CAP 30 - Part 5 - Primary Ability Discussion 30b

[chartung17]

You are correct that Gyarados doesn’t get a reliable Flying-type STAB, and that being a Flying-type doesn’t necessarily mean we get a STAB move. However, to maximize its ability Tinted Lens, I would argue that CAP30 needs to have access to a strong Flying-type STAB to be best product. The insane strength of Tinted Lens Flying-type moves is a huge draw, and Tinted Lens Poison-type moves just doesn’t come near that. This is especially true with our secondary typing, Poison, as it doesn’t offer nearly as much with Tinted Lens due to Steel types being immune to it. Without Tinted Lens Flying-type moves, I’m not sure what strengths are left that CAP30i can actually use effectively.

Reminder that 30b will be sharing it's movepool with 30i. What you're suggesting here is, in fact, putting restrictions on the movepool of 30i, to try and preserve some of the few answers that corrosion could have. I feel like it should go without saying that this is far from ideal.

You're both missing an important point, which I bolded below:

It's worth noting that being Poison/Flying type does not necessarily mean you get either Poison or Flying STAB. infamously has Bounce as its best Flying STAB, and itself has Cross Poison as its best Poison STAB. So if we as felt it was really important to us that we're walled by or or whatever, we could simply not give 30b both STABs. Physical/Special split means this need not interfere with 30i.

For example, if 30i is a physical attacker while 30b's attack stat is terrible, we can effectively give 30b no Flying STAB without restricting 30i by giving them both Gunk Shot, Brave Bird, and Sludge Bomb but not Hurricane.

 

[snake]

You're both missing an important point, which I bolded below:

For example, if 30i is a physical attacker while 30b's attack stat is terrible, we can effectively give 30b no Flying STAB without restricting 30i by giving them both Gunk Shot, Brave Bird, and Sludge Bomb but not Hurricane.

I don’t think you understand the point I made though. Using Brave Bird with having access to reliable recovery on a Pokemon with a Stealth Rock weakness won’t work. The Pokemon gets worn down too fast through rocks and recoil. Historically, Honchkrow, an offensive breaker that utilizes Brave Bird, has almost always run Roost. Why? To offset Stealth Rock and Brave Bird recoil.

In case it wasn’t clear, my previous says that I’m feeling uneasy about Corrosion on CAP30b IF (emphasis on the “if”) it locks out reliable recovery off of CAP30i. That’s not something you can fix with the physical/special split - either both forms have the recovery moves or neither do. If you don’t want to support potential reliable recovery for potential Brave Bird access (the best, most spammable move that we could give CAP30i), at least think about potential recovery to offset CAP30i’s Stealth Rock weakness.

edit: honestly I agree with spoo’s post below mine regarding Corrosion and Gale Wings, just to throw some more support on it. Replace Corrosion with Gale Wings imo.

 

[spoo]

At the beginning of this thread I was a bit hesitant on corrosion but still firmly in the "pro" cap, and I'm still not as down on the ability as many in this thread are - I don't believe it's fundamentally uncompetitive, or that it has no hope of ever being balanced, and I actually think it would be a fantastic choice for CAP to explore one day. However, this project specifically feels like the wrong time. Any argument against the ability has already been said at this point, but here are the ones that I feel are particularly important. I believe that corrosion would limit potential options for 30i - namely taunt, knock, and reliable recovery - to a degree that, while maybe still workable, ultimately is not worth the tradeoff. I think balancing concerns are also (mostly) warranted; corrosion does have certain "true" counters, yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean our final product will be particularly balanced - or, even if not directly overpowered, it may still be a suffocating and unhealthy option in the tier. The icing on the cake is that we are already balancing a mon with tinted lens of all things, and trying to additionally navigate corrosion feels a bit overconfident and sets ourselves up for failure.

If the ability stays on the slate I won't be mad; people clearly can't decide amongst themselves, and the best potential for consensus seems to be the polls at this point. However, I would still ideally like to see it removed, and also have it be replaced with Gale Wings. (although If corrosion stays, I think gale wings should still be added too; a 7-option slate is very very fine imo)

