CAP 17 CAP 6 - Part 1 - Concept Assessment 1

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So obviously if moves like Me First or Heart Swap would narrow the concept too early, so should moves like Trick Room (which would pretty much assume that CAP 6 is slow and or bulky in order to set it up and or abuse it). So in that case, yes, Doom Desire/Future Sight would allow for more creativity down the road due to it allowing multiple strategies (powerful wall breaker or punishing opponents switches, for example).
 
I would like to throw my opinion in, I support Field Effects, mainly Gravity, as I feel they have a lot of untapped potential. If cap6 has a good defensive typing and access to hazards, I could see this concept developing into a strong choice for many teams, and it might possibly bring some out-dated teams back into the metagame.
 
I think Toxic Spikes might have some potential if used with Gravity (which threatens flying or levitating opponents) and trapping moves (to keep opponents from switching out to mitigate toxic damage or other effects). Once the entire enemy team is poisoned, CAP 6 can just fire away with Hex/Venoshock. Gravity itself can be used with Zap Cannon/Inferno/Dynamic Punch rather than No Guard. Trapping moves also have potential, as they can be used with Torment (who doesn't love TormenTran?) to infuriate the opponent while damaging them with aforementioned Toxic Spikes. Healing Wish and Memento can also be used to switch in a sweeper after you've worn down or disabled the enemy team. If we give CAP 6 useful immunities like heatran, not only will it be able to run Torment sets, but it will also be able to switch on sweepers. Said sweepers can be forced to switch due to being choiced or walled, or have their stat boosts copied with Psyche Up if possible. Reflecting types could also help wall aforementioned sweepers if a pokemon with plenty of immunities does not fit the concept.
Besides these strategies, there are many uncommon move combinations that would have potential on CAP 6 such as Foul Play and swagger (of course we already have Liepard) and others as well. The key to creating CAP 6 is to consider what kind of situations it would be used in, and what it would do in those situations.

EDIT: All pokemon i referenced in this post do have better sets to run; part of our job would be to make sure that our niche sets are the best sets on CAP 6.
 
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One thing I think that we need to be careful of is making sure CAP 6 would actually use whatever move(s) we assign it.

For example, if we get a Grass/Electric with Soak (for example); a good portion of players might not even use Soak anyway. It'd still be viable, but I question a LOT of these choices.

We can tailor fit CAP 6 to be able to "use" Wonder Room, but that doesn't mean that it will. Therefore I think that we should focus on giving CAP 6 a move that will actually be used and not just giving it more obscure and niche-ridden moves.

I like the idea of Foul Play and Weather Ball; not great distribution and no notable user of either move, but could be important in CAP 6's overall strategy and playstyle.
 

Birkal

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I think this thread has diverged insanely, which is going to result in either a messy product or a boring three months. When Quanyails' concept came up, I predicted (and still do predict) that roughly 95% of CAP participants aren't going to be pleased with what we make. That's because many of those who chose this concept had an agenda of which "underused" move they want CAP 6 to utilize. Unfortunately, we cannot focus on every underused move for this concept, so everyone has seemed to go towards campaigning for their own favorite instead of having an actual discussion. Although capefeather mentioned that he did want specific moves by the end of this thread, it doesn't mean we need to throw every single one up against the wall and hope something sticks. Let's dial it back and see if we can get an actual discussion going here.


capefeather listed some good qualifiers of what kind of moves we're looking for in his original post, but I'd like to present a different method of categorization. For the moment, let's try to think of moves in terms of how much control the opponent has over the end result. For example, using a simple attacking move like Ice Punch gives the opponent only two options: they can either stay in or switch. This might seem brutally obvious, but let's extend it to something like Snatch. That move requires one limited option out of a plethora: the opponent must use a set-up move. Snatch fails when the opponent switches or using any sort of attacking move, which is a loss in momentum. So for the sake of this argument, let's call Snatch a "highly controlled opponent move" and Ice Punch a "lowly controlled opponent move". The former's success is largely based off of what the opponent does, while the latter will likely have a predictable result, regardless of the opponent's own action.

I'm here to suggest that we consider moves that are lowly controlled opponent moves for this concept for CAP 6. Belly Drum is a great example of such a move. The opponent cannot prevent you from doing Belly Drum (outside of Taunt or Snatch or something), so the likelihood of your move being successful when you wish to execute it is high. There are other moves that are lowly controlled opponent moves, such as Gravity and Future Sight, but we must remember that they are on a timer. The opponent has control over those moves in that they can stall them out or make timely switches, respectively.

I would describe Reflect Type as a middling controlled opponent move. It breaks into the first layer of opponent control: reliance on switching. If the opponent switches, the result of the move is different from what was intended. I still think it would suit the concept and be competitively viable, but understand why a competitive player would not want to use this move at face value. The more control a battler has over their moves' result, the more popular it will become. So what about something like Skill Swap? That dives into the second layer of giving the opponent more control. Now, there is difficulty in predicting switches and which ability the Pokemon is running; the opponent has been given even more control. Now for the big cheese: what about moves like Me First and Metal Burst? Those are extremely reliant on what the opponent will do; you need to predict against switches and which move it will use. I'd argue that moves in this category aren't popular simply because they give the opponent too much control. We should avoid them for this concept.

