Policy Review Ability Banlist

Birkal

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Hello! As the result of this thread, we will be implementing a list of banned abilities from future CAP discussions. The purpose of this thread is to create a banlist that will remove abilities that impede the process and make typical CAP conversations difficult. I implore you to read the original post of the thread to get a full understanding of why this was agreed upon by the PRC.

So, we'll essentially be treating this like a typical CAP ability discussion. I'll keep track of lists at the bottom of this post about what we have and have not discussed. Let's try to get through this quickly and concisely. As a rule of thumb, if the discussion of one ability derails this thread, it likely should be banned from regular CAP discussion. Also, as this is a hard banlist, I prefer to err on the side of caution. If we think that an ability is possible for some concepts, I personally would like to see it unbanned. I'll try to work off of the community consensus here as much as possible. As usual, don't be afraid to PM me with questions or thoughts!

To see his reasoning, check out Proposal 4 in this post.

DougJustDoug's Suggested Banlist:
Moody
Multitype

Drizzle, Drought, Sand Stream, Snow Warning
Wonder Guard
Imposter
Huge Power, Pure Power

Multiscale
Shadow Tag, Arena Trap, Magnet Pull
Speed Boost
Skill Link
Color Change
Forecast, Zen Mode
Normalize
Stall
Slow Start
Truant
Scrappy
Bad Dreams
Sand Veil, Snow Cloak, Tangled Feet
Super Luck, Sniper
Cute Charm
Stench
Serene Grace
Teravolt, Turboblaze
Victory Star
DougJustDoug's Suggested Banlist from Non-Flavor Discussions:
Big Pecks
Flower Gift
Friend Guard
Healer
Honey Gather
Illuminate
Pickup
Run Away
Telepathy

Discussed
Flower Gift - Unban
Magnet Pull - Unban
Multiscale - Unban
Skill Link - Unban
Stall - Unban
Scrappy - Unban

Air Lock - Ban
Bad Dreams - Ban
Color Change - Ban
Defeatist - Ban
Forecast - Ban
Huge Power - Ban
Imposter - Ban
Moody - Ban
Multitype - Ban
Pure Power - Ban
Shadow Tag - Ban
Slow Start - Ban
Teravolt - Ban
Truant - Ban
Turboblaze - Ban
Victory Star - Ban
Wonder Guard - Ban
Zen Mode - Ban​
Discussed Flavor
Hyper Cutter - Unban

Normalize - Ban
Not Discussed

Arena Trap
Cute Charm
Drizzle
Drought
Sand Stream
Sand Veil, Snow Cloak, Tangled Feet
Serene Grace
Snow Warning
Speed Boost
Stench
Super Luck, Sniper

Big Pecks
Flower Gift
Friend Guard
Healer
Honey Gather
Illuminate
Pickup
Run Away
Telepathy
To save on time, feel free to copy/paste your posts from that thread into this one if your thoughts on Proposal 4's specifics are still the same.
 

Theorymon

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Here are two I can think of off the top of my head that I think shouldn't be on the list.

I think Flower Gift should be removed because it actually has competitive merit: Even in singles, the Sunlight will boost your SpD and Atk by 1.5, its just that the only Pokemon who gets that is Cherim so most people assume its 100% a doubles ability.

Multiscale was also brought up in the last thread, and while it's a pretty good ability, it really misses out on quite a bit of potential without reliable recovery (granted there are things like CB Dragonite in OU).
 
I'm thinking Forecast and Zen Mode should be removed as, considering we're on a simulator, we don't have to worry about "hard-coding" anything. I also feel that they could be used for interesting processes.

I also think that the obviously bad abilities like Normalize and Slow Start should be removed as nobody would want to pick them anyway.
 

Birkal

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SgtWoodsy brings up a good point; we've been discussing this in #cap. Flower Gift, Zen Mode, Forecast, and Multitype are all hard coded to their respective Pokemon. I personally don't mind having a "hard coded" ability on a CAP, since we are indeed simulator based. I just bring this up for those who do care about this sort of thing; it is something you should mention in your arguments. I dunno if Illusion is hard coded to Zoroark, but we've already crossed the line there.

