CAP 29 - Part 2 - Primary Ability Discussion

[PsychLantern]

If a mon activates Color Change, will it be changed into a monotype? Asking this so I can try to think of something for it too.

 

[Kerri]

If a mon activates Color Change, will it be changed into a monotype? Asking this so I can try to think of something for it too.

Yes: similar to Protean it changes into a monotype for the rest of the game.

The only exception is that if it is still dual-typed and gets hit by either of those typings, then it will stay duel-typed for the moment.

 

[spookysocialist]

Color Change

• How can we benefit from this ability offensively? Defensively?
• How much control is given to the opponent by letting them manipulate your typing?
• How can this level of control be overcome? How can we benefit from it?

To benefit from this ability offensively, we could consider what common stab attacks of types we resist. For example, if we made this cap resist fighting, we could give it close combat that it could use, now with stab, etc. Defensively is obvious, switching in on attack best against the opponents team/pokemon. For the 2nd and 3rd question, I think we have a bit more control than is obvious at first since we're the one switching in. We can benefit from this control to dynamically overwhelm common checks - for instance, if we have an offensive water type thats walled by our opponent's bulky grass type and our color change mon also has a water attack, we can switch it into a water attack, forcing our opponent to go to their grass and potentially weakening it enough for our mon in the back. Obviously this is a pretty broad example but I think it is the route we want to look at if we want to make this an offensive pokemon.

Emergency Exit

• What methods are available for us to safely get to 50% HP or lower?
• How can we take advantage of being forced to switch out?

As far as the 50% requirement, recoil moves can activate it. If we give our EE mon a self recoil move, we can self activate it and potentially have a 120bp stab u-turn for the double edge clones. Obviously usually you would prefer your opponent to activate it for you after you attack to function as a teleport, but having that control over it in our own hands is worth considering. As far as the benefit, pivoting speaks for itself. I think this mon could actually pair really well with miasmaw - imagine hitting into a slowking, forcing yourself out with recoil, then going to miasmaw as it uses teleport, preventing it from regenerating and leaving it low enough to not be a factor anymore.

Mimicry

• How detrimental of an ability is Mimicry?
• How can we make this differently from any other terrain abuser and still benefit from it?

Mimicry is incredibly detrimental for the reasons others have mentioned - stacking weaknesses, most terrain setters not actually caring much, etc. I'm also not sure what our terrain mon could even bring over other terrain mons unless we want to go for some gimmicky "multi terrain" mon that has stabs for multiple terrains - but this is likely a lost cause.

 

[Orig Stall Guy]

So the easiest ways to make Color Change work offensively is 2 ideas:

A) Give high offensive stats to make up for the assumed lack of stab 90% of the time
B) Give this CAP a colorful move pool that lets it take advantage of the type it gets turned into (puns somewhat intended).

These methods are both unreliable and some could call it "overkill" but I feel these are simple solutions to address how to take advantage of Color Change from an offensive perspective.

 

[Sputnik]

• Color Change
  • How can we benefit from this ability offensively? Defensively?
  • How much control is given to the opponent by letting them manipulate your typing?
  • How can this level of control be overcome? How can we benefit from it?

I personally find this one to be the most interesting in the pool, so I'll focus mostly on them here.

With Color Change I think you need to take a really good defensive typing from the get go. I won't say any here and polljump, but it definitely needs to be one of those typings that has an obscene amount of good resistances to take advantage of. We would also have to look at the meta (which I understand could change but I still think this is an important step) and see what Pokemon are spamming common attacks, therefore figuring out what exactly we need to resist to give this thing opportunities to switch in. Offensively is much the same I think; give it attacks from common offensive typings to take advantage of should it be hit by these moves. Basically, give it a typing that resists as many common offensive typings as possible and then give it moves that are that typing in order to get STAB or whatever if you're looking to get offensive value out of it.

I'd also very quickly like to give my support for Mimicry here, as I think its more interesting, and more negative, than a lot of people are giving it credit for. One must keep in mind that something with the typing of the terrain doesn't actually beat any of the setters at all. All of them have powerful STAB coverage to hit you, and Rillaboom just clicks U-turn. Not being able to even control this definitely makes it a tall order to get around, especially if the typing lends itself to making it a glue mon that depends on its typing to be useful defensively or whatever

 

[Zephyri]

I think a ton of people have talked about Color Change, E-Exit, and Mimicry, and I think I have decently similar views for the most part. So I'm going to use this post to discuss the routes and general potential with

Perish Body

• How can we cause this ability to come into play?

I think people are giving Perish Body more flak than it deserves in terms of linearity. There are more routes or ways we can use P-body than just "anti-setup", and the concept of punishing contact moves in a Knock Off heavy metagame is extremely interesting. Off the top of my head, something that forces out defensive mons that rely on Knock and contact moves in general like Pex and Ferro is really interesting, and it shouldnt be written off by any means.

• How impactful is it that the opponent ultimately has control over when this ability activates?

I think, again, people are really underrating how valuable the ability for your opp to force you out in a single move is. It means that everything that the mon would usually have a huge no. of turns to do would have to be done in 3, and basically means that its very difficult for us to have a defensive role, although not impossible. Furthermore, it means that teams that we'd usually be able to plow through offensively are now able to force us out with a single Knock or U-turn or Lash from an Astro. The fact that the opp has control over the ability, along with the fact that a lot of contact move users (but not all) dont need to stay in for long is a huge disadvantage that shouldnt be understated

(think ive said everything but will update if i think of anything else )

 

[Legitimate Username]

As promised, here are the questions regarding the four abilities being discussed.

• Color Change
  • How can we benefit from this ability offensively? Defensively?
  • How much control is given to the opponent by letting them manipulate your typing?
  • How can this level of control be overcome? How can we benefit from it?

