CAP 29 - Part 2 - Primary Ability Discussion

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quziel

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CAP 29 - Part 2 - Primary Ability Discussion

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CAP 29 So Far

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Please pay very close attention to Tadasuke 's posts during this thread and remain on topic. DO NOT begin by posting massive lists of abilities!

Some general rules for this discussion:
  • Custom abilities are banned. No exceptions. Posts suggesting custom abilities will be deleted.
  • There are ability banlists for the different stages of ability discussion. Posts suggesting banned abilities will be deleted.
  • Flavor abilities do not have any place in this thread. Do not bring up flavor reasoning. Posts that rely on flavor reasoning will be deleted.
The following abilities are banned from this discussion:

Arena Trap
As One
Aura Break
Bad Dreams
Battle Bond
Chilling Neigh
Dark Aura
Dauntless Shield
Delta Stream
Desolate Land
Disguise
Dragon's Maw
Fairy Aura
Flower Gift
Forecast
Full Metal Body
Grim Neigh
Gulp Missile
Hunger Switch
Ice Face
Illusion
Imposter
Intrepid Sword
Moody
Multitype
Neuroforce
Power Construct
Primordial Sea
Prism Armor
RKS System
Schooling
Shadow Shield
Shadow Tag
Shields Down
Soul Heart
Stance Change
Teravolt
Transistor
Turboblaze
Unseen Fist
Victory Star
Wonder Guard
Zen Mode

These abilities are banned by default and should not be discussed barring exceptional cases. If you believe one of these abilities should be considered, you can make a post trying to explain why an exception is warranted in this specific case and if both the TL and Ability Leader agree, it will be allowed. If the TLT disagrees with the unbanning proposal, they should be considered fully banned and should not be further discussed.

Bulletproof
Dry Skin
Flash Fire
Fur Coat
Gorilla Tactics
Huge Power
Ice Scales
Libero*
Levitate
Lightning Rod
Magic Guard
Mimicry*
Motor Drive
Parental Bond
Protean*
Pure Power
Regenerator
Sap Sipper
Storm Drain
Volt Absorb
Water Absorb
Water Bubble

*These abilities can only be considered for an unban if the Ability stage is done before typing.



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Fully Banned Abilities group + Soft Banned Abilities group + flavor ability-only group


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We recently finished the Concept Assessment stage for CAP 29, with the following conclusions.

  • All ability shifting moves (Entrainment, Skill Swap) are treated as banned for the time being. Do not use them to influence your choice of ability.
  • Abilities without in-game effects (Illuminate, Ball Fetch) will be banned for the Ability discussion.
  • There are a variety of different categories of bad abilities, and comparing and contrasting these categories will be key in conceptualizing CAP29.
The following framework for discussing abilities may be relevant:
Purely Negative (Devastating) are abilities that only actively work against the Pokémon using it. The power-level required to elevate a Pokémon to a usable position is unreasonable or forces you to completely abandon the elements they impact. Defeatist, Slow Start, and Truant are valid examples.
Unreliable (Awkward) are abilities that are out of the control of the player. Color Change and Emergency Exit are the two that come to mind. Color Change is dependent on the move you are last hit by. More specifically, most of the power this ability has is dependent on matchup and opponent. Emergency Exit is just Eject Button that is dependent on a damage roll as opposed to just being hit.
Mechanic Dependent (Niche Dependent) are abilities that could see more reliable use, but their success is limited to specific mechanic interactions. Klutz, Stall, and Normalize all fall into this category. The problem with these options is that they are moveset dependent, and movesets are never guaranteed. Without these options, these abilities probably move into the purely negative category.
Give and Take are abilities that have an advantage but also have an associated negative effect with it. Weak Armor, Perish Body, and Hustle all fall into this category. Weak Armor and Hustle are self-explanatory since they grant a boost at the cost of defense and accuracy, respectively. Perish Body activates the Perish Song counter which impacts both players and could result in KOing your own Pokémon.
Contradictory (Self-Destructive) are abilities that create negative effects for the user based off how they interact with other mechanics. SHSP already mentioned something about Simple + moves that drop the user’s stats. This could also extend to terrain/weather + negatively impacted type or boost from specific type damage + 4x weak.
 
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Tadasuke

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Now that we've finished our first round of Concept Assessment, we're finally ready to move on to our Primary Ability Discussion!

We've already seen some wonderful posts regarding how exactly we want to execute this project. I've been very happy with the discussion surrounding the various categorizations of what we define as negative abilities, as well as the arguments on which specific categories would produce a healthy end result for the process. However, since we're doing ability at an earlier stage than what is standard, I feel we need to zoom out a bit to make sure we're keeping enough space open in this project to ensure that later stages will have enough room for creativity and innovation. I'd like to pose a question for each of you to keep in mind when formulating your responses to this thread. This isn't necessarily a discussion question, but rather should be used as a guide throughout this thread to ensure that the discussion here stays true to the spirit of the project.

