CAP 33 - Part 3 - Primary Ability Discussion

[mark6870]

Rough Skin is great. It forces the opponent into a catch-22 I feel: you either give up momentum, or you U-turn as CAP33 switches in and catch some chip. Snake goes more into depth in their post about this ability and so i dont parrot their words in a less educated way i suggest you read it. Read it. READ SNAKES POST NOW

Also not a huge fan of Natural Cure or Misty Surge - I feel like a wall wants to stay in for a while, but the former requires you to leave the field to activate and the other's effect wears off after a few turns. I'd like them better if we were aiming for some sort of pivot.

Walls can pivot. The two are not mutually exclusive, like Blissey in gen 8 or the Slow Kings in gen 9.
Additionally, Walls dont generally stay in for long periods of time unless they are bulky boosters like ironpress skarm or garg (garg is also a pivot and a wall, it gains momentum for its team by forcing switches with Salt Cure, but also is a wall due to its stats and solid Ironpress sets). In most cases a wall wont stay in for long enough for Misty Surge to wear off because by that time most players would have swapped to something that threatens us out.


I do like those abilities. I don't see how they work with our speed the way Protean or Serene Grace do but I feel they are some super solid choices. Between the two, I prefer Misty Surge because of the potential team support it brings.

Alright, now for abilities I do not support:
Prankster: We're already fast, which dampens the usefulness of this ability.
Limber: Misty surge/ Natural Cure but worse. It's a good pick if those two end up being disliked for being too powerful, but for now, why would we want it when we have objectively better options?
Simple: This ability really only helps us offensively. While i dont mind CAPP33 having offensive capabilities, its an extremely fine line to walk because how much before we stop being a wall and become just a fast attacker with some solid defensive stats?
Speed Boost: same thing as simple. Speed Boost is such an offensively geared ability, with Speed being such an important stat, that I believe 9 times out of 10 it's only going to make us offensively threatening UNLESS our offensive stats are so bad that it balances out, which is too much of a sacrafice in my opinion.

 

[bigtibba]

Although we aren't generally supposed to look ahead in the metagame, I am strongly against an ability that prevents status, because there is another Pokemon with a Legendary-level power budget with the same typing and pretty much a strictly better ability. It's not even necessarily that CAP 33 would be outclassed by Fini, it's more that this is an avenue that's already been explored.

Multiscale is probably the obvious choice here. I'm personally a big fan of the ability. (It's also incredibly thematic with Water/Fairy, though that's not why I support it) As others have mentioned, I am concerned about the limited recovery PP, especially since CAP 33 would likely be frequently recovering to full above half health. While there are potential solutions, such as Wish/Protect or Life Dew, these all come with their own consequences.

I am not a fan of Toxic Debris at all. It's fine on a Pokemon that's only on the field for a couple of turns, but over the course of a longer game it seems extremely oppressive, especially considering how well we match up into Tusk or Libra.

Shield Dust would be a lot better if we weren't a Fairy type. I feel like the main draw of Shield Dust (besides Salt Cure) is preventing status via Sneasler's Dire Claw/Poison Touch or Venom/Glowking's Sludge Bomb. Of course, our Poison weakness means we probably won't want to stay in/switch into these Pokemon anyway.

Mold Breaker is okay, but wouldn't be my first choice. Worth slating I think, if only for a viable way to remove hazards that isn't Tusk or Libra. Of course, the move stage is a ways away, but I think Mold Breaker would only be really useful along with Defog anyway. The added bonuses of statusing Garg and Gholdengo are not enough to justify this ability alone in my opinion.

Serene Grace is another one I am tentatively in support of. Similarly to Mold Breaker, this ability is only able to be analyzed when looked at in relation to potential movepool. I think as long as it doesn't get Scald, it should be fine, as a 60% to drop Sp.A (or Attack, with Springtide) could go a long way to effectively improving our bulk without requiring the raw stats to back it up. Not sure how useful it would really be besides that though.

Not sure what to think about Rough Skin/Clones. I may add on this later after I've had some more time to think about it. I think it's worth slating at least.

Really do not like Simple. Turning CAP 33 into a set up sweeper, even with moves such as Cosmic Power or Stockpile, seems extremely generic and doesn't really fit the concept that well in my opinion. It also seems unhealthy to play against.

Also like to add a few more words on Protean. Yes, it probably should have been discussed before typing, but given the rigid structure of the process there wasn't really an alternative. When I first saw the concept, Protean immediately came to mind, though there wasn't a way to suggest it before typing ended. An extremely interesting ability in my opinion, and one that would be a ton of fun to both design and play with, but it's understandable if it's too late in the process for it to be a viable option.

 

[Darek]

I just wanted to expand on Rough Skin/Iron Barbs and some alternatives.

In addition to the already mentioned benefits of Rough Skin/Iron Barbs, I want to elaborate on the specific synergy these abilities have with our Speed. One of the key situations in which CAP33's Speed comes into play are ones in which CAP33 comes in on a move it would get 2HKO'd by, but can force a switch thanks to its Speed and recover on the forced switch. However, this comes with the issue of the opponent being able to continue clicking moves on CAP33's healing and subsequently PP stall the recovery or keep CAP33 low by forcing an attack. This issue becomes worse in situations where CAP33 cannot immediately force a switch from the opponent. This is where abilities like Rough Skin come into play: They prevent CAP33 from being completely helpless in turns where it wants to heal, turning otherwise losing or neutral situations into winning ones. Of course, doing direct chip isn't the only way to punish incoming attacks, so here I want to discuss alternatives.

Static/Flame Body/Poison Point are pretty straightforward in how they function- the threat of debilitating status is often enough to disincentivize repeated attacks into CAP33. Whereas the chip of Rough Skin is generally useful and consistent, these abilities specialize in their potential to severely cripple specific Pokemon, with each one targeting different threats. In this respect, Static is the most generally applicable, being able to punish most fast threats such as Zamazenta and Dragapult. Specifically being able to cripple Specs Dragapult, which doesn't mind the other status conditions nearly as much is exceptionally powerful. However, Paralysis's lack of damage in comparison to Poison and Burn makes it less immediate into threats clicking moves repeatedly on us, unless we fish for a Full Para. Conversely, Flame Body can immediately shut down any physical attacker from breaking past CAP33, but is less impactful on Special attackers that can make contact like Dragpult. Lastly, I think Poison Point is generally the weakest of the three, but still worth mentioning just because Poison is the best at punishing bulky threats, specifically punishing Arghonaut for clicking Knock Off and Circle Throw. I think all of these three are worth some consideration, specifically Flame Body.

Toxic Debris is an interesting ability but I don't find that it's exactly what we're looking for. For starters, it's very clear that Toxic Debris is a very volatile ability that we don't know the full implications of yet. While it is true that several Pokemon are either immune to TSpikes or commonly run HDB, it is difficult to know the full implications of a Toxic Debris user that has consistent recovery and beats the tier's most common removal. While this is all speculative, I do think the ability also struggles to synergize with our Speed in the same way Rough Skin does. Specifically, despite Toxic Debris punishing physical moves, the effects do not immediately punish the opposing Pokemon, meaning it is not disincentivized from continuing to click moves into CAP33 in the manner other options do. Because of this, I find the ability to be largely gimmicky while simultaneously being not very pro-concept, and as such I don't think this is an option worth considering.