• I don't think that there's any offensive benefit whatsoever. I honestly can't think of any. Losing any kind of access to consistent STAB options just means that we'll be ending up with a lower power level than everything else after we take our first hit and lose base typing, with any potential STAB we might get from there just being more of a nice bonus than anything that can be consistently relied on. Defensively I think there may be some merit, as 9/18 types resist themselves and opponents can theoretically have a harder time offensively punishing them with any kind of consistency, though there's still obvious concerns and weaknesses against threats with good coverage.
• I'm skeptical of how much control the opponent actually gets in an unpredictability sense. I'm sure that a lot of threats might have a potentially linear path with common coverage options in how they can exploit this, like rock==>ground or grass==>fire, which would be very telegraphed and not necessarily difficult to play around. Against other threats, like Electric/Ice coverage, they'd have to just settle for spamming neutral hits, which is far from the aforementioned worse-case scenario. I think that the main concern isn't necessarily a lack of control, but a nonlinearity and unpredictability in our ability to handle threats, with the fact that the opponent is the one who actually has their hands on the steering wheel just being the icing on that negativity cake.
• I think that base typing is actually going to be surprisingly important for this. Having a wide variety of threats to be able to come in on while not being too exploitable to common coverage means that we can punish opponents for taking that one first turn to change our type and then take control of the matchup. If they have to waste turns dealing unfavorable hits to try and change typing into a more favorable matchup then that's more free turns to spend on the field potentially posing a threat.

 

[LucarioOfLegends]

Hey, I think I waited too long to post something but here I go anyways.

Color Change

• How can we benefit from this ability offensively? Defensively?

Offensively is tricky since except for maybe the first turn or two in (dependent if they choose to actually attack or if they want to use utility) its fairly unlikely Color Change CAP would be able to effectively utilize any sort of STAB Boost for attacks. This does give a technical STAB boost to coverage if we do land on its typing, but that not at all guaranteed and most likely matchup dependent. Overall I think the lack of consistent STAB is actually what makes Color Change look bad since after the first hit your damage is hampered. It would likely be relying on high-BP attack moves with good neutral coverage to make sure it always hits what it needs to.

Defensively is where it gets fun since that's the main meat of Color Change. I think utility here is actually a phenomenal since the target cannot spam one singular typing (unless its Ghost or Dragon but thats its own problems) and expect to get through easily since basically cuts the damage of an attack used consecutively on CAP. That means it has quite a bit of time to actually linger and get down everything it needs.

• How much control is given to the opponent by letting them manipulate your typing?

Quite a bit actually, but the opponent does have to be smart about it. If they click a move haphazardly they can lock themselves into doing less damage, and the less coverage the opposing mon has, the more likely they are to have to go into resisted hits. This of course doesn't apply to Ghost- and Dragon-type moves, since they are naturally weak to themselves though so they can just spam those.

• How can this level of control be overcome? How can we benefit from it?

I think for the most part its dependent on understand what is on an opposing mons, which pretty much gives a time limit on how many turns you have until you need to get out due to taking a lot of damage. You could also use that effectively to lure in certain attacks for switch-ins as well.

Want to post in depth more later, but I like Emergency Exit and Color Change a lot. I think Mimicry is a bit too matchup dependent to be really interesting and overall feels a bit like a gimmick, and have no major feeling on Perish Body aside from mild intrigue.

 

[MrDollSteak]

• Color Change
  • How can we benefit from this ability offensively? Defensively?
  • How much control is given to the opponent by letting them manipulate your typing?
  • How can this level of control be overcome? How can we benefit from it?

Definitely one of the cooler bad abilities. It has so much depth and is very conditional on certain situations and scenarios that are difficult to fully conceptualise that it's really hard to fully evaluate. In general, however, as others have said, I think the ability primarily offers defensive benefits, particularly against certain types of attacks. The only way to ensure some kind of offensive benefit is to run some powerful coverage or utility attacks that do not resist themselves for example Close Combat or Earthquake that you can then fire back at the opponent with STAB after taking a hit from that typing. That said, that scenario is likely to be pretty rare, as the common STAB users of some of these attacking types such as Tomohawk, Equilibra and Kerfluffle resist these attacks anyway. The only other option would be taking advantage of Ghost or Dragon type attacks to hit back super effectively, although these two types are rarely used without STAB in the first place. To answer the last two questions, I think its clear from even my brief response about offensive potential is that everything is conditional on your opponent's choices, although the user can nevertheless capitalise on these choices through clever play. For example in a hypothetical scenario against say Equilibra, if we took an Earth Power or Aura Sphere, the impending Doom Desire we take all the hits neutrally and then end the turn as a Steel type and are forced out by an Earth Power. That said, if we come in on Flash Cannon, we at least take a neutral Doom Desire. Against Zapdos, if we come in on a Hurricane we are scared out by Discharge, but if we come in on Discharge we can safely wall all of its attacks as quziel mentioned. In this regard, it's clear that the Colour Change mon is prone to losing momentum if the wrong sequence of attacks is used, but also capable of gaining some in ideal sequences. I think this level of unreliability will make for an excellent process in terms of discussing the best ways to try and mitigate the effects of poor sequencing and capitalise on the strengths of type changing. As LegitimateUsername says, the most crucial way to actualise this is in the base typing.

• Emergency Exit
  • What methods are available for us to safely get to 50% HP or lower?
  • How can we take advantage of being forced to switch out?

I think this is one of the more interesting abilities and a range of cool interactions and uses of the ability have already been proposed. I don't have much else to add in regards to the methods of activation as I think these have comprehensively been covered, but do want to echo the advantages of forced switches in terms of gaining momentum. Being able to guarantee that the Pokemon only takes 50% instead of 100% is something that cannot be understated, particularly on HO teams as mentioned previously, furthermore, if hazards have been set, it can also allow for a seamless transition into a Ghost Pokemon while still chipping the opponent if using a recoil move. I don't think that this would just be 'Golisopod but better' even if it might mimic some interactions from Golisopod's play already, as there is a lot of versatility about how to use it.