How can we successfully fulfill the concept while also ensuring that:
  • the process will be both in-depth and enjoyable for those who participate
  • the end result of the project yields a mon that can successfully fulfill its purpose in the CAP Metagame
  • we learn something worthwhile along the way
So with this in mind, I'd like to open up this discussion with a few pertinent questions:

How much of a negative impact should our ability have in order to fulfill the concept? Does our ability have to be exclusively negative, or do we need it to have an upside to be functional in the CAP Metagame?

Which abilities fit the umbrella of being negative enough for this concept? Which do not? Why?


I look forward to reading through your discussions. Expect more questions to be posed in the next 24-36 hours.
 

Sputnik

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How much of a negative impact should our ability have in order to fulfill the concept? Does our ability have to be exclusively negative, or do we need it to have an upside to be functional in the CAP Metagame?
I am firmly of the belief that we should choose an ability that has at least some conceivable upside. Ideally it shouldn't have much, but just something to work with is ideal in my opinion. I believe that an ability such as Color Change, Normalize, or Emergency Exit, abilities that are incredibly awkward/mostly negative but have an upside that we can focus on and build around is the play. They should have effects that are mostly negative of course, but these abilities do have their strengths, and I think that designing a Pokemon around those specific strengths while attempting to mitigate the much more glaring issues will be far more interesting than just beefing up a Pokemon to deal with a Purely Negative ability.

Which abilities fit the umbrella of being negative enough for this concept? Which do not? Why?
Eliminating the obvious that are the Purely Negative abilities, I think that any ability that we should focus on should be largely negative. It can have some positive (and I think that it should) but the negatives should outweigh the upsides. I think abilities that are sort of 50/50, like Hustle, Simple, and Weak Armor, should be avoided in my opinion, because they aren't really negative abilities in that regard. They can be annoying and infuriating, but they aren't purely bad abilities. The abilities that are chosen should be clear negatives; as in, a normal Pokemon would actively not want this ability, if that makes any sense.
 
How much of a negative impact should our ability have in order to fulfill the concept? Does our ability have to be exclusively negative, or do we need it to have an upside to be functional in the CAP Metagame?

I think that, in order to fulfill our concept to the best of our ability, we should pick an ability that we can derive an upside from.

In his concept submission, quziel specifically described CAP 29 as a Pokemon that "manages to work around an ability that is generally considered negative, and is viable, or even better for it."

I think that, in order to fulfill this, we should consider the potential upsides of our bad ability. This is why I'm a fan of using the abilities in the Unreliable and Mechanic Dependent categories. The abilities in these categories are still bad overall, but they also have small upsides that we can take advantage of to create a great CAP.

On the flipside, this is why I'm against using the abilities in the Purely Negative category. The name of the category says it all, really; these abilities have no upsides. I fear that, if we pick an ability from the Purely Negative category, we'll spend more time trying to mold CAP 29 to work around the ability rather than work with the ability, which goes against the concept.
 
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MrDollSteak

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How much of a negative impact should our ability have in order to fulfill the concept? Does our ability have to be exclusively negative, or do we need it to have an upside to be functional in the CAP Metagame?

I think that the key to this concept is that the ability has a negative impact that cannot be completely circumvented. In this regard rather than thinking only about how negative the ability is, we should be acknowledging how difficult it will be to ignore their negative effects. I don't personally think it's a problem if there is some feasible or foreseeable upside to the ability provided the negative aspects of the ability cannot be avoided, at least as far as answering whether it is pro-concept. As for being viable in the CAP metagame, I personally don't believe that the ability needs any upside to guarantee its success. Purely negative abilities like Slow Start or Defeatist can still theoretically lead to viable Pokemon. It could also be argued that while being purely detrimental mechanically, these abilities still offer upsides in terms of greater stat flexibility although emphasis will have to be placed on avoiding overcompensation completely nullifying the downsides of the abilities.

Which abilities fit the umbrella of being negative enough for this concept? Which do not? Why?

As mentioned previously, the threshold where I think abilities should no longer be considered pro-concept is when the abilities' downsides can be avoided. For example, the previously mentioned interaction between Simple and Close Combat is something thaf I would consider to be negative, however, due to the users ability to choose a different move, such as Brick Break, or alternatively to guarantee a KO with Close Combat before being hit would mean that the downside of the ability is completely circumvented. As far as an ability with a notable trade-off in upside that would continue to be pro-concept is Hustle, as the reduction in accuracy persists. Although for what it's worth I think that this would be a not particularly interesting ability to choose.
 