Cursed Body is in my opinion a very strong ability worthy of further discussion. It is notably different from the aforementioned abilities in that it does not permanently punish the opponent in the same fashion that chip, status, or TSpikes do, meaning it isn't as effective at making long-term progress against the opponent. However, Cursed Body greatly overcomes this weakness with its advantages in short-term interactions. Firstly, unlike the other options which only punish contact or physical moves, Cursed Body is capable of punishing all incoming attacks, making it much stronger against special attackers like a Dragapult clicking Shadow Ball. More importantly, in the short-term, the manner in which Cursed Body punishes the opponent is absolute. While other options may discourage the opponent from clicking moves, Cursed Body directly prevents the opponent from clicking moves at all. Most pokemon will only have one move that can reliably hit CAP33 for consistent damage, meaning that once that move is disabled, they literally cannot break through CAP33. Thus Cursed Body has the strongest synergy with CAP33's Speed, as CAP33 can heal while fishing for the Cursed Body activation and then essentially guarantee a forced switch and an opportunity to heal to full. The only issue is that Cursed Body can easily be prone to winning interactions off of luck, but nonetheless, it is a very strong option.

Mummy/Wandering Spirit are very specific in their interactions but the fact that they are guaranteed greatly helps CAP33 in specific matchups. For instance, removing Pixilate from Hemogoblin, Supreme Overlord from Kingambit, Galvanize from Caribolt, and more can easily turn otherwise losing matchups into winning ones. Unfortunately, the pool of Pokemon that it actually impacts is quite narrow, making these abilities niche, but worth considering nonetheless. Between the two I think Wandering Spirit is slightly stronger just so CAP33 can further take advantage of other Pokemon's abilities.

Pressure is more subtle in how it punishes the opponent but still largely accomplishes a similar purpose. Viol and Bass provides a great explanation of how Pressure can punish threats in a similar fashion to Rough Skin and others. Pressure shares the absolute shutdown capabilities of Cursed Body in that once your move is out of PP, you can no longer break CAP33, while being devoid of hax entirely. The consistency and guaranteed nature of Pressure make it a strong candidate; however, I do think that even with Pressure certain moves can be difficult to stave off long-term with 8 PP recovery, but ultimately it is still a very strong choice.

If I had to rank the options listed I'd do something like Cursed Body > Rough Skin/Iron Barbs > Flame Body > Pressure > Static > Wandering Spirit > Mummy > Poison Point >>>> Toxic Debris, but ultimately I do think all of these except Toxic Debris are worth considering. Also for the reasons already mentioned Multiscale is also fantastic so yeah

 

[sneakyjeans]

Abilities I Like:

Multiscale - I'm not sure I have much more to say on this that hasn't already been said, but I'd like to endorse this. I don't love that it pushes us towards HDB, but the speed interaction really is phenomenal.

Shield Dust - I don't find this ability interacts with our speed as much, but it is a really solid option that gives us consistency and reliability, as well as another clear edge over other bulky water types. I like how this is a solid differentiator and gives us more item flexibility.

Simple - This is sort of a guilty pleasure ability, as I agree that it is a very difficult option to balance and restricts future stages, but I don't think anything does quite embody fast wall as being able to massively boost defenses before getting hit. I am confident we can avoid turning this into some kind of offensive snowballer with careful choices in Defining moves.

Cursed Body - I'm glad Darek brought this one up, as I find the community does tend to shy away from abilities that aren't a guarantee activation. I think Cursed Body is a particularly good option because there also aren't a lot of Pokemon that carry two moves that hit Water/Fairy super-effectively. Being able to take a Sludge Bomb and then force the opponent into a Plan B through Cursed Body is a very interesting way to put down pressure.

Wonder Skin - Haven't seen this one mentioned yet. It does fall into the same camp as Cursed Body where it does have a luck element associated with it, but I think it is worth considering. Making it an additionally risky move to hit Toxic or other status moves (I did lots of reading and apparently Taunt is on the list too) is an interesting interaction that gives a unique element to how someone would have to play around CAP 33.

 

[Perturbo]

It was brought up earlier but was mostly looked over, so I want to bring the attention back to Natural Cure for a moment. (For the record I also love Multiscale)

Other than the obvious points of it being a great soft immunity to status, it also brings the idea of Rest on the table. Being able to fully heal yourself as opposed to 50% is very powerful, allowing CAP 33 to take even more hits and use recovery less often, which is important to consider imo when PP of most recovery moves have been cut in half for gen 9.
There are other abilities that can give the same/similar effect to Natural Cure + Rest, such as Hydration and Early Bird, but I fear that these abilities would limit creativity for CAP 33 during the rest of the process. Despite that, I do think that these abilities are worth bringing up.

 

[Amamama]

Abilities, that imo have nothing to do with the concept or the Pokémon we have so far:

Simple
This ability is naturally only useable with boosting, something, that - while not anti concept - railroads is into some very specific moves and likely stats. Any boosting move, that doesn’t boost only defenses will result in an offensive sweeper with high speed, failing concept. Defensive boosters are still in line with the concept but that locks us into basically one of three boosting and limits the choice of viable Attacking moves to „Toxic“ stored power and seismic toss/nightshade.

What’s even worse Imo is that it debilitates CAP 33 in its Pult Matchup, which is still favorable atm but which very easily becomes a losing matchup with a -2 SpD drop.

Speed Boosting/Controlling Abilities
I’ve gone over this before, but most Speed Boosting abilities create the highest value for mid tier Speeds between 60-90. While this particular metagame has a bunch of Pokémon, that will frequently be speed boosted and a speed boosting ability could help mitigate this (think Weak Armor into a booster Valiant Close Combat), these abilities both are situational and mostly incentivize lower Base Speed, which is anti concept. This btw also goes for abilities that drop the opponents speed, arguably also including static.
In general I don’t think we shouldn’t use our ability slot to improve our speed matchup but rather use our speed to make the most off our ability.

Prankster
This basically is a special case of the above.
Making our status go first in most instances makes high Speed less valuable though and actively goes against the premise of the concept of making a high (base) speed mon.

Drizzle
While I can see the vision, any weather demands it’s own specific concept imo, as it just has too many implications outside of the mon itself.

Protean
Literally the same as the above. There’s a vision there that is cohesive but it a) imo requires its own concept and b) really doesn’t fit with the typing we chose.

