CAP 31 So Far
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In this stage we will first reflect on the process so far, discussing what we've learned from this process, how this well we have fulfilled its concept, and what impact CAP31 had on the metagame. After that, we will discuss some possible minor tweaks to the product in order to better fulfill our goals. Please follow the Topic Leader's instructions and don't propose any specific changes until they say so.
Changes allowed:
- Move additions and removals
- Changes to secondary ability
- Small stat changes
Changes not allowed
- Typing changes
- Changes to primary ability
- Large stat changes
ratio
How successful were we in accomplishing the concept? How does Diamond Storm fit Saharaja and its kit?
Diamond Storm is both near-mandatory on Saharaja and one of its best tools; having strong Rock coverage alongside STAB Earthquake and Swords Dance lets it remain threating versus much of the metagame. It's also important to note that Diamond Storm has a lot of intrinsic pressure when it comes to playing around Raja, as the Defense boost can often screw with short-term gameplans, and preventing those situations where it wants to hit your side of the field SE with Diamond Storm is something I find myself doing a lot versus it. This move works wonders for our CAP: it's not only effective in providing ample coverage, but also gives Saharaja a unique identity as an offensive threat capable of gaining an sudden edge over the opponent simply by letting it attack.
How effective is Saharaja's preliminary movepool? Is the mon missing anything? Does it have too much?
SD+Spin EQ+DS is honestly the only thing Saharaja needs to succeed. The compression here is incredible: almost perfect coverage for the metagame, highly dangerous late-game potential with your three different boosting moves, and an additional layer of utility from Rapid Spin clearing hazards, all wrapped up in a useful Ground typing, excellent Special Defense, and a valuable Water immunity. I don't think there's anything else you could add that would realistically help the mon in its current state without likewise tipping it over the edge.
I would say that this movepool is a bit bloated. There's a couple matchup-fishy options and some genuinely dumb stuff that both shouldn't be used and I don't want to face the possibility of my opponent using.
Power Whip is the most significant of these moves: Arghonaut and Levitate Equilibra are two of the best checks to this mon, and Power Whip provides an very targeted way of blowing past both of them: max PhyDef Argh can fall to Whip if even slightly chipped, and Equilibra relies a lot of hardwalling the EQ + DS set to force Raja out. I would like to preserve these two as strong checks, since they are innately available to the CAP Metagame going forward. Horn Leech is more modest in power and only starts breaking Argh with hazards up if you go Adamant + Life Orb, which is a rather specific set.
screw it tabvle time, here's my opinions on everything that isn't the standard set. potentially contentious stuff marked as (?)
| Mandatory moves we don't have the ability to remove | Moves that are balanced secondary/tech options or inoffensive | Moves that are unnecessary competitive bloat, but not super dangerous | Moves that disturb balance or offer nothing positive competitively |
Protect
Rest
Sleep Talk
Substitute
Attract
Endure
Round
Snore | Body Press
Heal Bell
Pain Split
Stealth Rock | Horn Leech
Leech Seed
Poison Jab
Sucker Punch(?)
Taunt(?) | Power Whip
Thunder Wave(?) |
I would be fine with everything on the right side of the table being axed. Horn Leech, Poison Jab, and Sucker Punch are unneeded coverage I'd rather not give spoo/D2/Brambane the pleasure of beating me with, Taunt IDK how to feel about but it's probably safer to not have, Leech Seed is just kinda dumb, and Thunder Wave has no place on this mon.
Body Press does let you bypass Libra but does almost nothing otherwise, compared to Whip which helps versus other bulky Waters and Grounds while directly benefiting from Swords Dance. Heal Bell is rather awkward to fit on the mon IMO, Pain Split makes defensive sets cool, and Stealth Rock is appreciated. None of those four stand out as problematic to me.
You may have noticed Rock Slide is not present. I will discuss Rock Slide later.
How was returning to a move-centered concept? What can we take from this process going forward?
This was a rather monumental process and I'm glad I was able to contribute as much as I did to its development up to this point. Going into our concept I don't think any of us envisioned our chosen move being both an Attacking move and not STAB, but by God we did it and it's made a really fun and I'd say generally healthy addition to the metagame.
I think the biggest takeaway here is that out-of-the-box ideas for a concept are not only viable, but also creatively refreshing. We absolutely could have gone the obvious "Diamond Storm is a good STAB move for a type with zero good STAB moves on the Physical side" route and made a Rock-type, and I don't doubt such a creation would have been just as good if not better than what we have, but Saharaja is a mighty fine CAP in spite of its unintuitive direction and the value this information brings is more than anything we'd have learned from a Rock-type. I guess I feel like CAP31 showed that there's many different avenues to approach a question of "how could we best utilize a given move:" making it our strongest and most defining move may be one route, but so is having it be a complimentary piece to a greater whole.
Lastly, how is Saharaja's role and position in the metagame? Does it need competitively centered changes? Is it healthy for the meta, or more damaging?
Well it's as simple as having a Ground-type in the metagame that does important Ground-type things is cool: we relied a lot on god Lando-T to keep everything sensible prior as most of the other Grounds available really struggled into popular Electrics and failed to fill teambuilding holes like Lando could. Saharaja has given the old man a break for the first time since DLC2 dropped. You've got this fat SpDef Ground that does well into Electric-types without being overtly passive, retains the ability to clear hazards (though not as easily/safely as Lando can), and even provides a crucial Water Immunity that lets you do dumb stuff like stack certain Grounds on the same team without much detriment to composition.
