CAP 15 CAP 4 - Part 5 - Stat Limits Discussion

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bugmaniacbob

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Be forewarned that there is no poll for this stage of the CAP. The Topic Leader will decide the stat limits for CAP 3 upon the conclusion of this thread.

/democracy

Stat Bias Limits

Stat bias limits set the general stat bias of a Pokemon from an offensive and defensive standpoint. Stat biases are not solely for limiting stats, but they also describe the overall build of the Pokemon in offensive and defensive terms. However, the stat spread is the only part of the project that will be constrained by Stat Bias Limits. There will be four stat biases selected and a total Base Stat Rating (BSR) limit. The Stat Biases are:

Physical Tankiness (PT)
The rating of the Pokémon's physical defence.
Physical Sweepiness (PS)
The rating of the Pokémon's physical offence.
Special Tankiness (ST)
The rating of the Pokémon's special defence.
Special Sweepiness (SS)
The rating of the Pokémon's special offence.
A spreadsheet for calculating the biases can be found here. The formulae themselves can be found here.

If you're a newer member of CAP, we highly recommend that you do some good lurking during this stage in the process. Read this page thoroughly to understand what exactly we're doing here. If you're still confused, check out some of the old Stat Limits Discussion threads for past CAPs in the CAP Process Archive.

Please note that this is not the place where we submit individual stat spreads, and that any attempt to do so will be considered poll-jumping and will be dealt with as such.

Below is CAP 4 so far:

Name: Risky Business
(formerly "Living On the Edge")

General Description: This Pokémon is very risky to play, but very rewarding if played correctly.

Justification: Many of the Pokémon that are successful in OU are relatively easy to play or have great "safe" options (e.g. U-turn). Yet, many other Pokémon look very powerful, but are less successful than they could be because of some large risks involved (e.g. Hydreigon), and some aren't successful at all (e.g. Honchkrow). This self-balancing concept intends to explore what it takes for a risky Pokémon to be successful, and how much inherent risk a Pokémon can get away with. It should be emphasized that this concept is NOT about luck management, but rather, it is about what the user can afford to do given his/her opponent's options, and vice versa.

Questions To Be Answered:

  • What is the relationship between risk and potential consequences, both positive and negative?
  • What kinds of inherently risky tactics are successful in the OU metagame?
  • Do risky Pokémon need some form of safe options (e.g. switch-ins) to be successful in OU, or can it get away with having few really safe options?
  • How does Substitute, a well-known "safe" move with nearly universal distribution, impact how this Pokémon is built and played?
  • How do existing Pokémon use and deal with risky situations?
  • Can risky Pokémon be played well in the early game, or are they better off put into action later on?
  • How do different playstyles interact with risky situations?
Typing: Bug / Psychic
Abilities: Weak Armour / Illusion / No Guard
 

bugmaniacbob

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And finally, we're done with abilities. We now have in our possession the veritable triumvirate of Weak Armour, Illusion, and No Guard – so hopefully everybody came out of that stage happy. And if you didn't, kindly keep your thoughts to yourself.

Anyway, here we'll be talking about stat limits. This requires a bit of an explanation for newer users, which you can find in the above post – but since I'm nice and I want as much participation as possible, I'll go over it in simple terms. Essentially what we are doing here is deciding how good, objectively speaking, the stat spread itself is actually going to be, in four different categories – and when it comes to the time to submit stat spreads, all submissions will have to be within the ranges decided upon in each of these categories to be legal. For example, if I were to decide that this CAP should have "Excellent" Physical Tankiness, you would have to adjust your HP and Defence stats such that the PT value in the Excel calculator (found in the OP) is between 175 and 199 – an example of such a Pokemon would be Gliscor. So, bear in mind that in very simplified terms, PT refers to HP+Def, PS refers to Atk+Spe, ST refers to HP+SpD, and SS refers to SpA+Spe. The overall BSR refers to all of the stats together – have a play with the calculator to get a general idea. There will also be ODB and PSB, which you will have to submit, but these will not be set.

