CAP 32 - Final Product (1.0 Release)

spoo

spoo

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Well, we finally made it!

I'll write a longer post in this thread to share my thoughts on Hemogoblin's process in more detail. But for now, I just want to keep things (relatively) brief and say thank you––TLing was always something that I've wanted to do, and this was genuinely such a rewarding process to be at the front of.

Thanks to the people who helped me talk through decisions / work out my thoughts in private; thanks to the mod team for their endless work behind the scenes; thanks to our artists, spriters, 3D modelers, sound designers, and anyone else who helped give Hemogoblin its proverbial heart and soul (I'm stunned by the sheer amount of talent in this community every single CAP process, but this one struck me especially hard); an eternal thanks to the PS programmers, this project literally wouldn't exist without your help; huge thanks to every single person who contributed to the competitive stages during this process, whether you're a veteran or first-time poster here; and a MASSIVE thanks and congratulations to everyone on the TLT––you guys killed it every step of the way, seriously. Don't quite know how I landed in this extremely niche corner of the internet but I'm glad I did, this community rocks.

And with that, I present CAP32!

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Concept:
D2TheW said:
Name: Bang Average

Description: This pokemon will attempt to circumvent average or below average stats to become viable.

Justification: Ou has always shown a massive preference towards mons with great statlines and high base stats, but there have always been exceptions to this rule. However in Cap we have always exclusively made mons with good to great stats, meaning we have left a lot of interesting design space untouched. There's a variety of ways we could go about a concept like this and I think this would be an illuminating and interesting project for us to engage with.

Questions:
What actually counts as average stats?
This will likely be up for some debate, as this is somewhat relative. 85 speed is a perfectly good speed stat on fini, but if zera had 85 speed it'd probably be in ru. As for bst, the lowest bst of ou ranked mons at the conclusion of ss (sv is a bit young to draw conclusions from) is Pelipper at 440, with Clefable in 2nd with 483. Both of these are undeniably average but 3rd lowest is Ferrothorn at 489, whose statline could definitely be seen as above average. It'd be pretty hard to deny that Toxapex has a better statline than Alolatales, despite the 10 point bst difference being in the fox's favour. Particular attention will have to be paid to how the stats synergise, rather than a flat interest in BST

How much stat efficiency is permissable?
To return to the above example part of what gives Ferro and Pex above average stats is the efficiency with which their bst is divided, with speed and various attacking stats being dropped in favour of juicing up defenses. Conversely, to use a lower tier example, Cobalion has a bst 91 points higher than ferro, but that bst is inefficiently distributed giving Cob mediocre attacking stats and good bulk on only one side. Despite it's high bst, Coba has pretty average stats. Obviously some degree of efficiency will be necessary but to what extent. Breloom has a frankly awful statline with the exception of it's attack, finding use through it's unique combination of other strong attributes. Is one stat pushing 130 fundamentally antithetical to the concept or is it permissable if all other stats take hits? Where do we draw that line?

Do we actually do stats first?
This is obviously a very stat centric concept, but there's good reasons that stats are usually done so late in the process. It'd certainly be a shake up to the process but you could probably still achieve a similar result with a more standard process order.

How does this affect our power budget?
The Chromera process afforded a large power budget to other aspects of the process to account for it's bad ability. To what extent, if any, do we allow that here? Remember that the goal here is using stats that are average or below average, not explicitly bad. The sort of affordances allowed in chroms process are almost certainly over the line, and honestly we could potentially make a perfectly reasonable end product without dipping into anything explicitly overpowered.

What types suit average stats, if any?
For example, dragon might be more suitable for it's access to strong stabs like Draco and Outrage that mitigate ower attacking stats. Psychic on the other hand may suit less well due to its reliance on weaker stabs. Are there typings that can work around mediocre bulk by leveraging unique or valuable defensive profiles?

What can we learn from gen 9?
The early stages of SV has given us some interesting examples of successful mons with average stats. In particular, we've been given two excellent examples of what to avoid. Espathra and Houndstone both clearly have very average stats with both having a sub 500 bst and highest individual stats of 105 and 101 respectively. These two became the lowest bst mons to be banned to ubers since Mega Sableye in oras. Houndstone isn't particularly interesting, as it was purely broken by virtue of having one of the most cracked moves to ever exist. Espathra is more notable, as it initially fell to uu before rising through the ranks thanks to it's stored power shenanigans and ridiculous tera synergy. Espathra shows us that even with pretty shit stats, we have to be careful to not overtune in other stages, which is definitely a tendency that we have in cap projects.
Click to expand...
Type: Fire / Fairy
Primary Ability: Pixilate
Secondary Ability: Intimidate
Stats: 90 HP / 99 Atk / 89 Def / 99 SpA / 97 SpD / 55 Spe
1.0 Movepool:
Bitter Blade, Boomburst, Bulk Up, Double-Edge, Draining Kiss, Explosion, Extreme Speed, Fiery Dance, Fire Blast, Fire Lash, Flamethrower, Flare Blitz, Knock Off, Lava Plume, Moonblast, Moonlight, Psychic, Psyshock, Spikes, Taunt, Thunder, Thunderbolt, Volt Switch, Wild Charge, Will-O-Wisp, Zen Headbutt

Height: 1.4 m
Weight: 85 kg (80 BP)
Dex Color: Pink

Lastly, here's the replay from Hemogoblin's inaugural battle I had with Da Pizza Man, where Hemogoblin actually put in a lot of work!
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9cap-1877135316
My team: https://pokepast.es/285308f4641a3f97
Da Pizza Man's team: https://pokepast.es/784656c44f40a0f3

I hope y'all have as much fun playing with this mon as I know I will :)
 
ausma

ausma

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hemogoblin honestly came out so cool and i very much feel it was successful all around with a very fun and unique pokemon that i will have a whimsy time trying out. we had some bumps in the road here and there but i overall had a really great time with this process and i'm yet again glad i was able to be apart of it.

ofc a big thank you to the tlts for their direction, and spoo you did a great job getting things mobile as well so your poop factor has reduced slightly. heart emoji
 
ryangregory78

ryangregory78

As my first full CAP project, I can happily say that Hemogoblin has been a blast all around and I'm really pleased with how the little guy turned out. Admittedly, I've had my fair share of doubts throughout this project, but now, here we have a kickass little creature that can pull of a slew of roles really well and nails its concept on the head. Bravo to TLT and everyone involved!
 
kenn

kenn

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I am so happy to be a part of not just this particular CAP, but also the community who are absolutely amazing and wonderful and welcomed me with open arms so I appreciate that a lot. This was the first one I participated in (I lurked without an account during Saharaja lol) and actually got decently far (a typing sub slated which was my first ever CAP post and 4th in the stat subs) so definitely can't wait to abuse Hemogoblin and also for the next CAP because this was an absolute blast!
 
mark6870

mark6870

i said multiple times during the process that i didnt want to use a mixed CAP32 but the first set i make with hemogoblin is a trick room mixed breaker set and it is the funnest thing i have ever created

I love this homonculus thing so much dude.
 
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