CAP 29 - Part 2 - Primary Ability Discussion

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spoo

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Cool, slate is up, gonna give my thoughts. A few things first though,
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.
The point of this concept is that the ability should provide some sort of limitation to the pokemon and that limitation must be worked around (not ignored). Defeatist says that you have half attack and special attack below half HP, but still full speed and full bulk, so a pokemon that can still make progress under half and has the ability to heal up would completely fulfill the concept; "Defective Ability is an Actualization concept; aiming to create a Pokemon that... works with an ability that would be considered bad on most pokemon."The concept clearly spells out that abilities that the only real qualifying factor here is that the ability itself should be considered bad on most pokemon, that the ability should limit the mon in some way, and the pokemon should be set up in such a way that it can make the most of the ability and work around its limitations.
I don't mean for this to be a personal attack, this goes for anyone else who is arguing this line, but please stop- the person who wrote the concept has already come out in this thread and said that this isn't true, so if you're saying what the concept "is" and "isn't" to try and claim that slow start and defeatist don't fulfill the concept, then at this point the information you're providing is actively misleading

The argument of “we will just be making X mon but better / X mon 2.0” has been thrown around a lot and I don't think it's very sound. Personally I've seen it most often said about Emergency Exit, Slow Start, and Defeatist, and frankly I do not follow this logic at all and I don’t think it should be used as a reason to vote for/not vote for an ability. There are literally concepts that have been slated in the past that are “make an NU mon OU viable” or “make an RBY strategy OU viable,” so I don’t think it’s something that’s inherently bad in the first place, but beyond that, I don’t really think it’s even true here. Golisopod, Regigigas, and Archeops have a million things holding them back and are not really tooled to take maximum advantage of their abilities. This also isn’t to say something like Archeops wouldn’t be insanely good without Defeatist—it would—but that its tools aren’t optimal for working around Defeatist specifically, and that the same is true for Goli and Regigigas as well. Even if we make a “fast strong pivot” for Defeatist in the same way that Archeops is a “fast strong pivot,” there is still a ton of room to explore within that one archetype. So yeah, I just really dislike this train of thought and I hope that people don’t lean into it too much when they vote.

as for the slate-

Color Change: I don’t think there is a ton to say here that others haven’t already said. The ability is pretty horrible offensively but has a lot of possibilities defensively. We can’t actively control it and it gives next to no information about our role, which is really weird and challenging for the rest of the process, but also offers a lot of room for some creative problem solving. Overall I think this ability is probably the most interesting mechanically, but it’s also the ability that I think is the most risky. Like I said, we just don’t get a lot of information to work off of, and this could lead to some serious floundering later down the line, or an end product that flops because we misunderstood something fundamental about what the ability was offering us. I just have a lot of difficulty wrapping my head around what a Color Change mon would even look like, but I’ll reiterate that it’s still super cool and there is just as much possibility for us to succeed with a completely unique end product as there is for us to make something that’s awkward and uninspiring. tldr, really interesting but really hard.
For people saying that it’s a downright horrible ability though, I have to disagree, and I’ll leave you with an excerpt from a post by Rabia in CA that goes a bit more in depth:
I also think that Color Change needs to stop being referenced as a bad ability like, now; it's very situational in terms of being good or bad and largely depends on what you expect the function of the Pokemon in question to be.

The issue with going too in-depth w.r.t. Color Change is that the only Pokemon with it---Kecleon---has never been good, but I attribute this to stats rather than the ability. The only setting I have experience with Kecleon in is ADV NU, and I can say with certainty that it's not a net negative ability. Complicating how special wallbreakers can play into Kecleon is a fantastic boon for it; foes like Haunter, Flareon, and Wailord are significantly less problematic for it because they cannot spam their primary attacks as easily because of Color Change. Sure, for more offensively oriented sets it can be obnoxious losing your STAB on Return/Frustration or whatever move you opt for, but overall I think the notion that this is an objectively bad ability is a bad one.

Defeatist: Wanted to make a whole post on this ability but never got around to it lol. Me and some others spoke in #cap earlier today about Defeatist, and I’m really happy with the room this ability has to explore some great potential builds and interactions. I think it was quziel in the conversation who mentioned that Defeatist lets us think about how to price in and encourage recovery moves on Pokemon in offensive archetypes that normally wouldn’t run them, which I personally think is very interesting, and even beyond the more offensive archetypes a la Dragapult and Cinderace there’s still a ton more design space. Just for example, it's very possible to make something that functions like Melmetal above half and Ferrothorn below half—ie, a powerful tank that still has a ton of defensive utility if it’s knocked below the threshold—and I see something like this encouraging really interesting play and forcing both sides to ask themselves some weird questions that wouldn’t ever be relevant otherwise. I’ve always been pretty positive about this ability but it’s been gradually growing on me more, and compared to the other “no upsides” ability in Slow Start, I think Defeatist offers a lot more potential routes and is generally less restricting, requiring a much lower amount of compensation from the rest of the process.

Emergency Exit: Again, a lot of this has already been said, but this is probably our “safest” route, and it’s among my top choices. There aren’t a ton of restrictions, there are interesting mechanics at work that encourage cool ingame play, and it has a bunch of possible routes while still offering a strong sense of direction. I like the posts from D2 and Ausma about this ability so go and read those, but yeah I don’t have a ton more to say other than that I’m a fan of this one. I also don’t really sympathize with the “ultimate pivot” argument, unless “ultimate” really means “broken and unhealthy” which wouldn’t be the fault of the ability itself at that point. EExit has a huge built-in weakness in that it only works once unless we have recovery, and even if we are a super good pivot, there will always be a “best” pivot in the metagame so as long as we aren’t broken or unhealthy then I don’t see anything inherently wrong with having that title.

Perish Body: kind of indifferent about this one, it's my least favorite on the slate but I still like it way more than anything that didn't get slated. It's a cool ability for sure, and I'd be excited to build around it, I just like every option more. There are some genuinely cool interactions, but they all seem very situational and a bit contrived to me, so I doubt how often they would really come into play. Darek's post does a good job at highlighting some potential issues with the ability, though I disagree with him that it shouldn't be slated—the ability has some downsides which I'm not a huge fan of, but I still think it has earned its place on the slate.

