Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
It's time to discuss one of the most important decisions for CAP26; it's type! I'm excited for what GMars, CAP26's Typing Leader, has in store for this discussion. Please follow his posts carefully and DO NOT immediately propose type combinations. Wait for when he says so.
Below is the final post from the Concept Assessment thread. If you're not up to date with the process, be sure to read the concept at the bottom of the post as well!
And with that, Concept Assessment is a wrap! We've managed to pin down a lot of what we're aiming for, and identify a lot of things to keep in mind. We want to ensure a balance in the power we give CAP 26 where we incentivize Doom Desire without overshadowing it, help wallbreakers as a psuedo-hazard, and support switching and a team centric focus with our role as a pivot. I would like to wrap this up with a suggestion- if you haven't already, find time to play around with Future Sight mons, just to help with understanding the moves and what works with them.
Description - A Pokemon that makes usage of the 'delayed-attack' moves - Future Sight and/or Doom Desire
Justification - Given we're attempting to create a Pokemon that uses one of two specific moves, this is an Actualisation concept. Future Sight and Doom Desire are incredibly unique moves, which see limited usage in spite of their high base power, and ability to have a target Pokemon struck twice in the same turn. In using CAP26, the aim is to create a Pokemon that inspires a feeling of being able to trap opponents, to establish win-win situations.
Questions To Be Answered -
One Pokemon which has been seen to fairly reliably use Future Sight is Slowking. What can we learn from Slowking about what makes a viable user of Future Sight? On the same token, what has led Jirachi to not be effective at using Doom Desire, and other Pokemon to not effectively use Future Sight?
What is the optimum usage of Future Sight/Doom Desire, both on the turn immediately after using the move, and the turn on which the move will land?
Should the user of Future Sight/Doom Desire be primarily helping itself, or other teammates. If helping itself, what is the aim? If helping teammates, then what types of teammate?
Are Z-Future Sight and Z-Doom Desire mandatory, or just useful tools?
Explantion - Doom Desire is almost one we've done before, as people from the era of Cawmodore probably remember. Whilst little has changed since then, we have seen Future Sight get another power level increase since then.
This isn't a case of using a move which we know can't be used - we can look to Slowking (Future Sight) or Dialga (Balanced Hackmons, Doom Desire) for inspiration on what makes these moves workable. At the same time, we know that they're not automatic locks in spite of their high base power, allowing us room to explore what makes these moves often fall flat.
The beauty of Future Sight and Doom Desire as concept leads is that they don't massively restrict our ability to choose a direction right from the gate - focussing on these moves for their ability to strike twice in a single turn likely produces a Pokemon that is very different from focussing on these moves for their ability to force specific Pokemon out for a teammate to switch in. Whether we create a Pokemon that breaks walls, or pivots around, or supports a very specific partner, or something else entirely, these moves make for a concept that should be both interesting to implement, and with many avenues to explore.
Hey everyone, it's ya boy GEEEEEEEEMARS! From the conclusion of Concept Assessment, we agreed to focus on Doom Desire and the role of a pivot in order to promote switching and to have a team-centric focus. I've got two questions to start us off. One is a relatively simple question to ease us in, while the other should get to the meat of the concept as a whole. The answer to that question will determine a lot about how we go about this process, and what we learn from how we answer it will help guide us to fulfilling our concept successfully. With that, here they are:
1) Does CAP 26 need STAB on Doom Desire in order to use it effectively?
2) Should CAP 26 threaten switch-ins to Doom Desire by itself, or would it be beneficial to leave CAP 26 vulnerable to Doom Desire answers in order to draw them in, leaving threatening them up to its teammates? What are the ideal interactions CAP 26 can have with answers to Doom Desire, given the two-turn delay on this move? How can these interactions be affected by CAP 26's typing?
Please note: In order to dissuade early bandwagoning and to ensure we approach the second question with an open mind, I am disallowing discussion of specific type combinations until further notice. This restriction will be lifted as we get further into the typing process and will come along with another batch of questions to get a deeper dive into what we explore in this thread. With that, have fun!
---- Edited March 14th, 2019 second batch of questions for visibility:
I'm a really big fan of the discussion that's taken place so far. Summarizing what we've learned and the general community consensus:
STAB is crucial to making Doom Desire powerful enough to be relevant in the CAP meta and to fulfill our concept.
As NumberCruncher put it well: CAP 26 should be bad against most defensive switch-ins to Steel and good against offensive switch-ins to Steel, likely by threatening them through at least decent neutral hits with its secondary STAB. As snake_rattler mentioned, use this as a guiding principle, not as a binding 100% or 0%. Finding a good range of offensive Steel answers to remove and a nice set of defensive Steel answers to lose to on our own will both make CAP 26 effective as a Doom Desire user and as a choice when teambuilding.
Now, given this, I'm unlocking discussion of specific type pairings, and I have two more questions to go along with this:
3) During Concept Assessment, we came to the conclusion that a pivot is an ideal role for CAP 26. What typings would best allow CAP 26 to be an attractive choice in this role while teambuilding in the CAP meta? What typings should be avoided for success in this role?
4) We've come to a consensus that we would like CAP 26 to pressure offensive answers to Doom Desire by itself and that it would be ideal to allow CAP 26 to be vulnerable to defensive answers to Steel. What typings strike this balance well, specifically including what offensive Pokemon they help against and what defensive answers they allow?
Good answers to this question will focus on threats holistically and with an eye on specific Pokemon in the CAP meta, not generalizing off of types such as simply saying "Ground can beat Electric-types," for example. Here's a link to the CAP VR to help with identifying relevant mons for the CAP meta: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/usm-cap-metagame-viability-rankings.3626018/(Given the recent nerfing processes, take current rankings with a grain of salt until it can be updated)
Given we've determined that STAB is crucial to make Doom Desire successful while avoiding straining future stages, please do not suggest non-Steel dual typings in order to keep the thread on track unless you have extremely good reasoning for doing so (probably best to run it by us first).
