CAP 32 - Part 18 - Post Play Lookback 1

[Brambane]

Polling if we want to preserve the special side is likely the most appropriate.

The community opted into special by voting for this spread to win; as such, the community should have the vote to decide if they want to keep it around as well.

This would be different if the special set complicated counterplay, but based on the discussion that doesn't really seem to be the case. If the larger voting playerbase wants to be able to run special sets for fun, then sure whatever. I am indifferent on that. But I dislike the notion of making this decision without giving agency to the voters who put it into the project in the first place.

 

[Palosaks]

Nerf Package:

Stat Changes:
-5 HP (90->85)
-8 Sp.Def (97->89)
(85/99/89/99/89/55 BST: 515)

Movepool Removals:
-Spikes
-Taunt
-Fiery Dance
-Lava Plume
-Fire Lash

The general idea of this package is to trim the fat from hemo and make it easier to check hemo while preserving as much of the classic hemo you know and love. Too start I'll knock out the move removes as those are fairly easy to explain, spikes and taunt are utility options that hemo doesn't use, and by extension doesn't need, both simply contribute to movepool bloat and as such it would be best to cut them, then for the attacking moves it's a similar story as all of them are out classed by other moves and have little reason to be used, fiery dance and lava plume have been brought up by others as moves to be removed on discord so those should be clear to everyone but fire lash might be a bit more controversial, but my thought prosses with removing it is simply the recovery that bitter blade provides makes it too valueble to pass up leaving little room for fire lash to be used, as such it just contributes to movepool bloat along side fiery dance and lava plume.

Now as for the stat changes my main goal was to reduce hemo's bulk a bit to make it easier to check, as is hemo is able to live hits that it shouldn't with just a little bit of investment, I decided to snip a bit of it's hp and sp.def in order to make it easier to offset this. The main pokemon I used for this was venomicon because as it is the main example of a pokemon that should counter hemo but can be gotten around with a bit of investment, hell hemo has a 25% chance to live a 252+ sludge bomb from venomicon. (252+ SpA Venomicon Sludge Bomb vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Hemogoblin: 308-366 (95.9 - 114%) -- 75% chance to OHKO) Both these minor tweaks make it a bit harder for hemo to tank hits while keeping the general bulkiness of it's original spread.

Now I'm going to talk about somethings I didn't do and why I didn't, the main of which is me not removing boomburst, I did this because I don't see a reason to remove boomburst, if we remove boomburst we might as well gut hemo of all it's special moves, and I should make it clear I'm not arguing special hemo is going to see usage but rather that special hemo as a whole is built on boomburst, as such boomburst should be preserved.

Now as for another thing I wanted to address, being hemo's EV strain, by reducing it's bulk this issue becomes worse, all i shall say on that is it's a feature, not a bug, hemo should have such a strain on it's EVs to make it choose between what it wants rather than having everything it wants at it's finger tips.

 

[Tommaniacal]

WIP

Stat Changes:
-1 HP (90 -> 89)
-10 Attack (99 -> 89)
-10 Special Attack (99 -> 89)
-8 Special Defense (97 -> 89)

Movepool Removals:
-Boomburst
-Fiery Dance
-Volt Switch
-Spikes
-Taunt

New stats:
89 HP / 89 Attack / 89 Defense / 89 Sp. Atk / 89 Sp. Def / 55 Speed (BST: 500)

• I am against the removal of Bitter Blade, so the attack drop serves as a nerf to offense without drastically altering our current set
• The Special Defense nerf solidifies special attackers as a reliable answer to an already Bulked Up Hemogoblin
• Movepool changes are there to remove bloat and the special sets, which have mostly been agreed upon as unnecessary
• Changes to HP and Special Attack are just there to match the other 89s

 

[Darek]

Movepool Changes:
-Boomburst, Fiery Dance, Lava Plume, Volt Switch, Spikes, Moonlight, Fire Lash

Stat Changes:
- 8 SpD

Ability Changes:
- Intimidate

Movepool changes for the most part are pretty uncontroversial; I want to remove Moonlight because currently Hemo doesn't really need it and I think forcing it to rely on Bitter Blade for recovery is far more interesting. -8 SpD for the reasons mentioned already, and -Intimidate because it has never been used by any human being ever. I'm open to removing Knock as well but can't imagine what would be the new 4th move on BU sets would be.