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How much of a negative impact should our ability have in order to fulfill the concept? Does our ability have to be exclusively negative, or do we need it to have an upside to be functional in the CAP Metagame?
The negative impact of the ability we choose should be able to be felt in every interaction the CAP has, and as such needs to have significant impact in the design of the CAP. more than any other CAP, this pokemon should make players think about its ability and how it will play into the scenario at hand. This pokemon will more than likely punish poor play and reward smart, creative play in order to get around the hinderances its ability brings to them.

On the topic of Purely Negative abilities, I feel that while they do pose an interesting challenge in the design of the pokemon, I also feel like they would actually start to lack influence on the design rather than be felt throughout it. Without any positives, the only role these abilities would play in the design of the pokemon is to be a weakness to try and avoid, and as such the route to making it viable would be allowing the pokemon to best avoid its weaknesses, creating a result that I feel would be bland and completely controlled by the meta. Instead, I feel like the pokemon we choose should have its strengths come from its weakness, as in, while it still has a glaring flaw, that glaring flaw opens up a way to utilize the pokemon unlike any other pokemon in the current meta can replicate due to not having CAP 29's ability nor having the tools to utilize it like CAP 29 does. Again, the positives shouldn't negate the massive flaw of the ability, but should instead be built upon the flaw-using what would be a disadvantage to find a niche, and I feel that Purely Negative abilities don't offer that nuance in their design.
 
How much of a negative impact should our ability have in order to fulfill the concept? Does our ability have to be exclusively negative, or do we need it to have an upside to be functional in the CAP Metagame?
Our ability has to have some sort of positive to it, otherwise we can’t fully explore the concept. Sure we can make a Pokémon that succeeds with defeatist but it’ll be succeeding despite its ability and not because of it. 29 is supposed to turn its ball and chain into a mace, and not just drag it along.
 
Our ability has to have some sort of positive to it, otherwise we can’t fully explore the concept. Sure we can make a Pokémon that succeeds with defeatist but it’ll be succeeding despite its ability and not because of it. 29 is supposed to turn its ball and chain into a mace, and not just drag it along.
I would like to fact check this. The actual concept says that the Mon can succeed DESPITE having a detrimental ability, not to specifically use it at its advantage. It is possible can make the Mon get potential benefits from its ability, such as stall's capacity to create negative priority u-turns, but that it's not the main call of the concept. The main call of the concept is that the CAP manages to be successful DESPITE the huge drawbacks of it's ability, that if even if the ability has benefits it's drawbacks are also very terrible.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't use the abilities in the unreliable/mechanic based abilities, in fact I would love to explore abilities like normalize and color change. However, we shouldn't ignore purely negative abilities just because they are a hindrance, we should see them as a challenge we should overcome


Which abilities fit the umbrella of being negative enough for this concept? Which do not? Why?
To not derail from main discussion, I want to say I'm not a personally a fan of the give and take or contradictory abilities. At least for the abilities given as examples of these such as Hustle or simple, I find them to her more positive than negative in terms of the concept.

The other groups are very interesting though. The mechanic based group has some pretty cool benefits which are often drowned by extreme downsides, such as always moving last or having all coverage nullified. Unreliable abilities will probably also lead to interesting discussions, as while they aren't directly negative, they are definitely relegated to very specific activations or roles. The group I find the most fun is the purely negative group (aside from truant, cringe ass monke ability). To actively work against negative abilities and make a Mon viable can lead a truly cool process, such as a slow start hazard remover that has the option to stay in and become a monster or a truant tank that can constantly keep itself at high health to keep fishing out high damage.
 
On the flipside, this is why I'm against using the abilities in the Purely Negative category. The name of the category says it all, really; these abilities have no upsides, and if we created a CAP with these abilities, it would go directly against the concept.
Before answering the questions posed by Tadasuke, I want to respond to this.
With a mere change of Highlight in the sentence, that is used for this argument, this argument gets turned on it’s Head entirely.
manages to work around an ability that is generally considered negative, and is viable, or even better for it.
I don’t know if I’m the only one reading it like this, but to me this clearly states, that we could choose to work around the flaws of an ability, rather than try to harness its strengths, which means purely negative abilities are definitely on the table as far as the concept goes.

Now to answer Tadasukes questions.
How much of a negative impact should our ability have in order to fulfill the concept? Does our ability have to be exclusively negative, or do we need it to have an upside to be functional in the CAP Metagame?
I think as much as viability goes, we can pick our ability from any of the categories. The CAP process is designed to make a viable end product and we have all the tools to do so here as well, regardless of how negative the ability we pick is. I do think, that some categories will make for a much more engaging process than others but ultimately none is unworkable.