1) Yes. Doom Desire, while certainly not weak at 140 bp, is not much stronger than essentially any usable attack would be with STAB. To get the desired power out of Doom Desire almost certainly requires STAB, and while this could hypothetically be compensated with higher Special Attack, that only makes other attacks potentially more dangerous, which gives the risk of Doom Desire being unnecessary. STAB ensures we focus as much power as we can into Doom Desire specifically, which is more likely to make the move itself run.
Besides, steel is a good type. Being steel is nice.
2) I think it would should be able to threaten a subsection or otherwise have passable neutral coverage. Fires, Steels, Waters, and Electrics all resist Doom Desire. Given that we want to be able to force and, ideally, predict, the switches our opponents will be making to deal with Doom Desire, it would be ideal if we could cut off at least some of those resists ourselves, as well as have the option to pose immediate threat to at least some pokemon. That's a long enough list of resists that there's actually a pretty substantial number of ways you could go with the choice on which to threaten and how, but that can wait for when specific typings are open.
Additionally, some things to consider with regards to typing is that we benefit enormously from the ability to switch in repeatedly, which typing plays a big factor in. If we do elect to be at least part steel, which I do think we should, that certainly brings a large selection of resists, not to mention (depending on the secondary type, if any) a neutrality to Stealth Rock, which certainly doesn't hurt.
In my mind our CAP's typing should help us with two main things:
1) Provide us with a lot of switchin opportunities
2) Provide us with a secondary STAB with which to force the opponent to switch
The need to provide a lot of switchin opportunities should be fairly self explanatory, as we function as a wallbreaker of sorts. By coming in and using doom desire, and then switching out to a teammate and forcing a checkmate, we create a situation where a wall may be broken. Like any good "wallbreaker", being able to switch in a lot of times benefits us.
The need for a good secondary STAB is a bit more complex, but it must be noted: if the new CAP is using Doom Desire every single time it comes in, like clockwork, it becomes very easy to play around; if an opponent knows we are going to click doom desire, they can easily bring in Heatran, Pajantom, Tapu Lele or any number of threatening wallbreakers, and just do more damage to our team than CAP 26 does to the opponent. For this reason, we need to be able to conceivably use our secondary STAB (if it even exists) to threaten the opponent's team. By having a useful secondary STAB, we create turns where Doom Desire is low risk for us, far lower risk than if our secondary stab was weak or easily resisted.
For an example of this, consider Slowbro in NU, which has a very useful, and potent Scald backing up its Future Sight, which notably hits several Future Sight resists such as Incineroar and Steelix for very heavy damage. This secondary STAB means that once it uses Future Sight, the opponent cannot just bring in Incineroar for free, and forces the opponent to guess what move it'll use, and when Slowbro may switch to a teammate. It may not be necessary for our secondary STAB to hit Doom Desire resists super effectively, but we need the ability to create free turns.
A third, and less necessary concern: As a steel type, one that may very well end up being bulky, we need the ability to take on Tapu Lele, at least its choiced versions. For this reason, I believe secondary typings that cannot harm Tapu Lele are somewhat risky, as they mean we're forced to run a secondary Steel move, or have a powerful non-stab attack to hit Psychics and Fairies with.
1) I believe CAP 26 needs STAB on Doom desire, simply because it is the most effective way to boost the move's power (one of the only, Stat boosts and most abilities only work if you are in when it hits). This is important because having a strong Doom Desire that can help us set up checkmate situations is, and should be one of the major draws to our pokemon. With a weak Doom Desire, it begs the question, why are you dedicating an entire team slot to Doom Desire when something like Spikes provides good supporting damage.
2) I believe that CAP26 should have the ability to dissuade Doom Desire resists from switching in, as this means that the opponent cannot take advantage of it nearly as easily, and gives CAP26 the ability to force a checkmate by itself. If it were lacking this ability, and was purely reliant on teammates the CAP would lose a lot of complexity, and honestly, become far harder to justify putting on a team. Yes, the ability to help out teammates, and force checkmates is useful, but so is the ability to force those situations yourself.
1) Does CAP 26 need STAB on Doom Desire in order to use it effectively?
I believe it does, because we have to incentivize using Doom Desire as much as possible, without constraining ability or stats in a way, even though I can see merit in using it as a self sufficient coverage move too. What I mean by this is that if we do not have STAB on Doom Desire, we will either be locked into Steelworker or absurdly high Special Attack. If we don't have either and no STAB on it, it'll be incredibly hard to justify running Doom Desire ever. Besides, Steel is also an incredibly good typing to fill the role of a pivot.
2) Should CAP 26 threaten switch-ins to Doom Desire by itself, or would it be beneficial to leave CAP 26 vulnerable to Doom Desire answers in order to draw them in, leaving threatening them up to its teammates? What are the ideal interactions CAP 26 can have with answers to Doom Desire, given the two-turn delay on this move? How can these interactions be affected by CAP 26's typing?
I believe that CAP 26 should be able to pressure some Doom Desire resists, because this will otherwise leave CAP 26 vulnerable and very easy to take advantage of otherwise. I say some, because I do not believe that it should be able to pressure every Steel-resistant Pokemon by itself, because this could potentially have a really overwhelming effect to an unhealthy degree. Additionally, it gives a lot more potential to force checkmate positions effectively, which is the main appeal to Doom Desire in my eyes. These interactions can definitely be influenced by CAP 26's secondary typing (assuming we get Steel), with something like Electric to pressure Arghonaut, Toxapex, and Heatran for example.
1) Does CAP 26 need STAB on Doom Desire in order to use it effectively?
I fully believe so. STAB greatly increases the power of our move not bringing in, making it harder for our checks to reliably be able to tank the move, which helps in the lose/lose situation we desire. I also think the move is required due to its ineffectiveness as a coverage move considering its delayed fashion, and we would have to largely nuke its movepool unless we risk it using other coverage or utility moves. STAB is goddamn neccesary for us to be actually using the move, otherwise we'd be running another move that has benefits that turn. STAB is a requirement on it to actually use Doom Desire.
2) Should CAP 26 threaten switch-ins to Doom Desire by itself, or would it be beneficial to leave CAP 26 vulnerable to Doom Desire answers in order to draw them in, leaving threatening them up to its teammates? What are the ideal interactions CAP 26 can have with answers to Doom Desire, given the two-turn delay on this move? How can these interactions be affected by CAP 26's typing?