Slow Start: Won't be talking much about the ability itself because I already made a long post about it here, but I do want to address some fears. The concern that the CAP will be unviable is just not super grounded in reality. Balancing will obviously be difficult but we have had these fears before and they have always been unsubstantiated at the end. The tools exist to make a Slow Start CAP function. Second, I don't think we run the risk of outright ignoring the ability by being a special attacker or something; this is antithetical to the concept itself and it won't happen. The criticism of "the ability will just never come into play" is easier to understand, because I'm of the same opinion that we wouldn't be transforming in every game—however, it's important to realize that the threat of transforming would be in every game, and I don't think that should be written off.

The final two concerns I've heard the most are the most reasonable, but actually contradict each other: the first is that we're pigeonholed into creating some kind of bulky utility tank with recovery, and the second being that we'll end up with a regigigas esque turn-stalling playstyle that will be horrible for the meta. I actually agree with the first concern, and I outlined this some in my previous post, but yeah we are probably going to be decently constrained. It doesn't make the ability any less interesting within that specific role, it just means that we'll have less to discuss at some points, which I'll admit isn't great; though, it also means that the ability is one of our safer options because we're given a strong direction for a predictably good route to take, as opposed so something like Color Change where we'll have a harder time figuring out where to go. It's pretty clear how the second concern contradicts this, but we can't end up with both a) defensive utility mon at the same time and b) annoying stab/bulk up/sub/protect mon, so the fear of having an annoying stally playstyle isn't that justified, and it seems like a very easy criticism because, well, there's a bad route to go down with every ability here and it's easy to point them all out, but that doesn't mean it's likely to happen either.
Slow start isn't even my favorite option, it's behind eexit/color change/defeatist (in no particular order) for me, but a lot of the criticisms against it feel kind of weak so I wanted to try and clear them up.

========

Normalize: Probably my least favorite option to be honest, even among abilities like Stall and Klutz. Jas's post a few pages back summarizes my thoughts pretty well- basically there is very little that this ability offers us mechanically, and there aren't enough moves that benefit (not just change) from becoming normal, to the point that I don't see what there is for us to learn from pursuing this. What also bothers me about this ability is that all of its options seem incredibly incoherent- flying press, freeze dry, thunder wave (glare already exists), extreme speed, weather ball, future sight, multi attack... all of these moves seem very strange and incoherent to cram on the same moveset, so we would realistically only be focusing on one or two of them and at that point I just don't see what the payoff is. The only thing that has interested me so far about Normalize was Ho3n's post that argued for a more defensive route, as opposed to the more wallbreakery routes that I think people are thinking of more often, but either way it's still a very narrow ability. I also don't see how normalize would have any smaller of an anchor on this CAP than something like Defeatist- personally this is one of the most crippling abilities by far. All in all, there's a myriad of flaws here which I've tried to lay out- restrictiveness, we don't really learn much, incoherent options, narrow design space, encourages incredibly binary play due to having the most binary checks and counters in the world... ultimately I just can't get on board with this one.
 
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MrDollSteak

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I just want to weigh in on the current Normalize discussion.

To refer to Krazyguy's point: "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."

This isn't true. You're not hitting a Ground type with an Electric move. You're hitting them with a Normal move. Functionally it makes no sense to run Thunder over Boomburst, you're not actually opening up new special options because Normal already has the best no drawback attack. On the physical side of things, there's no difference between Wood Hammer and Double-Edge, but even then, if you had access to Extreme Speed that would be all you run, a Normal move.

You also can't say Normal has the best neutral coverage in the game because it can't run any other coverage to support it. In the CAP metagame there are more than a few highly ranked Steel, Rock and Ghost Pokemon that will completely wall a hypothetical Normalize CAP.

The only way that the movepool process can have any interesting discussion is if Judgment or Multi-Attack are allowed, which would be a very large ask considering that they are signature moves on exclusive forme change Pokemon, and even then would likely devolve into which utility moves would support the offensive moves its given, as it will effectively only ever need to run one of the two above moves alongside a reliable high BP attacking option. When you remove the ability for a Pokemon to run coverage, debating between getting Sludge Bomb and Tri-Attack is completely unnecessary except for niche situations with Miasmaw and secondary effects, and as such the end product will be completely one dimensional.
 
All the offensive options for Normalize are jokes. Yea you could hit a ground type with a normalize thunder for 130+ bp, but they can just switch to a ghost type instead? yea psychic can now hit a dark type, but they can switch to a ghost type instead. yea you can hit dragon with fairy, but.. you see where im going. its not creating some crazy inverted type matchup, its giving you normal type moves. thats not special, and when you take it out of the vague and into actual meta situations and specific good moves its not that diverse either. The freeze-dry example only improves its regular switchin matchup for Naviathan (and Omastar if you rate it) in the whole tier.

That being said, normalize is interesting to me cus its so bad. I wouldnt be mad to try out a mon that is always going to have its attack resisted or immune by one or more pokemon on the enemy team, it could make for an interesting end result and wouldnt mind if it was slated. As long as people dont expect a mon that will succeed offensively with it, cus that'll turn into a Dracovish and destroy even resists when it hits them (something that always gets banned).

edit: sniped by the steak
 
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Celever

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Agreed about the offensive options mentioned for Normalize being jokes, but there are four that are worth talking about in my opinion: Volt Switch, Foul Play, Body Press, and Gyro Ball. Volt Switch would be nice to hit Ground-Type Pokémon on their usually weaker SpDef and pivot, while the final 3 of course depend greatly on the stat stage and what role we end up wanting it to fulfil, but shake up the meta surrounding each of those moves greatly. Powerful Fighting-Type Pokémon who doesn't have to worry about Foul Play? Get Normalised. Bulky Fairy- or Poison-Type that can switch into physical walls with Body Press? Get Normalised. That Regieleki which can tank a Gyro Ball with its resistance? Yup, normalised.

Those are the only four offensive moves that receive unique attributes thanks to Normalize, but it's certainly interesting that each of the 4 use between them every stat besides SpDef and HP (Gyro Ball using Attack and Speed, and Foul Play the opponent's Attack). This in itself gives us some creativity down the line with regards to later stages of the CAP's development.

But of course all of these moves are still completely walled by Ghost-Type Pokémon, which is the main reason why this would be interesting. This is just to discuss that Normalize doesn't limit creativity as much as some seem to think.
 
