CAP 11 CAP 11 - Part 1 - Concept Poll 2

[Fuzznip]

After reviewing the results, three concepts are moving on.

Due to this being a clickable poll, I will not allow posts such as "I voted for Smelly Dan." Put some substance into your posts. Discussion is strongly encouraged at this point. What did you like about the concept you voted? What did you not like about the concept you didn't vote? Show some support for your favourite!

Concepts in the order they were submitted:

Name - Winter Wonderland

Description - A Pokemon that can take advantage of Hail in some form.

Justification - Face it, Hail sucks in the current metagame. When you look at the auto-weather starter being 4x weak to Fire, the entire lot of Pokemon that abuse it being weak to Stealth Rock, and the utter lack of very effective sweepers under Hail, you can immediately see why its usage is practically nonexistent and it's primary mode of use is "Hail Stall." Hail in itself, though, is not much worse off compared to other weather effects; it is primarily limited in the Pokemon that can take advantage of it successfully. This concept attempts to explore the depth to which Hail could become successful in the OU metagame through creating a Pokemon that interacts with it on some fundamental level and fixes - or helps to fix - many of the problems Hail-themed teams run into in the current OU metagame.

Questions To Be Answered -

• Can Hail become a legitimate, non-gimmick strategy in OU with better Pokemon to take advantage of it?
• Can Hail effectively function in a manner other than HailStall?
• Will a greater prevalence of Hail decentralize the weather metagame from around Sandstream users?
• In what interesting ways can we develop a Hail-based Pokemon other than what we've already seen?

Explanation - 4th generation is marked by much excitement for the "auto Hail-inducing" Pokemon. When it came, it wasn't all that people were hoping for. Furthermore, all of the Pokemon that appeared in the metagame to assist Abomasnow in its job did nothing to negate the severe weaknesses that come with Ice-typing with Stealth Rock around or the general lack of type diversity allowed on Hail teams. Lastly, in terms of weather, Hail is the only other one besides Sandstorm available permanently in the OU metagame, so this doesn't make it unfamiliar or bizarre to the common player.

This Pokemon could be any number of things. It could use either Snow Warning itself to be a starter of Hail, serving a different role than Abomasnow, or it could run Snow Cloak / Ice Body without having the Ice-typing of the other users. It could still be Ice-typing, but could otherwise be anything. It doesn't even really need any of the obvious abilities or typing, though, as a Pokemon could simply be designed to function effectively as another Pokemon in Hail. Heatran comes to mind as a common Hail supporter for its ability to take Fire-type attacks with ease and set up Stealth Rock for the Hail team. Furthermore, the concept could either make a sweeper or a defensive Pokemon, although I feel that a bulky attacker on the order of Tyranitar might help Hail the absolute most. The ability for this Pokemon to go toe-to-toe with Tyranitar and fare well would alone provide an interesting point of study for the OU metagame. What happens when Tyranitar isn't the baddest weather-user on the block anymore? I'd like to find out.

Name: Clean-Up Kid

General Description: A Pokemon capable of cleaning up lategame, but incapable of outright sweeping.

Justification: In the current OU Metagame, Pokemon can largely be lumped into three broad categories: Sweeper, Wall and Supporter. However, no Pokemon exists solely for the purpose of cleaning up lategame or revenge-killing Pokemon. They all have some means of sweeping. Scizor can use a SD set, and Choiced Pokemon have poor type coverage, leading to their ultimate downfall.

Questions To Be Answered:
-Is it possible to create a Pokemon who can clean without sweeping?
-How much of an effect does movepool have on a Pokemon's ability to clean-up compared to stats and ability?
-Which OU Pokemon are the most likely targets that need cleaning?
-How much does speed affect a Pokemon's ability to clean up?
-How will teams that don't rely on residual damage adapt to a cleaner?

Explanation: Ever since Deoxys-Speed left OU due to its insane set-up capabilities, there has been a sort of gulf in the metagame. No Pokemon is as capable of outspeeding and finishing off weak Pokemon. I envision mediocre stats beyond Speed as well as a fairly large movepool to allow it to clean up. I don’t have any typings in mind, but I’d probably go with a good defensive typing to allow it some longevity. I would also expect no stat-up or set-up moves in the movepool, because that just turns it into a sweeper. I also don’t have an ability in mind.