I don't buy into that many of the "unreliability" arguments about gale wings, which is the main point I've seen levied against the ability. Staying at full health for an entire match is unrealistic, yes, but staying at full for a large duration of the match - especially if you aren't recklessly switching directly into attacks - is not that hard, especially for mons with boots (which we will have) and special attackers. There are many many pokemon that can only really switch into the game on doubles or via slow pivoting, and most of these mons also do not have access to recovery, which is on the table for us here and would help immensely. We also would not be useless at 99% health. This typing still has good defensive benefits (which, while difficult to utilize at 100% health, are much easier to take advantage of once we've already incurred damage), and our flying move would be powerful regardless of our health percentage. Gale wings has very high ceilings imo - to use an extreme example, think of how powerful/good rilla's glide is - and while needing to be at full health sucks, it's not a dealbreaker. Though, potentially the most interesting part of gale wings to me is actually how this restriction affects our playstyle and the design process. Needing to incentivize and properly reward careful play to keep yourself at 100%, and really examining the risk/reward of aggressive play - ie making doubles on crucial turns so you stay at full health - is really cool. It's a super interesting playstyle to me and I think a gale wings mon has a deceptively large amount of design space and would be really fun to use in battle.

The notion that it's an offensive ability so it competes with TL is also something I don't buy into at all. These two abilities are as different as can be, and gale wings absolutely offers enough uniqueness to differentiate itself from 30i. The simple fact exists that "offensive pokemon" is such a massively broad and nonuniform category with just as much room for differentiation within itself as it has with "defensive" or "utility" pokemon. This is an argument I've seen used against every "offensive" ability discussed this stage, and while for some of them I can see the rationale, I don't think it works against gale wings at all.

The rest of the slate is great imo. Don't remove water bubble.

 

[chartung17]

I don’t think you understand the point I made though. Using Brave Bird with having access to reliable recovery on a Pokemon with a Stealth Rock weakness won’t work. The Pokemon gets worn down too fast through rocks and recoil. Historically, Honchkrow, an offensive breaker that utilizes Brave Bird, has almost always run Roost. Why? To offset Stealth Rock and Brave Bird recoil.

In case it wasn’t clear, my previous says that I’m feeling uneasy about Corrosion on CAP30b IF (emphasis on the “if”) it locks out reliable recovery off of CAP30i. That’s not something you can fix with the physical/special split - either both forms have the recovery moves or neither do. If you don’t want to support potential reliable recovery for potential Brave Bird access (the best, most spammable move that we could give CAP30i), at least think about potential recovery to offset CAP30i’s Stealth Rock weakness.

edit: honestly I agree with spoo’s post below mine regarding Corrosion and Gale Wings, just to throw some more support on it. Replace Corrosion with Gale Wings imo.

You made multiple points in your post, and the point I replied to has nothing to do with recovery. If you don't like Brave Bird in my example, then replace it with a different physical Flying move, or reverse the example and suppose 30i is a special attacker, 30b has terrible special attack, and both have access to Gunk Shot, Sludge Bomb, and Hurricane but no physical Flying moves.

The only point I was trying to make was that it is possible to have a viable Flying STAB on 30i but no viable Flying STAB on 30b.

 

[thundergoos]

Pretty much everything that can be said about it has already been said at this point so I won’t beat this very, very dead horse. I’ll just keep it simple: Corrosion would be far too difficult to balance at this point and this just isn’t the project for it. It should be removed.

There are two abilities on the slate that I really, really like, and I’ll start with Water Bubble, which I love. Y’all have probably seen my posts about it and how much I love the idea of a defensive WB user. Keep it slated.

The other ability I really like is Stamina, which I think could very be nice for 30b. Getting a progressively stronger defensive presence that also gets offensively stronger with a gradually strengthening Body Press is cool. Keep it slated.

Fluffy is alright I guess but I’m not a huge fan of the Fire trade-off, at least in this meta. One reason I like WB so much is because of how well it targets and checks , , etc. Fluffy’s physical muting is very cool, and the Fire weakness certainly helps to balance it, but it just doesn’t appeal as much to me personally. I wouldn’t mind it staying on the slate for variety.

Not too keen on No Guard, since I don’t really like the idea of 30b stepping on 30i’s toes (if it even has them lmao) with such an overtly offensive ability. And like others have said, it kinda encroaches on anti-concept territory since used the ability so catastrophically and so recently. It can stay I guess? But idk, I don’t love it.

Thick Fat is an ability that sounds great on paper but I feel would be lackluster in practice. The Fire-type resistance is nice and does help our matchups with , , and , among others, but I personally disagree with the notion that TF would do this better than WB. Our Ice matchup is the thing I’m iffy about. Unless we have some crazy bulk as it is, I don’t think TF will really be a gamechanger for 30b’s matchup with prominent Ice types like , , and . All of these mons have very strong, borderline nuclear Ice STABs, and I don’t know that TF will truly help with this in the long run. Provided we’re able to successfully turn OHKOs to 2HKOs, we’re put in an unfavorable position where we either get some chip or a Toxic off and then get hit again and subsequently dropped like a fly, or we hard switch and something else that gets chunked. If this is the biggest selling point of Thick Fat but it ultimately can’t do that very effectively, then that speaks for itself Thick Fat can stay slated I guess but I don’t think it’ll truly be that great in the long run. It’s also less of a worry but I do kind of wonder if it encroaches on anti-concept territory since used the ability very effectively only a generation ago, but that may be kinda reaching.

