CAP 15 CAP 4 - Part 4 - Secondary Ability Discussion

Status
Not open for further replies.
@Vonfielder

The reason people say that No Guard has no inherent risk is because no one ever intentionally switches a bug type into a stone edge or fire blast expecting a miss. This sort of ability just costs you the "i got lucky" factor and has no bearing on general strategy. The most convincing argument i see for No Guard is the whole entire "it limits variables argument". Saying that No Guard has inherent risks is close to total bullshit in my opinion.
 
You act as if no bug type was ever Fire Blasted or Stone Edged just because they'd never intentionally switch into it. What about when you try to counter a Pokemon by trying to come in on a different move and they out-predict you? What about when you are the last Pokemon trying to sweep, a situation a risk/reward mon might easily find themselves in? What about when you get trapped by Dugtrio, whose EQ and Reversal are both resisted by you? And this is before the other side of the status coin kicks in, where other mons abuse status now too.
 
forestflamerunner said:
The reason people say that No Guard has no inherent risk is because no one ever intentionally switches a bug type into a stone edge or fire blast expecting a miss.
Click to expand...
No, but people will switch CAP4 into Terrakion if they expect Close Combat, and No Guard prevents that one in five chance of getting lucky and surviving when you mispredict.
 
I'm probably doing myself a disservice by posting again at this time, but I feel as though I owe it to myself and the CAP community to explain my thoughts a little more clearly than I have been doing. I can only say in my defence that, well, I've been under a fair amount of stress recently, more so than I expected at this time. In any case, if any part of my argument is incoherent, then I apologise. I would dearly like people to know where I'm coming from, but from what I've seen that is impossible. I have seen people in this thread entirely missing the point, or else approaching it from their own point of view, which clashes with my own. Perhaps I should have been more clear on the point, but I assumed it was made clear by Concept Assessment. I fear I must now have to revise that judgement. The most I can do now is present an argument and invite you to adopt it if you have not done so already. If you refuse to even consider it, you are unlikely to enjoy the rest of this CAP that much.

What did I set out to do with this CAP? I reaffirm what I said at the start of this Project that I wanted this to challenge us, to force us to experiment, to see what we could come up with. When I saw capefeather's concept, I immediately interpreted it as a way to take something very generic and make something entirely new out of it. Risk and Reward are inherent to every single Pokemon in the game, or at least by my definition - that Risk is purely the negative consequence of any given action, as Reward is the positive consequence. Hence a risky Pokemon would be one that had a potential, in any one of its actions, to merit a greatly positive or a greatly negative consequence. Simple, yes? Well, I wasn't satisfied by that, because it was easy to solve. Hone Claws Sheer Cold, job done. I thus decided we should ignore the parts of this concept that meant little in terms of build. Out went luck-related factors. I tried to reconcile what was left, but there're still far too many different views of what Risk should be out there. Every part of a Pokemon incorporates a Risk - the opponent's potential moves, set uncertainty, team support, right down to the individual move choices on CAP4's set.

So, what I want to accomplish out of this CAP is something, if not unique, then at least noticeable. That is where the interesting parts of the process lie. I am adamantly of the opinion that if we cannot achieve this, we have failed the concept. I slated Weak Armour against my better judgement - it is true that almost any Pokemon with access to Weak Armour becomes automatically a greater Risk than a Pokemon without, especially if it has no viable alternatives. Hence why I am so opposed to abilities such as Flare Boost and Reckless - the strategies they promote are those all too familiar to us, namely the limited-duration breaker (for "glass cannon" is something I want to wean us off). I do not care about them. We are achieving nothing by selecting them - the rest of the CAP only serves to make them usable, perhaps adding a few extra risks here and there. This is not a role I want to encourage, and much more importantly, it is not a mindset I want to encourage.

Am I merely being neurotic? Well, that's not really a concern of mine. I'd like to say that I pushed the boundaries with this CAP, and that I didn't just blindly build a Pokemon to pre-existing specifications based on the prejudices of others. I see now that there was a real danger that that would happen with this CAP. So, I'll say it here now: I'd rather this CAP failed miserably and we tried something that wasn't straightforward, than we went for the safe option and this CAP was a resounding success. That's about as much as I can say on the subject.

