CAP 30 - Part 3 - Concept Assessment 2

[Tadasuke]

CAP 30 So Far

Now that we know that Tinted Lens will be one of our primary abilities, it's time to reassess our concept as established by this post.

• Name - Optimized Ability
• Description - This CAP would seek to utilize one or more Abilities which are, at face value, competitively viable, but which are only found on unviable or excessively niche Pokémon, or are paired with objectively better Abilities. The goal is to explore how these Abilities could impact the metagame if they were properly utilized.
• Justification- Archetype: This CAP seeks to explore one or more underutilized Abilities which could have a meaningful impact on the metagame, but are rarely or never seen because of the Pokémon they are found on, or the other Abilities they have to compete with. With two Forms we can explore the same Ability from two differant angles, or explore two differant Abilities, providing us with greater insight into how these traditionally neglected Abilities could function.
• Questions To Be Answered-
  • Why are some Abilities seen as better or more viable than others? Is it strictly a function of the Ability itself, or are other factors involved? What are those factors?
  • What new strategies become available with optimized Abilities? Are these strategies competitively viable, or just gimmicks?
  • Are there Abilities that may have been overlooked or disregarded because of poor utilization? Are some worth a second look, even if they lack immediate competitive merit?
• Explanation -This is, at it's core, a pretty simple Concept. There are various Abilities which, at least to me, seem to sit somewhere between being considered competitively viable and not being competitive at all. Abilities like Steam Engine, Merciless, Heavy/Light Metal, etc., all have a strong competitive impact at face value, but never seem to make it into our discussion during the Ability Stage. While there are probably many factors involved, I think at least some of the issue may simply be a matter of false equivalence; the idea that, since X Ability sucks on Y Pokmon, it must be bad in general. It's understandable. Why would you pick Merciless for Toxapex when it has access to Regenerator, which is an objectively better Ability for a Tank/Wall? At the same time, I think it's important to understand what the real value of some of these Abilities may be, and how they can effect the metagame if they were used "correctly". If given everything they need to succeed, could these Abilities prove to be viable, or are they truly flawed? That is the crux of this Concept.

Guidelines:
1) Pay close attention to the Topic Leader during this discussion. Their job is to keep us focused and to bring insight.
2) Do not poll jump. Poll jumping is a serious offense in these threads, and you can get infracted for it. Poll jumping is when you discuss something that should be discussed in the future, like specifying a CAP's stats or typing. You're allowed to hint at such things to conclude a point or to provide an example, but do not centralize your post on a poll jump. Poll jumping hurts the focus of early threads and can cause us to go off on a tangent. If you're not sure if a particular argument is poll jumping or not, err on the side of caution and don't post it.

CAP 30's TL Wulfanator will open the thread with his thoughts. Please make sure to read his initial post and his subsequent posts carefully and follow them for discussion! Keep posts civil and on topic, or else they will be deleted.

 

[Wulfanator]

Tinted Lens has been selected as one of our primary abilities. Before moving on, we must determine which form will explore the ability and what role that form will fill in our game. The questions posed here are intended to consider form and role simultaneously. One form may better enable specific roles compared to the other, so we want to establish the extent of the design space available with Tinted Lens.

From the Role Compendium thread, there are 4 general categories relevant to the current meta: Utility, Offensive, Defensive, and Weather. The specific roles a mon can occupy in the game are then organized under these categories.

Ultility

Hazard Setting
Hazard Control
Clerics
Item Manipulation

Offensive

Wallbreakers
Offensive Pivots
Choice Users
Priority
Set-Up Sweepers

Defensive

Walls
Defensive Pivots
Boost Removers

Weather/Rooms

Hail
Rain
Sand
Sun
Trick Room

There will be some obvious options that are unfeasible with our current ability-concept combination. I also think that roles like Status Infliction and Screen Setting are relevant despite them being absent from the compendium. This is more so aimed at setting an expectation as to what constitutes a role. We want to avoid overly broad paths like Caribolt’s “specialized.”

As a reminder from Concept Assessment 1, 30i’s unremovable item will be limited to 1.2x STAB boosts.



Questions:

What roles naturally complement Tinted Lens? What alternate applications are there for Tinted Lens that are not as obvious?

As I already stated, each form will be better equipped to facilitate different roles. What roles can 30b and 30i try to fill if they are selected to be the Tinted Lens user? This is intended to be as complete of a list as you can provide.

What are the pros, cons, and concerns for the avenues listed in the question 2? The decisions we make here will determine the power budget moving forward and impact the other form because of the remaining shared attributes.

How does a forced item change the type of roles available to CAP30’s forms? Given 30i’s item and the offensive nature of Tinted Lens, would we be forcing a role if we selected something that was defensively oriented?

Finally, I want to know what paths interest you. I wanted users to establish the boundaries of our design space and then talk about the routes they prefer. What routes excite you and make you want to push the project forward?



The current plan is to keep this discussion brief and hopefully wrap it up by Tuesday or Wednesday.

 

[Amamama]

What roles naturally complement Tinted Lens? What alternate applications are there for Tinted Lens that are not as obvious?

The first is Obviously Wall breaking.
Tinted Lens severely reduces the set of mons that can come in on CAP 30s STABs on a resistance. This means it is more free to spam its strongest moves and pressure opposing Pokémon weak to those moves.
This also means that a Choice locked Pokémon gains a lot from Tinted Lens, as locking into a Stab move is less risky unless immunities to that type exist.
Set Up sweeping benefits from possibly having to run less coverage, giving Space to recovery or maybe even utility.
Priority is also boosted by Tinted Lens, as it enables the Pokémon to possibly even pick off weakened enemies, that usually would resist it, as well as, because it might free up moveslots, usually held by coverage, for weaker moves of the same type as the main STAB.
I want to add the role of Late game Cleaner here, which a Tinted Lens mon, maybe even with priority would be exceptional at, as it can pick off weakend foes regardless of their type.

Its clear that Tinted Lens is offensively geared and hugely benefits offensive roles.

This doesn’t mean though, that it doesn’t also benefit other roles.
Having risk free STABs, which don’t desperately need Coverage, means you can free up moveslots as already mentioned.
That means you can make room for utility moves of all categories, including hazard control and setting, cleric support, status infliction, setting screens and item or stat manipulation.
Now to make use of these, I think it would be required to have STABs, that allow 30 to be a threat to some Pokémon and create free turns, otherwise this utility would be useless.

As I already stated, each form will be better equipped to facilitate different roles. What roles can 30b and 30i try to fill if they are selected to be the Tinted Lens user? This is intended to be as complete of a list as you can provide.

The item is key here. 30i will have trouble using choice items and might not be able to pivot as easily if the typing ends up being too weak to entry hazards.
On the other hand it could be solid as Knock Off absorber (if you consider that a role) and it’s item paired with Tinted Lens means, it has fairly spammable and always boosted STABs, without drawback, which are great for both wallbreaking and especially sweeping/cleaning, although These could still be fulfilled without the item.

