CAP 30 - Part 4 - Typing Discussion

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I've seen a few comments about how we shouldn't choose STABs that have immunities. I disagree with that notion completely. 30i will probably already be the least prediction-reliant Pokemon in the entire metagame, no exaggeration. Tinted Lens, coupled with the fact that we're unable to hold a choice item and therefore not locked into the first move we click, means that making good predictions will be less relevant with this mon than perhaps any other mon that has existed.

I don't believe that giving our STABs at least one immunity is mandatory, but introducing a tiny bit of prediction to a mon that can otherwise click moves with complete impunity is not a dealbreaker by any stretch. As long as our STABs are not literally Normal/Fighting or Ground/Electric or whatever, we'll be fine.
I don't think prediction is a big deal especially on a utility based wallbreaker. I doubt we're going to have enough power to run through the whole tier with one/two moves. As a wallbreaker, if we're able to scare certain pokemon out, we can predict a switch and click a utility move. It won't be difficult to build a mon that doesn't have both the speed and power to 2hko the entire tier.

Re: resists, fat mons like Corv and Pex have great defensive typings but are also able to switch into strong neutral moves because they are fat. Modest Kyurem with Icicle plate can't 2hko Corv with Freeze Dry. Icicle plate Tinted Lens Weavile doesn't 2hko Arghonaut with Axel. These are 2 of the best wallbreakers in the tier currently and they are incapable of 2hko-ing the most common fat mons in the tier with neutral hits. Now if Kyurem had Tinted Lens and predicted Corv to come in and clicked Draco instead, that's a different story, but that shows you can still include an element of prediction without making it a type with common immunities. Low acc, stat droppers, recoil moves, multi-hit moves, low pp moves, etc can all be punished, and those are just the damaging moves. You gotta be careful clicking Thunder Wave when the opponent's Ground is still alive.

Anyway, part of the reason Tinted Lens is cool is because it eases prediction. If a mon has access to 2 STABs of comparable power, but one of them has common immunities, why would it ever click the one with immunities except for SE hits? 4x resists are pretty rare except for Grass and Bug, so it's likely that the opponent is not gonna have a resist to the reliable STAB anyway, so not having any resists to 2 reliable STABs isn't really gonna make much of a difference. If you want to hit SE, you'll have to predict. I would personally not like to see the second STAB be used essentially as coverage, especially because of our cool item.

I hard, hard disagree with this notion. There are plenty of rocks weak breakers that are viable in the tier, namely Kyurem, Blacephalon, Volkraken, and Miasmaw.
All the Rock-weak mons that don't run HDB are purely offensive, and they all run a Choice item instead. 30i doesn't have the luxury of a Choice item or HDB, and we need to provide utility and not just power. Even Kyurem and Weavile run boots most of the time. Blace has zero defensive merit, and Volk and Miasmaw barely exist in the meta.

Another concern with a Rock weakness is 30b. With a Rock weakness, 30b either has to be offensive, or be item-locked to HDB. Other than the aforementioned Choice users and Pelipper, there isn't a single rocks-weak pokemon on the CAP viability rankings that doesn't use HDB overwhelmingly more often than any other item. During the first ability stage, a whole slew of abilities was banned because of being item-dependent, not wanting both formes to be item locked and the ubiquity of Knock Off. I see parallels here.

Honestly though, above all, I just don't see the merits. I've personally argued that Tinted Lens eases the pressure on our typing offensively, so it makes sense to focus on securing a decent defensive typing. I don't see what we gain from being rocks weak, except using it as a weird balancing tool. I think we have far more to gain from not being rocks weak.
 
Are there any individual types especially relevant to our selected role and forme?
Every type benefits from Tinted Lens, but the ones that benefit the most are those that 1) are resisted by multiple types, and 2) are not easily blocked by immunities. At least one of CAP30's types should have one of these characteristics.

How important are our STABS vs coverage to CAP30i?
Tinted Lens users lean heavily into their stronger, largely resistance-free STAB moves rather than relying on coverage. This is true both for TL users that have bad offensive types, where TL turns their horrendous coverage into something respectable (such as Venomoth), and for those with already good coverage that is amped up to another level (such as Seadra*Butterfree and Magmar*Butterfree in Cross Evolution). These mons all generally dedicate two moves to STABs and leave the other two available for status moves that improves their ability to function (at set-up sweeping, for these examples). We should do the same for our utility wallbreaker.

How much do we want Tinted Lens to interact with our typing?
We should definitely be getting a solid boost in coverage through our access to Tinted Lens. This does not mean we need to achieve perfect coverage, but we should be able to get further with a given offensive combo than we normally would. I actually think Venomoth is a very good model for this in terms of balancing purposes. Its Bug Buzz became far more spammable than it would normally be, but due to the large number of quad-resists to Bug, there were still several Pokemon who could switch in on it, especially since many of them were part Steel, making them immune to Venomoth's other STAB. For this reason I believe that Venomoth would be balanced even if it had ideal stats for its sweeper role. We should similarly aim for a type combo that is buffed by TL but not broken by it.

On what kind(s) of Pokemon would Tinted Lens be beneficial?
Mono-attacking utility and dual-attacking utility would get the biggest benefits, as they are able to run their multiple utility moves far more comfortably while still packing a punch against a large swath of the meta.

How much does defensive merit matter to a utility wallbreaker?
Wallbreakers definitely appreciate being able to take some hits since they are 1) often outsped, and 2) need to be switched in on fatmons with annoying moves. Since we also don't want to cripple the 30b form with a bad defensive typing, we should choose something with some solid defensive benefits that is traditionally lacking in the offensive department. 30i would then use Tinted Lens to make an effective set, while 30b would have the foundation to follow its own path.

Lastly, what might the full effects be of choosing a type combination weak to Stealth Rock?
As mentioned, Bug, Flying, Ice, and Fire types are all ideal beneficiaries of Tinted Lens. As always, however, it's better not to be rock-weak, especially since we can't hold HDB. But I don't think we should outright reject these typings. We may find that pairing these typings with a rock resist could be an ideal way to reap the benefits of TL without hampering our defensive utility, if we want to use one of the above.
 
I don't think prediction is a big deal especially on a utility based wallbreaker. I doubt we're going to have enough power to run through the whole tier with one/two moves. As a wallbreaker, if we're able to scare certain pokemon out, we can predict a switch and click a utility move. It won't be difficult to build a mon that doesn't have both the speed and power to 2hko the entire tier.

Re: resists, fat mons like Corv and Pex have great defensive typings but are also able to switch into strong neutral moves because they are fat. Modest Kyurem with Icicle plate can't 2hko Corv with Freeze Dry. Icicle plate Tinted Lens Weavile doesn't 2hko Arghonaut with Axel. These are 2 of the best wallbreakers in the tier currently and they are incapable of 2hko-ing the most common fat mons in the tier with neutral hits. Now if Kyurem had Tinted Lens and predicted Corv to come in and clicked Draco instead, that's a different story, but that shows you can still include an element of prediction without making it a type with common immunities. Low acc, stat droppers, recoil moves, multi-hit moves, low pp moves, etc can all be punished, and those are just the damaging moves. You gotta be careful clicking Thunder Wave when the opponent's Ground is still alive.

Anyway, part of the reason Tinted Lens is cool is because it eases prediction. If a mon has access to 2 STABs of comparable power, but one of them has common immunities, why would it ever click the one with immunities except for SE hits? 4x resists are pretty rare except for Grass and Bug, so it's likely that the opponent is not gonna have a resist to the reliable STAB anyway, so not having any resists to 2 reliable STABs isn't really gonna make much of a difference. If you want to hit SE, you'll have to predict. I would personally not like to see the second STAB be used essentially as coverage, especially because of our cool item.
The point of my post wasn't to say that this mon will 2HKO the entire tier. I absolutely don't think that. I'm just saying that having an immunity to one of our STABs should not prevent us from using that typing.

I do also think it matters that we will likely have perfect one-move coverage against an entire team with at least one of our STABs*. When I say that this is not a prediction-reliant mon, I'm not saying you'll 2HKO Corv with Play Rough or whatever. But you will chunk it and force it to roost, which gives you time to use a utility move or bring in a teammate. You will chunk literally anything that comes in... with a single move. That is extraordinarily powerful. I guess there's still a slight element of prediction in hitting certain mons super effectively, but my point is that you can still get massive mileage out of just not predicting at all. It's a powerful and pretty unprecedented level of consistency. I don't think that's bad, but it's worth acknowledging.

Anyway, you're saying that prediction can still be relevant without immunities to our STABs, and I agree with you to an extent, but there's absolutely no reason for those immunities to bar us from using certain typings when we can function more than fine despite them. Immunities aren't mandatory, but they're also not a problem.

*I did a little analysis earlier of some slightly outdated CAP teams, and the teams I analyzed all had a large spread of typings that are completely unresisted with Tinted Lens.
 
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spoo

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Alright all, thanks for the great discussion - here are a few things I'm taking away from how this thread has played out so far (stuff in hide tags to save on space):
(Also note that these are not hard directions we must take/hard requirements for our typing but merely a summarization of where most people's heads seem to be at so we can have a clearer direction moving forward. Feel free to push back against anything here if you disagree with it, or show your support if there is anything here you're particularly passionate about.)
  • A large benefit of tinted lens is that it makes traditionally defensive typings become strong offensively
    • Having defensive utility can give us more switch-in opportunities to either break or use our utility
  • STAB is absolutely huge for us, and we should ideally be able to accomplish our function without relying on extra coverage (to illustrate, STAB body slam is slightly stronger for us than non-stab hyper beam given our 1.2x item boost)
    • Focusing on our stabs can free up movesets for utility
    • This may mean that typings which are traditionally met with immunities, eg electric, ground, and dragon could be less desirable (this consensus was admittedly a bit less clear)
  • Stealth Rock weakness is not ideal, but also not disqualifying by any means (this may still need more discussion)
    • There was a decent amount of contention around this point, but the general consensus seemed to be that a 4x weakness is hard to justify but a 2x weakness is possible to work around
    • SR weakness can even be a good tool for balancing a powerful type combination
    • Fixating too much on a SR weakness can disqualify some of the most promising typing choices

Just a couple things I'd still like to get more clarity on before typing submissions open:
As I alluded to in my last point about having a Stealth Rock weakness, I do feel like there is a majority consensus but it isn't necessarily the clearest one at the moment. As such, I'd like to see a bit more discussion on it, especially if you feel strongly one way or another. Here are a couple questions getting at that:
  • Are there any strict benefits to having a Stealth Rock weakness?
  • While a Rock weakness may be acceptable on a frail wallbreaker like Blacephalon or a sweeper like Volcarona in past gens, what would it look like on a utility wallbreaker? Are there any relevant examples of existing Pokemon to point to, whether in past gens or lower tiers?

