CAP 17 CAP 6 - Part 10 - Attacking Moves Discussion

[jynx KB]

These pokemon can all still threaten CAP in rain if it's carrying Aqua Jet. Skarmory in particular is still a full stop, and Rotom-W takes Aqua Jet just as easily as Bullet Punch. Ferrothorn too. Jirachi still checks Intimidate CAP with Electric moves or Body Slam. Scarf Keldeo still checks it too. Latios and Breloom would much prefer CAP to run Aqua Jet over Bullet Punch.

This is terribly naive, if I may voice my opinion. Do the calcs say that CAP 6 can be defensively walled? Of course. Here's the rub, can the defenders do anything back?

Skarmory has Whirlwind I guess, but offensively it relies on Brave Bird (chipping it's own health) or tries to set up Spikes or Stealth Rock, giving CAP counter time to belly drum up and clean house, and that's not getting into Skarmory under Intimidate. (though I suppose CAP could be taunted)

Ferrothorn is similar. What offensively can it do to threaten CAP out? nothing, it carries Gyro Ball and Power Whip, both of which are ineffective And while it stacks Spikes, CAP sets up to clobber it. About it's only option is to Thunder Wave.

Rotom has it's Water Stab resisted, and it's Thunder(bolt) potentially useless against an immunity.

Defensively these are great, I agree, but you can't call them legitimate checks unless they actually threaten the pokemon they're defending against.

So for Aqua Jet at least, I'm going to throw my support against.

Edit: OK, conceded, I hadn't thought of those options, but the point still stands that it's not a complete slam dunk in the defender's favor either, especially on certain sets.

Here's the tricky thing with Acrobatics, and other moves in particular. We are dealing with essentially 2 attacks stats here. Pre-setup, and post-setup. we have a big potential to make a decent move ludicrously powerful if successful setup is achieved, and a poor move into usable. That's tricky.

Here's the question we have to ask ourselves mostly here, and I mean this in all seriousness. Would being able to obliterate all counters truly be a bad thing... post set-up?

That's the true question. With Belly Drum in play, we could potentially use that higher attack stat and make an easy sweep the reward for the tricky achievement of setting up.

We already have calculated potential revengers that can outspeed and chip down CAP.

Now I see problems with this idea, Leftovers being a big one, but Substitute can also move the bar one way or another. It just depends if we want to go in that direction. Most posters seem to be leaning twards no.

 

[blitzlefan]

Wait whoa, you forget that CAP is entirely dependent (in theory) on getting a Belly Drum boost, which reduces its HP by 50%. As a result, phazing from Skarmory means that CAP loses half its health, Ferrothorn can cripple CAP with Leech Seed + Iron Barbs damage, which will quickly rob CAP of its HP, CAP is Flying / Steel, so it Rotom's STAB Water-type moves are not resisted, and will do a hefty chunk of damage due to CAP's low special defense.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

That's the true question. With Belly Drum in play, we could potentially use that higher attack stat and make an easy sweep the reward for the tricky achievement of setting up.

Given CAP6's setup, I highly doubt it will have trouble finding time to boost, so we don't want to just give it all of the moves in such a manner that a sweep is nigh-guaranteed. The other unique thing about a Belly Drum Pokemon is that it can't "set up on something". This isn't like Salamence, where giving it free turns results in it going +2/+2 and then +3/+3 and so forth. This goes to +6 in one turn, and then that's it; it's spent and must sweep or get walled. So the reality is, if CAP6 can't punch through something on the enemy team like Skarmory (ie. it's not low enough HP to get the kill or it lacks the proper Flying Gem + Acrobatics trickery), it becomes dead weight on your team because it's otherwise a really dumb Pokemon in OU (it achieves nothing besides Intimidating and sitting there a bit to take hits and die). That's part of the risk here and part of what makes it so important that we actually justify bringing this Pokemon with a sufficient movepool to do something meaningful in OU.

The challenge is, ultimately, the following:

• Making boosted CAP6 worth it in OU over some other boosting sweeper
  
• Making boosted CAP6 not clean house on too many different team combinations in OU (keep it 'balanced')

How we achieve that depends on the community's discourse of this topic, really.