Abilities I believe are to weak or not targeted enough
Mold Breaker
I might not have all the mons this is useful against in mind, but tbh this seems really limited to statusing Garganacl, which unterad isn’t even likely to want to switch in and statusing/defogging on Gholdengo, which I admit seems like it could end up being a switch in, especially if we want to be a defogger. It makes sense technically but in the end this feels too limited to be worth a primary ability (unless that’s the goal).
Cursed Body
I in general like the contact/attack punishing abilities but I don’t think cursed body is it.
The effect no doubt is neat and our high speed can enable us maximizing the hax in 33s favor through fast recovery but imo an ability that is reliant on Hax anyway, whose effect is also removed by switching out, is not worth burning Revovery PPs on. If the disabling was guaranteed on the first hit this would be different but as is I think it doesn’t compare to other abilities, which do similar things.
Cloud Nine
This just seems fairly weak in general. It basically improves our already great Matchup against Walking Wake and Hemogoblin in Sunand makes Jumbao a bit sadder into us. We still hate switching into Iron Moth or the rare Hilligant.
Natural Cure
We know that this ability is great on a defensive Pokémon as is exemplified by Blissey, but I don’t think our typing actually lets us make full use of this ability.
We are naturally weak to the most common Status spreading Sludge Bomb, Static and Discharge. The two Twave users in the tier (Rotom and Gholdengo) both have a solid Matchup too, leaving us with wisp from Hex Pult and Defensive Cinderace both of which already have a hard time against us (granted hex Pult can give us trouble in the right circumstances.
There is one use case where this ability is neat, which is using Rest as Recovery alongside its effect to be able to recover to full health and remove sleep while switching out, which definitely synergizes with being fast but ultimately feels a bit too gimmicky to actually use it.
Limber
Pretty similar to the above. While i get the idea of protecting our speed against Paralysis, we don’t have great matchups into the mons spreading this status.
Overall this ends up being really weak on this specific typing and at most feels like a secondary ability.
Shed Skin
A lot of what is true for Nat Cure is also true for this ability and on top being less reliable.
Clear Body
The only benefit I see from this is not falling prey to an odd Shadow Ball drop. Otherwise Stat lowering effects are incredibly rare and don’t really affect the matchups we are likely to be in.
Wonder Skin
Since Status is rare and we have bad matchups into most mons that want to Status Id, I see this more as an ability that lets us dodge a taunt or encore from now and then, in which case oblivious seems like a better choice overall.
Poison Point
Darek already mentioned why this might not cut it as primary.
It certainly benefits 33s role especially into slower tankier mons but that’s also basically what makes this less interesting here, as it doesn’t target mons, that our concept wants to target.

 

[faithviolet]

First before getting into anything else, I think weak abilities are fine. We have the strongest typing possible for a wall, and most of the process still before us. There's no need to latch on to the strongest choices.

There are a few mentioned abilities which I think are anti-concept and should not be considered, namely:

• Speed Boost (speed boost makes our base speed matter less to our walling abilities)
• Static (other pokemon being paralyzed makes our base speed matter less)
• Simple (a fast set-up pokemon could be a wall, but it's definitely not the most fitting direction to the take the concept)
• Armor Tail / Dazzling (while this works with our speed, priority attacks are generally weaker and much less worth using against walls, so the ability synergizes well with roles we specifically don't have)

Some strong abilities I view as clearly pro-concept:

1. Multiscale: it's been discussed a ton already, but it works well with our one immunity, hasn't been done before, and specifically fits itself into a role of being fast and tanking really powerful hits
2. Protean: terastallization has shown how powerful the ability to dynamically change type for defensive purposes can be, and this ability would give the CAP project a very information-laden experiment on whether it works in practice when constrained by move choice
3. Pressure / Cursed Body / Rough Skin / Flame Body / Poison Point: There's been a case made that these do synergize with speed, and it's convinced me. They're less interesting to me than the previous abliities, but all of them besides static are reasonable choices:

Some weak abilities that I support under the assumption we will get somewhat higher stats or movepool to make up for their lack of power:

1. Cloud Nine: It reinforces our ability to wall the Pokemon we've already decided to be able to wall. This makes the choice a natural one for the direction we've been going.
2. Immunity / Pastel Veil: One of a bulky water type's main fears is that of toxic poison - there's a lot less Toxic in the current metagame than there used to be, but it's still somewhat of a death sentence. Having an immunity to poison makes CAP 33 better able to stay in on threats and spread its own status. (This is why I do not support Misty Surge: one primary use case of a Wall is to spread status, and I think it would be better to leave that option open for future stages to decide.)

Some abilities I haven't made up my mind on whether they fit the concept and our typing are Natural Cure, Shield Dust, Toxic Debris (why does a toxic debris setter particularly benefit from speed?), Mold Breaker, and Wonder Skin.

 

[Fenghuang]

Speed Boost (speed boost makes our base speed matter less to our walling abilities)

I strongly disagree with this sentence. Firstly, speed boost on a Mon with base 60 speed is much much weaker than speed boost on a Mon with base 80 or 90 or 100 speed. Secondly, the concept is not "make a wall with high base speed" it's "make a wall that leverages high speed". Speed boost is extremely reliable and I don't think it can be dismissed so easily.

Armor Tail / Dazzling (while this works with our speed, priority attacks are generally weaker and much less worth using against walls, so the ability synergizes well with roles we specifically don't have)

This is not true. Sucker punch especially from gambit, hemo espeed, tera normal espeed dnite, there are lots of meta relevant strong priority users around right now that can make it harder to leverage a high speed stat. Now like, are these moves extremely important to be immune to? Probably not, I'm not a huge fan of dazzling here either. But it's not irrelevant.

 

[kenn]

Hey everyone! I am loving all the suggestions so far and if you got any more you wanna suggest or you just wanna show support for ones already suggested feel free to do so, but I wanna post to say that after discussing with our TL and the TLT, I am gonna ban any further discussion on Simple, Protean/Libero, Speed Boost, and Prankster.

Simple incentivizes setup (I think it was specifically mentioned as defensive setup) which, while is a cool route for a wall to have, it isn't the main focus of this concept and I feel like it detracts from what we want a fast wall to accomplish.

Protean/Libero is definitely an ability that needs, or rather wants, a process to do ability first and then typing but unfortunately that isn't how this process started out and honestly I don't think changing out of our Water/Fairy is ideal in most situations as it is a fantastic defensive typing all on its own. I know I saw arguments for how Tera has allowed this defensive counterplay of sorts based on your typing but using up our coveted ability slot to do this is not ideal and I personally don't think that it feeds into the concept as well as some others.

Speed Boost kinda hints at having a middling Speed stat that we can overcome via our ability but that doesn't exactly scream fast wall and therefore isn't in line with the concept.

Prankster I think was mentioned once or twice but it is definitely anti-concept as we don't do anything to incentivize our hinted at high Speed stat, forcing investment into bulk and potentially offenses which doesn't seem conducive to our concept of being a fast wall.

With that, I do also wanna see more talk on some abilities that haven't gotten as much discussion like Serene Grace, Pressure, Wandering Spirit, and probably a few others I am missing lol.

