CAP 15 CAP 4 - Playtest [Done! See Post #71]

[Strategywin]

blissey doesnt learn harden IM ONTO YOUR SCHEMES LADYMENCE

It gets defense curl.

 

[ShiningFire]

Ok so I've been lurking around the forums during the process of CAP 4. I'm pretty caught up on all of Aurumoth. So today I've been around Showdown today and Ive been trying to climb the ladder despite my late start. (I've been using the name {Something Racist} because I can't remember my actual password to save my life). I also have been without a computer, or any Internet access, up until today.

Anyway, as this is only my second full CAP playtest, I think that the previously created Pokemon shouldn't be blocked. The environment that we test the cap in doesn't include the previous ones. We should not be testing a new cap as if the previous ones don't exist.

So that's my opinion and I'm sure there's other people that have thought of that.
Other than that, I've been trying out just about everything. So far I've found a double illusion is the most effective. I'm still trying just about anything I can find. Im hoping to finish in the top 30 like the Mollux playtest.

 

[bugmaniacbob]

Anyway, as this is only my second full CAP playtest, I think that the previously created Pokemon shouldn't be blocked. The environment that we test the cap in doesn't include the previous ones. We should not be testing a new cap as if the previous ones don't exist.

That's slightly missing the point of the exercise - remember, we designed this CAP for the OU metagame, not the CAP metagame, so it only makes sense to test this Pokemon in the OU metagame, doesn't it? After all, we're not just testing this thing for the heck of it - we're testing it to see how well our assumptions, theorymon and designing works in practice. This is a scientific experiment above all else. Remember, after the playtest is over, you can use all the CAPs in the same metagame - this is only for two weeks.

If your suggestion was to design CAPs for the CAP metagame rather than the OU metagame, then remember that this is a bad idea as only a few people know how the CAP metagame works, and that it's constantly changing completely as new CAPs are added, compared with an OU metagame that is both relatively stable and has a colossal player base.

----

For others, if you're complaining about how Aurumoth isn't risky or whatever it might be, you're missing the point of the playtest and the point of this thread, the former of which is to investigate the concept of risk through what we have designed, which might I remind you was designed to reward people who ran sets that were inferior by theorymon standards but which may work better than the standard sets under certain conditions, or whatever it might be, and the concept of consistency and how it applies to risk, and for the latter, to investigate this through talking about play experiences. You don't need to convince us that Aurumoth is not risky or broken or whatever - that's your opinion and that's fine, but all the same, it would be nice if you at least made an effort to try to investigate how the CAP works instead of dismissing it offhand or heaven forbid denouncing it based on your own personal interpretations of the concept - if you're doing that, you're not even attempting to learn something.

So anyway, I haven't had much time for playing lately, but I'd like to encourage you all with the following words of wisdom: "EIA EIA ALALA"

... that's it. Keep on trucking.

 

[DarkSlay]

So I've been doing a bit of testing with some different, over-looked Pokemon in the metagame. There's a few Pokemon that you might not be thinking of, but I believe really thrive off of the threats that have arisen during this testing phase. I'll start out with an Aurumoth defensive core I've been testing, and then later on I'll post some more unique Pokemon that can shake up your teams a bit:

Bronzong @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EV's: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
IV's: 0 Spe
Nature: Sassy
Moveset:
- Stealth Rock
- Gyro Ball
- Earthquake
- Toxic