Personally, I agree with the two posts above me as well.
 

Bughouse

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I don't know about Zen Mode. Something to remember is that it's actually "Daruma Mode" in Japanese. Daruma as in Darumaka and Darmanitan. Zen Mode is an English invention. It very clearly is intended as a one-off ability.

Forecast similarly is intended for Castform only. The description of the ability is "Castform transforms with the weather."

This crosses the line from being a signature ability to being an exclusive ability. No CAP should get those.
 
I can't see the difference between "signature" or "exclusive". Heaps of "signature"/"exclusive" abilities/moves/etc have gone to other Pokémon and we could get a really interesting CAP out of one of these abilities.

Also I'd like to see Skill Link removed. I don't feel that it could do too much harm (we don't always have to cram a movepool with multi-hit moves).

(also birkal you spelled "speed boost" wrong)
 

Texas Cloverleaf

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Remove Stall. I can see that being very interesting on a Pokemon that always prefers to go last, for example Forretress that wants to spin last against Ferrothorn, or shenanigans involving stall Metal Burst.
 

Deck Knight

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Don't care about hard coding. The problems with Forecast, Zen Mode, and Multitype are that they're all "changes competitive forme (inc. typing and/or stats) with a condition" abilities and should be banned on that basis. Keep on banned list.

Flower Gift on the other hand is a solely cosmetic change to Cherrim's sprite, and doesn't actually change any aspect of the Pokemon. Remove from banned list. Since Cherrim will never be anything but a bottom barrel mon I think it's safe to hijack its ability if for some reason we wanted a test of a Pokemon that could turn the tide in Sun's favor or something.

Defeatist should be added to the ban list along with Slow Start and Truant kept there. All three of these abilities warp the Pokemon in unacceptable ways and will never be chosen under ordinary circumstances.

Color Change is too weak and random. Keep on banned list. It's not really a forme change per se but it's so uncontrollable as to have very little conceptual relevance ever.
 

jas61292

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I already adressed a lot of this in the other thread, so rather than rewriting everything, I'll just post the quotes of what is relevant.
Drizzle, Drought, Sand Stream, Snow Warning I know these are probably some of the most polarizing abilities in the game, but I don't really feel that they have the same kind of problems that most exceptional abilities have. While they are very defining, they do not dictate any other stage. As heated as the drought debates of CAP 3 may have seemed, looking back I think that was some of the best discussion I have ever had as part of this project. If anything, abilities that define a Pokemon, but are not Pokemon defining (if that makes any sense to anyone) are great for the project as they are the sparks for fantastic debate for the entire length of the project without pigeonholing any other specific stage into a specific option.

Multiscale
Originally I would have agreed with this one, but then Multiscale was brought up in the third ability discussion for CAP4. When you actually step back and look at it, Multiscale is a decidedly mediocre ability and not defining at all. The only two users of it just so happened to be very well suited to abusing it to its greatest potential. Both are bulky Pokemon with numerous resistances, an immunity to switch in on, and, most importantly, reliable recovery. Without that, which we are in no way guaranteed to have, it is honestly not that great, and will more often than not be a waste of an ability slot. It’s good, but only when done right, and nowhere near exceptional otherwise.

Magnet Pull
While I agree Shadow Tag would only really work on an illegal concept, numerous Pokemon type combinations have trouble with steel types. If we don't want that to be a problem, Magnet Pull is a perfectly viable way to go about that. I don't think this is a common problem nor is it necessarily the best solution to it, but I don't see it as exceptional either. I sort of feel this way about Arena Trap too, but that one is more questionable.

Stall
Stall is odd. Yes. But I don't see it as exceptional. It is interesting, and could have application where we least expect it. And, unlike many other unusual abilities, it really is not prone to being brought up frequently without good reason, which is a main reason to ban things to being with. And, as to effecting stats, it only really does so if it is the only ability. It does not mandate a certain stat, just ignores it.