How does a forced item change the type of roles available to CAP30’s forms? Given 30i’s item and the offensive nature of Tinted Lens, would we be forcing a role if we selected something that was defensively oriented?

I don’t think we would force a role, as The defensive utility of a mon often comes from Typing more than ability or item, but it would be counterintunitive and imo also against the concept of optimizing the abilty.

What routes excite you and make you want to push the project forward?

I think I’m least interested in a balls to the wall, wallbreaker, as that is the most straightforward and probably least discussion heavy role for tinted lens, i think both utility tank (think Heatran, lando, Colossoil) and revenge killer, late game cleaner and priority user could be pretty interesting roles for CAP 30, as it lets us explore less obvious facettes of tinted lens.

 

[Astra]

Here we go.

What roles naturally complement Tinted Lens?

Tinted Lens definitely complements wallbreakers, Choice item users, and setup sweepers well. Those roles have one thing in common: they're meant to do as much damage as possible, and Tinted Lens helps to support them in that matter. Specifically, opponents will have to be very careful with switching into a predicted move with a Pokemon that may resist it because it's still going to potentially do a good amount of damage. Overall Tinted Lens makes these roles easier in accomplishing their goal to break through the opposing team, whether it be through sheer power or finding opportunities to set up.

What alternate applications are there for Tinted Lens that are not as obvious?

There are a couple of other applications that may not benefit as much as the aforementioned applications, but the overall increased damage Tinted Lens provides adds on to many of these applications and their effectiveness. For example, one may switch into a Pokemon against an offensive pivot that may resist their pivot move, like Volt Switch or U-turn, but thanks to Tinted Lens, it's going to do some more damage, which may be the difference in a successful gameplan. Priority is in a similar boat; thanks to the increased damage against Pokemon that may resist certain priority moves, it could be the difference between being able to revenge kill them or not. Another interesting but not as important application could potentially be increased damage output from Water- or Fire-type moves under rain or sun, respectively, which could potentially make for a very good addition to weather teams. This is probably the application we will focus on the least, though, since it does restrict us a bit with other stages in the process and could potentially make CAP30b or CAP30i have only a very specific niche.

Basically, with Tinted Lens's overall increased damage output, we are able to utilize that with many offensive applications simply because it would provide the metagame with a unique form of offensive pressure. Defensively, it doesn't have that much going for it.

What roles can 30b and 30i try to fill if they are selected to be the Tinted Lens user?

Tinted Lens can honestly fit onto any offensive role one can think of. Wallbreakers, setup sweepers, and Choice item users, as well as pivots and priority users, would appreciate it simply because of how much pressure it can provide with the increased damage against foes that resist the moves used against them. In a game like Pokemon, getting KOs is essential, and Tinted Lens definitely assists greatly in achieving that; thus, I can see us making whichever forme we assign it to any offensive role we'd like, really.

What are the pros, cons, and concerns for the avenues listed in the question 2?

The main advantage of Tinted Lens I've already mentioned before: we have a lot of room to customize the forme we assign it to offensively. However, we have to be very careful that we don't make it too powerful. If we overtune it, it will be very hard to switch into it in general, no matter if the switch-in resists the move used, of course. We don't want to make this a Pokemon like Dracovish, where they could potentially just spam one move without much counterplay for it and could potentially force players to run niche options just to counter it. Making sure that our Tinted Lens user won't warp the metagame in extremely important, so we must keep a strong eye on the other stages and need to keep all of them in mind while we're doing each one.

How does a forced item change the type of roles available to CAP30’s forms?

Well, CAP30i obviously can't be a Choice item user, but for any other offensive role, it would be amazing with it. The combination of the additional 1.2x STAB alongside the increased damage with resisted attacks will make it a menace to switch into, no matter what role it may have. Again, though, if we do go this route, we would need to be even more careful that we don't make it so powerful that switching into it would be incredibly difficult.

Given 30i’s item and the offensive nature of Tinted Lens, would we be forcing a role if we selected something that was defensively oriented?

Yes. Tinted Lens doesn't really have any explicit defensive applications, so forcing CAP30i to have a defensive role if we assign it Tinted Lens would be a waste and make the process very confusing on how we would make Tinted Lens benefit it defensively.

What routes excite you and make you want to push the project forward?

I'm very interested in how we can make Tinted Lens's applications more than just big damage to anything no matter what foe it's used against. Going for a unique route like an offensive pivot and priority user could potentially make for a more fun process over something like making it purely a wallbreaker or setup sweeper. Of course, we have wiggle room to make sprinkle everything, but if we'd like to focus on something, it would most likely be better for us to bring our attention to applications that don't make whatever forme we assign Tinted Lens just a Pokemon that can either just spam the same two moves or set up and then spam the same two moves for success.

 

[Tommaniacal]

What roles naturally complement Tinted Lens? What alternate applications are there for Tinted Lens that are not as obvious?

As has been mentioned already, Tinted Lens naturally fits on wallbreakers and sweepers due to it being able to break through resists.

I think it's important to say that with this concept especially, it's not a bad thing to explore more traditional roles to succeed in the process. Since by definition we're using an ability that hasn't been well optimized, we'll still learn plenty by pursuing well-suited archetypes like wallbreakers or sweepers. Choosing to give Tinted Lens to a wall or utility Pokémon would not be optimized in any sense, at least in my opinion.

 

[Earthflax]

(on mobile, forgive me for any bad formatting, will edit other stuff in later)

I’m going to start by seconding the above posters in saying that if we’re to optimize this ability in any context, Tinted Lens is largely limited to an offensively oriented role. (Wallbreaker, sweeper, offensive pivot, offensive utility, etc.) This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as now we can focus more on that aspect instead of needing to keep stuff deliberately vague.

What roles can 30b and 30i try to fill if they are selected to be the Tinted Lens user?

For the time being I’m not going to say anything specific, but I will say we should be very aware of 30i’s item lock, as it can be detrimental to some roles and perhaps overpowered on others. We should also definitely keep in mind that 30b can run a boosting item of some sort, and I don’t need to provide a wall of calcs to get across how potent that might be on the right Lens user.

What are the pros, cons, and concerns for the avenues listed in the question 2?

This might be a hot take but I’m not concerned that a Tlens mon will be overpowered. I trust CAP to not give a Pokémon which ignores 2x resists 130 SpAtk or other stupid things like that. My main concern is largely that building to cripple a Tlens mon will severely hamper our other form, as we have to share BST, typing, and movepool.

What routes excite you and make you want to push the project forward?

My favorite idea that I’ve thought about and discussed is a great cleaner that’s also a really shitty breaker. Ie not being able to force a lot of damage early game but being able to pick off weakened foes to great efficiency due to its ignoring (2x) resists.

will add more later as I said. Cheers for now

 

[shnowshner]

What roles naturally complement Tinted Lens? What alternate applications are there for Tinted Lens that are not as obvious?