Bronzong is one of those Pokemon that can take just about any hit from any Pokemon in the game, almost all neutral attacks and even some Super Effective attacks. What makes Bronzong so valuable in the Aurumoth testing phase, though, is its ability to reliably wedge itself between Aurumoth + Salamence/Dragonite cores. Bronzong is often knocked for not having an offensive presence (and is thus the lesser option under Jirachi), but what Bronzong has over Jirachi (no EQ weakness, higher overall defenses, a strong Gyro Ball) actually makes itself very useful when tackling some of the biggest problems in the metagame. Dragon Dancers like Salamence and Dragonite, very common here, have a difficult time trying to break through Bronzong, since their best option is either a Fire move (if they're running one over Roost, something that Dragonite usually favors) or...well, not much at all. Likewise, +1 Aurumoth fails to 2HKO Bronzong around 85% of the time (with a Life Orb), while Bronzong is guaranteed to 2HKO Aurumoth thanks to that +1 Spe boost of Quiver Dance (or Dragon Dance, but is 2HKO'd by a +1 Megahorn). The Special Defensive spread may seem like an odd choice, given that I've mentioned how Bronzong is designed to be up against a lot of Dragons, but the fact that Bronzong can take a lot of neutral Special attacks well helps itself overall while switching into common threats in the metagame, like Landorus-I. Bronzong is definitely more useful in this metagame than in the current OU metagame, so I'd say give him a shot if you're looking for a sturdy defensive check that can take advantage of the multiple Scarf users and Speed boosters in the metagame while having the defenses to put up multiple Stealth Rock layers (if needed against a Spin-heavy team). A good pair to Bronzong is:

Aurumoth @ Leftovers
Ability: No Guard
EV's: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Nature: Careful / Sassy
Moveset:
- Will-O-Wisp
- Wish
- Megahorn
- Protect / Zen Headbutt / Focus Blast

A very useful support-oriented set for Aurumoth, this set is designed to take advantage of Aurumoth's excellent 110 HP / 99 Def stats while also giving it ample opportunities to utilize Wish to heal itself or teammates. An HP pool of 424 after EV investment makes it a very valuable Wish passer, and its ability to completely shut down most Physical threats is very helpful for most teams. 100% accurate WoW effectively cuts opponents' Attack in half, making Aurumoth nearly impossible to kill Physically thanks to recovery. Megahorn is the obligatory Taunt-safe option, as it is STAB, has perfect accuracy and a high BP. The last move is personal preference and depends on what your team needs: Protect works well if you're playing Aurumoth very defensively or with Toxic Spikes support (like myself), effectively guaranteeing recovery while your opponent attempts to whittle away at your impressive Defense. Zen Headbutt gets STAB, loses its imperfect accuracy and hits Pokemon that can wall this set, like (ironically) Conkeldurr and Machamp, plus things like Terrakion, Tentacruel, and a slew of other Pokemon. Focus Blast is another option which hits Heatran hard on the switch for a potential OHKO after SR and a layer of Spikes or some residual damage, plus some decent hits on Magnezone, Ferrothorn, Lucario,
Skarmory, Forretress and Scizor (although most don't like WoW anyway). If you choose Focus Blast, run Sassy as a nature. -Spe might seem like it would hurt, but according to common sets, this only affects match-ups against Specially Defensive Rotom-W and Bulk Up Toxicroak, one of which is handled well by Bronzong and the other one isn't terribly common in this metagame (although you'll lose unless you run Zen Headbutt).

As a defensive core, these two are unorthodox, but work very well with both each other and for the team. I know what you're thinking: "DarkSlay, you silly goose, these two are weak to Fire!". To that, I say...yeah, you're right. They are. However, the other four spots on your team are still open, so if you have the right Pokemon to take advantage of this and patch up this weakness, this core works well. Besides that, Bronzong soaks up most Bug (neutral), Dark (neutral), Rock (resist), Dragon (resist), Steel (resist) and Flying (resist) attacks with ease, which is very, very useful for Aurumoth. This helps against things like Terrakion, Tornadus-T, and the Dragons especially. It's a bit harder to switch Aurumoth into Bronzong's spot, but if you predict a neutral Physical attack or a Fighting attack, Aurumoth usually gets a free turn. More importantly, though, Wish benefits Bronzong greatly thanks to the multitude of attacks it can switch into from Aurumoth, prolonging the usefulness of Bronzong. Due to this, SR is almost guaranteed to be up for most of the match regardless of Spinners. It's great, and I'd definitely recommend that you give it a try.

