CAP 17 CAP 6 - Part 1 - Concept Assessment 1

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jas61292

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Well, it took one more day than normal due to the large slate of great submissions, but we have finally decided on a concept. And now it is time to take a closer look at what exactly we chose:

Name: Show Me Your Moves!

General Description: A good user of moves with effects not frequently used in the OU metagame.

Justification: There are many moves in Pokémon with great effects, but they often end up unused. Moves such as Gravity, Snatch, and Safeguard have potential in OU, but they are neglected for several reasons: the moves are apparently overshadowed, have poor distribution, or are inefficient compared to another strategy. This CAP uses a combination of typing, ability, and stats to make these underused moves not only feasible, but also capable.

Questions To Be Answered:
  • What mechanics of Pokémon determine how viable moves are?--not only the Pokémon's typing, stats, and ability, but also its interaction with playstyles and momentum.
  • What new strategies might emerge by giving a new OU Pokémon underused moves?
  • What challenges do Pokémon that use lesser-used moves face compared to ones that use a more standard moveset?
  • If the Pokémon has options of staple OU moves (high-powered STABs, offensive stat-boosting moves, reliable recovery, Substitute), will those moves be useful to it, even if it's specialized toward a separate and distinct strategy?
  • Can underused moves increase other underused moves' viabilities?
  • Can one user of a strategy unrecognized in a metagame massively influence a pre-existing playstyle?
Guidelines:
1) Pay close attention to the Topic Leader during this discussion. Their job is to keep us focused and to bring insight.
2) Do not poll jump. Poll jumping is a serious offense in these threads, and you can get infracted for it. Poll jumping is when you discuss something that should be discussed in the future, like specifying a CAP's stats or typing. You're allowed to hint at such things to conclude a point or to provide an example, but do not centralize your post on a poll jump. Poll jumping hurts the focus of early threads and can cause us to go off on a tangent. If you're not sure if you're poll jumping or not, err on the side of caution and don't post it.​

This thread is going to stay locked until our Topic Leader, capefeather, is ready with his opening thoughts. Make sure to pay attention to what he says, as it will guide how this conversation goes. The goal here is to have everyone on the same page coming out of this discussion, so making sure we are following the guidance of our TL is very important. I'm sure there will be a lot to say here, so just sit tight, and we will get it going shortly.
 
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YES! The concept we're rolling with for Gen V CAP 6 is "Show Me Your Moves!"

There are two major move categories we can use with this concept. The first category is for moves that seem to have awful distribution, accessible only to Pokemon that use the move ineffectively or are outright bad. The second category is for moves that are normally bad or relatively unsuccessful, and we would be providing these moves with tools that they need to be more successful. Necturna gives a decent precedent to work off of for at least the second direction, being the only Pokemon to have both Soak and a STAB move that is super effective against Water.

As I'm writing this, DetroitLolcat is joking about Aurumoth, so let's be clear on the first direction. If we consider a move with perceived distribution issues, we should be talking not about the raw number of Pokemon with a move, but about the effective distribution of a move. Going back to the Soak example, even though more Pokemon have Soak than have, say, Quiver Dance, it does not have any effective users, while Quiver Dance has Volcarona. If Ludicolo had Soak, it might have been more effective in OU and we might not be having this conversation. (This isn't even getting into the fact that Quiver Dance doesn't actually have an unfamiliar effect, which goes against the concept <.<)

One thing I'd like to clear up is which moves we want to work with explicitly, and how many, because I think that we should have specific moves in mind to focus the concept. I like the idea of focusing on one move or move effect because it means we don't have to bend over backwards for multiple moves or move combinations. However, we could go with more than one move to focus the project more. I suppose it depends on the nature of the move(s) we focus on. The second and third questions in the "Questions To Be Answered" section are the most relevant to this inquiry. The second question is especially important, since the very point of this concept is to introduce a tactic to OU that is unfamiliar to it.

A potentially interesting road for this to take is to consider a move that is used to some extent in OU, but not often enough to make waves. Gravity and Trick Room are examples of this, used by Landorus and Reuniclus, respectively. If we get some kind of partnership going, that could potentially open up broader strategies, like VoltTurn except hopefully less annoying.



