams. It should be obvious to anyone that being either ground, rock, or steel is necessary for it to be remotely sustainable in sand. I think using a type combination that is uncommon both on sand teams and in general is a happy medium for both sides of the debate.


So, I'm just going to ramble on about some thoughts concerning the typing I have that I think are noteworthy. Firstly, I think we should avoid the steel type. With our pokemon having to be able to survive in sun, and steel being weak to fire, I don't see it working out. Next, I think our pokemon should be part grass. Grass type not only gives us an excuse to give our pokemon Chlorophyll, but it deals with water and ground phenomenally, and can hold its own against rain teams.

The typings Grass/Ground and Grass/Rock are the two we should consider the most. Additionally, I think Ground/Flying could possibly work, but it would need something to give it an excuse to be on a sun team.

 

[Deck Knight]

One of the issues I think we're going to run into with the focus on Sun and Sand simultaneously is making a Frankenstein's monster.

For example, if we focus on Lando-T, Tomohawk, and Greninja-Ash, the 3 Pokemon that seem to come up the most for threatening these weather archetypes (Tomo moreso for stalling out turns) we end up requiring a type that simultaneously takes Water, Ground, and Flying attacks well that also isn't weak to U-turn and can tank a Lando-T HP Ice or Z-Fly. None of these three Pokemon have particularly good special defensive capabilities, so for the remainder of the post I'm assuming Weather Ball equivalents or that plus a coverage move will be sufficient to 2HKO them.

From an objective standpoint the typing that does this specific thing best is Grass/Rock. It's only weak to the outlier attacks and Sand boosts it's SpD against the strong special attacks of Ash-Gren and Tomo. This should not lull us into a false sense of security though, as both Tomo and Ash-Gren have easy access to Ice Beam and Aura Sphere respectively which can both hit the type super-effectively. Grass/Rock also doesn't have many issues with Colossoil, the Pokemon right behind Tomo and Lando in usage stats.

Grass/Rock though has other problem Pokemon it lures, specifically Mega-Scizor and Cawmodore to an extent. And while the U-turn weakness isn't critical against those 3 Pokemon, being weak to U-turn means it's easier to get CAP in KO range of M-Scizor's Bullet Punch. It also can't switch into Cawmodore for the same reason. There's also the issue specifically in Sun that it doesn't resist Heatran and will take boosted neutral damage from Magma Storm. Heatran of course is the bane on many sun teams, and if you look at its item choice, in CAP-1760 Heatran actually has Air Balloon a large portion of the time, meaning Earth Power is not a quick fix. At least it doesn't resist Rock.

Dragon/Rock exchanges the Bug weakness for absolutely not caring about incoming Fire attacks, ever. It also outright resists Flying but becomes weak to Ground. Offensively speaking the two types can actually employ similar tactics, with Leaf Storm being able to perform a quick nuke on anything neutral and Rock/Fire moves providing good coverage. Draco Meteor of course hits a lot more things neutrally.

Flying/Rock has been mentioned in Discord as a potentially useful typing, and it has Ground immunity, gets the same SpD boosting benefits in Sand and the Water move reduction. Going back to out initial 3 Pokemon though, Flying/Rock is weak to Water, weak to HP Ice and Ice Beam, and it takes increased damage from Stealth Rock which again puts it in range for Mega-Scizor's Bullet Punch (and Gren's Shuriken to an extent) quickly. There are tactics or choices that can address this weakness to priority, but it is an issue.

Finally, I want to devote some attention to Fire-variant typings. They've been kind of panned, but Fire has two distinct offensive advantages: Double STAB in Sun and crushing Skarmory, M-Scizor, Cawmodore, Celesteela, and Ferrothorn, some of Sand's biggest problems.

Fire/Rock: I'm not gonna lie, 4x weakness to Water and Ground plus an SR weakness is bad. But nothing says our CAP needs to rely on an ability for Speed Control (an identified Sun need), it could just be really, really fast and use its ability for other purposes. A fast Fire/Rock type could also run roughshod over a huge number of threats to Sand, as nothing really wants to switch into it. It loves both weathers for enhancing its niche resistances or buffing its STABs/bulk, and it can even potentially go physical or mixed because it has its own priority potentially in Accelerock.