 

[ginganinja]

In any case, the "point" to Aurumoth, as I saw it in the design phase, was to give us a Pokemon that could run any number of effective sets, but crucially, the less ordinarily competitively viable ones would hold an advantage to them that mitigated the potential downfall, or risk, of using them in the first place. Hence, a risk in incorporating Aurumoth rather than using it. So far, I have seen plenty of Quiver Dancers, a few Scarf Gambit users and something that might have had a physical move, before I killed it. So I think I can say that Aurumoth has a standardised set core. I have also noted that a standard Quiver Dancer, for all its merits, is somewhat underwhelming as a sweeper - competent, but not stellar. Scarf Gambit is either a game-winner or a waste of space, depending on how I play it.

Yea I disagree with the last part of this post, mainly because I have found Quiver Dance to be exceptionally strong, while also being slightly tricky to handle. Birkal and I made a team which ended up being fairly successful until I got bored and stopped laddering with it because QD was so simple to use. You brought it in, you tanked whatever your opponent did (Illusion meant you could easily pull of a second quiver if they attacked) you quivered, you swept (bar lame misses with Hydro Pump), it was that simple. The number of scarfers that can actually OHKO Moth is pretty small without factoring in SR, so much so I could run Tanga Berry to handle Genesect and get to +2 easily, or any other type resist berry, to target the tiny number of scarfers that can revenge it.

I just wanted to highlight one small part of the quote above (sorry if I took it out of context) which mentioned the concept of Risk in incorporating Moth into your team, which I disagree with entirely. There is no real risk is incorporating Moth into your team, or using Moth entirely, its simply a SR weak pokemon, which just needs one free turn to set up and sweep. You can run a lot of sets on Moth, but to me, Quiver Dance is its flagship set, its - dare I say it, its best set, simply because it patches up the weaknesses of Moth in a single move, and the other 3 moves can pretty much be tailored to handle anything you want, due to that massive movepool. I have not really found a "downside", or really any negative to Moth (besides every half decent team over preparing for it) which really makes it difficult to me to understand the concept of Risk which (correct me if I am wrong) was supposed to address.

To me, Aurumoth is like Genesect, it can run lots of different sets, all of them good, with one set really pushing the boundries as to whether its a suspect or not (Quiver for Moth, RP for Gene). For reference, the General Description of the concept was as follows:

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

Aurumoth is not risky to play, by any stretch of the imagination. You can, quite simply, chuck it onto a team and do well, heck, most of my teams included Aurumoth because it was so good, simply adding it to my team made my team much more better. (Some people will know that currently this argument has been brought up a lot of times in reference to Genesect) Aurumoth has downsides, being weak to SR is the obvious one, but its bulk, Illusion, and Quiver Dance provide me with such a safety net in battle, that I honestly don't worry in the battle, heck, often its like, 'yep, im facing a Scarf Hydreigon here, but I have rain up and it cannot OHKO me even if it knew I was Moth so im sweet here and can set up and sweep now'. I don't really know how else to describe just how risk free Aurumoth feels when you use it, especially when its flaws can be handled so easily (Illusion can discourage super effective attacks (and your not setting up on a mon with super effective moves mostly anyway) and Starmie / Tenta can spin away SR which pretty much makes it near impossible to revenge you (for example Scarf Terrakion needs SR to guarentee the KO with SE iirc)).

My 2 cents

 

[Mdevil]

Aurumoth @ Chesto Berry
Trait: Weak Armor
EVs: 84 Def / 252 Spd / 172 SAtk
Modest Nature
- Quiver Dance
- Thunderbolt/Thunder (Because Rain is good)
- Ice Beam
- Rest