I feel like the issue of typings that gain comparatively a lot from TL vs those that gain comparatively little is a bit murky right now as well. To me, it felt that the consensus leaned towards choosing a typing where abusing TL is at the forefront. It seemed that typings that offer less (ie those with fewer resists) were less desirable to users, while those that have many resists (especially those that have many resists AND many SE hits) could be promising contenders.
  • Is this about the right attitude to take towards this issue? How much should we be prioritizing typings with many resists vs few? What about typings with 4x resists?
  • Do both of our typings need to abuse Tinted Lens well, or is it equally successful if just one typing does (eg Ghost/Fighting)?

With that out of the way, we'll be moving things along in a slightly new direction. I want to analyze the pros and cons of individual types so please get into the specifics, but also note that typing subs are still not open.
  • Are there any key resistances or SE hits we should be broadly looking for? Are there any key weaknesses we might want to avoid (eg Knock Off)?
  • Which individual types are promising to you and why are they relevant?
  • Are there any individual types which may not suit our concept or function? Could they be shored up in other areas or do we want to avoid them altogether?
  • Are there any individual types that strike a nice balance between defensive value and, with Tinted Lens, a strong offensive matchup against the metagame?

There are a lot of questions here so there's no need to answer all of them, though if you want to then that's great too. Depending on how discussion goes, I'm planning on waiting about 24hrs or potentially a little more before formally opening up typing submissions.
 
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While a Rock weakness may be acceptable on a frail wallbreaker like Blacephalon or a sweeper like Volcarona in past gens, what would it look like on a utility wallbreaker? Are there any relevant examples of existing Pokemon to point to, whether in past gens or lower tiers?
A great example of a more utility-based wallbreaker with a Rocks weakness in the current metagame would be Tornadus-T's pivot set. It offers amazing role compression thanks to the combination of Knock Off + U-turn + Defog while having good Speed and Special Attack stats. I think Torn-T should be the example we look to if we do end up going with a Rocks-weak typing.

Which individual types are promising to you and why are they relevant?
I am really interested in looking at the Psychic-type for something like this. Once the best typing in the metagame by far, it's really fallen out of grace in recent times, mainly due to Dark- and Steel-types being everywhere, especially the latter. Tinted Lens allows it to ignore a potentially crippling inability to hit Steel-types, and thanks to our item, 30i won't have to worry too much about Knock Off. As for Dark-types in general, we can always match it up with another type.
 
  • Which individual types are promising to you and why are they relevant?
  • Are there any individual types which may not suit our concept or function? Could they be shored up in other areas or do we want to avoid them altogether?
  • Are there any individual types that strike a nice balance between defensive value and, with Tinted Lens, a strong offensive matchup against the metagame?
I'm gonna tackle these three together and go through each typing, and talk about what I think is interesting or not interesting about each of them, as an individual typing.

Hid the wall of text.

Normal - Normal is typically a boring typing. It has neutral STAB and an immunity to Ghosts. The only benefit Tinted Lens brings is the ability to hit Steels neutrally with something like Body Slam or Boomburst. While it is an interesting route, and does hit every non-Ghost for neutral... Its not making too much use of the STAB Tinted Lens combo that other typings can't do just as well if not better.

Fighting - Fighting has the same weakness against ghost as Normal, but it brings so much more. Offensively, we have a strong SE STAB that can pressure opponents due to Tinted Lens boosting all 5 of its typical resists (Flying, Poison, Bug, Psychic, Fairy.) Looking at the viability rankings, the only really relevant things that resist our STAB are :slowking-galar:, :tapu-lele:, and maybe :aurumoth:. This means pressing STAB Fighting move will either always hit something, or get blocked by a ghost. This also brings a rocks resistance, which I think is very important still.

Flying - This one is the first typing that nothing is immune to. This means that it can hit literally everything but :magnezone: neutrally. It also has an immunity to ground moves, as well as most hazards, which is nice, but it is weak to Rocks as a downside.

Poison - I think this one is kinda boring. Steel types are immune to it, and while there are quite a few common typings that resist it in Poison, Ground, and Ghost (also Rock, but that's less common). It also has a fountain of its own resistances, such as Fairy and Fighting. But... The Steel immunity does hurt it really badly in my eyes. I think its more interesting when paired with a typing that can deal with those Steel types however, such as Fire or Fighting, but that's a different question.

Ground - Bug and Grass resist ground. Flying is immune. Flying is more common than Bug and Grass. I think that this is probably the worst typing we can go with.

Rock - Like Flying, this typing can do damage to everything. I think the only relevant Pokemon that resists it is :excadrill:, :cobalion: also exists but I think that's mostly irrelevant. I don't think it has much defensive merit in the current metagame however, since its weak to a lot of very common and powerful typings like Fighting, Ground, and Water, while its resists are made up of less popular attack typings like Normal.

Bug - Tied with Grass for the most resistances in 7. While this does mean that it is one of the typings that can turn the most resisted hits into neutral ones, it also has a major flaw in a lot of relevant Pokemon resisting it even after Tinted Lens. Its also got a rocks weakness as well. The only way I think this would be interesting would be if we came up with a partner typing that bandaged a lot of its weaknesses, but there are probably better/easier ways to solve that problem with Grass instead.

Ghost - Dark is its only resist, and Normal is immune. It at least hits things neutrally, and has a rather useful immunity defensively, but it has a lot of the same flaws as Normal and Ground, where it feels like its off-concept as an individual typing.

Steel - Is one of the best defensive typings in the game. This is a major pro for it here. It does have some SE hits, most importantly in Fairy, but it is also normally resisted by 4 rather popular typings in Steel, Fire, Water, and Electric. Tinted Lens is a very potent tool here, where the only major threats that resist Steel are :heatran:, :krilowatt:, and :magnezone:. There is a lot of promising defensive power with this typing, and a number of things we can now hit neutrally with STAB Tinted Lens.

Fire - Is surprisingly good here too. While it is rocks weak, it is also burn immune, which can be useful if we do end up going physical. It also has a healthy number of resists that we will now be able to hit neutrally as well. Plus, it is still a very threatening STAB as it is able to hit some typings such as Steel or :jumbao: offensively, while also bringing a whopping 6 resists of its own, enabling a nice selection of switch in opprotunities.

Water - I'm sure water types would love to hit Water/Grass/Dragon pokemon. Its a very consistent defensive typing, and it does have an opprotunity to threaten a lot of Pokemon with STAB boosted neutral water moves. The only Pokemon I can think of that resists its combo is :kingdra:, which might as well be absent from consideration. Kingdra is a rain abuser, and a Tinted Lens boosted Water STAB will threaten even Kingdra in the rain.

Grass - Bug but better or worse? It has more weaknesses than Bug, but also more resistances. It is neutral to rocks rather than weak to it, trades a fighting resistance for the common water and electric, and has a few utility immunities. For example, even though Ferrothorn resists Grass STAB even after Tinted Lens, it still cant Leech Seed us, meaning we will very likely be able to break it with neutral hits on whatever our other STAB is (so long as its not Poison.) Both Grass and Bug are resisted by Flying, Poison, Steel, and Fire, which give us a problem with quite a few common threats like all those Steel Birds and Heatran, but we trade problems against Fighting/Ghost/Fairy dualtypes (such as Tomohawk or Aegislash) for Bug/Grass/Dragon (the aforementioned :Ferrothorn: being the only notable resist.)

Electric - This is always a pretty solid typing. It has 1 weakness, but it has an offensive immunity as well. I think there are more interesting ways we can exploit Tinted Lens than with this typing, but the para immunity is nice.

Psychic - Is not very good here. It is a bad defensive typing, and offensively its mostly pressured by that Ghost immunity than the Steel resistance.

Ice - I like Ice. This is a typing that is supposed to be powreful offensively at the cost of terrible defenses, but it usually has so many resistances that it ends up neglected as an offensive typing too. With Tinted Lens, Ice can be fully realized as the powerful offensive typing that it is, hitting all flavours of Pokemon not named Heatran while also bringing some powerful SE breaking potential against very common typings in Flying, Ground, and Dragon.

Dragon - I think this one is almost as bad as Ground. Its already a very powerful neutral offensive typing that is balanced by its Fairy immunity. Tinted Lens adds almost nothing to this, other than making Steel types second guess switching in.

Dark - Its not off-concept, and I can't put my finger onto why, but I'm not too interested in this one. It does bring some nice Tinted Lens neutral hits vs Fighting, Fairy, and other Darks, and its alright defensively, but as an individual typing it doesn't really add much other than the Psychic immunity and fears that we will just become a very strong Knocker. I mean, that is fitting under Utility Wallbreaker that does make use of Tinted Lens in being able to Knock and threaten mons like :tomohawk: or :clefable: but I feel that a non-Lens boosted knock from any other common knocker is just as good (and also that looking at Dark for STAB Knock Off feels a bit poll jumpy?)

Fairy - Maybe its burnout from all these little blurbs, but getting to the last typing... Its nice but feels very average. Being able to hit Steel, Poison, and Fire is nice, and it is a solid defensive typing with an immunity, but I can't think of much to say for or against it. It just feels like an average typing in a vacuum. :heatran: bullies it, much like other typings.

So to go to the questions directly... I feel that Fighting, Steel, Fire, Grass, and Ice are the most promising typings. Other than Ice, they each bring some useful defensive merit in addition to their Tinted Lens boosted offensive potential. Other than Grass, they are all very solid at breaking down common walls with powerful STAB options.

For the ones that I think we can ignore altogether, they would be Ground, Ghost, and Dragon. These 3 don't really care at all about the Tinted Lens STAB boost, they're already very good offensive typings that hit most things neutrally other than whats immune to them and their few resists. I also think that Normal and Psychic struggle to make proper use of Tinted Lens beyond just hitting Steel types.