Name: Perfect Mate

General Description: Pick a good-but-not-great OU pokemon, and design the perfect teammate for it, similar to the way Celebi & Heatran, or Blissey & Skarmory complement each other so well on competitive teams.

Justification:
This would allow us to explore in detail how synergy between two pokemon can be achieved, because currently there are only a few perfect teammates in OU. And depending on the base pokemon we choose to give a "perfect mate", we can open a new niche in the metagame based around the efficient pairing.
The niche we create will be inherently tied to an existing pokemon in the metagame, which should provide a natural limitation to prevent this concept from being broken or "too different" from standard OU.

Questions To Be Answered:

• Is the base pokemon's usefulness (and usage) in the metagame increased as a result of having a "perfect mate"?
• What strategies are more effective for the base pokemon, as a result of having a perfect teammate?
• What are the most effective aspects of the new pokemon, for purposes of making a great teammate with the base pokemon?
• Is the new pokemon viable in the metagame without the base pokemon as a teammate?

Explanation:
This concept is very similar to the "Partner in Crime" concept proposed back in CAP 7. But, with all the changes in the CAP process, and stagnation in the metagame, I think this is a good time for the CAP community to focus on the competitive factors of synergy between pokemon.

I envision we will pick a base pokemon during the Concept Assessment. We will make a case to the TL for a good-but-not-great OU pokemon and the characteristics of that pokemon's "perfect mate". The Topic Leader would then select their favorite. We could even rename the concept to "<Pokemon>'s Perfect Mate" from that point forward.

It think we could have some fantastic discussions every step of the way, dissecting the base pokemon in exacting detail to figure out the best way to make an ideal teammate. If we choose the right base pokemon, we might even breathe some new life into a sentimental favorite, that isn't quite up to top-OU standards on its own.

This poll will close tomorrow at 3 pm EST. Go!

 

[vonFiedler]

After lurking during the last CAP, I wanted to give alot of input during this one. I saw the concept submission thread, but had other things to do at the time. The first thing I thought of was a Hail Sweeper. If I had put more thought into this, I probably would have come up with something else, but Rising Dusk beat me to the general idea anyway. Hail is entirely defensive at the moment, and having a hail sweeper would give a hail team more diversity. I realize not everyone is going to be going for that angle, but that's what I'll be going for in the coming threads. Obviously, I vote Rising_Dusk.

 

[NARFNra]

Personally, Winter Wonderland seems to be the way to go for me. For one thing, having attempted and failed continuously at using Hail, I believe I can safely agree with the fact that Hail is a hard to use, gimmicky thing. The only type that gets any true benefit or even just immunity to it's effects is Ice, and as of now the Ice type is a very weak and rare typing to have in OU. Choices such as Mamoswine, Frosslass, Abombasnow, and occasionally Walrein are all high on weaknesses and low on usable resistances. They're even weak to SR. The widespread use of Heatran and Scizor only helps to knock them down a notch. As another thing, the only offensive boost Hail even gives the said Ice types and team is a 100% accurate Blizzard, which can't hope to make up for the spots used in a team. In my opinion, boosting Hail offensively could teach us many things about the effects of weather in this metagame.

Don't forget that Winter Wonderland doesn't necessarily have to get an actual boost from Hail, it could just work very well in hail and do good outside it, like Heatran and Forry as previously mentioned. You could make something designed to deal with Ice's weaknesses, either by resistances, strengths, or both. Being on a Hail team would draw out what it would be best against, and it would thus "take advantage of" Hail.

Personally, I'm just not sure about the Clean-Up Kid concept. It's a interesting idea, but I think that if we went and made one it'd end up either overshadowed by late game sweepers with greater attack power, or
end up too powerful and sweeping anyway. On the other hand, it might be interesting to see if a pokemon with high natural speed and mediocre other stats would have any major effect on OU Baton Passing, or if it could get out of the rut of lategame sweepers while at the same time avoiding going the route of Ninjask and dying in a hit from near anything.