^the closest thing I could come up with to a fairy-themed Captain Falcon
 
(this is my first time, please be kind if I need to edit this)

So I can see that nobody wants to make a Pokémon who's heavy on setup moves, and I finally came to agree that suggesting status moves simply because Swords Dance is the only common status move doesn't mean we should do anything that would risk this project becoming a setup-&-sweep Pokemon. I'm intrigued and worried about using moves that are uncommon simply because there isn't a Pokémon who can capitalize on those techniques, but over half of the moves in question are uncommon for one of three things; Base Power, Accuracy, and effect. Moves with low accuracy are looked down upon for being a gamble (Zap Cannon, Dynamic Punch, Inferno...you know what they all are), and unless the Pokémon has No Guard or some other similar check for lowered accuracy, most people know that there's just no way. Moves with certain effects that are hard to capitalize on are often called out for being terrible (I'm not suggesting that we use it, but Brine is a fantastic example of a move with a hard-to-utilize effect). Finally, moves with an undesirably low Base Power have been set aside for a Scizor with Technician or Cloyster, so every multi-hit move plus every move with at most 60 BP are theoretically up for questioning.

No matter what, I see this project as something whose moves will be determined largely by its ability, since the Pokémon who capitalize on questionably uncommon moves do so mostly because of their ability. I believe Scizor and Cloyster are ok examples of this, and I'm interested in seeing what it takes to make this Pokémon as self-sufficient as possible on its unorthodox movelist with the help it needs to make it...to make it shine?
 
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DetroitLolcat

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capefeather said:
There are two major move categories we can use with this concept. The first category is for moves that seem to have awful distribution, accessible only to Pokemon that use the move ineffectively or are outright bad. The second category is for moves that are normally bad or relatively unsuccessful, and we would be providing these moves with tools that they need to be more successful. Necturna gives a decent precedent to work off of for at least the second direction, being the only Pokemon to have both Soak and a STAB move that is super effective against Water.
A good way to start finding moves to base our Pokemon around is to search other metagames for users of viable yet poorly distributed moves. I would like to warn against excessive theorymonning about moves ("Well, nobody uses Psych Up, but I bet if we did this then we would make a great abuser!), especially those with widespread distribution. Remember, many moves are not viable simply because they are too weak or too limited to certain situations to be viable, especially if those moves are also well distributed in other metagames. Another caveat is that we're looking for moves with effects not often seen in the OU metagame, so there's no point in bringing up great moves like Shift Gear, Sacred Fire or Dark Void. We know what Sleep does, we know what simultaneous Attack and Speed boosting does, and we know what high-powered Fire moves do.

But back to my first sentence. We've seen in BW RU that Cosmic Power and Psycho Shift can be absolutely fierce given the right conditions, and we know from NU that Rest and Sleep Tank are far from dead in competitive Pokemon. capefeather pointed out two different avenues to accomplish this concept, but I advocate his second method much more than his first. It's more much interesting to look for "diamond in the rough" moves than to find moves we know are good. Soak (thanks to Necturna), as capefeather pointed out, is a great example of how to accomplish this concept. Before Necturna, I assume a lot of us saw Soak as just another odd status move that nobody would ever want to use. Soak, much like other type-changing moves (Reflect Type, Conversion, Conversion 2 among others), looks like a move with limited viability. However, combined with Necturna's Grass STAB, Soak becomes the facilitator of one of the most difficult sets to switch into in all of CAP! Soak Necturna is a good blueprint to base this CAP on. Soak is a good move because Necturna can automatically hit an opponent with super-effective STAB off of 120 base Attack.

Soak is overlooked because it has poor distribution and the only Pokemon that get it are Water-type Pokemon, i.e., Pokemon that cannot hit Water Pokemon with super-effective STAB. We should begin our search for viable moves by looking at moves that fulfill some of these criteria:

1. The move has extremely poor distribution or distribution only among Pokemon in the lower tiers.
2. The move, under specific battle conditions, could be the cornerstone a Pokemon's flagship set.
3. The move cannot be properly used by the Pokemon that get it.
4. Combined with certain abilities, stats, or a typing, this move would make or break a Pokemon.

Sorry for the bit of poll jumping ahead, but a few specific abilities come to mind when fulfilling the fourth criterion. Prankster comes quickly to mind because it could give priority to moves that would be better if a Pokemon could immediately switch in and use it. Battle Armor would validate some other moves. Even Technician, as boring as that is, is worth taking a look at. Suction Cups is another good example, as are Serene Grace and Sniper (for obvious reasons).