I still think that Rocks weak typings like Bug, Flying, Fire, and Ice are held back by their weakness and our inability to bring Boots, but being able to pair one of those typings with Fighting or Steel to bring that to a neutrality is nice, especially since those two are among the typings I find the most promising.

Bug and Grass also have a huge problem in having too many resists. While they do make maximum usage out of Tinted Lens, they can still get walled by a lot of common walls. Being paired with a typing that can deal with their weaknesses such as Fire, Rock, Water, or Fighting to name a few does help them significantly.

I'd also like to read other opinions about Dark. I don't know what to make of it other than what I wrote above. It is a very relevant typing, but I can't help but think its just a bit too bland and doesn't actually add anything of value to the metagame.
 
  • Are there any individual types especially relevant to our selected role and forme?
    • Yes, but our ability changes the meaning of the answers to this question completely. Tinted Lens changes a bad offensive type into a good offensive type. A good offensive type still benefits from Tinted Lens, but the significance of the ability is reduced. Giving 30i a good typing will be an example of optimising the pokemon, but it will be less of an example of optimising the ability. There is a difference. We should not have a mon whose ability is merely a nice bonus for a concept of optimising their ability. Their ability should be central to how they play. As such, we actually want a typing that is actually bad for our selected role in order to showcase the benefits of Tinted Lens.
  • How important are our STABS vs coverage to CAP30i?
    • Coverage reduces the importance of Tinted Lens. In addition, it leaves ess space for utility on our utility wallbreaker. As such, coverage is not something we want 30i to usually run.
  • How much do we want Tinted Lens to interact with our typing?
    • As much as possible. This concept is very much about showcasing an ability's potential. We need to give the ability as much a chance to shine as possible. Tinted Lens is a very type-dependant ability, so typing is one of the biggest chances we have to showcase what the ability can do.
  • How much does defensive merit matter to a utility wallbreaker?
    • It matters more than for most other defensive roles, due to the fact that you want to spend time doing things other than simply getting rid of the mon in front of you, which leaves more opportunities to be attacked, but it's hardly be all and end all. We aren't a wall, after all.
  • Lastly, what might the full effects be of choosing a type combination weak to Stealth Rock?
    • The inability to hold boots means it hurts more than for many other mon, but there are options to make this less of an issue, like recovery. In addition, again, we are not a wall, so being at low health isn't as big of an issue as it could have been. Being quad weak to rocks is going to hurt the utility part of our role though, as it gets harder to get on the field at opportune times and we run the risk of being taken out while trying to perform some utility.
  • EDIT: : Whoops! See we moved on while I was working on this Sorry.
  • I will say in relation to the new questions, choosing a type with many resists is the best way to showcase the power of Tinted Lens.
 
Do both of our typings need to abuse Tinted Lens well, or is it equally successful if just one typing does (eg Ghost/Fighting)?
The Balanced Hackmons Dialga example shows that what matters for a mon that actually wants Tinted Lens is more about the extra damage gained for the combined offensive typing than the extra damage gained for each individual offensive type. We've dismissed Dragon before as a typing that gains relatively little from Tinted Lens thanks to the Dragon immunity Fairy has, but Steel/Dragon jumps from being resisted by Steels all day without Tinted Lens to being completely unresisted with Tinted Lens. (Thankfully for Dialga's chances in BH, Steel/Dragon still has mediocre super-effective coverage.) As a result, I don't think both typings need to abuse Tinted Lens well, and I actually don't think one type abusing Tinted Lens well automatically makes the combined typing abuse Tinted Lens well (e.g. Electric/Ice hits way too many typings neutrally or better without Tinted Lens and therefore appreciates abilities that strengthen neutral hits more - I don't care that Ice abuses Tinted Lens quite well) - I think the combined offensive typing needs to abuse Tinted Lens well. (Think of Tinted Lens as providing a conditional 2× damage boost, then compare it to damage boosts that abilities like Adaptability (4/3×) or Iron Fist (1.2×) provide.)
 

Astra

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Are there any strict benefits to having a Stealth Rock weakness?
The only obvious answer to this question that I can think of is that if we're alright with a Stealth Rock weakness, we have a lot of more freedom with the typings we can choose from. Just off the bat, if we're fine with a Stealth Rock weakness (and disregarding another type neutralizing it), we'll be able to talk more freely about types such as Fire, Ice, Flying, and more. Of course, they all can benefit more or less from Tinted Lens compared to other types, but just as a whole, we'll have a lot more wiggle room. Other than that, being able to potentially target more Pokemon within the metagame without any weird restriction is also fairly beneficial.
While a Rock weakness may be acceptable on a frail wallbreaker like Blacephalon or a sweeper like Volcarona in past gens, what would it look like on a utility wallbreaker?
If anything, a weakness to Rock would be somewhat of an inconvenience to an utility wallbreaker, especially considering that CAP30i is locked to a certain item and thus can't use Heavy-Duty Boots. Unlike Blacephalon and Volcarona, which only either uses strong moves or set up to make their moves stronger, a utility wallbreaker would want to come in as often and safely as possible in order to, well, utilize its utility. If it's going to be weak to Stealth Rock, it would be harder to it to come in as often as it should and therefore would require some support in entry hazard removal. If we do happen to choose a typing that's weak to Stealth Rock, we should keep in mind of how we should model CAP30i for potential teammates that specifically can help it keep Stealth Rock off the field.
Is this about the right attitude to take towards this issue?
We definitely shouldn't hard-focus our typing to be able to take advantage of Tinted Lens. It should be the number one priority, obviously, but we should keep in mind how that typing will interact with the metagame. For example, I've seen Normal being talked about as a potential candidate for being a part of CAP30's typing, allowing it to target particular the defensive Steel-types in the metagame. That alone does cover a good handful of Pokemon, but one must keep in mind that we won't be able to hit anything super effectively at all with it and Ghost-types could very well just handle CAP30i easily, depending on its other attributes. We shouldn't look at our possible typing purely just from a Tinted Lens perspective; keeping in mind other simple yet important attributes for the typing will help us reach a greater success more easily and sets us up for a much more smoother process.
Do both of our typings need to abuse Tinted Lens well, or is it equally successful if just one typing does (eg Ghost/Fighting)?
I don't really think we need to because personally, I believe that going either way will benefit CAP30i and CAP30 as a whole, just in different ways. If we choose to make our typings benefit from Tinted Lens well, then we would be able to target a larger variety of Pokemon with it. On the other hand, if we choose one of our typings disregarding it, we can give it a typing that may benefit it defensively, for example, which would allow it to utilize its utility more often and easily. There are plenty more examples, but this one is by far the best one to argue for only one of our types to benefit from Tinted Lens.
Are there any key resistances or SE hits we should be broadly looking for? Are there any key weaknesses we might want to avoid (eg Knock Off)?
Avoiding a weakness to Dark to avoid a weakness to Knock Off is something I believe we should actively look for. In fact, I believe that, if we have the room, that we make our typing resist Dark as a whole. Being able to act as a good Knock Off absorber I think would help us optimize Tinted Lens because it would allow CAP30i Knock Off users fairly safely, and from there, depending on what we want it to target, it would be able to force the foe out and potential gain a lot of momentum thanks to Tinted Lens making some switch-ins the opponent has less safe. As a whole, being able to switch in safely against a very common move will greatly help in Tinted Lens's optimization, being able to be utilized more often thanks to it having more opportunities to switch in.

Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to think about the other questions regarding specific types, so I'll still need some time to think about that.
 
I'd also like to read other opinions about Dark. I don't know what to make of it other than what I wrote above. It is a very relevant typing, but I can't help but think its just a bit too bland and doesn't actually add anything of value to the metagame.
Avoiding a weakness to Dark to avoid a weakness to Knock Off is something I believe we should actively look for. In fact, I believe that, if we have the room, that we make our typing resist Dark as a whole. Being able to act as a good Knock Off absorber I think would help us optimize Tinted Lens because it would allow CAP30i Knock Off users fairly safely, and from there, depending on what we want it to target, it would be able to force the foe out and potential gain a lot of momentum thanks to Tinted Lens making some switch-ins the opponent has less safe
I think Estronic's point here helps reflect the value of Dark as a single typing, as we both resist Knock Off and threaten a number of Knock Off users in the CAP metagame, like Colossoil, Clefable and Weavile. So while it isn't one of the most interesting abilities in terms of common resistances in the meta, how it interacts with some common threats and the defensive capabilities it can provide along with a secondary typing make it more interesting to me.
 
  • Is this about the right attitude to take towards this issue? How much should we be prioritizing typings with many resists vs few? What about typings with 4x resists?
I think it’s fine looking at anything from typing with less resists to typings with more. I’m a bit iffy on types, that stack too many four times resists or immunities against themselves. Types like Bug/Grass or Grass/Poison are still largely unviable offensively even with Tinted lens, bc there are still a large number of high tier resists to These STABs.
I also think, that having only one or two types resisting our type shouldn’t be a disqualification for optimizing Tinted Lens. Dragon only has one relevant resist against it. But if that resist is the best defensive typing in the tier and every team has at least one steel it would actually gain a lot from bypassing that.

  • Are there any key resistances or SE hits we should be broadly looking for? Are there any key weaknesses we might want to avoid (eg Knock Off)?
I think, that for 30i we should be able to hit a good bunch of the defensive Pokémon in the higher ranks SE with either one of its STABs.
Im unsure wether it should be able to hit several Walls SE with only one STAB type or if it should be split.

For the former option, the type with the numerically biggest amount of targets within the A ranks would be Electric, with the ability to hit 6 different walls Super effectively, followed by fire with 5 and ground with 4.

Otherwise we could probably do a mix of most types and have a solid amount of SE hits on some common walls.

I think we should avoid pairings though, that lack the ability of hitting several of these walls SE. these include: Most Dragon and Normal Type combos (except electric, fire, grass, ground and psychic), some bug, rock or steel type combos.

Im not sure if it makes sense to say x amount of SE targets is a good amount for a successful Wallbreaker, so take the above with a grain of salt.