Which abilities fit the umbrella of being negative enough for this concept? Which do not? Why?
I believe that both “contradictory“ and „give and take“ abilities do not fit this umbrella.
Instead of making a detrimental ability viable, we would try to make a viable ability detrimental
and I don’t believe that this is pro concept. We would not be exploring the effects of bad abilities on the viability of a Pokémon and how they impact other design choices, we would be looking at how other elements impact abilities and the viability of a Pokémon.
To me, Somehow This sounds like the exact antithesis to the original concept.
 
Just a quick question, should we specify which abilities belong to which of the 5 categories? We already have a clear idea for some, others we have vague ideas on and I've seen some disagreements on where certain abilities should be.
 
I would like to fact check this. The actual concept says that the Mon can succeed DESPITE having a detrimental ability, not to specifically use it at its advantage. It is possible can make the Mon get potential benefits from its ability, such as stall's capacity to create negative priority u-turns, but that it's not the main call of the concept. The main call of the concept is that the CAP manages to be successful DESPITE the huge drawbacks of it's ability, that if even if the ability has benefits it's drawbacks are also very terrible.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't use the abilities in the unreliable/mechanic based abilities, in fact I would love to explore abilities like normalize and color change. However, we shouldn't ignore purely negative abilities just because they are a hindrance, we should see them as a challenge we should overcome
This Pokemon manages to work around an ability that is generally considered harmful, and is viable, or even better for it.

If you honestly believe we can make a Pokémon gain some sort of positive out of an entirely negative ability I’m all for it, I however think those two statements are in direct odds with each other. There is no advantage to gain from having slow start. You can build around it, but I’ll always be dead weight. Sure that technically fulfills the concept but ideally we want a Mon that Synergizes with its bad ability and not one that just coexist with it.
 
Just a quick question, should we specify which abilities belong to which of the 5 categories? We already have a clear idea for some, others we have vague ideas on and I've seen some disagreements on where certain abilities should be.
I feel like this would be good idea. A lot of people tend to confuse the placements of the abilities in the baskets, such as people being unsure if things like stall or slow start go together in purely negative or in mechanic dependent abilities.
 

quziel

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Which abilities fit the umbrella of being negative enough for this concept? Which do not? Why?
Clearly Negative:

Color Change: This ability puts control of your typing into both your, and your opponent's hands. It is negative enough because you lose STAB, despite it theoretically setting you up to resist just about any attack, though your opponent can use it to make you weak to just about any attack. Overall super cool. Your opponent ultimately has control here, which is really why its here.

Defeatist: This ability is strictly negative thus it fits this concept. It is arguably the easiest of the strictly negative abilities to work around and worth with though, since it still preserves speed (aka the most important stat), and means that you can still use very impactful moves (eg Knock Off), even under half. I think its honestly a pretty interesting one at that because doubling the impact of recovery moves on an offensive mon makes for an interesting dynamic.

Emergency Exit: Another double-edged one, but also another where the opponent has arguably just as, if not more control over it than you, as it forces you out when you fall under 50%. The enemy control is really what makes this applicable here.

Klutz: This is strictly negative, removing the effect of every positive (and negative) item. Its also IMO quite boring, but we're not there yet.

Normalize: This removes coverage, ergo applicable.

Slow Start: This is strictly negative, also sorta boring.

Stall: This ability's upside is that you get to U-turn or TP last, the downside heavily outweighs, ergo negative and applicable.

Truant: this is by far the most negative ability we could possibly choose.

Debatably but in my opinion negative:

Perish Body: Yes it is theoretically useful for forcing out setup sweepers, but only setup sweepers that make contact with you, which are currently Hawlucha, Cawmodore (both win games with 3 turns left)?. The lack of control you have here is really crippling, and I think that a mon that implicitly has a timer of 3 turns every time is sorta interesting?

Mimicry: Yes it means you resist the terrain boosted attacks, but you also lose STAB on your moves (no terrain pulse is really bad so don't run it) and practically the mon known as Big Monke will just click U-turn.

Debatable but in my opinion sorta positive:

Weak Armor: This can definitely be a negative, see Garbodor which runs the fairly neutral ability Aftermath over Weak Armor as it is a physical wall and doesn't like defense drops, but in most situations its positive, eg Cursola, a mon with 30 speed running it. Its too easy to make work for you, and while I think we could get a functional fulfillment of concept out of it, we'd have to sorta poll jump real hard.