I know I'm already late for the "Normalize is not that good" train, but here we go:

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.
Saying that Defeatist is inferior to Normalize because it isn't in effect all the time is missing that the 50% threshold is always there, and both the player and the opponent will be playing around it the entire time. In addition, a Pokemon has plenty of ways to both make itself useful under half health, and making sure it stays above half health, even if it goes an offensive route. Archeops is offensive, but it's a very specific type of offensive mon (especially given its preferred STAB is Head Smash). I do agree that Normalize fits the definition of the concept, but I don't really see where the fun in trying to get around Ghost types is (you are either all offensive and thus ineffective, you have one of a few moves that are capable of hitting them, or you go out of your way to Trick a Ring Target), and I don't think it fits the concept particularly better than Defeatist does.

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.
The following moves bypass Normalize: Weather Ball (entirely weather dependent and Normal type otherwise), Natural Gift (one-time use move that is Berry-dependent), Judgment, and Techno Blast (two moves that are both item dependent, and thus can negated by Knock Off, and that we are not likely to get). Freeze-Dry retains its super-effective hit on Water-types, and Flying Press becomes Normal-Flying, but neither of them solve us being walled by Ghosts, Steels, and Rocks.

Grouping the next two quotes together because they have the same point:
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.
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.
Losing SE coverage is a massive pain, more than I think you're giving it credit for. Missing out on a reliable 2x boost to your moves is a pretty big hit to any Pokemon's damage output. I also don't agree with the idea that, because moves suddenly change their effectiveness, it makes them so much better. In the Thunder example, sure, you get to click it against their Ground type, but why would you stick Thunder on this mon when Boomburst is right there? Getting to damage Normal types, Psychic types, and Fairy types 1.2x with moves that normally would be completely blocked is cool. but we could have achieved the same effect with a regular mon with coverage, or even with the preexisting Normal type options. I think the Future Sight interaction is pretty fitting for the definition of niche interaction, and while the mindgame is interesting, that mons already commonly exist in the metagame that don't particularly care either way about what type the incoming hit is (namely Tyranitar and Equilibra) is not a very motivating thought. In addition, sure, all these moves come with their own secondary effects, but most of their interactions remain unchanged (Grasses still ignore Leech Seed and powder moves, Steels and Poisons still ignore poison, Electrics still ignore paralysis, Fires still ignore burn, etc.). The most you're getting out of these is extra damage, which is nice, but the damaging Normal-type options are already there.
 
I find a lot of these anti-normalize arguments silly and disengenuous. “It gets walled by ghost types and doesn’t have coverage!” Ah yes. And defeatist mons get crippled by going below half. And slow start ‘mons can’t use physical power effectively.

I don’t think a normalize mon with 300 base attack wouldn’t be viable offensively. Which shows that there is a threshold at which the ability becomes viable. It’s about finding the point where the negatives and positives balance out.

The same goes for any other ability here. Defeatist mons will be given better speed and bulk and recovery to let them compensate for a strictly bad ability. Color Change ‘mons will have better bulk and offenses both to account for loss in reliability on both fronts. Slow Start needs an insane stat total if we are going to make it have any physical attacking viability. Every thing here will need better than normal stats to make up for their weaknesses.

And... that’s the concept! Yes, normalize will need really good offenses to make it viable offensively. So will Slow Start, and Color Change. Yes, it has a major weakness, bigger than anything else on the list. But to discount an ability because “the weakness outweighs the benefit” is absurd. The concept is literally to build around abilities like that.

And sure, my move examples were bad. It’s not the move stage, and that was just 10 seconds of brainstorming. We’ve come up with around a dozen moves it affects in interesting ways over the past few pages, and we’re not even in the move stage. To entirely discount it for its downsides and write it off as having no upside when the concept is to overcome downsides and people have already come up with a small list of upsides is dumb.

I don’t say that normalize will be the easiest process. Nor the best pokemon. It will be a giant challenge to overcome. But if we are trying to base the entire process on a single bad ability, I think normalize is a totally fine option.
 
One of the approaches to the concept is to have a bad ability and function despite the flaws. Being hard walled by ghosts and not having reliable SE moves is a huge flaw. Voting for Normalize would be voting for a process that wants to work around those flaws, not for any "advantages" from normal type Sucker Punch or Gyro Ball. The discourse around its "advantages" are not the right questions to be asking. The ability should be looked at for how it completely warps the movepool stage to neglect typing and instead look at moves for their effect, for trying to find a way to see use despite the glaring weakness of no SE moves and having a hard time against 3 typings, and looking at viable ways to circumvent those weaknesses. Not about "Thunder Wave Grounds" or "Foul Play against Buzzwole."

Also, if there is no second ability, then its powerup effect is entirely negligible, and just needs to be factored in for the stats stage. Its a strictly detrimental ability, like Slow Start or Defeatist that we would want to build around in spite of the drawback ability.

That being said, I do think it could be an interesting and unique process to explore here. I think its fair game for the slate considering it has received support from people here, even if it is extremely controversial.
 

Wulfanator

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It is unsettling to see the level of support Normalize has despite how negatively it impacts the process.

First, the ability serves only to railroad the typing stage. Under no reasonable circumstance would a mon want to use normal as pure coverage unless it was absolutely forced to. This ultimately necessitates normal typing to preserve any ability benefit in the form of STAB. The next problem arises when you look at any type pairings for a Normalize mon. Normalize locks the mon out of all other offensive options, so we end up picking a secondary typing for purely defensive purposes. What could have otherwise been a diverse conversation is now limited to potentially 5 types by default. Keep in mind there are 171 possible ways to assign typing.

Secondly, the moveset stage is borderline meaningless since there is no type diversity for offensive moves. All normal-type, all the time. So, we pick a big damage option with a secondary effect and some utility options. We would be lying to ourselves to say this mon would attempt to make use of moves like flying press, future sight, or freeze-dry. When any steel-type can act as a designated counter to Normalize, all these options are inferior gimmicks. I am unconvinced that a conversation discussing only secondary effects and utility moves will offer us much in the way of learning. This will probably necessitate expanding moveset discussion to moves like multi-attack, and it would be silly to do so given how much people complained about the multi-attack concept submission.