I actually think, that hitting some walls SE is relevant for our power budget though. I believe, that - counterintuitivly - the more Walls we threaten SE, the more control we have on the powerceiling of CAP 30.
The ability to threaten walls with SE hits means we need less power to do so, which in turn means we have more room for neutral walls to still be effective against CAP30. A typing with little or no SE hits against common walls, risks the limbo between 2hkoing almost everything and 2hkoing almost nothing, which creates a lot more limitations for the rest of the competitive design.
 
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Given everything that's been said by others, I think we can safely assume Fighting to be a frontrunner, owing to its resistance to Knock Off and its 5 resisted types. If that is the case, 30i will have the relatively unique competitive property of gaining momentum off of Knock Off, a move that has been widely seen as a relatively safe offensive support option. This sort of utility was last seen in the Zamazenta-Crowned OU test, for which Zama was actually really useful. It also means that CAP30i would have a STAB with several super effective offensive matchups. This needs to be kept in mind if Fighting is chosen as the primary typing. As Sereg mentioned, we don't want to create a typing that otherwise would want a different ability.

Another thing we need to keep in mind is access to strong enough STAB moves. With Tinted Lens, it takes 130 atk to even approach 2HKOing Slowbro with Close Combat. Types like Fairy, Dark, Psychic, Ice all max out at 90 bp without having to use a Legendary-exclusive move or a 70% accuracy STAB. I'm not against using those types for CAP30i, but it needs to be kept in mind that certain types will place a lower ceiling on damage output than others, especially since we've pre-emptively restricted boosting moves.

252+ Atk Black Belt Tinted Lens Urshifu Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 174-206 (44.1 - 52.2%) -- 19.1% chance to 2HKO
 
I think the most interesting pairings of types are ones in which one type has broad neutral coverage with Tinted Lens, and the other targets certain walls with super effective damage while offering defensive benefits or utility. There are a lot of STAB types that hit almost the entire meta neutrally with Tinted Lens, and having just one such type is enough; we don't need two. In this context, certain types that have been largely dismissed, such as Electric or Poison, become actually really interesting and useful.

Electric for instance targets a whole host of walls we'd like to be able to take out, such as Corviknight, Toxapex, Arghonaut, and Tapu Fini, while we can always rely on our other STAB for neutral or better hits against Ground-types and the rest of the meta. We're immune to paralysis and could potentially spread it with our STABs as a form of utility.

Poison targets fat fairies and grasses, while offering really nice defensive utility, absorbing Toxic Spikes and Toxic, and spreading poison with our lens-boosted STABs. Poison does actually benefit quite a lot from Tinted Lens, gaining the ability to hit Toxapex, Dragapult, and almost every ground type neutrally. And again, to target the steel types that are immune to our poison STAB, we have a whole host of types to pair with Poison to take care of them.

These sorts of typings are overlooked, but they can be incredibly relevant when paired with one of the myriad typings with broad neutral coverage.
 
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Are there any strict benefits to having a Stealth Rock weakness?

The only obvious benefit of a stealth rock weakness is that it could help to balance out the power boost from Tinted Lens. We get a breaker that makes very consistent progress when it comes in, but can't come in as often/easily. The risk with this route is that if 30i hits hard but doesn't get in often, it's won't want to use utility moves. Two ways to deal with this are either making sure that a rocks weakness doesn't limit 30i's ability to switch in throughout the game, or else focus on utility moves that are impactful even if only used once or twice. For the first route, recovery and a good defensive typing helps a lot. Rock-weak typings definitely have some useful defensive qualities: Flying is immune to ground attacks and every hazard apart from rocks, while Fire has the second most resists in the game. For the second route, Trick on choiced Blacephalon is a good example of a utility move that only needs to be clicked once to impact a game. 30i can't use Trick however, and I'm not sure which other utility moves fit this criteria.

Is this about the right attitude to take towards this issue? How much should we be prioritizing typings with many resists vs few? What about typings with 4x resists?

It would definitely be nice to use typings with more resists so that we actually see a benefit from having tinted lens, although the number of different type resists isn't necessarily important. Dragon only has a single resist in Steel, but that's a very common defensive type so there's still a soli benefit. That said, I'd prefer to avoid dual STAB combos that already cover each other's weakness really well. For example Fire, Fighting, and Ice all have 4-5 resists, but paired with Ground, Ghost and Electric respectively they're already able to hit nearly everything at least neutrally.

4x resists are fine, as long as they aren't limiting our wallbreaking potential too much. Someone else pointed out that all combinations of Grass/Bug/Poison struggle with a lot of shared immunities/4x resists. Outside of those combos however I can't think of many 4x resists that are too problematic.

Do both of our typings need to abuse Tinted Lens well, or is it equally successful if just one typing does (eg Ghost/Fighting)?

I think it's perfectly fine for one of our typings to abuse tinted lens better than the other. For example, maybe the secondary typing improves our defensive profile, or just helps break specific walls.

Are there any key resistances or SE hits we should be broadly looking for? Are there any key weaknesses we might want to avoid (eg Knock Off)?

I think that regardless of Tinted Lens, as a breaker we need to hit at least a few common walls super-effectively.

No specific weaknesses come to mind that we'd want to avoid. The un-knockability of 30i is actually a benefit whether we are weak or resistant to Dark type. Obviously being being able to take resisted Knock Offs at 65 bp is very nice defensively. But if we are weak to dark, 30i's item gives us a damage reduction superior to Solid Rock (2/3 vs 3/4) on an incredibly common super-effective attack.

Which individual types are promising to you and why are they relevant?
  • Steel is a fantastic defensive type that struggles offensively because it has four resists that are all pretty common (Fire, Water, Electric and Steel), so it definitely benefits from Tinted Lens. Nothing is immune to Steel but there are a handful of 4x resists (Heatran, Magnezone, Rotom-Wash/Heat, Volkraken, Naviathan) so there is still some reasonable counterplay.
  • Grass and Bug have the most resists at 6 each, so the benefits for these types is pretty obvious.
  • Fighting has the third most resists at 5, while also hitting a lot of types super-effectively. Additionally, it preserves some meaningful counterplay with Ghost being Immune and Glowking being 4x resistant. Resisting rocks and Knock-Off is also nice.
  • Psychic doesn't immediately benefit from Tinted Lens that much, but I think it could pair well with other types that do. Ignoring the Steel resist is nice, as is the reduction in power of Knock Off. I also think some of the moves Psychic has are really nice for 30i: Psychic Fangs is the strongest physical STAB while also having the utility of removing screens, while Psyshock gives additional movelsot compression on a special attacker by allowing us to break some special walls more easily.

Are there any individual types which may not suit our concept or function? Could they be shored up in other areas or do we want to avoid them altogether?

The three that come to mind are Ghost, Normal and Ice. Ghost gains the least of any type from Tinted Len, with 1 resist and 1 uncommon immunity. Normal has two resists and one immunity, but doesn't hit anything super-effectively and has very little defensive use. Both of these types might still be useful as secondary typings if they have moves that are interesting with Tinted Lens, or they happen t pair well with another typing.

Ice is a little different. At face value it's a great exploiter of Tinted Lens with lots of resists and super-effective hits. However Ice is also the most extreme typing in terms of being very good offensively but very poor defensively. 30i exacerbates this by significantly boosting offenses with tinted lens and a STAB boosting item, while at the same time excluding heavy-duty boots - the biggest defensive boost most ice types can access. Ice could still work, but in this case it strikes me as the type that could most easily be broken due to overpowered offense, while also being the type most at risk of unviability due to a poor defensive profile.
 
Are there any strict benefits to having a Stealth Rock weakness?
There are no actual benefits when the Pokemon is in battle. However, I think that it is not worth disqualifying types on Stealth Rock weakness alone, as said types are potentially very relevant to Tinted Lens or otherwise capable of offering other useful aspects that can make up for the Stealth Rock weakness.
EDIT: Some people have expressed hesitation at potentially locking 30b into Boots. While Boots would likely become the default item, it doesn't necessarily shut out a whole lot of roles from the Pokemon, and SR-weak Pokemon have willingly run items other than Boots before.

While a Rock weakness may be acceptable on a frail wallbreaker like Blacephalon or a sweeper like Volcarona in past gens, what would it look like on a utility wallbreaker? Are there any relevant examples of existing Pokemon to point to, whether in past gens or lower tiers?
I think this really depends on the type of utility we end up going for. People have used Rocks-weak utility wallbreakers before, but a lot of them will take Boots 101 times out of 100 unless they get greedy for the power, making it more difficult to find examples in the current generation.

To steal an example from quziel, Thundurus-I has acted in a utility wallbreaker in previous generations without the benefit of Boots, thanks to a combination of a strong offensive movepool and stats, and access to both Defiant and Prankster Thunder Wave. CAP30i will likely be able to replicate Thundurus-I's offensive presence, although we are more stuck in terms of directly replicating its utility.

Although it is a rather large stretch, one could point to Life Orb Weavile. This set is rarer in CAP, due to how good of a stop Arghonaut is to Weavile in general, but the set has seen use on OU. It does provide utility thanks to Knock Off, although Knock Off is on this set primarily because it is its best Dark STAB. This points to a potential route in squeezing STAB and utility into one slot, which is a lot more feasible when said STAB needs to worry a lot less about being resisted. This can allow the Pokemon is more effective in the turns it can come in, or give it the slots to sneak in a recovery move to extend its longevity.

Is this about the right attitude to take towards this issue? How much should we be prioritizing typings with many resists vs few? What about typings with 4x resists?
I do think that the number of resists has some weight, although going purely off of this isn't the wisest choice. What the resists actually are and how they affect the Pokemon in the metagame is also relevant. For example, Dragon and Ghost both only have 1 resist and 1 immunity, but in my view, Dragon is more acceptable than Ghost because its immunity is much more common and it provides more defensive utility, both preventing it from completely dominating the other typing in terms of spammability and giving it some purpose beyond offensive use.

I also think defensive utility helps with giving 30i more opportunities to come in and not screwing 30b too hard. Bug has a ton of resists, but it has measly defensive utility compared to other types with less resistances, like Steel.

As mentioned by others, a type having 4x resists isn't a dealbreaker, but it does mean we have to be very cautious about not backing it into a corner where it is hard-walled by a large amount of Pokemon. Getting walled by one or two is OK, but as established earlier, a Grass/Poison would be truly screwed against the Corvknights and Heatrans and Ferrothorns in the metagame.