I am loving the direction of the thread and I wanna say that even if you feel an ability has been discussed to hell and back, don't be afraid to make your own opinions on it known as every piece of information gets taken into consideration with myself and the TLT.

 

[Zetalz]

support post speedrun GO

Serene Grace is pretty cool. Atm my favorite ability that seeks to address passivity. Making our STABs a lot more consistently punishing without raising our damage ceiling and potentially giving more breathing room to stats is very neat. I will say, I've seen some hesitance over this ability, mainly in regards to pairing it with Scald (which we may or may not go for), and I don't really get the fear. SG Scald is a very concise way of addressing 33's need to be able to pressure the opponent, and does so very sufficiently. SG should not be avoided for fears of being 'to strong' with 33's potential STABs, we still have a long way to go in this process.

Contact Punishing Abilities (+Cursed Body) are also very neat. The consistent value of Rough Skin/Iron Barbs chip has been proven over the generations by Ferro and Big Chomper, and with a defensive typing so strong against many contact moves in particular I can't see us going wrong with this. The other ones are harder to evaluate but I think out of the random-chance ones I prefer Cursed Body the most. Darek's post put it very well how powerful of a disrupting tool Cursed Body can be on a wall, and though it's less consistent than Rough Skin is still very potent. The other 3 (Static/Flame Body/Poison Point) are not as compelling personally as when it comes to contact-punishing I much more value Rough Skins chip.

Multiscale has been gassed up by pretty much everyone and I will not be deviating from that path lol. I have nothing to add that hasn't been said, it's a fantastic defensive option that works even better given 33's specific build.

Filter/Solid Rock is something that hasn't come up yet and it's something I quite like. A flat reduction on SE damage that's always live is less mechanically interesting than Multiscale, though it's still very appealing for a wall. It's hard to gauge it without knowing where stats are going exactly, but I think being able to turn 2HKOs from annoying mons that could check us like Kril or Venom into 3HKOs would be undeniably valuable.

Natural Cure is the only status-reduction/immunity that's really caught my eye. With how frequently walls are expected to switch around in games it can certainly generate a lot of value on paper, though I do wonder how much value it will actually have given the status it's most vulnerable to is usually going to be hitting it in the form of a SE attack. Even if it's not giving much though I do still like it, and status may become more common in the future, so it hardly feels like a wasted slot.

Regenerator is probably the most boring option to veteran users, but it's undeniably very good here. Having to spend less turns healing is even more valuable now with the 8PP recovery nerf, and spending those turns disrupting the opponent through whatever means we choose is solid. Not my favorite option, but sometimes the obvious and boring option is the right one.

thought I'd have more stuff to talk about but tbh a lot of stuff has been brought up and the majority of it is stuff I don't feel strongly on in any way.

 

[Brambane]

I'm not going to write a novel here, but there are two main classes of abilities we are looking for here.

The first one are "bulk" abilities, which basically are some form of damage reduction or recovery. Abilities that do this in a way that could be accomplished in stats are boring and uninspired. Fur Coat is this kind of ability, its just universal more physical bulk. These abilities are only interesting when they are conditional. Filter is extra bulk only against SE attacks; Multiscale is extra bulk only at full HP. The more restrictive the condition, the more we are encouraged to design with it in mind. Multiscale has a greater restriction than Filter.

The second class of abilities are "punish" abilities. These abilities are designed around giving CAP33 the ability to punish the opponent when it either switches in, or the opponent switches into it. Think Iron Barbs and Serene Grace Moonblast/Scald respectively.

There are some abilities that hybridize these traits. Flame Body is the best example, as it punishes contact moves and gives your more effective bulk with the burn. Regenerator also fits this, mostly because it allows you to be more punishing with your moves by not needing to spend the turn your opponent is reacting to recover; makes you tankier and able to play "aggressive" which is what made Toxapex awful to switch into for generations.

I think abilities that don't add to bulk/recovery or punish the opponent are not worth entertaining at all. As a general gameplan, walls typically gain value by generating opportunities to swing at the opponent with punishing moves, and they can do that a lot since they are tanky enough to pull it off. Damage abilities miss the point, and immunity abilities, while effective, seem more like making the "perfect wall" as oppose to a fast one.

Anyways, I like Flame Body, Rough Skin/Iron Barbs, Multiscale, Regenerator, and Serene Grace (but only if we are getting Scald, so moveset implications are there; Serene Grace Moonblast by itself is pretty meh).

 

[dragoon244]

support post speedrun GO

Serene Grace is pretty cool. Atm my favorite ability that seeks to address passivity. Making our STABs a lot more consistently punishing without raising our damage ceiling and potentially giving more breathing room to stats is very neat. I will say, I've seen some hesitance over this ability, mainly in regards to pairing it with Scald (which we may or may not go for), and I don't really get the fear. SG Scald is a very concise way of addressing 33's need to be able to pressure the opponent, and does so very sufficiently. SG should not be avoided for fears of being 'to strong' with 33's potential STABs, we still have a long way to go in this process.

Contact Punishing Abilities (+Cursed Body) are also very neat. The consistent value of Rough Skin/Iron Barbs chip has been proven over the generations by Ferro and Big Chomper, and with a defensive typing so strong against many contact moves in particular I can't see us going wrong with this. The other ones are harder to evaluate but I think out of the random-chance ones I prefer Cursed Body the most. Darek's post put it very well how powerful of a disrupting tool Cursed Body can be on a wall, and though it's less consistent than Rough Skin is still very potent. The other 3 (Static/Flame Body/Poison Point) are not as compelling personally as when it comes to contact-punishing I much more value Rough Skins chip.

Multiscale has been gassed up by pretty much everyone and I will not be deviating from that path lol. I have nothing to add that hasn't been said, it's a fantastic defensive option that works even better given 33's specific build.

Filter/Solid Rock is something that hasn't come up yet and it's something I quite like. A flat reduction on SE damage that's always live is less mechanically interesting than Multiscale, though it's still very appealing for a wall. It's hard to gauge it without knowing where stats are going exactly, but I think being able to turn 2HKOs from annoying mons that could check us like Kril or Venom into 3HKOs would be undeniably valuable.

Natural Cure is the only status-reduction/immunity that's really caught my eye. With how frequently walls are expected to switch around in games it can certainly generate a lot of value on paper, though I do wonder how much value it will actually have given the status it's most vulnerable to is usually going to be hitting it in the form of a SE attack. Even if it's not giving much though I do still like it, and status may become more common in the future, so it hardly feels like a wasted slot.

Regenerator is probably the most boring option to veteran users, but it's undeniably very good here. Having to spend less turns healing is even more valuable now with the 8PP recovery nerf, and spending those turns disrupting the opponent through whatever means we choose is solid. Not my favorite option, but sometimes the obvious and boring option is the right one.

thought I'd have more stuff to talk about but tbh a lot of stuff has been brought up and the majority of it is stuff I don't feel strongly on in any way.

Gonna piggyback off of Zetalz’ support post because honestly it captures my current sentiments pretty well, gonna throw in my two cents on top.