So, anyway, that's the general idea. Now, given that this CAP is to be designed to accomplish as many roles as possible, or similar, my initial thoughts on this matter are simply to have "Very Good" across the board (you can tell how much thought I put into this), which gives us a way of acting, offensively speaking, both physically and specially, as well as not opening up any sort of defensive weakness, and at the same time giving us wiggle room in both HP and Speed, both of which I feel are the most important stats for this Pokemon. I have also heard arguments both for an "Excellent" PT and a "Good" ST, in order to increase the risk by limiting what CAP4 can comfortably switch in on, while also making Weak Armour more easy to use – though I am unsure whether or not that is a good thing, I'd like to see more opinions on this. Another point, naturally, is that CAP4's big resistances are predominantly physical in OU.

As far as the overall BSR is considered, I don't think that "Excellent" is out of the question, as our typing and abilities, while not bad, are not exactly stellar, and I feel that CAP4 needs to have a solid stats base in order to be used effectively – having said that, this area is one where I feel that I ought to alter the standard limits slightly as anywhere close to 400 is far too high (also, if it wasn't clear already, I want to shy away from setting specific limits as much as possible, as I feel that that is overly, well, limiting. Another consideration is the large variation in HP and Speed that people seem to favour, so I would like to make a provision for that as well. There are many different directions we can take this CAP in, after all.

Thoughts?

PT: 171.1991
ST: 150.9317
PS: 155.0201
SS: 159.4294
BSR: 354.9255


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BMB's obligatory Topic Leader footnote gimmick - My Top 15 Arthropods

#9 The Tailless Whip Scorpion





Fascinating Fact said:
To be honest I like them because of how evil-looking they are, despite the fact that they are very docile and totally harmless to humans. They are also rather blind (despite the eight eyes) so use their spindly front legs as feelers to find their way about, as well as the sensory faculty of the pedipalps (the big evil claw things). These are also rather nice for grabbing things as they fold inwards – quite apart from also being huge.

Not to be confused with Whip Scorpions, which are entirely different (and have whips… and shoot acid from their abdomens) or Short-Tailed Whip Scorpions, which are also entirely different (really who comes up with these names).
 

jas61292

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I have also heard arguments both for an "Excellent" PT and a "Good" ST, in order to increase the risk by limiting what CAP4 can comfortably switch in on, while also making Weak Armour more easy to use – though I am unsure whether or not that is a good thing, I'd like to see more opinions on this.
As the person (or one of the people, if anyone else was making the same arguments that I didn't know about) who is of this opinion, I would like to go into a bit more detail as to why I think this would be the best way to go about things. To start off, we need to look back at what we have decided so far. Yes, our typing could be seen as suboptimal, but it is by no means bad. A single Stealth Rock weakness is not enough to make a Pokemon risky on its own. And for abilities, while we have one with an obvious downside in Weak Armor, the other two carry risk in other ways much more dependent on the rest of the build. Basically, what I am trying to get at is that if we simply give this Pokemon all around good stats, when running No Guard or Illusion, there will likely be little risk involved at all. Additionally, we can't wait until the movepool stage to provide this risk, or else we will likely end up producing something in the vein of many low tier high BST Pokemon (including many legendaries) in that they are not risky, but are simply not good. No, in order for there to be sufficient risk in using this Pokemon, there has to be a flaw in the stats that makes it a risk to use, even if it is otherwise very good.

Now, in my opinion, this flaw should be in its Special Tankieness. As we decided earlier on, mixed offenses are important to this Pokemon, but even if they weren't, lacking power from one side of the offensive spectrum is not a flaw that matters in competitive Pokemon. While the ability to go mixed is nice, the vast majority of OU Pokemon cannot do this, and it doesn't matter because specialization in one is generally far more effective anyways. So, for stats to have a risky flaw offensively, they would really need to fail on both the physical and special side, which doubly goes against what we want. In addition, in order for Weak Armor to work, the Speed stat must be calibrated properly, meaning that we are limited already on what it can be, and can't afford to put any more risk in there than the ability already provides. As such, I think it is clear that risk must be provided by a weakness on the defensive side of things.