Hustle: This is mathematically a damage increase.

Dry Skin: 25% damage increase from fire is bad, but water immunity good.

Fluffy: 100% damage increase from fire is bad, but half damage from physical is very good.

Gorilla Tactics: This is a free choice band

I have probably missed a few, so feel free to correct me.

This Pokemon manages to work around an ability that is generally considered harmful, and is viable, or even better for it.
The intent behind the concept was to include both double-edged and actively bad abilities. The only thing I really care about is the fact that the bad ability is part of your play, and that we are exploring how to make the best out of a worst situation, not only that we are using a strictly double-edged ability.
 
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1- I'm fine with the presence of upsides, but I feel like designing the mon will be more interesting/fitting with the theme if we pick an ability whose cons outweigh pros. I already manifested not being inclined towards choosing Contradictory or Give and Take abilities due to seing how they still have great potential benefits as their purpose. Hustle, for example, does have an accuracy drawback, but the offensive boost it grants is still enough of a benefit, since some mons were still able to use it to their advantage if I remember correctly.
In terms of actually needing an upside to work on the metagame, I'm not entirely sure.

2- Like I said before, Contradictory and Give and Take are categories that don't seem to fit to me. Once again with the justification of pros potentially outweighing cons (even if dependent on the situation) and there already being mons that use some of them.
Weak Armor for example, despite probably being used to avoid the RNG that Cursed Body would otherwise bring, still seems to be an ability that Polteageist can work well with. I remember the pre-Isle of Armor analysis mentioning the presence of a mon-ability synergy.
 

spoo

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I'm going to once again voice my dislike towards the give and take and contradictory abilities. This has been talked about ad nauseum and I don't have much more to add myself, so I'll simply quote a few posts on the matter that I think do a good job at explaining why these abilities should be avoided-
Darek851 said:
Then, for the Give and Take category I honestly feel like most of these abilities like Weak Armor and Hustle are quite good. Going by this category brings us to the same issue with the Contradictory category, where we are trying to use a good ability in the worst way possible.
jas61292 said:
I think that Give and Take or Contradictory abilities would be a poor choice. The reason for that being that they are, in many ways, relatively normal abilities. [...] Sure, these abilities can have negative effects, but these negative effects are rarely bad enough for the ability to be "generally considered harmful" and will only be harmful in actuality if we intentionally let them be. And if we do that, we are not really making a Pokemon that succeeds because, or in spite of, a poor ability. We would be making a mon intentionally crippled from taking advantage of its ability, which is not what I feel this concept is really about.
MrDollSteak said:
["Give and take" and "Contradictory" categories] would lead to an inverted process, whereby instead of trying to make a mon that can thrive with a bad ability, we would be seeing how we could make a powerful ability weaker.
Amamama said:
I believe that both “contradictory“ and „give and take“ abilities do not fit this umbrella. Instead of making a detrimental ability viable, we would try to make a viable ability detrimental and I don’t believe that this is pro concept.
These posts all have the same general thought process and I wholly agree with it. These baskets of abilities are ones that I just don't think we should be picking from. Sure, choosing an ability like Weak Armor or Simple would be easiest to make a viable end product out of; however, I'm optimistic that we can figure out ways to make even the purely negative abilities viable, which brings me to the next question:

Does our ability have to be exclusively negative, or do we need it to have an upside to be functional in the CAP Metagame?
Like I said, I think we don't necessarily need an upside for our final product to be viable. I don't see "X ability will lead to a viable CAP29 while Y ability will be unviable" as a super compelling argument because at the end of the day I think we could make something viable with every ability here. It goes without saying that some abilities will be much more difficult to make work than others--defeatist and color change are the two abilities I have the hardest time seeing being functional (for very different reasons)--but this still is not a huge deterrent to me because there's nothing that's strictly unworkable full stop. I am optimistic that we can make ourselves functional/viable no matter what and I've been evaluating my personal favorites/least favorites based on other criteria mostly. Having an upside will probably lead to a more interesting process and an end product that interacts more with its ability instead of avoiding it, but as far as viability goes, I don't think we need an upside for this to work.
 

shnowshner

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How much of a negative impact should our ability have in order to fulfill the concept? Does our ability have to be exclusively negative, or do we need it to have an upside to be functional in the CAP Metagame?

Our ability should feel like an uphill battle so-to-speak. Great abilities can have downsides, but those downsides are not nearly enough to detract from the upsides. Something like Drizzle can weaken the power of your own Fire moves and strengthen your opponents moves, but this also works vice-versa, and building a team around Drizzle is generally more effective than building a team specifically to take advantage of an opponent's Drizzle. In other words, the drawbacks of Drizzle do not come close to outweighing the many positives it brings.

