CAP 28 - Part 4 - Primary Ability Discussion

[Zetalz]

Most of the abilities I'm all for have been supported ad nauseum so instead, I come to rain on Triage & Shield Dust's parades. To start I agree with user's like reach and spoo that Triage's benefits are far more so in regards to the general match-up against offense rather than the types of teams and targets we've been steering ourselves towards. I don't think it can be understated how detrimental this ability sets us up to be vs Tomo, Mandi etc. and leaves us with a greater weakness to Slowtwin Scalds with no inherent way around it (no Jungle Healing doesn't count because the besides possibility of that move even being allowed are very slim, and it would very much be a momentum sink if we're forced to click it instead of actually threatening the slowtwin like we're trying to do here)

On the contrary Shield Dust does provide a safety net vs Scalds (and Astro Lashs but that's not super relevant) however I feel this one fails to do anything truly stand out for us. I would much rather put Water Absorb/Storm Drain to be on the slate, particularly the ladder. Storm Drain offers us the same protection from Scalds while also allowing us to actively punish a Slowtwin (or other bulky water) from clicking it for fear of a potentially boosted 28 bearing down on it. I'm not super-duper interested in these abilities but if only one is to be slated it ought to be Storm Drain. quziel's post on this ability is super good and details this ability quite well so I won't digress further.

 

[Speny]

Stall

• Can phase after teleport with moves like whirlwind and dragon tail.
• Skill Swap shenanigans crippling mons they may want to revenge kill or set up.
• Could be worked around if we have good priority.

This is probably them most gimmicky option and is very depended on what moves we get, still it opens options no other ability can
Steam Engine

• Punishes scald and fire moves.
• Gives the biggest reward out of any ability with the aim to punish scald.

Neutralizing Gas
Stakeout

 

[Voltage]

This is your official 12 hour warning. The final slate will be decided 12 hours from now, along with brief justifications for transparency's sake. Any last minute posts you've been sitting on should be posted now, or be forever kept to yourselves.

 

[Wolf134]

Stakeout

• Punishes pivots switching in or out in tandem with Phazing moves such as dragon tail or circle throw.
• gives CAP28's resisted moves a powerful kick upon an opponent switching in.

 

[Magic Mayhem Maiden]

I also disagree with Triage as the ability. Most of the reasons have already been said, but I don't really see the appeal of having priority Leech Life and only it. This ability would only apply to one move, as I doubt the use of any recovery move would allow CAP28 to pressure pivots better. It just seems like a way to do better against offensive, faster pokemons instead of the bulky pivots. This also means we are a physical attacker with no work-arounds against Scald burns, so getting burned would make CAP28 a far-less useful anti-pivot. And bug already has a strong, priority move of First Impression. I argue this move is more pro-concept than Triage Leech Life because firstly, it can be backed up with a better offensive/defensive ability, and secondly, it can only be used on the first turn out, so offensive pokemons won't be as threatened when they switch into CAP28.

On another note, I dislike completely defensive abilities, such as Shield Dust, Natural Cure, and Magic Guard. I think Magic Guard was chosen especially because of our terrible typing and weakness to SR, but if we just patch up our weakness, I don't think we will have an effective anti-pivot against anything but Slowbro/Slowking. Natural Cure doesn't sound great when we have to switch out to cure a status, losing momentum, then switching back in to lose another 25% of our health to stealth rocks. And Shield Dust seems to be avoiding scald burns with some additional benefits, which if we are going that way, I'd rather prefer Storm Drain, since it's both a defensive option and an offensive opportunity. I'd rather have an offensive ability like Download, or an ability that significantly punishes pivots, like Neutralizing Gas.

 

[quziel]

I personally dislike Magic Guard, as the problem it aims to solve, that is, patching up our Zeraora matchup by making us less dependent upon Heavy Duty Boots is still a major issue because, well, our calcs will assume Life Orb, and we all know how much Life Orb Magic Guard mons hate being Knocked Off. That is, it aims to solve a Knock Off weakness, but means we still have a Knock Off weakness, just a bit less severe.

Natural Cure is theoretically a way to get around burns, but lets be honest, it just means there's a 30% chance that Slowking forces us out, instead of the other way round. As before, I'd prefer a Water immunity ability to "answer" the question of scald, or even Shed Skin, which are well, less pivot-dependent ways to get around Burn.

With respect to Tinted Lens I'd honestly prefer a "third stab" ability over it, as well, it brings up substantial power restraints that I don't know we'll be able to handle correctly. Punk Rock gives us the potential for strong neutral coverage in a far easier to balance way, and has way less chance of just being super oppressive.