Since the early stages of this project, I have always thought Cloyster was the exemplification of a risky Pokemon, and I think now it serves as a better example than ever. Its huge defense lets it come in on almost any physical attack, but you can't just throw it in at any time, as its Special side is so weak that even resisted special attacks may threaten to KO it. I think a similar case would be necessary for CAP4 in order to insure that sets with its secondary and tertiary abilities carry sufficient risk.

As for why special weakness and not physical, I think it should be obvious by this point that having defense would be far more useful to CAP4 than special defense. It needs the ability to take physical hits in order to activate weak armor, and the most important of the things it resists and would be switching in on are generally physical. At the same time, special bulk does almost nothing for us. Few key resistances are important on the special side, and nothing we have decided on relies on special bulk. It is simply an unnecessary facet for this Pokemon to have.

I think it is incredibly important that we seize on this opportunity to inject risk into CAP4 by making it weak on the special defensive side. Giving bulk when bulk is not needed is pretty much the exact opposite of making a risky Pokemon. It is an attempt to play it safe in all situations, and one we have explored in many previous CAP Projects. If we really want to provide risk on this pokemon, we have to make sure it has a major vulnerability, and I see no better place to provide it that here.

That being said, I am all for having significantly higher physical bulk. It needs to be able to take the physical hits for Weak Armor to be useful, and having physical bulk, especially on what is likely to be a more offensive or support than defensive Pokemon is a nice reward that you would receive from using it over similar Pokemon.

As I said on IRC last night, in my opinion we should be looking at a PT of Excellent, but a ST of Above Average. While I did mention potentially giving people some wiggle room by setting the limit at Good for ST, I am starting to feel this would be a bad idea. We need that statistical flaw that makes this pokemon a risky choice, and limiting something to Good bulk is not really a flaw at all. While I personally would like to see ST in the range of Below Average or worse, I feel Above Average would allow for more variety in spreads while still guaranteeing an overall weak special bulk.
 
I was going to make the exact same points as jas, but upon refreshing to look for ninjas, jas already stole my thoughts exactly. I cannot agree enough that we should avoid having any extraordinarily high ST, due to how it's bulk we really don't need. In addition, if we're really going to argue that No Guard is risky, then moves like Hurricane and Fire Blast should be able to always KO, even with maximum SpD investment, or else a large portion of the risk in choosing No Guard becomes moot.

In regards to offense, we should have "Good" PS and SS, with a little more strength in PS. The ability to mix is important for CAP4, but it should be noted that the metagame is much more physically bulky than it is specially bulky, meaning that if we really are to rely on physical sets as much as special sets, CAP4 will need an extra edge upon boosting, otherwise between Hidden Power and the coverage moves we get, I'd find it hard to imagine that any physical sets would be good enough to use instead of things like Cloyster, Haxorus, or Salamence.
 

Bughouse

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jas ninjaed everything exactly. Not convinced that Excellent BSR overall is a good idea. I should think that would inherently unrisk-ify the whole process. Bug/Psychic is hardly bad. The abilities we have are hardly bad. The movepool this thing needs to have with Bug/Psychic is gonna be good on STAB options but weaker on coverage, pretty typical for CAP. Honestly, the stats is what HAS to be perfect for this concept to remain even remotely risky. And I don't think Excellent overall is gonna do that for us.
 
Finally, the part I've been waiting for.

Alrighty. I'm probably gonna get crucified for this, but I propose we give Risky Below Average PT. The reason? Risk. Where the risk of letting something with high physical tankiness take a physical hit for a speed boost? Would there be a risk to letting, say, Skarmory take a physical hit? I don't think so, not with good prediction. I mean, yeah, if you totally miss predict and switch into, I don't know, Infernape Flare Blitz or something, there's risk. Otherwise, not so much.

I say we give it enough physical bulk to handle weak and middle strength resisted hits and weak neutral hits to give it something to switch into, but make it physically weak enough to make you regret mispredicting. However, we should give it Very Good Special Tankiness, to help give it a change to set up, or just sweep depending on what moves we give it.