Now, on to the subject of duality. I am afraid that, alike to my interpretation of Risk, the interpretation of duality is being taken differently (or just plain ignored) by different people. So, my version would be as follows: that both abilities grant a specific positive and a specific negative that are distinct from one another, and importantly, that both have their own individual merit on similar sets. This can be seen on Pokemon such as Bronzong, Yanmega, Relicanth, Gyarados, and indeed quite a few things you could care to mention. I selected and slated Weak Armour in the belief that it could pair up in this way with other abilities, and I remain in that state of belief. Furthermore, I am of the opinion that we can and will make it work with the hand that was dealt to us. If I had not believed that, I would not have slated it, simple as. I'd like to think that my trust in the CAP Community will pay off, though I have confided my doubts to some.

No Guard I believe can work, for the simple reason that we have complete control over the Reward aspect of the ability. I have made it quite clear that the CAP will not be receiving any moves that it could not viably use without No Guard, as that undermines the duality aspect. As such, I do not see any argument that it could be overly dominating as entirely valid, especially as its function is largely independent of stat spread. Furthermore, No Guard has no even comparable abilities to its function, so occupies its own singular niche as far as usage goes. As for Illusion, it has been made clear already that that ability is as far removed from any other as it is possible to go, and more to the point, has quite as many problems associated with its use on this Pokemon as Weak Armour does. Finally, Moxie creates an interesting duality that I'd like to see explored further. The decision between Speed or Attack boosting could be accentuated by the relevant boosting moves, perhaps. I'd be curious to see how we could get it to work.

Other abilities? I dislike Contrary and Simple for being too restrictive on our movepools. I dislike Marvel Scale for being counterproductive - or, if you are using Rest, then down to the luck of Sleep Talk, which is not something I want to promote. Harvest I'm not fond of for its weather reliance. Analytic I have made my opinion clear on. Once again, I want to make it clear that I want to find another great ability to slate, and I am convinced that there is one out there if you go looking for it, or if you can present an argument that grants new potential to a typically bland ability. I don't want to slate only three abilities, but I will do what I think is best for the Project, even if that means going against popular opinion. I've already reneged on that count once, and I'm hoping I don't have reason to regret it, but based on the way that decision has caused some people to direct their comments towards me, I cannot be sure.

I will readily hear any and all lobbying towards one's favourite abilities, but I really don't want to have to hear strictures on how you think I'm running the CAP. It's really not helpful or likely to change anything.
 
Really pushing for Illusion here, because otherwise this CAP has a serious potential to be outright bad.

Keep in mind, guys, that Weak Armor, while it might (potentially) have potential, kinda sucks as is. There's a good reason no serious Pokemon uses it as a primary ability, or even at all for that matter (only Kabutops and Crustle use it at all, and even then on mostly gimmicky sets). You must get hit with a contact attack (requires a fair bit of prediction), must survive the hit, have enough defense after the drop not to auto-die to Scizor, have enough speed to make use of the boost, AND have the raw offense to actually make using CAP 4 worthwhile. In other words, this CAP will have to be specifically designed around Weak Armor, and if that ends up blowing up in our faces (let's be serious, Weak Armor may not even be worth the trouble), then this CAP will have been a failure. Add into this terrible situation a mediocre typing (in most battles, you'll be entering with 75% or less because of hazards, weak to pursuit, weak to Flying/Fire/Rock/Dark/Ghost which are common on fast sweepers), and we have a disaster waiting in the wings unless it gets stupid stats/movepool.