 

[Korski]

My opinions on the remaining moves up for discussion aren't very strong, but since we're still mainly talking about the vote-bound Acrobatics, I thought I'd get into them so DarkSlay doesn't have to beg for people to actually discuss these moves. Out of hand, I will advocate for allowing all Grass, Rock, and Ice moves, excluding Ice Shard, on the basis that they offer next to nothing to this CAP in terms of neutral coverage.

Grass moves would hit Rotom-W, Donphan, and Hippowdon better than anything else, sure, and outside of Fighting coverage, they are the only "realistic" options for doing so. But that's about it. Our Flying STAB clobbers all the other Water-types in the tier and even OHKOs SpD Rotom-W in the case of Acrobatics at +6 Atk. The other Ground-types are neutral to Grass, so Flying STAB will do more damage in those situations. In any case, I doubt something like Seed Bomb or even Horn Leech could wiggle its way into most movepool submissions based on competitive merit.

Rock and Ice moves are in the same boat together, a boat full of lead balloons, obese yokels, and a sprung leak in the bottom. A useless boat filled with useless things. Unless we absolutely need to OHKO Dragonite through Multiscale, these move types are completely irrelevant to this CAP and should be allowed and subsequently ignored.

Ice Shard is a different situation. It wastes Scarf Landorus-T and Scarf Garchomp, and it very nearly OHKOs Jolteon at +6 (76.8% - 90.4%), three things Bullet Punch cannot do, while still retaining usefulness against all the other Scarf Dragons, Breloom, and Scarf Gengar. The only significant things that Bullet Punch actually KOs that Ice Shard can't are Mamoswine, Scarf Kyurem-B, and Terrakion, so I'm torn but leaning toward allowing it on the grounds that it has specific enough tradeoffs with Bullet Punch to make itself irrelevant due to lack of STAB.

For Aqua Jet and Mach Punch, I can only see wanting them if Drain Punch and Brick Break both end up disallowed (I posted previously about how I think the Fighting moves should be allowed). Yes, Aqua Jet can be boosted by the rain, but it can't compete with Bullet Punch or Ice Shard for KOs against Scarfers and neither can Mach Punch. The only thing Mach Punch is useful for is if 75 BP Fighting moves are considered too strong; the priority is just completely meaningless in this case.

For U-turn, I tend to agree with the users who call this a big distraction from the concept and should be disallowed. If you're switching CAP into battle, be ready to use it.

The real meat of the "Needs Discussion" pile are in the Ground and Water moves, which people definitely shouldn't ignore. They both work great with Flying STAB alone and steamroll over a number of problem Pokemon for this CAP. Personally, I would rather they be disallowed if it meant people could stomach Drain Punch better, but otherwise I am honestly quite unsure about them. I think it's in the best interest of this CAP to get some more discussion on these two attacking types, as they are the two very best options for coverage beyond Fighting.

 

[Bughouse]

srk1214:

CAP 6's presence (allegedly) screams Belly Drum, not because of anything we've done with it, but because that is the concept that we're attempting to fulfill. Just because we claim it's about Belly Drum, doesn't mean it will turn out that way.

If we don't give any other options, it will. CAP 6's success imo hinges on the potential of other sets existing. There are only two options in the case where Belly Drum is the only set:
1) Despite being the most predictable thing in OU, it's very good and so it stays a viable threat
2) It's so predictable that any decent player can account for it in teambuilding alone and never need to play intelligently against it in battle

As it stands, I'm leaning towards option 2 right now. There are numerous hard stops to CAP 6 that take no intelligence as of now. Scarf Magneton (yes really... we put all that speed to outspeed Scarf Zone, but we lose to this very viable guy). Scarf Rotom-W. Sash Zam. Skarmory (yes, even if Flying Gem). Not to mention Scizor, who can revenge us from 30%, which isn't exactly an unlikely scenario. On top of that, several whole playstyles are going to be damn near impossible to set up against, as I'm sure you already know.

I think encouraging another, completely separate, set to exist is essential so that these hard stops don't just take over the playtest. We will learn absolutely nothing if everyone is using these things. To me, U-turn is the best move to that effect.

