CAP 37 - Part 7 - Defining Moves

[N-Manifold]

Spicy Extract is very fun, and I would love to have it assuming it's not verboten as a signature move. It gives us a really good late-game match up into bulky special attackers like Cresc, Glowking, Alomamola, etc while not affecting the early-to-mid game match up too much. It's almost certainly a defining move for this reason, but I think it's healthy if done right.

On the other hand, I'm really not into Swagger. The move is offensive to competitive play, only being unbanned because it isn't viable on anything that can run it. So we run into an awkward spot where either cap37 doesn't want to run swagger or else we don't want to give it swagger, but in any case cap37 running swagger is a failure. I think that swagger should be disallowed on cap37, swagger is a terrible anti-competitive move that should not be considered in CAP at all.

 

[Just A Shroom God]

I don't really have much to add to the conversation. Knock and 50% recovery are basically absolutely necessary, and Roost seems way better than Recover both flavor-wise and for its mindgames with Blast.

What I'm getting from this conversation is that we have a ton of options between hazards, setup, priority, coverage, pivoting, defog, spicy extract (???) etc. but that we don't actually need any of them to function. I agree with the consensus that we are have 3 locked slots in Knock/Blast/Recovery and then a 4th 'flex' slot. I think there are two schools of thought here:

A: We give this mon a lot, enough so that it has a tool to tech for most matchups. By moving some of its hard counters to pretty good checks, we add to its pressure, and opponents are much more incentivized to give it those precious free turns or risk being punished hard. .This is the more pro-concept of the two CAPs, as you're inviting opponents to Just Hit It™ to not have to deal with the headache of scouting your fourth slot. However, if we give it too much, we risk not slotting Beak Blast over one of our other moves, and there's even an argument to be made that giving it too much would lean into unhealthy territory.

B: We give it nothing, or just random misc. (non-ground or -fighting) coverage. Our current set with Taunt in the last slot is fine as is, and at this point, we don't have many stages left to course-correct if we mess up this one. Nobody really knows how any CAP will play before it's added, and especially so for a mon built around utilizing a move previously only seen on Toucannon of all things.

I think I personally lean towards B, but I could be convinced. I think that something like Defog or a weak Body Press could help us function in our intended role. The other thing is the meta aspect of CAP tending to make A to S tiers, and whether having a mon with such a gimmicky move as Beak Blast as an S tier is inherently unhealthy.

 

[dex]

Here is our final defining moves list:

Required: Beak Blast, Knock Off, 50% Recovery
Optional: Encore, Sucker Punch, Body Press

I don't feel that we know enough about the Pokemon yet to determine which is better in Roost vs. non-Roost recovery. There have been logical arguments made for both sides, so I think it is best to leave that discussion until after stats. Because Taunt is an innate move for Dark-types, and Taunt is a good move for this Pokemon, our Optional move list is somewhat sparse. However, we do have three enticing options here in Encore, Sucker Punch, and Body Press. I'm going to talk a little about Body Press, as I think its main use is not actually in threatening Garganacl (non-STAB Body Press surely does very little to Garganacl) but what it does do is provide a weaker hit that aids in CAP 37's Kingambit matchup, a Pokemon that not only runs Tera Fire but also resists CAP 37's STAB combo entirely.

I decided to leave Stealth Rock off the list, as I am not convinced that Stealth Rock provides enough of a positive boost to the mon that would require stat limit discussion.

I'm also not totally convinced that Spicy Extract is particularly concept relevant. Yes, it very technically incentives physical moves, but I also think that that changes CAP 37's role past what we have already decided and discussed. We already determined that setup was not in CAP 37's best interest, and I don't see a reason to change that despite the admittedly fun Opportunist interaction.

 

[earthflax]

Approved. Onto stats!