CAP 7 CAP 7 - Concept Assessment

[Starkclamp]

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say, could you make yourself a little bit clearer? It seems like you're saying that a scout will fail to fulfill it's niche if we make it a scout. =/

Hmm... Let me reiterate myself then. I think it's a silly idea to scout by forcing switches, because that's something that lots of other pokemon are already very capable of doing. If we say "X is strong or disabling and requires an immediate answer, so we can find out what their answer is when they switch to it" then that's not really a scout, it's a sweeper. We already have lots of sweepers. The point of CAP isn't to make new things for old jobs, it's to see how the metagame would work if we had new things.

As a result, I think it makes a lot more sense for CAP7 to approach scouting from a different perspective, with abilities like Frisk or Forewarn. Discussion has shifted more in that direction anyway. In particular, the Transform idea that was brought up is actually really cool, though I'm pretty sure its power level is depressingly low. An idea I had was an ability that on switching in it says the species of a pokemon on your opponent's team that you haven't seen yet... There's a lot of possible area to be plotted outside of traditional scout tools.

 

[Deucalion2]

I'd like to say I completely support the idea of a viable transform user. Transform is a single move, but it enables you to scout out everything about the opponent, with the exception of HP and held item, perfectly fulfilling our requirements. It also stops our scout from becoming to strong - many Poke carry moves which are super-effective against themselves, so our scout is strictly limited to scouting and not to sweeping. It would also be an entirely new niche in the metagame - not just a scouter, but a viable Transformer.

 

[bpblu]

A viable Transformer? Never actually thought of that. It definitely might be a good idea. We should keep this in mind when we begin discussing our scout's movepool.

 

[Plus]

I don't really get what this Transform business is all about. Transform is a pretty crap move, even if it sounds good on paper, regarding getting information on moves/stats etc. However, what good is it, really? Transforming into your opponent won't exactly force switches all the time, which is what a scout must do to live. If your opponent chooses to stay in on the scout, it's most likely because your opponent has the ability to kill/wall it. If it has that ability, then your ability to force switches is moot. Knowing one pokemon's set is somewhat of an advantage, but it is more advantageous if the scout actually revealed the opponent's team instead early game, so you know what to expect late game. Figuring out your opponent's team in the beginning is obviously something that is harder to figure out than a moveset.

There's the two forms of scouting, not offensive and defensive, but scouting for sets and scouting for a team. The latter is definitely move useful, and I really don't see why I'd want to waste a slot on what could be Yawn/Protect/U-turn/Roar/Threatening moves for something like Transform. After you transform, you're almost guaranteed to switch out. I don't think Transform warrants a set on the "ULTIMATE" Scout, when the average battler can predict sets through other forms, such as switch ins and/or abilities.

For example, Frisk tells you your opponent's item. If your opponent's salamence was holding Life Orb, you could guess what kind of set it is. Likewise, you could tell what heatran has. If it has scarf, you should definitely know what set it is.

Transform seems like a hindrance to me, as knowledgeable battlers should be able to predict sets on their opponent solely on mere switch ins. If a heatran switches in on a blissey, what move do you expect it to have?

The answer should be obvious, and that alone shows that transform is not needed on this pokemon.

 

[Magmortified]

A viable Transformer? Never actually thought of that.

Why would you even use Transform anyways? I'm not sure I'd really want to sacrifice a turn like that just to learn your opponent's moveset... which can usually be guessed once the opponent's done something anyways. If your opponent has DD'd with their Salamence, it is not difficult to guess what set they're packing. If they have just used Draco Meteor and lost 10% health, I need no Transform to tell me what they're packing. At least with Protect, you can keep all of your health while maintaining a more consistent set of moves with which you can do things. With Transform, you kind of take the risk of a big hit to the face.

Ultimately, there are two types of scouting that you can do:

-Scout what the current Pokemon has.
-Scout what your opponent has on their team.

I think that it's more beneficial to operate under the pretense of the latter, with respect to the former. We can give CAP7 abilities like Frisk, or Forewarn to give us an insight into the opponent's strategy without any extra effort - maybe even Protect. But I think that you'd get much more usable information by focusing on "the big picture." It's much more difficult to guess what other Pokemon your opponent than what set they're running when Infernape just used Swords Dance.

Overall, the more passive efforts should be considered for the former (using typing to safely switch in on Tyranitar, for instance), while, on the other hand, we actively try to allow the Scout to get a grip on the momentum by forcing our opponent to do things. Such as giving it Ice Shard to scare out Mence, thereby forcing your opponent to reveal more of their team. You could capitalize on this further by U-Turning to something that would scare out what your opponent would then send out and learn even more!