 

[alexwolf]

Disallow U-turn. The risk of losing focus from the Belly Drum sets in order to surprise the usual checks of the CAP is not worth it at all. U-turn is one of the best moves in the game, good enough to turn what was previously a bad all out attacker or pivot to a mediocre or even a good one, and we don't want to take that risk.

Allow Ground coverage only if we don't get Fighting coverage. I have already explained this before, but Fighting coverage hits everything that we would want to, but without murdering potential checks such as Heatran, Magnezone, and Jirachi. While it is true that the first two won't be able to take a Fighting attack at +6 too, they will be able to take one at +0, meaning that the CAP can't force them out before setting up, while it can do so with Ground coverage.

I don't really have a strong opinion about Ice Shard, Mach Punch, and Aqua Jet, but i think that Ice Shard is ok for the reasons Korski mentioned, and Mach Punch should be allowed as a weaker Fighting coverage option for the people that don't want strong Fighting coverage, in order for Pokemon such as max HP Heatran and max HP Magnezone to remain as checks to the CAP even at +6. I don't see any reason for Aqua Jet to be in our movepool, so i am gonna say no for the moment. Allow Ice Shard and Mach Punch, and disallow Aqua Jet.

I don't really care about Rock, Grass, and Ice coverage (other than Ice Shard), so i won't comment on them.

Oh and about this:

If we don't give any other options, it will. CAP 6's success imo hinges on the potential of other sets existing. There are only two options in the case where Belly Drum is the only set:

Who said that there will be only one Belly Drum set? Or that all the variations of the BD set will have the same checks and counters?

 

[DarkSlay]

This post marks the 24 Hour Warning for the closing of this thread. For the last 24 hours, I want users to focus on the following four moves, as these four topics either do not yet hold persuasion to place in any specific category at the present time, require more discussion, or still may hold aspects of controversy that need to be addressed as soon as possible:

Brick Break
Physical Water-based Coverage Moves
Ground-based Coverage Moves
Aqua Jet

Again, focus on these moves and these moves only for the next 24 hours. Thank you!

 

[jynx KB]

Oh man I wish I had more experience here. Nevertheless, I will do my best as a non-expert in calculations.

Brick Break undergoes many of the same calculations and arguments of Drain Punch, obviously, and that move has a better side effect. That being said, the niche of Reflect as a countermeasure to our CAP may be something we want to keep as an option.

I don't really like the idea of water moves in general, and Aqua Jet in particular. Like it or not, the Steel typing is going to encourage rain to patch up a fire weakness. Thunder might be used as a countermeasure, but CAP has potential immunity to that too. The silver lining is, it's easy for the opponent to play around, as our abilities are revealed by simple log checking. That makes two weaknesses potentially gone. I don't think we want an offensive boost.

More to the point, if water attacks are rendered useful enough boosted solely by rain, what's the point of a Belly Drum?

Ground is a little trickier, and it really depends on the moves here. I doubt anyone is suggesting Earthquake here. I will say that many of our checks chosen were electric types, Magnezone and Jolteon come to mind. Maybe if they were pitiful enough that it's negligible before the boost. (something like Ferrothorn's occasional use of Bulldoze)

I understand the view on trying to be usable before setting up a Belly Drum boost, but it's tricky ice to walk on when we have to run calculations on, and balance, two very different attack stats. What's a usable countermeasure at first can be back breakingly destroying to a counter post-boost. Making it even trickier is the high speed. What may be easily forgotten in the shuffle is Leftover recovery potential. Stall for long enough and you have all that health right back.

 

[Pata Hikari]

Allow Brick Break it has the same Base Power as Drain Punch, just with a different effect. Both give it fighting type coverage.

Disallow Ground moves. Ground moves means Earthquake. We don't want CAP6 to have Earthquake. Heatran can take a Brick Break/Drain Punch, it can't take an Earthquake.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

I think Ground-type coverage is too good and not good enough all in the same setting. It nails Jirachi far too hard, but completely misses the mark on Skarmory. I'm ignoring Heatran here because Fighting-type attacks at +6 will kill it all the same, so I consider it a wash as far as the type coverage goes. I think Fighting-type is much more valuable to CAP6 than Ground-type in this regard, as it gives it a powerful neutral hit against Skarmory and Jirachi and simultaneously nails threats like Ferrothorn (with contact damage returned) and Heatran. This means that with proper (and not an inordinate amount of it) support, CAP6 can actually achieve its sweep. If we give it Ground-type coverage instead, CAP6 will be completely shut down by Skarmory short of with tricky lure-and-KO strategies that the enemy doesn't adequately predict. I much prefer the "weaken counters with other Pokemon, then use CAP6 as a sweeper afterward" strategy to the alternative, which crushes certain Pokemon and outright loses to others. We don't want to hyper-centralize the meta around very specific CAP6 counters, we want there to be a diverse number of "good responses" to CAP6 to keep the meta that results from its inclusion healthy.