Lastly, stats are the only real freedom the project has if we select Normalize. CAP has a history of providing mons bloated stats when there is a lack of faith in concept success. Equilibra’s initial stats came as a result of not believing in Doom Desire as a strong attacking move. All the CAP veterans know how that story ended. The point is Darek851 was correct to be worried about a Spectrier-like final product because CAP will do it and CAP will do it better.

I think it goes without saying to keep this ability off the slate.


On a more positive note, I am glad to see Perish Body as a serious contender for slate. While I am not as interested in this option, I think it provides excellent contrast to the other contenders. Perish body is a negative ability. As already stated, it is an ability that is primarily in control of the opponent. Unless the player switches in on a predicted contact move, the opponent has control over its activation and forces the player out more easily because of it. This could be spun as a unique learning experience though. I really like Quziel’s reference to ORAS Latios (link). It draws good parallels to how this would function. However, what is not mentioned is that this ability would allow us to explore a higher power-level we would otherwise be barred from since this mon would be easy to force out.

The rest of the abilities being highly considered for slating make sense and I have nothing else to add.
 
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Normalize has no place in this discussion at all. Particularly, these ideas that "a Psychic-type move will now hit Dark-types for 1.2x damage" are just hilariously bad. This sounds cool in theory until you realize that your opponent literally knows its a Normal-type move and that alone makes the idea crumble apart really badly. The ability would also completely ruin the process; the movepool stage would be horrendous, there'd be literally nothing to it, and the typing stage is practically locked already. It would also encourage poll jumping. Don't slate Normalize.
 

Rabia

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Normalize has no place in this discussion at all. Particularly, these ideas that "a Psychic-type move will now hit Dark-types for 1.2x damage" are just hilariously bad. This sounds cool in theory until you realize that your opponent literally knows its a Normal-type move and that alone makes the idea crumble apart really badly. The ability would also completely ruin the process; the movepool stage would be horrendous, there'd be literally nothing to it, and the typing stage is practically locked already. It would also encourage poll jumping. Don't slate Normalize.
Agree big with this. Something I've noticed that gets talked about a lot is "uninteresting topics," i.e. someone won't vote for a concept, ability, or so forth because it isn't interesting to them or won't lead to an interesting process. Well, you want something uninteresting? Normalize fits the bill to such an extent it's depressing. The big reason for this is probably the ban of Entrainment and moves similar to it because, as we've seen in metagames that allow for the combination of Normalize + Entrainment, this is really the only strategy that exists for the ability. Without it, what are we left with? A Pokemon that... has only Normal-type moves? The singular route I can see this taking would be something like Spectrier, some nutty wallbreaker/setup sweeper that has never met a girl named Coverage in its life. I cannot support this ability.
 

snake

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Normalize should stay off the slate. The slated abilities have a) provide sufficient pathways for process and b) have a gameplan in battle to at least take advantage its ability in some capacity or overcome its ability.

Wulfanator72 and Jordy are absolutely right about how Normalize constricts process to an unhealthy degree. While there are some interactions with some moves, building a whole CAP around these small interactions honestly doesn't amount to much at all. It wouldn't be a surprise that CAP 29 can leverage typical Electric-type moves against Ground-types, or typical Psychic-type moves against Dark-types, etc. What would happen is that Rock-, Steel-, and Ghost-types would just switch into to Normalize CAP 29's moves; there's nothing else to say. It's the same problem with Mimicry, Klutz, and Stall; there are a couple of funny move interactions that might be interesting I guess, but they're not enough to have good discussions around.

The slated abilities actually have a gameplan when you bring them to battle. Slow Start, ideally you're trying to overcome the 5 turn limitation; with Defeatist, you're trying to manage your HP to be above half; with Color Change, you're actively trying to manage which typing you become; with Emergency Exit, you're trying to put your HP below 50% strategically; and with Perish Body, you're trying to leverage contact moves against your opponent.

The general gameplan for Normalize in battle is: "gee, I hope that I don't run into any Rock-, Steel-, or Ghost-types" in a metagame that has no shortage of these Pokemon. Without even considering Spectrier, Ghost-types have never been better in any other generation with Pursuit gone, and Steel-types are just as amazing as ever. Because coverage just doesn't exist on a Normalize Pokemon, the options become so limited that either CAP29 is just walled by Rock- and Steel-types or it breaks through them with ease. If it's the former, then there's an extremely hard usage case for CAP29 because being walled by Steel-types isn't really something that highly-ranked Pokemon do (just check the VR). If it's the latter, where Normalize CAP29 can potentially break through Rock-types and Steel-types, that's where the Spectrier comparisons are coming forth. I don't think a Pokemon needs a Moxie clone to make it frustrating to deal with when it's flinging off Normal-type moves that are so powerful that resists can't take them. Then the metagame becomes one where you have to have a Ghost-type to deal with Normalize CAP29, which is similar to the current metagame where basically have to pick a Dark-type or a weird RU/NU/PU Normal-type not to be run over by Spectrier. Basically, I'm not convinced that CAP29 actually has a way to utilize its ability to its advantage; it's just stuck with Normal-type moves and a couple of moves that interact funny with Normalize.

While, yes, this is the "bad" ability concept, the slate shows that there are five abilities that give CAP29 a goal in battle to either overcome its ability or even to use it to its advantage. For the reasons above, Normalize just doesn't. Normalize means that we can explore a couple of niche interactions between certain moves and Normalize at the expensive of hamstringing future stages of the CAP to a concerning degree. Because Normalize has no coverage, we begin to run into the scenario where we can either make for a Pokemon so weak that either gets walled by Steel-types and Ghost-types (which are are their peak now, even with Spectrier), or make for a Pokemon so strong whose only checks are a limited pool of Ghost-types and certain Steel-types (as Spectrier does now with Dark- and Normal-types). I believe the slate as is shows a diverse pool of abilities for this concept, and excluding any considerations for abilities that didn't appear on Tadasuke's last post, I think the slate needs no changes moving forward.
 

Zephyri

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As one of the main pushers of Perish Body, I would really love to see it on the slate. Unfort Tadasuke has informed me that "bribing the TLT isnt allowed and can get you CAP-banned" or smthng similarly stupid idk so i'm stuck with defending it in the thread.