I also like Stamina as it is well, just very anti-pivot in its existence, making us stronger the longer we stay in. It does have the noted weakness of making it so they want to Teleport instead of attack, but forcing Slowking to always click Teleport instead of Scald is arguably pro-concept. This also gives the potential of shutting out specific physical revenge killers; a Dragapult struggles to KO us if we're +1 when it comes in. That is, if a Slowbro Scalds us, and then Teleports out, Stamina denies specific Physical Pivots from coming in.

Edit; Thinking more meta specific, Stamina doesn't provide the impact I had hoped.

Berserk though, Berserk does. Lets specifically list what it does. Barring Toxic, we would be able to break Blissey (if it stays in) with any form of recovery and Berserk. We would be able to reliably turn Rotom-Heat, Astro, and others (assuming enough bulk to avoid 2hkos) into free SpA boosts, we turn U-turn usage into free SpA boosts, we could reliably gain power just by staying in and daring the opponent to attack us. If we're going to run one ability that synergizes with staying in forever, I think Berserk is that one.

 

[Reviloja753]

I also would like to show support for Stamina, as it not only is an anti-pivot ability, but discourages even special attackers like Slowking from clicking Scald if we are out, which makes Slowking extremely easy to predict and lets us easily take advantage of it. It also means that the longer we stay in, the fewer Pokémon can force us out. Physical Dragapult, as quziel mentioned, struggles to get past us if we are at +1. I also believe Stamina takes at least some pressure off of stats in terms of our bulk, which is useful for us due to letting us putting some stats elsewhere. One benefit is that Stamina cancels out with Astrolotl’s Fire Lash, which even with 86/86 bulk is barely a 3HKO from neutral.

0 Atk Astrolotl Fire Lash vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Yanmega: 105-124 (33.5 - 39.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

This allows us to be a situational switch-in to Astrolotl assuming no Dragon Claw, and with enough bulk it may potentially be possible to be able to sit in front of Astro with a Stamina boost or two even with Dragon Claw and kill it back with a Dragon move of our own.

The last bit I will mention is that I believe that an ability like Stamina that discourages CAP28 from constantly switching in and out will reduce the severity of our dependence to Heavy-Duty Boots. The reason a Pokémon like Zeraora runs Heavy-Duty Boots is that it constantly is pivoting around with Volt Switch, and hazard damage can easily rack up. If CAP28 is not wanting to constantly switch to teammates, then losing boots is not as much of a crippling factor as opposed to something like Zeraora losing boots. Some teams with extra hazard control just may drop boots entirely if they so choose, however unlikely. That isn’t to say we can switch into Knock Off willy nilly or anything, but it does make it so Knock Off is not as important as it currently is. All in all, Stamina is a very interesting direction to take CAP28 and should be slated for the primary ability poll.

 

[psykokitty]

Stakeout is a powerful ability, but only in certain situations. In that sense, it balances itself - incredible strength, but for a limited time only. G-Luke and Jewvia do a good job of outlining this point. Compare that to the universality of Neutralizing Gas - also powerful, and always powerful - and I think it at least merits a place on the slate; it allows for people to choose between specific and general utility. This is also why I support Stakeout over Analytic, as Analytic's power isn't as focused. Yes, if selected, Stakeout would require a bit more finesse in the stats stage, but the difficulty of a task should not diminish the value of attempting it. The people who submit CAP stats do a great job of finding just the right balance and have produced highly specialized and targeted spreads before, I think they'll be more than capable of balancing an ability like Stakeout.

One other note that I haven't seen brought up about Triage (recently at least)- in addition to a potential form of speed control, this could be a way to mitigate the damage we take from Stealth Rocks and other entry hazards, lessening our reliance on HBD and our fear of Knock Off. I think it's fair to keep it on the slate.

 

[Dogfish44]

I've been musing (oh no!), and I've come to the conclusion that Abilities are not where we want to tackle Teleport... or, at least, it's not where we should prioritise our ability. There are so many ways to punish Teleport - or otherwise outright stop it - that I can't help but feel we would be much better served by using our ability to instead tackle Hard Switches (amongst other things), which are a nightmare to punish in the same way.

(It used to be, of course, that Pursuit was the answer to hard switches. Unsurprisingly, remove Pursuit and what happens to pivotspam? Oy oy oy)

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As a result of where I feel priorities should lie, the top of my list remains Stakeout / Analytic - I'd argue the choice between those two boils down to how much power you're allowed to have with your regular attacks (Analytic allows a higher power for non-Analytic attacks which actually means I've moved more towards that as a preference right now, based on what I've calculated - I think Stakeout leans more Physical purely because of the Bug Special STAB options being, uh, 'blech'). These abilities provide a direct punish to hard switching on us that I find hard to resist the appeal of - with the ultimate goal being to make switching in a Slow or Pink Blob fundamentally dangerous for a pivot team to try.