Pressure for 33 strikes me as an interesting option. It gives an unavoidable way to simultaneously put a slow squeeze on individual opponents and, in a wider sense, speed up games by shaving potential turns down.

Of the contact punishing abilities, I most prefer Rough Skin/Iron Barbs as opposed to options that are chance based like Static/Flame Body/Cursed Body.

 

[StarFalcon555]

notices the lack of controversial submissions owo what dis? time to cawse contwoversey :333 suggests that broken ass ability be unbanned

Yes, I know that was cringe. But I'm about to do something even more cringe, because I'm here to suggest that Good as Gold should be unbanned for this process.

Yes, I know what you're thinking - that Good as Gold is OP AF, especially on a mon with a defensive profile as good as Water/Fairy. But I actually think that Good as Gold can work really well on CAP 33 without it being broken. Blocking all status moves is of course, incredibly strong on a wall, but the main thing that makes Good as Gold stand out to me as a good pick on CAP 33 is its ability to prevent CAP 33 from being inflicted with status conditions. Abilities like Shield Dust and Natural Cure have been suggested to reduce the chances of CAP 33 getting inflicted by status conditions, and while I do like those abilities, they both don't outright prevent volatile status conditions. Shield Dust simply reduces the chances of CAP 33 getting inflicted with a volatile status condition from an attack, and Natural Cure heals off status conditions that have already been inflicted after switching out. Good as Gold outright prevents moves like Toxic, Spore, Will-O-Wisp, and Thunder Wave from even affecting CAP 33, which helps out INCREDIBLY well with increasing its longevity.

Aside from status conditions, however, Good as Gold blocks a fuck ton of stuff. Blocking Defog and making us a semi-decent hazard deterrent is excellent, but in terms of our process, what really matters is the immunity to Taunt and Encore. Since we're a wall, our own status moves will most likely make up a huge chunk of our kit, so being Taunted is obviously not a good thing. Same goes for Encore to a lesser extent - the great thing about being a fast wall is that we can use our high Speed to reduce the inherent passivity that most walls are associated with, but a well-timed Encore could force us back into passivity. With Good as Gold, we don't have to worry about either of those things! Aside from those two, Good as Gold also just blocks a ton of things that may seem miniscule, but are actually surprisingly helpful. It blocks both Whirlwind and Roar, so we don't have to worry about getting phased by Ting-Lu. It blocks Trick and Switcheroo, so we don't have to worry about being cockblocked by a Choice item. It blocks Parting Shot, preventing mons like Malaconda from switching out in a pinch. It just helps us out so much as a wall.

That being said, Good as Gold doesn't block every status move. It only blocks status moves that are specifically directed at the user, which means that it doesn't block entry hazards. Good as Gold does block Defog, which helps out a bit in this regard. However, there is one big difference between a Good as Gold CAP 33 and Gholdengo - Gholdengo is a Ghost/Steel type, which means that it not only resists Stealth Rock, but it also blocks Rapid Spin and Mortal Spin, making it the perfect hazard deterrent. CAP 33 is not a Steel/Ghost type, and thus, it has none of these aforementioned qualities. Rapid Spinners are much more common in this metagame than Defoggers, and Mortal Spin is straight up super effective against CAP 33, making CAP 33 much more prone to getting worn down than Gholdengo even with Good as Gold. Additionally, Good as Gold also only blocks status moves, not status conditions as a whole. This makes CAP 33 even more susceptible to Mortal Spin, as well as other common poisoning/statusing moves and tactics in the metagame like Dire Claw, Sludge Bomb, Toxic Spikes, or even a lucky Flamethrower or Thunderbolt that burns or paralyzes. Again, Gholdengo can get away with this somewhat because it is a Steel-type, and thus immune to Poison. One of CAP 33's few weaknesses as a Water/Fairy type is the Poison type, meaning it doesn't get that liberty.

This doesn't stop Good as Gold from being a great Ability for CAP 33, obviously. These flaws simply allow for ways for CAP 33 to be played around, which, in my opinion, shows that Good as Gold can be balanced on CAP 33. This Ability plays so well with our concept and synergizes well enough with our typing without being overtly absurd like it is on Gholdengo, and for those reasons, I believe that it deserves to be talked about as our potential primary Ability.

 

[chartung17]

Abilities like Shield Dust and Natural Cure have been suggested to reduce the chances of CAP 33 getting inflicted by status conditions, and while I do like those abilities, they both don't outright prevent volatile status conditions.

Good as Gold doesn't outright prevent status conditions either, since it only protects your from status moves. If you want to prevent status conditions, Comatose and Purifying Salt exist.

 

[ultramafia]

I dont have much to say that hasnt already been covered just wanted to show my support for some abilites that have been discussed:

No-Brainers: Multiscale, Rough Skin/Iron Barbs, and Pressure
These are all strong (but not overpowered) abilities that have great synergy with being a fast wall. All these abilites are good for any defensive mon, and are even better with fast healing in the mix.

Lesser Abilities I Like: Limber, Natural Cure, Shield Dust and Filter/Solid Rock
These abilites are weaker than the no-brainers, or else don't have the same synergy what we already have for CAP 33 but I still like them, especially if we don't want to spend too much of our power budget on ability. I like Limber in particular as paralysis is likely to be more crippling for 33 than most other walls; because most walls are slow, their ability to counter offensive threats is not impacted much by the speed drop from paralysis. However in the case of CAP 33 , we are likely to chose defensive stats under the assumption of outspeeding the threats we aim to counter (excluding scarfers, priority and fastmons like Dragapult). This means that having our speed halved could seriously cripple our ability to wall things. Natural Cure and Shield Dust help with status in a more general manner, while Filter/Solid Rock has the potential to bring weaker SE hits below 50% damage, and stronger SE hits below 100%.

 

[PoorlyDrawnPhantump]

The two abilities that I’m really leaning towards are filter and serene grace. Filter is my first pick because Pokémon like Venomicon roaming the meta, having something that could help with that weakness could be very unique for a water and fairy type. Also, filter possibly can make terastilizing a bit more unique for this Pokémon with this ability as well.

As for serene grace, I would just be retelling what Panic Station said already, but I still think that serene grace is worth having on this Pokémon.

I also wanted to give my personal opinion on toxic debris as an ability. The reason Glimmora was able to get away with this ability was because it had moderate defensive stats and wasn’t able to take that much of a beating. So the idea of giving a fast wall that would have both better defensive stats, and typing than Glimmora toxic debris as an ability give me a bad feeling on how that would turn out. And also I just don’t think that toxic spike is that good in the CAP with Pokémon like Venomicon, Equilibra, and Kingambit in the meta.

 

[spoo]

There are three abilities I like quite a bit, a handful more that I think would still be fine choices, and it drops off from there. I'd support a smaller slate of 5-6 options, if only because of how many options just can't compete with the heavyweights like Multiscale.