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.
I agree that the user has some control over when Perish Body activates based on prediction, but the same applies the other way around: mons can predict when you're coming in and choose not to use their contact move. The fact that the opp controls when your abil is activated for the most part means that the trade off is extremely favorable for the opp. However, the unique benefits this ability offers means that there's something we can leverage and work off of to make this an interesting process. It feels disingenuous to argue that the ability can be seen as an NCA when there were a multitude of common possible situations where the ability's ability to force other mons out is extremely useful.

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.
iirc the only time people have talked about trapping in regards to perish body is when they want to emphasize that trapping is a bad thing for a P-body concept. Thus, I doubt that trapping will really have a place in a possible Perish Body discussion

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.
Forcing the opp to switch in three turns isnt a powerful tool, but it's an interesting one by all means. It means that you can send in a setup mon on the opposition when they would usually beat you at +0, giving you a free setup turn. It means that you can force out opposing mons that are starting to snowball. It means that you get a free turn when they switch out, and it enables interesting pivot strategies. It means that you can blanket "check" every mon with a contact move. Its definitely an extremely targeted ability, but i dont think thats necessarily a bad thing as we've seen with Miasmaw, which had one of the best projects in recent history. I think that although the uses of Perish Body aren't mind-blowingly amazing (which isnt a bad thing, the concept is "bad ability" after all) theres still something we can work off of, along with sufficient disadvantages to cement this as a negative ability
 

Voltage

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A lot of my post will be repeating opinions of others, but it's important to vocalize opinions here and show support for ideas. Please also note that this isn't meant to be a personal attack or something of that nature. With that in mind:



But for real

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.
I made a joke about this in the Discord (which you should all join btw), but I'd really like to touch upon your statement "I think that Normalize would have a VERY interesting process, especially in the move stage.". I have to thoroughly disagree here. In making the movepool process somewhat unique, Normalize encourages severe polljumping in the typing and movepool stages for the sheer fact that literally in order to make Nornmalize work, we have to literally consider the moves. For example: "Do we give CAP29 Techno Blast?". We literally cannot answer that question because it's entirely polljumping. We cannot base stats around a move that we haven't decided yet, and y using Normalize, we are actively encouraging polljumping.

Also I know it's been touched upon a lot as is, but ok, an electric mon can hit a Ground typew with an electric move, but that's literally only because it's a Normal typed move now. Yes technically it's pro-concept because everything is Normal now, but I really don't think this a very strong point. Circumventing immunities with Normalize is essentially moot because with Normalize, nothing if a coverage move anyway

The same goes for any other ability here. Defeatist mons will be given better speed and bulk and recovery to let them compensate for a strictly bad ability. Color Change ‘mons will have better bulk and offenses both to account for loss in reliability on both fronts. Slow Start needs an insane stat total if we are going to make it have any physical attacking viability. Every thing here will need better than normal stats to make up for their weaknesses.
The difference between Normalize and Defeastist or Color Change is that Normalize is actively forces obtrusive restrictions on the process. It's like Rabia, snake, and Jordy have said. Normalize puts us in a really bad corner for the rest of this process. We're either making something that is like Regielecki which basically lets any resist / immunity come in for free, or you're creating a mon like Spectrier which is so good and is only hard walled by Ghost types in order to check it. and in that process you have to deal with the encouraged polljumping as well. With Defeatist, one could argue that there would be polljumping with respect to recovery moves, but there is a lesser of two evils there as "recovery move" is a whole lot narrower than "literally every attacking ad utility move". And with Color Change really would avoid polljumping as a whole simply because this Pokemon's typing would be more or less dependent on the opponent. Sure, the Typing stage for this process might be a little lackluster, but the remaining stages would absolutely be a fascinating process. The problem being outlined here with respect to compensating here doesn't translate from Normalize to the other abilities in the same way in the process. And as snake can tell you, I'm being a stickler for process.

In short, I hope that Normalize stays off the slate as I fear it would generate an unfortunately inconsistent and unfun process, and a Pokemon that either is too unviable, or warps the metagame around it.


______________________________________


Ultimately, right now my Supports are with Color Change and Perish Body. I thin kthese two abilities are likely to generate interesting stages for stats and typing and would ultimately create a Pokemon with a very cool niche in the metagame despite these otherwise negative abilities. Color Change is an incredible "high ceiling" ability that can really lead to cxlever and thoughtful play while still being below average if used incorrectly. I would argue something similar for Perish Body as it would allow for clever use of Perish Song mechanics to act as a momentum grab similar to how Explosion or Healing Wish might be used as well.

In particular, with Perish Body, I am a big fan of the way that the user can effectively use the player's agency against them. All the opponent would need to do to bypass Perish Body would be to literally click U-turn, and suddenly, the user's Pokemon is put on a timer. In conjunction with heaving to deal with something like delayed attacks, this could easily put the user at a significant disadvantage. Because of this obvious disadvatange, there would have to be a really thoughtful typing and stats stage that would allow for ways in which to maximize this Pokemon's longevity while still acknowledging its very obvious flaws (Also, as a small aside, I am also in favor of avoiding trapping moves iwth Perish Body if it ever comes to that, but that's tnot the point I ant to get to right now). Perish Body has my support right now more than anything else, with Color Change as a close second, because it encourages in depth stages later on and thoughtful play as a final product.
 
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Just posting to vocalize some support for Defeatist btw since it hasnt been mentioned too much- its something that is more easily controlled than the other things on the slate- its not a situational on-hit ability, or mostly reactive like EE, or takes 5 turns; it can be "activated" (or rather deactivated) by the user any time by regenerating its HP. This is an interesting/reliable setup bc Defeatist is something that is going to be activated (and deactivated) in a meaningful, negative way every game.
As long as the concept avoids high speed pivots that turn it into the equivalent of a fast frail attacker (avoid all hits, only revenge kill/pivot/clean, no defensive utility- Syclant, Pheromosa, Alakazam) and we can build around the Defeatist design space we are really hitting the nail on the head with the concept and seeing the mon overcome it every match. It has multiple good routes and it can be forced to depend on allies or work by itself. Its also one of the two abilities that is purely negative and these have a really interesting approach to them that's different to the likes of EE or Perish Body and that just personally appeals to me

ftr i think the slate is great as it is
 

quziel

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Defeatist is an ability I really love because its one we have to constantly be thinking about (its more that you get 2 lives, but your second life is horrid), which implies a lot of very fun stuff. From the pokemon that is a terror against balance but is worthless against offense (aka hits hard but easy to force down), a pokemon that really cannot afford to get hit but is affording insane power due to it, or a pokemon that is constantly dancing between its two modes (think a mon that is both Ferrothorn and Melmetal) there's a ton of in-battle complexity there.