 

[snake]

You made multiple points in your post, and the point I replied to has nothing to do with recovery. If you don't like Brave Bird in my example, then replace it with a different physical Flying move, or reverse the example and suppose 30i is a special attacker, 30b has terrible special attack, and both have access to Gunk Shot, Sludge Bomb, and Hurricane but no physical Flying moves.

The only point I was trying to make was that it is possible to have a viable Flying STAB on 30i but no viable Flying STAB on 30b.

I understand this concept completely. But my post doesn't talk about CAP30b's STABs...at all. So I'm not sure what the problem is here.

To summarize that post:

1. imo, CAP30i needs a Flying-type STAB to best take advantage of Tinted Lens
2. The best Flying-type STAB we can give CAP30i is Brave Bird
3. Reliably recovery is necessary to manage Stealth Rock and Brave Bird Recoil (Honchkrow example in a supplemental post)
4. Many people in this thread have mentioned that Corrosion could be too strong to lock out potential recovery
5. Therefore, I'm hesitant about (and at this point, now against) Corrosion because it might lock out recovery, which I think is very important to CAP30i's design

Of course, we don't have to give CAP30i Brave Bird. That isn't a decision for this stage of the process. But if, in general, Corrosion on CAP30b is potentially going to lock CAP30 out of recovery, that's very bad news for CAP30i, a Poison / Flying type without access to Heavy-Duty Boots (and potentially recoil).

Happy to discuss what you're taking issue with, but honestly...it's not clear to me where CAP30b's STAB options are relevant to my post. I'm purely looking at CAP30i's options (Flying-type STABs and reliable recovery) based on the impacts of CAP30b gaining Corrosion.

 

[Brian Geniouse]

I wasn't previously thinking of posting here, especially this late in the Ability 2 discussion, but this statement is outright wrong:

Corrosion is indeed used and is indeed viable in Balanced Hackmons of all metas. One of the sample BH teams, recently updated for the post-Rusted Sword ban meta, has Corrosion Eternatus (you can see the sample teams in https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/balanced-hackmons.3656408/#post-8286447). Note that one of the other sample teams there, "Water Gun" Stall, was edited by BH leadership to remove Water Gun from its movesets, so it's not like BH leadership is afraid of editing out unviable material from its finalized sample teams.

The sample team's creator, Nihilslave, says this about how to use Corrosion Eternatus to the best of its ability (pun welcomed with open arms) and how important Corrosion Eternatus is to that team:

Yes, even in the much higher-power meta of Balanced Hackmons, and even with Poison Heal and Comatose completely blocking Corrosion and thus providing easy counter-play, Corrosion is still viable there. Granted, this Corrosion Eternatus gets to play with Core Enforcer to remove Poison Heal...if it somehow out-slows its targets such as Giratina and Tapu Fini. But Toxicing formidable walls like Ice Scales Zamazenta-Crowned and Prankster Registeel is very much worth not using a powerful ability like Dragon's Maw or Simple.

I'm happy someone was able to correct me on that. I went through like a dozen different OM threads trying to find examples of proper Corrosion users - not to prove a point, but more to sate my own curiosity as to what it might actually look like in practice. Being unable to find anything was driving me nuts; somehow BH slipped my mind. So I'm glad we found something! If anyone else finds anything, please let me know.

 

[chartung17]

I understand this concept completely. But my post doesn't talk about CAP30b's STABs...at all. So I'm not sure what the problem is here.

To summarize that post:

1. imo, CAP30i needs a Flying-type STAB to best take advantage of Tinted Lens
2. The best Flying-type STAB we can give CAP30i is Brave Bird
3. Reliably recovery is necessary to manage Stealth Rock and Brave Bird Recoil (Honchkrow example in a supplemental post)
4. Many people in this thread have mentioned that Corrosion could be too strong to lock out potential recovery
5. Therefore, I'm hesitant about (and at this point, now against) Corrosion because it might lock out recovery, which I think is very important to CAP30i's design

Of course, we don't have to give CAP30i Brave Bird. That isn't a decision for this stage of the process. But if, in general, Corrosion on CAP30b is potentially going to lock CAP30 out of recovery, that's very bad news for CAP30i, a Poison / Flying type without access to Heavy-Duty Boots (and potentially recoil).