• Mimicry
  • How detrimental of an ability is Mimicry?
  • How can we make this differently from any other terrain abuser and still benefit from it?

I think this is a far less interesting ability than Color Change, as others have said it doesn't give you any positive matchups against opposing setters which certainly makes it negative. That being said, because opposing terrain setters aren't guaranteed, if paired with your own setter, the ability while removing some key resistances or other stab options would primarily be positive, and therefore in my opinion anti-concept. At the end of the day the main benefit of the ability as far as abusing the terrain mechanics is in its versatility and ability to be tailored to different teams.

• Perish Body
  • How can we cause this ability to come into play?
  • How useful is this ability to us when it activates?
  • How impactful is it that the opponent ultimately has control over when this ability activates?

I may be one of the only people to see Perish Body as more of an NCA than a negative ability. This isn't to say that I don't think there are negative aspects to the ability, but I think the idea that the opponent has total control over this ability is inaccurate, and that even when the ability activates in most scenarios it will actually either have no significant impact on either player or lean slightly positively in the hands of the user if played correctly. As Zephyr mentioned, you can easily swap in on defensive Pokemon like Blissey, Toxapex or Ferrothorn and force them out purely through the activation of the ability. While it is up to your opponent to use a physical attack to activate the ability, the idea that as the user you are completely powerless to predict this is inaccurate. At best I think it is a 'Give and Take' ability that is only being seen as worse because of how terrible its user is at using its strengths. Although you will also have to swap, this is something that is par for the course for most Pokemon, particularly pivots. It's fairly rare for Pokemon to stay in for a full three turns towards the start and middle of the battle, but by setting a timer on an opposing wall it can allow you to overwhelm the opponent's in a similar manner to Future Sight or Doom Desire by setting up checkmate situations. I think if we were to build a Perish Body Pokemon, based on what I've seen in the thread we are vastly underestimate the ability, just like we did Doom Desire, and run the risk of overcompensating and subsequently creating a very powerful Pokemon that showcases that the ability is not primarily a hindrance even if it can be played around.

 

[D2TheW]

Emergency Exit:
What methods are available for us to safely get to 50% HP or lower?
The most obvious way of doing this is with recoil moves. There's a plethora of strong attacks that inflict various amounts of recoil that could be used. Of particular interest to me are steel beam and mind blown which each instantly proc ee upon use. Stats are gonna have to be finely balanced here. Too frail and cap 29 will fold to a stiff wind making ee useless, too bulky and it won't be hitting ee often enough.
How can we take advantage of being forced to switch out?
The offensive route: Using ee as a means to act as a strong offensive pivot, attacking with strong attacks and switching at the same time. Ee could also allow cap 29 to act as a pseudo-suicide lead, setting up hazard/s or screens and being forced out by opposing attacks letting hard hitters in safely. The fact that it can very easily survive this interaction means ho teams that already don't mind playing 5 vs 6 can still play 6 vs 6. This would be a godsend for ho teams that explicitly takes advantage of emergency exit.
The defensive route: Eject button toxapex is an established set that utilises pex's great defensive traits to come in and soak an attack and then pivot to it's frailer offensive teammates like cinderace. Emergency Exit would allow us to emulate this without the item restriction, though lacking regenerator is obviously a massive pain. This pivot potential can put the user in a win/win scenario: either the opponent knocks cap 29 into ee range, allowing a big threat onto the field risk free or they avoid doing so, allowing cap 29 to make progress with the tools most defensive mons have used for generations; status, hazards, knock, etc. Darek mentioned the synergy wish has with ee and leech seed would also suit well. Leech pass is a strategy that adv celebi has had success with and it would work similarly here. Leech either keeps cap 29 healthy or it passes useful passive recovery to easily worn down offensive mons/set up mons that appreciate an extra health boost.

Overall I think emergency exit has lots potential and it's a close second to defeatist as my favourite candidate rn.

Colour Change: Nothing to add for this one that others haven't said better, it's awkward offensively and cool defensively. Suits the concept to a tee and would likely lead to a very interesting process and mon even if it's almost certainly the hardest to work with out of all the candidates.

Mimicry:
How detrimental of an ability is mimicry?
Honestly, not very. The downside is obviously that your opponent has control over your typing, but the fact of the matter is that in most games it's just not gonna be relevant to the mon. According to the usage stats from cap snake, Rillaboom had the highest usage of the terrain mons, at a 9.26% usage rate (15 uses). Rilla and tapus fini, koko and lele combined to a usage rate of just over 25%. If this ability isn't going to be defective 75% of the time, it's just not worth it in my opinion. Terrain also only lasts 5 turns unless terrain extender is used, and it's honestly not a huge deal to just not switch cap 29 in during those 5 turns, if it would be detrimental to it. Not a fan of this one tbh.

Perish Body:
How can we cause this ability to come into play?
This ability has seen more discussion in the discord over the last few days, and one idea thrown around that stood out to me was using it to create a set up mon with a built in weakness that isn't in the stats department. The threat of set up, especially special focused set up such as calm mind or the dreaded quiver dance force engagement with perish body and contact moves are simple to punish with mons like helmet tomo or ferro.
How useful is this ability to us when it activates?
Not massively useful, it can help stop certain sweepers but they still have turns left to threaten you and if they're not an 'one and done' sweeper like cawm, they could well come back for another round. The easiest way to abuse this is probsbly with trapping and teleport to secure perish kills if you can survive the three turns. Trapping is dangerous ground though and it's ground we've trod before with paj so it wouldn't necessarily teach us much.
How impactful is it that the opponent ultimately has control over when this ability activates? It's pretty impactful, especially the way uturn and flip turn can set off your perish for free while skeddadling. This mon would need a way to deal with common pivots, especially uturn users which are a dime a dozen. However, as I said earlier, having a clear built in weakness like this gives us more liberty in other aspects, which could definitely lead to an interesting process. Not my favourite candidate but still cool and unique.