Scrappy
Ok, ok, yes, it’s true that it is almost always a "thinly-veiled poll-jump to push for Scrappy Rapid Spin." But I don't think that in and of itself is reason to ban it. As you said, we need a more objective reason, and the one given only really means anything if for some reason we decide to do ability before type. If that ends up the case, then sure, ban it. But otherwise, I don't think so.

Also, I am against banning Sand Veil, Snow Cloak, Tangled Feet, Super Luck, Sniper, Cute Charm, Stench, and Serene Grace. Well, those first two are banned from OU anyways, but as for the rest:
That being said, I am adamantly against the third presented category of "Anti-Competitive." Anyone who has read my posts in threads on competitiveness, evasion, banning philosophy and the like will know that I believe the entire concept of anti or non-competitive to utter bullshit. It’s the whining and complaining of people who lose to luck when they feel they shouldn't have, and has nothing to do with the actual competitiveness or skill requirement of the game. I could probably go on about this for hours (and I have in the past, if you really want to look it up), but that is not what this thread is about. Suffice it to say that, while these are abilities with important consequences that should not be taken lightly, we should not ban something just because a few competitive players might bitch if they lose to it. If there is a case where it legitimately fits the concept, I see no reason to disallow these abilities, unlike ones that might fall under the category of "Exceptional".
Now, on a different note, I just want to briefly comment again on the whole anti-competitive ability thing. I don't want to beat a dead horse, but even with that more advanced codification, I still don't think banning them would be justified. Lets get one thing straight, I agree with the idea of saying "CAP intends to build competitive pokemon that are consistent with Smogon competitive policy." However, except in the cases of things actually banned, I don't see how that justifies this list. The closest thing we have to a defined policy, as far as I'm aware, is Doug's own "Characteristics of a Desirable Metagame" thread, which itself states that luck is a part of the metagame we desire. In addition, while we have banned some luck related things, saying that doing so is Smogon policy is ridiculous in my opinion, expecially in the wake of us having just UNBANNED one of the most luck related things, evasion, in our Uber tier. I know that their are plenty of people out there who think all things in this group of abilities are evil and should be banned, but lets not pretend that the opinion of this vocal minority is the policy of Smogon as a whole. Lets stick to the decisions that the community actually makes, and not go any farther than that when it comes to staying within the confines of the actual Smogon competitive policy.
As far as the flavor abilities list, as was mentioned already, Flower Gift should come off. I'm not sure I love it not being banned along with other form related abilities, but no matter what it is competitive.

Anything else I didn't mention I really have no problem with being on a banlist.

Oh, and I agree with Deck on Defeatist. Its honestly even more discussion centralizing that Truant as it directly effects stats, much like Slow Start. If those two are banned, so should Defeatist.
 

Deck Knight

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To piggy-back on jas a bit on a few abilities that should be taken off the lists:

Scrappy:

This is basically Foresight: The Ability. Fighting coverage is impressive with many types and while it does invite "Scrappy Spin lol" there is an excellent argument to be made for adding Fighting coverage against Ghosts on say a Bug-typed or Poison-typed Pokemon where Ghost would resist their STAB. Scrappy Poison/Fighting is only resisted by Poison types, and those are hardly common outside Tentacruel and the occasional Gengar, Toxicroak, or Nidoking (Venu is neutral to Poison).

Stall:

The utility of this ability is limited to three specific moves: Entrainment, Metal Burst, and Skill Swap. That said, it's not nearly as crippling or foundational as Defeatist, Slow Start, or Truant, and is irrelevant to a Pokemon that uses non-zero priority moves. There are other yet more situational uses like say a Fire-, Electric-, Poison-, Rock-, or Steel- /Flying type with Stall using Roost to ensure it never has to play the Earthquake guessing game (while still being susceptible to Focus Punch in varying degrees), but in the end its a very niche ability that is negative without necessarily being centralizing.

Big Pecks:

Finally a flavor removal. Big Pecks can stand in the way of Tyranitar's Crunch haxing you into a 2HKO situation. It's not a strong ability since most common moves don't lower Defense, but it's not entirely useless either. Needless to say if Kitsunoh were actually a real mon we'd never consider Big Pecks for the list because lol ShadowStrike.