Happy to discuss what you're taking issue with, but honestly...it's not clear to me where CAP30b's STAB options are relevant to my post. I'm purely looking at CAP30i's options (Flying-type STABs and reliable recovery) based on the impacts of CAP30b gaining Corrosion.

If you weren't saying anything about 30b's STABs, then why did you quote the paragraph from Brian Geniouse's post which deals with 30b's STABs?

Edit: The more I think about it, the more I like Brian's idea. If 30b has Corrosion but no viable Poison STAB, Clefable and Tapu Fini can both wall it, which should make Corrosion much easier to manage.

 

[snake]

If you weren't saying anything about 30b's STABs, then why did you quote the paragraph from Brian Geniouse's post which deals with 30b's STABs?

Edit: The more I think about it, the more I like Brian's idea. If 30b has Corrosion but no viable Poison STAB, Clefable and Tapu Fini can both wall it, which should make Corrosion much easier to manage.

I shouldn’t have quoted that section then, my mistake. My argument about recovery still stands outside of that though.

 

[quziel]

Last minute post shilling Cotton Down

This ability is still hype as hell. A mon that can instantly slow down a sweeper for teammates is legitimately so huge. We can suddenly say "screw your Cawm its -1 after KOing" which is value asf. Is it strong enough to compete with Tinted Lens? I'd say no, but we have the boots, which is a huge balancing factor, and lets us use a 4/10 ability to compete with an 8/10 ability thanks to the item choice being freed up. While it doesn't have a ton of hard targest on typing alone; basically Scarf Fini, you could use it to situationally force out fast mons with the threat that they're now slower than you. This is 100% a team support option whose value would be partially based around the fact that you could situationally use Cotton Down to slow an opponent beyond a teammate, rather than explicitly using the ability yourself. Being able to tank a single hit from Zeraora, roost up, and then double to Kyurem the next turn is huge. This also means that if we tank a single move from Zera/Koko we can just roost them if we want.

Yes, plays around it would be predictable in the same way that doubling to Lando and U-turning into a check to abuse the -1 attack is predictable.

---

Also supporting Gale Wings; being at 100% HP is difficult, but at the same time its not that difficult, and the reward of a +1 priority move is situationally huge. Suddenly you can threaten out a 50% pult, a 50% Weavile (forcing it to shard is something it hates), and that threat would absolutely give this mon a place on teams.

---

Wandering Spirit is too niche in its list of impacted mons frankly.

 

[LucarioOfLegends]

Before I start, I just want to say that all of the options are slate sans the main one I'm covering are all great. I feel that Thick Fat, No Guard, and Stamina are shoe-ins and Fluffy is a weaker option that gets the spirit of Fur Coat / Ice Scales while offering quite a bit more to chew on.

Water Bubble, as much as I don't have any strong feelings on it, is still a good thing to put on slate simply because it does offer something very unique from the rest of the slate in a pseudo-stab. It does cover a lot of territory and it is certainly a strong ability, but I do think there is room for it to work without being broken. Once again I don't feel that strongly towards it as I remain unconvinced that we actually need the pseudo-stab, but I happily support it being on the slate simply for offering a different route from Thick Fat. I think it should be slated, it'll just be at the bottom of my ballot.

As you can guess though, I do have a very large problem with Corrosion on this slate.

In general, I think my entire point regarding Corrosion is one shared by other detractors of Corrosion. Do I think it is possible for Corrosion 30b to turn out balanced? I do. I think however this restricts our process both for CAP30b and for CAP30i due to Corrosion and its effect on usual Toxic counters, a restriction that I think is unhealthy and ill fitted for this concept. Others have covered it better but Corrosion restricting various utility options out of our movepool, particularly recovery, is really terrible for 30i. If it were just one mon itd be easier to justify but since 30i really likes recovery it's really just not the right process for it I think.

I also disagree with Korski's post fundamentally on the ideas of "Concept is King", when I think proper discussion is a mixture of addressing both its link to a concept and its possibilities in the meta. CAPs affect the metagame, but the metagame also affects how we approach building a CAP in processes. And while we dont know exactly what set, we can actually theorize what options are going to be best here without blowing the poll jumping whistle.

 

[Shock3600]

I don't think my opinion is the most useful as it's rather uninformed, but I think it could provide some perspective plus it's fun to get involved.

Corrosion
I certainly think Corrosion has the possibility to be balanced, and it could be rather interesting to explore, but I have a hard time imagining exactly how you would balance, and can easily see it interfering with 30i (the posts about 30i most likely wanting roost badly is a major point to this). To me, this increased difficulty in fine tuning the balance of 30b and the restrictions it adds onto 30b just aren't worth what we get out of it.