I've never really gotten the Perfect Mate concept or any of the older versions of it, (Partners in Crime). It just seems like it'd be an overly centralizing force in our metagame to me.

e.g. I vote Rising_Dusk

Edit: Secondary Argument

 

[QuimicVital]

I voted for Winter Wonderland due to the fact that Hail is very underused (and my favourite weather with sunny day) and because it can have a lot of typing and new abilities as possibilities, also, Clean - up Kid was a (somewhat) uncreative concept that we can explore by changing the movesets of some Pokémon, and Perfect Mate (which is a good concept) isn't as exciting (IMO) as Winter Wonderland.

 

[Viashino_wizard]

I voted for Winter Wonderland because Hail is a cool and interesting weather effect that's crippled by a lack of effective users. Hail could be particularly effective in CAP metagame, where it already has good offensive team members in Syclant (an ice-type attacker) and LO Krillowatt (who ignores Hail with Magic Guard and resists Fire/Steel to boot). The concept isn't necessarily incompatible with Perfect Mate either, since Winter Wonderland could easily be tailored as a perfect mate to Abomasnow, a required pokemon for Hail.

Clean-Up Kid strikes me as pretty vaguely-defined and hard to balance.

Perfect Mate is interesting, but feels too narrow for my tastes.

 

[Elevator Music]

I'm not a fan of Winter Wonderland. The concept of "Hail pokemon" sounds incredibly nice on paper, but in reality, there is almost nothing we can make (without a new ability) to abuse Hail. This is the main problem with Hail concepts, and this is the same argument against Hail the last time it made polls.

You have the following you can "abuse" with Hail:
- 100% accurate Blizzard
- Ice-type immunity (or MAGIC GUARD (oh wait I think we've done this before))
- Snow Cloak and Ice Body, which also grant immunities to hail if not Ice-type

You also have Snow Warning if the community decides we want a better Abomasnow.

What is there to abuse there? Furthermore, how does this pokemon not just build itself? There is not way this thing isn't going to be an Ice-type. It's really not a "Hail-abuser", and it probably won't be helping non-Hail stall teams that much. It NEEDS that STAB Blizzard, otherwise this pokemon may as well could have been Krilowatt.

But that's all it is. A Pokemon with STAB Blizzard and maybe one of the two abilities I listed (or some custom one but do we really want to go there? lol the 'reversing resists and weaknesses' ability suggested on CAP). How is that really a Hail Pokemon? What do we learn from that?

tl;dr: Hail is a crappy weather, and doesn't have enough effects to base a Pokemon around.


So I had to choose between Perfect Mate and Clean-Up Kid. I went with Clean-Up Kid, because I felt it was a concept that better fit our process. We've had concepts that haven't agreed with the process much before and I think most people find they've made poor-er CAPs.

 

[QuimicVital]

I'm not a fan of Winter Wonderland. The concept of "Hail pokemon" sounds incredibly nice on paper, but in reality, there is almost nothing we can make (without a new ability) to abuse Hail. This is the main problem with Hail concepts, and this is the same argument against Hail the last time it made polls.

You have the following you can "abuse" with Hail:
- 100% accurate Blizzard
- Ice-type immunity (or MAGIC GUARD (oh wait I think we've done this before))
- Snow Cloak and Ice Body, which also grant immunities to hail if not Ice-type

You also have Snow Warning if the community decides we want a better Abomasnow.

What is there to abuse there? Furthermore, how does this pokemon not just build itself? There is not way this thing isn't going to be an Ice-type. It's really not a "Hail-abuser", and it probably won't be helping non-Hail stall teams that much. It NEEDS that STAB Blizzard, otherwise this pokemon may as well could have been Krilowatt.

But that's all it is. A Pokemon with STAB Blizzard and maybe one of the two abilities I listed (or some custom one but do we really want to go there? lol the 'reversing resists and weaknesses' ability suggested on CAP). How is that really a Hail Pokemon? What do we learn from that?

tl;dr: Hail is a crappy weather, and doesn't have enough effects to base a Pokemon around.


So I had to choose between Perfect Mate and Clean-Up Kid. I went with Clean-Up Kid, because I felt it was a concept that better fit our process. We've had concepts that haven't agreed with the process much before and I think most people find they've made poor-er CAPs.