We'd want to look for the opposite approach, in this case. The overall effect is that CAP29 would probably be better without its ability, even if it does receive some sort of cool tech from it. Whatever ability we choose, the negative effect needs to be a constant thorn in our side.

Exclusively negative abilities don't interest me much as that feels like shooting ourselves in the foot with an elephant gun and could have some serious consequences should things go awry, but I understand that succeeding the concept that way could be an interesting challenge to impose on ourselves. There is the special case of Truant, however, which I feel is not a good Ability for our concept. I might elaborate further at a better time or if there's interest as to why I feel this way, but Truant is such a horrible ability that I feel CAP29 will either fail miserably at accomplishing anything or end up strong enough that it completely warps the metagame around beating it. Beyond that, we should pursue anything from the obviously bad like Defeatist to less obvious but still frustrating choices like Color Change.

Which abilities fit the umbrella of being negative enough for this concept? Which do not? Why?


I spent a good while looking through Abilities with downsides and came up with four separate categories on my own: Definitely Bad, Generally Bad, Detracting, and Other. The first two contain most of the bad Abilities already discussed, while the third included anything that took away some control from the player, even if it had clear upsides. That third category contained everything from the "awkward" Abilities like Perish Body (not a terribly great ability seeing at it can KO you) to some really strong Abilities like Aerilate + its clones (takes away the option of Normal as a coverage move: as someone who has used a lot of Sylveon in Flipped I can assure you this sucks when it happens)

Of course I don't think all of those are fit for this concept: although we could in theory make Pokemon awful with some of those abilities I added, I don't think that means we should railroad ourselves with the likes of Refrigerate, Sheer Force, and Dry Skin. Our main focus should be on the Pokemon being good in mostly everything except in regards to its Ability.

Defeatist feels like the lowest bar we should stride towards, seeing as I find Truant a lost cause, while to me Stall is pretty much the limit of how good a negative ability can go: being unable to outpace an opponent certainly limits our potential, but that hasn't stopped any naturally slow Pokemon like Ferrothorn or Shuckle from finding legitimate use despite practically always moving after their opponent, and there's plenty of moves that synergize very well with going last.

(post)
I have probably missed a few, so feel free to correct me.
We got the worst Abilities out of the way but there are still a few with downsides that can be looked into, not that I feel these are the best options. No Guard means the time-old strategy of being lucky and dodging a Focus Blast or Stone Edge doesn't work anymore, and it could be specifically teched against with even the lowest accuracy moves since they'd always hit against CAP29, meaning that our opponent would be able to actively use our ability against us. At the same time, No Guard is quite abusable with the right tools and I feel it potentially gives us too much power than it's worth.

Rivalry is the only other negative ability that somewhat fits our concept and is also the absolute lamest thing we could do. An ability that takes away control from both players is not fun nor groundbreaking. It's so bad I honestly think we should do ourselves a favor and just blacklist it from discussion.
 
I'm going to once again voice my dislike towards the give and take and contradictory abilities. This has been talked about ad nauseum and I don't have much more to add myself, so I'll simply quote a few posts on the matter that I think do a good job at explaining why these abilities should be avoided-

These posts all have the same general thought process and I wholly agree with it. These baskets of abilities are ones that I just don't think we should be picking from. Sure, choosing an ability like Weak Armor or Simple would be easiest to make a viable end product out of; however, I'm optimistic that we can figure out ways to make even the purely negative abilities viable, which brings me to the next question:
I agree with what spoopy is saying in this post and on top I wanna add that CAP does best when it takes something bad and squeezes all the juice out of it rather than taking something thats already pretty good and working to make it more detrimental. The discussion will involve better evaluation and reasoning for adding/disallowing parts of the mon as pro-concept falls in line with improving viability. Its quite hard to understand the sweet spot for making a decent ability "a little worse" since there are a million different routes to make things worse rather than better, and a lot of it will be denying things rather than additions, it might be hard to understand exactly what we are aiming for and start to feel arbitrary. It also feels confusing to see a bad suggestion and not really understanding if its pro-concept because it makes the ability worse, or anti-concept because it makes the mon less viable.
So yea while they might be the smallest "jump" to get to a viable place, the route taken will be much more hazy and harder to get a good discussion from.


to tie it into the question...
Which abilities fit the umbrella of being negative enough for this concept? Which do not? Why?