In this light, I say allow Brick Break, disallow Ground-type coverage.

I've already said my piece on Aqua Jet. It's weak by all rights and ultimately only beats Jolteon and ScarfTran and a few other stragglers (Okay, and Landorus-T), and I think Mach Punch should be allowed all the same, which does the same things. Allow Aqua Jet.

I don't particularly share any concern for Water-type physical moves, though I think they are "out of place" logistically and put a little too much flexibility for CAP2 on rain teams. I think that ultimately, I want to remind people that we want the BD set to be the best set, and we don't want to allow things that encourage other sets. I think a physical attacker bulky Steel/Flying immune to Electric has a lot of merit on rain teams because its only weakness is nullified by rain, and if CAP6 has access to something like Waterfall, it gets pseudo-STAB. I believe that Water-type physical attacks will provide too much opportunity for CAP6 to become something other than a BD user, and so thus should be disallowed.

 

[DetroitLolcat]

Brick Break

Brick Break breaks CAP6 worse than it breaks bricks. We're supposed to be checked in some manner by Magnezone, Heatran, Skarmory, and Jirachi, but Brick Break's purpose is specifically to make our checks and counters less able to check or counter us. Although the threats list is a guideline and not an edict, it's smart to at least attempt to lose to the Pokemon that we designated as checks and counters. We already gave CAP6 Volt Absorb to give it more of a chance against Magnezone, do we really need to just straight-up OHKO them with Brick Break? Not a single OU Heatran set has a chance against Brick Break, while Jirachi and Skarmory lose a lot of their utility against us. For example:

+6 252 Atk (custom) Brick Break vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Jirachi: 258-304 (63.86 - 75.24%) -- guaranteed 2HKO.
+6 252+ Atk (custom) Brick Break vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Jirachi: 283-334 (70.04 - 82.67%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Adamant CAP6 wastes Specially Defensive Jirachi, a Pokemon that cannot OHKO us, with Brick Break and Bullet Punch. Jolly CAP6 misses out on the 2HKO, but if Jirachi fails to paralyze us or CAP6 has enough HP remaining it won't really matter. We are not supposed to beat Jirachi reliably. Brick Break lets us do so against any Physical Jirachi set not running Thunderpunch without fail. Disallow Brick Break

Physical Water-based Coverage Moves

Although Physical Water-based Coverage Moves seem to be pro-concept in that they hit Steels neutrally while pulverizing the Ground types that CAP6 is supposed to threaten. However, we already have Ice and Grass attacks Allowed for that. Water moves, specifically Waterfall and Aqua Tail will shred Steel-types. CAP6's Steel type already means it gets its Fire resistance neutralized by Rain, and Water moves will undoubtedly make Politoed CAP6's most frequent teammate. Let's look at how Waterfall annihilates our counters list in the Rain after a Belly Drum:

+6 252 Atk (custom) Waterfall vs. 224 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory in rain: 234-276 (71.55 - 84.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 252+ Atk (custom) Waterfall vs. 224 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory in rain: 257-303 (78.59 - 92.66%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 252+ Atk (custom) Waterfall vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Eviolite Magneton in rain: 316-372 (130.57 - 153.71%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+6 252+ Atk (custom) Waterfall vs. 172 HP / 0 Def Magnezone in rain: 402-474 (124.07 - 146.29%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+6 252 Atk (custom) Waterfall vs. 252 HP / 108 Def Jirachi in rain: 370-436 (91.58 - 107.92%) -- 50% chance to OHKO
+6 252+ Atk (custom) Waterfall vs. 252 HP / 108 Def Jirachi in rain: 406-478 (100.49 - 118.31%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+6 252 Atk (custom) Waterfall vs. 252 HP / 236+ Def Jirachi in rain: 300-354 (74.25 - 87.62%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 252+ Atk (custom) Waterfall vs. 252 HP / 236+ Def Jirachi in rain: 331-390 (81.93 - 96.53%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