Fluffy
Fluffy is a rather neat ability, and I spot atleast 6 A or higher ranked mons that it helps with. Although some of them can still hit it with SE stab (Weavile, Zeroara) I have no doubt that fluffy would still be a major help. The fire weakness also makes it more interesting to work with, giving 30b a pretty weakness in heatran.

Stamina
Stamina has a clear use, clear ways to abuse it, and is really interesting all around. A mon looking to get in on weak hits to set up an onstoppable defense has a lot of potential and could make good use of body press (is that poll jumping?). Similar to the other defense boosting abilities but with more in game work to use well.

Water Bubble
Water bubble is one of the more interesting choices as I can see a few different paths to take. You can use it purely defensively, not giving 30b any actual water moves, you can let 30b use it as a psuedo-stab in addition to its defensive utilities, or you can do something strange like give 30b poor attacking stats and/or poor STAB moves and make it rely on its psuedo-stab to really do any damage. Unlike corrosion it also seems really easy and direct to scale, based on the selection of water moves given. Would obviously make for a very clear heatran counter.

Thick fat
Thick fat is mainly in contention with water bubble. While it loses the burn immunity and the extra offensive power, it turns certain match ups from sure losses to still bad but not impossible odds. I'm not certain how useful that is compared to water bubble, but I think it certainly has merit and has less baggage.

 

[Sqookblooks]

As a person who mostly lurks these threads because it is enjoyable and now wants to say something, apologies if I say anything that is stupid in advance!

On the Corrosion discussion, I think one of the primary concerns is that running Corrosion would prevent 30i from running recovery. So why can't we just give 30i pain split and we set the HP of 30i really, really low, and the HP of a 30b with corrosion really high to ensure that 30i gets reliable recovery while 30b doesn't? AFAIK the Framework of Giratina-Style Forms said that the two forms could have different stats, so changing HP shouldn't really be a problem, unless we're operating from a game-perspective.
Also in general, it vexes me why 30i needs recovery in the first place because in the Utility Wallbreaker explanation, Wulfanator listed 3 examples of utility wallbreakers that don't run recovery (Scarf Kart, T-Wave Melmetal, Taunt+Tox Heatran) so recovery doesn't seem to be a requisite for utility wallbreaking, and with the power of Tinted Lens, I think we could probably achieve the objective of forcing switches in order to use utility moves.
Just a thought, because I probably wouldn't vote for Corrosion anyways.

As for the other abilities on the slate, I'll give my new poster opinion on them--

Water Bubble / Stamina-- Both of these seem fine to me. I guess there is an argument to be made that Water Bubble is too strong, but I don't really know where this assertion is coming from tbh when I read the anti-water bubble posts, and I agree with other posters that you could limit water bubble's power by giving it lower-powered moves. Stamina is fine as well. I don't see a problem with it.

Fluffy / No Guard-- I agree with the other commenter's criticism on these two tbh. Aurumoth does No Guard shenanigans fine, and I really don't like the idea of No Guard Inferno / Sleep Moves which have been suggested as new ways of exploring No Guard optimization. No real comment on Fluffy, I agree with basically everything said so far against it.

Thick Fat- This ability and the justification for it has me confused. I get that being immune to toxic + resisting fire means we completely wall off Heatran and obviously Heatran is amazing and a great meta mon to target. But like, what do we even do against Heatran when we get in? Heatran resists both our stabs, so it is not naturally threatened at all by our presence unless we're running some sort of super-effective coverage, except we are a defensive mon and Heatran isn't frail. According to the TL, Tinted Lens being on 30i means that some form of compensation in the stat stage will probably be necessary, so I don't know if we would get enough stats to threaten Heatran, and even if we did, would having super effective coverage against a pokemon like Heatran strong enough to threaten it not conflict with optimizing Tinted Lens?

I get that we could go the utility route and status Heatran / provide some other form of utility that would be threatening if the opponent left the Heatran in, but Heatran also has taunt so it could shut that down. And of course, Heatran also gets Nature Power + Terrain to smack 30b with a Psychic or a Thunderbolt if necessary, although that probably shouldn't get factored into consideration even if it is a spicy tech.

And finally, going more from out of Heatran, people generally talk about the other mons we could potentially be walling (Volcarona, Weavile, Astrolotl, Kyurem etc), but Astro has some pretty debilitiating status and Weavile and Kyurem are really strong. As for Volcarona, I assume we would need to be physically inclined to threaten it because otherwise Volcarona wouldn't care. But if we are physical, then Heatran could fish for burns with Lava Plume and cripple 30i, defeating the purpose of 30i being a Heatran counter.