Here is a set I've been tinkering with a bit and it has performed quite well. At a quick glance there a few things you will notice. These are Weak Armor, Bolt-Beam, Resto-Chesto, and a Modest nature. I will admit that on paper this set looks stupid. Weak Armor is undoubtedly the worst among the three abilities with which Aurumoth has been gifted. This is most likely so. Still, I feel it has potential and I will work to find a set which brings that potential out. This set is, at it's core, about setting up. it sets up Quiver Dances until it's health is too low to continue, then it Rests and sets up some more, followed by a sweep. The problem with attempting to build a Rest-Chesto set on Aurumoth is that it limits it's coverage. While Psychic/Bug/Fighting is great, Psychic/Bug is not. There are then two plausible options about what to do in terms of coverage as well as keep a set-up move. Sadly, both of these require me to use a Special Aurumoth despite Dragon Dance variants being superior. These option are Bolt-Beam and Ghost/Fighting. both have a benefit and a drawback. Bolt-Beam's weakness is lack of a hard hitting move against enemy Aurumoths. Ghost/Fighting has to deal with either Focus Miss, excuse me, Blast's abysmal accuracy or Hidden Power Fighting's mediocre Base Power. Considering an enemy is not likely to bring in an Aurumoth on an enemy Aurumoth blindly due to most carrying a Bug move, I figure my variant should be able to handle an enemy after a few Quiver Dances despite only doing Neutral damage. Next on the list of stuff to explain is Resto-Chesto. My experience with the playtest, as well as what we discussed during building this CAP, is that Aurumoth is, at heart, a set-up sweeper. Resto-Chesto, as we all know, allows a pokemon a nice safe recovery, once. This is great for set-up sweepers. Set-up until you have low health, use your new-found speed to Rest before being hit with the finishing blow, then set-up some more. Weak Armor also fits in to this set-up style as it boosts Speed... duh. The last thing about this set is the Modest nature and the EVs. With Weak Armor and Quiver Dance working together to boost my Speed, there is no reason I should need a Timid nature. The Evs provide some good, though not amazing, Special Attack and Speed while also allowing Aurumoth to take a hit or so physically for the Weak Armor boost. That just about wraps this up. If there is one area where I want feedback the most it would definitely be the moves as while Bolt-Beam has good coverage, it has nothing great against Aurumoth.

 

[team grassfire]

Mdevil, I like the idea of chesto rest, but how does weak armor actually help it? I tried my own dragon dance set with weak armor, but it almost never peformed better than a quiver dance set. Anyway, about selecting moves with only two move slots, I believe you would be best served by either pyshock and focus blast (used this combo on a will-o-wisp quiver dance no guard moth), or bug buzz and thunder(bolt). The former leaves you walled by other moths, and psychic types in general, so since you expressed this as a concern I would use the latter. It leaves you walled by heatran, the blobs, and with a tough time against steels (scizor), ghosts (gengar...), and flyings (dragonite) not weak to electricity, but rain has no issues with many of these so definately go with that move set on a rain team. Good luck with the set.

tl;dr bug buzz and thunder(bolt) as attacks

 

[Birkal]

Has anyone been using No Guard with boltbeam coverage in the form of Thunder and Blizzard? I've been trying to run a set with QD / Bug Buzz / Thunder / Blizzard, but I'm not really convinced it's worth going for. It's true that boltbeam isn't as effective in 5th gen as it was last time around, but it's been kind of fun to toy with. In fact, I've been giving it a go on sun teams, and it's been interesting getting to use that kind of coverage on a sun team because usually you just spam fire attacks and abuse Chlorophyll.

Even though NG has been fun, I'm thinking that Illusion will still remain the best ability. My thoughts essentially echo ginganinja's. You can come in on so many threats and be guaranteed to set up at least once, if not twice. NG and Weak Armor are cool abilities, but the games you can play with Illusion is great. I bet that if we'd have more time to playtest, ability usage would level out a bit more; once your Illusion is exposed, it's worthless. NG provides stronger coverage and Weak Armor can set you up lategame, so I feel that once the metagame shifted to dealing with Illusion, the other two abilities would become more popular than they currently are.

 

[jas61292]

So, as many of you may remember, one of the many reasons I personally didn't want Aurumoth to have Quiver Dance was because of the similarity it would have to Volcarona. So, today I decided to test just how they compared. I, and many others, have already experimented with QD Auru, so I have been instead seeing how QD Volc works in the face of a meta focused on countering a QD user. Now, I thoroughly expected Volc to be a higher risk higher reward QD user, and I pretty much got what I expected there, but what surprised me is just how good it was in this meta.