Any role that leans offensively benefits from Tinted lens: being less dependable on coverage to supplement STAB attacks allows you to make the most of your extra moveslots. Generally offensive Pokemon want STAB to be doing the majority of the work and only use coverage to beat Pokemon that get in the way of said STAB moves.

You will have times where coverage is often useful for hitting offensive benchmarks: perhaps a 100 BP STAB move can't secure a 2HKO but a SE 100BP coverage move can. So Tinted Lens isn't causing coverage to be obsolete as much as it reduces reliance on such moves to function offensively.

This has a lot of implications. A Choice Band/Specs user is usually balanced by being locked into a move and leaving themselves open to a defensive resist. When that pool of resists is severely cut down by Tinted Lens, Choice items become significantly harder to punish. Sweepers appreciate relying on less coverage and using their moveslots to either break through specific targets and help enable setup opportunities/avoid being crippled. Revenge kills are also easier to pull off when your less punished for clicking a predictable move.

All offensive roles definitely gain a lot. Offensive Pivot has maybe the least gain but Offensive Pivots also like having role compression and Tinted Lens allows that, so really they all do love this ability.

On that topic, Utility mons definitely aren't getting as much out of Tinted Lens, but that's not to say it's worthless. Hazard Setters and Hazard Control stand out to me as gaining a lot from Tinted Lens. There's a lot of Pokemon that have hazards or hazard removal, but the best ones are those that can enforce these moves being successful. Take Lando-T for example. The reason its so good at setting Stealth Rock is thanks to not only its defensive qualities, but its offensive power too. STAB EQ + 145 base Attack (and the funny knock off button) goes a long way in letting Lando force lots of switches: switches it can than use to get Rocks up. Other offensive hazard setters like SD Garchomp and the Specs Ash-Greninja were able to get hazards up by similar means of forcing switches. Tinted Lens makes us stronger offensively, and being able to scare out Pokemon helps in giving us a chance to set hazards.

There is a bit of anti-synergy with Tinted Lens and hazard setting since you may just opt to click attacks and delete switch-ins if you're strong enough: I don't see us going that route though, so my point still stands.

Removal works in a similar way: you often want to keep hazard setters from coming in as you remove, else they will simply get them back up in your face. Having a strong offensive presense can force setters out, giving you room to clear hazards for your team.

As I already stated, each form will be better equipped to facilitate different roles. What roles can 30b and 30i try to fill if they are selected to be the Tinted Lens user? This is intended to be as complete of a list as you can provide.

30i is item-locked so there's no hope of being Choiced. Beyond that our other offensive roles are very much doable: the extra 1.2x STAB damage is much appreciated, and the item being immune to Knock Off and Trick is a blessing for Offensive Pivot and Setup Sweeper especially as the former is likely to switch in on moves a fair bit and the latter stays in long enough that you are quite vulnerable to getting hit by Knock Off or, worse yet, TrickScarf'd into an exploitable move.

30i should have room to either set or remove hazards as well if we so desire. Lack of ability to use Leftovers/HDB/any other item is pretty bad for the more defensively-oriented roles like Cleric, Wall, and Setup Prevention, while also outright denying us options for Item Manipulation, but those are roles not exactly tailored to Tinted Lens' strengths.

30b naturally has more room and can definitely work as a Choice user. It could also bleed more into the defensive/utility niches if we wanted, though in general our role is best suited as offensive and any foray into other roles should be molded to fit our offensive one. For example, we could absolutely go for more defensive roles if we wanted to be an offensive tank something like Mega Scizor was, but that would hinge a lot on being threatening enough to pull off such a niche.

What are the pros, cons, and concerns for the avenues listed in the question 2? The decisions we make here will determine the power budget moving forward and impact the other form because of the remaining shared attributes.

Estronic's Dracovish comparison hits home for a lot of us. CB Strong Jaw Fishious Rend would already be a good move even off of Vish's meager Attack stat: the doubled damage when moving first, however, is essentially like that of Tinted Lens hitting resists, and the defensive strain caused is the same: there wasn't so much Dracovish Rend resists as there were Dracovish Rend immunities. If you didn't have huge defenses and a Water resist at the same time you got 2HKO'd.

I am a bit wary on Tinted Lens and our power budget due to strong boosting options like Choice Items.

Finding that sweetspot where we don't instantly delete wall but also deal enough damage to actually make an impact is tough. That is an issue for our offensive roles; stray too far to one side and either the metagame suffers for it or we undershoot the project.

I'll mention a pro while I'm at it. If my ideas on coverage being decentivized are correct, that should mean we don't have to neuter our offensive movepool for sake of balance and leave the other out to dry. Stronger coverage in the >100 range might be an issue, but overall I don't see us straying far from STAB since resists are so trivialized. It would be a tad redundant to use an 80 BP coverage move to hit SE alongside a 90 BP STAB move on a resist that is only doing slightly less damage, moreso when that coverage is only for a select few and leaves us with only two more moves we can run.

How does a forced item change the type of roles available to CAP30’s forms? Given 30i’s item and the offensive nature of Tinted Lens, would we be forcing a role if we selected something that was defensively oriented?

Kinda inadvertedly answered this on question two, but another part of me is a bit confused on what this means. Is the question asking if picking a defensive role for 30i, when it is locked to a damage boosting item and would have Tinted Lens, would be us forcing a role on 30i in a counter-intuitive way? Or is it asking how assigning one role to one form can affect the other, considering the restrictions applied to 30i? Is it both and did I just answer myself?

I do have thoughts on which form stands out as a desirable user, but I am not sure if this is the time to do so. I will say that given what we know so far about 30's forms, and the general strength of our ability, it does appear difficult to manage our power budget in a way that doesn't restrict the other in some fashion. Tinted Lens does have a good bit of unexplored potential beyond spamming high power moves, so that is nice. I can't see our user being anything outside of an offensively-inclined Pokemon however.

Finally, I want to know what paths interest you. I wanted users to establish the boundaries of our design space and then talk about the routes they prefer. What routes excite you and make you want to push the project forward?

By far my favorite route we can take is in the form of offensive support; a Pokemon who can dish out steady and consistent damage while also providing various forms of team support sounds promising. Tinted Lens is an incredible asset for a utility Pokemon. It ends up sort of like an offensive Blissey, which I know sounds weird but hear me out: Blissey's go-to offensive move is Seismic Toss, which deals that same steady and consistent damage to a target so long as it isn't Ghost-type, allowing it to focus more on its duties as a defensive pivot, cleric, and special wall. Tinted Lens is an amped-up version of this strategy that lets us pose a more proactive threat and to a wider pool of Pokemon, as Toss is rarely a 2HKO on even frail Pokemon due to being fixed damage based on Level. When dealing damage isn't as big of a concern, our moveset is opened up to the large array of support/utility moves we can benefit from.