Sorry for the rambling, but I kind of feel like that all the discussion on Corrosion and Water Bubble has left some abilities like Thick Fat kind of under-discussed, and as a result, I couldn't see any clear explanations of how exactly a Thick Fat 30B would threaten Heatran in a meaningful way other than the obvious pp-stalling certain moves because Heatran has lots of ways to make progress against most defensive mons (Stealth Rocks, Taunt, Fish for Burns, Magma Storm+Taunt+Non-Earth Power Move). In that sense, I feel like Water Bubble is a better choice because at least then, we also resist Heatran completely, are immune to burn, and can always threaten it for some decent damage.

But I don't know, this is my first time ever posting in the CAP Forum. I apologize if my post is bad.

 

[Explosion Badger]

Gonna take my chance to get some thoughts in while I can:

I feel like similar to others on the topic of Corrosion, in that while it is theoretically possible for us to make it balanced, its presence makes 30i and Tinted Lens' role far harder to accomplish. Not only does it have a good chance of removing the recovery that 30i most likely wants due to an inability to fend off rocks, but it also causes 30b to butt heads with 30i far more. Both allow Poison/Flying to take on Steel Types, but while Tinted Lens leans into the weaker offensive side of the Pokémon, Corrosion utilizes the stronger defensive side and also works with the typing to beat pokemon that wouldn't mind Toxic such as Clefable and Tapu Fini. Overall, I'm against slating Corrosion for that reason.

Water Bubble, on the other hand, is something I very much want to stay on the slate. The ability to weaken fire type damage and be able to not be burned by scald nor be weak to it are both very useful. While the boost to water type damage is fairly strong, I also don't feel that it is too strong to balance, nor does it impede with 30i's role. Instead, it allows for a Pokémon with a unique ability to threaten water weak threats while not being weak to common water type answers (save for electric types) and allows for rarely seen water type moves to be highlighted more thanks to the strength of water bubble.

As for everything else on the slate, I feel mostly fine with them, save for maybe Fluffy, which just feels like Fur Coat but with more weaknesses and not much else. I'll parrot adding Gale Wings to the slate and replacing Corrosion with it, for the same reasons others have said. Otherwise, full steam ahead!

 

[ArtinKernel]

Hello, another complete newbie/constant lurker since Miasmaw/occasional voter chiming in :) I've never posted here before but I've really enjoyed following this discussion and thought I'd add my opinion to the chorus, even though I don't have much to add. Sorry if my post is bad or stupid lol, please don't be too mean if it is :P

As for Corrosion, I've been fairly neutral and even tentatively for it since it gives a clear, focused direction and has a unique, interesting, and un-optimized niche (very pro-concept like Korski said). It would be really cool to see how Corrosion on a good Pokemon would effect the meta. But ultimately the recovery argument makes me disprefer Corrosion. In randbats (the only format I have time to really get into lmao) Salazzle's SubToxic set is practically the most annoying and unfun thing to exist, I know we won't be exactly like Salazzle and a real meta is not AT ALL like randbats, but good golly that thing is obnoxious enough without recovery. Imagine us doing that and presumably we'd have good stats. 30i can't use boots and that plus its most spammable STAB having recoil means it will really want recovery, which would push Corrosion over the edge unless our stats are crap imo, or reliable wish/defog support to be good. Sqookblooks mentioned some other utility wallbreakers, like Melmetal, Defog Scarf Kartana, and Heatran, that are good despite no recovery, but Melm and Kart resist SR, Heatran's neutral to it, and none of those use recoil moves. We take 25% from rocks and, if we are physical (seems likely as BB is stronger and more spammable than Hurricane), take recoil when we break (yes, Gunk Shot exists but TL Flying is a stronger offensive type). We don't even get Lefties; a reliable way to avoid SR damage and heal from chip are essential for 30i in my opinion.

Though I disfavor Corrosion now, I strongly agree that it should be on the slate. A lot of the more experienced CAPpers seem more opposed to it, but we spent so much discussion on it, and there's not a clear consensus, that I think we ought to send it to the polls and see what the people decide.