It should be able to threaten some threats with Doom Desire, but not all of them. Team interaction is going to be important here, but being completely shut down by certain switch-in means it will not be able to at all use Doom Desire effectively, especially with the weird Steel-typing that the move has. We should be able to do at least something to our checks aside from just Doom Desire and stall for turns. As such, I think it is important we have a way to cripple incoming switch-ins to our move, either with some form of status or some other form of crippling/weakening the foes like hazards. This also offers a way of being able to be more mutual with our team aside from just being a pivot, as it allows us to better add something for them as well.
1) Without STAB, the move becomes harder to incentivise. The alternative is to encourage Rocks and Fairies to switch in, but making a lure is harder and Steel has other advantages too.
2) While it can rely on a partner, being able to pressure at least some Steel switch ins makes its job much easier and makes it harder to out predict.
I do not see this as one of the easier concepts. We don't need to make our job harder.
1)Does CAP 26 need STAB on Doom Desire in order to use it effectively?
To echo the general consensus I strongly believe that yes Doom Desire requires stab on the attack to be a relevant move. It is not good coverage, and Steel isn't the best attacking type so it definitely needs stab to be run.
2) Should CAP 26 threaten switch-ins to Doom Desire by itself, or would it be beneficial to leave CAP 26 vulnerable to Doom Desire answers in order to draw them in, leaving threatening them up to its teammates? What are the ideal interactions CAP 26 can have with answers to Doom Desire, given the two-turn delay on this move? How can these interactions be affected by CAP 26's typing?
I really like this particular set of questions and think it will lead to very valuable discussion going forward about what this Pokemon can aim to achieve.
I personally believe that the ideal way to build CAP 26 will be to have it not want to beat the Pokemon that resist Doom Desire by itself but rather to encourage team mates to do so. My main reason for this is to continue with our theme of forcing lose-lose situation for our opponents. In a nutshell, I believe that by encouraging switch ins that resist Doom Desire, we will be able to pivot into checks and counters against the respective Steel-resist Pokemon, and be able to force the Doom Desire splash damage onto neutral targets, maximising damage.
If we think about the main S and A rank Pokemon that resist Doom Desire, we see Heatran, Arghonaut, Celesteela, Ferrothorn, Volkraken, Kitsunoh, Krilowatt, Magnezone, Toxapex and Zapdos. While Greninja and Kartana also resist it their lack of bulk will lead to 2HKO situations anyway assuming that we have base special attack of 95 or higher. Assuming that at the very least CAP 26 receives Steel-typing for the purposes of stab, despite resisting Doom Desire, the majority of these Pokemon will not be able to exert a tremendous amount of pressure on CAP 26.
I have run some calculations with Silvally Steel to stand in for CAP 26 to demonstrate the effective power that super effective hits from these common meta game Steel-type resists may have upon a hypothetical CAP 26 with a Steel-typing and maximised HP.
252 SpA Volkraken Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Silvally-Steel: 386-456 (97.9 - 115.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock
252+ SpA Heatran Magma Storm vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Silvally-Steel: 372-440 (94.4 - 111.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock and trapping damage
252 SpA Life Orb Krilowatt Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Silvally-Steel: 198-234 (50.2 - 59.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252+ SpA Magnezone Hidden Power Fire vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Silvally-Steel: 150-178 (38 - 45.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock
0 SpA Zapdos Heat Wave vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Silvally-Steel: 172-204 (43.6 - 51.7%) -- 64.5% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
0 Atk Arghonaut Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Silvally-Steel: 164-194 (41.6 - 49.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
What we can immediately see from this list is, apart from Heatran and Volkraken, none of the Pokemon can reliably OHKO CAP 26 with a Steel-typing and maximum HP. Even Volkraken and Heatran may fail to cleanly OHKO with more Sp. Def investment. The purpose of these calculations is to ultimately show that depending on the level of bulk we give a Steel-typed CAP 26, unless its secondary type gives it a 4x weakness to one of these particular attacking types, it is not a massive detriment that CAP 26 is unable to reliably threaten out common Steel-type resistant meta game Pokemon with its secondary stab, as it will in most cases be able to set up a Doom Desire and swap out without being killed.
To come back to my earlier point about forcing lose-lose situations, if we focus on giving CAP 26 a type that can reliably threaten Pokemon that resist Doom Desire we will likely be wasting a slot that can easily be filled by a teammate, as we need to be drawing these Pokemon in as we cast Doom Desire to set up our lose-lose situations for the opponent.
If we look at the following hypothetical sequence, we can see that this lose-lose situation for the opponent is quite dependent on drawing in a Doom Desire resist:
Turn 1: User brings CAP 26 into a resisted hit
Turn 2: CAP 26 casts Doom Desire, opponent brings in Doom Desire resist
Turn 3: Opponent uses a move that at best can 2HKO CAP 26, user swaps CAP 26 out in some capacity to a check or counter
Turn 4: The user's counter Pokemon either destroys the Doom Desire resist or chips a switch in that is then taken care of by the Doom Desire damage.
If we follow the same situation but focus instead on luring in a Pokemon that isn't resistant to Doom desire we end up with a subtly different situation.
Turn 1: User brings CAP 26 into a resisted hit
Turn 2: CAP 26 casts Doom Desire, opponent brings in a strong offensive Pokemon that does not resist Doom Desire
Turn 3: Opponent uses a move that can definitely 2HKO CAP 26, user swaps CAP 26 out in some capacity to a check or counter
Turn 4: The user's counter Pokemon either destroys the Doom Desire neutral Pokemon or chips a switch in that then takes resisted damage from Doom Desire.