As far as offenses are concerned, I say Very Good Physical Sweepiness, and Excellent Special Sweepiness. This give it the ability go in either direction, but makes it's special attacks a bit more potent.

Urh...I just realized everything I said is almost exactly opposite what BMB said...still, I'll stand by my statement. I already knew my ideas would be controversial...now I know exactly how controversial.

EDIT: Since everyone's been talking about what BSR to give it, I thought it prudent to mention the stat spread I've been looking at, with the limits I just suggested, gives it a BSR of Very Good. I absolutely see these limits as making it a risk to use, but having a very high reward if you pull it off.
 

bugmaniacbob

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many a word
You make a lot of solid points, and as I do feel that we need to economise on the stat effectiveness in some capacity, I agree that ST is the best place to do it in. It adds a good deal more risk to the switching-in game while still, if a greater PT is agreed upon, leaving CAP4 with plentiful opportunities to switch in. I don't think there's anything there I disagree with, and I read it through multiple times to be sure.

As such, I'm revising my rough ranges to the following:

PS: Very Good
PT: Excellent / Very Good
SS: Very Good
ST: Above Average / Good
BSR: Very Good

In regards to offense, we should have "Good" PS and SS, with a little more strength in PS. The ability to mix is important for CAP4, but it should be noted that the metagame is much more physically bulky than it is specially bulky, meaning that if we really are to rely on physical sets as much as special sets, CAP4 will need an extra edge upon boosting, otherwise between Hidden Power and the coverage moves we get, I'd find it hard to imagine that any physical sets would be good enough to use instead of things like Cloyster, Haxorus, or Salamence.
Note that with Good PS and SS, you are essentially about as good offensively as Kingdra (but without the Dragon STAB, Dragon Dance, and complete coverage over nearly everything in two moves), which isn't really good enough for a set-up sweeper or indeed many offensive roles at all. Very Good is really the minimum required for both, though I do agree to an extent that PS should be higher than SS, if only because Bug and Psychic both have more reliable special moves.

jas ninjaed everything exactly. Not convinced that Excellent BSR overall is a good idea. I should think that would inherently unrisk-ify the whole process. Bug/Psychic is hardly bad. The abilities we have are hardly bad. The movepool this thing needs to have with Bug/Psychic is gonna be good on STAB options but weaker on coverage, pretty typical for CAP. Honestly, the stats is what HAS to be perfect for this concept to remain even remotely risky. And I don't think Excellent overall is gonna do that for us.
Bear in mind that with ST decreased to Above Average there is little reason to run an Excellent BSR, so I've already dropped that down to Very Good regardless.
 
I really like Mr. Holiday's ideas. The whole "low PT increases risk" thing is pretty intellegent. With Weak Armor, you're pretty much saying "come at me, bro" to the opponent. The player would have to roll the dice with whether or not the attack would KO. Good idea.

As for the others:
PT: Below Average-Average
ST: Good-Very Good
PS: Excellent-Fantstic
SS: Excellent-Fantastic

I see this CAP becoming an incredible offensive threat, but with lower defenses and a mediocre speed stat that can only be boosted with Weak Armor.

As for BSR, I think something in the middle or upper part of the Very Good category would work just fine.
 
I'm not sure it's best to limit both offenses and BSR to Very Good. I think that this will unnecessarily limit the stat spread submissions, especially since, as we know, Speed in particular has a huge effect on the sweepiness ratings. For the sake of keeping the Speed discussion alive, we should perhaps relax the BSR limit or the sweepiness limits (or both).
 
Given that Weak Armour seems to be the main focus of this CAP (at least, the majority of discussion degenerate into Weak Armour discussions), we are going to want to make it capable of making use of Weak Armour. In my eyes, this means able to take at least 3 neutral physical hits and remain standing, or 2 SE physical hits and remain standing.

Zoroark's status with Illusion is primarily due to its abysmal bulk. Illusion would probably be the more viable option over Weak Armour if Special Tankiness was why.

