CAP37 - Part 4 - Role Discussion

[Da Pizza Man]

CAP 37 So Far

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Dark/Flying is our chosen typing! This thread will serve to determine the role CAP37 will play! Please pay close attention to earthflax's post in this thread!

Guidelines:
1) Pay close attention to the Topic Leader during this discussion. Their job is to keep us focused and to bring insight.
2) Do not poll jump. Poll jumping is a serious offense in these threads, and you can get infracted for it. Poll jumping is when you discuss something that should be discussed in the future, like specifying a CAP's stats or typing. You're allowed to hint at such things to conclude a point or to provide an example, but do not centralize your post on a poll jump. Poll jumping hurts the focus of early threads and can cause us to go off on a tangent. If you're not sure if a particular argument is poll jumping or not, err on the side of caution and don't post it.

 

[earthflax]

Hi all,

Thanks for putting up with me. The TLT and I decided that we’d have a brief Role Discussion stage before we went into Ability Discussion considering how little of our place in the metagame has been fleshed out up until this point in the concept. I’ll lead us off with a few questions:

1. What are the unique strengths of our typing and conditional move?
2. What are the shortcomings of our typing and conditional move?
3. What general roles are best suited for our skillset so far?

A brief reminder to please not poll-jump with specific mentions of abilities, stats, or other moves, unless as an example of a broader point. For brevity’s sake I will tentatively give about 24 hours, give or take, for these questions. Cheers!

 

[Ayecrusher King]

The advantages have more-or-less been talked throughly before we polled, so I'll go into flaws.
Edit: Actually, there is one more slight advantage that might be useful: as a part Dark-type, we're also immune to Prankster-boosted status moves, as well as the anti-healing Psychic Noise.

What are the shortcomings of our typing and conditional move?

We are still somewhat affected by Stealth Rock unless we have boots. We are also weak to Fairies (very common and varied choices this gen, such as physical priority , fast wall , mixed attacker ), Ice (such as our newly unshackled Ramnarok) and Electricity (so we're probably likely to get paralysed as well). Those are things we need to address.

The very first thing we need to remember is that Beak Blast has negative priority. Every time we're clicking this, we will go last unless the opponent is trying to set up Trick Room or has something odd like a Lagging Tail. A slightly lesser thing to remember is that Beak Blast is a bomb move: Bulletproof mons like Chesnaught and Equilibra will not be damaged at all (but are still vulnerable to the burn if they make contact). Whatever option we choose, we should keep in mind to mitigate, if not improve, our position in moving last most of the time.

What general roles are best suited for our skillset so far?

A bulky physical attacker is all but guaranteed to be our identity. I would say a tanky role is our ideal role, given Beak Blast's negative priority requiring us to be able to take a hit before we deal damage, though as to what specifics I'm gonna withhold my thoughts. I would agree that we're probably capable of wallbreaking if we can bust out Beak Blast's high BP effectively or utility if our Speed is decent.

 

[AzothBend]

1. What are the unique strengths of our typing and conditional move?
2. What are the shortcomings of our typing and conditional move?

Grouping these together as two sides of the Knocked Off coin. Knock Off is perhaps the most common contact move in the meta. A Dark-type resistance and a move that can punish contact moves with Burn suggests CAP37 as a prime Knock absorber for its team. At the same time, a secondary Flying-type means CAP37 will need to contend with a weakness to Stealth Rock, which is perhaps counterintuitive to the role of Knock absorber. Balancing this will be pivotal to CAP37's success. The good new is our typing already affords great match-ups into many of the meta's best hazard setters, either through defensive immunities and resistances or the threat of Burn.

3. What general roles are best suited for our skillset so far?

Beak Blast requires CAP37 take a hit to function optimally. Therefore, we should be eyeing roles that lean more defensive. The power of Beak Blast maybe even forces us into a tank role. Some factors we'll need to contend with are speed & priority, longevity, and how CAP37 capitalizes on turns where it forces opposing Pokemon out. I'll save my specifics thoughts on all three for now, until we get more specific questions or move to later stages. But like with the Knock Off interaction, there seems plenty of ripe discussion to be had over how counterintuitive choices may be to 37's benefit.

 

[Robraf]

What are the unique strengths of our typing and conditional move?

Well with Dark/Flying we are not weak to Knock Off Damage but still incentivize Opponents to use the move on us because of our SR weakness. We don‘t just straight up resist U-Turn therefore U-turn is also encouraged only taking Typing into account. We generally bait a lot of Physical Contact moves, for Instance usually runs something like Ice Spinner or Head Charge for more specific coverage which we can Burn. could also run Wild Charge and heavily getting punished.