Volcarona provides a few things as a QD user that Aurumoth just can't match. Going pure offensive Auru gives it a run for its money, but a Bulky QD set with roost best exemplifies the differences between the two. Now, I want to make one thing clear. It doesn't matter if they are bulky or offensive, 3 Attacks or 2, or anything else. Volcarona has a harder time setting up that Aurumoth. In addition, once set up, more common Pokemon wall Volcarona than wall Aurumoth. However, I am not going to say that this mean Aurumoth is just a less risky Volcarona. I don't even want to analyze risk here, as that is not really a fair way to compare Pokemon. I want to compare how good the two are. Of course, with all I have said so far, you might be thinking that Aurumoth is clearly better. However, I think that is wrong. Volcarona has a harder time getting in and setting up, and more things wall it. However, it ha ways to get around those wall. Aurumoth really does not have ways to beat its counters.

For example often times when I would get Volcarona in, people with switch to things like Dragonite while I QD. Now, I really have nothing against a Dragonite, and Volcarona has mediocre Defense. However +1 Bug Buzz does enough that unless it is fully bulky Nite, it cannot afford to just sit there and boost. It has to attack. And that puts it at risk for a Flame Body Burn. Volcarona also has Roost, making the chance of getting that burn is much higher. In fact, I would say that using this kin of strategy has let Volcarona beat over 50% of the Dragonite it has faced. This ability to beat its checks is even more valuable when they are quite common due to many of them also stopping Aurumoth. In addition, the popularity of Aurumoth itself is great as Volcarona will almost always beat it one on one.

Overall, I feel that while it may be harder to use successfully, when it comes to QD sweeping, Aurumoth is great, but Volcarona is the king. However, the ease of setting up and less need for team support may make Auru the superior choice to fit on a random OU team.


On a completely different note, pleas people, if you are going to use QDmoth, run a psychic move on it. Boltbeam is mediocre coverage compared to what else you can get in three moves, and as much as I like having my Terrikion take a +2 Ice Beam to let me revenge it, I don't want to win matches where I screwed up enough to let Auru set up twice because it is running a bad set.

 

[Bull of Heaven]

Yeah, after watching my Dragonite and its teammates get demolished by jas' Volcarona twice today, I'm definitely impressed. I think it's the only Volcarona I've seen in this playtest, and it definitely seems to be worth trying.

I've been running QD/Bug Buzz/Thunder/Hydro Pump on my Aurumoth for a while now, but I sometimes find myself wishing I had some other attack. I don't think I could use a two-attack Aurumoth; the 4MS would get too frustrating. Those of you that do run it: do you find that this is a problem?

My record has gone off a cliff lately, but one set that still does fairly well for me is DDTar with Fire Punch. Earthquake really isn't missed in this meta, and Fire Punch tears through tons of Genesect and Ferrothorn, which tend to just stay in. In fact, I've come across a few teams that have no real answer to DDTar other than Ferrothorn, although those may have only been at the lower end of the ladder. Of course, there's also the original reason I started using Tyranitar: to remove rain.

Speaking of Genesect, I'm generally fairly conservative about calling a Pokemon broken, but I think this one qualifies. I guess that's the least relevant part of this post, but it was a new discovery to me since I had never played BW2 before this playtest.

 

[Bughouse]

When I was running QD Moth on a Sun Team, I was running Bug Buzz, Thunder, and Focus Blast. There were many times I wish I had a Psychic move, not too many times I wished I had Blizzard. Of course, that's partly due to my specific team, and I don't want to generalize... but I think the buffed BoltBeam is overrated.

That being said, I've basically concluded personally that Sun, though I was very much in favor of it on Day 1 (see earlier post in thread), is not all that great. As usual.

 

[Delta Nite]

Spamming U-turn with ScarfRachi is awesome in this meta. I've more than often catched Illusion Moths off guard. I guess that would be effective with ScarfSect too, if anyone dared to keep Aurumoth in front of one...

EDIT: Also, ScarfRachi offers great support by Paralyzing QD Aurumoth, if U-turn is something you despise.

 

[Birkal]

I just wanted to throw up that the playtest has about nine hours remaining. Also, if you're one of the top contestants (like top 5) on the ladder, please PM me or post in this thread some identification that it is you. I can altcheck you and verify that it is indeed you, and you'll be recognized for your work! You can do this after the playtest is complete as well, but the sooner identification gets done, the better.