While the results may ultimately appear quite similar in very vague turns, we can see that Turn 4 is a make or break point of momentum in the second scenario as the doom desire splash damage is more likely to hit a Pokemon that resists it, and subsequently not be able to guarantee that the opponent is losing a Pokemon or at the very least crippling one. While both scenarios above are both quite vague and can obviously be played around through good predicts, I think it highlights sufficiently that the power of Doom Desire comes from doing as much damage as possible, and as such rests on Steel-type resists being forced out on the turn that is going to hit. It is for this reason that I think we should be selecting a type that has a strong level of defensive utility to maximise the Pokemon that it can switch in to and set up Doom Desires, and subsequently won't discourage common Steel type resists from switching in too significantly. Ideally, this secondary typing would provide a range of neutral offensive power to CAP 26 that can complement Doom Desire and subsequently force out the Pokemon that CAP 26 will be easily coming in on.
1) I might sound like a broken record, but yeah, I feel as if CAP 26 needs a steel typing. Part of why many of us voted for this concept is the openness and space for creativity that it affords, and we significantly reduce what we can do in terms of stats and ability if we don't give CAP 26 a STAB Doom Desire.
Modedit: Please do not suggest typings yet.
Edit: I'm super sorry. I can't read today. I somehow missed the many instances of the rule I broke. My bad.
Anyway, I'll just restate what I said for Question 2 besides my last paragraph, which was the bad one.
2) I feel like CAP 26 should not be able to deal with all of the many steel resists on its own with secondary coverage and secondary STAB moves. One of my fears, however, is that bulky Heatran, the regenerator mons, and some of the tier's powerful special attackers in Krilowatt and Volkraken will just shrug off CAP 26's Doom Desires if CAP 26 doesn't have solid neutral coverage with its secondary STAB. While I do support the concept of CAP 26 being a bulky pivot, forcing bad scenarios for opponents, and helping other teammates pick up kills, I do think that a poor offensive secondary typing would make CAP 26 a tad bit too passive against many of the tier's biggest threats. I think that we should be looking into ways to consistently do substantial and reliable but not immediately threatening chip damage to an offensive steel's hard counters. This is especially important against Krilowatt, which doesn't take hazards, and Heatran, which can run specially defensive variants with leftovers to offset any damage done by Doom Desire. Each of the switch-ins that I have mentioned are immediate, hard to switch into threats that are hard to pivot in on for many teams.
What I'm trying to say is that while CAP 26 should be based on creating openings for its team and not necessarily for itself, it needs a secondary STAB that dissuades powerful Pokemon from switching directly into it and going to town, because our new pivot should not completely fold to the type of Pokemon that are traditionally checked by pivots. CAP 26 should retain some hard counters, of course, but we need to find a way to reduce the number of top-tier counters and convert them into checks through a good, but not great, secondary offensive STAB move.
1) Does CAP 26 need STAB on Doom Desire in order to use it effectively?
Yes, this move is pretty difficult to justify, without the STAB boost, it will be harder to balance CAP26.
2) Should CAP 26 threaten switch-ins to Doom Desire by itself, or would it be beneficial to leave CAP 26 vulnerable to Doom Desire answers in order to draw them in, leaving threatening them up to its teammates? What are the ideal interactions CAP 26 can have with answers to Doom Desire, given the two-turn delay on this move? How can these interactions be affected by CAP 26's typing?
If CAP26 could threaten the Doom Desire switch-ins, they will have less opportunites to stop CAP26, so they should be threatened by CAP26 teammates.
1)Does CAP 26 need STAB on Doom Desire in order to use it effectively?
Part of CAP is to challenge gut feelings with data. My gut feeling is yes, but I decided to run some calcs. The following are using a 100 SpA Modest non-Steel 'mon's Doom Desire against multiple targets. In this case I used Nasty Plot Mew as my base for ease of math but it could be anything. We haven't actually done a threat assessment yet, but I would argue the goal is to scare Steel-weak folks away, hard. if Doom Desire fails to do more than 75% I'd argue it simply isn't worth the turn on compared to attacking twice with some other move. Between you and me I don't think it is unreasonable to want a clean OHKO off of this, but I'm willing to take 75% as it means DD + Chip kills the target. Let's take a look at how non-STAB 100 SpA Modest max investment Doom Desire does versus M-Tyranitar, M-Diancie, Tapu Lele, Jumbao, and M-Crucibelle (aka the highest-ranked Rock and Fairy types):
252+ SpA Mew Doom Desire vs. 168 HP / 0 SpD Tyranitar-Mega in Sand: 160-190 (41.7 - 49.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252+ SpA Mew Doom Desire vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Diancie-Mega: 516-608 (214.1 - 252.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ SpA Mew Doom Desire vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Tapu Lele: 248-292 (88.2 - 103.9%) -- 25% chance to OHKO
252+ SpA Mew Doom Desire vs. 0 HP / 96+ SpD Jumbao: 226-266 (69.5 - 81.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Mew Doom Desire vs. 252 HP / 168+ SpD Jumbao: 210-248 (54.1 - 63.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Mew Doom Desire vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Jumbao: 272-320 (83.6 - 98.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Mew Doom Desire vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Crucibelle-Mega: 230-272 (64.9 - 76.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Conclusion: We reliably hit the benchmark of 75% on a DD against half of these targets. Diancie is easy money, however, as with a 4x Steel Weakness Hidden Power Steel is 50% to OHKO. We notably fail to do much to disincentive T-tar from staying in, and we struggle against M-Crucibelle and Defensive Jumbao. We fail to get a reliable OHKO against anything other than M-Diancie (although we're probably "close enough for government work" against Tapu Lele).
EDIT: Was pointed out in Discord that I used the "old" defensive spread for Jumbao instead of the more common special wall set found in the strategy 'dex. I have kept the old calcs, but added new ones with the more common 252 HP/168+ SpD that show it is even more difficult for a non-STAB Doom Desire to hurt this particular 'mon.
