CAP 33 - Part 1 - Concept Assessment

[boomp]

Is the idea of more moveslots being dedicated to utility more valuable than utilizing STABs and/or good coverage? Are there situations where we would want more than one offensive move to succeed at being a fast wall over more utility?

i believe if it has more utility then itll just be more of like a pivot mon than a wall. good coverage and stab would just allow it to check threats better which is incredible for a wall to not only tank hits but to punish mons that stay in :D

 

[Tunana]

Do you believe the standard process order/my placement of Threat Discussion is fine? If not, what would you suggest instead, and why?

I would like to suggest to place threat discussion before typing. As a wall, typing weaknesses not make or break match-ups, but they also decide whether you can switch into a certain Pokemon's attacks. For example, loves switching into most and sets because of its typing, but will completely fold against something like . I think the most important thing to identify in this project is our threats and what we counter. The defensive typing that takes on will be entirely different than the one that can switch into , so we must plan accordingly. CAP has rarely ever touched on making a defensive Pokemon before, so we will naturally have to adapt to several new challenges throughout this process. Deciding threats before typing on a defensive Pokemon is one such way to mitigate challenges that we may shoehorn ourselves into by making premature choices on the identity of CAP 33.

EDIT: I’ve realized I misunderstood the process but I’m choosing to keep this up because I like the rest of the post. Disregard the previous section.

At what point are a certain Speed tier and resources too much for a wall? What factors can contribute to a fast wall being potentially too influential or too much to break? How about the other way around?

As long as CAP 33 doesn't have too many attacking capabilities, a high speed tier should be fine without turning it into a fast sweeper. However, there are certain tools that could be oppressive on such a fast Pokemon. SubSeed is an idea I have seen thrown around a lot for this CAP. There have been fast Pokemon with this move combination before, such as . However, they do not have a monstrous HP stat to translate into massive substitutes, like a theoretical CAP 33 could. I think that giving this Pokémon high base HP could very well be an issue if the Pokemon is too fast. I can't think of any other fast utility that could be unhealthy off the top of my head, but we will have to be very cautious with the utility we give this as well as the offensive stats to ensure we don't create an oppressive CAP. On the flip side, I think all we need to ensure this won't be too weak is proper typing and defensive stats. These are largely dependent on what we want to take on, which goes back to my reasoning behind placing threats as the firstmost step in this process.

Is the idea of more moveslots being dedicated to utility more valuable than utilizing STABs and/or good coverage? Are there situations where we would want more than one offensive move to succeed at being a fast wall over more utility?

I think giving this CAP too many options in terms of coverage, STAB or not, and offensive capabilities runs the risk of it being utilized as a breaker rather than a wall. Most cited examples of fast walls get away with only running one damaging move of a strong type with no immunities, like Dazzling Gleam on . The reason for this is that if they had better attacking stats or offensive moves, they would probably be run as breakers due to their high speed and coverage. That is why I believe utility to be the more important factor to consider here. I think if we wanted more than one offensive move, it would be an offensive utility move such as Knock Off in conjunction with a STAB move. Other than that, giving CAP 33 more offensive moves toes a fine line between fast wall and fast breaker.

 

[kenn]

At what point are a certain Speed tier and resources too much for a wall? What factors can contribute to a fast wall being potentially too influential or too much to break?

I feel like if we get to a Speed that rivals the likes of Dragapult or faster, our resources become too thinly spread out to do what we want effectively in terms of checking threats or people will want to use it offensively even with an underwhelming offensive stat just because it is so damn fast. That being said, it definitely feels harder to make a wall "broken" versus making a more offensive mon "broken" so I think at the end of the day, there is no reason not to see what the limits of a fantastic wall are. One thing about how it could be broken is if it has ALL the right tools but since the process can kinda control what tools CAP 33 can have, I think it will be just fine to allow it the freedom to be a top tier wall capable of handling the offensive Pokemon they outspeed.

Is the idea of more moveslots being dedicated to utility more valuable than utilizing STABs and/or good coverage? Are there situations where we would want more than one offensive move to succeed at being a fast wall over more utility?

I think the idea of using coverage is too much for a wall because it feels like people would wanna use CAP 33 as a breaker at that point and not for what the intended purpose of the concept is. I personally believe that we wanna lean heavily on having a really good singular STAB option or a decent STAB combo to utilize the other moveslots for what we want CAP 33 to accomplish as a fast wall. I think that this would allow us to maximize the potential of CAP 33 while also not being so passive that we don't threaten anything with our Speed.