Looking at moves that would benefit from specific abilities makes moves like Cosmic Power, Iron Defense, Amnesia, and Me First jump out, especially that last one. Me First is a move that, if the user is faster than the opponent, steals the opponent's move and lets the user use the move at 1.5 times the power. Being able to use Garchomp's Earthquake with automatic STAB just reeks of untapped potential. Crush Claw, combined with Serene Grace, automatically drops the foe's Defense.

If you can't tell, Me First is the move I believe best fits the concept right now. Combine that with Prankster/high Speed and we've got a good move on our hands.

Does anyone else have a method of weeding out moves with untapped potential? I believe that's the best way to move forward with this Concept Assessment.
 

Governess

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My first time doing this as well, so be gentle if I make / made a mistake with this.

I agree with Yveltal on certain move choices; I think we should avoid using moves that have high-risk factors, but then again, in terms of accuracy, Lock-On or Mind Reader could be an option, since No Guard is sort of a double-edged sword. Of course, the opponent might switch out, but that may lead to a new strategy of some sort, as predicting the switch could trap the opponent into whatever move the new CAP could have, or put them in a frustrating position on whether to stay or switch, much like Pursuit users. I'm not sure how useful it could be, but moves with wavering accuracy could be put to some usage with some sort of accuracy-boosting move, In terms of BP, I can agree that they should but put up for more discussion, and unless the move itself has great purpose, should be avoided,

I'm interested in the new strategies that could be made with these lesser move choices; Snatch in particular caught my attention, as it can really be useful against setup Pokemon in OU that try to stack on boosts, which could make the Pokemon great against the likes of Volcarona or NP Thundurus. I can definitely see Heal Block as an effective move against Pokemon like Blissey and Chansey in the short term, but in the end, would it be worth it? We want a CAP Pokemon that can not only utilize these lesser moves, but still pose a threat / stand on its own, so there has be to be a limit on how 'creative' we get with the moves we choose.

Me First sounds really good from the previous poster's explanation. I second it.
 
I would like to see us avoid giving this thing a combination of movepool and ability that yields bunch of accurate, high BP, drawback-free attacks of differing useful types. Between No Guard Aurumoth, Life Orb Magic Guard Krillowatt, Rock Head Pyroak (remember the old stat spread?), I think we have seen what that accomplishes already. There may be other, less explored combinations of ability/movepool that produce a different set of the moves I just described, but I think it would be more interesting (and less overpowered) if we chose not to focus on buffing flawed attacking moves by means of an ability.
 

Imanalt

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The first thing i'm very concerned about is that we pick a move that is underused because there isnt a pokemon well suited to using it rather than because pokemon choose not to run it. Cosmic power for example, had deoxys-d who seems a perfect abuser for it, and yet it still wasn't a good sweeper, largely because there are just too many things that beat cosmic power sweepers (and before anyone mentions sigilyph... Its cosmic power set is not good).

What i think we should be focusing on are moves with effects that have thw pptential to be strong, but arent used due to either being too situational because of suboptimal abusers or due to a complete lack of possible abusers. We know plenty about boosting in general, but we know very little about say, the viability of future sight/doom desire, because there is nothing that can use these attacks and then take advantage of the pressure to switch in a resist.

Now, onto some possibilities for direction:
Heart swap: (did anyone expect me not to mention this?) its a move that balanced hackmons has clearly shown to have viability, although only with prankster. Is heart swap viable in a completely different environment? Is it even viable without prankster? These are things wed need to figure out later on, but the ability to "steal" all of your opponents boosts is definitely a potentially powerful one.

Doom desire / future sight: both of these have the same effect, so although typing and power are different, im lumping them together. Both have the potential to allow you to effectively hit twice in one turn, allowing for extreme wallbreaker potential. However, they both also allow resists to switch into them, weakening the move and making it an essentially wasted turn. Could we figure out how to punish this? Probably, but its my biggest concern about these moves.