Therefore, assuming we want this CAP to be actually worth using in the highly-competitive OU metagame so we can learn from it, riskymon has to be viable. Given that typing alone is out the window, and no one wants to give this thing Mew's movepool or 550+ BST, we have to utilize our secondary abilities to compensate for other setbacks. Illusion seems to fit like a glove imo. We get to explore a kind of different kind of risk, early game/prediction based, as opposed to Weak Armor's predictable risk (you know the benefits beforehand of using Weak Armor while Illusion is highly variable from game to game). We get to explore something that hasn't really been explored much (sure, Zoro, but it doesn't work too well in OU and Zoro has a ton of restrictions based on its stat distributions). We encourage further risk with Illusion because it somewhat dictates the other members of your team (Illusion needs at least one SR-weak, spikes-vulnerable teammate to make full use of the surprise factor). And we get something that will allow riskymon to differentiate itself (and probably make it viable with better-than-zoroark stats) should Weak Armor fail.

tl;dr CAP might suck because weak armor might suck, so we need another alternative. For this, I think Illusion is perfect because of its contrast to Weak Armor and unquestionable potential in OU.
 
bmb, don't hate on Marvel Scale because of Sleep Talk. Abilities are decided on before movepool. Does everything learn Sleep Talk by move tutor in B/W2? Does everything learn Rest? Yes. But we can decide it doesn't. We could even decide to not offer CAP4 Rest. Would this strongly break precedent? Yes. But I'm usually really big on movepool flavor and requirements and even I know that's an unfair argument. Nothing about a CAP HAS to be in-game logical.

Heck we could decide CAP4 doesn't learn ANY TMs at all, much like several Bug prevos. It's CAP. We can do what we want.
 
@??????, can you please explain how No Guard is "obviously overpowered" when compared to Compoundeyes (CE)? CE gives a 30% accuracy boost, so anything with >77% accuracy is boosted to 100% accuracy. None of CAP4's potential STABs have less than 100% accuracy either way. Plus there are only a handful of moves that aren't boosted to 100% accuracy with CE. Some that come to mind are non-Spore sleep moves, some of the best coverage moves for certain types (Focus Blast, Thunder, Blizzard, Hurricane), and certain status moves. Even then, said status moves (eg Will-O-Wisp, Stun Spore) are brought to 97.5% accuracy. Plus No Guard has drawbacks . . .

Yeah, so I'm gonna go ahead and suggest No Guard. There were many arguments in the last thread about No Guard, I'll try not to repeat them. Instead I'll give my opinion on how No Guard (NG) works well with Weak Armour (WE).

Firstly, what exactly does WE do for CAP4? Well, it somewhat turns CAP4 into a glass-cannon-y typed pokemon. It trades defence for speed, risking an easy revenge (priority?) for a potential sweep. WE CAP4 is, in my mind, very offense oriented, kinda a glass cannon. But didn't we agree during concept assessment that CAP4 wasn't going to be a glass cannon, that it would be able to fulfil other roles too? So, here's my proposition for No Guard . . .

Risk versus reward bla bla bla, arguments were made for and against this during the last discussion. Anyways, No Guard works well for CAP4 because it allows for CAP4 to take on different roles than its WE counterpart. Risk and reward is no longer situational (as it is for WE) but rather constant. Birkal said that WE is late-game risk and Illusion is early-game risk; well NG is all-game risk. IMHO the best combination of abilities would be Weak Armour/No Guard/Illusion because they best exemplify this idea. What was I even talking about?

Right, NG allows CAP4 to fulfil roles that WE CAP4 can't do as effectively. For example, bulky offense. With NG, CAP4 has near perfect accuracy on its status moves. This allows it to cripple Pokemon that would otherwise stand in its way (100% accurate Toxic, 97.5% accurate Will-O-Wisp + Stun Spore). It also allows CAP4 to do something nifty, but not necessarily important: trap foes with its 100% accurate Bind/Whirlpool/Fire Spin for 4-5 turns and switch to another Pokemon allowing them to set up . . . the downside of course is that CAP4 is vulnerable to the same status moves, which inherently disadvantages it as a bulky 'mon. In the same vein, CAP4's STABs have 100% accuracy (thinking Megahorn and Zen Headbutt), but it's easily taken out by a SE or Fire Blast now (not to mention it can be easily revenged due to the lack of WE speed boosts). Again, this disadvantages it as a bulky 'mon from the get go. Point is that NG CAP4 plays a different game to WE CAP4. IMHO we should be experimenting with different kinds of risks altogether, not similar risks (eg stat boosting abilities).