As some extra math, I decided to take a look at how we do versus prolific Ground types as well. We probably wouldn't be a switch-in to Grounds (especially not as a Steel-type) but it'd be of interest if non-STAB DD is something that could seriously maim the likes of Landorus-Therian, Garchomp, and Colossoil:
252+ SpA Mew Doom Desire vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Landorus-Therian: 167-197 (52.3 - 61.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Mew Doom Desire vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Landorus-Therian: 168-198 (43.9 - 51.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Mew Doom Desire vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Garchomp: 160-189 (44.6 - 52.7%) -- 25.8% chance to 2HKO
252+ SpA Mew Doom Desire vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Colossoil: 183-216 (44.9 - 53%) -- 86.7% chance to 2HKO after burn damage
252+ SpA Mew Doom Desire vs. 0 HP / 160 SpD Assault Vest Colossoil: 100-118 (24.5 - 28.9%) -- 99.7% chance to 4HKO
This doesn't look great, as it ultimately doesn't do much more than a powerful neutral STAB hit over two or three turns. Now, obviously these matchips could change if we choose a type to beat these 'mons (say we make our 'mon a Grass or Poison type) - but our Concept is not "make an ultimate counter to rock, ground, and fairy types". Our concept is "make Doom Desire the star of the show" and without STAB, I'm not sure from these calcs it will be. We can obviously aim higher on our SpA stat or give our 'mon certain very specific abilities to compensate, but given that we want to be a Pivot I think it will threaten to make this 'mon straight-up unviable if we have to sink even more into our offensive stats or give up our ability slot to boost DD. Typing is the easiest way to get a little extra muscle, and it makes sense to have STAB on Doom Desire to ensure it is a major component of 26's kit.
2) Should CAP 26 threaten switch-ins to Doom Desire by itself, or would it be beneficial to leave CAP 26 vulnerable to Doom Desire answers in order to draw them in, leaving threatening them up to its teammates? What are the ideal interactions CAP 26 can have with answers to Doom Desire, given the two-turn delay on this move? How can these interactions be affected by CAP 26's typing?
From my answer to question 1, let us assume we have a Steel-typed CAP 26. I think the answer to this is "both". If CAP 26 has a typing that leaves it unable to deal with ANY Switch-in to Doom Desire, I worry it won't be a viable 'mon or that Doom Desire won't be a viable attack, which is a failure. Conversely, if we somehow utilize Movepool + Ability + Typing to answer EVERY DD switch-in, we may make a 'mon that is too powerful and centralizing and will also fail at our "side-project" of utilizing DD as a momentum-building move to assist teammates in "check-mating" threats. So I think we want CAP to be able to answer some switch-ins on its own, but still have a few that it cannot answer and needs team support on. I also think that it's safest to err on the side of "too many answers" rather than too few - my calcs make me worried that even with STAB or a more generous SpA or a crazy ability, using Doom Desire is a tough sell. Additionally, if we try to push CAP 26 to having a very specific niche (like being, say, a "perfect partner" to Caribolt by utilizing DD to lure targets) we threaten to make our 'mon unviable as we have with so many "partner" concepts of ages past. A more unpredictable and versatile 26 is a 26 that's more likely to actually be used.
Typing is of course not the only way to influence these interactions - some switch-ins have a double weakness we can exploit with movepool alone wthout STAB. But typing is a key part of this, and I believe we need a typing that helps us cleanly answer at least 50% of the switch-ins to Doom Desire on our own power.
1) Does CAP 26 need STAB on Doom Desire in order to use it effectively?
CAP26 is probably going to need Steel Typing. Doom Desire has really bad coverage typing, and also doesn't quite hit hard enough neutrally to justify the turn of set-up without STAB.
2) Should CAP 26 threaten switch-ins to Doom Desire by itself, or would it be beneficial to leave CAP 26 vulnerable to Doom Desire answers in order to draw them in, leaving threatening them up to its teammates? What are the ideal interactions CAP 26 can have with answers to Doom Desire, given the two-turn delay on this move? How can these interactions be affected by CAP 26's typing?
If CAP26 is a Steel type and also has secondary typing that lets it beat Steel's resists, why wouldn't it just run a Flash Cannon set, since switching in against Flash Cannon is never safe?
My thinking is that CAP26 should be bad against the defensive switch-ins to Steel and good against offensive switch-ins to Steel. I say this because we're filling the role of a pivot. If something like Toxapex comes in on your Doom Desire turn, you can pretty safely switch pivot against Toxapex. Conversely, if Volkraken comes in on your Doom Desire, you can't safely pivot, because nothing wants to take an Analytic-boosted Fire Blast from Volkraken.
1) Does CAP 26 need STAB on Doom Desire in order to use it effectively?
I actually disagree with the consensus and think that, while Steel would be very beneficial to this mon, it isn't strictly necessary. Since I'm the only one so far who isn't against non-Steel typings, I thought I'd go over the pros and cons of this option. I think the main pro of a non steel typing is that we'd have greater control of what we can switch into and what we can pressure and I think this is the only real reason to consider a non STAB typing over a STAB one. Now onto the cons:
Lack of STAB severely limits the power ceiling of Doom Desire. To put this in perspective, the highest offensive stat of any non mega Pokemon is Kartana's attack stat of 181. 181 SpA with 252+ non STAB is equivalent to a SpA stat of 104 with 252+ and STAB
This power discrepancy cannot effectively be offset by the ability Steelworker, Steelworker only works if the user of the move is on the field when the move hits which is something we're trying to avoid with this mon, so if a non Steel type gets suggested, don't think we can "save it" in the ability stage by giving it Steelworker.
This would also mean we need to be more careful about which STAB moves we give it in the movepool stage, because if its STABs are too powerful relative to Doom Desire, it has little incentive to use the move
Steel is also a poor offensive type, so finding a type combination that would want it as coverage would be very difficult(though not impossible imo)
Due to all of these cons, any non Steel typing would have to be essentially perfect, it would need to be able to switch in to and threaten exactly what we want this Pokemon to and also be a typing that would actually run Doom Desire. I will admit this might not be possible, especially with Steel in particular, but I think it's worth leaving the door open to the possibility of non Steel options and I'll see if I can come up with something good.
2) Should CAP 26 threaten switch-ins to Doom Desire by itself, or would it be beneficial to leave CAP 26 vulnerable to Doom Desire answers in order to draw them in, leaving threatening them up to its teammates? What are the ideal interactions CAP 26 can have with answers to Doom Desire, given the two-turn delay on this move? How can these interactions be affected by CAP 26's typing?