I don't consider Saharaja to be
perfectly balanced, but the goal wasn't to get things 100% right from the start, that's what PPL is for. I would like to spend time going over some options to tone down Raja's strength, it would be rather silly to let another obviously strong and dangerous mon go unchanged even if we like what it's offering right now.
One of the most pressing matters is
Rapid Spin. Spin is fantastic on Saharaja: its a move it gets to use selfishly to boost its own Speed, which only makes the potency of Swords Dance and your Ground/Rock coverage even higher, but also provides an additional layer of team support
in the same slot when attempting a +2 Attack +1 Speed assault isn't yet possible or worthwhile. This move is a vital part of Saharaja's success: while Diamond Storm provides great synergy to its kit, Rapid Spin is the selling point. There have been concerns that this combination of SD + Speed Boosting + random Defense boosts from Diamond Storm is overwhelming: the raw power of this combo is something we figured out pretty early on in testing, and it's remained true months later. When Raja gets going it can be really hard to stop, with only a handful of Pokemon able to Revenge Kill in these scenarios. Yes, it does take three turns to get there, but its not a hard sequence to come by if you make a smart read on your opponent and force them into an awkward situation.
There's two main ways of addressing the Rapid Spin problem:
- Remove it so Saharaja has to rely solely on Attack and Diamond Storm boosts to sweep
- Lower Speed to the point where a single Rapid Spin isn't enough to reliably outpace the metagame
I wouldn't be happy with the first option unless we gave it Defog in compensation. I know some people aren't going to like the idea of Defog on Saharaja thematically considering the association with Flying-types or other airborne/winged Pokemon, but there's a sizeable list of exceptions to this rule.
All of these learn Defog and it's not really clear to me why, and there's a couple other oddballs I didn't even include. If you wanted precedent for Raja to learn Defog, I don't think it gets better than these otherwise completely unrelated Pokemon all sharing the move. I can't say how good the move would be in place of Rapid Spin but I wouldn't want to remove its strongest team support option outside of setting Rocks. As for Speed, I know we're not at the point of suggesting changes outright, but gosh -12 Speed works so well. Da Pizza Man summed up prior discussion on the change and there's nothing else I can really add other than how precisely perfect it is relative to Speed tiers.
Next, there's probably some room to reduce Attack or Defense. Everyone seems pretty happy with our Special Tankiness (spdef ground stocks only going higher), so there's not a good reason to touch HP or SpDef. I don't really have exact numbers down: Saharaja has very customizable EVs so I think just knocking things down a peg would do well enough, something like idk -5 Attack -10 Def or vice-versa would probably be nice, maybe less if combined with a the Speed nerf. Just enough to keep it a bit more inline with the power level of the metagame, as its stat are genuinely incredible.
I also want to talk about
Serene Grace for a bit (read: four paragraphs), and in accordance
Rock Slide. I will admit to being eternally tilted after losing to Serene Grace Rock Slide during Playtest after requesting a substitute when I actually didn't have to. Still, it begs questioning:
Is Serene Grace adding much of anything to Saharaja's niche in the metagame? I don't really think so. You are able to bluff Water Absorb rather convincingly because who wouldn't run it, so it's not a huge detriment to slot in even if running the usual set: a 50% chance is relatively common to proc multiple times in a row for Pokemon standards, and you won't always be using the move often enough for people to get suspicious. There is nice reassurance in knowing that Diamond Storm will boost if the move connects, as it can allow for specific gameplans to work out in your favor where Water Absorb may fail.
I'm mostly arguing that this small benefit of Serene Grace isn't really worth the uncompetitive side of the issue, which is the combination of Swords Dance + Rock Slide. Saharaja is unique among SG mons: it's got a combination of Speed, Attack, and bulk nothing really compares to, and atm still has Rapid Spin to let it outrun other fast mons and a strong EQ that's not really going anywhere. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth: I'm not as much of a fan of the bluffing aspect of Serene Grace as I was before, because its such an abstract thing to scout for, and I'm definitely not a fan of a ~54% chance to be flinched down by such a strong and bulky Pokemon.
The easy solution would be cutting Rock Slide, but that runs into the issue of precedent: there's no fully-evolved Ground-types that don't learn Rock Slide except for two: Wormadam-Sandy and Ursaluna. The latter is exclusive to Legends: Arceus which is a side-series game (Ursaring even learns Rock Slide naturally so what gives), and the former is just... weird with its multiple forms. I guess Wormadam could be enough on its own and I'd be for it, otherwise the only messy thing with Serene Grace is the difficulty in telling if its in play or not, and that's simply too little to care about: it could just mean that I predict Saharaja to switch out as I click Hydro but then it stays in and dies and the VC pops off.
If people aren't comfortable with cutting Rock Slide however because of how ubiquitous it is with Ground-type identity, I am in support of finding a suitable replacement for Serene Grace that maybe sorta has a niche but is greatly overshadowed by the strength of Water Absorb, preferably something easier to notice and subsequently play around.