I think its about viability ceiling. How good can the ability get when maxed out? Abilities inside Purely Negative, Unreliable and Mechanic Dependent generally don't get amazing when they max out. They get alright. Even the most abusable things like Emergency Exit still come with a thorn that can keep them from being an S tier ability, such as unavoidable unreliability/flaws, or perhaps switching out once per match can just never weigh up to the best of the best abilities. Compare this to Give-and-Take abils like Weak Armor, which can be used to grab a boost and win the entire game with just a pinch of compatible movepool and stats, and can then be boosted by teammates with screens on top. Contradictory abilities are in the same ballpark. I think the abilities that max out as decent/alright are perfect for this concept because they actually let us aim to make it the best that it can be, and ppl are going to be able to pour a lot more ideas and interactions into it to let that happen.
 
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Zephyri

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Which abilities fit the umbrella of being negative enough for this concept? Which do not? Why?
Although i suggested abilities similar to Weak Armor in CA, I've now come to realize that these sorts of abilities are... really just too good to be considered "defective abilities". I'll also say here that i think building a concept around an ability like Defeatist or Truant is really... not going to teach us much. A mon with an ability with viability-plummeting downsides and no significant upside is most likely going to end up a) overpowered for viability and b) very one dimensional, since it's hard to dedicate our power budget to adding dimension when we need to try and make our mon's other characteristics good enough to compensate, possibly leading to a single-set syndrome (which is bad-bad). Another thing i want to mention is that the Purely Negative abilities seem the ones most likely to create either a Voodoom or a pre-nerf Astrolotl, simply because it's difficult to gauge how "bad" such an ability would be since the current users of the abils are really un-optimized, so we might end up overcompensating and end up with something similar to Equilibra (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just something that might be overlooked).

With all of this being said, I'm going to join the masses and say that the Awkward abilities are by far the best of all of them, since they're all more than just one-trick ponies and can lead to a meaningful process and a great learning experience. However, I don't think the Mechanic-Dependent Abilities are ones we should write off just yet, since, although they're more restrictive, they're still more than just one-dimensional mons that could lead to an interesting process.

As an aside, I really don't think Perish Body should be in the "Give and Take" category. It's similar to the Awkward ones in that you're forfeiting all control to the opposition, and the benefits on your side are honestly not even comparable to those of Weak Armor and Hustle. I think it'd lead to a much more interesting process in comparison to the other two abils in the Give-and-Take category so i would rather not bunch it up there and instead put it in the "Awkward" category, or maybe "Mechanic-Dependent"
 
Echoing what people have said above, I don't think abilities like Hustle or Weak Armor are what we're looking for here. Hustle is mathematically a direct boost to CAP 29's power level, and the accuracy drop achieves little beyond making CAP 29 aggravating to use. Weak Armor is...well, there are plenty of mons that would kill for an easy way to get +2 Speed without dropping a moveslot or a turn of setup for it. While there are ways we can make them become bad (Weak Armor Skarmory being a prime example, as it actually has Weak Armor as an ability choice and yet no serious player would be caught dead running it), this seems very suspiciously similar to the "Contradictory" pool in terms of implementation. We're trying to make a bad ability good. Making a good ability bad is literally the exact opposite of that.

I'm personally in favor of the Mechanic-Dependent box. I feel like the Unreliable box is just that - unreliable. We want a mon that can do its job with a reasonable amount of consistency. While it's certainly true that moveslots (and stats, for that matter) are never guaranteed from this stage, finding ways to work with whatever ability we end up choosing is literally the whole point of the building process. As an extreme example, we aren't going to give CAP 29 Stall and also 150 base speed. We're (mostly) sensible people who have done this before and have a reasonable amount of knowledge about how the game of Pokemon works. Let's put our skills to use, and make an ability work with us, not against us.
 
Purely Negative and Mechanics Based are the two groups I am most interested in exploring with this concept. While the Unreliable group is filled with bad abilities that can produce interesting stages, such as Color Change giving a unique typing stage or Emergency Exit giving multiple routes and interesting questions during Stats and Movepool, they are still Unreliable at best.

Purely Negative may be purely negative, but it is also consistently negative. These abilities bring less questions about "How can we exploit this defective ability's effect" and instead ask "How can we make a viable Pokemon despite this glaringly destructive ability?" The Mechanics Based abilities are likewise consistently negative, but they each bring unique benefits that can make for a unique Pokemon that would present a process where we explore negative effects and try to maximize their value in different ways.

Contradictory seems like an arbitrarily restrictive process. We aren't really learning about defective abilities and trying to make use of them, but instead we are making defective abilities and movepools, and then trying to pick up from the mess we dug ourselves deeper into. Give and Take is another group that feels off the mark for this concept. These aren't defective abilities as much as they are abilities with defects. Abilities like Dry Skin or Weak Armor are effective abilities that bring downsides that can be worked around. Mollux worked around its downside with a fire resistant typing, while Aurumoth tries to set up and then use the speed boost to sweep. Even with their downsides, these kinds of abilities aren't really defective, even if both users have fallen out of meta.
 