I would like to see CAP4 be a Physical Sweeper over Special Sweeper. No real reason, other than to see a great Physical Psychic pokemon.

As others have kind of pointed out, a low PT would increase the risk of CAP4. I understand the need for risk on the Riskymon, but it is too fine of a line to walk and keep Weak Armour a viable option.

Physical Tankiness (PT)
Average / Above-Average
Physical Sweepiness (PS)
Very Good / Excellent
Special Tankiness (ST)
Bad / Below-Average
Special Sweepiness (SS)
Average
 
Take all of this with a grain of salt, as I am not very experienced in CAP:

I think to make Weak Armor risky, a PT of Above Average-Good would be in order. If you have Weak Armor but physical defenses, then you just take a physical attack like a boss and your speed increases, too. ST should be Very Good-Excellent, so that you can still take some nice special attacks and live. I think PS and SS should be equal or near equal, like PS of Excellent, and SS of Very Good.

PT- Above Average-Good
ST- Very Good-Excellent
PS- Very Good-Excellent
SS- Above Average-Very Good

BSR-Very Good
 

MCBarrett

i love it when you call me big hoppa
Definitely agreeing with everything being said about an excellent PT and a quite vulnerable ST. But cape is right that we need to give room on the PS and SS sides. The speed stat needs to be specified to weak armour as he said and than an attacking stat must be decided upon after that. And although this isn't necessarily what i'm looking for, i don't think we've decided against one superior attacking stat being an option so that may end up being rather high and would then restrict the speed stat if the limitations are set too low right now.
 
Perhaps it's because I'm new but I've been lurking a bit, and I'm wondering if it is advisable to limit the offensive stat limits to very good. I know we're trying to avoid simply categorizing risk as a glass cannon but the opposite side of risk is reward. And although Very Good is just that Very Good, the offensives need a better selling point. The only reason rational people consider risk is for the potential reward. In my opinion a Very Good chance of a reward doesn't cut it.

We don't want to create a riskymon that simply plays the role of a tank. Now I'm not suggesting making both PS and SS Fantastic and/or Amazing. But rather one of them, preferably SS should be Excellent. This pairs nicely with the generally specially based typing of Psychic and would allow riskymon to perform with a nicer movepool of STAB biased to the appropriate stat.

I do agree with others that for Weak Armor to be a usable ability this riskymon has to be able to take a few hits. But giving it two high defensive ratings is not in vein with the concept behind this pokemon.

Thus my proposal as of now regarding stat bias limits is:

PT: Very Good
ST: Above Average / Below Average
PS: Very Good
SS: Excellent
BSR: Very Good

Responses to my reasoning are appreciated. So that I may learn and better contribute to the next CAP project.
 
Agreeing with jas' post in regards to how the defensive side of our CAP should look. We need our CAP to be statistically exploitable in more ways than just Speed to fulfill our goal, yet we also need to give it the capability to work in tandem with the tool we've given it in Weak Armour.

As for offensive capabilities, its kinda already decided that this poke will be in the realms of average in the speed department, and thats what we've been building around, which tethers us to a degree in regards to the PS/SS. The other thing that I feel tethers us is the fact that this mon is supposed to be very rewarding- and with the previous point of average speed in mind, to get the reward that we want I feel we need to be hitting more than just decent/high attacking stats. We need to make this thing worth the risk, we don't want to sit there during the playtest and going "why not just use Salamence?". I feel we need to make this pokemon absurdly rewarding when used right, yet not stupendously hard to make use of, like Medicham, Ursaring, and other incredibly threatening yet risky pokes that never see the light of day (but still not easy).