All the arguments that I had when I started writing this have just walked out of my brain . . . so I might stop now, maybe come back and add some more to the discussion later :)
 
I'm not saying stone edge misses aren't game changing. They can be. What I am saying is that no one will intentionally switch a bug type into stone edge EXPeCTING stone edge to miss. Going back to that terrakion example, you switched in cap 4 expecting a stone edge. That chance of a stone edge miss would have had a negligible impact on your decision. Its nice that stone edge miss, but you were hardly counting on it. Think about it like parahad: its nice when it kicks in, but you dont make a decision expecting it to save your ass. The exception would be when Terrakion is sweeping your team. At that point, you may be relying on a stone edge miss to survive. In that case, yes, no guard impacts your strategy and is a risk. In every other case, its not.
 
Can't read, Nyktos and I clearly talked about switching into Close Combat and getting out predicted, not intentionally switching into Stone Edge.
 
On that note...

Why not Mummy?

We're already probably going to have a high base Defense stat due to Weak Armor, so most likely it'll be able to reasonably abuse Mummy. The risk comes in that whatever hit you take might've been better spent on obtaining a spe raise, say, if you get rapid spinn'd by Blastoise (who isn't OU relevant but this is besides the point). Thus, risk via opportunity cost. However, the potential reward of, say, completely screwing over a Scizor sweep by swapping in on a bullet punch and removing technician, thus eating a huge chunk of its damage by changing its ability, can be totally game changing -i.e., saving you from losing to BP technician sweep-. Or saving you from the wrath of BandTechniloom, a common set on the feared physical attacker Breloom.

I really see potential in Mummy.
 
It seems i am conveying my point badly. I will try one more time to explain my position and then let the matter rest because i can feel our argument begin to congest this thread. Our primary difference seems to rest on our respective definitions of risk. In my opinion, a risk is any negative factor that effects your decision making whereas, from what i gather, you feel risk is any negative factor. Yes, you would switch CAP into terrakion expecting a CC and not a stone edge. I agree completely. I'm saying that when you decide to switch in CAP 4, you automatically run the formula: (pros of switching into CC)- (cons of switching into stone edge) as opposed to the formula (pros of switching into CC) + (probability of a stone edge miss) -(cons of stone edge hitting). I personally always use the first formula and almost never the second, and therefore, to me, stone edge carries no strategic risk. You may use the second formula, which may be the cause of our different points of view, but in my eyes No Guard would only serve to limit the impact of probability in a game and not have any real impact on strategy itself. That, in a nutshell, is my stance.
 
Illusion has grown on me in principle, though I think it will completely outclass Weak Armour. The main reason I disliked it before was my preference to give CAP 4 roles that reflect how its user interacts with risk throughout the match. For this reason, I shy away from abilities like Illusion that focus on specific stages of the match. "In the early game, one should be more conservative as one scouts out the opponent's movesets and strategy." We know this.

On the other hand, Illusion does have the effect of exaggerating the contrast between the early game, when little information is known, and the later stages, when just about everything has been figured out. A properly built Illusion CAP 4 should still give us insight into risk in the late game as well as the early game. Ironically, this is exactly why I think it will obsolete Weak Armour... That and I don't believe that Weak Armour is specifically a late-game risk ability.

P.S. Some people seem to think I hate Illusion and would throw a fit if it won. Uh... Not really? Even without my recent warming up to it, I don't care that much either way. Maybe you'd throw a fit, but I see no reason to in this case. Just because you guys are drama queens doesn't mean I'm going to be.

And on that note...