I think Water Bubble and Stamina are the funnest and most interesting options on the slate. Stamina completely fits the bill as an unoptimized ability, for the reason that Mudsdale doesn't get recovery and dies very easily to the strong special attacks targeting its weaknesses. The optimized Stamina user desperately needs recovery-- it wants to come in and sit in, getting fatter every time you try to smack it, and without recovery it just gets whittled down and eventually forced out. There are also several good routes we could take to fulfill Stamina. A special wall that, with a smart switch-in, instantly becomes a physical wall too. A physical wall that becomes unassailable then slaps back with Body Press (good way to deal with the Steels that naturally check us). And this is just two examples I thought of in 2 seconds-- practically any defensive mon would enjoy Stamina (if they don't have a better option; I guess this really only applies to defensive mons that get by *mainly* with naturally strong stats and typing), so this ability provides a couple clear focus ideas while also leaving a lot open.

Water Bubble just seems really cool and fun. A third STAB is a unique and interesting option, gives us something to prevent Steels from completely walling us, and the defensive value is amazing. Also Araquinid is very unoptimized and Water Bubble is such a defining ability that does so much, that I feel we could learn a lot from it. And the power ceiling is completely manageable, we can just not give out water moves of too strong base power. (But honestly? I think it'd be pretty neat to at least think about stronger moves too. Having a defensive mon that could just drop an (attack uninvested, we can give it a horrible attack stat and choose defensive stats that demand investment instead to get important benchmarks) 150 BP 100% accurate drawback free water move would open up interesting interactions. For example, how would a wall with the ability to have a strong attack of an unexpected typing change its natural checks as determined by typing and stats? This is a pretty basic question but I'm sure this setup has more interesting things to ask too.) It is not as direction-ful as Stamina is, so I think I slightly prefer Stamina (which gives more specific direction for what defensive things we ought to be doing, water bubble is way more general).

Thick Fat doesn't seem bad, just... boring. Others have explained how it doesn't actually help a whole against Ice types, and as for targeting Fire types I say we just use Water Bubble in that case. Gives similar but in practice better defensive benefits (Poison AND Burn immune for the win) and is so much more interesting and fun, while still being easy to make balanced.

Fluffy and No Guard definitely have potential for interesting interactions, with Fluffy making us weak to Fire. No Guard does seem intriguing, but I hope we don't go down the route of "I just use strong inaccurate attacks" because that's boring. Also, everyone seems to be assuming 30b will be defensive (are we allowed to assume this?), isn't No Guard bad in some ways for a defensive Poison-Flying mon? For example, now Stone Edge, a pretty common inaccurate move we're weak to, or Heatran Magma Storm that we absolutely hate, always hits us. Looking at the trade-offs of No Guard could definitely be interesting, and I think it'd be pretty neat to have a defensive mon that spreads status and damage simultaneously with like Inferno or Zap Cannon, so No Guard has potential. Also No Guard opens up status-spreading shenanigans with mainly sleep moves (but I am deeply wary of 100% accurate sleep and we would need to devote a lot to making that not overwhelming).

I'm also throwing my support behind Gale Wings. Initially I thought it was a bad option since it will be difficult to keep us at full health. But like quziel pointed out, if we do manage to stay at full health, we have potential to get massive value. It still seems very situational, but especially since HDB exists I'm more intrigued by this option. I think this one should be added to the slate.

 

[SDK03]

I’d like to vouch for Water Bubble as it would carry benefits for 30b both offensively and defensively that wouldn’t be as centralizing as Corrosion. Water Bubble gives 30b an additional Fire resist helping it against threats that wall it such as Heatran while also preventing burns to give it better longevity. This same burn immunity also allows it to spam STAB physical moves and Knock Off without too much punishment. And like many others have discussed, Water Bubble also gives an extra STAB to 30b that can take on many of the Steels in the tier. Balancing 30b around this ability mainly lies in the Water-Type coverage it receives, as Burn immunity and Fire-Type resistance aren’t as powerful tools as Water STAB could be. Of course, we shouldn’t neuter it’s Water moves to things like Water Pulse. Flip Turn is a move that can be abused very easily by 30b as it is not only boosted by Water Bubble, but can’t be weakened by any burns.

252 Atk Water Bubble Scolipede Flip Turn vs. 252 HP / 164+ Def Landorus-Therian: 182-216 (47.6 - 56.5%) -- 31.3% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Water Bubble Scolipede Flip Turn vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Heatran: 208-246 (53.8 - 63.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Water Bubble Scolipede Flip Turn vs. 252 HP / 100 Def Equilibra: 204-242 (50 - 59.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Water Bubble Scolipede Flip Turn vs. 104 HP / 0 Def Colossoil: 286-338 (66 - 78%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