The last thing I wanted to bring up since we're discussing abilities and their legality interactions is formulating a concrete policy on DW ability legalities. Should people be able to use DW illegalities in their movepool submissions or not?
 
Limiting comments to just those I'd see off the above lists, and for what reasons:

Multiscale
I think in the original thread others made the comment already, but without a solid defensive foundation in typing/stats/recovery moves, Multiscale is hardly overpowering. In some cases, Sturdy could actually outclass it. I don't think it should be on the banlist.

Skill Link
It makes the same assumptions about movepoll that Technician, Compoundeyes and No Guard would make, that there will be moves to abuse them. I do not see any good reason why it shouldn't be allowed for discussion and treated the same way those abilities are.

Defeatist
Should be added to banlist to join its siblings Truant and Slow Start.

Air Lock
Rev's example aside, it's a Legendary exclusive and also, Cloud Nine exists. I would have prefered Illusion banned as well, but it's too late for that now. Oh well

Hyper Cutter/Keen Eye
For the same reason Big Pecks are flavor. Mind you, they fit under 'ineffective' purely because if we wanted the competitively-centered variant, then Clear Body/White Smoke exist and outclass the others.

Flower Gift
This has potential to be competitive. On Cherim it's so-so because Cherim isn't OU, but looking at abilities in isolation, this is decent. It shouldn't be on the flavor ban-list.



And concerning Deck's proposal: I think it's best to leave choice of DW Ability (read: which one among the chosen Abilities is DW) and DW illegalities to movepoll submitters themselves. We've already been pretty much following that as an unwritten rule, might as well codify it and stick to it.
 

Bull of Heaven

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Are you saying that Hyper Cutter should be considered ineffective? It may technically be outclassed, but an ability that blocks Intimidate still has a great competitive niche. Actually, since Intimidate is the only common way (IIRC) to lower an opponent's stats in competitive play, Hyper Cutter is effectively the same as Clear Body, outside of things like Deck's Tyranitar example. I suppose Keen Eye could be considered ineffective, though.

I agree entirely with the conclusions of the first quote in jas' post: weather abilities, Multiscale, Stall, Scrappy, Magnet Pull, maybe Arena Trap shouldn't be banned. All of these abilities have interesting niches that could be used very well in CAP, and none of them guarantee problems in the creation process. As I said in the last thread, I think that completely banning an ability is an extreme step for such an experimental project, and should only be done with abilities that have no apparent potential to be valuable to us. To me, this means "anti-competitive" abilities and abilities that are guaranteed to interfere with other steps of the process. Multiscale, for example, is a strong ability in the right hands, but does not hijack the creation process any more than, say, Intimidate does. Serene Grace, on the other hand, has the potential to be used well on a CAP creation, but will inevitably spark a shitstorm about "hax" that is far too likely to create more problems than the ability is worth. Weather abilities are polarizing, but not universally despised the way hax is, so while I'm less certain about these than the others I listed, I think that it is acceptable to allow them.

I also agree with whoever said that Skill Link should be allowed, as it doesn't direct the movepool stage much more than an ability like Technician does. A movepool can't really be centred around multi-hit moves anyway, since there aren't that many of them and they all do the same basic thing.

Allow weather abilities, Multiscale, Stall, Scrappy, Magnet Pull, Skill Link. Maybe allow Arena Trap as well.
 

Theorymon

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I'm actually against unbanning Drought, Drizzle, and Sandstream from the list. I don't really have much against the abilities myself, and I actually enjoyed some of the Drought discussion for CAP 3, but honestly those 3 abilities are total PR disasters if they get chosen this gen. If you thought Aurumoth was bad, imagine what would happen if we made a better Politoed... I think Snow Warning could be a different story though. Hail is a pretty niche weather, and honestly I still think that making a Snow Warning Pokemon is still a good concept to explore that could settle well with the masses since only Abomasnow and Snover get it. So I do support Snow Warning getting removed from the list.