NO GUARD

I initially didn't think that No Guard would pair very well with Weak Armour, and I wasn't going to talk much about it. However, there doesn't seem to be much that pairs much better other than Illusion or something. I'll probably get around to scanning all the abilities for what I said in my first post itt, but I'm not hopeful. The standalone arguments about No Guard have been said over and over, so I won't repeat them at length. People think it's contrary to the concept and even stupid, but I think it's more like it's counterintuitive. That's actually kind of why I still like it.

Anyway, I now think that No Guard might actually pair better with Weak Armour than it seems. The reason is that Weak Armour does a very strange thing to opposing inaccurate physical attacks, Stone Edge being the most relevant by far. If Stone Edge hits, you're rewarded with an injured CAP 4, but CAP 4 now has a Speed boost. If it misses, too bad, but CAP 4 doesn't get the Speed boost, either. The "hax" of Stone Edge missing is converted into something that's not necessarily bad. So what the player has here, if No Guard is paired with Weak Armour, is two choices. One can let the silly random-but-not-slanted scenarios happen, or one can do away with that silliness with No Guard. I think that the Speed boost from Weak Armour may be more tempting than people give it credit for. Speed is a very good, efficient stat, unlike the defensive stats and more than the offensive stats.

That's not all, though. IMO, Weak Armour would amount to boosting without using two turns to switch in and boost. In other words, Weak Armour would promote "quick" offense, i.e. CAP 4 would switch in and do as much damage as possible before it either makes a bad decision or is forced out somehow. The other avenue is the more traditional setup sweeper role, and in this case, accuracy affects viability greatly. If you want to sweep five Pokémon with Megahorn, well, you have a 44.4% probability of hitting them all. That doesn't sound like a smart plan to me. Anyone who's used something that has to rely on Focus Blast for coverage can attest to what I'm talking about, too. No Guard makes sweeping with inaccurate moves more viable, in exchange for the lack of a Speed boost. Again, I'd say the Speed boost could be more tempting than people seem to think...

The best part? I apparently know how to piss certain people off over trivial things with little effort, while they try to piss me off over the same trivial things and fail. And people say I overreact to things... *shrugs* Maybe I do, but over something like this? Really?

Asylum said:
As much as I loved No Guard and hated Weak Armor for our Riskymon, I think that slating No Guard again would be a slap in the face to the majority of the community who voted for Weak Armor, because I know that barring some crazy "nothing with below 100% accuracy" shenanigans during the move-set phase or some absolutely masterful stat engineering, I sure a heck would never use Weak Armor if No Guard were available to me just because of how darn risky Weak Armor really is (I can already hear Cloyster and its Skill Link making plans to skyrocket in usage).
Click to expand...

I look at it this way: Suppose No Guard is slated and wins the poll, and suppose it outclassed Weak Armor and everybody chose it in battles. Where is the slap in the face, exactly? In this scenario, the community chose No Guard, thereby slapping ourselves in the face, if anything. Additionally, I actually really like the fact that the metagame can slap us in the face by resolving our decisions in ways we didn't expect. We can be as democratic as we want. The metagame doesn't care. I do not get a say in how the metagame handles CAP 4 any more than I get a say in how the universe works.

Seriously, guys. This is a very important point. If we, as a community, pick abilities such that one outclasses the other, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We have no one to bitch at for slapping "the community" or "democracy" or whatever else in the face, because we did that to ourselves. Please don't be like "hurr durr No Guard already lost, present-us can't choose it now or else it might nullify past-us" or anything similar because it's completely nonsensical.

---

So yeah. Illusion and No Guard are cool. I probably said too much. There may be other great abilities that haven't been sufficiently argued for. I'm not all that hopeful about their existence.
 
What about a Weak Armour clone that raises (special) attack instead of speed, forcing you to chose between being able to beat poke A who is faster that +0 but slower that +1 and can be killed with +0 (special)attack, or being able to beat poke B who can tank a +0 hit but not a +1 and is out speed naturally by CAP 4,
Objectives: Risk: same as weak Armour
Reward: attack boost
team building risk: speed or power
seems to cover all of our bases to me, not necessarily the best solution but certainly something that deserves consideration.
 
nyttyn said:
On that note...