This ability is one that I'd also love to tackle as the typing leader because it opens up a ton of very interesting questions. Given that we have effectively half bulk (but two lives) how important is residual damage given that its basically doubled for us? How important are well, good resists given that those are what we'll be actualizing if we want to (or even need to) heal up? How important is a good offensive typing given that it implies we'll be spending half our time in a "defensive" state? All of these questions are ones I'd love to handle in the typing stage, and its why this ability is one that I think deserves to be on the slate.

Color Change is another ability I would love to handle as the typing leader, just because of how interesting it would make my stage. Simply asking what the ideal typing for it is, given that we will be losing that typing after one hit, is like, incredibly interesting. Asking questions about self-resistant and self-weak typings is just a ton of depth for that stage. That said, I think it does worry me because Color Change + Typing gives next to no direction for the mon, and not a huge amount of insight into the actual role the mon would be playing. I think this typing is super interesting, but I do worry about how smoothly the Moves and Stats stages could run given that lack of direction. We'd need to iron out a ton of stuff in the CA2 stage in order for me to really be comfortable here. I think we can, its just a worry.

------------------

To give my thoughts on normalize. I think there are interesting routes in the ability, and we could make an interesting CAP from it.

However, I really dislike the effect it has on the typing stage, all but railroading Normal typing, and I think moves could be very linear as it basically says that every move is equivalent barring secondary effects and BP. The interesting routes (imo the moves that ignore it allowing depth) are well, interesting, but imply a lot of polljumping and I don't think they're realistically something we can guarantee at this stage. Because of its effect on the process and the sorta polljumping needed to diversify discussion in many of the stages I cannot really support it.
 
I'm going to try to make one last push for Stall here. I still think that the idea of a Pokémon that is almost always forced to go last is very appealing and I think that the CAP team could still do some interesting things with it. Because we're forced to almost always go last gives out opponent many opportunities to either hit us, status us, or set up on us. I want to see how we can take advantage of an ability that gives so much leeway to the opponent.

The abilities on the slate that I like are Perish Body and Defeatist, for the reasons that others have already said.
 

Rabia

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I've seen Stall mentioned a bit in the Discord and in this thread, and I'd like for some of the proposers of it to be more concrete with why they think it'd be a good ability for this concept. Specifically, most of the defense so far has been "we always move last and this is really shit, so it'd be cool to see what that means in practice and how we can offset that"; my biggest issue with this is... what is the difference between that and just giving CAP 29 base 5 Speed? Like, we've seen this interaction before too with Pokemon like Slowbro that effectively always move last.

For all it's worth, Metal Burst would be a way to move forward that I believe I've seen mentioned a bit, but shoehorning that move onto every set seems... weak? As in, it feels like a very poor way to justify an entire concept's ability. There might be routes that I haven't thought of personally or that I missed in live chat discussions (or even in this thread), but for the life of me the only defense I can recall to this ability has been that it'd be cool to always move last in battle; in my eyes, that is very directionless and not particularly useful going forward.
 
A lot of my post will be repeating opinions of others, but it's important to vocalize opinions here and show support for ideas. Please also note that this isn't meant to be a personal attack or something of that nature. With that in mind:



But for real



I made a joke about this in the Discord (which you should all join btw), but I'd really like to touch upon your statement "I think that Normalize would have a VERY interesting process, especially in the move stage.". I have to thoroughly disagree here. In making the movepool process somewhat unique, Normalize encourages severe polljumping in the typing and movepool stages for the sheer fact that literally in order to make Nornmalize work, we have to literally consider the moves. For example: "Do we give CAP29 Techno Blast?". We literally cannot answer that question because it's entirely polljumping. We cannot base stats around a move that we haven't decided yet, and y using Normalize, we are actively encouraging polljumping.

Also I know it's been touched upon a lot as is, but ok, an electric mon can hit a Ground typew with an electric move, but that's literally only because it's a Normal typed move now. Yes technically it's pro-concept because everything is Normal now, but I really don't think this a very strong point. Circumventing immunities with Normalize is essentially moot because with Normalize, nothing if a coverage move anyway



The difference between Normalize and Defeastist or Color Change is that Normalize is actively forces obtrusive restrictions on the process. It's like Rabia, snake, and Jordy have said. Normalize puts us in a really bad corner for the rest of this process. We're either making something that is like Regielecki which basically lets any resist / immunity come in for free, or you're creating a mon like Spectrier which is so good and is only hard walled by Ghost types in order to check it. and in that process you have to deal with the encouraged polljumping as well. With Defeatist, one could argue that there would be polljumping with respect to recovery moves, but there is a lesser of two evils there as "recovery move" is a whole lot narrower than "literally every attacking ad utility move". And with Color Change really would avoid polljumping as a whole simply because this Pokemon's typing would be more or less dependent on the opponent. Sure, the Typing stage for this process might be a little lackluster, but the remaining stages would absolutely be a fascinating process. The problem being outlined here with respect to compensating here doesn't translate from Normalize to the other abilities in the same way in the process. And as snake can tell you, I'm being a stickler for process.

In short, I hope that Normalize stays off the slate as I fear it would generate an unfortunately inconsistent and unfun process, and a Pokemon that either is too unviable, or warps the metagame around it.


______________________________________


Ultimately, right now my Supports are with Color Change and Perish Body. I thin kthese two abilities are likely to generate interesting stages for stats and typing and would ultimately create a Pokemon with a very cool niche in the metagame despite these otherwise negative abilities. Color Change is an incredible "high ceiling" ability that can really lead to cxlever and thoughtful play while still being below average if used incorrectly. I would argue something similar for Perish Body as it would allow for clever use of Perish Song mechanics to act as a momentum grab similar to how Explosion or Healing Wish might be used as well.