With Waterfall or Aqua Tail at our disposal, we are literally countered by nothing. We can OHKO Skarmory after Stealth Rock damage. Every Jirachi set not running a Bold nature and 236 EVs gets pulverized. Aqua Tail is even more egregious as it drops Skarmory and Jirachi to the floor no matter what. Furthermore, CAP6 destroys Tyranitar, the most common weather changer in the game, with Bullet Punch. Hippowdon, somehow, can actually take a +6 Waterfall from Jolly CAP6 at the cost of 90% of its health. Regardless, there is not a Steel-type in the game that can hope to defeat CAP6 if Waterfall is in our movepool. Disallow Physical Water-based Coverage Move

 

[Nyktos]

Brick Break, Ground coverage
These are clearly similar in what they achieve. First off, Drain Punch really should not be going to a vote if Brick Break somehow ends up disallowed. That would be silly. That aside, let's look at the merits of these. Our CAP really does want some sort of coverage for Steel-types, as those are just too numerous to succeed with them as a complete blind spot. Let's look at the differences between them, then. Of note is that while Fighting-type moves stronger than Brick Beak are already disallowed, the strongest Gound-type move (Earthquake) is not. It gives CAP 6 the ability to OHKO even the bulky sets of Heatran and Magnezone unboosted. This is enough reason to disallow Earthquake.

However, contrary to popular belief, Earthquake is not the only physical Ground move in existence. The next best is Drill Run, which does not OHKO either 252 HP Heatran or 172 HP Magnezone unboosted with any degree of reliability. As such, it would be useful primarily on a boosting set, as we want. Drill Run is, however, still a more powerful move than Brick Break, thanks to the existence of Jirachi which while far from a hard counter is definitely favoured against CAP 6 with only Fighting coverage, but is (of course) trivially OHKOed at +6 with Drill Run. There isn't really a Jirachi analogue on the Fighting side, since the obvious example (Ferrothorn) is OHKOed by Acrobatics and needs only a fairly small amount of prior damage to be KOed by Drill Peck as well. Similarly Acrobatics hits Skarmory harder than Brick Break does, so its ability to score a neutral hit there is not especially notable.

So overall, Brick Break is the weaker move, but still does more or less what's needed. I don't think the CAP should get both kinds of coverage because that's basically the worst of both worlds as far as finding the balance between "having checks" and "not being terrible" goes. As such, allow Brick Break and disallow Drill Run.

Water coverage
Water is a pretty generically good attacking type. It doesn't target any of our specific checks except Heatran, which could make it more palatable to some than Fighting or Ground coverage. However, with a boost from rain, it ends up being nearly as good of a "coverage" move for Steels as those are. Jirachi and Magnezone are both OHKOed by rain-boosted Waterfall. Even Skarmory, the one sacred cow that almost everyone agrees should be a solid switch-in to CAP 6, has a 25% chance to be OHKOed by +6 Adamant CAP 6 in rain. Despite the fact that the CAP does need help to be a power in OU at this point, Water coverage is going way too far. Disallow Water coverage.

 

[DarkSlay]

The Attacking Moves thread is now CLOSED. Thank you all for your input, and I hope that the current set of Allowed/Disallowed moves reflect the conclusions drawn from the thread. It was my intention that our Belly Drum-based CAP balances both coverage and power in a way that makes it both viable as a threat, successful as a sweeper, and modest enough to retain its checks. The following three moves will be put to a vote:

Acrobatics
Drain Punch
Brick Break

All three of these moves have controversial aspects to their inclusion, but have garnered enough conversation and discussion to be put up for a community vote regarding their conclusion. The poll for these three moves will be up shortly.

 

[capefeather]

Crux knows why I'm only posting now.

The fact that Brick Break and Drain Punch are both on there is kind of weird, but a similar thing happened last time, so eh. The moves put under Controversial are pretty much the ones that should be in contention, since they're the ones that mess very significantly with every OU Steel-type.