 

[Riguor]

Ok to all the people responding saying “you forgot to halve EVs and IVs” for Slow Start, that’s totally fair. But it’s also missing the point. 170 was just an example. What it you put it at 210 or something? I’m not a math expert. Pick a number that’s good when halved. The point was that you can get a result similar to setup sweepers investing 2 turns of Dragon Dance. Rather than viewing it as a negative ability, view it as similar to “plus 2 stages each after 5 rounds”.

But anyway enough on old topics. For color change, my first thought was: Pivoting is a necessity. You need to be able to avoid things like chained dragon hits, and you can’t lose too much value doing it. Another possibility would be picking a base typing like steel, which guides the list of likely first hits into a narrow selection, assuming you pivot in undamaged. And of course the big issue is STAB. No stab friggen sucks. And we can’t really risk just giving 1.5x stats or something. A weird possibility would be stuff like Mirror Move or Mimic; they’d suddenly allow STAB. Regardless, this mon need considerable bulk and offenses both just to compensate for the control opponents have over it. Another compensatory method would be just to give a huge variety of non-STAB options that are typically stronger power than you’d normally see. Alternatively, one bizarre option is Revelation Dance for constant stab, but I worry that would see nearly unanimous play.

The other three I don’t really have as much thoughts on. E. Exit will have lots of options that I’m not clever enough to see, and the other two don’t interest me that much; other than working with trapping perish body doesn’t do much, and personally I’d go so far as to veto Mimicry just for the significant chance of having 0 downside in a game, which goes against concept.

210 under slow start is effectively about base 80, which is still not good
I checked under 255 as well, it comes out to about an effective base 103 when maxed out under slow start, which is pretty average and that's the maximum we're allowed to work with (and I doubt we'd get it)
That's also just a single stat, if we give it some absurd amount of attack AND speed we might honestly not have the room to squeeze in much bulk (even assuming we stretch to the absolute limits of legendary BSTs like 680) which entirely undermines the idea of surviving 5 turns.

If we go with your suggestion I'd recommend sticking exclusively to either attack or speed, and we'd have to use an absurdly high value to get even reasonable attack or comparable to better speed than Regieleki to still be usable outside of slow start while having the bulk to actually muscle through it.

 

[snake]

Mimicry

• How detrimental of an ability is Mimicry?
• How can we make this differently from any other terrain abuser and still benefit from it?

Honestly, Mimicry doesn't seem that detrimental of an ability. It's definitely not a good ability, but it seems situationally bad only some of the time. If you check the Snake Draft usage stats, our most recent tour, we can see Rillaboom is Top 23 usage at 9.26%, Tapu Fini is Top 7.41%, Tapu Koko is Top 39 at 3.70% usage, and Tapu Lele is Top 59 at 1.23% usage. For Mimicry to activate on a consistent basis (and thus be an actual hinderance to CAP29), I think you'd need terrain setters to be used a lot more. You also can't just simply add up the percentages above because teams can have multiple terrain setters, and, honestly, I don't want to go and count what percentage of teams had at least one terrain setter. To make it worse, Tapu Fini usage is inflated from Snake Draft stats because Urshifu was in the metagame. Now that Urshifu is banned, Tapu Fini usage has declined, so the chances of running into a terrain is even lower than before. Bottom line, not all battles are going to have terrains up, so Mimicry will kick in some of the time, but not all the time. In battles without terrain, Mimicry is essentially Run Away or Honey Gather, so I really don't think it's a "detrimental" ability as we outlined in Concept Assessment.

Contrast Mimicry with other abilities like Slow Start, Defeatist, Color Change, and Emergency Exit. These abilities will always affect how CAP 29 plays in every single battle it's in. Perish Body will also affect how CAP 29 plays in virtually every battle it's in because nearly every team is going to have a contact move on some Pokemon. If we actually want to make typing a challenge on CAP 29, then Color Change is the best ability for that, not Mimicry.

Since I haven't had a chance to voice my opinion on some of the other abilities, I don't like Normalize, Klutz, or Stall. Normalize changes the typing of some utility moves, and that's about it. I'm not sure what there is to learn from this ability honestly. I know people are itching for a Normal-type CAP, but this doesn't seem like the right way to go about it if that's your motivation to want Normalize. Klutz seems very narrow in passing an Assault Vest or other detrimental item onto the opponent, but again, how much more in depth can we go than that? Finally, Stall means CAP 29 goes last always, but beyond a few niche moves, why not just make a CAP that has a low speed stat?

tl;dr: I think Slow Start, Defeatist, Color Change, Emergency Exit, and Perish Body (no particular order) actively hinder CAP 29 in every battle it's in and have colorful, interesting paths to go down for reasons already stated by many other users above. On the other hand, Normalize, Klutz, Stall, and especially Mimicry don't seem all that interesting to explore.

 

[Tadasuke]

Alright, after reviewing further with the TLT we've opted to move towards finishing up the ability discussion sooner rather than later. Instead of spending 48 hours wrapping up discussion we'll tentatively be spending 24 hours reviewing the abilities we've gone over and ironing out the specifics of exactly what's going to make the slate. If discussion suddenly picks up we can look to expand the time limit.

To start, let's go over the abilities that I feel have received enough positive responses to merit a spot on the slate.