Copycat: a very interesting move, although it requires either very high speed or prankster to function well, as ideally youd like to be able to come in and hit them with whatever they just used, throwing draco meteors back at dragons, or close combats back at terrakion etc, copycat gives the potential to work as essentially seeral different coverage moves in one slot for a revenge killer, or simply to get a temporary boost in priority to a move like roar, either way copycat is incredibly speed reliant, and thats my biggest concern with it.
 

jas61292

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So, I want to just take a second and cover the kinds of things I think are bad ways to approach this concept. There are a ton of moves out there that are not used, but we want to see more than just a new move being used; we want to see a new effect being used, so simply taking a little used move that has the exact same effect as other, more common moves, and making it see use is not really accomplishing anything. Sure, we could make a million pound Pokemon and give it Heat Crash, but that is not doing anything that we don't already see with Flare Blitz.

At the same time though, I want to go against some of what was said above and suggest that moves that would be defined by abilities are probably not a good route to go. Remember, the most important things about the CAP project are the discussions we have and what we learn along the way. There are a ton of moves that you can look at and say "that would be awesome with Technician/Serene Grace/Prankster/whatever," and a lot of people will have those moves as their first thought. Moves like Prankster Copycat or Heart Swap, Serene Grace Crush Claw or Luster Purge, or Technician... anything. But, if we go that way, then we choose the move, give it the ability, and that is it. What would there be to discuss about the concept? Nothing. All that's left is to fit it in OU without breaking it. Frankly, if there is an obvious way for the move to be made good in OU, then it is not the kind of move that is worth basing an entire project around.

So with that said, I think the kinds of things we should be looking at are those with odd, unexplored effects. Me First is an interesting one, for example. Now, while having Prankster or something might greatly improve it, it is not something that you can simply slap an ability on and suddenly it is good. Only combined with the right stats and typing would it really be effective, and figuring out what those are would be a great basis for discussion. Reflect Type is another one that I think would be a good project base, as how well it works depends entirely on the Pokemon as a whole. Losing your own type means giving up STABs, so you would really need to be able to control matchups well in order to make it work properly. Again this is done by a combination of everything that the Pokemon has, and would be conducive to discussion throughout the project, not just in a few stages.
 

Stratos

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If you can't tell, Me First is the move I believe best fits the concept right now. Combine that with Prankster/high Speed and we've got a good move on our hands.
Lock-On or Mind Reader could be an option

Snatch in particular caught my attention. I can definitely see Heal Block as an effective move against Pokemon like Blissey and Chansey in the short term, but in the end, would it be worth it?

Me First sounds really good from the previous poster's explanation. I second it.
I just want to take a stand right now against moves that are situational or prediction-heavy such as Snatch, Heal Block, or Me First, because i simply do not believe they could ever be good. The main thing we look for in a Pokemon is consistency; it's why Toxicroak is low in usage. We all know of that Kecleon set of Magic Coat / Snatch / Focus Punch / Sucker Punch and it's epic when it 6-0s a team but it's mostly epic because everyone expects it to fall flat on its face. Heal Block and Me First are even worse, in that respect: while that Kecleon set has a good move for virtually every circumstance, 99 times out of 100, heal block/me first will just be completely useless. How many Pokemon in OU even use a healing move? And how many Pokemon in OU can be beaten by their own STAB? And then it takes prediction (Or, in heal block's case, Mean Look) to not just fall flat on its face anyway... no thanks, i'd rather just use a STAB move. We have Mewtwo in the land of Pokemon weak to their own STAB with a Me First off of base 130 Spe yet he doesn't use it... i think that says something: if your best option is Me First, you have no options.

In general, I don't want this CAP to be using an underused move for lack of better options (ie bounce gyara), I want it to truly be the best option. Of what i've yet seen listed, the closest they come is a Doom Desire pokemon for putting wall-breaking pressure on the opponent, and is what I'm throwing my support behind right now.
 
I honestly like the general idea of the move Soak. Sadly, the move isn't widely distributed, and most who get it are either too slow, can't take a hit, or don't have attacking moves to back it up. Whirlpool was among the moves Quanyails posted as well. Not to say that the new CAP should be based on a partial trapping move/Soak, but it's an interesting idea.
 
As far as I can see, it seems a lot of moves have low usability because the opponent can just switch out their Pokemon and remove the negative effect, making the move pretty much useless. So a trapper may be useful. Moves that are conditional on the attributes of the opponent (Reflect Type, Role Play) could be interesting, but they would need to have a way to switch into a Pokemon with a desirable attribute, and use that attribute effectively, meaning it would have to prepare for a wide variety of Pokemon to be useful, rather than just a gimmick.
 