I think the Biggest Advantage to BB is the ability to pin folks. We can switch into the likes of etc. and put them into an awkward position where they either Switch out and potentially get a lot of Chip or attack into us and get Burned. It‘s difficult to actually tell what the strengths of BB are as the Stats and Ability will play a lot into it. We want to discourage opponents as much as possible to hit 37 with contact due to the burn chance. It makes for a lot of mindgames.

What are the shortcomings of our typing and conditional move?

What’s a bit sad about our Typing is that with Dark we are generally good against common special attackers for instance yet these mons don‘t really trigger BB burn ever. We are also still weak to Rocks which can make it tough functioning as a switch in after being Knocked. I also think that even tho Dark/Flying isn‘t a bad defensive typing looking at the VR it doesn’t look like a typing that would want to switch into that much honestly. This can obviously be targeted in the Stat Stage but since I don‘t wanna polljump I‘m just taking the typing alone into consideration.

BBs drawbacks are blatant I‘d say. We have a -3 Priority move that we want to encourage in the moveset. A move usually always going last meaning that we require some extent of bulk to take hits. Also the burn effect is extremly telegraphed, everyone will know what‘s coming therefore you can‘t ever rely on a burn. If we can find ways to increase the chances of BB burning by baiting or forcing opponents to hit us with a contact move would be cool. Or other ways to punish them switching if they wanna avoid the burn to begin with.

What general roles are best suited for our skillset so far?

100% we require Bulk, without really good bulk we will drop BB any chance we get cause it will always require us to get hit even by the slowest mons in the meta. I also believe that we shouldn’t just do high def lower spe def or high spe def lower def I believe we require both to be decent or straight up excellent. I‘d say that having a higher spe def would be beneficial as we want them to be more inclined hitting us for damage physically. Aside of bulk we do also wanna do damage, we DONT wanna be just another that never runs a STAB flying move. Therefore we need good Attack. I feel like a Bulky Attacker is exactly where we wanna land. Take hits well while dealing back a lot of damage. I was kinda thinking about Cresselia bulk with a bit less speed almost no special Attack but good Attack.

 

[Guingil]

1. What are the unique strengths of our typing and conditional move?

Dark/Flying is a very happy middle between the paths of "win always against contact Physical attackers" and "be weak to them to bait their attacks" discussed in the last stage. You somewhat alleviate your weakness to having your Heavy Duty Boots knocked off as a Flying-type with a resistance, but not as strongly as with a Stealth Rock neutrality. You also are neutral to U-turn and Fighting moves, which might help you bait them while still being able to tank them with reasonable bulk. Expecting the play where if you come in against a contact attacker, their optimal response is still to switch out, getting Burns with Beak Blast is still difficult for this Pokemon. But at least with this typing I expect to see situations where the opponent can decide it's best to take the Burn a little bit earlier than the endgame, which is how the Steel/Flyings and Ground/Flyings have implemented it in STABmons in my knowledge.

Your specially defensive profile has useful resistances in Ghost, Dark and immunities to Earth Power Ground (but also to the Physical moves) and Future Sight Psychic, which, while it still doesn't force your answers to be only Physical, especially with the Fairy, Electric and Ice weaknesses, does give you good matchups into certain meta mons. So some availability of switch-in opportunities.

Dark + Flying is great two move coverage, with only Tyranitar, Kingambit, Tinkaton being relevant mons who resist it, and two of them strongly leaning contact, which rewards Beak Blast.

Taunt, which is an universally assumed Dark move, synergizes really well with Beak Blast by denying one avenue of counterplay. Prankster immunity is not very relevant, but could be very funny.

1. What are the shortcomings of our typing and conditional move?

Fairy, Ice and Electric have good special attackers, obviously. The Rock moves most likely to interact with us (Salt Cure, Stone Edge and Stealth Rock) do not interact with Beak Blast. Hemogoblin does not mind the Burn, and neither do a lot of endgame Tera Fire Physical attackers (Revenankh, notoriously, but also Zamazenta).

I don't know if it was mentioned in the typing stage, but how we switch in as a Flying type into moves that we want to then play mindgames against is kind of awkward (although Dark/Flying really alleviates a lot of this). But unlike a Knock, U-turn and Stealth Rock resistant type, which could be repeatedly switched into physical hits at little cost, we do have a cost into coming into the target Pokémon for Beak Blast.

1. What general roles are best suited for our skillset so far?

We are pretty "agnostic" in our role, provided that we have a decent bit of bulk to live the hits that Beak Blast brings in. Galarian Moltres and Mandibuzz both use this typing to different ends, and with decent success.

