Name: Type Equalizer
Description: A pokemon whose presence in the metagame increases the usage of one or more underused types and simultaneously decreases the usage of one or more overused types.
Justification: Take a look at the OU usage statistics for January and you'll see that 9 out of the top 10 pokemon have either steel, water, dragon or fighting as one of their types, and extending it to the top 20 shows 16/20 with those types. We should also be asking ourselves why these trends exist so strongly and what can be done about them. In creating this CAP, we'd have to discuss in depth many different aspects of what makes a type and opinions can ultimately being tested in the playtest.
Questions To Be Answered:
- Is a types usefulness relative to the metagame or is it intrinsic? (Ie. Can any type be the "best" type given the right circumstances or do type match-ups, available STAB moves etc mean some types will always be better than others?)
- What exploitable weaknesses do "good" types in OU have? Are their currently pokemon that can exploit them and if so, how do they function differently to CAP5?
- How (if at all) will the targeted types adapt to the situation created? Will people choose different movesets, abilities, etc or will they just use them more/less? How is this linked to the way CAP5 functions strategically?
- What effects will the changes on certain types' presence have on the metagame?
- Which members of the targeted types will benefit and suffer from this most and why?
- By creating CAP5, have we learnt any new ways to counter good types or use bad types?
Explanation:
Types have many complex interactions to explore - not just with one another but with abilities (eg, Magnet Pull, Water Absorb), moves and field effects (rain, Stealth Rock, etc), and sometimes even trends in the pokemon with the type. What I'm trying to present is a clear destination whose journey leads to good discussion and analysis of a large aspect of pokemon, whilst still being enjoyable. I feel one of the main strengths of the concept is that it has a wide variety of potential implementations which will help to promote discussion and creativity. The idea of a "bad" or a "good" type is rife throughout all areas of competitive pokemon, with CAP being no exception, so it seems valid to explore it.
A lot of people have asked how I envision this working. The short answer is it depends on which types we decide to take down and up. However, some general ideas can still be given:
Obviously we would want CAP5 to have the right type match ups for the concept. Resistances or immunities to the types we want to take down and weaknesses to those we want to bring up are ideal but not mandatory. Immunity granting abilities are a valid option to patch up not-so-ideal type match-ups later down the line. Between the two, we'd probably be hoping to make moves of certain types less spammable.
Statwise, the build very much depends on what we're targeting as well as the previous steps, so it's difficult to say much. I would suggest decent special defense to prevent people utilising hidden power rather than pokemon of our "bad" types, but that's not a necessity.
Choosing to target certain types might require CAP5 to have specific aspects: for example if we try to bring down water then an anti-rain element would be worth considering and if we're trying to bring up a stealth rock weak type then looking into anti-hazard methods would be a valid option.
Obviously, we should be mindful of specific threats of the targeted type(s) throughout, but we tend to do that well anyway.
Note that I haven't specified how many types we should target. This is really important. One of the big learning opportunities will be when we decide how ambitious we think we can be, as this will provoke discussion on just how firm type dominance is and contribute a lot to answering my first question in particular. I don't want that to be missed because I've said "we should focus on X number of types". That's for the community to decide.
This concept shares some similarities with Mollux in that they both try to make "bad" typings "good". However, the learning opportunities of Mollux were very much focused on the build of a pokemon itself, opting to alleviate typing's weaknesses by combinations of ability and movepool. I'm trying to look more on typing in relation to the build of the metagame and and what new opportunities existing pokemon will have in the modified metagame, without the presence of certain types.