As for Forecast and Zen Mode, honestly I would LOVE to do a CAP related to these abilities, but I think that the should be banned UNLESS the concept is based around it, because making new formes like that could totally derail any other concept. Think of this as being like how Sketch would never ever be allowed in a movepool in normal cases, but Necturna allowed it because the whole concept revolved around one use of Sketch.

As much of a huge fan of trapping abilities as I am (I'm a fan of Wobbuffet for a reason!), I think that like Drizzle and Drought, they could be a total PR disaster. I think the only trapping ability that I'd be okay with being alllowed is Magnet Pull, since it's utility is much more limited than Arena Trap and Shadow Tag. In the same vein, I think we should avoid the "hax" abilities, since I can't see them benefiting most concepts and again, it could piss people who are new to CAP off, even though I agree with jas that they are often an excuse for people to whine.

The only other two abilities I can think about at the moment are Scrappy and Speed Boost. I think Scrappy is honestly mostly fine, a TLT could easily just ban Rapid Spin if that's an issue. Speed Boost is trickier though... I think that it could be an intresting ability to explore on a really slow Pokemon, but at the same time, Speed Boost is an ability so crazy that it got Blaziken banned... I'm leaning towards thinking it should stay on the list, but I want to hear some other viewpoints!
 

Birkal

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Alright, I've caught up and updated the OP with a discussed / not discussed listed based on the consensus here. Note that none of those are finalized; if you still feel like you want to pick a fight on any one of those, go for it. I'm just trying to help organize things. You can also check out the hide tag of "DougJustDoug's Suggested Banlist" to see what we've already discussed in this thread. Here's a list of things that the consensus was not clear on:

Not Discussed
Normalize
Multitype
Color Change
Drizzle
Drought
Sand Stream
Snow Warning
Arena Trap

There's more that could go there too, like Speed Boost, Serene Grace, and "luck-based" abilities.

Finally, I think we are missing some gimmies here. I support banning Wonder Guard, Moody, Multitype, Imposter, Huge Power, Pure Power, Bad Dreams, Teravolt, Turboblaze, and Victory Star. I feel like most of those are self-explanatory, but it'd be good to get them out of the way to discuss other, more pressing abilities.
 

Bughouse

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Yes, ban Multitype, Serene Grace, Normalize, Color Change, and Arena Trap. Also ban all the so-called "gimmies."

The weather abilities, I'm not sold need banning. If used judiciously, they may fit a concept quite well. Speed Boost may fit in this category as well, though I'm a little leery of Speed Boost obviously, seeing what it did to Blaziken.
 
I support banning Wonder Guard, Moody, Multitype, Imposter, Huge Power, Pure Power, Bad Dreams, Teravolt, Turboblaze, and Victory Star.

So, all the gimmies, for obvious reasons.

Regarding the pair of type-change abilities (Forecast and Color Change) plus weather-starting abilities, I'm all for the clause Theorymon mentioned: banned UNLESS the Concept specifically calls for them. They're polarizing, yes, but being polarizing doesn't matter once we embrace the fact we're testing a weather-starter or form-changing mon. They're additional Optics headaches though (Forecast and Color Change are exclusive to their Pokemon, while weather is metagame defining) so I'd prefer to err on the side of banning them actually. If nothing else, the metagame might shift again and we'll find outselves unbanning them later when they're more welcome.

With Magnet Pull allowed I think we have enough space to experiment in without permitting Arena Trap, so keep that one banned alongside Shadow Tag.

Normalize should be on the flavor list IMO.... think about it. Its effect is so niche - like statusing otherwise immune types - and it reduces any mon we make to a mono-attacker with zero super effective coverage and one type that walls it outright. I don't see anyone bringing it up in Ability discussions, or if brought up, convincing enough people to support it that it makes the slate. Adding it to Ineffective Abilities would allow us to soft-ban it from competitive discussions along with all the potential gimmick uses it allows for.

Speed Boost should stay banned. Gamefreak did enough experimenting for us by giving it to Blaziken in Gen 5... and Sharpedo as well. We know how this works. And I doubt our current BSR formulas would permit a Pokemon slow enough to not be broken by it nor its megaton mixed attacking stats - which giving 150 or higher to a non-legendary would be its own Optics argument on top of Speed Boost... unless you gave it to, I don't know, an accelerating wall - but by that point, isn't Prankster the better choice?
 