So which moves am I supporting? I'm not sure at this point. Yilx and I are on the same page here (I'd recommend reading his post too), so think about this classification system when determining which moves will be suitable for this concept. I will say that I feel like lowly controlled opponent moves without a timer are optimal; moves like Belly Drum and Soak really put the power in the players' hands. However, I do feel like we could have some interesting discussion with a middling controlled opponent move, such as Reflect Type and Magic Room.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
Possibly even Explosion can be used for this purpose.
THIS IS MY NEW FAVORITE

I, like I assume most people, totally skipped over Explosion because of ten years of teaching that it was a mainstream move, but it's never seen in BW, thanks to two major things. First, Team Preview and the death of the lead metagame, and second, the halving of its effective Base Power. However, 375 BP (after STAB) still packs an insane punch, and you get the momentum of a free switch (and other small benefits like spinblocking) and I want to see if we can create a Pokemon where this is still worth it. (Funnily enough, if we go with this, we'll also be doing Birkal's concept by remaking a niche from another meta: the surprise Blissey killer (magma storm tran lol) or the Kamikaze lead). Also, it's low opponent controlled—exactly like ice punch but with extra boom.

Besides, Explosion solves the major problem I've had with almost every other move we've suggested: We know we'll want to use it.

As Porii just addressed above, almost all of these moves make me worry. We seem to be listing moves with underused effects and forgetting that the effect is underused because it sucks. If we give a mon the tools to abuse the wallbreaking power of, say, Doom Desire, we've given it the power to abuse a bunch of less gimmicky things too. However, Explosion isn't a move that pokemon shun in favor of more reliable options; it's entirely reliable (with decent prediction) and we know from experience that it defines an entire role. If we can get the role to work in BW2 OU, the underused move will come naturally, and we don't have to worry about nerfing the hell out of our movepool to achieve it.
 
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Forgive me if this is a bit cryptic or naive, but if we're trying to make a Pokemon that utilizes underused moves better than most Pokemon who are given the techniques, why aren't we trying to make a Pokemon that uses underused moves to run around the meta? I was thinking about it all day, and it started to make sense to me that the underused moves in question are extremely varied, so to give it all the ones that we, as a majority, believe it should have, its movelist will probably be all over the type chart. If the Pokemon becomes varied because of this, I think we should consider creating a Pokemon that does ok either setting itself up (though not necessarily with uncommon Atk/SpAtk boosters) or switching into a setup, fighting in or out of as many weather scenarios as possible, and hitting the opponent with as many desired underused coverage moves as possible.
(Take the following with a pinch of salt) For a not-too-relevant example of a not-too-uncommon move, if it had Hurricane, it would/should have the ability to operate in and out of rain if it had another method of checking Hurricane's bad accuracy. If it had Bone Rush and Skill Link, it would have a Ground attack, one of Pokemon's best offensive types, with an effective power of 125 every time it used it, and it wouldn't have to necessarily be a Ground type do deal an inane amount of damage.

I don't really want an all-over Pokemon, and I also don't believe that having a cop-out ability that would come bundled with a very specific set of moves isn't the way to go either (like Skill Link and every multi-hit move out there), but I don't think it's a major stretch to say that having something based on adapting to and defeating the most predictable of predictable tactics is something to consider right along side finding out why what combination of arguably viable underused techniques will best serve the purpose of evening out the move field...because that's a part of what we're here for, right?
 
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Ignus

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Birkal (as always) makes well sighted points on the basis of the concept. Control is the name of the game.
But he made another great point, also. As a move's control over the opponent increases, so does it's popularity. The point of this concept, as I see it, is to take usually low control moves and "repurpose" them in to high control moves. Soak is a good example of this. It takes control of the opponent through the usage of tactics otherwise unseen. Having a mon with relatively high speed automatically grants control of a situation. So do entry hazards, but by discouraging switches rather than limiting choices of staying in by being faster. In fact, that's what makes moves like trick room and gravity so appealing for this CAP. Other things mentioned that can grant control include moves like Doom Desire, although to a lesser extent then a straight out attacking move. Auras and moves like Trick Room will probably work out the best, as they require only slight adjustments from the user in order to be effective.

So we have to choose. Do we want a move that grants higher control over our opponent and requires less re-tooling from CAP, at the risk of the move being popular;

Or do we want to use a move that inherently grants less control over our opponent that has to be utilized in a way that the CAP can create control with?

Both options work for me. It'll be interesting to see how this turns out.
 
Birkal and others beat me to one major issue I'm seeing with suggestions, which is that people aren't really thinking about the opponent dependence of some of the moves being suggested. With moves like Me First, Snatch / Heart Swap, Copycat, and Metal Burst, the reliance on the opponent's moves means we'd have to restrict the opponent's options artificially using trapping and/or disabling abilities and/or moves. Heart Swap may have some potential to take us somewhere without severely constricting the rest of the process, but I have doubts about it as well.

As Pwnemon mainly pointed out, when talking about moves to focus on, we should ask ourselves whether a particular move simply needs help, or it needs us to nerf the Pokemon to force it to be used. There are a lot of reasons and opportunities to nerf a CAP Pokemon, and this concept is not the kind that should provide one of those reasons. More generally, I'd like to see suggestions explained in two ways:

- Possible impact on and/or interactions with the metagame. A lot of posts have been really vague on this aspect. Give concrete examples.

- How we can actually make a move work. You don't have to poll-jump to do this (and you shouldn't). Here, people can and should talk about broad tactics that are possible in the game. I'm mainly looking at Reflect Type, Power Trick and Worry Seed / Gastro Acid / Simple Beam for this.

Another thing I'd prefer we don't do is focus on moves that have ability equivalents. For example, Role Play is a move version of Trace, and Mean Look is a move version of Shadow Tag. I don't believe we should make this concept into a poor man's Neglected Ability (Cyclohm).