This was also posted just in time for me to support too. Being able to use weaker moves with powerful effects, like Priority, and ignore resistances while doing so is very useful to have.

 

[LucarioOfLegends]

What roles naturally complement Tinted Lens? What alternate applications are there for Tinted Lens that are not as obvious?

Unsurprisingly due to the offensive nature of Tinted Lens, it goes best with a lot of the the offesive roles as opposed to the defensive, utility, and weather/room roles. More specifically Wallbreaker or Choice user is probably the best fit since it's much easier to punch through stuff with Tinted Lens since there are fewer natural resists to CAP30 with it. Although, I do definitely think that other roles in other categories could work effectively with Tinted Lens as well, the ability acting more as a supplement to the role. An example is a defensive wall that invesrs EVs to hit specific defensive benchmarks before putting the rest in the relevant attacking stat. In this case Tinted Lens more helps to compensate for the lower investment in offenses for the wall, but is still an essential part of the kit as it allows the mon to have some offensive pressure without having to sacrifice defenses. This is of course dependent on our current interpretation of 'optimized' but I do not think it is something that should be thrown off the table.

What roles can 30b and 30i try to fill if they are selected to be the Tinted Lens user?

Considering 30i is locked to the custom item, its inclined towards more and Choice User is obviously completely off the table for it. Tinted Lens 30i is best fitted to either Wallbreaker, Offensive Pivot, and most particularly Setup Sweeper due to its item keeping damage high and the pressure on. 30b, due its comparitive freedom in item choice, has far more room for the more utility or defensive roles like Wall and Hazard Setting/Control. It of course can absolutely work with the offensive roles of Wallbreaker, Offensive Pivot, and Setup Sweeper since they work best with Tinted Lens, but thier effectiveness as compared to 30i is really dependent on how much the mon would want the custom item instead of something like Heavy-Duty Boots. Choice User is also an available option for 30b, so that is also a promising route for it for the same reasons as other offensive roles.

What are the pros, cons, and concerns for the avenues listed in the question 2

Gonna focus on the cons and concerns a bit more here. Aside from general concerns with Tinted Lens being hard to balance, I do worry about Setup Sweeper and Offensive Pivot specifically (regardless of form, though 30i is more helpful for setup sweeper) Setup Sweeper relies on snowballing the opposing side once set up, and the largest worry is that Tinted Lens makes setting up way too easy, since it could just muscle through everything not named Arghonaut with a boost or two. Offensive Pivot is equally terrifying if it gets a damaging pivot move, as Tinted Lens makes those moves much easier to click. It would certainly be optimized, but I doubt it would be very fun to fight.

Swapping focus to the non-offensive roles, the main concern is more about optimization. Tinted Lens is much more built to work with offensive abilities, so if we throw it on a more defensive or utility-based role that may not use it as efficiently, would it really be considered optimization?

How does a forced item change the type of roles available to CAP30’s forms? Given 30i’s item and the offensive nature of Tinted Lens, would we be forcing a role if we selected something that was defensively oriented?

Mentioned this a bit in question 2, but being stuck with the custom item really leans 30i in the direction of offensive roles since they get the most active benefit from it. Defensive or utility roles do still get use from it since they are probably running some form of STAB, but a lot of the time they appreciate the healing of Leftovers and the immunities of Heavy-Duty Boots since they are...well more defensive. 30b does get a lot more freedom since we get to actually choose our item, so a lot more roles look more appealing in its direction. I think it is still possible to give 30i a more defensive role, but it would be an absolute waste of the extremely useful offensive boons the custom item provides.

What routes excite you and make you want to push the project forward?

I think that Wallbreaker 30i or Choice User 30b are both very safe and effective bets for CAP30 but I'll be honest: Wall 30b is still my favorite option. I think the dichotomy between natural defensive capability and offensive pressure possible through Tinted Lens is intensely interesting, and would result in a very capable defensive mon. Is it the most efficient use of Tinted Lens? No. Is it even optimized? That's up for debate. But its definitely the option that speaks to me most and not one that should be tossed aside.

 

[Dece1t]

What roles naturally complement Tinted Lens? What alternate applications are there for Tinted Lens that are not as obvious?

Tinted Lens suits itself to more offensive roles, whether it comes to wallbreaker, boosting sweeper, choice cleaner, tank, or offensive pivot. Alternate applications for the ability are pretty wide given Tinted Lens can allow its STABS and coverage to hit for neutral damage a vast majority at the time (the only time a move hits for half damage if the opponent is 4x resistant). This can threaten switch-ins that would normally be confident in switching into resisted attacks, and it dwindles safe switch-ins for CAP 30.

What roles can 30b and 30i try to fill if they are selected to be the Tinted Lens user?

30b has the freedom of items, so I would be more inclined to give it a bulkier if not entirely defensive role out of that sheer fact. The ability to run things like HDB or Lefties has transformed into a staple for most defensive mons this generation. Even if a defensive role is chosen, 30b would still benefit from Tinted Lens as a means to dish reasonable damage to resistant Pokemon without reliance of power-boosting items. CAP 30i's item lends itself to further boost its STABs (whatever they may be), and I believe that 30i would be the better choice to give Tinted Lens to (especially if 30i is chosen to be more offensive).


What routes excite you and make you want to push the project forward?

Role wise, I'm personally warm to offensive pivot or wallbreaker. I believe those two in particular are the ones that can best maximize Tinted Lens' potential out of the the fact that it'll almost always get a neutral hit out.


...I may come back to some of the questions I skipped later.

 

[Amamama]

I want to say that depending on stats 30b actually has a lot more offensive/wallbreaking potential just because it has the freedom to run choice items and further increase damage output by 25%/run choice scarf. With tinted lens, being locked into a move gets punished way less and Id expect 30b to run a choice item unless it’s completely geared towards defense or utility or suffers too much from hazards.
And even with a hazards weakness you still might see choiced options (compare to Kyurem or Blacephalon)

 

[ultramafia]

What roles naturally complement Tinted Lens? What alternate applications are there for Tinted Lens that are not as obvious?

I agree with what others have posted that basically any offensive role appreciates the consistent damage output that Tinted Lens provides. Choice users have fewer resists to worry about when spamming stab attacks, while other offensive roles benefit from having moveslots freed up thanks to needing fewer/no coverage moves (especially set-up sweepers and offensive utility). There isn't a lot of overlap between the two benefits: choice users aren't switching moves so don't really benefit from moveslot compression, and non choice-locked attackers aren't reliant on spamming a single attack (mono-attacking sweepers such as Safeguard Volcarona are an exception to this).