The only mons I can really think of that wall a 30b with Water Bubble and 100Atk are Mollux, Naviathan, Plasmanta and SpD Gastrodon, which makes options for countering it pretty limited on paper if given too powerful of a water move, especially one with good utility. Moves such as Waterfall and Surf seem pretty attractive as despite being more powerful than Flip Turn or Scald, they don’t have much utility that can be abused with them and also lend themselves as coverage for 30i. Scald also works as it isn’t too powerful of a move, but it’s burns can definitely turn games around easily, so optimizing SpA and Atk to make sure 30b can’t abuse these moves would be the best route, which wouldn’t sacrifice coverage for 30i either. Corrosion makes things a bit harder as the only things that wall them (Poison Heal users like Snaelstrom and Magic Guard Clefable and Magic Bounce users like Hatterene) are easily dumpstered by its STAB, forcing it to have weaker stab and gimping 30i, or giving it very little bulk to work with and having 30i be the heavily preferred form of CAP30.

 

[Tadasuke]

Okay pals, it's time to finish up this stage of the process with the final slate. The majority of the slate remains unchanged, except for one notable ability being swapped out for another. You'll find the changes below.

• Fluffy: Of all the abilities that provide a direct reduction damage, this one seemed to garner the most support. Although it's a bit more situational that the broad boosts to defenses provided by options like Fur Coat or Filter, the general consensus seems to support this for the added dynamics it gives to specific matchups. It seems to offer more interesting design spaces than straight defensive boosts.
• Gale Wings: Although it didn't make the preliminary slate, there's been a sufficient amount of support and positive argumentation backing Gale Wings' inclusion on the final slate. While keeping a mon at 100% HP throughout a match might be a bit of a restriction, it's not the most difficult thing to ask for, especially when looking at specific matchup based strategies existing in the current metagame that follow this exact standard (i.e. keeping Dragapult at full health in order to check Cawmodore). Additionally, there's a fairly wide variety of strategies that can be improved by the +1 priority granted to Flying type moves, so I don't believe the process will be too restricted if this ability gets picked.
• No Guard: Despite the overlap this ability may seem to have with 30i's role as a wallbreaker, No Guard's capability to give perfect accuracy to otherwise unreliable status moves or inaccurate attacks with strong secondary effects provides us with ample space to help differentiate 30b from its item carrying form. There's a lot of room to work with when dealing with this ability, and if chosen I think we'd be in for a very entertaining movepool stage.
• Stamina: The direct boost to physical defense that this ability gives us leaves a lot of options open that can work within the scope of the project. While it's generally good to receive a +1 boost to a mon's physical defense, the potential Stamina has to snowball into becoming a gargantuan physical wall seems to make this a widely supported option for the slate. Boosting the strength of Body Press is just one of many great strategies bolstered by this ability in order to carve out a separate niche from CAP 30i, and the broad-ranging number of strategies that would otherwise benefit from the additional bulk only gives us a wider berth of options down the line.
• Thick Fat: Though other defensive abilities on this slate offer us protection from a wide variety of popular threats in the CAP Metagame, Thick Fat's specificity with regards to buttressing 30b's matchups against prominent Ice and Fire types such as Weavile, Heatran, and Kyurem gives the project an immediate purpose and target around which a potent defensively functioning mon can be built.
• Water Bubble: Water Bubble's overall strength and incredible defensive utility sets it apart from other abilities as one of the most powerful options here. Though the power ceiling for this ability is incredibly high, I believe it can be optimized in a manner that doesn't overstep the boundaries we set when making a new CAP. Adding tertiary STAB options to our movepool only serves to widen the scope of how this mon can function offensively, and can be navigated in such a way that it won't necessarily be overbearing. Providing a defensive boost against Fire types and immunity to burn just gives us more room to work with when figuring out exactly how to fulfill the concept with this ability while still creating a mon that's unique from its other form.

Now for the one notable exclusion:

• Corrosion: I fully believe that the CAP Process has the potential to make a balanced and potent mon with this ability, however as many have pointed out in this thread, the added restriction of having to adapt the stats and movepool around both Tinted Lens and Corrosion leads to some very difficult complications. I would love to see this on another mon, but given our framework I don't think it's the right time to do so now.

Our esteemed Topic Leader Wulfanator will post his closing thoughts now, and from there we'll move on to our second Primary Ability Poll!

 

[Wulfanator]

Nice work, Tada. You may rest now.

I'm going to be using my -1 to remove Gale Wings from the slate. This is a rather underwhelming ability to pair with our solid defensive typing. The fact this form is not item-locked lets us explore these natural strengths to its utmost potential, and it seems backwards to create a form that needs to manage its HP to make use of its ability. The purpose of structuring the project Primary Ability 2 after Typing was to pick abilities that would play into the typing. For these reasons, I do not believe Gale Wings is an ability that should be slated for CAP 30b.