Birkal

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I want to reaffirm the purpose of this thread, now that we're getting into the difficult abilities to assess their position. Remember, we're here to ban abilities that derail discussions. We're not necessarily looking for "broken" abilities or ones that make a Pokemon unfair in the metagame (although that is part of it). The primary purpose here is to improve ability discussions. I'm not directing this towards a user (I have fallen victim to this too), but it's something we need to think about.

That being said, I'd like to err on the side of being conservative in our bans if need be. Remember, we've implemented discussed / not discussed lists for future process threads. If an ability is questionable, it will likely get banned in most process threads right away anyways. Furthermore, don't discount abilities because they are "unlikely in concepts" because that limits our creativity in concept submission. We need to be focusing on which abilities consistently derail threads and ban them.


Below, I've listed each of the ability discussions from the past four CAPs. Feel free to utilize them to help you come up with which abilities derail a thread easily. If you want me to pull up earlier ability discussions from Gen4, I can do that too.

 
Huge Power / Pure Power is an ability that I'm actually kind of iffy about. While I agree that the vast majority of concepts should never touch this ability, and that people somehow try to suggest it anyway, I'm curious about how it could potentially be used. It is a purely stat-altering ability, which distinguishes it from almost every other ability out there in that it could be considered not an ability. There could be a situation where it could be used in kind of the same way Sketch was used in CAP 2, to inspire a universal sense of balancing a potential behemoth. Plus, I'm not sure it actually derails a discussion that much. People usually ignore suggestions like that and move on. Basically, I wonder if the niche potential of Huge Power / Pure Power outweighs what I see as comparatively minor potential for thread derailment. Of course, Huge Power / Pure Power only really makes sense before stats, where it can be discussed in the abstract, so I'd definitely go for banning it from secondary ability discussions. This is not to say that it should happen, just that maybe we should give it a bit more consideration that we have been giving it. Though, one could argue that Sheer Force does the same thing... kinda...

I'm also iffy about Arena Trap. On one hand, there's the efficacy argument. Even though it's "weaker" than Shadow Tag, the scope of what a trapper is allowed to trap is obviously not the only restriction as to what a trapper reasonably can trap. In fact, unless the list of technically trappable Pokemon is very limited (i.e. Magnet Pull), it is a pretty small factor. The existing trappers are proof of this. On the other hand, there isn't much of an indication (as far as I can tell) that people care as deeply about Arena Trap as they do about Shadow Tag. Still, I'm leaning towards a ban.

Given how the discussions in CAP 3 went, and given the general attitude toward auto-weather on Smogon, I agree that we should just ban Drought and Drizzle from ability discussions. Snow Warning I'd leave in, and I suspect Sand Stream might be fine as well. People don't really complain about sand anymore after the bans of Sand Veil and Excadrill.

I feel that Normalize and Color Change are enough of a non-factor in discussions that there's no point in banning them.
 
CiteAndPrune/Birdkal said:
I support banning Wonder Guard, Moody, Multitype, Imposter, Huge Power, Pure Power, Bad Dreams, Teravolt, Turboblaze, and Victory Star.
Agree, of course.

Birkal said:
we're here to ban abilities that derail discussions. We're not necessarily looking for "broken" abilities or ones that make a Pokemon unfair in the metagame
So, Arena Trap. It can most certainly have it's uses on pokemon instead of Magnet Pull. If any of you have played The Binding of Isaac, think of comparing The Book of Revelations (Magnet Pull) and The Nail (Arena Trap.) 99 times out of 100 The Nail is superior, but evey once in a while a run comes up where you need to fly over rocks to win, and now The Book of Revelations is better (that made no sense to someone who doesn't play Isaac...) As nice as the luxury of choosing between them would be, discussions about Magnet Pull vs. Arena Trap would be intolerable and aggravating as shit. Ban Arena Trap.