 

[Zetalz]

Do you believe the standard process order/my placement of Threat Discussion is fine? If not, what would you suggest instead, and why?

We absolutely do not need to alter the order of stages here. Doing Threats at any point before Ability would not be desirable, as Ability can play a major deciding role in how we want to shape our threatlist. We are also not lacking for direction and are not in the position of working with a hyper-targeted concept that requires more forethought on C&C than necessary.

 

[Voltage]

Do you believe the standard process order/my placement of Threat Discussion is fine? If not, what would you suggest instead, and why?

No qualms with the presented order. Don't really have anything else to say here :]

At what point are a certain Speed tier and resources too much for a wall? What factors can contribute to a fast wall being potentially too influential or too much to break? How about the other way around?

I think the breaking point for this CAP will be if we go a little too overboard on this CAP's ability to always be going first. In my view of this CAP, which I will elaborate on more in the answer to the third question, our primary way of checking the threats we aim to check will involve directly out-speeding them. While this is just my view of what this CAP could be, I think one of the biggest limits is that we need to decide which threats we plan to outspeed, and how. Are we beating them with priority, or are we investing certain amounts of speed in advance? In that regard, I think our stats stage will be just as instrumental to the process as typing, if not moreso, since it's at this stage where we will outright decide the speed of our creation, and therefore, how much it can check without any investment in speed. I do not think we should be naturally outspeeding Dragapult, but we should definitely be getting pretty close to that speed, in my opinion.

And as I noted previously, I think that having any significant offensive presence is too far in the other way for this process. We will need to be very focused on avoiding more offensive coverage and presence than is necessary to check threats. I understand that CAP will almost never want to make a mon they don't want to play against, but this CAP will already be fast, this is something that has been dictated by the concept. Therefore we have to consider how speed plays a part in creating bulk, which is, in my opinion an artificial form of defense. I would hate for this process to fall into the mindset of "a good defense is a good offense", as while it is a solution, it's a pretty cheap one imo. I would be perfectly content with little-to-no offensive presence, perhaps by giving this CAP one single, relatively applicable/spammable STAB or coverage move to handle some of its general threats.

Is the idea of more moveslots being dedicated to utility more valuable than utilizing STABs and/or good coverage? Are there situations where we would want more than one offensive move to succeed at being a fast wall over more utility?

It is one-hundred percent better to have a surplus of utility move and one or two splashable offensive moves than it is to utilize STAB and good coverage here, in my opinoin. I think to mons like Ubers Lugia that rely on three status moves , and a singular coverage move to hit some of the most prominent metagame threats. Consider this set DPP Ubers:

Lugia @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 64 Def / 192 Spe
Timid Nature
- Roost
- Reflect
- Whirlwind
- Ice Beam

In this set, Lugia creates pressure against its checks by establishing its bulk either through immediate recovery or added bulk, can phaze out foes by forgoing the first action, or it can click an attack so that it doesn't immediately become Taunt bait. Ice Beam is of note here as the attack is not chosen only because there is a surplus of Ground and Dragon types in DPP like Groudon and Rayquaza, but also because there are no Pokemon immune to it while still having a high PP. Lugia would love to run Areroblast, but that has 8 PP maximum, and it would love to run Psychic but it has to consider that Darkrai, a common metagame threat, is immune to the move, and Mewtwo and Giratina both resist it. Therefore, Ice Beam is chosen because of its broader set of use cases, when Lugia needs to get chip damage on its opponents.

Having more than one offensive move is valid in my opinion so long as this offensive move has a very specific purpose on the set, rather than being used strictly for general coverage. If having a second direct attack is necessary to prevent one specific Pokemon from wreaking havoc, then I think that this would warrant a secon attacking move. However, this move would likely prve to be more at the user's discretion when considering the team composition, i.e. "you COULD run this move on CAP33 to check a certain mon, or you could just choose another teammate that checks this specific threat, so that CAP33 can run a more standard set and have a more general wall presence". I think it would be alright for us to give this CAP multiple similar BP moves with specific type coverage, so long as we can craft the mon in such a way where this CAP would have to choose which of the two attacking moves to run (for example having both Flamethrower and Ice Beam, where if you want CAP33 to threaten more Steel types you have it run Flamethrower, but if you want CAP33 to threaten Dragon types, you would have it run Ice Beam etc.). Furthermore, I think the offensive moves ought to be quite predictable: you should be able to suss out from team composition that this mon might be running more than one attacking move if they, say, lack a good way to handle a threat that is otherwise checked by having CAP33 run two attacking moves (like how one might be able to tell if Equilibra is Levitate or Bulletproof depending on what partners in the team it has, y'know information you should be able to get from doing a careful team preview analysis).