I'd like to throw in a sort of dissenting opinion on Belly Drum. Mainly, I'm not sure if it actually provides something we can worth it. Its "effect" is essentially its drawback of cutting 50% of the user's HP. I'm not sure that this is the kind of "underused effect" that does this concept justice.

Now, concerning some of the other suggestions:

Doom Desire / Future Sight - The intriguing thing about this suggestion is that it gives the opponent something very concrete to worry about at a specific point in the future. It's not like other timer-based moves in that it can't really be stalled out. The influence is entirely on that one future point. However, I do worry that this may be one of the less realistic options.

Gravity / Wonder Room / Trick Room / Magic Room / Tailwind - The timer-based field effects don't get much love because of the timer, and this often means that Pokemon use these moves to sustain themselves. However, I really wonder how we could possibly use most of these, other than Trick Room. Gravity has thus far only been shown to be worth it on a strong Ground-type (i.e. Landorus), and so I don't think we could even reasonably get a partnership situation going. With Trick Room, we can try to make it work better in BW2 OU, or we could try to partner up with Reuniclus and possibly other Trick Room users.

Explosion - This move hasn't gotten much attention, but it's a really good suggestion imo. It's kind of bringing Birkal's concept back from the dead and combining it with this concept. I wonder about the logistics of it, but there are a lot of things that we could potentially do with Explosion, including possibly using it in tandem with other underused move effects.
 
I think moves that change Abilities need some thought, too. Here's a few:

Skill Swap: If your Pokemon has a bad or useless Ability, you can cripple an opponent with it, however, you don't know what Ability you'll get. Lack of control = not so good. But if your Ability didn't change...
Entrainment: This move has never seen good use. Durant is the only Pokemon who makes use out of this with Truant, though even that is horribly gimmicky. A good set with this move could really change a game around.
Gastro Acid: A good move if every Pokemon you face has Wonder Guard, Shadow Tag, or Prankster, which they don't. Still, it could be good for messing up your opponent's strategy.
Role Play: This one I don't think will fly, because you have no idea what Ability you'll get with this. No control.

OK, those are the ones I think are discussion-worthy. Personally, I think Entrainment has potential. Very situational potential, but still. :)
 

Imanalt

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So lets talk a bit about heart swap

Heart swap is a move that is certainly situational, but it is a common enough situation that it is worth devoting a mon to, especially in as aggressive of a metagame as bw2 ou is. There are a vast number of mons that can grab one turn to set up, and then sweep unprepared teams, and theres no way one revenge killer can deal with all of them. This is basically what heart swap allows you to do. Yes, the opponent can switch out, and youve then wasted a turn... That would be mission accomplished! You halted their sweep at little cost to yourself, other than some momentum, which is basically the trade off of any scarfed revenge killer anyways.

The other concern ive seen eith heartswap is that it would force us into prankster. While prankster is the "best" way to abuse heart swap, it is not necessarily needed. For example, if you just slapped heart swap on heatran, it would be able to reliably steal boosts from nearly every speed boosting mon (most cloysters and dragons and all volcaronas fail to ohko balloontran without several turns of set up), so clearly a faster heatran could heart swap against nearly all set up mons. Yes it can never be perfect, but i have confidence that we can figure out a way to beat a wide variety of set up mons without relying on prankster if it comes to that.
 

Yilx

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I'd like to bring up support towards Doom Desire/Future Sight, Trick Room/Tailwind and Explosion, and once again expressing my disapproval towards moves that your opponent can manipulate like Me First, Metal Burst and Wonder Room.

Doom Desire/Future Sight are simply not explored as much because they have a lack of mons that can properly abuse them and/or the mons simply have better options available to them. With the advent of Gen V, Future Sight is 100 BP, Doom Desire is 140, and they hit for their proper type now instead of hitting for typeless damage. This means a STAB boost will bump them up to 150 and a whopping 210 respectively. They also hit the opponent currently out instead at the time of usage now, so no more OHKO Blissey with Doom Desire shenanigans. What makes these moves so interesting is the way it makes the opponent play into your hand easily; for example, if your opponent needs to bring a sweeper healthily in at a specific time like Terrak or Salamence, they can't anymore because they risk being damaged by FS/DD when they come in. Of course, you can argue that this can be used against you when you need to actually outright deal damage, but that's why we have 4 moves, right?

Trick Room/Tailwind have GREAT amounts of untapped potential and amazing users already (Slowking/Reuni/Cofag for TR, Tornadus for Tailwind), but their users share the some form of shortcoming by basing themselves around these moves; the "countdown". Some of them are lackluster without the specific move but can REALLY shine when they have their specific move activated; OTR Reuni is a very good example. If we could look into making a mon that does not fall flat on it's face outside of it's ideal "room" condition I think it'd prove for good points of discussion. Also, just a friendly reminder that if you use a mon to activate Tailwind and then switch/u-turn/bp out, you only have 2 turns left to "abuse" it. 2 turns is a very little amount of turns.

Explosion. The fact that it's BP essentially got halved means not many would run it anymore, but anyone who actually plays mons knows what they can do. The only mons that are close to getting a STAB Explosion are Snorlax's Selfdestruct and Licky's Explosion, where both mons are really a bit too slow to utilize them well. Final Gambit is kind of bad as a whole as it depends on your mon being at full if not closse to full health to do any significant amount of damage; do you REALLY want to sacrifice your full HP mon to take out one of theirs unless you're playing some kind of purely suicide mon?