Given that we have some awkwardness around switching into moves that we want to bait out, I'd say a purely defensive wall, designed to take in all physical hits, is not the most simple route, but still doable. But to make Beak Blast very threatening, as well as to take advantage of the fact that we want to push our opponents into switching, a decent bit of offense to consistently damage opponents is great. Also assuming that we do not get as many turns of switching in due to this awkwardness, a faster paced, punch-holes style is great to leave some impact with these fewer opportunities. Bulky wallbreakers/stallbreakers like Melmetal or Hoopa-U come to mind.

Utility options could also work to take advantage of a free turn, although have to take the repeatability into account. Recovery and setup could also be rewarded by that turn. The latter would make for really wonky interactions with a -3 priority attack, though.

 

[traceyscetchit]

1. What are the unique strengths of our typing and conditional move?

2 Immunities is fairly impressive, and dark/flying is a bit of a sleeper offensive combination, with flying covering fighting type dark resists and the two sharing no 'wasted' super-effectiveness on the same type. Dark resists both the common knock-off and the ghost types mandated by hazard stack teams. Dark gives stab to a lot of powerful moves which I will not name.

2. What are the shortcomings of our typing and conditional move?

Flying type gives a weakness to stealth rock, pressuring CAP37 to run heavy-duty-boots. Additionally, the types that CAP37 resists aren't often ran together, meaning nearly every pokemon will be able to find either a neutral stab or super effective coverage move against CAP37. Unfortunately, rock, electric, fairy, and ice are all types that very rarely use contact moves. Cap has allowed a few physical pokemon like caribolt and hemogoblin to get access to physical stabs they normally would not have access to, but for the most part, CAP37 will be unable to burn most of its hard counters.

3. What general roles are best suited for our skillset so far?

Beak blast's negative priority makes speed less crucial for a beak blast attacker, but beak blast into a fast or positive priority move can apply a lot of burst pressure. Still, most of the pokemon that CAP37 would want to burst down like shox, alomomola, or mollux are slow, so this combo doesn't require much speed. As for it's role, I would like to advocate for a bulky hazard setter. Rather than guaranteeing hazards like standard speedy setters, beak blast allows CAP37 to force the opponent to choose between keeping hazards or getting burnt. Beak blast is even able burn rapid spin caribolt in emergencies, while standard spinblockers like gholdengo are unable to switch in to stop an rapid spin. Additionally, beak blast does good damage to the burn-immune spinners: flying weak snaelstrom and the often specially defensive mollux. This method of keeping hazards on the field with retaliation pressure has been seen by many pokemon in old generations, such as garchomp, ferrothorn, or flame body heatran. Finally, taunt is a universal move for dark types, which synergises with the hazard setter role.

 

[grovylestand!]

What are the unique strengths if our typing and conditional move? I would argue the two immunities are a major piece of our success and strength. I feel Flying is essential vs threats like Libra for it's EP. Psychic Noise immunity allows for a healing style such as Roost because there is no major way to stop. What are the shortcomings of our typing and conditional moves? The Stealth Rock weakness is major due to the fact that we are supposed to switch in at some point and then tank at least one contact hit. The weaknesses are major particularly because they cannot be (usually) negated with a burn, and even if you can, it doesn't really matter because by then, especially if rocks have been set on your side, you will have taken significant damage and may be forced to switch and not have much lategame potential. What general roles are best suited for our skillset so far? I believe a healing based tank would be best, ideally with decent physical attack to do some damage with BB or other physical moves we happen to give it. Thank you for reading!

 

[escarlata]

Strengths
Aside from the 2 immunities that it has, I think the biggest strength that this typing has is that it is imo the single best type combination at switching into Ghost and Dark moves, since most commonly carried coverage options only hit us neutrally. In addition, it lacks glaring weaknesses against common contact moves, and the ones we are weak to (Pixilate ESpeed and Ice Spinner), are either telegraphed or unSTABed. While I don't want to assume movepool yet, a potential STAB on utility moves such as Sucker Punch, Foul Play and Knock Off (if we get them) is really nice.

Weaknesses
On the flip side, our typing has mostly neutral typings interactions with most moves we want to punish, notably U-turn and Close Combat. This is a strength conceptually since it means the burn from BB is what is discouraging them, but in terms of general viability I'd consider it a weakness. I also think that the typing's biggest selling point, its advantage against Ghost and Dark, is not properly taken advantage of. I do think a good statline could fix most of these though.