Imo Boomburst should definitely be removed it's just TR cheese and that's cringe

 

[Ayecrusher King]

WIP Nerf Package:

Stat Changes:
-5 HP (90->85)
-4 Atk (99->95)
-4 Sp. Atk (99->95)
-10 Sp.Def (97->87)
-5 Spe (55-50)
BST (501)

Movepool Removals:
-Spikes
-Taunt
-Fiery Dance
-Fire Lash+Moonlight or Bitter Blade+Knock Off

Ability Changes:
- Intimidate

1. HP and Sp. Def are dropped down to 85 & 87 to allow for more checks & counters by Special Attackers; Atk & Sp. Atk are brought down to be on par with Clefable; Spe may the controversial one, but given that Hemo is viable in Trick Room, now TR may be one of the few places it can shine with this change, assuming it wins the Speed tie with Ursaluna.
2. The first three are niche options that are rarely used and bloat the movepool; this is my middle approach to the debate: From what I've experienced, the item removal followed by recovery Hemo can abuse is part of what makes it viable. Now, we could remove Knock + BBlade, or we run Fire Lash + Moonlight, an acceptable compromise that may just be a rehash of Astro's main thing, relatively speaking, which also fills the fourth move. And for clarification, if we ax BBlade, we're axing Knock as well, but we do not then ax Fire Lash + Moonlight (I should add that, I'm not axing Boom or Plume because, if anyone wants to run a Special set, those two moves would probably be its bread & butter)
3. Why the bloody hell did we get bloody Intimidate?

 

[dex]

Now, we can remove Knock + BBlade

Considering this is the main set and by far it's best set, you cannot in any way call it bloat. Remove one of them, not both.

 

[ryangregory78]

Nerf Package

Stat Changes:
-1 HP (90 -> 89)
-8 SpDef (97 -> 89)

Movepool Changes
-Fiery Dance
-Knock Off

Ability Changes
-Intimidate

- Stat changes have all been proposed before, so I won't bore you with an full explanation.
- Although Knock Off is a pretty important part of Hemo's moveset, not only do I think the little guy can do just fine without it, but that taking Knock out of Hemo's moveset will make it a healthier part of the metagame. Knock lets Hemo easily wear down his most easily splashable check in Heatran and beat the piss out of Glowking, while also doing other annoying shit like getting rid of Garg's and Dozo's Lefties and Pex's Lefties/Helmet/Cloak/whatever the hell. Slashed bulk also means that Hemo will (hopefully) have a harder time not running defensive Teras, meaning that the likes of Tran, Glowking, Garg, Pex, Dozo, etc. much safer checks in the long run. Fiery Dance is also there because I don't see a situation in which we ever really use it over the immediate damage of Flamethrower/Fire Blast/Overheat, especially with how fast the meta is at the moment.
- Intimidate is an ability that Hemo will almost never seriously use over Pixilate even on a defensive set, so I see no reason for it being here. Not to mention that Hemo is like the single least intimidating creature ever devised, but that's beside the point.

 

[StarFalcon555]

me when I see everyone submitting nerfs only even though it was specified that buffs can be submitted as well

WIP

Buff/Nerf Package

Stat Changes
-5 HP (90 -> 85)
-8 SpD (97 -> 89)
+6 Spe (55 -> 61)
New BST: 85/99/89/99/89/61 (BST: 522)

Movepool Changes
-Knock Off
-Boomburst
-Fiery Dance
-Fire Lash
-Spikes
-Taunt


What I really like about current Hemo is that its statline and movepool, in theory, really encapsulate the Bang Average concept by allowing us a wide range of sets. The keywords being in theory. This package aims to fine-tune Hemo's moveset so that it can act as both a physical sweeper and a special pivot without one role overshadowing the other.

First off, the stats. -8 SpD is a very common change for good reason, so I won't discuss it further. -5 HP is also a fairly common change, made to allow physical and special attackers alike to have an easier time checking Hemo. The real controversy here is moving 6 of these removed stat points into Speed. This was done for two reasons:

1: Pushing our Speed over 60, in combination with the removal of Boomburst, effectively kills Hemogoblin's niche on Trick Room teams while maintaining its ability to spam Extreme Speed. The one area of play where Hemo seems to be disliked is its Trick Room set due to the raw power of Pixilate Boomburst and having the perfect Speed tier to abuse it. At the same time, however, this Speed is what allows our Pixilate ESpeed to be as abusable as it is. 61 base Speed just barely breaks into that awkward area of "too fast for Trick Room, too slow for other playstyles" which should help special Hemo find a niche on balance, offense, and defense cores alike without completely trashing its main gimmick.