Fire/Dragon: While it's not ideal inherently in Sand, it is neutral to Water, resists Bullet Punch and U-turn, and if it had a Sand-themed ability to provide Sand Immunity it could really take off in both weathers by being an entirely different offensive threat.

Long story short, there's no magic typing that Sun and Sand loves that has no issues with other threats. Offensively speaking Rock is a great type that only has issues with Colossoil and Ferrothorn, issues that can mostly be addressed with Grass and Fire coverage that naturally arise with Sun.

 

[SunshineFuture]

Fire/Dragon: While it's not ideal inherently in Sand, it is neutral to Water, resists Bullet Punch and U-turn, and if it had a Sand-themed ability to provide Sand Immunity it could really take off in both weathers by being an entirely different offensive threat.

What do you mean by an entirely different offensive threat? I agree that Fire/Dragon is awesome (currently my personal favorite), I just didn’t understand that part.

To make this not a one-liner, I’m just going to say that there are three types that I personally think are important for us to resist or be neutral towards: Water, Electric and Ice. I’m not going to elaborate on Water, since it has been discussed before. Electric is common on Rain, especially with Tapu Koko spamming Thunder. Ice is even more so, with things like Ash Gren and Koko running around with Ice Beam or HP Ice. If we are weak to one of those types, we basically are doomed against Rain. For that reason, Grass/Rock is not as favorable as it first appears to be, due to being a magnet for Mega Scizor and other U-Turn users (which includes the current rain setter, Pelipper) and would be easy to be revenge killed by Ash Greninja. Rock/Flying is IMO pretty bad, despite having a Ground immunity, as it is weak to all three and could very easily veer off concept (case in point, people earlier were mentioning Rock Head with Head Smash/BB/Flare Blitz on Rock/Flying).

 

[Professor Mesquite]

Fire/Rock: I'm not gonna lie, 4x weakness to Water and Ground plus an SR weakness is bad. But nothing says our CAP needs to rely on an ability for Speed Control (on identified Sun need), it could just be really, really fast and use its ability for other purposes. A fast Fire/Rock type could also run roughshod over a huge number of threats to Sand, as nothing really wants to switch into it. It loves both weathers for enhancing its niche resistances or buffing its STABs/bulk, and it can even potentially go physical or mixed because it has its own priority potentially in Accelerock.

I'm now imagining an Alola form Stratagem with Fire/Rock, Physical Bias, Accelerock, and Solar Blade. A bit off topic, but should we consider Alola-fying a preexisting Pokemon for the creation of a new CAP?

I'm going to delay my personal discussion on Speed Stats vs Speed Ability until later.

 

[snake]

I realistically don't think we can afford to be quad-weak to Water-type moves because of Ash-Greninja's priority Water Shuriken.

252 SpA Choice Specs Greninja-Ash Water Shuriken (20 BP) (3 hits) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Camerupt-Mega in Sun: 300-372 (106.7 - 132.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Camerupt-Mega is sitting at a comfortable 70 / 105 HP / Special Bulk, and it just gets annihilated :( Having a sun Pokemon get forced out by Ash-Greninja unconditionally is awful because then Greninja-Ash can U-turn out of the switch-in, smack Venusaur with Specs Dark Pulse, or just set up Spikes.

 

[Professor Mesquite]

If we are legitimately talking about Accelerock on it, we could simply end up in a situation where it doesn't matter. I think this discussion of interactions against Ash-Greninja are too heavily dependent on what moves and Special/Physical bias we develop, and should be delayed. CAP24's typing should be primarily decided by what weather allows it to do, rather than what threats we need to counter with typing. If we go crazy in countering Greninja, we could say Grass/Steel Solar Beam blaster, but I think we should explore more with the concept. This isn't a target concept, and while we can get carried away, we should avoid thinking that it is.