Do both of our typings need to abuse Tinted Lens well, or is it equally successful if just one typing does (eg Ghost/Fighting)?
While it would be nice to have both typings abuse Tinted Lens well, I also think that it's possible for us to corner ourselves into a typing that gets tons of mileage out of Tinted Lens, but either sucks at actually wallbreaking or gives 30b the short end of the stick. For that reason, I think it's fine if it is just one typing that takes advantage of it, although it does depend on the secondary typing and what it actually accomplishes. Ideally, the typing that does not take as much advantage of Tinted Lens as the other typing does not somehow become the primary attacking type over the Tinted Lens typing.

Are there any key resistances or SE hits we should be broadly looking for? Are there any key weaknesses we might want to avoid (eg Knock Off)?
Nothing really comes to mind in terms of resistances. For SE hits, though, I agree that it would be nice to have at least one of types score some super effective hits on certain walls. Having SE damage against Water or Steel stand out the most for this. Ground is a little less prominent with the recent drop of Equilibra, but it's still a good defensive typing to be able to cover. Poison and Fairy are less common in terms of numbers, but Toxapex and Clefable (and Slowking-Galar) are all significant defensive staples, and having super effective damage against them would be nice as well.

As for weaknesses, I already discussed Stealth Rock earlier. I have a similar position on Knock Off; I don't think it's disqualifying on its own, and as ultramafia noted, the item provides a Filter-esque damage reduction to Knock Off, making it stand out among other Pokemon of its type. While a Knock neutrality or even resistance would be a nice bonus, I'm not super stressed about trying to avoid a weakness if the type is appealing in other ways. Other than that, nothing particularly stands out as a weakness to avoid.

Which individual types are promising to you and why are they relevant?
Fighting
has been fairly popular so far, and for good reason: high power STABs on both physical and special sides, as well as decent midrange options for both; has super effective damage on a number of the defensive Steel types in the meta, as well as the Dark types that have risen to help with Dragapult; has many relevant types that resist it that are neutralized by Tinted Lens in (Fighting also has the second highest number of resistances at 5); and nice bonuses in being Stealth Rock-resistant and Knock-resistant. The physical side does admittedly get better picks for STABs, but I think the special side is in decent enough shape that it's not enough to sink the typing.

Fairy seems to be a less popular pick, but I like it as a useful defensive typing, and because it has two very nice and relatively spammable (though not exactly high power) STABs in Moonblast and Play Rough. Moonblast in particular has been demonstrated as an excellent spam move, thanks to its 30% chance to drop SpA, and Tinted Lens would be able to further increase its spammability. In addition, it has common resistances in Steel and Poison that work well with Tinted Lens (and technically Fairy, although the dominant Fire type in Heatran still resists after Tinted Lens). It also provides rather helpful super effective coverage for Dragon, Fighting and Dark types.

Steel has a suite of excellent defensive characteristics, along with three common offensive resistances in Water, Electric, and Steel (as well as Fire, although it has a similar issue with Heatran as Fairy). Steel is slightly worse off for offensive options compared to Fairy, however. While the physical side does get Meteor Mash, which is comparable to Play Rough in power level, the special side is stuck with Flash Cannon. It is also a little middling when it comes to super effective damage, only hitting Ice types (which tend to sit on the frail side) and Fairies (some of which take neutral damage already). Despite my comparisons here, though, I still find Steel to be very promising.

Grass is tied for the most resistances at 7 (Bug, Dragon, Fire, Flying, Grass, Poison, Steel), which means it is almost certainly going to get a ton of leverage out of Tinted Lens. It also has wide access to a pretty large suite of moves on both the physical and special sides, with high power STABs and usable midrange options on both sides. Grass's defensive profile isn't the best, but it does come with very nice resistances to Electric, Ground and Water. It even has the ability to land super effective hits on a number of the bulky Grass and Ground types in the tier. The only real issue that it has is that it's still resisted by a number of Pokemon after Tinted Lens, as pointed out by others, so we need to be careful about what type it gets paired with in order to avoid getting stonewalled by too many Pokemon.

This pick isn't quite as big as the other, but I like Flying a lot. It's Stealth Rock-weak, but I think this is at least somewhat compensated with its immunity to Spikes, and if we really want to avoid a Stealth Rock weakness, it pairs pretty well with typings that resist Rock. Flying types have a very convenient immunity to Ground, which is a pretty sizable amount of defensive value. This is also a Flying type that doesn't fear losing its item, which is an interesting change of pace from other offensive Flying types like Tornadus-T and Zapdos. Flying has access to some very powerful STABs in Brave Bird and Hurricane, although it's lacking in midrange options, and it gets mileage out of Tinted Lens against common Electric and Steel types.

Are there any individual types which may not suit our concept or function? Could they be shored up in other areas or do we want to avoid them altogether?
Ghost
is not very good for this concept. It's already a very potent offensive typing, as demonstrated by strong offensive Ghost types like Dragapult, Pajantom, and even Blacephalon, and while Tinted Lens would be very nice for it to break through Dark types, it's not exactly raring for it. Add on unspectacular defensive utility and I am not a big fan of this typing.

I agree with ultramafia on a number of points regarding why Ice seems questionable for this project. Ice is an extremely strong type offensively, and it certainly gets a lot of mileage out of Tinted Lens against Water and Steel types, but it is also infamously questionable on the defensive side. It's potentially salvageable depending on what type it gets paired with, but I'm not sure how much I like how "boom or bust" it can potentially be. The lack of defensive utility can also really put pressure on 30b.

Dragon is in a similar boat to Ghost, in terms of not being resisted by much, although as viol and base pointed out, it is at least salvaged by the useful resistances it provides, in addition to having a more relevant neutralized type in Steel and a more common immunity in Fairy, which does help with the possibility of turning into Dragonspam: the Pokemon. Unlike Ghost, I am more willing to see this type attached to another, more Tinted Lens oriented typing that benefits from Dragon's defensive bonuses.

Electric is in a weird position where the types that comes in to tank hits is generally an immunity (Ground types), not a resistance. While the types that do resist it (Grass, Electric, Dragon) are all decently prominent in the tier, you are much more likely to just get your attack eaten up by an immunity: if not a Ground type that appears on almost every team, then Zeraora and its Volt Absorb. Electric does do well against the bulky Waters of the tier, making it a potentially decent pair with a more Tinted Lens oriented typing, but by itself I'm a bit suspicious about whether it is good for the concept.

Are there any individual types that strike a nice balance between defensive value and, with Tinted Lens, a strong offensive matchup against the metagame?
I think Fairy (more so on the defensive value end) and Fighting (more so on the offensive matchup end) fit pretty well in this department. The other typings I highlighted in Flying, Grass and Steel are also pretty good, although Steel is a bit lacking in offensive power from moves, I do worry about Grass's amount of 4x resists, and Flying does have to content with an potential SR weakness and no Boots.

There wasn't a specific question about this, but I did want to put aside a section for some other types I'm more neutral on. I might edit more thoughts in here.
Bug is sort of stuck as a worse version of Grass in a number of aspects. Same amount of resistances (Fairy, Fighting, Fire, Flying, Ghost, Poison, Steel), worse super effective coverage (Dark and Psychic are both less commonly associated with walls, and all the relevant defensive Grasses are neutral to Bug besides Tangrowth), worse defensive utility (Ground resistance is nice, Rocks weakness not so much), and worse outright offensive moves (the only high power option is Megahorn, special has to make do with Bug Buzz/Pollen Puff at 90 BP as its strongest options). The biggest benefit it has is the range of weird utility moves it has (Lunge, Skitter Smack, Leech Life), as well as the powerful First Impression, as demonstrated by Miasmaw. Of course, Bug also leverages Tinted Lens a whole lot, thanks to all of those resistances. I'd be OK with Bug, although I've cooled on it a little.
 
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dex

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With that out of the way, we'll be moving things along in a slightly new direction. I want to analyze the pros and cons of individual types so please get into the specifics, but also note that typing subs are still not open.
A lot of good discussion has already happened with most of the questions, so I just want to analyze a few individual types here that I like.

Fighting: As has been previously mentioned, Fighting seems like an awesome choice. It has notable resistances that Tinted Lens makes up for (mainly Flying, Poison, and Fairy) while also having defined weaknesses to Ghost and Tapu Lele. Given that one of the reasons offensive Fighting types struggle in the current metagame is because of how ubiquitous defensive Pokemon of the aforementioned resistances are, I think the Fighting type stands to gain the most from Tinted Lens

Fire: Fire is another type that has defined weaknesses but also really appreciates Tinted Lens. We have two consistent checks once again, this time Heatran and Astrolotl. On the flip side, Fire appreciates Tinted Lens for breaking through defensive Water-types that are normally used to check it. Despite the Rocks weakness, this type holds a lot of promise. Another point in its favor is the utility aspect. Something mentioned on Discord was the fact that utility could be construed as a "support" attacking move, and Fire's STAB on Mystical Fire could be an interesting way of actualizing utility on this mon.

Steel: Steel has me a bit worried as it could turn into us making a "Steel that beats Steels" like SM Libra. However, Steel brings some very interesting traits to the table, as it is quite capable in its ability to leverage Tinted Lens vs. common defensive options.
 
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shnowshner

You've Gotta Try
is a Pre-Contributor
  • Are there any strict benefits to having a Stealth Rock weakness?
  • While a Rock weakness may be acceptable on a frail wallbreaker like Blacephalon or a sweeper like Volcarona in past gens, what would it look like on a utility wallbreaker? Are there any relevant examples of existing Pokemon to point to, whether in past gens or lower tiers?
Being SR weak is, competitively, always a bad thing unless not having HP is beneficial in some roundabout way.

With regards to our project however a SR weakness can serve as a balancing factor depending on what route you go. One could say allowing a SR weakness would also mean that we have more freedom in our typing and lets us use Flying/Fire/Ice/Bug types. That feels a bit like reverse logic to me but tbh there are like zero real reasons we want to be weak to rocks lol so I'll take it.

Off the top of my head I can't think of a utility-based Wallbreaker weak to rocks, and the closest example I can think of is probably something like Ho-Oh in prior gens, which was 4x weak but had Regenerator to sorta help offset this issue (still died at 50% so not completely). Ho-Oh has some pretty nice offensive potential in its STAB typing, powerful Brave Bird, and the high Burn chance of its signature Sacred Fire. I don't think it really counts as a wallbreaker however, and I am not familiar with the Ubers metagame enough to be certain about this.