 

[tennisace]

I'm going to make a suggestion here: don't decide on what you do and don't want to scout until AFTER the typing is done. The reason is that the typing will dictate what we can and can't switch in on. So I would suggest we go with a typing that helps with scouting, but doesn't conform to a list of set Pokemon we need to scout, if you get what I'm saying.

 

[beej]

Since when is Transform used for scouting purposes? People don't use Transform Smeargle (or Mew in Ubers) to scout the opponent's movesets, it's used for offensive purposes often because it copies the opponent's stat boosts, so you can transform into a Snorlax with a Curse for example. It's also a gimmick of a move at best. We should absolutely not make Transform the main focus of this Pokemon, there are plenty of other viable moves we can use.

 

[MapleSandwich]

Transform could work if it was largely defensive, such as a Water/Steel which many moves fail to hit SE. Force a switch, transform to the switch-in, and see what you can do (or rather, what they could do). As for typing, I agree Speed needs to be the highest priority stat. HP and physical Defense should take a back seat, since scouts (in the sense of the word) are typically fragile. As for moves, we can all agree that Roar/Whirlwind, U-Turn, Protect and maybe Baton Pass work best. Other options:

• Charm/Fake Tears
• Yawn
• Screech/Metal Sound
• Perish Song

If we're going with information retrieval, why not make it a Psychic type? After all, the concept of psychic does include telepathy, and Psychic was an extremely fast type historically. Although it might be Pursuit fodder, one could say Pursuit was made to force originality in scout choices. For a secondary typing to help null that, maybe Fighting.

 

[cyberzero]

I think we're getting off-topic, Yllnath provided us with an amazing base to work with. I won't quote the entire thing, so if the mods and Mag agree, I'll request for any posts after this to discuss what he's brought up.


Yllnath's post can be found at http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1760517&postcount=62

List of goals

Possible information we want to collect (Prio 1):
- Names of the 6 pokemon on a team
- What 4 moves are used on each of these pokemon
- Items used on each of the pokemon
- Abilities used on each of the pokemon
- EV spread of each pokemon

First of all, which of these do you agree with? If anyone has anything to add, please introduce it to us. I personally think that all of these except the EV spread should be priorities for this CAP. EV spreads are too difficult to reliably collect, and it wouldn't make much of a difference because most sets have similar or predictable EV spreads.

Here is my opinion on this matter:

Possible methods to get information, split by information type:
Names of the 6 pokemon on a team:
- Causing switches by raw force (high offensive stats meaning death to any pokemon that stays in
- Causing switches by status (Ruining a potential sweep with a burn or a paralyze)
- Causing switches by potential sleep (Yawn)
- Causing switches by temporary stat drops (I.e charming a physical version of mence)
- Causing switches by removing an item that is vital to the cause of that certain pokemon
- Causing switches by the use of roar and/or whirlwind
- Causing switches by revealed information because it was vital to the opponent to keep his set revealed

Raw force will make this a sweeper. I think that status, sleep, stat drops, item removal, phasing, and revealing information are great. If those 5 demands are met, the team scouting aspect of the Pokemon would be perfect.

I won't expand too much on the rest, what do the rest of you guys think of Yllnath's points?

 

[Skyshroud]

If we're going with information retrieval, why not make it a Psychic type? After all, the concept of psychic does include telepathy, and Psychic was an extremely fast type historically. Although it might be Pursuit fodder, one could say Pursuit was made to force originality in scout choices. For a secondary typing to help null that, maybe Fighting.

Getting a little bit ahead of yourself. We don't need anything that specific yet. After all, the typing poll is coming up soon anyway.

 

[Magmortified]

After all, the typing poll is coming up soon anyway.

Speaking of which, I think we're pretty much done here.

Typing Poll and Discussion coming shortly.

 

[jagged_angel]

Before discussing Yllnath's excellent post, I'd like to propose an order of importance of info to be uncovered by our Ultimate Scout:

1. Team Composition
2. Items
3. Movesets
4. Abilities

The reason for this order is that team composition gives you the most information. For example, if you see Fidgit, Hippowdon and Cradily, it pretty much reveals the opponents whole strategy. Revealing late game sweepers is also incredibly useful.

Items are more easily determined than moveset, and give a strong indication of which moveset is being used, in many cases.

Movesets are arguably more useful to know than Items, but are difficult to determine completely outside a custom Ability or Transform, both of which have major downsides.

Abilities are only useful info in rare cases where an opponent has 2 or more useful Abilities.

I have left Stats/EVs off this list as there is currently no game mechanic that allows one to determine this information, other than Transform (which is a barely competitive move). However, it is theoretically possible to create a move, item or ability that reveals the opponents stats.