 

[Bughouse]

so I'm me... lol. I don't really believe in using alts.

That position #5 at the moment, may be higher or lower by the end idk, was achieved using 3 teams, with my most recent one being the most successful. If I'd laddered it separately maybe it'd have gotten me up higher, maybe not. I'm happy where I am.

EDIT: Also, how did Pwnemon gain like 100 points since I beat him earlier today. That's ridiculous lol.

 

[Base Speed]

Damn. I was 5th about an hour ago. Now I'm 8th with no hope of getting back up that high.

Oh well, I enjoyed the playtest anyway.

 

[sanches br]

Well i don't know what time is it in the server but i tried my best. I'm obviously RSsanches br and i'm also made in 3min

 

[S0L1D G0LD]

i like the no guard. here's my team, if anyone cares.

the team

Aurumoth @ Leftovers
Trait: No Guard
EVs: 252 SAtk / 252 Spd / 4 SDef
Modest Nature
- Bug Buzz
- Thunder
- Blizzard
- Quiver Dance
Heatran @ Leftovers
Trait: Flash Fire
EVs: 208 SDef / 252 HP / 48 Def
Calm Nature
- Lava Plume
- Stealth Rock
- Protect
- Toxic
Dragonite @ Choice Band
Trait: Multiscale
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spd / 4 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Outrage
- Earthquake
- Fire Punch
- ExtremeSpeed
Blissey (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
Calm Nature
- Wish
- Protect
- Toxic
- Ice Beam
Genesect @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Download
EVs: 252 SAtk / 252 Spd / 4 Atk
Hasty Nature
- U-turn
- Thunderbolt
- Flamethrower
- Ice Beam
Forretress @ Leftovers
Trait: Sturdy
EVs: 80 Def / 252 HP / 176 SDef
Bold Nature
- Spikes
- Rapid Spin
- Sunny Day
- Volt Switch

did i mention i love unusual sets and thhus am buddies with sunny day forry?

EDIT: well, mr. sanches, if you are so good, then how come i won even with a shit experimental aurumoth set? (sorry i just don't care for sub disable that much, maybe it was because i illusioned into my genesect, though.) and don't say sleep deprivation :P

 

[Delta Nite]

There was someone running Banded Ferrothorn earlier. I'd never seen one before. Anyways, it was a nice playtest. I was doing pretty well , 10W/2L with a 2100+ rating but then I lost quite a few matches, being the one against srk1214 that marked the beginning of the fall.

Aurumoth is indeedly not broken, nor dead weight. It's good and versatile Pokémon. When I got paralyzed by my own Magic Coated T-Wave, I knew...

 

[Birkal]

And just like that, the playtest is over! We've been working hard over the past two weeks to compete in these battles, so thanks to everyone who participated. I've taken a shot of all the non-provisional battlers and put it in the hide tags below.

Final Rankings

I'll let bugmaniacbob post some guiding questions here when he wakes up; I bet he'll have a few things to talk about. Until then, feel free to post your impressions of the playtest ladder and Aurumoth's role in it! Also, check out the CAP 4 Playtest Tournament which is currently in round two. We'll also likely be starting up Aurumoth's pre-evolution stages soon, so get pumped for those.

Here are our top five battlers on the CAP 4 Aurumoth Playtest Ladder! Congrats to user Windsong for winning the playtest! He had the highest ACRE at the end of it all, so great job to him. For his work, he'll be labeled as the CAP 4 Playtest Champion in site for the Aurumoth page. Also, he's been granted permanent voice (+) status on Pokemon Showdown!. The below five users ranked very high. If you had the alt 000nuggets, let me know and I can do an altcheck to verify you for second place. Thanks again to all who participated!

 ACCOUNT         ACRE     SMOGON ACCOUNT
----------------------------------
till i collapse 1943     Windsong
RSsanches br    1918     sanches br
noCAPintended   1917     demist
Pwnemon.2       1857     Pwnemon
srk1214         1776     srk1214

 

[Bughouse]

Hazards are even more important than normal. That's not all that surprising, given our CAP being weak to rocks and often being an Illusion set. Still. I underestimated even then how much they'd matter.