One thing about tinted lens is that it doesn't increase the damage dealt by neutral or super-effective moves, so it doesn't help in breaking through bulky mons that don't rely much on resistances, e.g. tinted lens is no help on a special attacker trying to break through blissey. For this reason I think tinted lens might be a little less useful on breakers that are trying to defeat really bulky mons. Instead offensive roles that target fragile or weakened mons might benefit more from tinted lens. With Tinted Lens, fast offensive pivots, scarfers, and priority users can revenge kill a larger pool of opposing mons, while tanks can 1v1 a wider variety of mons. This suggests that while tinted lens is good on offensive mons, it could also be very useful against offense.

What roles can 30b and 30i try to fill if they are selected to be the Tinted Lens user?

30b can realistically fill almost any role, although as mentioned above it makes more sense to pick an offensive role.

30i however cannot fill the choice user role as it's locked into an item. It is also unbale to utilise certain set-up sweeper strategies that rely on specific items, e.g. terrain seed+unburden, power herb+meteor beam.

What are the pros, cons, and concerns for the avenues listed in the question 2?
How does a forced item change the type of roles available to CAP30’s forms? Given 30i’s item and the offensive nature of Tinted Lens, would we be forcing a role if we selected something that was defensively oriented?

Roles such as tank, bulky set-up sweeper, and defensive roles benefit from 30b's ability to run defensive items like leftovers. The ability to run heavy-duty boots on 30b also benefits pivots as well as freeing us up to use typings that are hazard weak.

Two things that 30i is specifically able to do accomplish is absorbing knock offs and ignoring trick/switcheroo. Neither of these have any obvious synergy with tinted lens, however they do support some of the roles mentioned in the first question. Pivots appreciate the free switchins against knock off and trick/switcheroo, tanks and other defensive roles would have the bulk to repeatedly absorb knockoffs throughout the game, and sweepers appreciate being trick immune.

What routes excite you and make you want to push the project forward?

The two routes that are most interesting to me are mono-attacker and anti-offense.

A mono-attacker could go in a lot of possible directions. One is to use the free moveslots for utility options, although I don't find that very interesting. Another direction is a set-up sweeper that has excellent longevity and can stall out would-be counters. The example of Safeguard Volcarona was given above; Dragonite and Kyurem can both run comparable sets with Heal Bell and Substitute respectively. This is a more interesting option to me, although we did just make a bulky set-up sweeper with Chromera. For me the most interesting direction is a choice+trick user that can do other things after having tricked away its choice item. For example a scarfer with STAB+trick+recovery+boosting optimises tinted lens in both of the ways mentioned at the start of this post: while choice-locked it appreciates the limited resists to its single spammable STAB attack, after tricking away it's item it benefits from the moveslot compression that allows it to run both a boosting and recovery move.

For anti-offense, I think it could be really interesting to pair Tinted Lens with attacks that remove/bypass screens and substitutes. This would make CAP 30 very consistent against the offensive mons it is meant to check. We'd want to decide whether we are checking offense through bulk (tank role) or speed (priority, offensive pivot and choice user roles), although both seem viable and interesting to me.

 

[chartung17]

Tinted Lens fits better on an offensive mon than a defensive mon, since it doesn't provide any benefit unless a damaging attack is used; similarly, 30i's item fits better on an offensive mon. If we want to ensure 30i is capable of using its item effectively, giving Tinted Lens to 30i rather than 30b gives us a lot more freedom in choosing our second ability.

Also, Tinted Lens mons don't normally need to rely on coverage, since they can hit most mons neutrally or better with just their STABs (or all mons, depending on the typing - there are over a dozen type combinations that could hit everything neutrally or better), so 30i's item should work well with Tinted Lens.

 

[Zetalz]

It's been pretty well established what roles Tinted Lens is inclined towards so I'm not going to make a huge paragraph talking about every single one but would like to affirm that generally offensive roles are what we should be looking for. That said I don't think we should have too much fear of trying to go down a more non-linear route like Offensive Support (or my personal favorite Utility Breaker. ), as honestly Tinted Lens is just a solid ability that we would have to try really hard to get it to not work out. Of course I'm not advocating we go completely off the walls here but it should be understood we don't have to hamstring ourselves into a mon that only ever clicks attacks to fulfill concept.

Finally, I want to know what paths interest you. I wanted users to establish the boundaries of our design space and then talk about the routes they prefer. What routes excite you and make you want to push the project forward?

I think going for a role akin to a Late-game Cleaner/Sweeper or the previously mentioned Utility Breaker could be very fun direction to take from the bog-standard sweeper/breaker roles we come to expect. Utility Breaker in particular I think has some good variance we can get out of it, as options such as Status Spam & Hazard Control are very achievable within our design space for Tinted Lens. These roles also aren't particularly caring of which form we choose Tinted for, as 30i benefits from additional offensive pressure while 30b could offer more flexibility in the utility side of things. Late-game cleaner meanwhile gives us viable options to chose from such as the previously discussed sweeper roles, or something like a priority revenger.

Overall though I wouldn't be upset if we decided to go down traditional lines like Wallbreaker or Offensive Pivot, regardless of how boring they might feel to some they are viable directions to take the project.

 

[kjnjkmjk1]

People have already hit on a lot of my points, so I won't expand too much on things that have been said a lot already.

What roles naturally complement Tinted Lens? What alternate applications are there for Tinted Lens that are not as obvious?
As already mentioned, Tinted Lens is explicitly offensive due to its ability to negate resistances. Pretty much all offensive roles have some appreciation for the ability to get more damage on resisted hits, with a particular nod toward set up sweepers that might be able to drop a particular coverage move in favor of other moves, and Choice users that are less worried about locking into a particular move. The primary alternate application is to use the extra damage provided by Tinted Lens to threaten out an opponent that might otherwise wall you thanks to typing, and use that opportunity to perform some sort of utility role.

As I already stated, each form will be better equipped to facilitate different roles. What roles can 30b and 30i try to fill if they are selected to be the Tinted Lens user? This is intended to be as complete of a list as you can provide.
30i obviously can't be a choiced user or a setup user that is dependent on single-use items, but it can fill most other offensive roles thanks to the consistent 1.2x STAB boost from the unremovable orb. There is also the item manipulation immunity afforded by the orb, which in theory could be leveraged by more defensive roles.

30b can fill all of the roles that 30i can, with additional access to Choice and single-use items. Its access to items like Rocky Helmet, Heavy Duty Boots, and Leftovers also means it has more flexibility for various utility and defensive roles, and even offensive pivoting.

What are the pros, cons, and concerns for the avenues listed in the question 2? The decisions we make here will determine the power budget moving forward and impact the other form because of the remaining shared attributes.
I'm going to interpret this question a bit differently and include some talk about how I think this will affect the process.