I've said this before and I will sound like a broken record, but I will say it again; do you REALLY want to leave your mon's success up to your opponent?
 

DetroitLolcat

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In the same vein as Explosion, there's another, less explosive move that deserves some exploration: Final Gambit. Although Aurumoth does get the move, Aurumoth rarely uses it because of its superior options in Dragon Dance and Quiver Dance. However, Final Gambit is an interesting alternative to Explosion in that only one type is immune to the move and that zero types resist it. With Explosion, the opponent can just switch in Ferrothorn and go up 6-5, but the same cannot be said about Final Gambit. Most importantly, if the opponent switches in a Ghost to Final Gambit, the Final Gambit user does not faint. With the right coverage and stats, Final Gambit can immediately force a 5-5 situation or even better thanks to Final Gambit being a risk-free move. You know the sacrifice you have to make, and your opponent cannot just switch in a Pokemon immune to Fighting and gain the match's momentum. Final Gambit does not force our Pokemon to be a Fighting-type, doesn't prescribe any stats besides HP, and doesn't require any abilities to be effective. It is as non-restrictive a move as possible; Final Gambit only needs a decent HP stat to be effective.

Remember, Final Gambit is as free a move as you can get. Our Pokemon, if we choose to use Final Gambit, does not have to be a one-Gambit pony. We can use plenty of other under-appreciated moves along with Final Gambit because Final Gambit is so self-sufficient.

Explosion is cool, but its modern equivalent needs some discussion.
 

MCBarrett

i love it when you call me big hoppa
First of all, I think the move that we decide on should 1) have a predictable effect, and 2) have an effect that doesn't go away after the opponent switches out. This would basically force us to use a trapping ability to get the most out of our move which doesn't seem like a good idea. I definitely have full support behind some recent suggestions such as Explosion, Final Gambit, and Tailwind but I think a couple of other moves are definitely worth discussing.

The first would be Glare. Glare provides the ability to Paralyze any typing (Ghosts are still effected by Glare) at the cost of only 10% accuracy. I think this would be a great move to build our CAP around because it could fit so easily into certain playstyles, namely Bulky Offense. Paralysis support would allow these teams to perform so much better but at this point Druddigon is the best Pokemon that can learn this move.

Another move that I think would be cool to look into would be Super Fang. A move that is guaranteed to do half damage to the opposing Pokemon is pretty powerful but the fact that the only Pokemon that can learn it either are not very powerful or are better off with another moveset has made this move largely untested in the OU metagame. A Super Fang CAP could act as a great wall breaker or it could be a wall with the ability to deal more damage than Seismic Toss, breaking through the Substitutes of threats like Kyurem-B more easily, provided its HP is above 50%.
 
The suggestions that stand out most to me so far are Explosion and Power Trick. More than others, I feel that these moves, on a suitable pokemon, have the potential to open up new metagame niches.

Explosion will replicate a role seen in past metagames - the suicide lead. Though in this case it's likely to be more of a 'suicide utility', since the concept of a concrete 'lead' has faded with Team Preview. What intrigues me most is how we might go about expanding the possibilities of that role - besides the archetypal hazard layer, a 'suicide utility' might also be something that can check a few specific threats, setup screens, or even use one of the more obscure field effects others are suggesting like Gravity and Tailwind. And that may just be the tip of the Iceberg. Final Gambit is similar, with it's own advantages and disadvantages, but I'm not really swayed either way in that regard. Consider me an advocate of both.

Power Trick is a move with great potential utility that hasn't been given to anything that can really make use of it. An offensive CAP5 could stop physically offensive switchins in their tracks by turning defensive, potentially saving momentum. A defensive CAP5 could set up a sweep. It's fairly simple but it's more or less unprecedented; this on-the-fly role changing is something that has been hinted at by stuff like Darmanitan-Z or Meloetta, but never really worked well enough to find its way into OU. In fact, scratch that; it isn't used in any tier at all, because the existing options are flat-out awful. In that respect, Power Trick is a great choice, because it's in the game but it has a lot of untapped potential. It also defines any moveset it's on - which is a big pro for the concept.
 
I think that Doom Desire/Future Sight has a ton of potential, particularly Doom Desire with the higher BP and no immunities. The Steel typing of it is actually great at mitigating the problems of the "two turns later" mechanic. For instance, one problem with these moves is the fact that you are spending a turn not damaging your opponent in order to prime them. This leaves you vulnerable to counterattack or setup. However, with Steel STAB almost inevitable if we focus on Doom Desire, we could easily build a pokemon with a great defensive typing that can afford to take a turn priming Doom Desire. Another issue is that regular STAB options could end up being more useful than their delayed equivalents. Using Steel STAB, your next most powerful choice next to Doom Desire is Flash Cannon, at a passable 80 BP, so there is a huge power difference (way more than Psychic/Future Sight). We could definitely make this Doom Desire hurt, too, as it's the same BP as Draco Meteor; it could be enough to seriously pressure your opponent into switching in a Steel resist. That pressure is really the beauty of this direction for the concept, as there is so much that could be done to play with it.