Ultimately though, I genuinely think that at MAXIMUM two of the moveslots are attacking moves, with more than one attacking move in a moveslot happening only maybe 5% of the time. This Pokemon's defensive potential stems form its ability to move first and disrupt its opponents, not because it moves first and hits with a moderately powerful STAB and extra coverage attack.

 

[Brown4Sides]

The only thing I personally am unsure of, though, is where to put Threat Discussion. All of our Typing, Ability, and Defining Moves will be greatly influencing the Pokemon we will have weak and strong matchups against, with Defining Moves being generally more applicable to a greater range of matchups, so I personally am more partial to doing it after Ability and before Defining Moves. However, I think there's an argument to be made to have it instead right after Typing or Defining Moves. Do you believe the standard process order/my placement of Threat Discussion is fine? If not, what would you suggest instead, and why?

Threats should be after either Ability or Defining Moves. We need to make sure that we have enough information about CAP 33 before we can determine what its threats will be. Doing it right after typing might mean we'll end up with a decently different C&C than what we decided on.

I would like to suggest to place threat discussion before typing. As a wall, typing weaknesses not make or break match-ups, but they also decide whether you can switch into a certain Pokemon's attacks. For example, loves switching into most and sets because of its typing, but will completely fold against something like . I think the most important thing to identify in this project is our threats and what we counter. The defensive typing that takes on will be entirely different than the one that can switch into , so we must plan accordingly. CAP has rarely ever touched on making a defensive Pokemon before, so we will naturally have to adapt to several new challenges throughout this process. Deciding threats before typing on a defensive Pokemon is one such way to mitigate challenges that we may shoehorn ourselves into by making premature choices on the identity of CAP 33.

I'm sorry, but I strongly believe that we should not do this. Typing is a major influence on threats. If we did threats first, how would we decide what to put in our C&C? Do we just add a random set of offensive Pokemon to it? This would be a major constraint on our typing stage and would likely not be an accurate C&C in the end.

Second, I want to address the Speed tier and the potency of fast walls. This was a bit of an uncertain discussion that's gone back and forth on the Discord, and before we move along I want to discuss the potential strength of the concept due to how the strength of these changed interactions Speed enables is agreed upon to be gamechanging. At what point are a certain Speed tier and resources too much for a wall? What factors can contribute to a fast wall being potentially too influential or too much to break? How about the other way around?

I'm gonna go against the consensus and say that I don't think there is a Speed limit we can hit that would make us too broken. Speed alone I don't think is an issue. As long as you are making sacrifices in other areas, I think even being faster than Dragapult is fine. This isn't to say we need to, but I don't think it's the end of the world at all.

Rather, I think it narrows down to being too fast AND too bulky at the same time. This is certainly a way to make CAP 33 hard to take down. Another thing I think would make us too much is being able to debuff both physical attackers AND special attackers at the same time. One or the other is fine, but I think having both would make CAP 33 too difficult to break, as it severely limits the pool of Pokemon that are able to crack it open.

 

[ausma]

Also: there is a possibility I might get things mobile in about 24 hours instead, depending on how much discussion happens in this thread between now and then, as well as if there are a general lack of dissenting opinions. I don't want to hold up this stage longer than we need to, and our typing TL is doing better, too.

 

[Explosion Badger]

Is the idea of more moveslots being dedicated to utility more valuable than utilizing STABs and/or good coverage? Are there situations where we would want more than one offensive move to succeed at being a fast wall over more utility?

It's hard to see a scenario where coverage is a good idea for this Pokémon specifically. While there have been walls who use more than one attack, such as Zapdos, Pokémon like this have incredibly strong offenses, something we can't really do with this project. While coverage might be useful for threatening attackers attempting to switch in on us, utility offers us similar pressure on mons trying to take advantage of us, while preventing 33 from being set up on by something even coverage can't break.

 

[Tunana]

I'm sorry, but I strongly believe that we should not do this. Typing is a major influence on threats. If we did threats first, how would we decide what to put in our C&C? Do we just add a random set of offensive Pokemon to it? This would be a major constraint on our typing stage and would likely not be an accurate C&C in the end.

I think I had a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system of C&C worked. This is my first time participating in CAP so thank you for the feedback!

 

[skippergamez]

Answering this
Why does Speed even matter for a wall? How might normal interactions change when a wall is faster than the Pokemon it is tasked to take on?