In particular, with Perish Body, I am a big fan of the way that the user can effectively use the player's agency against them. All the opponent would need to do to bypass Perish Body would be to literally click U-turn, and suddenly, the user's Pokemon is put on a timer. In conjunction with heaving to deal with something like delayed attacks, this could easily put the user at a significant disadvantage. Because of this obvious disadvatange, there would have to be a really thoughtful typing and stats stage that would allow for ways in which to maximize this Pokemon's longevity while still acknowledging its very obvious flaws (Also, as a small aside, I am also in favor of avoiding trapping moves iwth Perish Body if it ever comes to that, but that's tnot the point I ant to get to right now). Perish Body has my support right now more than anything else, with Color Change as a close second, because it encourages in depth stages later on and thoughtful play as a final product.
Fair points sometimes. I still think Normalize would absolutely work. The one this I very much find weird is saying it cripples other stages and encourages poll jumping. Uh... why can’t we just swap the poll order again? We already did it once.

I do think the one point someone raised is very fair: Normalize’s 1.2x is just a defacto stat boost. But there is one I don’t think is: Psychics hitting darks for 1.2x isn’t predictable like most of a normalize mon’s kit when it comes to future sight. Switching out last turn means it could hit as psychic instead, while staying in keeps it normal.

As for being hard walled, Weather Ball would provide a way around that; Base 50 (up to 60) power isn’t great, but Fire-type weather ball effectively hits ghost and steel, and Water hits Rock and Ghost. It’s polljumping a bit, but I think there are definitely a few niche options to make a Normalize not hard walled by its resistances.

Heck, there are also just roles that don’t require as much offense. Hazard placing, walling, pivoting; those roles don’t need as much offensive potential. For example, take the standard Slowbro pivot set; the only move that sees lessened viability is Scald. And we have the ability to do crazy stuff like add Sacred Fire to the ‘mon if we are worried it won’t be viable.

I think normalize will work. Will it be easy? Probably not. But that’s no reason not to slate it in my opinion.
 

Birkal

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I have a piece of advice to offer up in these final hours of discussion before we head into a poll: I would encourage everyone to read or skim through this thread before voting. These last 24-48 hours of discussion can sometime devolve into debating one specific ability, as it has to a degree with Normalize. I personally do not think that Normalize is a good route for CAP29, but our time might be better used discussing the slate itself, as many users did after Tadasuke posted his tentative slate. We've had CAPs in the past where we were so busy debating the inclusion or exclusion of one aspect, that we hadn't fully considered and discussed the other choices that eventually went on to win: Snaelstrom's typing and Cawmodore's Volt Absorb come to mind.

So again, please continue to discuss, but I also want voters to take a gander at everything discussed in this thread, not just the last few posts in the last few hours. This has been a larger conversation, and I'd hate for it to end with, "Yay, we removed Normalize... now what?"

In terms of my own opinions, I'm pleased with the slate proposed by Tadasuke. In general, I'm a supporter of big slates, but with such a limiting concept, there were destined to only be a small handful of viable abilities for this concept. Not a bad thing, just the way it is. Defeatist and Slow Start probably have me the most intrigued, as they are genuinely, undeniably awful abilities that we can still make something creative and viable through. Slow Start in particular is a pretty unique mechanism, and I think there are a few routes we could travel here from a creation process standpoint (read 2spoopy4u's post here for more). Color Change and Emergency Exit have both grown on me a lot, as their viability is impeded by giving your opponent "choice" about your state in a battle. I think Color Change gets the nod here for being a bit more unreliable, in that you're losing a lot of aspects that define a Pokemon (which, to be fair, you can mitigate when you're building your team wrt which mons you want to check), whereas Emergency Exit might require a little more engineering in-battle to get it to pop in the way that you'd want (and creating around that can be particularly finicky, (but still doable)). And finally, Perish Body has some solid niche use that could prove handy in a battle. This will probably result in the most "regular" competitive mon we could get from this process, and even then, it would still be pretty far-flung from what most CAPs look like. Darek851 brought up some excellent points on why this might be a bad choice for us, so for anyone heavily considering Perish Body, I'd recommend reading his post to get a sense of the potential pitfalls we could stumble upon while working with this ability.

snake_rattler and -Voltage- (combined with several other users) have made statements about Normalize that I largely agree with, and I don't see many ways for it to be a flexible project. Sure, there might be a good handful of move interactions for us to explore, but it would limit several of our other discussions. I agree with Jewvia and kjnjkmjk1 from Sunday that Mimicry is a little too similar to Color Change, and like snake_rattler posted earlier in Concept Assessment, I'd rather go big if we're going to pick a detrimental ability. I don't think it's bad for this concept, so I wouldn't mind seeing it slated if people felt strongly about its inclusion. SHSP and Amamama both made great posts earlier that are succinct about why Klutz doesn't have a ton of interesting ground to cover; it'd be mostly a conversation about item reliance, and while that's cool, I think we have meatier options. And finally, Stall received some interesting discussion in the middle of the thread, but I think Tadasuke himself said it best when he felt that this ability just doesn't have a lot for us to explore. I think it fits the concept, but I would rank any of the five abilities on his current slate much higher than it.

That about sums up my personal take on each of these abilities. I think the five slated by Tadasuke currently are unquestionably the best abilities for this process. I think including Stall and Mimicry could be acceptable, but to what ends? They're both heavily outclassed by other abilities we've been discussing with much greater vigor, and Klutz and Normalize both seem to be generally frowned upon for this concept. And in terms of which ability of the five I think is best for this CAP, I think that will be largely philosophical to each voter. Slow Start is the big fish that has dominated discussion in thread and on Discord. It's certainly negative enough, and has a lot of routes to explore, but could also lead to something that's more controversial than our other paths. Defeatist is also negative, but it's more manageable competitively than Slow Start and could teach us a lot about tempo and keeping up health within a battle. Color Change and Emergency Exit both would lead to some amazing discussions on teambuilding, prediction, and what it means to be a counter and/or check, especially if your state is constantly shifting (typing for the former, and switching in and out for the latter). And Perish Body, while the most sane of the five, would also lead to some good discussions about forcing opponents out. I don't think there's a loser in that bunch, but I encourage the community to read through this thread before voting, and consider the pros and cons of each slated ability.
 
This is not how normalize works. Given that our concept is based around a bad ability, this primary ability to will be our only one. Given this, all of our moves will be normal, so "Darks getting unexpectedly hit with a psychic type move" doesn't make sense. Future Sight will be normal no matter if you stay in or switch out.

Direct quote from Bulbapedia: If the user has Normalize or was affected by Electrify when Future Sight hits, it hits as a Normal- or Electric-type move respectively (regardless of whether this was the case when the move was used);
Dude... you’re wrong. We literally tested that earlier this thread. Also, Bulbapedia is wrong.
 