Why not Mummy?

We're already probably going to have a high base Defense stat due to Weak Armor, so most likely it'll be able to reasonably abuse Mummy. The risk comes in that whatever hit you take might've been better spent on obtaining a spe raise, say, if you get rapid spinn'd by Blastoise (who isn't OU relevant but this is besides the point). Thus, risk via opportunity cost. However, the potential reward of, say, completely screwing over a Scizor sweep by swapping in on a bullet punch and removing technician, thus eating a huge chunk of its damage by changing its ability, can be totally game changing -i.e., saving you from losing to BP technician sweep-. Or saving you from the wrath of BandTechniloom, a common set on the feared physical attacker Breloom.

I really see potential in Mummy.
Click to expand...
I agree with nyttyn's concepts about Mummy. It may even help out with the design of the Pokémon.

I also agree with the arguments being made about Marvel Scale. Another factor of the risk is seen like Milotic. If Milotic absolutely needs a Recover, and is Taunted, there is a risk factor of the Burn taking down Milotic. This could be spread to Psybug, and who knows, perhaps Psybug (with its inferred high Defense stat) could actually become somewhat of a risky Wall.
 
I'm all in for Mummy and No Guard. Why? I see that with mummy, you are giving up you're ability that might actually come in handy when taking something out, or giving you the speed boost from weak armor. But you gain a defensive edge hardcountering Scizor and the likes of which rely on their abilities. Both require getting hit so there is some duality there.

No Guard, all of the arguments have been made for this.I don't want to elaborate.
 
The thing about Marvel Scale is that the defense boost tends to merely cushion the blow of the status, rather than actually making up for it enough that Milotic or whoever would switch into status with glee.

Anyway, a quick look at the ability list was as disappointing as expected. Defensive abilities are just not that creative compared to the other ones. They are generic rewards like Intimidate and Poison Heal (which I doubt anyone wants) and/or weather-dependent like Rain Dish and Hydration. Clear Body, Mold Breaker and Rough Skin kind of make sense, Clear Body mainly to eliminate Intimidate users as counters to physical sets, Mold Breaker so that we don't have to tiptoe around Heatran, and Rough Skin so that the lack of Weak Armour is made up for by incremental damage. None of them seem all that compelling, though. In the "alternate Speed boost" department, we have Quick Feet, Rattled, Steadfast and Unburden. Rattled and Steadfast are far too situational, and Unburden is too much of a one-shot pony for my taste. So I guess Quick Feet could work, but I fear it may be too similar to Weak Armour to be worth pursuing.
 
bmb's point on duality and adecuate relationships between abilities and stat spreads is why I believe Moxie should be the secondary ability of CAP4. I won't bring up the same points I did in my first post for the sake of redundancy, but I would at least like to see some more discussion on Moxie, and see what other people think, rather than arguing about No Guard for the entire thread.

Also, nyttyn's idea of Mummy is interesting, but I would like to know the risks involved with that. As if now I the only downfall I see is 'Not getting the Weak Armor boost' which is hardly a risk, imo. However if someone can explain the risk factor of Mummy, I would definitely support that too.
 
Birkal said:
I had a conversation with DarkSlay about this on IRC a few days ago. I'm going to throw out some generalizations that arose from that conversation. I obviously think this stuff is spot on, but I'll leave it up for your interpretation.

Weak Armor allows us to explore late-game risk. For the most part, you aren't going to be using CAP4 with Weak Armor early on in the game. It simply is going to have too many checks to be of much use. If you do use CAP4 early, you'll get the boost, but your weakened defenses leave you as easy pickings for Scizor, priority, and Scarf-mons. And honestly, if you're running Scarf Weak Armor CAP4, then I don't know what's up with your strategy, haha. In general, you're going to wait until the end of the game to pick up the boost and sweep when your counters are removed. It tests late-game risk.