You know we CAN create a new ability with which CAP 11 may benefit of losing HP with weather?

 

[Elevator Music]

I do, but I think it's a poor idea. We shouldn't vote for a concept because it means "we probably get to make a cool new ability". And since Hail doesn't have many other directions...

 

[Nails]

The hail pokemon would have a very hard time offering enough value to a hail team without being as valuable outside of hail, as hail just isn't a good weather condition. Ice is the worst defensive typing, due to a fire, fighting, and rock (and steel) weakness , and adding a SR weakness makes it even worse. Even normal isn't as bad because it has an immunity and three less weaknesses. Due to the fact that all hail offers is a different typing of sandstorm damage and a single powerful attack becoming more accurate (look at rain and sunny day's power boost or sandstorm's defense boost, or even Gravity's boost to the accuracy of ALL moves), even with a dedicated hail abuser it still wouldn't be a viable style of play, because of everything going against it.

It would be hard to have a single pokemon make hail viable without that pokemon being broken, because of all of hail's current weaknesses.

Also, for offensive hail pokemon, there isn't too much more that syclant can't do as far as I can see (high speed and special attack, IMMUNITY to stealth rock, tail glow, high attack good physical coverage... the list goes on).

I chose the Clean-up Kid because I think it gives more possibilities than the perfect partner, which would be designed for use with one pokemon only, as opposed to a varity of teams and play styles (not that you couldn't use the perfect pair on all team styles, it just seems like it gives less room for interpretation).

 

[callforjudgement]

The problem with making a Pokémon to abuse Hail in particular is that it's hard to see how the concept would be much different from "Ice-type special sweeper"; it's unlikely any other type would win out as a primary. If you tried to make it gain sweepiness from hail (Chlorophyll-style), then (unless it was really truly incredibly broken) you'd just end up with Hail sweep from being inferior to, say, Rain sweep; unfortunately, we're only making the one CAP, and it's hard to see how something without Uber-level power could compete against Kabutops and Kingdra and Ludicolo and the rest of a typical Rain team. (Admittedly, it would have the advantage of having an autoinducer in OU, which is a pretty big advantage, but when only one Pokémon on your aggressive team can take advantage of it - and it's not as if Abomasnow is exactly the sort of thing you'd want on, say, a heavy offense team - your whole strategy seems potentially vulnerable to falling apart.) The other possibility would be a Pokémon designed for setup of a hail sweep, but even if you have Snow Warning and double screens and baton-passing Dragon Dances or something silly like that, you still don't have any hail sweepers to pair it with, as there are no hail sweepers. Thus for the concept to work, we'd need at least 2 CAPs (one for setup, one for sweeping), or probably even more.

 

[Chileno4Live]

So I voted for Winter Wonderland.

I voted for this concept because I like to finally abuse Hail for once. I used to run a good Hail Stall but it just wasn't capable of winning against very good teams. It's sad how Hail is such an awesome Weather condition, cannot be abused properly. I mean, Hail hit's everything except Ice types, which are quite uncommon in OU. The concept can finally stop this.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

I voted for the home-team, Winter Wonderland.

I know that there is much concern over the viability of Hail as a concept, and that a lot of people are used to it doing poorly in both polls and slates because "it's Hail." A lot of people go so far as to attribute the fact that it has done poorly in past CAPs to the fact that it is a "bad concept," when nothing about it actually suggests such a thing. I urge users to consider the concept at its core when going to vote, as that is really what matters here.

To address what many people are saying is a "very limited" concept, I will bring up several different possibilities that a CAP based on taking advantage of Hail could be. I will also avoid discussing anything that is considered poll-jumping, and will instead present some vague direction possibilities that will clearly show how we, as a community, are not over-limited by the concept.

A Pokemon that can take advantage of Hail in some form.

There are five immediate ways to take advantage of Hail.