A move that hasn't been mentioned yet and doesn't see much usage because it has really poor distribution is Weather Ball. While this concept is not rooted innately in the concept of weather the meta is highly weather-centric and Weather Ball would allow CaP 6 to be an effective fill-in attacker on all kinds of weather teams. The move itself is powerful, and would allow us to measure how CaP 6 can change how weather teams play with their weather and counter others. Suddenly the sun that knocked out your rain is what you're using to defeat the opponents Venusaur. Weather Ball is only really viable on a handful of Pokemon and even then they fit nicely into a specific weather condition rather than expanding that thought and using multiple weathers for the multiple effects of Weather Ball. The problem with this is that it would make the concept weather centric which may not be the best direction to head this project in.

The other concept I found interesting was Power Trick. Besides Shuckle trying to slap the living crap out of everything in sight this move doesn't see any real usage. However I find that the concept of a Pokemon who can switch from crushing through walls to stopping n opposing offensive movement could provide a lot of interesting game-changing movements and allow for a look at momentum.

The idea of Me First doesn't appeal to me because I feel like the reason Me First isn't used is that no Pokemon can benefit from it, but if all we do to this concept is slap high speed on a Pokemon and give it Me First it has the potential to wreak teams simply by being fast and countering a lot of offensive pressure. Overall I don't feel this will allow us to learn much about the current meta.

As well I don't believe picking an option that practically necessitates Prankster is a good choice either. While plenty of moves would be more practical with Prankster it doesnt say much about the conditions surrounding the moves efficacy other than priority it always good to have. Always.
 

Andrew

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I like Imanalt's mentioning of heartswap; it also means that you can trade your stat drops from moves such as close combat, leaf storm, or v-create. Using close combat on a bulky wall and then heart swapping the drops would allow for possible wall-breaking, and mean that you don't have to immediatly switch out due to the stat drops making your pokemon unusable.
Along these same lines is Haze, which eliminates all stat changes. This would reset your stat drops and prevent opponent from setting up. How many times have I switched out after using Draco Meteor, because the pokemon can no longer cause damage, and without access to nasty plot it's special attack stat is now next to useless. Heart swap and haze would both cause this pokemon to be able to stay in battle, and prevent opponent's set up.
Another idea is accuracy drop, but these moves are usually low in bp or the chance to cause a drop is too low. The most viable seems to be night daze, which is 85 bp but only 40% chance to drop accuracy. This move is only given to zorua and zoroark currently, and could be usable in place of dark pulse on a pokemon with the added benefit of possibly dropping accuracy. And really, that's higher than scald's chance to burn, and that seems to happen all the time, to me at least. Accuracy drops would mean your opponent would either switch out more often or you would have more chances to hit.
Power Swap could be usefull on a defensive pokemon with low attacking stats. It's success of course would be determined by the opponent you are facing at the time, but it could potentially cripple your opponent while giving you a big boost. This is like shuckle's power split but it actually swaps the attack and sp attack stats. Think of shuckle with the attack stats of Kyurem-Black.
 
I think that making a core with existing Pokemon to make a great Gravity/Trick Room core would be a great route to take this. These effects are already powerful, but they lack enough good users/abusers to make a team with great synergy, thus the low usage. Perhaps something that could act as a good pivot/glue for those teams would work quite well. Would also give us another chance to examine cores this gen.
 

ginganinja

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Not keen on Night Daze. The move is pretty much outclassed by Dark Pulse, and there isn't really a niche that Night Daze gives. Haze I also am sorta "meh" on since while it doesn't have that many abusers, the move isn't amazing in general in the current OU meta (people use Perish Song to force out sweepers anyway). Guess it could be ok, but I prefer Heart Swap for its offensive and defensive purposes.

Moves such as Tailwind and Gravity im really interested in, since they can give our CAP a fairly specific niche, and neither of the moves are widespread in OU, but idk if they have the support to carry them through.
 

Andrew

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I used a gravity stall team for a while, and i found that the more i played it the less i used gravity :/ the problem with gravity is that it only lasts four turns, so you constantly have to keep setting it up if you want to abuse it. Plus, what would make this pokemon a special user of gravity that other ou mons can't already due, such as ferrothorn setting up spikes, or starmie using low accuracy, high powered moves as mentioned in the smogon gravity analysis. However, something I don't see in use is an offensive physical attacker that would use gravity in conjunction with moves such as earthquake, stone edge and/or gunk shot to take advantage of the evasion drop. Perhaps it could work on a defensive pokemon who has access to spikes, toxic spikes, and phasing.
 