All this means I ultimately feel our CAPs offensive stats are pidgeonholed already, and were ultimately pidgeonholed from the moent we decided to go with Weak Armor. With this in mind I propose these biases-

PT- Very Good/Excellent
ST- Below Average/Above Average
PS- Very Good/Excellent
SS-Very Good/Excellent/Fantastic (I believe we threaten more with a slightly more specially offensive bias, since special walls tend to be more dedicated to special walling than physical walls to physical walling, which makes them easier to break physically thus needing lesser dedication from our part...eh, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself)
 
No Guard is a powerful ability. If CAP4 had a bad tankiness, it would not be a great risk to play No Guard. The higher CAP4's physical tankiness is, the higher is the motivation to use Weak Armour ... Consider that Illusion has a psychological effect. If you see CAP4 and Tentacruel in the team preview, you might think that CAP4 has Illusion, even if it doesn't have.

Because of Weak Armour and No Guard I think more about a physical tank which can turn into a sweeper if its ability is used correctly.

I think the following stat biases would fit best into CAP4's concept:

PT: Fantastic
ST: Above Average (CAP4's Achilles heel)
PS: Very good (This means: high Atk, low Speed)
SS: Good

BSR: Very Good
 
Just wanted to say I agree with BMB and jas both on the points they make. The overall feel with an exploitable weakness in the stat spread is a good way of keeping CAP4 risky, and of all the possible areas, ST seems the way to go.

I don't think the current stat limits are too harsh, either. At least the stat spread I had in mind fits under these (or even further below them). I'm sure we can work out something with those stat limits.
 
Why do we need to change what BMB set?

Everyone is suggesting a low PT, but that would just mean ABSOLUTELY NO ONE is going to use Weak Armor, if we stick with a Very Good PT, Weak Armor will get more use.

Also the Very Good PS and SS are fine because we WANT this mon to go mixed, not Special so let's just keep them there.

ST can stay, I think it should be Below Average-Above Average instead of Above-Good but other than that, I think that BMB's limits are perfect!
 
If PT is above average or worse, Cap4 would have too hard a time getting the weak armour boost, boone would run Weak Armour over Illusion or No Guard.
With Very Good or Excellent PT, Cap4 can switch in on a physical resisted attack, get the spd boost, and then not fall victim to any stray priority attack. I agree with Jas that ST should be Above Average or Good.

Edit: agreeing with everything Subway said
 
My mind is stuck in a back-and-forth between favouring PT or ST. On one hand, sacrificing ST will reduce the viability of Weak Armour (in my mind, anyway). I know if I was choosing a low-ST CAP4 counter I'd chose a special attacker, because A) it's just plain easier to defeat CAP4 with special moves and B) I don't run the risk of activating Weak Armour at all. On the other hand, we need to find the balance for PT - if it's too low then CAP4 can't survive the physical hits it needs to survive in order to use Weak Armour effectively; if it's too much higher than ST then people will just favour special moves which are more effective at taking out CAP4. That's why I feel CAP4 should have roughy equal PT and ST. I'd favour PT slightly, so that it's the better "base" option, but after a Weak Armour defence drop it's the worse of the two defensive stats. That makes an interesting team building choice too (for playing against CAP4): do you pack a specially-oriented counter to target the lower special defence stat, or do you pack a physically-oriented counter that can play off the Weak Armour defence drops? Basically I think PT and ST should be roughly equal, but we should favour PT slightly. That being said, I'm unsure of what specific PT or ST CAP4 should have . . .

In terms of offenses I'd be biased toward a higher PS, but SS shouldn't be so awful as to make a special set unusable. I'm thinking now in terms of No Guard. Of the lower accuracy moves that CAP4 might enjoy using, many of them are special (Blizzard, Thunder, Focus Blast). Physical, assumedly Weak Armour, CAP4 would have the higher offensive stat (attack), but special No Guard CAP4 would carry the more powerful, otherwise inaccurate, moves. That's not to say WE CAP4 won't use special moves, or No Guard CAP4 won't use physical moves (Megahorn?), but these are just my initial thoughts.
 

MCBarrett

i love it when you call me big hoppa
Also the Very Good PS and SS are fine because we WANT this mon to go mixed, not Special so let's just keep them there.
Why is it so important to make cap4 mixed? i think arguments could be made for either a high PS or SS and if we dont allow that wiggle room for the submissions than cap4 could be limited offensively which is definitely something we dont want.
 