A wall tanks hits really well, and makes it harder for the opponent to hit it over time. Normally, walls are slow, so they have to tank a hard hit first before doing anything, a fast wall would deteriorate the opponent before they could do anything. So a high speed is actually advantageous for a wall.

At what point are a certain Speed tier and resources too much for a wall? What factors can contribute to a fast wall being potentially too influential or too much to break? How about the other way around?

This is interesting cause in my opinion, once you’re like 111+, you already have an amazing speed tier and not many more Pokémon outspeed you. I do think beating Dragapult is too much. One thing that might bring a fast wall over the edge is too much offensive presence. Notable fast walls Scream Tail use STABs, but in like base 80 attacking stats. I think a wide array of offensive utility moves like Knock Off, Rapid Spin, Nuzzle, Stone Axe, and such will be too much with its speed. More passive moves are ok. We know it will be fast, what we need to work on is HOW CAP33 will be bulky and a wall. Just because something is fast, doesn’t automatically mean it’s amazing, think Ninjask lol.

Is the idea of more moveslots being dedicated to utility more valuable than utilizing STABs and/or good coverage? Are there situations where we would want more than one offensive move to succeed at being a fast wall over more utility?

I think both are valuable, I like more Utility since our power budget is already pretty invested into Defenses and Speed.

 

[Samirsin]

Do you believe the standard process order/my placement of Threat Discussion is fine? If not, what would you suggest instead, and why?

I like the idea of ability coming first, then threat discussion and then moves, as this would future proof it better. The ability would not change as much as movepool in the future.

At what point are a certain Speed tier and resources too much for a wall? What factors can contribute to a fast wall being potentially too influential or too much to break? How about the other way around?

What happens if a fast wall is too influential:

• If a wall's Speed is too high, it might dominate battles and centralize the metagame around its presence. This can limit diversity and creative team-building.
• An overly fast wall might render certain strategies ineffective, reducing the variety of viable team compositions and limiting counterplay options.
• High Speed can translate into quick control over the pace of the battle, making it challenging for opponents to regain momentum or execute their strategies.
• If the wall is too fast to be reliably checked or countered, it could lead to frustration and unbalanced matchups.

Is the idea of more moveslots being dedicated to utility more valuable than utilizing STABs and/or good coverage? Are there situations where we would want more than one offensive move to succeed at being a fast wall over more utility?

The allocation of moveslots for utility versus STABs and coverage presents a challenging trade-off when designing a fast wall. Prioritizing utility moves may offer control and disruption potential, with tools like Taunt and Strength Sap to hinder opponents. While utility-focused walls claim adaptability, their actual offensive contributions may be limited, potentially hindering their relevance in a metagame where versatility matters.

Conversely, incorporating STABs and coverage moves might grant the wall an offensive edge, yet at the risk of diluting its core defensive purpose. The offensive route could potentially undermine the concept's core premise, especially if the wall's identity becomes muddled with offensive capabilities, overshadowing its intended role as a defensive counter.

The primary objective of a fast wall is to provide effective defensive counterplay. Prioritizing utility and defensive moves aligns with the concept's core identity, ensuring that the wall excels at countering strategies rather than veering into an offensive direction.

Personally I think that giving it a lot of Speed but not a lot of offensive moves is a fair trade.

 

[ausma]

Alright, we've now gotten to a point where I think we've really dug into the meat and potatoes of this concept, so I don't really see much of a reason to keep us here any longer than we need to, especially with how much hype there is around typing atm.

Regarding the process order, I am going to be keeping it the same and host threat discussion after we have our primary Ability voted on. As stated by several people (including myself), there's not really a reason to deviate from standard protocol. So, the order would be looking something like this for the uninitiated:

Typing => Ability => Threat Discussion => Defining Moves => Stats => Movesets

Overall, it does seem that there is a fair amount of control we have to make this concept hit close to the target goal, but still be successful. I believe most of the challenge that comes from this concept will come from the actual stat limits to balance the chemistry of our desired offense, bulk, and, most prominently, the Speed tier itself. This seems to be mirrored fairly well by the fact that most sentiment around what would make this concept too much is giving it too much bulk, longevity, and speed for what it is capable of accomplishing. Obviously, I will not dive into the nuances of that as this isn't really the time for it, but it's important that we respect the strength of the interactions that Speed will enable CAP 33 as we continue the process, and be conscientious of the chemistry all of our stats will have with one another.

With this established, there's not really much more that needs to be said. I believe our path forward is pretty clear and I know our TLT is going to do a great job at getting things mobile. I'm now going to pass the baton to Zetalz!