Rabia

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Contradictory and Give and Take should be off the table entirely. I feel the former category is really forcing us into a linear process, whereas the latter just... isn't concept relevant? Like, abilities such as Hustle and Weak Armor are generally considered to be good abilities, and this process calls for abilities you'd like to avoid. Think about Pokemon such as Durant, which loves to employ Hustle alongside Hone Claws---or even just on Choice Band sets---to become an absurdly difficult Pokemon to wall, and Omastar, which is great at utilizing Weak Armor alongside Shell Smash to make up for its pretty poor Speed.

Purely Negative should not be off the table as some have claimed; there are definitely ways to make use of some of these abilities. I do think we must be cautious, however, with these; I feel because these abilities have no inherent benefits to them that it could lead to some very bad power compensation down the road, particularly with respect to stats and movepool.

Unreliable and Mechanic Dependent are my two favorite categories here. Abilities like Color Change and Emergency Exit have really cool in-battle interactions for the user that could inspire some fun strategies, whereas options like Klutz, Stall, and Normalize are more tried and tested (mostly Klutz and Normalize; I don't know of any Stall Pokemon that have been used in a serious setting) but could introduce strategies into CAP that we normally would never see.
 
I feel like I should clarify that I don't think Purely Negative Abilities should be removed from discussion, nor do I think that it's impossible to make a viable pokemon with a purely negative ability. I just feel the end product of such an ability would be a very uninteresting mon, since with Purely Negative Abilities we are only trying to avoid the negative effects of the ability and as such the pokemon will be made to cater to the meta, instead of having its own unique purpose which Awkward or Mechanic Dependent Abilities would better allow for.
 
I realize that I'm probably beating a Spectrier (haha get it?) at this point, but I want to voice my massive disapproval for using the abilities in the Contradictory and Give and Take categories. taziathegreat's ball and chain analogy (which I love, btw) works perfectly for explaining why these categories do not work with this concept at all.

CAP 29's ability is a ball and chain tied to it, supposedly dragging it down. Instead of dragging the ball and chain, however, CAP 29 uses it like a mace, i.e. a strength. But if we took the ball off of the chain and replaced it with a gun, the strength given to it by the gun completely overtakes everything else. Theoretically, CAP 29 is still chained up, but the gun makes it seem as if it isn't chained up anymore.
 
Purely Negative abilities are pro-concept, and I think they could lead to interesting processes, with the notable exception of Truant. While these abilities are purely negative from an in-battle standpoint, they have upsides from a Pokemon creation standpoint: we can grant them better stats/typing/movepool without necessarily breaking them. That's one way to answer the question of whether these downsides can become upsides. There's sufficient flexibility with the non-Truant abilities here that I think we'd have a lot to work with.

Now, as I mentioned, I don't think Truant should be the example used for this category as a whole. Truant is much harder to compensate for via other means, and lends itself to essentially two roles: hit-and-run wallbreaker with maxed-out stats, and pivot with maxed-out stats. As others have mentioned, there's a good chance it'd end up either broken or terrible. Either way, it'd be pretty dull.
 

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I think it has been widely expressed that Contradictory and the majority of Give and Take abilities are not what the community is looking for when trying to adhere to our concept. The way the process is currently structured is not conducive for these categories. The process would be forcing us to build against existing features instead of with them which is not a beneficial experience.

I also think that Purely Negative abilities require a lot of self-discipline to not simply abandon the element of the mon they impact. (i.e. Slow Start being special attacker or Defeatist being a wall) I am not convinced that we can avoid these routes which makes them less desirable options to explore. If we had wanted to entertain the idea of meaningless abilities, they would have been carried over from the previous discussion. Unless the community can commit to working the elements of the mon that a negative ability impedes, they are not worth entertaining.

Mechanic-Dependent abilities are lacking in depth since they are just that: mechanic-dependent. There might be a more interesting process behind blacklisting desired mechanics like trick and pivoting, but I do not have much to say beyond that.


The only category I have genuine interest in is Unreliable. I would also move Perish Body into this category since its activation is at the discretion of the opponent like Color Change. These abilities pose interesting challenges not really seen in any of the other categories. They also have “less” detrimental drawbacks which makes them more tolerable options that still operate in the realm of bad ability.

I guess to answer Tadasuke’s first question, our ability should pose a challenge when trying to overcome its flaws, but there should be some functionality we can gain from it. Attempting to elevate a bad ability versus brute forcing past it seems more promising.
 
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