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I can see the usefulness in Heart Swap/Haze in removing and or switching stat drops, but the Pokemon would have to be able to take that turn to use said moves. This would cost momentum, allowing the opponent to set up or attack, so I'm not sure if it would be any better then simply switching the Pokemon out. In fact, I notice that quite a few underused moves (Trick Room, Tailwind, Power Swap) are setup moves. I think part of the reason that these moves lack usage is because they take away from your team's momentum, and although other setup moves like Swords Dance do the same, perhaps the benefits of these underused moves are not considered worth the setup time in comparison to doubling one's Attack stat? I suppose this CAP would make setting these moves up either more beneficial than current users of the move, or, well, find a way to not lose momentum. Is that possible?
 

nyttyn

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Copycat: a very interesting move, although it requires either very high speed or prankster to function well, as ideally youd like to be able to come in and hit them with whatever they just used, throwing draco meteors back at dragons, or close combats back at terrakion etc, copycat gives the potential to work as essentially seeral different coverage moves in one slot for a revenge killer, or simply to get a temporary boost in priority to a move like roar, either way copycat is incredibly speed reliant, and thats my biggest concern with it.
The problem with copycat isn't that it is incredibly speed reliant

The problem with copycat is that you have absolutely no control over it. Which is absolutely godawful considering that it could be a special OR physical attack, which means unless you have absolutely insane mixed stats you could just wind up doing nothing. In addition, you will almost never get STAB, and there aren't that many times where a pokemon will launch an attack that will hit itself for SE (in fact as far as I'm aware the only such circumstances are some coverage moves like thunderbolt Starmie, the Dragons, and Terrakion, which is a really large mix of psychical and special) - often times, they will fire out attacks that they themselves resist (Water, Steel, Fire, Psychic, Grass, Electric, Dark, Ice).

I don't know anyone who in their right mind would use a pokemon they had zero control over who would be useless outside of very niche scenarios.
 
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I actually really like Snatch for this concept. A sizable chunk of the more dangerous OU Mons use set-up moves fairly often (Thundurus-T, Keldeo, Garchomp, Conkeldurr, Dragonite, Haxorus, Reuniclus (CM Variants, less common than TR but they're there), Volcarona, Cloyster, etc.). Using Snatch as the basis of CAP 6 examines the impact set-up moves have on the metagame and how a viable Pokemon with Snatch can impact it. Snatch steals the boost, simultaneously depriving the opponent of their boosts and taking them for yourself. That's a huge momentum grabber (potentially simultaneously stopping their sweep and starting your own). It seems to me that even the presence of such a Pokemon in the OU environment would discourage set-up sweepers to some extent. It requires prediction to use well, but the psychological effect of having something like this around would provide some insight on the effects set-up moves have on the game.
 
What about Bide? I see Bide as having some potential in OU. For example, if Terrakion is causing trouble for your team, CAP6 could come out, endure the next two attacks, and then hit Terrakion for huge damage, KOing or severely crippling it. Even if Terrakion switches out after the first attack, Bide will punish the Pokemon that switched in. Granted, CAP6 may need a recovery move/Leftovers to properly pull this off, but I think it's worth having a look.
 

The Leprechaun

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What about Bide? I see Bide as having some potential in OU. For example, if Terrakion is causing trouble for your team, CAP6 could come out, endure the next two attacks, and then hit Terrakion for huge damage, KOing or severely crippling it. Even if Terrakion switches out after the first attack, Bide will punish the Pokemon that switched in. Granted, CAP6 may need a recovery move/Leftovers to properly pull this off, but I think it's worth having a look.
Being set-up fodder for 2 turns doesn't sound like fun...

Also, looking at snatch i think to use this effectively you not only need to surprise the opponent with it, you need to predict right and you then need to be able to use whatever move you got effectively. First of all, if snatch is used on every set of this pokemon, no one will ever set up on it, second of all if you did manage to snatch, say a swords dance from lucario, you'd need the moves as well as stats and moves to abuse it. A lot of the time, pokemon are tailored to their boosting moves, lucario uses swords dance because of extreemespeed, jirachi uses calm mind because of bulk and typing etc etc, we can't always benefit from boosting. Trying to make a poke that benefits from snatch will be impossible IMO.
 