 

[Mr Holiday]

I realistically don't think we can afford to be quad-weak to Water-type moves because of Ash-Greninja's priority Water Shuriken.

I'm going to have to second this thought. Sand already has problems with Water, as does Sun to a lesser extent. Add in the afore-mentioned Ash-Greninja, and you've got a serious issue for Sun/Sand teams, and being 4X weak to Water does not help us in any way. Whatever we pick should be, I think, at least neutral to water, if not outright resistant to it.

On that note, I kinda like the sound of Grass/Rock. Is it ideal? No, probably not. Being weak to Fighting, Bug, Steel and Ice, while only resisting Normal and Electric makes it a bit questionable on the defensive side of things, but not so questionable that we can't account for it later on with Stats, Ability and the effects of weather. On the other hand, both Types work well in they're respective weather conditions, and can serve adequately in the opposite weather. Further, Grass/Rock is a surprisingly effective STAB combo, being walled mostly by Steel Types and a handful of other things (Like Breloom, Toxicroak, etc.). If we're looking for a Pokemon with wall breaking potential to help out on Sand teams, near-perfect STAB coverage goes a long way towards that goal in my books.

 

[BARABOY]

I'm going to have to second this thought. Sand already has problems with Water, as does Sun to a lesser extent. Add in the afore-mentioned Ash-Greninja, and you've got a serious issue for Sun/Sand teams, and being 4X weak to Water does not help us in any way. Whatever we pick should be, I think, at least neutral to water, if not outright resistant to it.

On that note, I kinda like the sound of Grass/Rock. Is it ideal? No, probably not. Being weak to Fighting, Bug, Steel and Ice, while only resisting Normal and Electric makes it a bit questionable on the defensive side of things, but not so questionable that we can't account for it later on with Stats, Ability and the effects of weather. On the other hand, both Types work well in they're respective weather conditions, and can serve adequately in the opposite weather. Further, Grass/Rock is a surprisingly effective STAB combo, being walled mostly by Steel Types and a handful of other things (Like Breloom, Toxicroak, etc.). If we're looking for a Pokemon with wall breaking potential to help out on Sand teams, near-perfect STAB coverage goes a long way towards that goal in my books.

Is any type really ideal for this concept? The most practical is as you said, Grass/Rock.

 

[Professor Mesquite]

Solar Beam is powerful enough that I don’t necessarily see STAB for it as a necessity. The Pokémon we’re all worried about is Ash-Greninja, but that thing isn’t known for bulkiness. Water Shuriken is really dangerous, but pairing CAP24 with Lele would fix that problem, and Dazzling isn’t banned from ability discussions. I’m a fan of a Rock/Grass typing too, but I think dismissing Fire/Rock so quickly is a huge problem, as it is the typing that has the greatest to gain from Sun/Sand weather, and has better coverage than Rock/Grass (and with Solar Beam coverage, it’s only stopped by Kommo-o and Heatran, who wouldn’t appreciate Fighting coverage).

Yes I said Solar Beam, treat it as Solar Beam/Blade, but that takes too long to type everywhere

Side Note: Grass Sun/Sand weather abuser is just asking for Vanilluxe to kill it from the depths of NU

 

[snake]

Solar Beam is powerful enough that I don’t necessarily see STAB for it as a necessity. The Pokémon we’re all worried about is Ash-Greninja, but that thing isn’t known for bulkiness. Water Shuriken is really dangerous, but pairing CAP24 with Lele would fix that problem, and Dazzling isn’t banned from ability discussions. I’m a fan of a Rock/Grass typing too, but I think dismissing Fire/Rock so quickly is a huge problem, as it is the typing that has the greatest to gain from Sun/Sand weather, and has better coverage than Rock/Grass (and with Solar Beam coverage, it’s only stopped by Kommo-o and Heatran, who wouldn’t appreciate Fighting coverage).