Chansey is really, really good. Many teams I faced lacked any notable Fighting coverage. At the same time, Fighting moves offered great switch-ins to Aurumoth.

Will-o-Wisp is very good on Aurumoth. I was against it getting Will-o-Wisp because I felt it would be too good. Then I went and didn't use it until I got around to my third team. Quiver Dance No Guard sets can absolutely run Will-o-Wisp and only 2 attacks. I was personally running upgraded BoltBeam, though I'm thinking Psychic/Fighting coverage would have been better for my team. This is especially good because when facing a non-Illusion moth, there is no confusion and many players immediately switch to their best option against a QD Moth. These are 99% of the time physical attackers, and burning them enables you to switch out and come in later once that check/counter is gone. Alternatively, it may instead enable QD set-up.

 

[sanches br]

If I had to describe this playtest in one word i would say: genesect. In the end it was more a refugee to genesect users than a test to aurumoth. Well aurumoth is really ok, it's ilusion is really predictable, the only problem is when you forget how much damage every poke has(that did happened a lot). the no guard set is fairly strong but stealth rock is a big let down if you are hoping to use aurumoth bulk in your favor. weak armor set? Did someone really used that?
My review to the playtest? aurumoth is ok, genesect is not.

EDIT: well mr SolidGold just because i forgot that forre was still alive and u won by beeing capable to sacrifice forre in order to change the attack of gene made your play much better? and just to say, by seeing your team it has major flaws aggainst rain offense(tornadus-t wrecking your team and toxicroak spelling your doom), and aggainst sun stall/offense(or u expect ice beam on blissey stoping a venosaur?), latias can sweep your team too(try using ice beam blissey to break a subs), or maybe keldeo sweep might happen, or maybe a terrakion sweeping too. just because you won one battle doesn't mean you're good at all. if there was something good in your team it was genesect, because it's a one man army.

 

[Base Speed]

I found Aurumoth very enjoyable to play with. I agree somewhat with the idea that the playtest was a haven for Genesect users and I was surprised how few people actually used Aurumoth on their teams (there was a point where only about half the teams I played had them). I guess perhaps it fulfilled its goal and was deemed to risky for some people to use.

In the entire playtest, I saw just 1 Weak Armour variant and I think it's safe to say QD and DD, along with not-terrible base speed killed any use for it, which is a shame.

Illusion and No Guard created an interesting choice though. As I believe they were intended to, Illusion gave people better opportunity to set up (I really enjoyed leading under either Illusion, catching people off guard, getting a Quiver Dance and punching holes in teams) while No Guard allows more immediate power but with more difficulty setting up.

Aurumoth's SR weakness along with the rarity of Quiver Dance among OU pokemon made it hard to keep an Illusion going for long - Dragon Dance should've had an easier time fooling people but seemed less popular for some reason.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I've read the thoughts of srk, sanches and Windsong and I'd agree with them mostly. Congratulations to you guys on your victories by the way.

 

[GRs Cousin]

The playtest was fun, and I'm sure we learned a lot. For me, Aurumoth has heavily showcased the risk in the move selection process (which definitely has Four Move-Slot Syndrome). There were many times where I wish I had just one more move to choose from... It made me think. I loved it. Additionally, I think Aurumoth has really, really made is apparent of how important speed is on a Pokemon. When we were designing Aurumoth, we had triality in mind for its abilities: three equally useful abilities for entirely different playstyles. Unfortunately, it's too apparent that Illusion and No Guard made Weak Armor almost completely unused. I believe the sole reason for this is because of Aurumoth's base 94 speed, which many people thought was just right (if on the rather slow side) for Aurumoth. With access to Illusion, Dragon Dance, and Quiver Dance, Aurumoth was more than capable of in terms of removing speed issues, however. Weak Armor became obsolete when we already had those two much safer moves to choose from on a decent base speed. We've learned that as a community, we tend to underestimate Pokemon's speed. The mindset is that if a Pokemon cannot beat another certain Pokemon's base speed, regardless or not if they are checked by said other Pokemon, that it loses to them (exceptions being to specifically slow and bulky mons such as Ferrothorn and Jellicent). Hopefully the playtest has shown us that we need to be muchmore picky in regards to choosing our base speeds for our CAPs.

tl;dr: Aurumoth has risky 4MSS and has shown how too much speed can mess up the plans for a Poke's use

 

[bugmaniacbob]

Sorry this is late, just managed to get White 2 set up and, well, you know... priorities...