Tinted Lens 30i provides much less variability in terms of its power level, which makes it easier to consider its impact. In addition, they both lean in similarly offensive directions, so there is some synergy there. As others have mentioned before, the orb specifically boosts STABs, which can play into the Pokemon focusing more on spamming those STABs and less on using its coverage moves (although coverage is still likely to have some kind of impact). While it removes some routes (a Choice item user would love Tinted Lens but is out of the question with 30i) and makes other routes more difficult (for example, pivoting becomes awkward without Heavy Duty Boots), it does also open more flexibility for the second ability by leaving it with 30b, which could be helpful in accommodating any potentially odd decisions we make in exploring Tinted Lens, such as a typing that works well with Tinted Lens but might not work as well with other abilities without the assistance of non-orb items.

Tinted Lens 30b is the opposite, in that it offers Tinted Lens more flexibility in its item slot, and thus more flexibility in its roles. It unlocks both the highly synergistic Choice user route, as well as more defensive routes if we choose to go there. However, it also means that, if we pick a lower power route, we have carefully plan around the extremely high power ceiling that Tinted Lens has, and it also sticks the second ability with 30i, where the inability to switch off the orb could be a bit restricting.

How does a forced item change the type of roles available to CAP30’s forms? Given 30i’s item and the offensive nature of Tinted Lens, would we be forcing a role if we selected something that was defensively oriented?
I think the forced item does bias CAP30i towards more offensively-oriented roles, as while its effect is useful offensively, it does not really offer anything defensively besides an item manipulation immunity. Tinted Lens also being offensively oriented makes it difficult to justify a defensive Tinted Lens 30i, unless the Pokemon happens to come with excellent defensive traits through typing and/or stats.

With regards to Tinted Lens 30b though, I think it's more possible to justify a defensive route without forcing it, although it still has difficulties. I think one way of quantifying how much is being forced is that the Pokemon should still consistently click their offensive move(s) with the intent to deal significant (aka more than just chip damage) amounts of damage, and thus actually utilize Tinted Lens on a consistent basis. Attaching Tinted Lens to a purely defensive Pokemon like Toxapex or Blissey is certainly forcing it, as in many cases the attacking move either provides utility (Scald, Knock Off), fixed consistent damage (Seismic Toss), or is just there so the defensive mon can occasionally do chip damage and avoid being complete Taunt bait.

To borrow examples from Amamama, Pokemon like Heatran and Landorus-T primarily act in defensive roles, but can still dish out large amounts of damage thanks to their extremely high attacking stats, and do regularly click non-utility attacking moves. I think Tinted Lens can work in this space without being completely forced, as it can augment these high-power attacks even more, giving the defensive mon more room to function against other Pokemon that might resist their moves. However, this runs the risk of the Pokemon sidelining possible defensive roles and preferring to act as a wallbreaker to take greater advantage of said high attacking stat and Tinted Lens, in the style of Melmetal.

Somewhere in the middle of the ladder of offensiveness is something like Ferrothorn, which has a respectable 94 attack and has run Power Whip/Gyro Ball consistently in the past, although it has switched to running primarily utility-based attacks over its STABs this generation. Ferrothorn is less at risk of going straight for the wallbreaker route, but it potentially brings into question how much Tinted Lens is actually a significant part of its niche.

All of this is to say that I believe a defensive role is possible for 30b without going full "square peg into round hole", but it's also a rather difficult line to ride. A purely offensive role, an offensive threat with some degree of utility like Defog Kartana or Spikes Ash-Greninja, or even a Melmetal-style wallbreaker/tank would be much easier to build around than a Heatran-style wall for 30b, much less the more offensively inclined 30i.

Finally, I want to know what paths interest you. I wanted users to establish the boundaries of our design space and then talk about the routes they prefer. What routes excite you and make you want to push the project forward?

With regards to which form, I think Tinted Lens 30i would make the process easier on ourselves. Although it does come at the cost of cutting off a few roles and restricting others, there is already inherent synergy between the orb and Tinted Lens that we can still take advantage of for a number of different offensive or even utility roles. Like others have stated, going straight for the wallbreaker role on either form would be fine, although I also find OofTheQuagsire's suggestion of a very effective cleaner that is not so adept at directly wallbreaking, which matches up with another suggestion in priority user, intriguing as well. Some of the other roles I mentioned earlier in offensive utility or bulky wallbreaker/tank would also be fine by me.

For what it's worth, I actually think trying to ride the line for Wall 30b could make for an interesting process, although over the course of writing this post I have found it more difficult to justify the effort we would have to go through to execute it properly with the concept in mind.

 

[Lasen]

I am not gonna make a very long post because most of my thoughts have already been shared either via discord or I would be echoing what others have said practically verbatim, but I do wish to show support for Tinted Lens on 30i. I believe the item's damage increase to our STAB moves, whatever those may be, is complimented nicely by the playstyle Tinted Lens enables and vice versa. This also gives us a lot more design space, as 30b can now occupy a completely different role, which is something that I believe is tougher and somewhat limited if we end up giving Tinted Lens to the base forme. Sure, the ability to equip ourselves with a Choice item and wreak havoc with Tinted Lens Hurricane/Thunder/Fire Blast/Close Combat/etc, but then I do believe that the 30i's item is designed around damage output and Tinted Lens sounds good enough to use it.

As far as roles go for the Tinted Lens user, I do like the idea of creating a fast cleaner that's very middling at breaking. Perhaps something built around its Speed stat or even strong priority, but I wouldn't be opposed to us taking on a more "boring" route and going for a pivot. I do not wish, however, to see a set-up sweeper, as I feel that we not only have a myriad of those running around the metagame as is, but it's also extremely easy to snowball or even get a Cawmodore situation and terrify the low ladder for years to come. Item displacement is another thing that intrigues me but also terrifies me, a Knock Off that's practically unresisted? How do we work around that? Does it wrap the metagame?

 

[MrDollSteak]

As others have pointed out, it's quite obvious that Tinted Lens suggests a variety of offensive roles. I don't quite think it's worth me exploring these options out in any more detail except to state that I really don't think the suggested defensive routes are very feasible, even if they are interesting.

How does a forced item change the type of roles available to CAP30’s forms? Given 30i’s item and the offensive nature of Tinted Lens, would we be forcing a role if we selected something that was defensively oriented?

I think the best way to speak to this question is to follow the path of least resistance. We have chosen an offensively geared ability, considering we have an Item that accentuates the power of our STABs, it would in my opinion make the most sense to focus on an offensive role.

Beyond this obvious similarity, however, there is a surprising amount of synergy. In fact, Tinted Lens is possibly one of the best abilities we could have chosen to really make Cap 30i's item shine. Considering the item only gives us a boost on our STABs we are naturally inclined to want to make the most out of them, which Tinted Lens achieves excellently with most dual typings getting close to perfect Neutral coverage. In fact it even gives us the chance to run multiple different STAB moves, either mixed options or utility moves.

What routes excite you and make you want to push the project forward?