2: This new Speed tier, with just a little bit of EV investment, barely allows Hemogoblin to outspeed Equilibra. IMO, the biggest drawback of pivot/special Hemo is that it can't make progress against the threats it wants to make progress against because it's just a tad too slow. Obviously, adding more Speed to try and outspeed all of these threats would kill the ESpeed set, but one main threat that can be outsped with a simple buff is Equilibra. Hemogoblin being able to threaten Equilibra with its STAB instead of the other way around is a great way for the special sets to force progress - would you rather have your Libra take a huge chunk from a Fire Blast or switch out and risk Hemo predicting you and using Volt Switch. I know this may seem potentially seem like too big a buff, but keep in mind that the cuts to HP and SpD make it much harder for Hemo to switch in safely on one of Libra's attacks. It creates mind games on both sides and balances out the interactions between the two.

As for moves, the big ones are the removals of Knock Off and Boomburst. Dex explained the reasons to remove Knock very well so I won't go in depth. I was VERY hesitant on removing Boomburst because abusing Pixilate ESpeed and Boomburst was what our stat spread was made for but in the end I came to the conclusion that it has to be removed, to allow for more set diversity and for balance, especially when taking the Speed buff into account. A lack of special Normal moves will also encourage use of Intimidate on Hemo, a much better outcome than outright removing it imo. The other four removed moves are just unneeded fluff.

Now for the things I kept. I toyed with the idea of removing Lava Plume for a long time, but this particular package appreciates having a reliable way to burn Libra, so it stays for now. As I wanted to maintain the idea of a pivot set, I kept Volt Switch, and Moonlight is also necessary for these sets if not physical. Finally, Intimidate stays because it's honestly just a massive fucking hassle to remove it. I ranted about this on Discord a bit and if I continued that rant this post would be longer than War and Peace, so let me just share Scizivire and quizel's thoughts on the matter because they sum it up very well.

Most CAPs don't use their secondary anyways (looking at you in particular, Miasmaw and Saharaja), and we'll have three abilities anyways. It's much less of a hassle to keep Intimidate as honorary flavor than to remove it and run another poll for a new flavor ability. And before you say that Intimidate doesn't fit Hemogoblin flavor-wise, if HITMONTOP can have Intimidate, Hemo most CERTAINLY can too. If Intimidate still proves to be useless by the time PPL2 rolls around I'll probably be more open to changing it, but stats and movepool should be the main focus for now IMO.

thanks for coming to my ted talk guys have a great day :3

 

[snake]

Hemogoblin is in a pretty solid spot and doesn’t need too many impactful changes. Removing Bitter Blade is not the play. While Fire Lash and Flare Blitz are good moves on their own, they're not replacements for Bitter Blade on Hemogoblin. The chassis of Bulk Up / Extreme Speed / Bitter Blade gives Hemogoblin viability, and that shouldn’t be touched.

Some stat nerfs are all that Hemogoblin really needs, if anything. Toning down its special defense seems very reasonable, and I can see toning down its attack as well. This would be similar to Saharaja’s nerf, where it lost a some attack, some speed, and also minor coverage move that could bust through its checks (Power Whip). An increase to speed would justify larger stat nerfs.

Power Whip on Saharaja was nowhere near as impactful as is Knock Off on Hemogoblin, however. The removal of Knock Off could be warranted, but it leaves Hemogoblin in an odd spot where it wonders what its last move should be. I can see Taunt, Substitute, or Tera Blast, but those definitely feel like serious downgrades compared to Knock Off - downgrades that just aren't warranted. Replacing Knock Off with a decent coverage move like Liquidation or Brick Break could be an interesting remedy, as those moves still give it a way around some of its checks but doesn’t cripple all of its checks indiscriminately like Knock Off does. Overall, though, I think leaving Knock Off alone is the right play.

Beyond that, removing some of the clutter like Spikes, Fiery Dance, and Volt Switch seems reasonable. They we’re really added to make the Boomburst sets more viable. Boomburst has really only seen use on Trick Room teams, and Trick Room Hemogoblin doesn’t really want to leverage these tools - they mostly want to spam, well, Boomburst, and other high damaging moves.

With all that said, shnowshner, Wulfanator, Palosaks, and Darek have the cleanest adjustment packages when examining what will impact Hemogoblin's primary set and therefore place in the metagame. These packages show differing opinions on how to clean up the fluff, but they show that they understand how small changes can add up quickly, especially on a CAP that's only a tiny bit overtuned like Hemogoblin. Adjustment packages that have rather drastic reductions in attack and bulk without compensation to speed or call for Knock Off removal without giving a decent 4th move for Bulk Up sets will cause Hemogoblin to underperform.