1. A move that takes advantage of Hail
2. An ability that takes advantage of Hail
3. A typing that can take advantage of Hail
4. The capacity to start Hail somehow
5. The capacity to take advantage of battle conditions or common responses to Hail in the metagame

That list above gives us a ton of places where we, as a community, can weave in our interaction with Hail. There may not be a lot of in-game ability or move options to take advantage of it, but there are ample possibilities for a Pokemon that can take advantage of it in some fashion. Furthermore, the types that can function effectively in Hail are not necessarily limited to Ice-types; Heatran, for example, is an excellent Pokemon in Hail and supports such teams superbly. This is also neglecting the possibility of creating anything new. Now, I will leave it at that. We've had ample discussions in IRC over different typing possibilities as well as ability and stat combinations. We are in no way more limited by the Winter Wonderland concept than by other concepts in this poll to the point where the future stages are predefined by the selection of the concept.

Lastly, we are in no way obliged, as a community, to fix all of Hail's problems at once, or even try to. We can try to see if we can't deal with a few of them, decide which problems are the most pressing, and then work from there. There are a lot of things that can be done, and most of all, this is about learning; it's why we do CAP at all. There is so little going for Hail right now, and it is painfully obvious to everyone here that "Hail is a bad weather condition" is the dominant mindset. However, take care to note that this is only because the current metagame makes it so! If we impact the metagame with the Winter Wonderland concept, then we are able to see the possibilities and things that Hail can really do, something that as-of-yet we cannot in OU. That's the intent of the concept, and is something that excited me - and hopefully most of you all - a great deal.

Good luck to all concept submitters that made it to this stage!

 

[DarkSlay]

I voted for The Clean-Up Kid. Before I say why, I want to make my points clear on the other two choices as well.

Winter Wonderland

All in all, I do not like this concept whatsoever. Like EM has pointed out (thus saving me some time), this concept practically builds itself. It pretty much has to be an Ice type. I understand we can go the Cacturne route, ala IRC chat, but Sandstorm doesn't give STAB enhancements anyway. Plus, Cacturne's ability isn't really reliable, and then we would be forced to give CAP11 an ability to prevent Hail damage. That narrows it down to Snow Cloak and Ice Body. Sometimes, you just know an immunity is necessary when you see it. Predictable.

What's more predictable will be its typing. It will have to take neutral damage to SR naturally (per the concept's goal), so with an Ice type, that leaves Ground (re: Mamoswine), Fighting, and Steel (re: Fighting attacks). Giving it Mountaineer would just lessen its usability in Hail, which is the main purpose of the concept. There's little room for discussion here, which limits creativity. Didn't this already happen with Syclant anyway? Predictable.

About the "We can create an ability!" thing. If we were to, wouldn't we simply just look at Rain and give it similar abilities to Swift Swim? I fear that this would simply make the concept "Let's try to make Hail more like Rain or Sun!", as the ability should be somewhat offensive. We shouldn't go so low as to make Hail more unoriginal. Predictable.

Not to say that the concept is absolutely terrible, and R_D did a nice job, but this just doesn't look fun to me. It's too...predictable. Sorry, this is how I feel.

Perfect Mate

I think this is a great, great concept that will be almost impossible to accomplish. I'm not thinking that it will fail to bring up its target's usage, though. I'm talking about its effectiveness outside of what we'd design it for. One of the major reasons I believe this is the concept's mention of the CeleTran combo as its influence. Many of these pairings rely on typing, like CeleTran's limitless resistances with each other. However, both of these Pokemon can be used to accentuate top tier OU because of their typing. Something we make to make Heracross better could result in making Scizor better. Something to make Porygon-Z better could make Gengar better. And so on, and so on. Typing is typing, and making a top 15 OU Pokemon even more dominant seems likely right from the beginning, just by typing and resistances.

It just seems impossible to make a concept focus on such a narrow group, especially when you know that a Pokemon will be exploited to make others better. We could be super specific and hinder it, but that would just result in a bad Pokemon. As a consolation, this is imaginative, though. :)

Clean-Up Kid

This is challenging. I really think that this will be a struggle to make initially, but it's definitely possible. Ability, Typing, and Moves are not constrained here, which makes me happy. I think it will be perfectly enjoyable to make such a Pokemon. Good job!

 

[tennisace]

I voted for Clean-Up kid. I feel like this is the concept that will shift the metagame the least, however it will still shift it in a positive manner.