As I've mentioned, I think the best route we can take is putting Tinted Lens on the Item form. As far as actual types of offensive roles I think mixed wallbreaking, utility attacking and late game cleaning are all very interesting roles that make the most of the synergy between our item and ability.

Furthermore I believe that in comparison to putting Tinted Lens on 30b, we will have more flexibility in terms of what role we end up actualising because our item provides us with a lower power ceiling in a vacuum. As far as being a wallbreaker the difference between a 1.2 and 1.5 boost is large enough that we don't need to be as restrictive in terms of say set-up, priority and even some utility moves.

 

[Krazyguy75]

I don't have a ton to add; Tinted Lens is a very generically good offense ability that doesn't particularly care how it is used offensively, so any role we pick will be able to optimally use it, for the most part. But there was one part of one post I found odd and wanted to address:

I'll mention a pro while I'm at it. If my ideas on coverage being decentivized are correct, that should mean we don't have to neuter our offensive movepool for sake of balance and leave the other out to dry. Stronger coverage in the >100 range might be an issue, but overall I don't see us straying far from STAB since resists are so trivialized. It would be a tad redundant to use an 80 BP coverage move to hit SE alongside a 90 BP STAB move on a resist that is only doing slightly less damage, moreso when that coverage is only for a select few and leaves us with only two more moves we can run.

I feel like this is the opposite of the case; we are aiming to optimize the ability, not just use it. Optimizing, in my opinion, would be pushing us to use and rely on it as much as possible. Adding secondary coverage with high BP means that you have less reason to hit 'mons with resists, as you have the coverage to hit them for more damage with SE coverage more often. Meanwhile, putting more extreme limits on coverage means that you are forced to take advantage of the ability to break through poor typing matchups with your STAB, which I view as a much more optimized approach; you take as much advantage of the ability as possible. The more we are having to use NVE STAB, and the more we benefit from doing so over other moves, the more optimized this ability is.

 

[kjnjkmjk1]

I feel like this is the opposite of the case; we are aiming to optimize the ability, not just use it. Optimizing, in my opinion, would be pushing us to use and rely on it as much as possible. Adding secondary coverage with high BP means that you have less reason to hit 'mons with resists, as you have the coverage to hit them for more damage with SE coverage more often. Meanwhile, putting more extreme limits on coverage means that you are forced to take advantage of the ability to break through poor typing matchups with your STAB, which I view as a much more optimized approach; you take as much advantage of the ability as possible. The more we are having to use NVE STAB, and the more we benefit from doing so over other moves, the more optimized this ability is.

I want to point to the definition of optimization that we already established in Concept Assessment 1.

"We want the ability to be a leading element of CAP 30’s functionality while avoiding optimization that removes healthy counterplay." (Source)

Note that the ability needs to be a leading element, but it does not have to be the single leading element of the CAP's functionality. There is putting a focus on Tinted Lens, and then there is railroading it into relying entirely on Tinted Lens, which I worry is what will happen if we try to get the CAP to use Tinted Lens STABs in every matchup possible. I can see arguments for cutting off certain types of coverage to prevent the Tinted Lens from overrunning certain checks or counters with super-effective moves, but I am opposed to forcing this CAP into using Tinted Lens by cutting off coverage so much that it needs to use its STAB as much as possible. Being able to click a Tinted Lens move with much less fear of resists is already a strong enough benefit to the CAP's offensive potential that we do not need to go this far out of our way to get it to use STABs. Not only is this a rather heavy-handed approach to making Tinted Lens as central to the CAP as possible, but it also is likely to screw over the other form unless it takes a defensive route that does not run coverage, and I would like to not impact the other form to this extent if we can help it.

 

[NitioWO]

A few brief thoughts, not specifically related to any of the questions.

- Tinted Lens is an offensive ability, 30i's item gives it offensive boosts, and 30i is unable to hold defensive utility items (Lefties/AV/HDB). I think the most painless route if Tinted Lens were to go to 30i is to make it offensively leaning. If 30i were to go defensive, it might constrain the typing stage unnecessarily as we would heavily favor a non Rock-weak (or Spikes immune) typing due to the inability to hold boots.

- Tinted Lens is good at compressing moveslots, but it doesn't actually increase the power of a mon. A mon isn't necessarily going to suddenly start breaking through things if it has Tinted Lens. Power has to be generated through the other facets of the mon: stats, set-up options, high BP moves, power boosting items. For example, Rillaboom with Tinted Lens isn't going to suddenly punch through things with just Grassy Glide, but it may start to do some damage with Wood Hammer, or Swords Dance or a Choice Band. This is especially relevant for types with no (or unreliable) high BP moves like Rock. Tinted Lens definitely reduces the number of viable switchins that can eat hits due to their typing, but by and large the current metagame is filled with defensive mons that leverage their stats to a high degree. Corv and Pex aren't able to switch in to Dragapult Shadow Ball due to a resist, and Clef is similar vs pivot Zeraora. But in these cases, Pult only has 100 SpA using an 80 BP move, and Zerarora isn't boosting its power in anyway. If Pult had 120 SpA, neutral switchins start becoming shaky. If Zera has Bulk Up, you'll need a resist or you're boned.

- Coverage is still important, because Tinted Lens affects coverage moves too, not just STAB. Super effective damage is important to secure KOs or at least threaten them; I doubt we are going to be operating at Dracovish levels of power. This is especially true if there is a lack of power boosting options like set-up or items. Coverage is also unavoidable to a degree because we are going to share a movepool with the other forme (unless there's a clean physical/special split between the mons). I think Choice Item users LOVE Tinted Lens, but Tinted Lens doesn't necessarily like a Choice Item any more than another power-boosting option.

- I am personally partial to 2 roles. The first is Late Game Cleaner. This can be achieved through either the Priority User or Choice User roles mentioned above. The second is Set Up Sweeper. This can be achieved a number of ways: Pure offense (like Weavile), or with some defensive utility (like Tapu Fini or Gen 7 Mega Scizor). Set Up sweeper could also fill the late game cleaner role with speed boosting or priority.

- I am undecided on which form to give it to. While the synergy between 30i's item and Tinted Lens is undeniable, I think the flexibility offered by 30b's ability to hold whatever it wants is useful for the process and leaves the door open to more options. One of my preferred roles of late game cleaner is easily achievable by a Choice Scarf user, but we can't do that with 30i.

 

[sneakyjeans]

What roles naturally complement Tinted Lens?

I won’t go into too much depth as a lot has already been covered, but I want to echo that offence is the right choice. I agree with Tommaniacal that we don’t need to be overly complex in our execution of this role. A Wallbreaker is a perfect fit for this concept, and I prefer it over set-up options, in particular some of the discussions around a Utility Breaker I find the most interesting. A Choice User is equally as interesting to me. Tinted Lens gives us plenty to learn in terms of power budget, checks and counters and movepool, I don‘t think we need to be more complex than Wallbreaker/Utility Breaker in the pursuit of a process with plenty of discussion and learning outcomes.