 

[Binacle Pinnacle]

WIP

-Bulk Up
The crux of this package, I believe that though Hemogoblin's most viable set at the moment is Bulk Up, it is the one that should be removed. For a Pokemon who's designed around the concept of having average stats, I find it sort of wrong that this set, the one that exists in spite of what we have instead of with what we have stat-wise, is the one that people seem on board with keeping the most. The set does not utilize our good bulk and unique defensive typing to the fullest at all, and ignores its speed stat entirely in some matchups. I'm just not sold on how this set is interesting in the slightest, especially considering that it will be the only set we have should it stay.
-Bitter Blade
Considering that Bulk Up is removed in this package, Bitter Blade serves no purpose here.
+Wish
With Bulk Up removed, we can focus on the special set now. With Boomburst, we barely need any special attack investment, allowing us to use our bulk to the fullest. We force out a decent amount of the meta with Boomburst, and I think that Wish could be a good use of the free turn we get from it. Knock Off, Spikes, and Nuzzle are better for this job though, so this is the most iffy of the additions to this package.
+Nuzzle
Nuzzle is a pretty threatening option that we can throw out on a free turn, as said above. Paralysis would be most threatening on BO teams, which I expect Hemo would be seen the most. We already have Spikes and Knock Off, so Nuzzle would be a team dependent option, which I think is completely fine.
+Mystical Fire
Mystical Fire allows Hemo to take on the likes of Gholdengo and Equilibra, with the latter being something it couldn't deal with at all before. I think its ability to define Hemo's matchups is ok to have considering Mystical Fire would be the most risky of Hemo's moves to run: we get an even worse matchup into Heatran and Glowking while running it.
- Fiery Dance
Something I don't see us running at all really.
+5 HP (90 ->95)
Just a tiny general bulk increase.
-10 Attack (99 -> 89)
With Bulk Up gone, we no longer need our Attack (unless you're running espeed/boom on a lead set or something)

 

[shnowshner]

Final Submission

Stat Changes: -3 Attack (99 > 96), -2 Defense (89 > 87), -8 Special Defense (97 > 89)
New Spread: 90 / 96 / 87 / 99 / 89 / 55 | 516 BST

Movepool Removals: Boomburst, Fiery Dance, Volt Switch, Lava Plume, Spikes


Stat changes: minor nerfs across the board. Originally just -8 for the 89 SpDef stat, broadly increasing your investment needs. Stat nerfs are now slightly more justified. Here is my method:

• -5 Special Defense, ensures OHKO from Speed Booster Energy Iron Moth's Sludge Wave without any investment.
• -2 Defense, ensures OHKO from Adamant Sneasler's Dire Claw without any investment.
• -3 Attack, ensures we still OHKO NP Gholdengo after 1 layer of Spikes.
• Hemogoblin likes to invest in Special Defense, so I wanted to do a bit of extra tuning on that end, but since EV spreads can vary I didn't want to look at any particular one. Thus, I did the following:
  1. Using the old Special Defense stat, I added 60 EVs of investment to get 245
  2. I took 245 and divided it by the raw stat of my revised Special Defense (220), to get the value ~0.897959
  3. I multiplied our 220 Special Defense by this number, to get the value ~197
  4. I subtracted 220 by ~197 to get 22
  5. Rounding up to 24 (the nearest multiple of 8), I decreased our stat until 24 EVs would get us to the same bulk that we used to be at, that number being 89. This results -3 Special Defense, for a total of -8

This just so happened to be the 89 value from before, which is cool and makes most of this pointless. Oh well!

Move trimming: Copy-Pasting from before here. Boomburst and Fiery Dance were given out specifically to bolster the strength of our Special Movepool, which needed it if you wanted to compete with Physical sets, which packed priority and healing into our strong STABs instead of needing to eat up a slot doing so. With Special sets largely irrelevant, I find no reason to commit to these anymore. Let Hemogoblin stay concise. Volt Switch and Lava Plume also don't really jive with me: the former is from our long-dead plans for a pivot, and Lava Plume is simply asking people to use the Intimidate set that really isn't worth it. We don't need Spikes either, this mon has enough ways to pressure checks and I'm even preserving Taunt if Knock Off isn't enough for you. Meta could probably use less Spikers if I'm gonna be honest.


I am here to further the eyesore base stats agenda.