NumberCruncher basically took the words right out of my mouth(or fingers ig, that idiom doesn't really translate well to text).
1) Does CAP 26 need STAB on Doom Desire in order to use it effectively?
I don't have much of value to add. I agree that STAB is very necessary to encourage Doom Desire. Steel type has additional defensive utility useful to a pivot, anyway.
2) Should CAP 26 threaten switch-ins to Doom Desire by itself, or would it be beneficial to leave CAP 26 vulnerable to Doom Desire answers in order to draw them in, leaving threatening them up to its teammates? What are the ideal interactions CAP 26 can have with answers to Doom Desire, given the two-turn delay on this move? How can these interactions be affected by CAP 26's typing?
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7nu-424750
Here, we can see some pretty optimal use of a delayed move, showing what we want to emulate. First, slowbro uses Future Sight while sandslash protects. Slowbro switches to passimian, and sandslash switches to scrafty.
The opponent is faced with a choice; either let scrafty die to Passimian, or switch in Decidueye and tank the future sight.
This is the situation we want to be able to set up, and typing plays a HUGE role here. Sandslash switches into a pokemon immune to future sight, and slowbro switches into a pokemon that can kill the first.
Because of the sequence of events in this best-case scenario, we don't want the pokemon that resist Doom Desire to also be the full counters to the user - if they were, they'd come in sooner - possibly while you're setting future sight. This isn't terribly desirable - it means the pokemon you are switching into is taking a hit. But at the same time, we don't want to actually fully deal with those pokemon - or else they wouldn't switch in at all. NU Scrafty is a superb example of this; as a physical hitter it doesn't exactly want to take a scald if it doesn't have to, but it's also not entirely helpless against Slowbro.
Our opportunities to actually use Doom Desire need to come from somewhere else; we need to be able to threaten other pokemon into switching out to net a free turn and typing is possibly the most elegant way to do this. If our secondary typing hits a fair slew of the meta, we should be able to get plenty of free turns to set off Doom Desire.
So basically, what I think we need out of a secondary typing to make Doom Desire function is this;
1. It needs to be neutral against most of the pokemon that resist Doom Desire. These pokemon should be wary of our secondary STAB, but not terrified.
2. It needs to be a good enough attacking type to threaten a variety of pokemon and give e us opportunities to set Doom Desire. In NU, psychic/water is excellent coverage - we want a type that tempers steel's weaknesses from an offensive standpoint. Ideally, one good enough that we don't need to run flash cannon on top of DD.
Steelworker only works if the user of the move is on the field when the move hits which is something we're trying to avoid with this mon, so if a non Steel type gets suggested, don't think we can "save it" in the ability stage by giving it Steelworker.
Source? I’ve not been able to confirm this in smogon’s research threads or anywhere else. PS mechanics are not a source btw. They’ve been wrong before, especially about esoteric mechanics that don’t actually exist as legal possibilities in-game, at least without skill swap etc coming into play.
The only mechanic I’m aware of around Steelworker that’s interesting is that it applies its boost on top of STAB ie we could do both Steel and Steelworker. But that’s not relevant right now.
Knowing for sure whether or not DD is boosted even after leaving the field would certainly be relevant, since it could open up other typings if the community felt a non-Steel typing was better (potentially making it a better pivot and/or giving it 3 STABs), albeit at the cost of basically nullifying the ability stage.
I’m not too keen on railroading the ability, but it’s at least worth discussing if Steelworker could enable a better-suited non-Steel typing. Knowing this mechanic would help.
Source? I’ve not been able to confirm this in smogon’s research threads or anywhere else. PS mechanics are not a source btw. They’ve been wrong before, especially about esoteric mechanics that don’t actually exist as legal possibilities in-game, at least without skill swap etc coming into play.
The only mechanic I’m aware of around Steelworker that’s interesting is that it applies its boost on top of STAB ie we could do both Steel and Steelworker. But that’s not relevant right now.
Knowing for sure whether or not DD is boosted even after leaving the field would certainly be relevant, since it could open up other typings if the community felt a non-Steel typing was better (potentially making it a better pivot and/or giving it 3 STABs), albeit at the cost of basically nullifying the ability stage.
I’m not too keen on railroading the ability, but it’s at least worth discussing if Steelworker could enable a better-suited non-Steel typing. Knowing this mechanic would help.
I tested it on cart to see if the PS implementation is correct and it appears to be, I recorded a vid myself, but I'll see if there's a better quality test out there.
1) Does CAP 26 need STAB on Doom Desire in order to use it effectively?
I think that having STAB on Doom Desire is absolutely necessary to use it to its fullest extent, as without STAB, Steel is a very mediocre offensive type. This doesn't mean that a non-Steel CAP 26 will never use Doom Desire, as we can make it so that Steel coverage is particularly good alongside our STABs (For example, a typing very vulnerable to Fairy-types would greatly appreciate the ability to eliminate them). However, in this cases its likely that CAP 26 will use Doom Desire only to nuke would be checks with Steelium-Z, and will rarely use the non-Z form of the move. as a Doom Desire without a boost its unlikely to be more effective than spamming our STAB moves, especially if you had the opportunity to lure a Pokemon that resisted them. I don't think this is an outcome we want, because even though CAP 26 would technically use Doom Desire, it would do it in a way in which it would not explore what the move is truly capable of.
2) Should CAP 26 threaten switch-ins to Doom Desire by itself, or would it be beneficial to leave CAP 26 vulnerable to Doom Desire answers in order to draw them in, leaving threatening them up to its teammates? What are the ideal interactions CAP 26 can have with answers to Doom Desire, given the two-turn delay on this move? How can these interactions be affected by CAP 26's typing?
Because there are so many Pokemon that reliably resist Steel-type (Heatran, Celesteela, Arghonaut, Ferrothorn and Volkraken, and those are only the ones ranked A+ or higher in the VR), I think that we need to reduce the amount of these Pokemon that can naturally check CAP 26 because if the opponent has too many ways to play around it, its effectiveness will be very limited. Despite that, we should still let some of them wall CAP 26, as we shouldn't want something too overwhelming, especially considering that one of our teammates should ideally be able to assist us in breaking the opponent. Basically, if we pick Steel as our first type, our second STAB should be able to reduce the number of safe switch ins, by hitting them with at least neutral damage.