Color Change as an ability for a CAP is something I strongly disagree with. Not only would this render an entire step of the project near useless, (I know it has use on switch in, but after that it's a waste) but it also puts a lot of strain on the movepool step to give coverage for different typings. Sure we are talking about abilities, but potential to derail a movepool discussion is still worth banning this in my book. Ban Color Change.

I'll probably have something to say on the other abilities later.
 

Deck Knight

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I'll weigh in on a few more.

Unban Arena Trap.

Arena Trap is one of the most comprehensively malleable abilities in the game. Flying type lets you switch out of it. Levitate lets you switch out of it. Magnet Rise lets you switch out of it. Smack Down and Gravity let you trap anything in it. Using Soak on an opposing Flying type will let you trap those Pokemon in it. Using Skill Swap, Gastro Acid, Worry Seed, or Simple Beam on Levitator will let you trap that Pokemon. Air Balloon and Shed Shell let you get out of it while the item is still attached. Telekinesis lets your opponent switch out of it (or an Ally in doubles).

Shadow Tag does not share any of these characteristics with the sole exception of Shed Shell, and Shadow Tag's only caveat is it doesn't work on other Shadow Tag Pokemon, so you could remove it from the opponent with Entrainment, which is a much less interesting dynamic than everything going on with Arena Trap. Because of this versatility, while Arena Trap is stronger than Magnet Pull I feel it should not be banned because it has a long list of interacting moves and abilities that allow it to be explored.

As far as the signature abilities, I support banning all of them except Victory Star, so: Ban Wonder Guard, Moody, Multitype, Imposter, Huge Power, Pure Power, Bad Dreams, Teravolt, and Turboblaze.

Unban Victory Star because it is a weaker variant of Compoundeyes and is therefore an ability we can calibrate to movepool strengths and weaknesses by say giving fangs 100% accuracy but not Stone Edge and Focus Blast.

Ban Multitype - If one of our criteria is to avoid thread derailing, then Multitype is the ultimate derailment. Twice we've tried to deal with it and twice it has failed. There is simply no good way to implement it as designed.

Unban Drought and Snow Warning. Ban Sandstream and Drizzle. This is going to sound odd but bear with me here. Rain and Sand are the most centralizing weathers in OU. Rain only has one user and yet almost down to the Pokemon every abuser has been getting canned after a suspect test, and the very first ban involving Drizzle was Drizzle + Swift Swim to nerf those abusers. Let's be clear here: Rain Dance is the single most powerful move in the game on a per action basis. Rain boosts so many powerful attacks and Pokemon that it defines an entire metagame with only one starter that is in and of itself a fairly mediocre Pokemon.

Sand on the other hand benefits from already having two starters, one of which abuses the SpD boost to tank and crush with force, the other which has better defensive capabilities and reliable recovery. There's nothing more to really pull out of Sandstream.

Drought and Snow Warning on the other hand each only have one viable starter and neither of those has truly reliable recovery, though Ninetales has RestTalk and Abomasnow has draining moves and subseed. Basically there's still useful territory to explore with these two abilities, and an addition would drastically alter the playtest metagame in ways that Drizzle and Sandstream wouldn't. While I would submit there might be an optics problem with them, I think Drought and Snow Warning have competitive learning potential where Drizzle and Sandstream do not.

Flavor Ban Normalize - it is a terrible ability that will barely get support from anywhere good. The ability itself basically necessitates Foresight.
 
Unban Arena Trap.

... Using Skill Swap ... on Levitator will let you trap that Pokemon.
I'm sorry for nitpicking but in that specific case you trade your own Arena Trap for the enemy's Levitate, so they end up with Arena Trap that fails to trap you while you no longer have it to trap them.

Other than that... I'm undecided, I figure that Arena Trap could be interesting given all those interactions. Still it's extremely polarizing - unless the Concept itself calls for it, it's probably better if it does not arise.

As for the weather starting abilities - I recall that during CAP 3 one argument was that Drought Mollux and Ninetails could have been used as paired weather starters on one team, similar to how Hippowdon plus Tyranitar can work currently to maintain the advantage in the weather war. Is it really fine to try and make a better weather starter if the risk is that players might stack them?