For instance, if you had coverage moves/secondary STAB to punish some of the best special Steel resists in the tier, you could put your opponent in a situation where they have to force you out the next turn in order for their resist to get in safely, lest you nail it with the proper coverage move. U-turn/Volt Switch is another obvious way to take advantage of this pressure, essentially allowing you to force their wall out immediately after taking Doom Desire (and scout for the opponent saccing something to try and kill your switch-in). You could also use the strategy to buy yourself time to Baton Pass, especially if you primed a boosted Doom Desire. Protect or Substitute could augment these strategies by stalling until the turn that Doom Desire hits. Imagine Doom Desire/Protect/Volt Switch/Coverage Move, or Doom Desire/Protect/Tail Glow/Baton Pass (Edit: maybe Tail Glow a bit greedy). Alternatively, you could try to get a sweeper in the next turn, forcing your opponent to take damage on your setup turn, possibly crippling their counter. This is just off of the top of my head, pressure is a deep enough concept that there should be plenty of creative ways we could take advantage of it. At any rate, this should be enough to show you that there are many different ways that you (and consequently your opponent) can play out the scenario, which should lead to some good strategic play.

There is also a wide variety of abilities that could work well for a Doom Desire mon, so choosing it as a focus does not predetermine our ability. Both defensive and offensive abilities could work, really.
 
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nyttyn

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Power Trick
Power Trick is really nice on paper, but in practice it is two things: an absolutely pointless move, and a shittier swords dance/nasty plot. It does not work to turn a bulky mon from bulk to stronk, because then it will have horrible bulk (assuming this thing isn't a 900 BST nightmare) and will likely be murdered by anything that sneezes on it. If it is fast, it will be murdered that turn. If it is slow, it will be murdered the NEXT turn. And really, what the hell is the point of it over Swords Dance/Nasty Plot other than "lolpowertrick?"

In response to people who are saying "Offensive CAP6 could go defensive," how? It only has three moveslots to work with, assuming it runs Power Trick. At that point, if it wants to be offensive, it at LEAST needs STAB, but monoSTAB for attacking is horribly shitty. Even Dragons would suffer if all they had access to was their STAB (and don't bring up Kyurem-B, even physical Kyurem-B has Fusion Bolt and Ice Beam). And you can't even do anything with two moves for Stalling - Maybe Recover and Toxic at the very best?

So stop bringing up Power Trick. It is an absolutely awful option that, at its very best, is just a shittier Swords Dance/Nasty Plot.

I think moves that change Abilities need some thought, too.
No they do not. Absolutely no pokemon in OU has an ability that is worth spending an entire turn to remove considering the effect only lasts until they swap out (and no ability is worth spending a turn to copy). The only pokemon which have abilities worth removing (Huge/Pure Power) see such miniscule usage in OU that it would be beyond niche to put CAP6 on your team if all it brought to the table was a ability-changing move.

Also how would you even base a mon around an Ability changing move? It is pretty much impossible.

Glare brings absolutely nothing to the table that Body Slam Jirachi doesn't already. Too late for the snake train regardless.

Super Fang
Crobat exists and is plenty OU viable, but really only uses it for lack of better options. Not really a very exciting move to base a mon around, and not all that great in a meta where you want to murder things as fast as you can instead of just wearing them down.

Final Gambit
In a world where hazards are really easy to get up and where mons are throwing around disgustingly powerful attacks, Final Gambit is really sub par. Plus, with the new Fast/Bulky/Powerful Pick Two policy CAP has, a CAP with Final Gambit would be really lackluster at either using Final Gambit or at attacking outside of Final Gambit. Which relegates Final Gambit CAP6 to either being a one trick pony, or just being a mon who just so happens to have Final Gambit.

Tornadus already exists, is OU viable, and is pretty much the perfect Tailwind user. And even then Tailwind isn't really that special on it which is really saying something.

Trick Room
Reuniclus exists, is already OU, and is pretty much the best Trick Room user there is and is pretty effective. In addition, Trick Room teams are still somewhat viable and actually do see use. I'm not even sure why Trick Room was brought up, it doesn't really fit the concept at all because it is actually used.
 
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Bughouse

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Heart Swap is indeed an intriguing move to build around. Prankster is certainly an option, yes, but so is Unaware, and frankly so is every ability. While Prankster and Unaware are the two abilities best suited to boost Heart Swap, there is no reason it would need a specific ability to boost it. As long as it can live a +1 Outrage, steal the boost, survive an unboosted Outrage after (maybe), and heal or get the KO first, it can take on some Salamence. I'm not going to go super detailed, but I think y'all get how this would work.

I think focusing on a specific Ability-neutering move just isn't going to work. I have similar concerns about things as esoteric as Reflect Type. They see marginal use for the simple reason that Pokemon are restricted to 4 moves. Any CAP that actually has this as one of its 4 best moves is going to have a pretty crappy movepool. It's just not a good enough thing to realistically build off of in this sort of OU metagame.

I also oppose any generic Field Effects move. I feel these inevitably devolve into team support discussions like "If OU had a Trick Room user who also did X, then blah blah blah." I think this is totally the wrong approach. Trick Room still has limited viability in OU and that has nothing to do with who can use it. It has everything to do with its short duration and the sheer offensive prowess of OU bearing down whenever Trick Room is not up, which is most of the time. CAP 6 cannot change that problem.

Doom Desire/Future Sight are interesting and I could support building around either. However, I'd rather see this be a last resort sort of option, since I think we can all agree that these moves are good in their own right, though yes still under-appreciated. I'd much rather keep trying to focus on something less strong to begin with.
 
So I was thinking a fair bit earlier that there are some great ideas for combinations that work well. Like my previous post about Gravity leading to other options for lesser used moves, there are other ways of making use of this concept.