Yes I said Solar Beam, treat it as Solar Beam/Blade, but that takes too long to type everywhere

Side Note: Grass Sun/Sand weather abuser is just asking for Vanilluxe to kill it from the depths of NU

It doesn't matter if Fire / Rock gains the most from Sun and Sand. CAP24 has to function on current Sun and Sand teams to properly abuse Sun and Sand, which means we can't just blindly throw every weather-related advantage at CAP24 and expect it to work well. There's more to this project than verifying that Fire-type attacks in the Sun are super powerful and Rock gets a cool Special Defense buff in Sand. If it doesn't work on weather teams, we didn't make the CAP correctly. Again, if this Sun abuser is forced out by Ash-Greninja, then Sun teams actually have no way to reliably beat a very well-played Ash-Greninja, particularly because U-turn Ash-Greninja is common with the rise of SpD Arghonaut.

I'm not opposed to Grass / Rock, but I definitely think that Grass / Fairy is better. Grass / Fairy addresses Sun and Sand's common weakness to Ash-Greninja extremely well. Grass-types like Tangrowth and Amoonguss commonly appear on Sand-based teams to deal with Tyranitar and Excadrill's shared weakness to Ground-type and Water-type attacks, but they all definitely struggle with Tomohawk. Thus, Fairy-typing helps with the Sand match up much better than Rock. Additionally, Sun-based teams struggle to break past Dragon-types like Mega Latios and Zygarde, which Fairy-typing, helps with. Grass / Fairy also means that CAP24 will not be complete set-up fodder for Hawlucha, which threatens both Sand and Sun teams. With appropriate coverage moves alongside this good STAB combination, I think Grass / Fairy has a good shot at addressing Sun and Sand's problems. The biggest problems with Grass / Fairy I can see are Heatran and switching into Tomohawk, but Heatran can be addressed much more easily than mandating certain teammates or certain abilities, and being weak to Flying-types but not weak to Ground-type moves, which is something we need to focus on, is a reality that many, many (but not all) typings face.

 

[Professor Mesquite]

Grass/Fairy runs prey to both Weathers’ sweepers though. Excadrill can Iron Head it to death, and [insert cliche Fire type weather abuser] can wreck it. In fact, this mon would be dead walled against Charizard Y, who can then proceed to kill your teammates. If we want to look into Grass/Fairy, we need to decide if a fast Tapu Bulu would have a chance in the CAP meta. The answer is a swingy yes, but perhaps the most matchup dependent mon I could imagine. Toxapex appears? CAP24 can’t do anything. Cawmadore appears? CAP24 wishes it had a typing that could hit it. Steel is the best and bulkiest type, and if CAP24 ends up with no capability to counter it, defining it as a Stallbreaker or sweeper is pointless.

This brings up some of the unique typings. Ground/Fairy and Fire/Fairy patch up the Steel problem, with Ground being able to take on Toxapex and Fire taking on Cawmadore. They lose the Water-Shuriken resistance in exchange for a weakness, but if we demand a mon resistant to water, we really box ourselves in to avoiding so much. Fire, Rock, and Ground are all wonderfully benefited by the weather combo, but they are also the only types weak to water. This deviation from traditional weather types isn’t bad, but reminds me of perhaps one of the worst weather abusers I saw legitimately talked about. Hail Jirachi.

Hail Jirachi is a relic from infinite hail days, and is what I can only define as ill suited. It was recommended to carry Leftovers to prevent chip, run Serene Grace, and spam Iron Head. Where does Hail fit in? To benefit from Chip damage. I’m not saying Hail teams didn’t benefit from it- they don’t have a lot to begin with, but now that weather is so finite, CAP24 needs to use it before it’s gone, and use it creatively. Thinking defensively is great, Pokémon tend to enjoy surviving more than one hit, but we have the opportunity to make a Pokémon explicitly for utilizing weather to full potential, and that potential is more than resisting Water moves. I think my main problem with rejecting fire or rock typings is that without them, we are just building an Ash-Greninja counter, rather than a weather user. Abilities that benefit from weather are all fine and dandy, but when they only help you against one threat (I guess Argohnaut too but that’s for another time) instead of the meta as a whole, you begin to move away from Drew’s concept too much, and begin a Decentralizer concept instead of a Dual-Weather user.