If anything the difficulty of coming up with an example that fits should be a premonition to maybe avoid being weak to rocks.

  • Is this about the right attitude to take towards this issue? How much should we be prioritizing typings with many resists vs few? What about typings with 4x resists?
  • Do both of our typings need to abuse Tinted Lens well, or is it equally successful if just one typing does (eg Ghost/Fighting)?
We need to return to our goal of "optimizing." Is a typing with more resists more optimal use of Tinted Lens? It does get the most interactions with our ability, but there is a major flaw here: interaction =/= optimal.
A Pokemon always interacts with Tinted Lens is obviously benefitting more from its ability, but if it still struggles to carve a niche than it's hard to say it is "optimal." Optimizing Tinted Lens means we have to have a viable user that takes advantage of 2x damage versus resists, not that its every move is hitting on a resist. If the most optimal route happens to lead us towards a type that has lots of resists that's cool, but our main priorities should be that 30i is viable and Tinted Lens is a reason why it succeeds.

Consequently I feel that as long as one of our types of a dual-typing uses Tintes Lens that is perfectly acceptable. Defensive merit is important here and denying ourselves a beneficial secondary type because it "doesn't get use out of Tinted Lens" is pretty awful reasoning.

  • Are there any key weaknesses we might want to avoid (eg Knock Off)?
As long as we are not weak to Dark we should be fine. Knock Off is effectively the only Dark-type attack we will take in a majority of games: the only other Dark moves you'll usually face are coming from Special Attackers or TTar. Having the move only hit at 65 BP and not remove our item (even if said item is mandatory) already puts us leagues ahead of some other Knock Off switch-ins. Resisting Dark can definitely help secure us this niche though, and as a result looks quite promising.

I would say that we'll probably be inclined towards having decent Defense or a Dark resist going forward, as not having either defeats the purpose of being naturally equipped to take on the multitude of stronger Knock Off users, like Weavile, physical Zeraora, and Lando-T. As such we can ignore the Dark resist if we want but that will likely influence our stats down the road.

  • Which individual types are promising to you and why are they relevant?
  • Are there any individual types which may not suit our concept or function? Could they be shored up in other areas or do we want to avoid them altogether?
  • Are there any individual types that strike a nice balance between defensive value and, with Tinted Lens, a strong offensive matchup against the metagame?
Against my better judgement I'm gonna do what Jewvia did and go through each type.

Normal - This one is weird because Rock is a rare type in OU, while Steel is like, the best type in the game and basically everywhere. Normal has a lot of really strong moves at its disposal and being able to hit the commonplace Steel type with them is a huge benefit and maybe you can make Tyranitar even more depressed while you're at it. No SE hits sucks a ton though, as a lot of fat stuff can just eat hits all day. This is definitely doable but practically requires a complementary secondary type to function. Ghost being immune is also quite bad for Normal's viability here, even if the meta in turn would love a new Ghost check.

Fighting - Strong offensive type which resists Dark and Rock that would kill for a chance to get around the presence of Fairy, Flying, and Poison in the metagame. About as pro-concept as it gets.

Grass - Has a good amount of defensive use but is plagued with five weaknesses. Offensively being able to smack Water and Ground is really useful and Tinted Lens helps in negating the long list of types that resist it. You do face a ton of double-resistances which is certainly a let-down, so I'm a bit cautious about Grass being a good pick.

Water - Strong type in every way and a Water that beats Water would be appreciated by many teams. Sort of boring and we have tons of good Waters in the metagame but I can't deny how great of a foundation this would provide just because of how reliable Water has always been.

Fire - Weak to rocks but has a large and respectable list of resistances, plus being a good offensive type. If we can make a Fire-type combo that is SR neutral we would be in good shape.

Electric - Faces an immunity and already a tad low on the relevant resistances. Not awful and the singular weakness is definitely a positive, but this really struggles to stand out compared to other options.

Ice - This would be a pretty major risk since Ice struggles a lot in the defense department and our role implies we will be taking damage fairly frequently for an offensive Pokemon. At the same time Ice is a powerful attacking type that many teams tend to be underprepared for (see weavile becoming s- in like a month's time), and STAB Ice moves that lack resists outside of Heatran is downright nasty. Sounds like a neat direction and one that would likely be balanced through Ice's sheer defensive deficiency as long as we don't make it GDarm or Calyrex-Ice.

Ground - This one is super meh. Neither of its resistances are terribly common and Ferrothorn doesn't count. Most teams go for a Flying/Levitate mon to deal with Ground. As part of a dual-typing this sounds fine as it has good resists and the Electric immunity, but on its own it's a rather poor option.

Rock - Rock sucks lmao. It is good offensively in a vacuum, but in practice it just sounds miserable. We want to avoid inaccurate moves so we can fire off attacks to our heart's content. Name a Rock move that isn't inaccurate. We also want some form of defensive integrity and being a worss Steel that trades a Fire Weakness for three other ones and tons of resistances results in a Pokemon that will rarely find good opportunities to come in and almost certainly be forced out after landing an attack. The best I can say about it is that you MU well against Torn-T lacking Focus Blast but that's pretty much it.

Poison - Steel being immune to Poison is a huge problem as almost all teams will have at least one. That said being SE against the multiple Fairy-types in the metagame is useful and being able to work around the many resistances to Poison is beneficial. Poison attacks usually have the Poison statuses attached which means our attacks will not only do considerable damage but potentially leave the target crippled. Poison also happens to be useful defensively so there's that as well.

Flying - Flying is a deadly offensive type that usually suffers from Physical users having none of the good moves and Special users not having good moves period. A Flying-type wallbreaker that can bypass Electric and Steel would have free reign to birdspam as much as it wants. Your SE coverage is a bit lacking yet in many ways this is just an improved Normal Type that misses out on the dumber Normal moves like ESpeed and Boomburst.

Bug - Bug is a lot like Grass in that it faces a lot of resists (and double-resists), but unfortunately its got much worse SE hits and a much less impressive set of resistances. Also, Stealth Rock. I think if Bug had a better array of unique attacking moves this would be cool but outside of First Impression, Leech Life and Fury Cutter (which is inaccurate ofc) there's not much exciting. There is U-Turn, but I know for a fact that move is going to be controversial so I don't want to bank on it.

Psychic - Faces an immunity which blows as per usual. Steel and itself are the only resists and while evoking the good old days where Psychic had one switch-in would be funny I just think this type has too many inherent weaknesses. It's got bland SE hits and bland resistances.

Ghost - Ghost has one resist, one immunity, and two uncommon types weak to it. Could be neat as a dual-typing piece but it has extremely small interaction with Tinted Lens.

Dragon - If this was prior to Gen 6 I might have had meager support for this as a Dragon that can spam its STAB moves for free would be pretty unique, but we live in a Fairy-type society and its consequences. Perhaps as a defensive supplement but nothing more.

Dark - Dark has a lot of potential here honestly. Yeah, its got the same awful SE coverage as Ghost, but its got no immunities, three resists, and a really cool (physical) movepool! And I mean more than STAB Knock. It's not the most amazing choice but it's not one I have any real complaints about.

Steel - I think this has a lot of value actually. Steel has always been the definitive defensive type but its offensive value I feel is criminally underappreciated. There are a lot of neat attacking Steel moves like Gyro Ball, Bullet Punch, Double Iron Bash Gear Grind, Heavy Slam, Meteor Mash, and Anchor Shot. Not all of these may be feasible choices and we basically have to go Physical, but variety is good IMO since the differences between type effectiveness are blurred by Tinted Lens. Hitting Fairy SE is a big deal as well, and somehow hitting Ice SE is actually important with how prominent Weavile and Kyurem have become.

Fairy - Borked typing. Great offensively and defensively, benefits from Tinted Lens to get around Steel and Poison but not much else. Competitively a great choice but I am biased and hate it.

Here's how I'd rank these in terms of complimenting our concept and role:

  1. Fighting, Steel, Water (all a great pick)
  2. Dark, Flying, Fairy, Fire (may have issues or does not get as much from our ability, but still good overall)
  3. Electric, Normal, Grass, Ice, Poison (a bit more challenging and flawed but could be fun)
  4. Ground, Bug, Psychic (lot of flaws and/or lacking ability synergy)
  5. Dragon, Ghost (no real benefit from ability)
  6. Rock (Not worth it)

Right now my favorites are Steel, Water, and Fighting. Water and Steel both have good defensive integrity while still retaining an offensive presense. Fighting is less defensively inclined but has unbelievably relevant resistances for our project and extremely good offense that gains a lot from Tinted Lens. All three have an impressive line-up of high BP moves and more unique options like Priority, situational boosts, and additional effects which are a lot more valuable when resistances are so few and far between.

We should probably avoid Ground, Dragon, and Ghost due to them not having much to gain from our Ability, but their usefulness defensively is still there. Bug and Psychic have a lot of issues for me to be comfortable with, but I don't think they are impossible and have some nice offensive capability. Rock however is so bad overall we'd just be shooting ourselves in the foot, even if it looks good with Tinted Lens on paper in practice we'll likely miss our strongest attacks and die to everything.
 

LucarioOfLegends

Master Procraster
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  • Are there any strict benefits to having a Stealth Rock weakness?
  • While a Rock weakness may be acceptable on a frail wallbreaker like Blacephalon or a sweeper like Volcarona in past gens, what would it look like on a utility wallbreaker? Are there any relevant examples of existing Pokemon to point to, whether in past gens or lower tiers?
I basically agree with Estronic on their points here. Allowing a Stealth Rock weakness mostly offers benefits in the types that we can actually choose, mostly working with Bug-, Fire-, and Flying-types becoming much more viable typing for submission. The problem is that a Rock weakness does give some serious issues as we are a utility breaker as compared to a normal breaker like Blacephalon and Weavile. 30i really wants to come in safely a lot more often so it can actually flex the utility it has to offer (unless that utility is more inherent to being a wallbreaker within itself), so having to take 25% or worse with no option of Heavy-Duty Boots due to Griseous or a different ability that could basically make the Rock weakness negligible (Regenerator or Magic Guard) is going to hurt 30i more than the frailer breakers who just want to come in and deal as much damage as possible before croaking. I don't think its impossible to make it work for the mon especially if its only a 2x weakness, but it might be a case of shooting ourselves in the foot.
  • Is this about the right attitude to take towards this issue? How much should we be prioritizing typings with many resists vs few? What about typings with 4x resists?
  • Do both of our typings need to abuse Tinted Lens well, or is it equally successful if just one typing does (eg Ghost/Fighting)?
I think for the above question it is a matter of context and is definitely not clear cut in the way of more resists > few resists because it lacks a lot of understanding of how helpful getting past those resists are. Like sure, Grass/Poison as a typing has a lot of typings that resist it and get the most optimal assistance from Tinted Lens, but at the end of the day it still does basically not much against the Heatrans and the Corviknights of the tier. I also think that 4x resists are fine if we can limit it to one type, but if both types have the same 4x resist then that is really bad news for 30i.