The Leprechaun

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Out of the options seen so far I like Tailwind and Heart Swap the most, possibly these could even be used in one set, i.e. you could steal a stat boost and then use tailwind, or use superpower then heart swap to survive an extra couple of hits to set up tailwind, I dunno, maybe that sounds stupid i can't tell.

A move I quite like the look of is Work Up. It's a move almost never seen in OU because there are no pokemon capable of running a mixed set who also have the stats to sweep. Hydreigon comes close to being able to do this but its speed tier is what often prevents a sweep. Virizion however does manage to utilise work up in UU and if used at the right time, it can be deadly as there is no poke in the tier that can wall it at +1. This might be an interesting route to go down.

Gravity is also quite interesting. The reason it's not used in my eyes is simply because it doesn't benefit the pokes that have it enough. Landorus is our best example, the gravity set allows it to fire of EQs with no fear of flying types or levitators. The reason it's not used is because lando can easily be forced out because of its middling speed or because it has the coverage in stone edge making it a waste of time. What if tomohawk was used in gravity though? throwing out unresisted, high accuracy focus blasts as well as accurate hurricanes sounds pretty nice... I'm sure there are other ways as well gravity can be to be powerful.
 
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I'm sorta thinking about the possibilities of Wonder Room. Wonder Room swaps the Defense and Special Defense stat of every single Pokémon on the field for 5 turns, sorta like a Trick Room like effect. Wonder Room even has the same priority as Trick Room! Anyways, Currently, the distribution for Wonder Room is pretty poor, especially since a lot of Pokémon who can use it (like Alakazam) can't really take a hit. I think this move could have potential for both its defensive swapping properties allowing a Pokémon to "switch" what it walls, and it could also work offensively too to break defensive Pokémon!

Anyways, here's my opinion on some of the moves already mentioned.

Power Trick: I think this one has serious potential! I mean, the only mons that have the defensive stats to actually pull that off are Shuckle and Forretress, both Pokémon who crumple under offensive pressure themselves after using it. There is also of course, the unexplored version, where you can use an extremely offensive mon, and use Power Trick to wall physical hits that'd normally KO you. Role shifting via a move is something I think is extremely under explored as well, so choosing this move would lead to a less straight forward CAP, hence why this may be my favorite option!

Me First: Actually, there is a metagame where Me First is on a fast Pokémon: Mewtwo in Ubers! And guess what: it's actually really not that good. Quite a few mons use moves that aren't very effective against themselves, and like Sucker Punch, it's very easy to play mind games with Me First. I think this move is too situational to work out well.

Snatch: Similar deal with Me First, this move requires a LOT of prediction, and is very easy to play mind games with. I don't think this is a strong move to base a concept around.
 

Yilx

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Let me put this out in the open first;

If there's a move that's not used often, it's because either,

1. There is simply no room in the Pokemon's moveset to put it
2. Other moves accomplish the Pokemon's goals in a better way
3. the move is shit lol

Putting the outclassed crap like Slam and Submission out of the way, this is the reason we don't see nonsense like Imprison, Magic Coat and Snatch normal in competitive play. While I do agree that all of them have the potential to be good, not all of them are good in practice. Snatch, alongside all of the moves that depends on your opponent's actions, are way too unstable and inconsistent to be considered "good". They depend WAY too much on prediction and similar, if not even better results can be achieved through the usage of other moves. User Pwnemon has mentioned the moves that fall into this category Whether you stand or fall depends completely on if your opponent is running what you want them to run and on on certain occasions the move will even become a dead weight.

I'd also like to extend this to my disinterest in Wonder Room. Swapping defenses is only useful when you manage to find out which one of your opponent's mons is stacked towards which form of defense, and even so just using an appropriate move and outright killing it is better than using a -5 priority move and trying to catch it with it's opposite defense. We know for sure that mons like Jirachi typically use a Specially Defensive set, but nobody's going to use Earth Power on it anyway and even under Wonder Room it won't really be staying in vs mons that usually run it. It's simply too slow, not worth the moveslot in general and again, depends too much on your opponent's shenanigans.