• Color Change: This one seems like there's a plethora of routes to take in terms of how we want to actualize the concept. There are a ton of cool interactions that come as a result of the frequent typing changes inherent to this ability, especially regarding how the mon would function defensively. I also like that this encourages more mindful play, since the opponent can't always keep spamming the same move and needs to put thought into which attack they want to click first against this mon and why.
• Defeatist: Although this has been a bit controversial, it opens up a whole bunch of different routes in terms of how we can actually complete the project. There are a wide variety of functions and archetypes that a mon with this ability can fulfill, and I think that frees up a lot of room for the remainder of the process.
• Emergency Exit: There are so many interesting ways to go about forcing a switch from this ability and how we can take advantage of that. In general this seems to me like the least restrictive ability process-wise, and opens up a lot of room for us to really learn about how much we can benefit from manipulating the mechanics involved.
• Perish Body: Although I wasn't sold on this ability at first, I think Zephyr's post pointed out a lot of interesting interactions regarding how it can force out common defensive threats. I also thought he had a great point on how it allows the opponent to strategize differently in terms of how they want their offensive mons to perform if they can simply hit this mon with one contact move and put it into the situation of either switch or die. That said, this is ability can enter a lot of situations in which it functions as a Non-Competitive Ability.
• Slow Start: This has been a fairly contentious ability, however I think it's received enough support and positive argumentation to merit a spot on the slate. There are a wide variety of ways we can flesh out the concept with this ability while not necessarily being restricted to a single viable path. This may require more precise handling than other abilities to ensure the end product both fulfills the concept and doesn't break the meta, but I definitely believe it's possible to do so.

The next group of abilities are those which haven't received much of a positive response. Please feel free to make final arguments for or against any of the following.

• Klutz: This seems really boring and straightforward. There's not much to do here in terms of utilizing the ability outside of tricking a restrictive item away or using Fling for a single-use Dark-type attack.
• Mimicry: This will generally function as a Non-Competitive Ability, and even when it does come into play, the scope of what we can do in terms of innovating around it is rather narrow.
• Normalize: Outside of a few niche interactions with certain moves, this seems generally uninteresting and fairly narrow in terms of scope. It seems incredibly restrictive on the rest of the process as well, specifically the Typing and Movepool stages.
• Stall: This is also fairly restrictive on the rest of the process. In a lot of cases it seems like this would function more like the mon is simply slow rather than gaining any benefit from its ability forcing it to go last in the priority bracket. While it may seem intriguing theoretically, but in practical terms the routes available for this ability don't seem anywhere near as interesting as the other options listed.

So again, let's tentatively look to wrap up this discussion within the next 24 hours, then we're on to the ability poll!

 

[Gekokeso]

Right now the first five seem like the best for slating: all are flexible enough to provide excellent discussion, with slow start and color change being my favourites (as well as the most discussed).

Afterwards I don't really see the utility of the other abilities with the exception of normalize, which even then would lead to huge poll jumping. I think that the first 5 abilities in the post (perish body, ee, defeatist, slow start and color change) are the ones that deserve being slated the most, and I wouldn't change or replace any of them

 

[dex]

I want to give my thoughts on the currently slated abilities.

Color Change: This ability has been talked about ad nauseam. I agree with Snake and Tada in saying that Color Change gives us the chance to have extremely interesting and informative conversations throughout the rest of the stages while definitely counting as a bad ability. I think of the available abilities, this one works best.

Defeatist: I think our options to make this work are fewer than color change, but it is still interesting enough, and doable enough. Defeatist has the unique quality of having an example of a successful mon (Archeops) that we can look at and cherry pick from. All in all, I think Defeatist would lead to healthy discussion across the process.

Emergency Exit: I would warn against this ability if only because it sounds like we're making the ultra pivot. Additionally, I don't know if Emergency Exit is bad insomuch as it is bad on Golosipod. However, I do see this leading to a fun process, and it can be argued that it is still a bad ability because it gives control to the opponent.

Perish Body: Perish Body is a dangerous one. I've heard talk of trapping, but at that point it's not a bad ability. The reason we can think of Perish Body as a bad ability is because it forces us to switch. If we lose more for switching than the opponent, then I think we will have accomplished the concept. I don't know how feasible it is to create that, which is why I prefer other abilities, but that is how it would need to work from a concept point of view.

Slow Start: Slow Start has been talked about a lot. I understand the appeal of it, I mean we've all wanted to use Regigigas at some point. However, I don't see this going anywhere interesting. If Slow Start is picked, one of the following will occur: a) we create a mon that completely ignores the downfalls of Slow Start, which goes against the concept completely. b) we make an absolutely stally, annoying mon that is not healthy for the metagame. c) we make an unviable mon in our attempts to balance it given Slow Start's effects on stats. None of these options are appealing to me, and I think Slow Start should be removed from the slate, as it would turn out to be uninteresting and uninformative for the process and unhealthy for the CAP metagame.

 

[ausma]

Hey all!! Not really a CAP player, but I competitively design a lot of Fakemon, and I wanted to pitch my thoughts on these abilities real quick, as far as a pseudo-detrimental, yet still intuitive one goes.

Color Change: I really like the concept of this one, but I feel as though you're not going to get much mileage out of it in a vacuum since it is dependent on your opponents' damage and doesn't give the player enough control to be consistent in any way. I feel like Color Change would pretty much only have defensive use since you're not really going to have access to reliable STABs or anything of the sort and you will never be able to guess what kind of moves you're going to be hit by on a game to game basis, even if you design it to deliberately want to take specific types of attacks like Knock Off. I guess that's part of the point, though. I just feel like there isn't a lot of room to make this shine simply due to the consistency issues, and not being able to reliably make full use of it. I wouldn't complain if it won, though.

Emergency Exit: This one is bar none my favorite suggestion. Golisopod was always a favorite Pokemon of mine to use, and Emergency Exit is a gigantic reason as to why; it has access to a bunch of really cool options, for one, however something that makes Golisopod shine is that the user can have control over Emergency Exit. Emergency Exit, I feel, gives us the most amount of room to design something intuitive and interesting that isn't overtly a benefit to it, but can be actually utilized with smart play and management, which I think should be the goal here. Obviously, it's imperative that we don't perfectly design a super pivot around this ability, but I think the fact that the user can still take advantage of it with a wide array of interesting options makes Emergency Exit my favorite suggestion. Hazards, recoil moves, recovery, priority, etc.; there's so much we can do with this.

Defeatist: I think the appeal of Defeatist mostly comes in the sense that it justifies creating a Pokemon that appears insane on paper, but is handicapped by having to deal with Defeatist. Obviously, it's important to mention that we have to design this Pokemon to actually be detrimented by it for it to amount to anything, but I'm certainly not against the idea since it can be worked around, and still encourages a fun, varied process overall.