I agree that CAP 26 absolutely needs the Steel typing in order to utilize Doom Desire effectively, especially since CAP 26 is moving towards the role of being a pivot, which can utilize the multiple resists that the typing carries in the metagame.
2) Should CAP 26 threaten switch-ins to Doom Desire by itself, or would it be beneficial to leave CAP 26 vulnerable to Doom Desire answers in order to draw them in, leaving threatening them up to its teammates? What are the ideal interactions CAP 26 can have with answers to Doom Desire, given the two-turn delay on this move? How can these interactions be affected by CAP 26's typing?
I am of the opinion that it would do us good if we are able to pressure certain switchins into Doom Desire by itself. If the CAP actually cannot put pressure on any Doom Desire switch in, we run the serious risk of CAP 26 either dropping Doom Desire from its viable sets or even worse, having a very mediocre / borderline unviable stance within the metagame (depending on Movepools, abilities and a wide variety of factors). However, on the flip side, it should not be able to effortlessly punish EVERY viable switchin, lest we create an overdominating presence within the metagame.
If we can strike that key balance, in addition to keeping in mind the points made by Birkal and SHSP in Concept Assessment, we can hit the perfect stride that which we want to achieve with CAP 26.
Source? I’ve not been able to confirm this in smogon’s research threads or anywhere else. PS mechanics are not a source btw. They’ve been wrong before, especially about esoteric mechanics that don’t actually exist as legal possibilities in-game, at least without skill swap etc coming into play.
The only mechanic I’m aware of around Steelworker that’s interesting is that it applies its boost on top of STAB ie we could do both Steel and Steelworker. But that’s not relevant right now.
Knowing for sure whether or not DD is boosted even after leaving the field would certainly be relevant, since it could open up other typings if the community felt a non-Steel typing was better (potentially making it a better pivot and/or giving it 3 STABs), albeit at the cost of basically nullifying the ability stage.
I’m not too keen on railroading the ability, but it’s at least worth discussing if Steelworker could enable a better-suited non-Steel typing. Knowing this mechanic would help.
Frostbiyt is correct on this, though it is not some Steelworker specific interaction. Neither abilities nor items have any effect on the damage of Doom Desire if the user is not on the field when the damage is done. While this will be more relevant later on when we actually get to the ability stage, with regard to typing, if our general goal involves hitting Pokemon with Doom Desire after we switch out, the only way we could make up for the loss of power from not having STAB would be in the stats stage.
Personally, I think that this power is necessary enough and that it would be unreasonable to expect a 50% increase in our SpA above what we would otherwise need, and as such, I think having STAB is pretty much a necessity.
As for the other questions, while I think it is important that we are not so impotent that tons of top threats just shut us down, I think that, to the extent that we can, we absolutely should not be trying to take on Doom Desire switch ins. The entire point of Doom Desire is to create a no win situation for the opponent in two turn, but that is only worthwhile if you can't just do better before that time comes around. If you can just beat the things that would want to take a powerful steel type attack, why are you not just doing that. A KOed Pokemon now is almost always going to be better than a potentially KOed Pokemon in two turns. If we actually have the ability to take on most of these threats, we have no reason to run Doom Desire, much less use it, unless our movepool is so pathetic that we have no other options. But if that is the case, its probably simply the case that we have a bad Pokemon not worth using at all. So instead of focusing on taking on Steel resists, other than perhaps the very frail ones, we should focus on trying to stop ourselves from being countered by too many good Pokemon that do not resist Steel. Limit the opponents options to try to force them into the situations Doom Desire is designed for.
These thoughts are pretty much mirroring what other people have said by now, but I figured I'd post them anyway.
1) Does CAP 26 need STAB on Doom Desire in order to use it effectively?
I think CAP 26 needs to have STAB on Doom Desire to end up actually using it. Without STAB, Doom Desire becomes a lot less useful and would probably be simply not used if CAP 26 has access to any other STAB moves. Doom Desire is effectively weaker than any other viable STAB move due to it's delay, so having STAB makes it worth actually using it over other, more immediate options.
2) Should CAP 26 threaten switch-ins to Doom Desire by itself, or would it be beneficial to leave CAP 26 vulnerable to Doom Desire answers in order to draw them in, leaving threatening them up to its teammates? What are the ideal interactions CAP 26 can have with answers to Doom Desire, given the two-turn delay on this move? How can these interactions be affected by CAP 26's typing?
I believe that having CAP 26 lure in Doom Desire answers only to be threatened by other teammates, creating the often-mentioned checkmate scenario, is one of the most viable ways to go about CAP 26. However, if it only lured in enemies, I think it would be pretty niche and possibly fall prey to losing viability like some partner concepts, so CAP 26's typing will determine which pokemon feel safe when switching in to Doom Desire, so I think that the typing should be able to actively threaten pokemon we do not want to come in while simultaneously luring in other pokemon in one way or another. This would most likely be done by selecting a typing which is weak to or is not effective against the pokemon we want to lure in for teammates to beat. I think choosing some pokemon that CAP 26 should beat and some that it should lure would help with choosing a good typing.
Frostbiyt is correct on this, though it is not some Steelworker specific interaction. Neither abilities nor items have any effect on the damage of Doom Desire if the user is not on the field when the damage is done. While this will be more relevant later on when we actually get to the ability stage, with regard to typing, if our general goal involves hitting Pokemon with Doom Desire after we switch out, the only way we could make up for the loss of power from not having STAB would be in the stats stage.
Thanks for confirming. And reading through some BH Dialga related posts, since that's a meta where a Doom Desire user does have such items/abilities (Tinted Lens, in particular), this does seem to be the case.
In that case, yup the CAP absolutely must be Steel type. It is unreasonable to assume we can make Doom Desire usable without it. Relying on Steelworker later on would 1) not work with the CAP being a pivot, and 2) railroading the ability is a bad idea anyway.
