Hey all, wanted to pop in and give some of my thoughts too.
Firstly, I want to echo and reiterate
Reviloja753 ’s definition of “fatal flaw” as “
an element which contradicts/goes against how the role traditionally finds success which ultimately factors into how the Pokémon functions on a team.” I believe this is the most pertinent way of viewing this tricky wording to our process, and the one we should primarily take into our consideration. A “fatal flaw” is itself a bit of a misnomer for what I — and several others, it seems — believe to be what we should aim to achieve here. In my opinion, our aim here is not to create a Pokémon whose kit is compromised by a disastrous element; the term “fatal flaw,” after all, implies something, well,
fatal to the ‘mon’s potential.
I’ve seen it said above that this route could potentially be made interesting by designing a ‘mon whose singular terrible trait is offset by other overwhelming positives, but to be honest, this is well-trodden ground as it is. Hemogoblin and Chromera were both designed with a central compromising factor (Defective Ability and just-average stats across the board, respectively), but what ended up happening was that Chromera was effectively made into a statball with a good movepool who despite this still remained (mostly) unviable up until its buff, and Hemogoblin ended up being overtuned in terms of the synergy between its incredibly effective movepool and ability. In other words, we’ve walked this road before, and it doesn’t always end in the cleanest way. What makes this particular concept exciting is that it presents a new idea we haven’t really tapped into in the same way that we did with the two aforementioned processes: intentional contradiction in design.
What I find much more compelling here than simply designing a ‘mon whose bad trait doesn’t matter in the face of its better ones, is intentionally designing a ‘mon whose gameplan appears contradictory to the role that its kit would otherwise suggest. I saw some great examples of this in posts above, especially Cawmodore (a supremely deadly sweeper who operates with a defensive typing, abilities, and a mostly defensive statline), pre-SV Heatran (a meta-defining defensive glue that lacks reliable recovery — a role which, to perhaps a somewhat lesser extent, Ting-Lu succeeds in in this gen), etc.
In regards to
kenn ‘s questions, I also want to echo other posters in saying that I don’t believe a contradictory ability or stat spread would be conducive to our process here. As others have said, a contradictory ability — or even a non-ability, in the example of Keldeo that I saw above — is extremely restrictive on what we can feasibly do with our chosen role, and, as we’ve seen, most likely leads to overcompensation in other areas, like stats and movepool. Conversely, contradictory stats can muddy the process unless the Stats stage occurs much earlier in the process. A contradictory typing is interesting in that it leads to potentially compelling interactions later with both our offensive and defensive profile and the role our kit would imply versus what our ‘mon
actually ends up doing in practice. However, my personal favorite route here would be a
contradictory movepool.
Focusing on movepool as our contradictory element is the most exciting prospect to me, because this is an almost entirely untapped space for us. To my knowledge, we’ve never designed a ‘mon with an intentionally shallow or otherwise misleading movepool. At least since SM, it’s always sort of been our unspoken MO to just load up our products with diverse moves (hence the memes about CAPs always having one or more of Stealth Rock, Rapid Spin, or some form of setup). The idea of designing a ‘mon whose movepool goes against the grain of its role is fascinating to me, and I would personally much prefer if this was the route we take. The design space here is just more exciting to me, especially with some of the roles others have suggested, like a wallbreaker who has to rely on powerful coverage for damage output, a wall without reliable recovery, or, a suggestion of my own, a tank who functions as a trapper.
Lastly, I’ve also seen some differing takes on whether we should poll role and contradictory element as packages or one after the other. I don’t have much of an opinion on this currently, but I lean a little more towards polling role first and then our constraint. However, I do also see the merit in polling them as singular packages, as role and constraint are so interlinked for us here. Whichever way we slice it, I think these two things need to be decided upon before we do anything else. Echoing
spoo, I firmly believe we need to pick a solid direction and
stick with it. Cresceidon’s process is the best recent example of how balanced and viable a product we can make if we do this.
Anywho, this process looks to be very fun!! I’m excited, I think we stand to learn a lot here. Cheers, all :)
Got sniped by A Fairy but I also want to peep in Wall + Lacking Resistances as a role + contradiction! 