The first is Super Fang / Brine which is nice on paper and quite possibly doable. But it has a number of issues. Namely that people can switch and lefties or recovery completely bones the subject. As well as scald and hydro pump are better move options. Also Ghosts. But I like this frame of thinking so I'll move on.

Foul Play / Screech One is a great move with low usable distribution and the other is never seen and covers the faults with the first. I really like this idea and it makes good use of stat lowering moves which are very underused across all tiers.

Now the last one, one I really like the concept of is partial trapping. Magma Storm saw use last generation on Heatran as a set that could dismantle some brilliant special walls with a specially based mon. This can be combined with a multitude of things. Be it netting free switches, setting up hazards/sweeps in the face of something or just severely destroying something stats and smacking them with pursuit to net some key target kills. There are plenty of ways with later sections of the project to make a poke that will get the most out of the partial trapping moves by making volt-turn-baton stuffs a bad idea against it.
 

phoopes

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Okay so this is another Doom Desire/Future Sight post from me.

First off, these moves were lumped together because of the similar effects. However, I think it'd be redundant to give both of these moves to CAP 6, so the better option would need to be decided on. I think out of the two of these, the obvious answer is Doom Desire. It has 40 higher Base Power than Future Sight, and no immunities, meaning that a Dark type can't just switch in and make the turn wasted. Another issue that has been brought up constantly throughout the thread is that the Pokemon we make could potentially just use the other moves in its arsenal, leaving the underused move still underused. I don't think this would be the case with Doom Desire (assuming it would be used for Steel STAB), as the 140 Base Power is significantly higher than the next most powerful special Steel move, Flash Cannon at 80 Base Power. This extra oomph would be plenty of incentive for CAP 6 to use Doom Desire, compared to Future Sight where the step down to Psychic (100 BP vs. 90 BP) isn't as strong. Doom Desire is on the same power level as moves such as Draco Meteor and Overheat, and I feel like CAP 6 could use this power quite effectively.

There are plenty of excellent points or ideas in this thread, and I'd like to address a few of them with why Doom Desire would be a fantastic option for us to consider.

Quanyails said:
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.
To me, Doom Desire fits this description perfectly. Its effect is seldom seen, if ever, in the OU metagame. With the general focus of B/W2 OU being offense now, the concept of offense later has really never been touched. Why is this? Because Doom Desire embodies the description laid out by Quanyails, in that it has poor distribution, is overshadowed, and seen as ineffcient compared to another strategy. Poor distribution is completely unarguable here, as Jirachi is the only Pokemon that has access to Doom Desire, besides Smeargle. Overshadowing is apparent as well, because as anyone who has played the OU metagame at all can tell you, Jirachi has a wide array of diverse sets that it can use effectively. There are so many things that Jirachi can do well that Doom Desire is almost always overlooked. This is why Doom Desire is usually deemed an inefficient strategy, because Jirachi makes use of its huge movepool, balanced stats, and great typing to pull off other roles in the OU metagame.

In the justification, Quanyails calls for CAP 6 to use a combination of typing, ability, and stats to make an underused move relevant, capable of being something that players need to watch out for. For typing, Doom Desire doesn't necessarily pigeonhole us into making a Steel type (I mean who wants more of those in OU?) but to get full effectiveness out of the move, that's probably the route we'd have to end up taking. However, what makes this move a pretty great concept is that it is not reliant on a single ability to be pulled off well. Other ideas like Heart Swap and Me First may need an ability like Prankster to maximize their potential, but the Doom Desire CAP could work well with almost any ability. With this in mind, we could use this Pokemon's ability to play to its other strengths, depending on what kind of Pokemon we make it, which relies heavily on stats and its other movepool. There are numerous different directions that we could go with this. For example, CAP 6 could be a Pokemon designed to punish the opposition for switching, taking advantage of setting hazards and using Doom Desire to cause a lot of residual damage to the opponent. It could also be a high Speed wall breaker that uses Doom Desire right before a special wall comes in to be able to be able to net a 2HKO instead of a 3HKO, or a OHKO instead of a 2HKO. This little used effect has potential to build on existing strategies, and even possibly create new ones. It fits the description and justification perfectly in my mind, making it a great candidate for what CAP 6 is built around.

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.
Doom Desire fits the first category listed by capefeather to a tee, and fits in the second category well too. As said before, Doom Desire is Jirachi's signature move, and it uses other sets that are more effective in the metagame because of its typing, stats, movepool, (etc.). This can be seen in Future Sight as well, because the Pokemon that get it are either pretty bad (Grumpig, Mr. Mime, more) or just have more commonly used sets to fulfill a role (Alakazam, Reuniclus, more). By specifically designing a Pokemon with Doom Desire in mind, we could give this unique effect a place in the OU metagame that would be a relevant move players would need to be prepared to deal with.