The other problem is that we have chosen a typing that does not answer Libra, Haemo, nor Gliscor. So when deciding our role, we have to think of what we want to do into them.

Role
I think the true strength of the typing is that it can really fit into a plethora of different roles. Mandibuzz uses it purely defensively; Moltres-G makes use of it special offensively; and the neat part is that both of them do use Beak Blast in STABmons so we kinda have a working framework for how to design CAP37 such that it can take advantage of the move. The fact that it works on Moltres and Mandibuzz means that we are not limited to just designing a physical attacker. The only direction it pushes us is that we have to be bulky.

I think the one thing we have to be careful is that we do not just just make another Mandibuzz / Moltres-G. This can be pretty challenging because Moltres-G has almost the perfect statline for what a great user of BB should have; so I guess that's something we have to figure out down the line.

Since we are not at the statline discussion yet, I will not talk too much about stats, but I strongly disagree with the idea that we do not need speed. Despite, or rather because of, the forced negative priority on BB, we kinda need a rather speedy recovery option in order to not just be a blob. At the bare minimum, we should be faster than whatever is switching in to take the Beak Blast, or we will be taking a lot of hits before we can heal up. In addition, Taunt is an option that is also pro-concept, and prefers for us to have a decent speed stat.

Personally, I would like CAP37 to be a utility-pivot, similar to Lando-T. I think it's something that the typing does really well, and what Yveltal was known for. And considering BB is not great into Libra/Hemo/Glis, being able to pivot out on a predicted switch in adds to the BB mindgames. BB here serves as a reverse-pursuit-trap where BB discourage non-manual switching; so having a pivoting move of our own will always push the momentum advantage.

 

[aaronarium]

What general roles are best suited for our skillset so far?

• The typing discussion seemed pretty unanimous in that we need to both be able to tank a hit and dish one out in order to get the most out of BB, but beyond that I think something pretty utility-focused would be a smart path to take. If the opponent has a physical attacker out, we don't want to make the opponent choosing to swap out to a special attacker (or something unbothered by burn) an easy choice. Sure, we threaten them with BB on the switch, but what if they swap to something that's physically defensive or resists our STAB? Keeping the option open for a utility-based role is more likely IMO to discourage the opponent to swap to something that doesn't mind BB because that could give us a free turn to provide team support, so if they have a physical attacker out then they might have to make do that turn in the hopes of KOing us, but risk the burn that turn. Sort of like a prisoner's dilemma for the opponent.

 

[viol and bass]

What are the unique strengths of our typing and conditional move?
Dark/Flying has hybrid strengths: it offers surprisingly solid and complimentary 2-move coverage, which is a boon to both more offensive and more defensive builds, and it also offers a number of important resistances for teams and 2 immunities. Our move is similarly a hybrid move: it hits quite hard, while the conditional effect and negative priority implies tanking hits.

What are the shortcomings of our typing and conditional move?
There's a certain amount of awkwardness on the defensive end of things. We're a dark type that can't switch into ghosts like wisp Pult/Kitsunoh, Pecharunt, or some Gholdengo comfortably, and similarly we have issues with a number of dark types like Darkrai and Weavile, as well as Psychics like Hatterene and Glowking. Most ground types have some way of annoying us long-term. We also face a fair amount of bird competition in a more defensive role. One aspect of Beak Blast that is different from a mon like Moltres is that we cannot punish contact moves by switching into them. The lack of fighting resist can be a boon in encouraging contact moves, but it also means we cannot comfortably switch into strong fighting moves compared to other birds.

There's also some awkwardness on the offensive end of things; it may be hard to get kills with a flying move that always goes last. There are ways to potentially take advantage of this, but it can certainly be awkward at times. It does mean that something like a pure wallbreaker is probably off the table.

What general roles are best suited for our skillset so far?
So we have a strong offensive typing, a decent defensive typing with some shortcomings in terms of really walling things, and we're building around a move that requires tanking hits. All of this leads to a tank being a pretty damn attractive route. Switching out is one of the main forms of counterplay against Beak Blast, and if we hit quite hard, we make that difficult. Some form of utility is fine since we have such good 2-move coverage, but I think hitting hard and also being able to tank hits are pretty important regardless.

I have some doubts about a pivot route with this typing. Switching in isn't always easy as I talked about above, but more importantly, we can't punish contact moves by switching in like Zapdos or Moltres. We have to already be on the field to do that. I think pivot isn't a natural fit here.

 

[Explosion Badger]

What are the unique strengths of our typing and conditional move?