Illusion, on the other hand, lets us test out early-game risk. That ability is going to be used early-game, for the most part, due to its weakness to hazards. Illusion allows us to test out the concept of lures, which is something we've lost a little bit of in the transition to Gen5, in my opinion. With just Weak Armor, we won't be testing out early-game risk. That is why Illusion is the absolutely best complementary ability. It doesn't function very well late-game, but it works as an excellent lure at the start of the match. Illusion would allow us to check out risk at the beginning stages of a match.

Overall, Illusion and Weak Armor complement each other very well. One lets us test early-game risk, while our current ability will be working with late-game risk. I think that these two abilities would absolutely work best in tandem with one another to give CAP4 a plethora of risky situations to test out.
Click to expand...

I'd like to bring up this excellent post from Birkal, reinforcing a point brought up by BMB and others: Our primary and secondary abilities need to have both some kind of duality and synergy - for example, No Guard has neither with Weak Armor. Illusion is one example that does; Birkal explains it better than I can. I'd also like to throw my support for Moxie. If CAPmon has a boosting move, this forces the opponent into a position where they have to choose between attacking CAP4 and risking running into a Weak Armor set that's now fully primed to sweep, or switching out of CAP4 and letting a Moxie'd CAPmon set up for a possible snowball. There's risk from the opponent, and by definition, there's risk for the user just between the two abilities alone based on how the opponent plays and what they predict.
 
@nyttyn: while it's a cool ability, what does Mummy have in terms of risk versus reward that isn't to do with opportunity cost? All of CAP4's abilities will have some sort of tradeoff if you pick one over the other, as has been outlined. But Mummy? It does have a certain duality with Weak Armour, I'll give you that, but on its own it's just a rewarding ability with no risk about it. I don't hate Mummy as a secondary ability, I just think there are better abilities to consider. And by "better" I mean riskier.

Looking through the other suggested abilities, the only one (apart from No Guard) that I'm interested in is Illusion. A theoretical combination of Weak Armour/No Guard/Illusion would be great for CAP4 because all three abilities showcase a different type of risk versus reward. With WE it's entirely situational, but you have some control over the risk - play things right and things work in your favour, but play them wrong and you're screwed. To benefit from WE requires some skill, and requires some sort of forethought (eg get rid of Scizor first). NG is a different type of risk, with immediate and constant risks and rewards. No matter how you play the game you can't negate the effects of NG like you can with WE (with WE you can just switch out). Finally there's Illusion, which is risk very much grounded in prediction. It's less about what you do, and more about what you can make your opponent do in paranoia. I don't really have that much of an argument for Illusion actually, but I think it would be something interesting to consider!
 
I'm loving the idea of Anger Point. Having to hope for something that only occurs 6.25% (I think) of the time and gives a x2 (I think) boost to the move, it's not only unlikely that it will happen, but also that CAP4 will survive. And if it does, the opponent is in for a world of pain.

But that might be too much risk, and not enough reward. Another option I'm thinking of is Dry Skin. The risk? MORE fire weakness and weakness to sun teams. The reward, though, is the ability to go on a rain team or just work well in rain. And a immunity to a type it was previously neutral to. And finally, rain is pretty much the most common weather, or at least Politoed was the most used OU pokemon in August, so that's where that's coming from.

Last but not least, i think Normalize is a great ability. If not excellent, it makes for a great surprise factor, which can be the reward. Your opponent switches, i dunno, Weavile to a bug resist, and gets hit by a normal move? I dunno about effectiveness, but it would make a great laugh.

EDIT: Ok, Normalize was a joke.
 
Throwing my feather weight behind the likes of Moxie and/or Illusion. As I posted in during Primary Ability Discussions... Moxie, on one hand, forces us to play safe - except for the fact that CAP4 has to potential to be forced out very easily while being ripped off a quarter of its HP per switch-in. This means if we switch in at the wrong time, we're pretty much screwing ourselves upside down. Meanwhile, Weak Armour (yes, I want it with a "u") forces us to predict a resisted physical hit and start sweeping for as long as possible, since it'll unlikely get a second chance after surviving SR and a free hit.

