The CAP Meta Hub
Hello, welcome to the CAP Meta Hub. The purpose of this thread will be two fold: to give an in-depth introduction and explanation of the CAP metagame and to provide a one stop shop for all relevant resource threads for Gen 7 and Gen 6 CAP and active Gen 7 projects.
The CAP Metagame consists of all OU legal Pokemon with the addition of the Pokemon created by the CAP Project. The purpose of this metagame is to provide a competitive and balanced arena to showcase our past creations, as well as to generate interest in the overall CAP Project. The metagame is ever growing due to the regular addition of CAP Pokemon created with every CAP process. Currently, there are 28 CAP Pokemon created by the CAP process. These Pokemon were all created for either the OU or CAP metagame of their generation of creation. Currently, CAP Pokemon are created for the CAP metagame, and every Pokemon from CAP 22, Kerfluffle, and onward have been made for the CAP metagame. Before CAP 22, CAP was creating Pokemon for OU. The CAP Project has been ongoing for over 10 years, with Pokemon hailing from every generation since the fourth. What you're playing with today is the accumulation of a decade's worth of work by the CAP community. Unsurprisingly, the CAP Pokemon vary wildly in power level and viability due to changes in generations, power creep, policies, and users involved in the process.
While many CAP Pokemon hail from earlier generations, a special update project was hosted this generation to give Gen 4, 5, and 6 CAP Pokemon access to moves from generations after their creation. This update process changed many CAP Pokemon through ability changes, movepool additions, and in the case of Tomohawk, movepool removals. These updates have not been applied retroactively to generations past Gen 7, so movepools and abilities in Gen 6 CAP remain unchanged from when the Pokemon were originally created.
Currently the CAP metagame is designed to be a CAP-legal mirror of OU's banlist. This means that all existing OU bans and clauses are upheld, including bans on Arena Trap, Shadow Tag, and Baton Pass. This also means that CAP will enforce any bans and quickbans made by OU during the course of a generation. Additionally, the CAP metagame has an attached Metagame Council that utilizes our own nerfing process to balance any CAP creation that is deemed unhealthy. Only Pokemon directly created by the CAP process may be nerfed; no official Pokemon from GameFreak has or will be changed by the CAP Project. Further information on the nerfing process and Metagame Council can be found in the main CAP forum.
Currently, Mega Crucibelle, Necturna, and Aurumoth have undergone our nerfing process.
In addition to the Pokemon created by the main CAP process, the CAP project also plays host to a pre-evolution project. This project focuses on creating pre-evolutions for Pokemon created in the CAP process, and all completed pre-evolutions are legal in the CAP metagame. While currently no pre-evolutions are viable, and the project itself is geared towards flavor, any player is welcome to experiment with them in the CAP metagame. Additionally, CAP LC is available as a challengeable format on Pokemon Showdown! to allow players to use the CAP pre-evolutions in a prevo-friendly enviroment.
Some things to note about the CAP metagame:
- A team is not required to have a CAP Pokemon on it to be legal. Any team that is legal in Smogon official tiers OU and below are legal. There may be 0 to 6 CAP Pokemon on any given team, and any variation of these numbers may yield good teams.
- There is only one CAP Pokemon with a mega forme, Mega Crucibelle. The base forme is Crucibelle and Crucibellite is the associated mega stone. Crucibellite is the only custom item created for CAP, and was only done so in order to adhere to game mechanics.
- There are only five other custom elements among all CAP Pokemon. Custom elements are defined as any typing, move, and ability that is not present in GameFreak Pokemon games. All of these hail from Gen 4 when CAP policies allowed for the creation of custom elements when necessary, and CAP policy no longer allows for the creation of custom elements.
- These five elements are as follows:
- Mountaineer: on switch-in, the Pokemon negates all Rock-type attacks and Stealth Rock. Notably, damage from Rock-type attacks will be avoided, and no damage from Stealth Rock will be taken. Mountaineer will only be available on the Syclant family.
- Rebound: on switch-in, blocks certain status moves and bounces them back on the user. Functionally, Rebound provides a Magic Bounce effect upon switch-in. The list of moves that Rebound affects is the same as Magic Bounce. Rebound will only be available on the Colossoil family.
- Persistent: when used, Gravity, Heal Block, Safeguard, Tailwind, and Trick Room have their effect duration extended by two turns. Persistent affects only field effect moves, and does not work with Light Screen, Reflect, weather setting moves, and terrain setting moves. Persistent will only be available on the Fidgit family.
- Shadow Strike: a 80 BP, 95% accuracy Ghost-type physical contact move with the effect of a 50% chance to lower the target's defense by 1. Shadow Strike has 16 PP and a Z move base power of 160. This move is only available to the Kitsunoh family and Sketch users.
- Paleo Wave: a 85 BP, 100% accuracy Rock-type special move with the effect of a 20% chance to lower the target's attack by 1. Paleo Wave has 24 PP and a Z move base power of 160. This move is only available to the Stratagem family and Sketch users.
- These five elements are as follows:
- Nectura is a special case among all CAP Pokemon. It's concept focused on the usage of Sketch, and as such, Nectura learns the move. Unlike Smeargle, Necturna was limited to learning Sketch as an egg move, and was therefore confined to having Sketch in only a single moveslot. This translates to any Necturna move set being three natural learned moves from Necturna's movepool and one moveslot with any move existing in the official games, plus Paleo Wave and Shadow Strike. Gen 7 egg mechanics forced the introduction of the Necturna Clause, which dictates that any Necturna may only have a single Sketch slot. In short, yes Necturna has access to every move under the sun because of Sketch, but only in one single moveslot.