Birkal said:
capefeather listed some good qualifiers of what kind of moves we're looking for in his original post, but I'd like to present a different method of categorization. For the moment, let's try to think of moves in terms of how much control the opponent has over the end result. For example, using a simple attacking move like Ice Punch gives the opponent only two options: they can either stay in or switch. This might seem brutally obvious, but let's extend it to something like Snatch. That move requires one limited option out of a plethora: the opponent must use a set-up move. Snatch fails when the opponent switches or using any sort of attacking move, which is a loss in momentum. So for the sake of this argument, let's call Snatch a "highly controlled opponent move" and Ice Punch a "lowly controlled opponent move". The former's success is largely based off of what the opponent does, while the latter will likely have a predictable result, regardless of the opponent's own action.
Going by this categorization, I think we could classify Doom Desire as a low to mid controlled opponent move. At the end of the day, Doom Desire is just an attack, the only difference being is that the damage is dealt two turns later instead of the turn it is used. This goes right back to what Birkal said, your opponent can either stay in or switch. However there is some opponent control in that based off type effectiveness, stats, and whatever else plays a role in their predictions, they have a free turn in between Doom Desire's use and hit to analyze the battle scenario and make a smart decision to switch or stay in depending on what is happening in the battle at the moment. In addition to this, the turn that Doom Desire is used, they also have a chance to do whatever, be it attack, boost their stats, set up hazards, heal, or whatever else floats their boat. However, you also have that turn in between use and hit to make your opponent play into your hand, giving you some more control of the situation. With this in mind, the success of Doom Desire is in a way based off what the opponent does, but at the end of the day they will still get hit with an attack and need to react to the user's decisions regardless of what they do. In this way, I can see how Doom Desire would be a middling opponent control move, as Birkal mentioned with Reflect Type later in his post.

capefeather said:
- Possible impact on and/or interactions with the metagame. A lot of posts have been really vague on this aspect. Give concrete examples.
Simple, Doom Desire is a powerful attack that has an effect almost never seen in OU. It can create mind games between players, and can make the whole "Stay in or switch?" decision a lot tougher and more meaningful in a battle. Different strategies to use and counter Doom Desire would be created if we built CAP 6 effectively with a clear role in mind.

capefeather said:
- How we can actually make a move work. You don't have to poll-jump to do this (and you shouldn't). Here, people can and should talk about broad tactics that are possible in the game.
There's two big options that I see here, though there are probably a few others as well. One is a hazard setter that can punish the opponent for switching even more than taking residual damage from Stealth Rock/Spikes already does. Another is a wall breaker that can use Doom Desire along with a high powered attack to get the extra oomph needed to get through a special wall. In addition to these two strategies, Doom Desire has the nifty abilities to provide team support in a way, breaking Focus Sashes and Multiscale, along with hitting through Protect, Detect, and (lol) Wonder Guard. There are definitely more creative people than me out there who could probably come up with another role that CAP 6 with Doom Desire could fill, or create.

---

All in all, I feel like giving CAP 6 Doom Desire, or even Future Sight, would be a great fit for Quanyails' concept. In my mind it fits the description and justification perfectly, and would be great at answering the original questions proposed. It'd be an interesting build, as there are a few different directions in which we could go, and out of all unique effects that could be brought to the center stage of OU, I feel it's one of the most interesting and doable while staying true to the concept.
 
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(This is my first CAP contribution, so don't be too harsh!)

I think that Doom Desire / Future Sight would be a very interesting concept to try. Doom Desire with STAB has a whopping 210 BP, and with this kind of damage, it can pressure your opponent, because it's like a huge time bomb waiting to go off. When you doom desire, either your opponent switches in a resist or takes some hefty damage with another mon. I believe this can be abused by luring in pokemon like Ferrothorn / Jellicent and hitting them with a nasty surprise in the form of a super effective move, (possibly STAB boosted) or just hitting the incoming wall hard a barrage of powerful moves and possibly ko them with a combo of doom desire and strong move. This can be further abused with hazard support, as the opponent will be switching to avoid getting wrecked by doom desire. The downsides to this move however is that it can be stopped by protect, and leaves you open for a turn.

Gravity is also an interesting move that could see use. The only use it's seen in ou is lando abusing earthquake, but CAP6 could potentially make use of powerful, low accuracy moves, like focus blast and hurricane, or status moves with low accuracy such as sleep powder and hypnosis. Gravity can make use of entry hazards, too, but would require constant setup.
(Sorry, I posted this sorta late at night, I forgot some of my points about doom desire.)

EDIT: CAP6 might be able to abuse Doom Desire by using a mixed set to hit incoming special walls like blissey harder than with special attacks. Sorry if I'm jumping ahead.
 
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nyttyn

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Time for the out of the blue suggestion.
Inferno.

Unlike many other options, Inferno does not set the CAP in stone. There are a number of ways to approach the accuracy issue, and WHAT it does with Inferno can take a number of differnet approaches, but Inferno is the only attack in the entire game, bar Sacred Fire which is a legendary signature, which has a reliable Burn. In fact, assuming it hits, it will ALWAYS burn. With a great BP to boot. There are just so many directions we could take offensive burning with that I think it would be a great approach to take CAP6 down, especially considering it sets very little of CAP6 in stone.
 
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Deck Knight

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Just to give a little background,

Heart Swap was one of the moves we gave to Krillowatt to act as a Utility Counter. I don't believe it saw much use there, but it is used quite a bit in Balanced Hackmons where broken stat and ability combinations run rampant. Necturna also gave us a small sample of what these moves can do, but I think one move is particularly interesting as a test case.

Going to disagree with nyttyn about Power Trick.

If you notice something about PT, all of its users are either slow or the move is irrelevant to them (Alakazam, Gliscor). If we were to build around Power Trick with a fast Pokemon with divergent AND useful Attack / Defense stats (an example of this concept would be Regirock, which maxes at 548 with Max Defense+ and has 236 Attack unboosted. In Regirock's case, PT WOULD be better than Swords Dance if it used its EVs for a wall set, and even after PT it would still have respectable defense). The question would be, what would make us want to use it, and I think the answer is support for the two different functions. It would also be intriguing because even with the "bad swords dance" element, it allows us to take a lot more liberties with the design. Almost no Pokemon that has a defense as high as Regirock or Steelix uses Max+, but with Power Trick there's an incentive to do that. It make physical walling viable while also allowing our Pokemon a unique stat-altering move.