The Good:
Shilling for Filter. Water/Fairy is a phenomenal typing, but I think we should be honest about its weaknesses, particularly its subpar matchup into some of the best speedmons in the meta (read: the Pokemon we must be incentivized to outspeed in order to really succeed here). We resist some strong moves from Meowscarada, Sneasler, Iron Moth, Krilowatt, and Cinderace among others, but are weak to their other STAB or some common coverage. If we do not have a sufficient enough defensive profile into these mons, I think there's a non-zero chance that we ditch Speed investment, more or less forfeit these matchups, and invest in raw bulk to better answer the slower Pokemon that our typing is more naturally suited to checking. Granted, there are other reasons to run Speed than beating things on the switch-in (such as wanting to force these mons out after a kill), but we should be incentivizing Speed investment more through our ability to wall threats and less through our revenge killing potential (or other factors). As such, I think Filter is a very useful option. As a strictly defensive ability, Filter broadly aligns with our goal as a wall––but, more specifically, it improves our matchup into the prediction-reliant fastmons, therefore aligning with our goal as a wall that wants to be fast. This ability deserves more consideration.

Multiscale is probably my favorite ability, I think it's kind of in a league of its own and most people seem to recognize that, so I won't bang that drum any more than others already have. Rough Skin is also really cool for reasons that have been well rehearsed in this thread. Very high on both of these.

Cursed Body is actually pretty cool (go read Darek's post) and is a lower/mid power option that I think we'd make good use of. While the RNG is not ideal, the effect isn't "will I win the game or lose the game" so much as it's "will I win or lose the 1v1" (oversimplifying a bit here, but you get the gist). Serene Grace legit just makes Scald and Moonblast better, but that's a very powerful effect, and goes a long way towards addressing the "how will we make progress" issue we'll inevitably need to solve. Mold Breaker is also neat, though I think the interaction it has with Wisp is seriously overstated. I would prefer all of these as secondaries rather than primaries, but I think they should still be slated.

The Bad:
I do not like Shield Dust. The only effect worth discussing here is its negation of Salt Cure damage; avoiding the 20% drop from Shadow Ball is the next best perk, which is honestly saying a lot. Owning Garg is cool for sure, but this ability has essentially zero interaction with our Speed, and is maybe the single most limited option (affects literally one matchup) that people have been seriously considering. Shield Dust makes us a marginally better wall, but I fail to see how this interacts with our Speed whatsoever, the very heart of this concept. I am not interested.

I'm also lukewarm on Pressure. The best thing I can say about this ability is that it interacts with our Speed more than some other options on the table. Still, I don't think that this ability's effect is powerful or interesting enough to be a compelling choice. The main draw of Pressure is flipping losing/neutral interactions into winning interactions long-term, e.g. Corviknight defogging Lando's rocks, or CM Suicune stalling Pex's Haze. SV is a much faster paced tier than some past generations, though, and beating things long-term as a wall is way harder with 8PP recovery. This feels like it enables more strategies in the abstract than in practice, especially given that setup is out of the picture, and is overall not impactful enough for me to consider it over stronger and more broadly useful options.

The Ugly:
I am much more leery of the status-based contact abilities. This might just be the SS player in me talking, but abilities like Static and Flame Body can disrupt a tier to such an insane degree. The prevalence of Zapdos and Heatran in SS single-handedly make so many strategies unreliable at best and straight up throwing at worst; even the decision to load some of the most consistently strong options like Weavile and Melmetal can be a death sentence if you're not careful or just a bit unlucky. Get burned when you click Knock or Superpower as Heatran comes in, and well, the game flips in an instant. It's not like you can just never attack these mons, either, so you're forced into very awkward gameplay patterns, or say fuck it and deal with some actually heinous risk vs reward calculations. Yes, these abilities are technically balanced with "unfavorable" odds of proccing, but games often devolve into forcing the same repetitive sequences, treading water until the ability inevitably activates. This is also why playing around these abilities isn't just as simple as good RNG management. They are unarguably good options from a viability and concept perspective, but the gameplay implications are unacceptable on a wall that will have no shortage of entry opportunities throughout a game. If these abilities are slated, I will be putting them at the bottom of my ballot.

 

[skippergamez]

I love Rough Skin > Filter > Multiscale

Rough Skin increases its wallong potential a lot. Iron Barbs (I’m pretty sure is the same) makes Ferrothorn an amazing threat any meta it is in, and makes Garchomp a tank.

Filter is one I am a huge fan of, if you saw my posts in Hemogoblin’s ability stages you know how I feel about this. While it doesn’t feel as necessary this time around, since it’s weaknesses to major meta threats are like Zapdos, but what does fit is Filter’s capability to come into said threats and wall a lot more.

Multiscale will make CAP33 viable with little to no questions asked.

 

[Sawyer.]

I'm also firmly against Flame Body or Static. These abilities are far too crippling and variance-inducing, and CAP33's gameplay would inevitably revolve around fishing for these activations rather than simply walling. Furthermore, Flame Body/Static would likely railroad us into being a primarily physical wall, when Water/Fairy is a strong physically AND specially defensive typing.

As for my two favourite ability options:

Cursed Body: Out of all the abilities that punish opponent moves, this is clearly the best choice. I don't see this as excessively hax-based, because a speedy wall can reliably activate it by spamming recovery to win 1v1s (albeit at the cost of its finite recovery PP). Again, I love that Cursed Body emphasises 1v1 walling rather than punishing weak attacks. Crucially, it also benefits CAP33 against both both physical and special attackers.

Multiscale: I initially thought this would be overbearing, but the limitations imposed by a likely 8 recovery PP is enough to balance it imo. With Multiscale, CAP33 would make a brilliant short-term roadblock against offence that would need to be played much more conservatively in longer games. There's not much else to say, except that (along with Cursed Body) this is one of the most effective abilities with which to leverage a high speed stat.

 

[Brambane]

wrt Flame Body/Cursed Body/Static, this is a question of introducing variance and means. I will be blunt that having an option, be it Scald or Wisp, to burn seems like the most functional execution of the concept; if you are faster than a target and can threaten to burn it, then you leveraged your speed meaningfully. I am focusing on burn since its the most impactful walling status and has the fewest easier answers; sleep would also probably be good, but all my friends and their dads hate Spore. Anyways, if we are slotting burn into the moveset, than Flame Body just seems like unhealthy fluff. Static is in a similar boat and I don't think Cursed Body is consistent enough or more importantly consistently impactful enough to consider beyond it being a sorta funny ability when it works.

I think Mold Breaker and Shield Dust are really weak abilities, they are really about punishing a really select group of Pokemon in honestly not that impressive ways. I wouldn't mind seeing one of them on the slate not because its amazing, but on the stipulation that "we gave this Pokemon an only okay ability so that we can hogwild on stats and moveset."