With Winter Wonderland, I forsee the metagame shifting heavily towards weather teams for the playtesting period, then never really being used. If you make a Pokemon to be used in hail teams, people will use hail teams. However, there is going to be a contingent who make anti-hail teams. Therefore, the metagame is centralized around hail (and you all know what happened in UU).

For Perfect mate, the metagame will centralize around that pair that we choose. However this is worse because then there will be two Pokemon on a majority of teams, and the metagame will centralize extremely heavily around this combination. People will again "counterteam" this combination, leading to more heavy centralization as people use the combination and the combination's counters on the same team. In addition, as a moderator, I have severe reservations about the way we would go about picking the Pokemon to partner with. The last time the community tried to pick an existing Pokemon, we ended up cancelling a project. I know that Doug himself submitted this concept, so I'd like to see his plan for how we're going to handle that stage of the process, since it would be the next stage (before typing).

Last, there's clean-up kid. The metagame will centralize slightly around it, since the nature of the playtesting period dictates that we actually test the Pokemon in the OU metagame. However, I believe the effects will be much less harmful since for this Pokemon to be effective, you need synergy with your 5 other teammates in weakening the opponents team to the point where you can reveal this cleaner and win easily. This doesn't encourage any one playstyle in particular, since a cleaner is welcome on any type of team (even stall teams!) This is why I voted for Clean-Up Kid.

 

[bugmaniacbob]

I really have to agree with Elevator Music here. Hail is, at present, a semi-gimmicky weather effect that, to quote Rising_Dusk, "sucks". To counter this we would have to create a CAP - one, single Pokemon - that would turn Hail into a legitimate playstyle. Even granted that the concept never stated what that playstyle might be whatsoever, and thus giving us an extraordinary amount of leighway when coming to the concept assessment, I still feel that the concept is extremely limited. If CAP11 isn't going to be a stall tool (and let's face it, StallRein pretty much does that capacity to death), what can it be otherwise? An offensive tool, naturally. What does a very limited offensive tool (since we wouldn't want it to work outside Hail, or that would defeat the point of the concept) have to have to be effective? Enough power to bulldoze everything. What moves are powered up by Hail? Blizzard. What types can use Blizzard to its full power? Ice. Why aren't Ice-types popular again? Because the entire metagame is against them. Scizor, Heatran, Tyranitar... and then we have Stealth Rock.

And then there's the limiting factor. If we have a hail playstyle, it has to be usable. How does rain get around this? Well, there are a number of reasons, but mainly because it is a playstyle that has a recognisable advantage over the closest, bogstandard alternative (that being standard offence) - trading the trouble of maintaining the flow of battle for incongruous amounts of power. The power is significant. A boost to STAB, ability to use stuff like Thunder against counters, and actually quite spoilt for choice for sweepers - even in standard, there are so many choices for both offensive sides that rain can function solidly. Oh, and a tiny little very well-distributed ability called Swift Swim. So how does hail fit in? Well, what exactly functions there at present? Froslass, maybe Glaceon? No boost to STAB, no boost to Speed, and very few Pokemon that could actually do better in hail than they could outside of it. Heatran is good in Hail? Heatran is good outside of hail. And it's usually the better for it. Thus, there has to be a very, very good reason to use hail and similar support. And one CAPmon is supposed to be that.

But therein lies the problem. This CAPmon, whatever it does, can do that and no more, so it has to be worth using in hail. But if hail isn't worth using, what's the point in using it? You could be using any other sort of offence... and therefore, whatever CAP11 does, it would have to make hail offence a dominant playstyle. And that's hard, because all the other dominant playstyles (full offence, bulky offence, stall, etc) have a LOT of variety to them. Lots of choice. But here, for hail offence, you have to use CAP11, you have to use Abomasnow, and probably Froslass also, for easy Spikes and spinblocking. Thus we run into the same problem as rain offence teams - for all the variety they have, all of them do almost exactly the same thing. This would be even more pronounced, especially as this CAP11 would have to be ridiculously powerful to be able to build an entire team around it, as well as giving it that kind of support, and for an Ice-type that can barely stick around long enough to... what exactly is this new ability then? I hate creating new abilities, but even more so for when the concept is basically asking for it. That's not to say that Snow Cloak or Ice Body wouldn't work, but it would have to have pretty terrific stats to be viable then. And then, again, it would be more viable outside of hail. Because it can be involved in a team that isn't so limited.