The cool thing about Power Trick is that it's permanent until the next use or a switch out, meaning it can be advantageous to *toggle back* in some circumstances. Recovery moves and priority moves could be built around the concept of Power Trick's mechanical toggle.

Reflect Type is another move that has a lot of potential because of all the matchups it can alter, both favorable and unfavorable. A Pokemon with Reflect Type doesn't necessarily have a STAB, but would be able to have moves of any type, perhaps those that match up with an ability well (Serene Grace and Sheer Force work here) and you could tailor the Pokemon accordingly. Personally I like Power Trick and Reflect Type more because they are effects on YOUR Pokemon and your opponent cannot simply switch out of them.

In reading the Justification, I also think the elements of the move we want to choose have to fit the following two characteristics:

1. The move must define the Pokemon OR its strategy.

Essentially, the only reason to use this Pokemon should be based around what it can uniquely do with the move. An example of existing Pokemon that could be rebuilt around this is Soak Lanturn or Gravity Gengar (disclosure: I've used Gengar on a Gravity team and wish Gengar was itself a Gravity user).

2. The move's effect must be competitively useful in the abstract.

There's a lot of moves that are good on paper but have the serious flaw that the opponent can just switch out on them. Telekinesis is in many ways a poor man's Gravity and could only be alleviated with trapping abilities to ensure the effect remains. Torment is a nasty move denier, but its much less specific than Taunt or Encore.

Without these I think you end up overcompensating for a move that simply can't function under its own power without ludicrous support.
 
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nyttyn

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. If we were to build around Power Trick with a fast Pokemon with divergent AND useful Attack / Defense stats (an example of this concept would be Regirock, which maxes at 548 with Max Defense+ and has 236 Attack unboosted.
Yeah only we can't. That'd be fast, bulky, AND powerful, which violates the new "Fast, Bulky, Powerful: Pick Two" rule.
 
I like Inferno/Zap Cannon/Dynamic Punch, but I don't think any of these would make a good pick as the main move that we focus on. If CAP6 where to have a chance of using Inferno effectively, then it would pretty much require either No Guard, Gravity support, Compoundeyes+Hone Claws, or Simple+Hone Claws. Compoundeyes or +1 accuracy only boosts its accuracy to 65%, which is still lower than Focus Miss. +2 Accuracy gives it a usable 80%, but that is still less accurate than Fire Blast normally, which hits harder, and has over 100% accuracy at +1 (if ability is Compoundeyes, then you don't even need to set up at all to get a perfectly accurate FB). Gravity boosts it to 83%, which is good enough, but as soon as Gravity ends, you can't really use it without resetting gravity, or taking a big gamble. So of those 4 methods, only No Guard and possibly Simple+Hone Claws/Coil seem effective enough to be worthwhile. That basically limits us to 2 possible abilities, 1 of which is only good for a sweeper.

If we chose Gravity as our main focus, then Inferno and Co. would make great tools to help us achieve our goals. However, if we chose Inferno as our main focus, relying on Gravity to boost it's accuracy would make it harder to use, and more likely to get passed over in favor of stronger/more reliable options.
 

nyttyn

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I like Inferno/Zap Cannon/Dynamic Punch, but I don't think any of these would make a good pick as the main move that we focus on. If CAP6 where to have a chance of using Inferno effectively, then it would pretty much require either No Guard, Gravity support, Compoundeyes+Hone Claws, or Simple+Hone Claws. Compoundeyes or +1 accuracy only boosts its accuracy to 65%, which is still lower than Focus Miss. +2 Accuracy gives it a usable 80%, but that is still less accurate than Fire Blast normally, which hits harder, and has over 100% accuracy at +1 (if ability is Compoundeyes, then you don't even need to set up at all to get a perfectly accurate FB). Gravity boosts it to 83%, which is good enough, but as soon as Gravity ends, you can't really use it without resetting gravity, or taking a big gamble. So of those 4 methods, only No Guard and possibly Simple+Hone Claws/Coil seem effective enough to be worthwhile. That basically limits us to 2 possible abilities, 1 of which is only good for a sweeper.

If we chose Gravity as our main focus, then Inferno and Co. would make great tools to help us achieve our goals. However, if we chose Inferno as our main focus, relying on Gravity to boost it's accuracy would make it harder to use, and more likely to get passed over in favor of stronger/more reliable options.
Well yeah Gravity sucks, of course it would be passed over. Also you've forgotten about Lock On, which really isn't viable as an option I'll admit. But honestly, being limited to specific abilities isn't really a bad thing at this point, considering so many of the moves we COULD do would basically dominate the path of the CAP from the start (cough)power trick(cough). We're going to be limited at SOME point, but Inferno still leaves us with some freedom of choice in the aspects it limits us. Even if one of those is clear-cut the 'best' option.

Reflect Type is another move that has a lot of potential because of all the matchups it can alter, both favorable and unfavorable.
Reflect Type is way too situational. You have to be A. Faster then the target, B. swap to a type that resists the attacking type and C. not be 2hko'd regardless. You're giving up an entire turn for a move that's only good in that limited scenario.

I'm not sure how you propose we base a pokemon around always using that move.

Doom Desire
Jirachi already exists and can use Doom Desire just fine. In fact its actually a pretty good user of Doom Desire. It doesn't use Doom Desire.

That speaks volumes right there.
 
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