I've seen Stall mentioned a bit in the Discord and in this thread, and I'd like for some of the proposers of it to be more concrete with why they think it'd be a good ability for this concept. Specifically, most of the defense so far has been "we always move last and this is really shit, so it'd be cool to see what that means in practice and how we can offset that"; my biggest issue with this is... what is the difference between that and just giving CAP 29 base 5 Speed? Like, we've seen this interaction before too with Pokemon like Slowbro that effectively always move last.
The difference between a CAP 29 with Stall and a CAP 29 with base 5 Speed is that Stall guarantees that CAP 29 will be going last, whereas a CAP 29 with base 5 speed can go first under certain conditions. The best example of this is with Trick Room. You put up a Trick Room for a base 5 Speed CAP 29, and all of a sudden it's always going first. Stall, on the other hand, ignores Trick Room, so a CAP 29 with Stall will still be moving last in Trick Room. Another difference between a based 5 Speed CAP 29 and a Stall CAP 29 is that Stall is not affected by changes to the Speed stat. Even if CAP 29 has only base 5 Speed, we could give it something like Autotomize and have it max out its Speed, which would make it able to outspeed a few things. Stall, on the other hand, is based on the priority bracket, not Speed. So even if we have +6 Speed, Stall ensures that we will still be going last.


Continuing on with this episode of Extremely Hot Takes, I want to voice some concerns about Color Change. A common argument against Normalize is that it would complicate the typing and movepool stages, and I think that those concerns could carry over to Color Change as well. Why does our base typing matter so much if it'll change the moment we get attacked? And how can we make a solid movepool when Color Change could completely invalidate it? I would love to hear from those who support Color Change on how we can get around these issues.
 
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Why does our base typing matter so much if it'll change the moment we get attacked
The typing process here would be a unique one. There are different ways to approach the starting typing, such as one with a high amount of resistances that has a lot of safe switch ins, one that abuses/punishes self-effective typings like Ghost or Dragon (such as through immunity or resistance,) or trying to resist self-resistant typings to make safer switch-ins that persist after the colour change (A Grass switch in resists Thunderbolt, then switches to Elec which also resists Thunderbolt.)

Movepool there I think is less interesting, but it would provide a very interesting and unique typing discussion. There are other routes to explore beyond what I mentioned, such as abusing the fact that you keep a dual type if you get hit by one of the two types. (A Fairy/Steel resists Fairy, then keeps its Steel STAB)
 
. Priority moves are also a good example of this. A Pokemon with base 5 Speed can get access to and use priority moves just fine, but Stall ignores priority moves (at least I think it does, Bulbapedia was very vague about it, please correct me if I am wrong), which means that a CAP 29 with Stall can't take advantage of them. Most importantly, this means that if CAP 29 has Stall, it won't be able to take advantage of moves like Protect, meaning that it is always vulnerable to damage.
Stall affects turn order within priority brackets. It will not make a lower priority move go before a higher one.
 
how can we make a solid movepool when Color Change could completely invalidate it? I would love to hear from those who support Color Change on how we can get around these issues.
It's true that Color Change means that we have no reliable way of getting STAB, which is why multiple people earlier in the thread highlighted the fact that this ability is not very good from an offensive standpoint. I don't think the comparison to Normalize works that well, though, as retaining type effectiveness (and thus the ability to not get completely walled and to hit supereffectively ) is really important. It's true that the movepool stage would be somewhat limited, but rather than having all of our moves being entirely Normal and thus being very similar to each other, we can still choose moves both for their ability to hit mons we would be coming in on frequently and for whatever utility they can offer us regardless of STAB. I don't think the movepool stage would be invalidated at all.
 
I think the slate is great as it is. Every of the preliminaries has interesting design space and will spark interesting discussion on how to utilize or circumvent our ability in a competitive scenario.

I also want to echo the concern over normalize being slated.
I agree with Pip, that it might be interesting to pursue it, if we lean really hard into its negative impact.
BUT the way this ability has been argued for, has me worried about the rest of the process, if it were slated and voted for.

Some have brought up powerful moves, that now can hit immunities or resists, they couldn’t before.
But that misses the point entirely.
Normal already has the most powerful Special move and only Megahorn is better - as a drawbackless physical move - than head charge and at the same time the lack of SE hits will only be detrimental to any offensive mon, possibly pushing us to compensate during stats.
It’s similar with utility. Knock off is effective against fairies and dark types? It’s also less spammable, since it’s worthless against ghost.
Thunderwave hits ground types? Glare exists.
Future sight is weird again? It always is.
Some have brought up weather ball or terrain pulse as moves that work around normalize. But why would anyone put CAP29 on a team with a weather setter, if they could also just run a weather sweeper?

To me there is a lack of actual vision and scope in these arguments.
They feel like arguments for the arguments sake. None of these arguments proves that normalize is redeemable, but at the same time they also don’t acknowledge how detrimental it really is.
They only show, that normalize has limitations, to its qualities, that make it really lacking in it’s depth from a process perspective and would make a competitive mon with it really binary to use and play against.

These limitations will also restrict us a lot in Movepool. We are basically forced to decide, if we want to use a legendary signature move (which brings its own pitfalls), so we can have a semblance of viability, or if we want to really lean into only using normal moves, the moment we decide ability, because none of the moves mentioned, that bypass normalize are going to be more than a niche gimmick.

And after that decision I don’t see a lot to do. We choose if we want Normal STAB or not and then pick one of the 5 viable normal types, because we basically don’t have any Offensive interaction with any mon. (Except ghost), so checks and counter is basically just do we want to be special or physical.
And Stats would just be how high do we need to crank up offenses to be useful.

Aside from this linearity, I fear that some might speculate on certain moves, being available to us, when they aren’t yet.
Volt Switch would be nice to hit Ground-Type Pokémon on their usually weaker SpDef
This is wrong though. Half of the ground types in the tier run more special bulk.
Dude... you’re wrong. We literally tested that earlier this thread. Also, Bulbapedia is wrong.
Actually the test showed, that it indeed hits as normal type move if a mon with the ability normalize is on the users side of the field when it hits. It only changes its type, when the normalize mon isn’t on the field anymore.
 
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