What roles can 30b and 30i try to fill if they are selected to be the Tinted Lens user?

A Utility Breaker for 30i and a Choice User for 30b are the best choices IMO. For example I’ll point to 2 different Melmetal sets, Choice Band and TWave + 3 Attacks. CB Melmetal is a powerhouse, it fulfills a simple role of hitting things very hard. It has passable coverage and a strong ability in Iron Fist to up the output. 30b is a great pick for a Choice User as it fulfills similar power output criteria. TWave + 3 Attacks usually runs Protective Pads, a situational item but one that helps Melmetal dish out more damage by providing some sustainability. The item itself isn’t as critical to fulfilling the role but serves to add a strong push. TWave compensates for slow speeds and allows for more chances to attack, so it’s more of a Utility Breaker. 30i fits this bill because its item choice is locked into providing a power boost and not restricting to one attack like Choice. It is better suited for utility options like status spreading to help facilitate breaking, while still having the oomph to be threatening.

 

[dex]

Obviously a lot has been said about Tinted Lens being used in a offensive way. I totally agree with that, but one offensive role that has not been mentioned here (and not in the OP) is Cleaner. For those that are not aware of the difference between Cleaners and Sweepers, Cleaners are something more akin to the role Mega Alakazam and Weavile played in SM CAP. Those were mons that could clean up an already weakened team and secure a win if kept in the back, while still threatening the opponent with their offensive potential. Sweepers, on the other hand, use setup in order to KO multiple opposing mons. Cleaners can sort of act as Wallbreakers in a way, but are more oriented towards endgame play. I think Tinted Lens is uniquely suited for the Cleaner role, and is one we should discuss or look towards in future stages.

 

[Wulfanator]

I need to start by thanking kjnjkmjk1 for pointing out the definition we established at the end of CA1. We want our ability to be a leading element of the design, but this does not equate to full reliance on Tinted Lens. The problem is that users are using “optimized” at its face value and feel every element of the mon needs to immediately play back into our ability. This is simply untrue. We can build a mon that uses the ability efficiently and bolsters its strength without having to force our ability on the player.

As for the questions I posed, offensive routes were always going to be the safest option available. Wallbreakers, Cleaners, and Choice Users are all great roles for Tinted Lens since they compound on the offensive benefits the ability provides. While there is more flexibility for 30b to favor defensive routes, there are difficult boundaries we would have to establish to make these paths function properly. For that reason, it is probably best to drop these routes entirely from conversation. I also think that set-up sweepers are out of the question because we easily risk snowballing out of control as well as severely hurting the design space for the form we have yet to build. Other than that, I think all the other roles suggested can work.

We have spent a lot of time talking about roles but very little addressing what form we want to see pursuing them. I want to send the options that have seen heavy discussion to a poll in the form of

---EXAMPLE SLATE---
Choice User 30b
Cleaner 30i
Wall 30b

I want role and form to be selected at the same time to cut back on needless polling. I also want to clarify that these are just examples to convey how I wish to set up the poll and not a definitive slate. The final thing I want to ask is what form do you think is better suited for the roles talked about? Some of the roles I have seen a lot of discussion about include:

Utility Wallbreaker
Late-Game Cleaner
Offensive Pivot
Priority
(Choice user has been talked about a decent amount too, but that is already limited to one of the forms.)

Lastly, we are not limited to the single role we select in this assessment. As an example, we can give a late-game cleaner priority moves if we so choose since mons can occupy multiple roles. We just want to establish a primary focus

 

[dex]

Utility Wallbreaker lends itself to both forms in my opinion, though if I had to choose one, it would be the Item form. There are interesting movepool implications for this role that I think uniquely suit the item form, but as I said, it works for both.

Late-Game Cleaner is absolutely best suited for the Item form. The 1.2x STAB boost + Tinted Lens screams endgame breaking potential, which is what I would love to see from this mon.

Offensive Pivot is conversely better suited for the Base form. Not only do pivots gain a lot from their items (see Boots, Leftovers, and Helmet to name a few), but the Item form's item lock is a little too detrimental in this role for my liking given the chip damage pivots accrue over the course of a battle.

Priority is a weird one that I think is really reliant on typing. Personally, I don't really like it that much as it is sort of vague and could really be lumped in as more of a way of accomplishing a form's role than a role unto itself, but if I had to pick one, I would choose the Base form in order to keep our typing options more open.

 

[Astra]

dex pretty much summarized exactly how I feel. CAP30i would obviously benefit from being a utility wallbreaker and late-game cleaner because both of those role heavily appreciate the extra STAB damage to perform one of the primary goals in taking out foes. Meanwhile, since an offensive pivot would bank more on having to switch in and out all of the time and may occasionally provide some utility, it would benefit CAP30b more because it would be able to hold an item that can help it with its role, such as Heavy-Duty Boots.

Answering for priority is a bit tricky, though. In my opinion, I would think that CAP30i would appreciate being a priority user more just because the potential extra damage can help it revenge kill more easily, but at the same time, CAP30b could benefit from that may assist it as a priority user. I don't really like calling "priority" solely a role, though; many other roles utilize priority moves to perform their role efficiently, but most of them would be referred to as "revenge killer" or "cleaner" first before being called "priority." Also, to be honest, I think we should also keep in mind that both formes could potentially be potent users of priority but perform different roles unless one forme really doesn't care for that utility. Again, though, when discussing roles, we shouldn't focus on calling a role purely as "priority" but rather refer to roles that may use priority to their advantage.

 

[shnowshner]

Here's my personal list of roles each form can fulfill the best

30b

O. Pivot: it can run HDB so it wins​

Uti. WBreaker: I think having access to stronger boosting items or other options such as Leftovers for passive recovery give this an edge. The 1.2x boost to STAB is always nice, but not exactly the most amazing item present.​

30i

Cleaner: This is where our item shines. The damage boost is very practical and the lack of secondary downsides compared to the likes of Life Orb or Choice Band/Specs means we aren't as vulnerable to getting worn down or locking ourselves into a single move.​

Priority: Similar reasons above. Tinted Lens helps a ton in making up for the weaker power of Priority moves meaning we can hit resists with greater impunity, and item boosts damage is very helpful without hurting us in return like other items can.​

This isn't meant to be a damning list that 100% means we have to go one way for a role. 30i's Item Manipulation resistance would be great for a Utility Wallbreaker, while 30b could also work as a Cleaner simply because Choice Items + Tinted Lens is a stupidly strong combination in a vacuum. In terms of best/most favorable user, however, I am pretty confident in my selection for the two.

Also, yeah Priority as a "role" is a tad awkward. I do think 30i is better at using moves with priority, so I guess its fine in terms of "things this Pokemon can do," as we don't need to do one role only.