Birkal had already put up his thoughts on Illusion, about exploring late-game risks versus early-game risks. With Illusion as a secondary ability, the battle will often turn into a mind game where the opponent attempts to flush out the Illusionist while CAP4 players will try to bluff Weak Armour for as long as possible.
 
kjt said:
@nyttyn: while it's a cool ability, what does Mummy have in terms of risk versus reward that isn't to do with opportunity cost? All of CAP4's abilities will have some sort of tradeoff if you pick one over the other, as has been outlined. But Mummy? It does have a certain duality with Weak Armour, I'll give you that, but on its own it's just a rewarding ability with no risk about it. I don't hate Mummy as a secondary ability, I just think there are better abilities to consider. And by "better" I mean riskier.
Click to expand...

The risk nyttyn was going for is being able to stop a sweep, or neutralize a pokemons ability. For example switch into scizor would take's it's technician bullet punch away if predicted right, or switching into a Salamence would take it's moxie away, taking away it's immediate ability to pull of a sweep. With enough bulk I really could see Mummy being a very viable option, The risk is obviously, you have to switch into these pokemon and stay alive, easier said then done, if mence predicts and fire blasts or scizor predicts and uturns ect, and the reward, is neutralizing some common threats abilities to hinder their ability to sweep. They way I look at it's a good check to a lot of common threats, but it could also bite the bullet quicker then it could wall them. Correct me if i'm wrong nyttyn. But to end this post i'm going to say that I heavily support the idea of mummy
 
At the monent Moxie is the most appealing to me; what with the whole speed vs attack vs the fact that if you fail with your goal you wasted around 25% of your hp for nothing.

However I would like to talk about Compoundeyes

Alhough I'm against No Guard, I see the point some people are making about all the fire blasts, stone edges (and even hurricnes outside of rain?) everywhere.

However while compoundeyes doesn't boost your moves to 100% accuracy, it does boost nearly all of them to 90% or above, making them generally very reliable. It also doesn't make your oppenents moves anymore accurate. Therefore I only see a reward in this ability and don't see any risk.

Not sure if I'm breaking any rules here as this is my first actually contributive post (been lurking since playtest of Mollux)
 
kevlarscale said:
What about a Weak Armour clone that raises (special) attack instead of speed, forcing you to chose between being able to beat poke A who is faster that +0 but slower that +1 and can be killed with +0 (special)attack, or being able to beat poke B who can tank a +0 hit but not a +1 and is out speed naturally by CAP 4,
Objectives: Risk: same as weak Armour
Reward: attack boost
team building risk: speed or power
seems to cover all of our bases to me, not necessarily the best solution but certainly something that deserves consideration.
Click to expand...

Seems like a pretty legit option to me. very similar to the classic scarf or band/specs conumdrum. We can call it Scattered Armour or Broken Armour. something like that :P
 
@The Exeggutor: Er, being able to stop a sweep etc. is a reward, not a risk . . . but I see you've elaborated, so to that I'm gonna say I'm a bit more supporting of Mummy now. Mainly because I like the idea of the reward. Still, IMHO we should explore different types of risks, not similar risks. Mummy and Weak Armour are two sides of the same coin - the risk is getting your ass whopped, with the reward being crippling your opponents or gaining speed boosts respectively. In terms of duality it works, but my concern is this: what is CAP4 to do after it Mummifies its opponent's ability? Once WE is activated your objective is pretty simple: defeat your opponent and then sweep. With Mummy it's much more variable. If the theoretical Salamence is non-choiced you'd switch out, fearing a Fire Blast. Assuming that hazards are up, you switch in, take hazard damage, Mummify, switch out, switch back in later, take hazard damange . . . with SR up it's 50% of your health gone, plus you're attempting to survive a CB Technician Scizor's Bullet Punch on the switch in. Mummy is great for forcing switches and general fun, but now I'm thinking that the reward isn't that great apart from forcing switches. I guess CAP4 could attempt to set up or something . . .

Long live No Guard and Illusion :D
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top