BMB has stated (at least on IRC) that he wants mixed offences. So I'm just listening to the TL.

Also, having Very Good in both offenses is PLENTY of "wiggle room" and very unlikely to "limit offences"
 
I suspect that people think Very Good offense limits will be sufficient because they've already made up their minds on their builds. In particular, I suspect that people have made up their minds on the kinds of Speed levels that they want. I'm beginning to suspect that CAP 4 may want to be decently fast and decently powerful. Throw the desire to have decent mixed offenses in there and we might quickly run into a problem. In fact, if anything, relaxing the BSR and/or offensive limits will (I think) make good mixed offensive builds more likely, not less.

I'm saying all this because I'm really wondering now about what we're going to do with the Speed stat in particular. Offhand, I find a build similar to Latias, with physical bulk instead of special bulk and more Attack, rather appealing. Of course, Latias has "Fantastic" grade Special Sweepiness and high "Excellent" grade BSR, and I'm not necessarily suggesting we should go as far as Latias on most of the stats. I suppose it's worth fishing for ideas about this thought, though.
 
I think CaP4's speed is a bit of a complicated issue, which will then reflect upon the sweepiness stats. I actually think having CaP4 of middling or low speed, but with high physical bulk and offensive stats could be quite helpful for it. Consider that it gets an ability designed to boost speed, an ability that in practice would let it spam more powerful moves, and an ability that would allow it to bluff without necessarily needing speed. If CaP4 can already outpace a good deal of the meta, what use does it have for Weak Armor when it could have speed and power with No Guard or speed and surprise with Illusion? In order to make the speed boost relevant, CaP4 would need high physical bulk, high offensive stats, and subpar (or at least not excellent) speed. I believe this translates to very good offenses and the excellent physical bulk that has been suggested.

EDIT:

With that said, I feel like the current limits do reduce the amount of viable approaches quite a bit. Consider that stat spread creators will come up with their own ways, and limiting it to "high physical bulk good offenses low special defence" is a bit of a shame and leaves little freedom to either the designers or the community. While I believe that the approach outlined above is optimal, it would be counterproductive to make this who can make the best stat spread that does effectively the same thing as every other stat spread.
 

MCBarrett

i love it when you call me big hoppa
I think a good example of a potential stat spread that would be considered excellent in an attacking category is gyarados. Gyarados has a pretty lackluster speed stat, but it does troll some of the base 80s in the tier so it is usable before boosts. It also has a similar ability in moxie. Now gyarados does have a pretty abysmal special attack stat so that likely wouldn't stay the same as bmb is apparently looking for mixed attacking options, (which i don't disagree with at all). But basically the point that i'm trying to make with this comparison is that an excellent rating in either sweepiness category would not be too overpowering or not risky enough, and that it would fit the stat limits of weak armour quite well. Also, mixed attack doesn't have to be stats that are nearly exactly the same, say both being very good for example. one stat could be rated excellent and the other could be rated good just to give more coverage options.
 
So do we choose just one rating range per category, or do we choose a lower and upper bound? I was under the impression we just chose upper bounds in this stage...

Capefeather makes a good point in that we have brought up a lot of "requirements" in discussion that the cap should:

-be able to sweep on both the special and physical side
-have enough defense to make use of weak armor
-have enough speed to take advantage of weak armor

Basically this requires three of four categories to be strong; I have a feeling that we will have to make compromises on some of these. I think because of this we should leave a good amount of leeway in the individual categories (if possible), so that those submitting stat spreads have room for creative compromises.

A simple "working spread" for me might be:

PT: Excellent/Fantastic
PS: Very Good
ST: Below Average/Average
SS: Very Good

We shouldn't be afraid of weak Special Defense. CAP has a history of balanced defenses, and the only real weak defenses are on glass cannon mons with both tankiness ratings low. Throwing a highly unbalanced spread on this would certainly lead us into unexplored (for CAP, many real pokemon have unbalanced defenses) territory, and definitely would provide a great risk/reward dynamic to a pokemon with good offensive presence like our CAP is supposed to have.
 
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