I also have held a bit of concern about focusing solely and completely on our typing within the context of 30i and Tinted Lens, and I think picking a typing that focuses too hard on resistances for the sake of abusing Tinted Lens could really end up hurting our other half 30b. Sure 30i would prefer to rely entirely on its STABs to best abuse Tinted Lens and typing with a lot of resists actualize that best, but how would that affect 30b when we get to its stage when it has to cope with a stab combination resisted by tons and not Tinted Lens or Griseous to counteract that? That's my largest worry in focusing entirely on the conundrum of resistances, and I think the best solution is look at just not how many different ways a type is resisted, but what those resistances actually mean for its matchup, as well as considering how they may affect our other form.

In a similar vein, I don't find it completely necessary for both types to utilize Tinted Lens if it means hurting ourselves with too many resists. Although, I must also state that this is true as long as the typing that doesn't use Tinted Lens as well doesn't completely circumvent the need for Tinted Lens in general. The given Ghost/Fighting typing is actually perfect for this example, as the typing together has such perfect neutral coverage thanks to Ghost that it hardly becomes necessary to actually utilize Tinted Lens, especially considering that both types with get the Griseous boost. I think Ghost/Fighting is absolutely the worst case scenario and not the most likely thing to occur, but it is definitely something to keep in mind as well.
  • Which individual types are promising to you and why are they relevant?
  • Are there any individual types which may not suit our concept or function? Could they be shored up in other areas or do we want to avoid them altogether?
Good Ones:

Fighting: Obvious frontrunner just because it has a lot of really cool traits that fit this concept super well, most importantly its high number of resistances that Tinted Lens can utilize, as well as its inherent Knock Off resistance that make it a particularly phenomenal Knock absorb. It also has capabilities across both physical and special, so I think it just works really well.

Psychic: I think this is a sleeper among the typings because of its low resists, but what I see from it is a very focused typing that can utilize Tinted Lens to bypass both Steels and fellow Psychics. It also has great options both physically and specially as well, and the possibility of Future Sight capability could also be a very alluring draw too. It does have problems I think, most in the weakness to Knock Off and Dark being immune to it, but I think these flaws can definitely be worked around to result in a solid product.

Steel: Once again a very strong typing for the concept because of its offensive resistances, but also offers some really great defensive resistances to boot as well. Most of what applies for Fighting also applies here, although the immunity to Toxic is also a very nice highlight among it as well.

Bad Ones:

Ghost / Dragon: Both of these types have the same problem of having waaaay too wide of neutral coverage and only one or two actual resistances to really utilize Tinted Lens, mostly resulting in not actually using the ability that well. Certainly their immunities make them slightly more balanced than others, but the problem is that they just don't actually utilize the ability that well at all. Stay far, far away from these.
 
I mentioned in the Discord that one of this CAP's types should have something immune to them but enough that resist it so they don't hit everything else. Dragon and Ghost are not optimal for this. A prominent typing I brought up was Electric, as three types besides Ground resist that typing. Normal has a similar problem to Ghost, but it does not hit for SE damage on anyhting, so it can be used to hit Rock- and Steel-types that would otherwise wall them.

The big typing I thought about that is walled by a lot more without TL, and that is Ice. Nothing (relevant) is immune to Ice, but it is resisted by several common types, including itself. However, a problem arises when paired with Electric: it is no longer walled by anything after TL, which includes Magnezone, Mamoswine, and Pokémon that otherwise resist both. Fortunately, while it is pretty busted offensively, it is weak to Rock, meaning 30i cannot hold Heavy-Duty Boots to alleviate Stealth Rock, giving it a reasonable drawback.
 
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  • Is this about the right attitude to take towards this issue? How much should we be prioritizing typings with many resists vs few? What about typings with 4x resists?
  • Do both of our typings need to abuse Tinted Lens well, or is it equally successful if just one typing does (eg Ghost/Fighting)?
IMO the most important thing to consider for our purposes is this:
30i does not need to be able to hit everything with one move. It should, however, be able to hit everything with two.
(These attacks are ideally both STAB, but they don't have to be.)

One of the major selling points of Tinted Lens was how it opens up moveslots for eg utility, so if 30i ever feels like it wants or needs to run a third attack for type coverage, something has probably gone wrong.

This is important when looking at mons that have many double-resists (eg :heatran:) or multiple immunities (eg :heatran:). Having a single type that is easily walled is not an issue, but having both easily walled by the same mons can be. 30 would then either
  1. Have access to the coverage to hit mons that wall its STABs, in which case it'd be encouraged to run 3 attacks, which goes against the spirit of Tinted Lens.
  2. Accept that it's occasionally walled and forego said coverage, which may constrain the moveset stage and harm 30b more than intended, and also isn't really in the spirit of Tinted Lens.
Both are less than ideal.

I think, as a general heuristic, we should avoid type combinations where both types have offensive immunities. This would be any combination of Normal, Fighting, Fire, Water, Poison, Ground, Electric, Psychic, and Dragon. It would also be useful to edge away from pairs with more than one overlapping resistance.
 

quziel

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I've been thinking and talking in discord for a bit. I think the problem of typing comes down to a few things, being how do we relate to the idea of "Tinted Lens Utility Wallbreaker", how can we get switchins (leaving space for secondary forme), and more generally is there room for the secondary forme at all.

---

Tinted Lens Utility Wallbreaker:

Our suitability in this role is gonna come down to a few factors. Its worth noting that a lot of our use from Tinted Lens will be in the following situation: We are in vs a mon that we hit SE, it switches out fearing the SE hit, the switchin is then hit neutrally thanks to tinted lens. Additionally we should try to hit a lot of stuff neutrally with tinted lens, which can hurt some typings such as Grass (multiple relevant 4x resists). The ability to hit several walls SE is a factor that we should weigh moderately, as Tinted Lens will help us out in this situation.

An additional factor for any typing in this role is going to be its ability to actually switch in, as any wallbreaker that is purely reliant on pivoting to get in will struggle (see how strong Dragapult is thanks to great Dragon/Ghost defensive typing). We should aim to have several relevant resists to prominent pokemon in the meta. Increasing the number of type-reliant switchins will also significantly help the base forme, so this is a factor we should weigh heavily.

Tinted Lens is unique in its ability to provide neutral coverage to typings that traditionally struggle, so we should ensure that our STAB typing has several strong, or at least high utiltiy moves. As we are a utility breaker, the ability to gain utility from our STAB moves will really help us fulfill this role. Consider how SM 3 Attacks Zapdos arguably fulfilled the Utility Wallbreaker role (ish, its a weird mon) due to STAB Discharge.

We should be able to hit prominent Pokemon SE with our STAB.

We should be able to switch into several prominent Pokemon based on typing.

We should try to have high utility attacks.


Edit:

Ultimately Tinted Lens buffs almost every single typing up to a point that is usable for a Wallbreaker; if Heatran/Corv/Lotl resist your Leaf Storm its still fine as like every other breaker has stuff that resists it. The stakes are very low and personally I will be evaluating stuff on how cool I think it is.

---

Something that I've seen brought up often is our interaction with two moves; Stealth Rock and Knock Off. I'll cover Knock Off first.

Knock Off

One of the defining aspects of the framework we chose was an unknockable Orb (or whatever its called), which effectively sets Knock Off to a maximum of 65 BP vs us. This has lead to some arguing for us to resist Dark in order to double down on the ability to just deny Knock Off users joy. I think this is slightly misguided. Instead, we have a unique ability to effectively answer Knock Off users while being neutral to the move, as we really cut off a lot of the wallbreaking power that it gets from the 97.5 BP hit; consider how bulky Charizard-Mega-X was able to function as a reasonable Weavile answer because it neutered Weavile's most spammable move. Additionally, I think there's real merit in using our Orb as a pseudo-filter with respect to Knock Off. We have the ability to very easily tank even very strong Knock Off hits while being weak to the move; 75/79 bulk is all that is needed to take a Knock Off from Weavile, arguably the strongest user of the move in the meta currently.

A consequence of this is that any typing that resists the secondary STAB of common Knock Off users can answer them while being neutral to the move itself. A pure Grass-Type could take on Colossoil until the end of time taking an effective 65 BP hit from Colossoil as its strongest move. A pure Ice-Type can do the same with Weavile. We should seriously look at these particular type combos as they allow us to do some very unique stuff.

Stealth Rock

Stealth Rock is a factor that I think is being a bit overblown in many people's minds with this CAP. It is incredibly easy to keep the field clear of rocks currently thanks to the strength of SpDef Lando, Colossoil, Equilibra, Defog Astrolotl, and more. A Stealth Rock weakness will not prevent this mon from being successful, instead it will just increase the complexity of getting it in, and building around it. Think of how you had to build around SMUU Moltres for an extreme example, which I should note was still an incredibly strong mon. An alternative example are current Kyurem and Blacephalon. Stealth Rock can also provide a very useful balancing factor for us; we chose an incredibly strong ability for our first forme, so including a Stealth Rock weakness could help us a lot when choosing our base forme's ability.

A Stealth Rock weakness is not going to cripple this mon, can potentially increase playstyle and building complexity, and could be an important balancing factor for us. We should not disqualify any typing pairings just due to a Stealth Rock weakness, however this weakness could affect the roles we fill (aka it makes being a defogger for our item forme bad, though not for the base forme).