Two very good examples of mons that exemplify the concept are Sawsbuck and Sigilyph. Sawsbuck is pretty much the only mon that normally runs Nature Power because it can turn into Earthquake and provide it with much needed coverage without having to rely on the less than perfectly accurate Jump Kick. Sigilyph is pretty much the only mon that "normally" runs Cosmic Power. (Although the CM/Flame Orb or Offensive sets are much better just saying)

Moving on to my next point, I'd like to address the prevalence of people bringing up "Serene Grace/Technician/Prankster _________". Although this is technically a valid way of addressing the concept, I feel that it is also a very lazy way of just "opening" up more moves for us to use like the aforementioned Me First and Copycat, as is giving it Technician and slapping every single 60 BP and below move on it below the sun. What the concept wants us to do is to look into moves that are overlooked and/or not used because of poor distribution or the mons that learn them simply do not have better options. Bringing up Sawsbuck again, this is why it runs Nature Power instead of Earthquake. If it learned EQ, it'd definitely use it, but it does not so it has to settle for it.

As for the moves I support, I think looking at Heart Swap as one of our potential candidates is a good idea. It does not depend completely on your opponent to see any good use and could really some interesting play with moves like V-Create Superpower and Leaf Storm, for example.

Power Trick is also a very good move to look at. The main reason why Shuckle is pretty much the poster boy for this move is because of the extreme change in offensive and defensive ability, inlcuding it's speed. I think the idea of a mon that could potentially switch between being a wall and a potential offensive threat on a whim is pretty interesting to look into. The main issue here, IMO, is justifying the moveslot for it.

I'd like to personally bring up Belly Drum myself as a move that we should look at. No proper physical attacker in OU learns and can utilize it, and even if they could the amount of revenge killers and priority users would put a hamper on the 50% HP remaining. A well-timed belly drum off a mon that can properly utilize it can be potentially game-changing. Of course, one might argue that Linoone already does this and is a good example of a mon that "utilizes it very well", but there is a reason why we don't see it up here in OU. The main reason lies in it's lackluster stats and bad typing more often than not, but personally I feel that we could learn quite a bit if we could really look into what makes Belly Drum -really- tick.

What about Bide? I see Bide as having some potential in OU. For example, if Terrakion is causing trouble for your team, CAP6 could come out, endure the next two attacks, and then hit Terrakion for huge damage, KOing or severely crippling it. Even if Terrakion switches out after the first attack, Bide will punish the Pokemon that switched in. Granted, CAP6 may need a recovery move/Leftovers to properly pull this off, but I think it's worth having a look.
The flaw with this is that you need to properly take a hit from Terrakion AND survive and your opponent has TWO FREE turns to prevent/mitigate the damage or outright kill the mon before it even gets Bide off.
 
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Base Speed

What a load of BS!
I'm reading through this and I'm seeing some great ideas, but everyone seems to have forgotten about attacking moves!

There are loads of attacking moves with neat side effects that, for one reason or another, remain largely unused. While I'd be happy exploring the underused non-attacking moves, I feel like someone should make a case for attacks.

  • Avalanche and variants could be cool but existing pokemon don't enjoy sitting and waiting to be hit. Combining them with Analytic would be an interesting path to go down.
  • There's a bunch of multi-hitting moves that simply by merit of belonging to neither Cloyster or Cinccinno are pretty much never used, like Barrage, Dual Chop and Arm Thrust. That'd be interesting to look at.
  • Speed lowering moves, like Bulldoze, Icy Wind, Electroweb and Low Sweep have shown they have potential, but haven't really been explored much outside of Technician Breloom.
  • Circle Throw, Dragon Tail's Fighting type variant, also sees little use due to poor distribution.
  • Crush Claw, interestingly enough, has ShadowStrike's much coveted 50% chance for a defense drop. We all know how fun that can be
  • Lastly, there are moves that take a fairly significant cut in base power for a heightened chance to induce status, like Force Palm. For most pokemon that trade-off doesn't seem worthwhile, could we make it so?
And lastly, a note on Technician and Prankster. They're very much the obvious option here and I'd like to just say, sometimes the simplest solution is the best. I fear people want to be overly creative and shun these abilities because they work too well. Please don't do that. There's no shame in using these abilities.

Edit: Yes, Yilx. Icicle Crash was indeed meant to be Avalanche. This is what happens when you try and write stuff straight after getting out of bed :P
 
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