Perish Body: I'm relatively a fan of this one too. I feel as though Cursola is a strange case, because it in of itself hates being put on its own timer, but at the same time, it isn't able to reliably get its Perish Body off due to its poultry physical bulk. So long as we don't give the Pokemon any easy trapping options (or maybe not any trapping options at all), I'm certainly for an ability like this, since it's a really cool concept and one I feel we can balance our Pokemon around.

Slow Start: Slow Start is an unforgivably bad ability, and one I am highly against. Obviously, with Slow Start in our design, we want our Pokemon to be actively detrimented by it for it to amount to anything, but at the same time, 5 active turns that hurt your Pokemon tremendously every time they switch in limits what we can do so much. This pretty much forces it to be a stally tank with recovery if it wants to have viability, and it will be shunned to having a good portion of its movepool be utility and sustain just so it can shave off Slow Start; then, it will only have a move or two to actually make use of its stats. I get the idea behind this one, but I just dislike how limiting this ability actually is and how it could make the process here limited to one or two courses of action.

I pretty much agree with all of the other abilities not being slated, for the reasons provided.

 

[MrDollSteak]

I don't have all too much to say as I am overall satisified with the preliminary slate and have made some extensive arguments on the abilities themselves before, as such I am more just rehashing my points for clarity here.

I completely agree that none of Klutz, Mimicry, Normalize and Stall should be included on the final slate for precisely the reasons that Tadasuke has mentioned.

Of the five that have been selected I am the least excited about Perish Body because as I have mentioned previously, I think it is currently being undervalued and is not as negative of an ability as it is being made out to be if it is designed around correctly. I would prefer if Perish Body were nor slated but I'm not going to throw any full weight behind that.

Otherwise, I think that Slow Start, Colour Change, Emergency Exit and Defeatist will all lead to interesting projects with good discussion, although I am a bit concerned that Defeatist could lead to some overcompensation in the project and result in the least interesting end product of the others.

 

[Celever]

I've wanted to get more into CAP for a long time but didn't notice this was happening and am late to the party so RIP. Suppose I may as well provide some thoughts on things.

Color Change: Color Change being used for its defensive utility seems immediately underwhelming. It only has a possible utility against choice-locked Pokémon (when looking at it 1-on-1) and even in that instance only against: Poison-, Steel-, Fire-, Water-, Grass-, Electric-, Psychic-, Ice-, and Dark-Type moves. It seems feasible that, based on seeing this CAP in team preview, opponents would just only use these types on a choice-locked mon in dire circumstances, making its intended utility relatively easy to play around. The alternative, and where Color Change could be stronger, is as an offensive counter to Ghost- and Dragon-Type Pokémon. These two are the only types that are weak to themselves, and Color Change presents interesting offensive utility where they could be revenge-killed by a powerful STAB move under some circumstances. This offensive utility is in my opinion a more viable route to take a Color Change CAP than trying to force easily played around defensive utility, especially since Kecleon itself was intended to be a defensive Pokémon first with its high SpDef (and every type bar Poison- and Steel-Type that resists itself being special in Gen III), and it's been getting played around since its inception.

Emergency Exit: This is certainly the best "bad" ability in-battle and provides the least challenge to design a Pokémon around. There are a number of viable routes with this ability, though I somewhat question how bad it really is. Getting the switch advantage is amazing, with many teams running slow pivots for specifically this purpose, and so while Emergency Exit is worse than a slow Teleport or VolTurn, it still has clear utility that could be fun to design a CAP around. Personally I'm skeptical surrounding its fit of the concept for this reason, and would classify it as a give-and-take ability, but consensus seems different and I wasn't here to bring this up sooner so hey.

Defeatist: There's certainly a lot of potential with Defeatist that could make it really fun to conceptualise, as we would likely have to straddle a line between offensive and utility that creates issues with 4MSS that we would have to work around. This seems like a neat concept on-paper so long as we don't do what everyone is afraid of and over-compensate its offenses to make it good regardless. A downside here is that there isn't any up-side to this ability at all, so it would simply be a working around and not with ability. If one ability were to fill this role, my preference would be Normalize (for a reason I'll cover later).

Slow Start: Slow Start is probably cooler than Defeatist in principle because it offers more creativity. While Defeatist only affects offensive stats, Slow Start affects only physical attack, and speed. This opens up lots of possibilities -- a special attacker that only cares about speed getting boosted, a bulky pivot that can double up as a cleaner if it stalls out the Slow Start turns, or a Regigigas-style Pokémon that just wants to stall out its 5 turns before pummelling with physical attack. There's even potential synergy with something like Trick Room, where it moves first under Trick Room and then when Trick Room ends so does its Slow Start. Due to the number of interesting strategies and routes that could potentially involve working with Slow Start's effect for the CAP's benefit, I think this is currently my first preference.

Perish Body: This is a pretty one-note ability that I don't think would end up being too interesting. Only processing on contact moves makes it fairly easy to play around, and largely I think if we designed around Perish Body and the CAP was common enough then it would just hurt the viability of contact set-up sweepers and stop them being used, therefore removing the use of the CAP too. Seems very niche and situational, and in most battles this wouldn't affect anything. Ranking this as fifth preference, probably.

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Personally, I'd like to make an argument for Normalize being slated because in my opinion it has a unique approach to concept. This is the only ability that is the case on every turn of the battle, regardless of what the opponent does, how long it's been on the field for, how much damage it's taken etc., and at all times it will do the same thing: make the Pokémon categorically, inescapably hard-walled by Ghost-Type opponents. Any Ghost-Type at all. If our preference is to create a CAP that functions in spite of and not with its ability, then Normalize is our best option because it will always let a Ghost-Type opponent in for free. In my opinion it should be slated instead of Defeatist, because Defeatist is the only other ability with no upside whatsoever, and is inferior to Normalize because it's only active sometimes and only cuts offenses in half which is fairly worthless for creativity (if we make it an offensive Pokémon it just becomes bad after losing half health, otherwise we don't care too much about Defeatist anyway if it's utility or wall). Scanning through the thread, the discussion around Normalize was mostly on what it can do (which is indeed very limited -- it can turn Thunder Wave into a Glare clone and that's about it) as opposed to what it can't, and I think it's something worth considering more. How to design a Pokémon that is countered wholly by an entire type, since it doesn't have coverage to redeem itself, sounds like a fun challenge.