I am fine with Filter since its like the most basic of the conditional defensive abilities and it fits, but I do want to emphasize what it implies. Filter more or less means when you get to stats, you have ever intention of letting this Pokemon tank some super-effective moves well. I don't think you would slot this ability just to make a mon still get 2HKOed by all the same SE it would without it, after all. So its actually more like Bulletproof-lite; you are moving more in the direction of a "perfect" wall than a fast wall. It is not as egregious as an immunity ability, but it is food for thought if we are really interacting with the concept that much. Also begs the question on how much tankiness do you give a Pokemon before it starts abandoning the idea of going fast in just doubling down on bulk. At least with Multiscale you have to heal before your opponent hits you if you want the tankiness back, so you are pressured into running Speed investment that way.

 

[Da Pizza Man]

Going to make a fairly last minute push for Grassy Surge (Mostly so that it doesn't go unmentioned in the thread)

The biggest draw of Grassy Surge for me here is granting ourselves passive recovery, which is a huge benefit for a wall for reasons that I really don't think that I have to get into. The added benefit of granting ourselves a pseudo-resistance to Ground is fairly helpful for certain matchups as well, with the biggest one being the Baxcalibur matchup. The added support for our teammates also gives us a very solid niche to work with, as we already see Rillaboom seeing occasional use even without access to Grassy Glide, just thanks to how powerful of a supportive effect that Grassy Surge provides. I do understand that their might be some concern about boosting the power of Grass moves against us, but I honestly don't think it's going to be that big of a deal just looking at what currently runs grass moves in the metagame right now.

(This is already beating us if we don't outspeed, and losing if we do)
(Requires Tera)
(Doesn't get the boost)
(Doesn't get the boost)
(Not a super common mon in general)

Outside of that, some other abilities that I support but don't really want to talk a whole much about are Multiscale, Serene Grace, and Rough Skin.

 

[kenn]

Just posting a real quick PSA that the slate is going up in roughly 48 to 72 hours! Keep up the discussion and throw out any last minute ideas or support you may wanna showcase before then.

 

[thundergoos]

Gonna jump in to hurl my support at Multiscale and Rough Skin/Iron Barbs.

Like with most discussion of these abilities at this point, I don’t really know what I can say that about them that hasn’t already been said, but I’ll start with them.

Multiscale — This is my absolute favorite ability here by a pretty wide margin. It just works immensely well for our purposes, and outside of Lugia (who has a vastly inferior typing at the trade of Legendary stats) we’ve never seen a fast defensive user of Multiscale in an OU-adjacent metagame. Like some people have mentioned, Dragonite sort of came close last gen with the defensive Defog sets, but the distinction lies in Dragonite’s middling speed. The idea of a fast defensive Multiscale wall is ridiculously compelling, primarily due to the interaction with recovery moves that’s been covered at length, but also due to our ability to dish out disruption in the form of status or hazards or what have you when we’re at full. Like spoo said, Multiscale is sort of in a league of its own, and I think it’s the best and most intriguing route we could take.

Rough Skin/Iron Barbs — As has been widely covered, the ability to dish out punishment for aggressive play in the form of chip damage cannot be understated. It undoubtedly helps with the question of our passivity as a wall and also encourages the opponent to play more conscientiously. You really can never go wrong with Rough Skin on a defensive mon, and I absolutely like it the most out of all the contact punishing abilities. Honestly, it’s really the only one of this subcategory of abilities that I really like for our purposes here. I think I saw it mentioned earlier in the discussion that Rough Skin also has a positive interaction with fast recovery, and I agree with this a lot. The ability to recover off damage and get out of 2HKO range before the opponent can move, and then wear the opponent down further immediately after is a very cool interaction that we haven’t really seen optimized before, since Chomp doesn’t have recovery and Ferrothorn is slow as hell. I think Rough Skin is intriguing for this interaction alone, but its host of other positive qualities and interactions elevate it. Definitely my second favorite ability here.

Serene Grace — Now this is interesting, and also just really bloody nasty. 60% Scald burn and Moonblast Spa drop is nuts and gnarly as hell. This obviously helps patch up our passivity concerns since very little physical attackers will ever want to switch in on this. Artificially increasing special bulk through the Moonblast drop is also very cool. My only stipulation is that I don’t really love this ability for our primary ability, but could instead love this for a secondary. I guess the concern there would be whether it would eclipse the primary in usage since the benefits of this are pretty crazy, but I could see CAP33 having Multiscale primary and Serene Grace secondary. Both could perhaps coexist in different sets, but the question then is how healthy is a wall that has that stacked of a toolkit? I don’t really know at this current juncture, but my general assessment is that I’d love to see Serene Grace slated, since I think it’s one of the more powerful and ultimately beneficial abilities we could have here.

Other abilities I support but have less to say on are Filter and Mold Breaker.

I really don’t like Grassy Surge here, personally. I acknowledge that it provides us passive recovery and an artificial ground resist, but I really don’t think this is worth the cost of making our weakness to Grass that much worse. I really just don’t see how this ability interacts with our speed at all to help make 33 into a fast wall. I struggle to see the relation to the concept personally.

I also really don’t care for Shield Dust, Wonder Skin and the other contact punishers (Static, Flame Body, etc.). They either just don’t do enough for us here or they aren’t consistent enough for our purposes. Cursed Body and Pressure kind of fall into this category too, but I’m more ambivalent on them. I don’t really care if they get slated but I think we just have much much better options available.

TL;DR — Multiscale is the best by far, Rough Skin/Iron Barbs is second best, Serene Grace is interesting and nasty but maybe not best for a primary ability, Filter and Mold Breaker are cool. Everything else is either bleh or straight up kinda dookie. Cheers!

 

[ausma]

As TL, I feel as though it's important for me, too, to sort of give my perception on what I feel to be conducive for this stage. So, here are some thoughts I wanted to share:

I feel like Brambane's initial post summarizes the kind of abilities we should be aiming for with CAP 33 pretty well. Focusing mainly on boosting our defensive profile or giving ourselves an innate punish game definitely benefits us, though in my opinion it's important that we are deliberate with how we opt to do this. We need to be conscientious of the fact that a huge draw of this CAP will be its Speed, and as such finding abilities that leverage how we use our Speed in defensive matchups I believe is a good call. However, I think we also don't need our ability to be immensely strong, as we have an amazing typing and are slated to have an extremely potent stat spread.

__

Multiscale, by far, is the strongest candidate for an ability that fits our role and pairs phenomenally with our build. Fast recovery is something that is very innate to this concept, and Multiscale rewards that unlike anything else by effectively doubling our bulk when we actually take advantage of our Speed to consistently be at max HP. Of the defense-improving abilities it is my favorite by a long shot as its strengths are tied to our concept near exclusively.

Abilities that focus exclusively on bolstering our defensive profile with no caveat like Filter I feel are overrated as they don't really directly incentivize us to use our Speed; if anything I'm worried it would encourage us to focus on our bulk by making it harder to break us, which is noteworthy given our absurd resistance profile and our general lack of exploitable weaknesses. However spoo made an excellent argument in favor of it as something more metagame-focused that, by proxy, would encourage Speed investment, so I'm not particularly against it, just not super subscribed.

