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.
Explanation:
Cap loves statballs. It's a natural consequence of the ability to choose stats that we're never gonna intentionally give a cap a statline that isn't fit for purpose. From dpp when most caps bst were only lower than legendaries, to the sheer ridiculousness of baos whole statline in sm, to the most recent project that required rajas speed to be nerfed, giving caps some great stats has been a consistent theme across generations in cap. It's one of the easiest ways to guarantee a viable end product and in projects that are focusing on exploring other elements, it'd be a bit of a downer to ruin the mon at the last stage by giving it glalie stats.
This leaves us with some pretty interesting unexplored design space. High statlines are an obvious staple of all ou metas, but there have always been interesting exceptions. The classic example here is Clefable, which has no stats above 100 but has achieved ou success in four generations. However to me, Clefable is a pretty uninteresting and frankly, unhelpful example. Clef is viable because of magic guard. It has a great movepool and really nice typing, but let's be real here, without Magic Guard Clef would be ranked RU, UU at best. To me the more interesting example is Breloom which also has ou success in 5 generations including sv, despite a statline that is severely lacking in almost every department. Just like Clef, it's got some great abilities and a dope movepool. However, Clef is a phenomenal ability facilitating other good attributes, while Loom is a series of great individual traits that when combined, make an utterly unique and consistently viable mon. Loom isn't the only example either. SVs current poster child for low bst in ou is Clodsire, which has the lowest bst of any ou mon in generations bar azu (which is obviously carried by huge power) with just 430 bst. Clodsire very much goes down the incredibly efficient distribution route, with hp and spdef making up more than half of it's total bst, in stark contrast to it's cousin Quag which has identical bst and very evenly distributed stats. Clod could very well fall to uu very soon but it's still had it's place in the spotlight.
There's a variety of other examples and ways this concept can go. Amoongus and Gastro only have good hp but that patches up their more lacklustre defences. Others like indeedee and masquerain fulfill highly specific niches that require only barebones stats to get by. There's a range of options here.
To me, this concept has the potential to give us a super tight and focused cap, instead of the sprawling masses that caps often turn into, where they have a hundred movepool options and stats that can be specced seven ways to Sunday. It also has the potential to give us something really unique and interesting if we try. In my opinion this concept hits the sweetspot of giving us interesting constraints to play with and learn from, without kneecapping us with the starting pistol. There's design space here and I think it's space worth exploring.
intriguing