First off, a very hearty congratulations to Windsong!

This is a bit iffy, but if it would be possible to in some way collaborate with Battling 101 and CAP? As Birkal said to me, they're both about learning things, and there's a huge amount of potential to integrate the two. First off, CAP draws a lot of newer players and players who are just generally not so involved in the competitive aspect of Smogon, and designing CAPs that relate to basic concepts of competitive Pokemon (let's say, for example, a perfect lure) would be really helpful to those players. Secondly, Battling101 tutors spend quite a bit of time discussing basic concepts with newer players, and establishing a temporary metagame to completely involve a person in learning about one or more of those concepts seems like an excellent aid for it to be taught more effectively. Just a thought!

This is perhaps something that can be visited after the current round of PRC topics as the vast likelihood is that whatever happens there will significantly impact upon any form of this proposal. For what it's worth, I like the idea, though it's not my place to discuss it further and anyway I'm not sure if the current process could support it...

---------

Anyway, the playtest. I won't bore you for too long with what I personally think of Aurumoth's performance - suffice to say that I'm not too happy with it, but on the other hand I think it's about as good as it could have been, given the circumstances. I think it's laudable that we jumped head-first into the Genesect metagame and came up with a rather cohesive Pokemon creation. It's not, perhaps, quite what the concept asked for in terms of "A Pokemon that is very risky to play", except in that there is a rather large discrepancy between its performance in different battles... or so I found. It's not, perhaps, as risky in the traditional sense as some existing OU Pokemon, though I would take issue with those sorts of comparisons. But it does seem to do what I asked of it, in that it does take a bit more thought to use properly to make it worthwhile, and all parts of the Pokemon contribute to this, rather than it being an ordinary Pokemon using a risky strategy (which I could argue is part of the charm of Volcarona and Cloyster). I could go on, but really, I'm sure you don't really want to read through all that. Suffice to say, I myself am far more interested in the community's response than my own opinion.

So, to start off with:

• 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?

These are the big questions that accompanied this concept at the beginning of the CAP. What do we think of them?

If I may, I'd also like to add a few of my own:

• Did you feel that you were able to collect wins more consistently using a single or several different sets?
• How do you think Aurumoth affected the metagame?
• How do you think the absence of Quiver Dance would affect this Pokemon's performance, particularly with reference to Weak Armour?

I ask the last question because this is one thing I was really interested in learning from this CAP, in terms of how Quiver Dance affected it in terms of risk. In my own opinion, we could perhaps have learned more had we not had Quiver Dance - but then again, possibly Aurumoth would have then been rendered unusable, at least as a sweeper. Or would Dragon Dance have simply usurped the role? It's a question that doesn't lend itself to an easy answer, and as this is the one part of Aurumoth's build that still irks me, I'd love to hear what the community thinks on the topic.

The one question I've deliberately left off is "how will it work now that Genesect is gone?". Pertinent, to be sure, but not relevant to the playtest. I can imagine that this will be a rather important question for the CAP metagame players, so I'll leave that to your overactive imaginations. For now, do concentrate on what's up above.

EDIT: OH, one last thing: If you have any replays, any at all, do please share them with us now! I was rather enthused early on in the playtest with the idea of keeping a library record of some of the playtest battles for future reference, and as such, as many games as possible of any quality would be greatly appreciated. For my own part... I only ever saved one replay, bar the inaugural - here. It's not a great battle, but that's what I'm relying on you lot for.

 

[Bughouse]

So... this is the only one I saved: http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/capaurumothplaytest4729692

Not necessarily the best showcasing of Aurumoth since they both died early. But it was me beating made in 3 min... (who was then saved by ladder overload).