Serene Grace to me is a really dangerous route to take. To be frank, our potential Speed tier alongside SG Scald and Moonblast is absolutely disgusting to a point that I feel would reduce us to spamming our STABs while encouraging a very unhealthy dynamic as a wall by punishing the entire attacking spectrum autonomously. Yes, our Speed with SG STABs is certainly pro-concept, but I am in the camp that it would be way too unhealthy and way too limiting for the future of this process.

__

Punishment-oriented abilities are another major class of abilities we can pursue; contact-based ones to be specific, which we have an amazing type-combo to make use of. Not to be a broken record, but Rough Skin/Iron Barbs are excellent and really stable options that let us consistently exert pressure while doing our job, so I won't discuss them much. But I wanted to really lay down the sentiment that Flame Body/Static are really dangerous options and I would really recommend we steer away from them. Without a doubt they would be strong since we have the ability to respond to so many contact-based moves, but in that lies the actual problem. The risk/reward of these abilities wrt the way we would be actually fishing for their effects is immeasurably skewed toward us. Unlike Moltres/Zapdos, there's pretty much no drawback to fishing into moves like Knock Off because our build doesn't necessarily need an item to succeed, whereas they heavily appreciate the impunity to Stealth Rock. We have no reason not to be trying to use our ability proactively because there is so little risk to doing so, and as such we will nearly always be able to debilitate something due to the sheer strength of burn and paralysis. This is also part of why I like Rough Skin, as it's a fairly small, guaranteed punishment that can add up to be really useful in the long run as our typing lends well to doing so reliably, whereas Flame Body and Static on our build promote a really unhealthy dynamic.

If we want to focus on other contact-based effects, I think Poison Point and Cursed Body are more conservative and more closely align with Rough Skin in terms of game-to-game strength. They do still have an element of luck attached, but this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that our typing lends well to getting off their effect more reliably but not in an immensely unbalanced and unfair way. I do feel Rough Skin is a far better and less volatile choice, but these two abilities should most definitely be in contention over Flame Body/Static imo.

I actually like Pressure. While its effects can't really be felt immediately, the fact we boast a positive matchup into moves like Fire Blast, Close Combat, Draco Meteor, Sucker Punch, Pyro Ball, Hyperspace Fury, and even more while also pressuring users of Headlong Rush/Make it Rain means that we are able to really play into our build and type by reliably draining the PP of these moves with fast healing and great bulk. It's a very conservative and safe option compared to the above abilities, but I believe it very much deserves discussion in part because it's not extremely high impact but still gets things done.

___

There is one more ability that I believe should be considered more that actually isn't in either class of ability, and I am genuinely surprised at the lack of support behind it: Mold Breaker. Many people are citing it as being too narrow in focus, but I personally disagree. I think it's important to consider that, as a dedicated wall, we are likely to be a bit more passive by nature. Most of our pressure is going to be coming in the form of Speed and direct utility moves; because of this, our matchups into Pokemon that innately take advantage of our propensity to spread utility are going to be really awkward and arguably debilitating. Scream Tail, I believe, is an immensely strong example of how annoying Pokemon with such disruptive defensive abilities (like Gholdengo and Hatterene) can be, and in some cases they can be so problematic that their success in a battle is greatly rendered down to walling a single Pokemon in an emergency scenario, as otherwise your wall can be a super easy loss of momentum.

The primary targets most certainly are Gholdengo and Garganacl, but I think they're insanely relevant for sure. Being able to dispense proactive utility with greater impunity is important for us if we expect to find good value on a game-to-game basis. Gholdengo is more catch-all (especially if we opt for, say, Strength Sap for recovery), but statusing Garganacl is honestly a pretty big deal too seeing as it's a Pokemon that's really awful for defensive Pokemon to handle without Encore. With Mold Breaker, we wouldn't necessarily need to force ourselves into Encore just for Garganacl, yet it can still be useful into Calm Mind Hatterene and bulkier Gholdengo sets. The aforementioned Magic Bounce Hatterene is also a massive target, as it means we don't have to be afraid of using our utility, lest it be turned against us.

Aside from these Pokemon, Mold Breaker is actually a super nice complement to our STAB combination. Mold Breaker allows for us to actually pressure Water Absorb Clodsire which comes in for free otherwise, and Mold Breaker also allows for us to ignore Dragonite Multiscale and make our Fairy STAB actually sting it from the get-go; this can either force a Tera on its end, or force it out more reliably. Also interestingly is the fact that Mold Breaker ignores Contrary, meaning that Contrary Enamorus/Pyroak can't punish a Moonblast/Spirit Break by flipping the SpAtk drop, creating even less room to be exploited.

If this is somehow still too narrow for us, I feel like Shield Dust, too, should be dismissed. From what I understand, it only seems useful for Salt Cure, as we're weak to Discharge and Sludge Bomb anyway. And even with a Salt Cure immunity, our only way to really take advantage of Garganacl is to use Encore unless Tera has been used elsewhere. I personally am okay with this ability but I feel Mold Breaker is just a stronger choice.

Tl;dr Mold Breaker lets us use proactive utility more, which is super huge as we will be forcing switches frequently, and the key targets are Pokemon that would, normally, not be at all opposed to switching into us. Mold Breaker also reduces the ability to exploit us in several other matchups as well.

___

Great discussion overall everyone, and I'm really excited to see what we will have in store with our ability!

 

[mark6870]

Pressure deserves more credit. If CAP33 gets removal (which it does have a positive MU into many hazard setters), halving the amount of times they can set up those hazards is definitely a benefit, as seen with Corviknight.
In addition, as ausma points out in their post, there are a lot of low PP moves that we have the ability to tank as a wall that makes our opponent think twice about clicking them. Draco Meteor, Make it Rain, Hydro Pump, Pyro Ball, Extreme Speed, and so on. Many users of the move we have a solid matchup into due to our stellar typing (WW, Specs Dragapult, Cinderace, Hemogobbo, Dragonite) and Pressure punishes them for clicking their favorite buttons.

Also in favor of Grassy Surge. The pseudo Ground immunity and extra passive recovery for it and its team definitely work in favor of CAP33, as well as opening up potential grassy seed shenanigans from its teammates.

Multiscale good. take less damage from attack? be able to recover to full to even take less from incoming attack? wow! its one dimensional for sure but sometimes the best answer is the simplest.

Mold Breaker is too specific i think. Its main targets are Garg, Ghold, and Hatterene and while it is solid that CAP33 would be able to status these there are abilities that just have more value from us.
Same sentiment applies to Shield Dust. Cool idea, not very practical.
Static / Flame Body / Poison Point / Cursed Body seem just. really unfun to fight. they're definitely solid (especially Static or Flame Body) but it would make CAP33 a pain to play around.

edit: reread ausmas post i like mold breaker now
While it's definitely a bit more narrow than other abilities slated, it does have more utility than I previously thought. Abilities probably won't make or break CAP33 either, seeing as we have such a powerful typing.