 

[memesketch]

WIP

Stat Changes:
-9 Atk (99 -> 90)
-9 SpA (99 -> 90)
-8 SpD (97 -> 89)
New Spread: 90 HP / 90 Atk / 89 Def / 90 SpA / 89 SpD / 55 Spe

Movepool Changes:
-Fiery Dance
-Lava Plume
-Volt Switch
-Spikes

Very much agree with snake that Hemogoblin is close enough to balanced that toning down its stats is preferable to removing key tools in its kit. With the right stat nerfs we can justify keeping Knock Off, and I want to put out there that I believe losing Knock would be overly damaging to Hemogoblin's niche. In a sense we can replicate Knock's coverage in part with something like Liquidation, but its utility is so crucial that there's not a move within the scope of our project that slots in for Knock Off to give Hemogoblin what it needs to complete its kit. Knock's ability to force progress is problematic because of Hemogoblin's huge endgame potential, but this is made an issue in the first place because of its bulk and power, so I believe that should be the target of our changes. Cuts to SpDef and Attack make it significantly easier for checks (*cough* Knock targets) such as Galarian Slowking, Heatran, Skeledirge, and Venomicon to outlast and pressure Hemo, while also making it easier for mons like Kril to offensively check it. Exact numbers are for reasons already discussed in depth by others.

One other thing I wanted to explore was keeping Hemo's interesting TR niche alive by retaining Boomburst and reducing our Special Attack to make it less appealing outside of Trick Room and slightly less frustratingly powerful and cheesy in Trick Room. Aside from unintentionally matching it up with the nerfed Attack stat, lowering our Special Attack to 90 cuts into Boomburst's power enough to keep Hemo from consistently wiping out every wall and resist thrown its way. For example, Galarian Slowking can avoid the 2HKO without full investment, Equilibra tanks two Boombursts comfortably even after Rocks, and Gholdengo and Volcanion both survive one. Basically diluting Boomburst just to the point that it doesn't automatically break open the game while still being potent enough for Hemo to remain a viable TR attacker.

calcs

252+ SpA Choice Specs Pixilate Tera Fairy Hemogoblin Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 188+ SpD Slowking-Galar: 166-196 (42.1 - 49.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

252+ SpA Choice Specs Pixilate Tera Fairy Hemogoblin Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 64+ SpD Equilibra: 175-206 (42.8 - 50.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

252+ SpA Choice Specs Pixilate Tera Fairy Hemogoblin Boomburst vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Gholdengo: 252-297 (80 - 94.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ SpA Choice Specs Pixilate Tera Fairy Hemogoblin Boomburst vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Volcanion: 255-300 (84.7 - 99.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Lastly, my movepool changes are pretty straightforward, removing fluff that's unlikely to see real use like Lava Plume, Volt Switch, and Spikes and getting rid of Fiery Dance to make sure no silly MU fishy special sets pop up outside of TR.

 

[spoo]

First of our two PPLs is all wrapped up! Thanks everyone for helping to keep this stage running on a stricter timeline.

Without further ado, here's our slate:

Wulfanator's proposal: This package's primary focus is on Hemogoblin's attack power. While Wulf opted to nerf Special Defense as well, the real impact of this is likely small in nature due to the Speed buff allowing us to invest more EVs into bulk.

Darek's proposal*: This package opted for just a minor cut to our Special Defense, decreasing the good staying power that Hemogoblin currently boasts, while leaving the mon's offensive output completely alone.

shnowshner's proposal: This package offers a bit of both worlds: a small nerf to Attack, and a slightly bigger nerf to our bulk. The idea here is that Hemogoblin's issues stem from a combination of factors, not just a single area.

All three of these packages also cut extraneous special movepool options like Boomburst, Fiery Dance, and Volt Switch. As for why I've only chosen three options, I found many of the proposals too similar to one another or too harsh overall. I'm biased towards the more restrained proposals for three reasons––I personally don't think Hemogoblin is that far off strength-wise, the metagame is still continuing to adapt to Hemogoblin's presence, and we still have a second PPL to make further changes if the results of this stage leave us wanting more nerfs.

*I'll be cutting "-Intimidate" from Darek's PPL package. While I can sympathize with Darek's intention to remove options that are completely useless from a competitive standpoint, it's also a largely pointless endeavor in this case. Should Intimidate be removed, we would choose a new flavor option to replace it, so either way we end up with a useless secondary ability; the final outcome doesn't really change. Removing Intimidate just gives us more work down the line, even disturbing some of the pre-evolution progress, for no discernible benefit. It seems like a mostly flavor-motivated removal, so for that reason, I don't think it has a place in what should be a competitively focused poll.