----

Some Typings I like:

Grass is a typing that can get several free switches (aka Ground- and Electric-moves are very common), has a number of very useful utility attacks, and thanks to our item could let us potentially check the Ground+Knock Off attackers that are currently very common in the meta.

Flying is the gold standard for tinted lens attacking. It has a number of very common weaknesses to hit (Argh, Shifu, Rilla, etc), gains a ton from Tinted Lens itself by denying stuff like Zapdos from switching in freely, has a number of very good attacking options on both sides, and again, lets us take on stuff like Colossoil (potentially depending on secondary typing). This is a very strong option.

Psychic benefits very heavily from the orb reducing Knock Off damage, taking Knock Off from a move that would typically force you out to one that just forces you to consider whether taking the damage is worth it. One only needs to look at Necrozma and its recent success in CAP to see how strong a pseudo-filter is on Psychic-typing. It also has a fairly unique ability to hit a number of current Pivots for SE damage, including a fairly unique SE hit on Toxapex, hitting Arghonaut, Tomohawk, and Amoonguss for SE damage as a major bonus.
 
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shnowshner

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75/79 bulk is all that is needed to take a Knock Off from Weavile, arguably the strongest user of the move in the meta currently.
I feel like this is a bit misleading, as we only take Knock Off from unboosted Jolly Weavile; sets that run Adamant or a boosting item can break us from full.

Obv your point is that even something with high Attack and STAB on Knock won't be hurting us too bad (jolly Weav does less than 50% if it is the HDB set, so you can imagine something like Pex does less than nothing). I do think we should still be able to take Knock Off reasonably well in some fashion: even if we lived a +2 Knock we would die to Ice Shard later, and if they aren't boosted its still doing a decent chunk to us, not to mention other chip we will probably receive from stuff like Rocks.

Just as food for thought here's how we would take some Knock Offs from various physically-oriented users, with uninvested 75/79 bulk and a neutrality to Dark:

0 Atk Colossoil Knock Off vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Abomasnow: 102-120 (35 - 41.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

0 Atk Guts Colossoil Knock Off vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Abomasnow: 153-180 (52.5 - 61.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

0 Atk Landorus-Therian Knock Off vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Abomasnow: 79-93 (27.1 - 31.9%) -- guaranteed 4HKO

0 Atk Arghonaut Knock Off vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Abomasnow: 62-74 (21.3 - 25.4%) -- 0.3% chance to 4HKO

252+ Atk Choice Band Rillaboom Knock Off vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Abomasnow: 138-163 (47.4 - 56%) -- 24.6% chance to 2HKO after Grassy Terrain recovery

252 Atk Zeraora Knock Off vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Abomasnow: 78-92 (26.8 - 31.6%) -- guaranteed 4HKO

Generally speaking we are not taking much from this move, especially from the most common mons right now besides Weavile. Still, I don't think a "good enough" approach is the right way here: damage racks up over time and 30i lacks access to items which can boost longevity. Even if a Landorus Knock Off isn't going to 3HKO us, any damage taken on a wallbreaker will leave us vulnerable to getting wiped out by faster threats.

We don't need a Dark resist to function as a utility wallbreaker, and we can live some of the most powerful Knocks in the game even with mediocre physical bulk, but we should have some sort of way to shrug off Knock Off hits so that our resistance to it isn't squandered and end up getting worn down by the move we're uniquely equiped to handle. There's a lot of ways to accomplish this so it shouldn't constrain us in a negative way.

Otherwise I agree with everything said (except for psychic ew). Your point about double-resists not being too awful echoes a sentiment which was growing on me: sure we don't hit them as hard as we want, but being able to turn a 0.25x into a 0.5x resist is still double what we'd do normally and can enable a follow-up attack to finish the job.
 

spoo

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Okay, thanks for all the discussion, I meant to move on a little earlier but I got a bit tied up last night so here we are - typing submissions are now open, get excited!
You're not bound to submit only one type combo, but if you submit more than one, please make sure that it's still argued well and you aren't just submitting it for the sake of submitting it.

Quickly summarizing discussion before moving onto some questions, it feels like we can definitively say that a rocks weakness is not disqualifying. A weakness is still a weakness, but having built-in shortcomings isn't always a bad thing as we can shore them up later or use them as balancing measures, and most importantly, being super pessimistic about a rocks weakness would immediately rule out some of the most promising typing options for this forme. Some people may individually disagree on this point, but I feel as though most of the discussion has leaned towards the notion that, if our final typing is weak to rock, it's not impossible to make work.

It also feels like we can get away with only one of our types abusing TL well while still having TL at the forefront of our niche. If we have one type that gets a lot out of TL while the other gains comparatively less, that's still fine as long as the two still have good synergy with each other; it really just depends on what the specific combo is.

Lastly the issue of Knock Off seemed to be a bit of a contentious one, but if I may offer my own personal input, just the fact that the BP is knocked down to 65 BP is a huge benefit for us and means that we may not need to prioritize explicitly resisting the move. Quziel's analogy of our item acting as a "pseudo-filter" was also convincing to me, and may mean that being weak to Dark isn't outright crippling either.


Finally here's some stuff to keep in mind when writing your submissions - these are just guiding questions, so don't stress too much about answering all of them as long as you feel like you've covered the details of the typing combo well enough:
  • What are the broad strengths and weaknesses of this typing?
    • this is a very general question, but what I'm trying to get at is stuff like - what can this typing uniquely accomplish? ie, what reasons might there be to put this mon on your team? conversely, are there any negative traits you'd have to be aware of in-game when using this mon?
  • What does this typing broadly offer defensively?
    • could be general groups of resists, or specific pokemon we can use to come in on and threaten out, or any other unique defensive qualities
  • Which important Pokemon can this typing threaten via SE hits?
  • How much does this typing abuse or benefit from tinted lens?
    • could be speaking broadly in terms of # of resists that are turned into neutral hits, or describing the specific obstacles that TL allows this typing to bypass (eg, TL urshifu would benefit by not caring as much about tapu fini), or anything else
  • Are there any other cool side effects this typing has, such as immunity to status, resistance to hazards, or otherwise?
I would also really encourage people to provide feedback/their own POV on typings that they like/don't see as a good fit, and if you still want to respond to any posts before this one then that's totally encouraged as well.
 
Sorry, was typing this earloer, went away and came back and saw spoo has posted, but wanted to post. Ill make a new post once i've finished my thoughts on the update.

I quite like Poison as a typing to select, if I'm honest.

-SE vs Clefairy, Fini, Koko, and 4* against Jumbao/Bulu, etc
- Resisted by a number of the Metagame; Dragapult, Lando-T, Glowking, Garchomp, Toxapex etc
- Although Immuned by Steel, this can be even be used to bait it with coverage/second type i.e Electric, Fire, Fighting, which would also help smash other targets.
- 100% Accurate Toxic can chunk down walls, and Poison Jab can spread poison, which could be leveraged elsewhere; i.e Hex or Venomdrench.

- We don't need ridiculous numbers to significantly hurt targets; BP95 Sludge Wave with 117 SpA with a +Nature and Poison Barb threatens 50% 2HKO Chances against Toxapex, after cleanly 1HKO's +0 Calm Mind Clefable.
-If Physical is an option, Gunk Shot will be better against AV Glowking (clean 2HKO at +Nature 95 Att). Relying on non-STAB Knock Off against Glowking at the same Att Stat risks below average rolls not grabbing the kill which it can then Regenerator out on despite being hit SE by Dark. That additional damage chunk can help prevent Glowking from being switched in to absorb an attack it might otherwise survive, then Regenerator out again.

That it too can absorb Toxic and Spikes, and good defenses against Fighting+Fairy are things than should be levered into "optimizing Tinted Lens" from a defensive aspect. Without Tinted Lens, we would need to jump through quite a few hoops to threaten Clefairy, Pex and Glowking all on the same chassis.

I think plenty has been said by others that I have nothing new to add to for other typings; however, do through my support being Electric, Fire, and Fighting
 

dex

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Here comes my first typing submission for CAP 30! I may end up submitting another one, but this one has been at the forefront of my mind recently.

It's time to talk about Infernape lads.

Fire/Fighting

What are the broad strengths and weaknesses of this typing?
Fighting, as has been mentioned a lot in this thread, takes advantage of Tinted Lens very well against a number of would-be defensive switch-ins. Toxapex, Clefable, and Tornadus-T are just a few matchups where Tinted Lens activates. Fire also has this property, as Tinted Lens activates on Pokemon like Arghonaut and Garchomp. The two types complement each other quite well, with Fire able to hit Corviknight super effectively while Fighting hits Heatran hard. Additionally, Fire gives us access to interesting utility attacks in Fire Lash and Mystical Fire. There are some weaknesses to the typing, such as a weakness to Earthquake, Urshifu, Hurricane, and Future Sight, but the offensive nature of the typing more than makes up for this in my eyes. One other weakness of the typing is Ghost being immune to Fighting, perhaps punishing us for attempting to spam Tinted Lens Fighting STAB. However, I see this as more of a balancing aspect, freeing us to go a little more haywire later on in the process.

What does this typing broadly offer defensively?
Though the typing is primarily offensive in nature, it does provide some helpful defensive qualities. Notably, it full resists both of Weavile's STAB options, and provides useful resistances to Knock Off and U-turn. It also happens to be incredibly helpful vs. Kartana, who can only hit the typing neutrally via Sacred Sword. The same can be said for its matchup into Rillaboom, which can only hit neutrally with Superpower.

Which important Pokemon can this typing threaten via SE hits?
Corviknight and Heatran are notable examples of Pokemon that this typing threatens quite well. Others include Weavile, Kyurem, Scizor, and Melmetal.

How much does this typing abuse or benefit from tinted lens
The simple answer is, well, a lot. As mentioned before, Fighting uses Tinted Lens a ton vs. many of the tier's defensive options, such as Clefable, Zapdos, and Tapu Fini. Fire abuses Tinted Lens less so, but still utilizes it against Dragon-types like Dragapult and Garchomp and Water-types like Slowking and Toxapex.

Are there any other cool side effects this typing has, such as immunity to status, resistance to hazards, or otherwise?
The one nice side effect of Fire/Fighting is that it is immune to Burn, easing our ability to go in a physical direction if we deem it necessary. This synergizes well with Fighting's stronger, more reliable physical STAB options.
 
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