This idea of 'punishing hard switches' is something Neutralising Gas also manages - it's less "punish" and more "remove positive benefit". When we consider Neutralising Gas in the context of pivots, we're considering "A Slow that has to click Slack Off to heal off ", a major momentum drain for pivoting that negates the entire strategy of pivoting. If Slowblob is being consitently chipped down over a match, if landing a stray Toxic onto a Blissey will stick, that's incredibly up our alley.

I've already said how Simple also fulfils this , but I'll reiterate - it makes the Hard Switch from your pivot blob of choice punishable by Set-Up to a level that plain boosts simply don't. Unlike other abilities it's less direct, so it has a fairly large amount of counterplay (potentially too much), but it does what it does very well.

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I don't get the Download hype train - is the aim to hit Blissey physically, but the Slows Specially? I understand the appeal (Slows can Burn, Blissey can't, it's unlikely that we'll need both in a single game), but it ignores that we can do this through movepool and stats - for instance, there are two fighting attacks that hit Physically without using the Atk stat, whilst others are ridiculously high in BP and don't need a lot of effort. Whilst this isn't a bad choice, it feels fairly... wasteful, and when we're sent out it makes us substantially more predictable - which means we're less effective at punishing hard switches.

Triage is aimed at... uh... Zeraora? Where I still don't think it actually succeeds :-\. I have no clue what an ability that's really good at breaking fast non-pivots is going to do in a concept where we've broadly decided to favour breaking... slow pivots. We can add recovery options without Triage - and I feel some abilities do lead us in a direction that favours bulkier ideals (NGas) - so I feel that it'd be a wasted ability slot for us.

 

[Voltage]

And that's time! With that folks, I present to you, your ability slate for CAP28. Please know that a lot of thought and consideration went into making the final list, and hopefully there's at least a couple abilities on this list that you would vote for for CAP28 !

Download

• Download allows CAP28 to opt for a solid mixed set that improves depending on matchup. This alleviates our need to go solely physical or solely special, while also allowing us to hit a little harder with our awkward STAB combo. Furthermore, Download is also very matchup dependent, so I do believe it isn't likely to get out of hand quickly. Ultimately, Download gives us options to power through the mons we're supposed to beat, while still being checked by general matchup dependence.
  

Neutralizing Gas

• As many have already pointed out, this ability is the best ability to outright stop abilities like Regenerator, Natural Cure, and other abilities that otherwise considerably boost the viability of a Pokemon. It is probably the most obviously pro-concept ability on the slate if only because of how directly it solves the problem. I don't think Neutralizing Gas isn't necessarily too powerful for this CAP either since this ability really only affects the foe and doesn't provide any notable power boosts to CAP28.
  

Punk Rock

• The first new ability to the slate, I was convinced. Punk Rock is one of those abilities that absolutely gives us both a power boost without being too broken in the same way other abilities might. I also think that this ability gives us more possibilities for later stages as well, given the movepool down the line, as well as giving credence to running a variety of mixed and special sets. The most important thing though is that this ability only applied to a subset of moves, meaning that it's very easy to manage going forward.

Storm Drain

• The second ability I opted to swap, I saw the push for one of these abilities over Shield Dust, so I opted for the swap. This ability gives CAP28 a nice immunity as well as a way to effectively prevent Flip Turn and boost its special attack. Like the other abilities, Storm Drain allows CAP28 to have options for sets going forward, and it gives an important Scald immunity. There's a lot of potential with this ability when compared to Shield Dust, so ultimately it is slated.

Triage

• I understand that some people have very strong opinions of Triage, but I believe that Triage still works with our concept. We can use this ability to threaten faster pivoting mons that exist with this ability, while still being able to tune later stages to beat the already Guaranteed Switch In mons. This ability also allows us to expand the list of Pokemon we can switch into as well. I think that this abiliyt still absolutely has merit on the slate without being too overly powerful.

It should be noted that Mx nixed the ability Stamina which would've been the sixth slot on this slate. With all that said and done, thank you all for a great thread and I'll see you all Pokemon Go to the polls.

The slate:
Download
Neutralizing Gas
Punk Rock
Storm Drain
Triage

 

[Mx]

The slate looks great and has my approval. Let's see what the polls bring us!