I don't want to derail this thread with an argument about the abilities, but for the sake of example, do we really want to handle that and similar questions again the next time these abilities become the focus? Are we ready for this or is it better to leave that area and explore other themes?
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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Arena Trap is an ability that should only be chosen if it were necessitated by the concept. And frankly, any concept that requires Arena Trap isn't the sort of concept with which we would be working. I see no reason Arena Trap deserves to be up for discussion. It is definitely the sort of ability that has zero relevance to almost anything and therefore derails discussion. BAN Arena Trap.
 

Bull of Heaven

Guest
Sure, ban the "gimmies".

I understand that the point is to ban abilities that derail discussions, but my preferred approach is, to the best of our ability, to only ban the ones that will derail discussions, and unban the ones that might not. This was what I had in mind when I first voiced my support for a banlist, and I hope that I was clear about it.

Given that, I think that we should unban all weather abilities and Arena Trap. It is difficult to argue what value any of these abilities could conceivably have or not have in a discussion, aside from Deck Knight's interesting points about Arena Trap, but I don't think that any one of them is guaranteed on its face to be problematic in any discussion, and that is the standard that I would prefer to use for this list.

One more thing to remember is that as long as CAP continues to run, there will be more PR cycles after this. An ability banlist is likely to be revisited in the future, and I suspect that unbanned abilities are more likely to be reviewed than banned ones, as we will have had new experiences with them. This is another reason that I would rather ban too few abilities than too many, at least in this first attempt.
 

DetroitLolcat

Maize and Blue Badge Set 2014-2017
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back on PRC :D

I don't think restricting ourselves to a great extent with banning abilities is a wise decision, especially when at times, some perceptibly broken abilities may not be broken at all. For example, Pure Power/Huge Power was discussed at length during Mollux's stage, and though it obviously wasn't the best ability for the Pokemon, it provided decent discussion and, given the stat spread, at least raised some eyebrows. I am of the belief that as long as the ability has competitive merit, it should be at least permitted in the discussion. I admit that almost every CAP, somebody will bring up an absolutely stupid ability but 99% of the time when a ridiculous ability is brought up, it's quickly shot down in the next post. The problem we have with obviously poor ability choices being brought up is not hugely significant, and the opportunity cost of blanket banning abilities (that is, the potential great discussions that could spurn from these proposed bans) is not worth blanket banning most abilities. For that reason, I have pretty conservative opinions on which abilities should be blanket banned from discussion.

Of the remaining abilities, that is:

Normalize
Multitype
Color Change
Drizzle
Drought
Sand Stream
Snow Warning
Arena Trap

I only support banning Multitype. Though I don't think Normalize and Color Change are ever going to be groundbreaking abilities for a CAP, I don't want to see them stricken from discussion because if/when CAP expands to guest metagames, abilities that seem useless like Normalize and Color Change could become intriguing ways to limit a Pokemon or explore a gimmick that involves abusing typing. Thinking about the future of CAP and how we're probably going to explore metagames other than OU sooner rather than later, I recommend only banning abilities that are difficult to implement such as Multitype. Multitype is also far too centralizing a concept, and by the current definition of the concept submission rules, would be illegal. Banning Multitype would just codify a policy that's unofficially been in place for a long time, so I support Banning Multitype.

The weather abilities are rather controversial, but in the end, allowing them will do more good than harm. Remember that Drought was just narrowly defeated in Mollux's time, and many prominent users believed that Drought would have done good than harm on the lava lamp snail. Extrapolating that to the other weathers, my position is to Unban weather abilities.

Arena Trap is fine.
 
I propose banning all weather starting abilities besides Hail, due to the potential I see in a future CAP that could possible change Hail being looked down upon in competitive use. The other abilities already have solid weather starters, and as such shouldn't be viable for Pokèmon to receive.

I also support banning Color Change and Multitype, both due to being very selective abilities that shouldn't change that Pokèmon's uniqueness. End of story.

Arena Trap and Normalize are fine. Both are not OP (especially Normalize), and don't need to be extremely specific to Pokèmon that already have them.
 

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