In general, Dark/Flying is a pretty solid typing, both Defensively and Offensively (things that has been proven by both Mandibuzz's and Goltres' viability in the OU tier at times). Defensively, the ability to wall the increasingly popular Ghost and Dark types, as well as the Ground types that inevitably rule the roost is an incredibly useful tool, as is avoiding every hazard outside of Stealth Rocks for free. Offensively, the type has excellent neutral coverage, hitting every individual type at least neutrally. Dark type also comes with plenty of powerful STAB moves that provide different types of utility, such as Foul Play, Sucker Punch, and of course, Knock Off.

 

[Blizihguh]

What general roles are best suited for our skillset so far?

I think if we ever want to burn something with Beak Blast, we specifically need to have high special bulk. Weaknesses to ice, electric, and fairy will make it very hard to justify leaving a physical attacker in. If you're facing down CAP37, why do you ever click a contact move when you could be clicking a super effective special attack? It doesn't help that our only physical-leaning weakness, Rock, rarely makes contact as well. An ability to shrug off those attacks and punish them somehow is crucial.

 

[Amamama]

1. What are the unique strengths of our typing and conditional move?
2. What are the shortcomings of our typing and conditional move?
3. What general roles are best suited for our skillset so far?

1.Dark Flying has a nice broad neutral defensive line up and a crucial ground immunity, which slots in pretty well with common defensive partners, especially fire and poison types like Mollux, Prcharunt, Glowking or Heatran. Also as a dark type that is not weak to Revenankh it has an immediate slot on teams as dedicated ghost resist.
This predisposes 37 to be used as defensive pivot that patches up its teammate’s weaknesses.
However Dark Flying is also a pretty potent STAB combination that also allows 37 to offensively pressure the mons it checks as well as would be switch ins. Especially offensive teams might have trouble to find a good knock off switch in that is also comfortable eating a beak blast.
Overall I think this pretty balanced typing works well with a Pokemon with a tanky offensive build similar to Pokemon such as Zapdos, Equilibra or Tornadus.
Beak Blast itself seamlessly fits into that mold with high bp as well as defensive utility.
2. As a defensive piece it has a lot of competition as flying type especially as compared to other typings it doesn’t offer multiple useful resists.
given its weaknesses I also think compared to other defensive mons it will be relatively easy to force out.
While this typing has a very solid offensive spread for a sweeper, Beak Blasts reduced priority makes it less desirable for a Pokemon that wants to set up, although a slow, tanky booster could work since you mostly won’t need more than your STABs to Attack almost everything neutrally, which makes a lot of room to support a bulky set up attacker.
I believe a mix between offensive and defensive works best here.
Both our chosen move as well as our typing are potent offensively as well as decent defensively and a tanky attacker that uses its good defensive typing and high power/value stab to come in and make progress with powerful Attacks looks like the perfect fit.

 

[shnowshner]

What general roles are best suited for our skillset so far?

If we desire to make the most out of Beak Blast we need to be the kind of mon you get on the field with the intention of it making real progress. Wallbreaker and All-Out Attacker are two very obvious ways to get there, we have a good offensive typing and Beak Blast's unqiue mechanics make us more challenging to play around vs your standard clicker. If we can get on the field in strong H2H matchups where the opponent is heavily pressured to switch, we're golden, as the drawback of decreased priority on Beak Blast's attack is irrelevant if the opponent can't do much but switch out.

I know our ability to Burn seems enticing for more defensive roles, but we can only burn something when the opponent lets us. Beak Blast is not Wisp, and it is not Flame Body. Burn is simply a tool of our Flying STAB to complicate how the opponent needs to manuever around us. If we take a more defensive approach we'd appreciate being a Tank, leveraging our strong STAB combo and capacity to spread burns to enhance our field presence, and presumably having the bulk to stomach going dead last so our strong STAB combo is something foes have to respect.

Pivoting is something we will invariable do as the time arises thanks to having Psychic and Ground immunities, but it's not something I believe we should dedicate resources specializing in. Again, Beak Blast is a conditional burn that we need to initiate and the opponent needs to walk into. I feel like a dedicated defensive pivot might be too slow for what we need our move to do, and an offensive pivot trying to pressure with a move that only outspeeds Circle Throw is not it.

Any sweeper roles don't feel good. I doubt we want to be spending turns trying to set up when it'd be more productive to swing. Beak Blast also sucks for sweeping since it moves last, you'd need bulky setup to get anywhere and woulf still struggle to pressure defensive mons who outspeed you anyway, not to mention we'd be competing with elite threats like Hemo, Rev, and the Poison Heals for this space.