 

[dex]

Sorry to double post, but I think this is worth mentioning.
Should Slow Start be chosen, we cannot just make a bulky special attacker. In that scenario, we are completely ignoring the downsides of Slow Start, which is essentially anti-concept. Keep this in mind when you vote. I see a couple people saying that Slow Start would be good on a special attacker, but in doing so we would basically be making a mon with no ability, rather than having any meaningful interaction with our bad ability. I fail to see what we would learn from this, as CAP already has plenty of bulky special attackers (see Equilibra, Jumbao, Mollux, and Cyclohm). Especially when considering the cases of Jumbao and Cyclohm, who do not rely on their abilities to be viable, I think we would need to go in a physical direction to fulfill the concept and have meaningful discussion about how to work with a bad ability.

 

[Celever]

Sorry to double post, but I think this is worth mentioning.
Should Slow Start be chosen, we cannot just make a bulky special attacker. In that scenario, we are completely ignoring the downsides of Slow Start, which is essentially anti-concept. Keep this in mind when you vote. I see a couple people saying that Slow Start would be good on a special attacker, but in doing so we would basically be making a mon with no ability, rather than having any meaningful interaction with our bad ability. I fail to see what we would learn from this, as CAP already has plenty of bulky special attackers (see Equilibra, Jumbao, and Cyclohm). Especially when considering the cases of Jumbao and Cyclohm, who do not rely on their abilities to be viable, I think we would need to go in a physical direction to fulfill the concept and have meaningful discussion about how to work with a bad ability.

Perhaps not a bulky special attacker specifically as speed matters less to that archetype, but arguing that special attacking in general is anti-concept is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A special attacker who makes use of and/or is hampered by the speed element of Slow Start is entirely within concept. I don't see a reason why it has to make use of every aspect of the ability and not just one.

 

[aaronarium]

Beyond the flat damage increase, what's interesting about Normalize is the implications it has for moves whose utility would change if they changed type. Think about it this way: I would argue that since there are moves that can bypass the normalization, and we can possibly include one later, the major weakness of Normalize is not that you are hard walled by Ghosts, Steels, and Rocks. It is that when everything is a single type, all your attacking options become totally homogeneous. While this sounds restricting, I think it opens up the door to do things with moves we would be unable to do otherwise. Moves changing their type, even to one as offensively unimpressive as Normal, can totally change their targets or how they are used, especially for moves with unique effects or behaviors. Also consider that against non-Ghosts you would be bypassing all type immunities, and since you know all your moves will be a single type (and therefore, no 4MSS due to coverage) you will be well-informed about who on the opponent's team you will be able to handle. A better way to put this might be that, since our offensive move will always be Normal, we can rely on our checks and counters always being ABC and we can mix up our move choices based around that and keep the opponent guessing in other ways. The alternative being having to choose between movesets TUV and XYZ. each with different checks and counters, and being caught unaware because we brought the wrong set to deal with a certain 'mon. I hope I'm coming across as clear here.

Other than that, I still like Slow Start. The idea of having to succeed in spite of our ability in order to succeed because of it (or rather, because of its nullification) IMO makes it the most succinct and elegant ability on the slate.

 

[Krazyguy75]

I too would like to see Normalize slated. I can’t agree with how much of an understatement “a few niche interactions with certain moves” is.

We’re talking every single move in the entire game becoming not only STAB (assuming the normal type we’d almost certainly get), but STAB with an additional 1.2x multiplier! STAB 96 power extremespeed? STAB 78 power knock off? STAB 144 power double edge? Yes, you lose SE coverage, which is an overall loss, but you get some of the best neutral coverage in the game.

Not to mention: Every electric move can now hit ground for 1.2x. STAB 132 power Thunder on a rain team against a ground mon? Why not? Every Ghost move can hit normal for 1.2x. Psychic can hit dark for 1.2x. Do you switch in that ghost if future sight might be psychic, or do you switch in the dark ‘mon? Dragon can hit fairy for 1.2x. The amount of moves that suddenly get weird interactions is staggering.

I think that Normalize would have a VERY interesting process, especially in the move stage. We’re talking hundreds of moves that change viability in the hands of a Normalize ‘mon.

 

[Yuelia]

I've already given my thoughts on Defeatist and Slow Start previously, but to reiterate the problems with these:

1) The concept isn't "a mon with an objectively terrible ability", it's "a mon that succeeds in part because of an ability that most other mons wouldn't want". It's literally impossible to succeed because of Defeatist or Slow Start, unless you have Entrainment / Skill Swap, which we're already treating as banned. EDIT: So I learned from 2spoopy4u's post that the concept author stated in this thread that this perspective wasn't right; I missed that post from quziel, and I didn't mean to give out false info. I apologize for that, but I still oppose these abilities on the basis of my point 2 as follows:

2) There are already mons in OU that have excellent stats, solid movepools, non-restrictive abilities, the works. For that matter, there are mons that have all of that and aren't even OU. If you're building a team, which would you rather use: a mon that has to operate with an anchor tied to it, or one that doesn't? Consistency is one of the most important things people look for in teambuilding. In order to motivate people to use a Defeatist or Slow Start CAP 29, it would have to have some kind of absurdly powerful draw to it, and that's just begging for a repeat of what happened with Aurumoth's process. We assumed it was going to be risky to use, we overcompensated, and it turned out to be far too good.
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As for the abilities that do have upsides, let's go over them one by one:

Normalize: I feel like this is the perfect example of what we're looking for here. The overwhelming majority of mons would not want this ability, but with stats and a movepool that can take advantage of it, it becomes very helpful for us - exactly what the concept asks for. There are tons of unique moves that we can utilize with added power and a type change. There are even ways around the lack of super-effective coverage with Flying Press (becomes Normal/Flying), Freeze-Dry (retains effectiveness on Water-types), and Weather Ball (still changes type even with Normalize). As for it being restrictive in terms of process...that could be said about literally every ability here. It's not even as restrictive as people seem to think; even if it's highly probable that our typing would become Normal/X, the X can merit a lot of interesting discussion. There are tons of ways to go about the Movepool stage, which if anything becomes more interesting than usual, not less. I think this can really become something amazing, and it's a real shame that this isn't being given the attention it deserves. This is my first choice, and absolutely deserves to be slated at the very least.

Color Change: While we could certainly do worse than this, I feel like we could also do somewhat better. There aren't a whole lot of ways to use this ability offensively; on that front, it's inconsistent by its very nature. So we'd probably be locked into a more defensive playstyle, and while that's not inherently a bad thing, it would mean that it'd be fairly easy to play around us for non-Choiced attackers. Not a big fan of this one, but I'll admit that it does have its upsides. Being a fairly solid catch-all answer for Choiced attackers is not nothing.

Emergency Exit (or Wimp Out, depending on flavor): This one could be fairly interesting, alongside interactions with Speed and priority moves, and possibly a recovery move. An ability proc becomes effectively a free Teleport, with bonus points if you get to use another move in that same turn. While we have an example of what this might look like in Golisopod, its base 40 Speed is profoundly counterproductive for this sort of playstyle, even if it does have some priority to work with. We would have to be careful to avoid the pitfall of "just Golisopod but better", and the ability as a whole may be a little more restrictive on the process than we're giving it credit for...but I feel like that's already true of most of the abilities here.
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I'll abstain from talking about Mimicry, Klutz, and Stall for now; I might edit this later, but I'm not a big fan of these and I wouldn't strongly object to them not being slated (though I still think they're better than Defeatist or Slow Start, which in my opinion have been getting entirely too much positive attention).

 

[Darek]

I don't think Perish Body should be slated. Yes, forcing the opponent to switch is a powerful tool. On the other hand, forcing the opponent to switch within three turns isn't. If CAP29 doesn't otherwise threaten the opposing mon, the opponent still has 2 turns to do whatever they like before they switch. I fail to see many situations where I would bring CAP29 in to try to force a switch with Perish Body when I can instead force a switch immediately with a check or counter. If CAP29 is to effectively force switches, it'll be by virtue of its stats, typing, and movepool allowing it to check opposing mons, not because of Perish Body.

Focusing on the detrimental, pro-concept aspect of CAP29, we're essentially asking the question, "How can a Pokemon be effective while being unable to stay in for more than 3 turns?" Which to be quite honest, almost every Pokemon already accomplishes this to some extent, since in most situations mons are only staying in 1 or 2 turns after they switch in. As a result, I don't think that this makes for a very interesting pro-concept discussion.

As for the other aspects of Perish Body, I think we all generally agree Perish Trapping is gimmicky and unhealthy, and I personally find the intentional suicide route of Perish Body to be a really ineffective suicide user, especially considering that Emergency Exit also has similar momentum-grabbing attributes.

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Also, a lot of people are throwing in support for Normalize. I think Normalize should absolutely stay off the slate. We all agree that the utility Normalize provides is gimmicky at best. Normalize Thunder Wave is still worse than Glare; A Normal Future Sight is still eaten up by a large portion of the most common Future Sight switch-ins, being Steel Types and Tyranitar.

That leaves us with the concept of us making a mon with really potent STAB, but zero coverage... which is basically just Spectrier. And everyone hates Spectrier. I don't see why we should make CAP29 explore the concept of "make a mon with zero coverage" when Spectrier basically already teaches us everything we need to know, and shows us how unhealthy for the metagame this sort of mon becomes. By its very nature, a mon with no coverage is extremely linear in how it plays and how it is checked, making for an ultimately uninteresting mon.

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That being said, I'm fine with the rest of the proposed slate. I think that Slow Start, Defeatist, Color Change, and Emergency Exit can all lead to very interesting processes.

 

[Yuelia]

We all agree that the utility Normalize provides is gimmicky at best. Normalize Thunder Wave is still worse than Glare; A Normal Future Sight is still eaten up by a large portion of the most common Future Sight switch-ins, being Steel Types and Tyranitar.

Frankly, no, we don't "all agree" on this; the very existence of people arguing in Normalize's favor disproves that.

Thunder Wave is one move which CAP 29 might not even get, and doesn't need to fulfill concept, Normalize or no. As for Tyranitar eating Future Sight, there's a difference between taking some damage and taking no damage, and that difference could mean the difference between a 2HKO and a 3HKO.

That leaves us with the concept of us making a mon with really potent STAB, but zero coverage... which is basically just Spectrier. And everyone hates Spectrier. I don't see why we should make CAP29 explore the concept of "make a mon with zero coverage" when Spectrier basically already teaches us everything we need to know, and shows us how unhealthy for the metagame this sort of mon becomes. By its very nature, a mon with no coverage is extremely linear in how it plays and how it is checked, making for an ultimately uninteresting mon.

The comparison of Spectrier to Normalize is fallacious for a lot of reasons, but tl;dr: Normal is not Ghost. CAP 29 is almost certainly not going to have 145/130 attacking stats. CAP 29 is definitely not going to have a Moxie equivalent.

There are tons of interesting interactions with Normalize; aaronarium and Krazyguy75 above have the right of it. I don't think it's fair to the ability or the process to just dismiss it out of hand. It should be slated and have its chance to be voted on. If it gets outvoted, so be it, but I think it's absolutely worth considering.