In terms of the second question, yes the CAP should be able to threaten some portion of its potential switchins. If it can be switched into by every electric, water, and steel type in the game, there is no way you can have a teammate that takes advantage of every possible CAP 26 counter. You can't possibly benefit from your opponent switching in ANY of Heatran, Arghonaut, Volkraken, Celesteela, Caribolt, etc. If CAP 26 doesn't narrow this list down it will be unusable.
Frostbiyt is correct on this, though it is not some Steelworker specific interaction. Neither abilities nor items have any effect on the damage of Doom Desire if the user is not on the field when the damage is done. While this will be more relevant later on when we actually get to the ability stage, with regard to typing, if our general goal involves hitting Pokemon with Doom Desire after we switch out, the only way we could make up for the loss of power from not having STAB would be in the stats stage.
1) Does CAP 26 need STAB on Doom Desire in order to use it effectively?
Absolutely. To provide a little context, let's check out a couple of sample calcs. Given that Jumbao, which is weak to Steel-type attacks, should take heavy damage from Doom Desire, let's look at a Base 115, fully invested, STAB Doom Desire:
252+ SpA Silvally-Steel Doom Desire vs. 252 HP / 168+ SpD Jumbao: 348-410 (89.6 - 105.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
If we remove STAB from the equation, to reach the same benchmark, we need 198 Base Special Attack:
252+ SpA Silvally Doom Desire vs. 252 HP / 168+ SpD Jumbao: 348-410 (89.6 - 105.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
While there were a couple of assumptions made for these calcs, Jumbao is a reasonable target for CAP26 to hit, and the point is to highlight the how ridiculously we'd have to increase CAP26's Special Attack to compensate for its lack of Steel-type STAB, as that was the only variable changed between the two calcs. I think it's obvious how having a Special Attack that high wouldn't be conducive to having a stat spread for a pivot and how we'd have to bend over backwards to compensate otherwise. CAP26 should have STAB on Doom Desire.
2) Should CAP 26 threaten switch-ins to Doom Desire by itself, or would it be beneficial to leave CAP 26 vulnerable to Doom Desire answers in order to draw them in, leaving threatening them up to its teammates? What are the ideal interactions CAP 26 can have with answers to Doom Desire, given the two-turn delay on this move? How can these interactions be affected by CAP 26's typing?
A lot of people have displayed this sentiment, but I'll repeat it again. We should be able to deal with some of Doom Desire's switch-ins, but not all of them at once. This could be through incomplete coverage or other utility moves, but I think a good secondary STAB will be very necessary to accomplish this concept. If CAP26 exclusively uses Doom Desire on the turn it comes in, it'll become very predictable and lose a lot of value on Doom Desire. However, if it can punish the opposing Heatran, Toxapex, or Zapdos switch-in (examples), it will be much, much better as a Pokemon in the metagame, that's worthwhile adding to a team. NumberCruncher's statement of hitting offensive switch-ins and leaving CAP26 more vulnerable to defensive switch-ins is a great general statement, but I don't think we should take it as "hit 100% of the offensive switch-ins, 0% of the defensive." It's, imo, a good general guiding principle.
e: removed some thoughts that I want to share at a more appropriate time
I also agree with the above posters that we should definitely have STAB Doom Desire. Doom Desire is a lot less threatening without STAB, which is counter-intuitive to the lose-lose situations we are trying to force for the opposing team. Furthermore, a Pokemon with two non-Doom Desire STABs would probably find a better coverage move or utility move to use that's not Doom Desire, which is already a concern that's been expressed with STAB, so I think it is a dangerous road to go down. Relying on Steelworker (which doesn't even work it you switch out) to carry us in the ability stage is disastrous to both the typing and ability process, and having STAB would give us more options for abilities, still including Steelworker, but not relying on it. Also there's not many typing that would use Steel coverage, especially one that wanted it enough to use a delayed move of all things.
As for the second question, I agree with some users that we should try to pressure some Doom Desire switch-ins, but not all. I think the real question here is what DD switch ins we should exactly pressure. I asked this question on Discord and didn’t get a lot of response, but I agree with the sentiment that we should generally try to target offensive mons while being checked by passive mons. Which offensive and passive Pokemon should be exceptions to this rule I think is an idea we should touch more on, and I don’t have any concrete ideas at the moment.
I'm a really big fan of the discussion that's taken place so far. Summarizing what we've learned and the general community consensus:
STAB is crucial to making Doom Desire powerful enough to be relevant in the CAP meta and to fulfill our concept.
As NumberCruncher put it well: CAP 26 should be bad against most defensive switch-ins to Steel and good against offensive switch-ins to Steel, likely by threatening them through at least decent neutral hits with its secondary STAB. As snake_rattler mentioned, use this as a guiding principle, not as a binding 100% or 0%. Finding a good range of offensive Steel answers to remove and a nice set of defensive Steel answers to lose to on our own will both make CAP 26 effective as a Doom Desire user and as a choice when teambuilding.
Now, given this, I'm unlocking discussion of specific type pairings, and I have two more questions to go along with this:
3) During Concept Assessment, we came to the conclusion that a pivot is an ideal role for CAP 26. What typings would best allow CAP 26 to be an attractive choice in this role while teambuilding in the CAP meta? What typings should be avoided for success in this role?
4) We've come to a consensus that we would like CAP 26 to pressure offensive answers to Doom Desire by itself and that it would be ideal to allow CAP 26 to be vulnerable to defensive answers to Steel. What typings strike this balance well, specifically including what offensive Pokemon they help against and what defensive answers they allow?
Good answers to this question will focus on threats holistically and with an eye on specific Pokemon in the CAP meta, not generalizing off of types such as simply saying "Ground can beat Electric-types," for example. Here's a link to the CAP VR to help with identifying relevant mons for the CAP meta: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/usm-cap-metagame-viability-rankings.3626018/(Given the recent nerfing processes, take current rankings with a grain of salt until it can be updated)
Given we've determined that STAB is crucial to make Doom Desire successful while avoiding straining future stages, please do not suggest non-Steel dual typings in order to keep the thread on track unless you have extremely good reasoning for doing so (probably best to run it by us first).