And if hail offence becomes a dominant playstyle, what then? Does this mean a massive metagame shift? I can't honestly remember if that metagame characteristic thing went through (the policy review thread was a little unclear) but I could feasibly see this happening if we go too far. This is a very fine line we're aiming for - too weak, it fails the concept, too strong, it's broken - and I question whether the perfect medium actually exists for a playstyle as of yet nonexistant.

On the subject of the other two, I dislike Clean-Up Kid for some pretty basic reasons. Firstly because it doesn't seem to have any sort of general direction or intended result, and regardless there are "cleaners without sweepers" already in existance. Take Starmie and Aerodactyl, for example. Though they aren't exactly the "best", I can't see where this concept will take us if not somewhere that already exists or that we have already created. In short, I just don't think there's that much to learn from it.

Thus, I cast my vote for Perfect Mate, which I admire for the intellectual challenge as well as the logistical challenge. While this may sound hypocritical after what I said about Winter Wonderland, I have to say that Perfect Mate seems, to me, the more logical and easily applicable, as well as embracing a concept that already exists, and seeing if we can recreate it. It is a puzzle, certainly, but a puzzle with a definite answer, or so I feel.

Now, let's make a CAP.

 

[Ice-eyes]

Winter Wonderland
I don't like the idea of this for two reasons. Firstly, as has been said by EM and DrkSlay already, it will be extremely difficult to execute effectively. Secondly, I don't think it would tell us very much about the metagame. In my opinion, people are getting too sucked into 'Yay, I want to play viable Hail,' and not focusing on the actual focus of CAP - valuable, interesting and relevant information about the meta.

Perfect Mate
This looks like an interesting idea and it gets my vote. It'll be hard to execute but if done well could give rise to some interesting strategies.

Clean-Up Kid
I doubt this will win the poll and it seems like we would probably end up with a faster, frailer and slightly more powerful Krillowatt. Starmie?

 

[jc104]

Winter Wonderland

It pretty much has to be an Ice type

In fact, I am of the opinion that the concept will fail completely if it is an ice-type. I have played Hail a lot in OU in the past, and as I'm sure you are aware the issue with hail is that the weaknesses of the Ice-type really stack up very fast. Walrein itself, when properly set up, is actually very powerful (in a loose sense of the word). Essentially, the pokemon would probably have to have a typing that covers the weaknesses of the ice type, and have an ability such as Snow Warning/Snow Cloak/Ice Body. The only issue is really how to make it so that it doesn't improve the viability of all stall teams as it does for Hail stall teams. Anyway, anyone who thinks the moves will be restricted is quite wrong - it could be a powerful blizzard user, a rapid spinner, a toxic spiker, a staller with sub + protect like Walrein. The number of ways to support a hail team is in my opinion more varied than the sweeping options of fast sweepers.

As for offensive hail, as said before, Cyclant already does this as far as is possible, which leads me to think it is also completely impossible to make offensive hail truly viable without inventing an ability. Anything with a Blizzard powerful enough and stats and typing good enough to make offensive hail powerful enough would surely end up as a fantastic special sweeper rather than a hail abuser. My only thought is if we gave it Blizzard and not ice beam or any other powerful move.

Overall, the hail concept seems challenging, but possible, and of course, it's Hail, which is by far my favourite type of weather (the British like their underdogs!).

As for the "Perfect Mate" concept, this will be by far the most narrow of the three options, given that it is entirely based around supporting one pokemon. This is not necessarily a problem, but a number of people seem to dismiss the hail concept for this reason alone. The hail concept is based around several pokemon, namely Abomasnow and Walrein, but also a number of other pokemon that could abuse hail if it were made more viable, like Glaceon. There also seems a fair chance, to me anyway, that we pick a thouroughly unintersting pokemon - this adds an extra selection process, so you don't even know what you're really voting for. As Tennisace said, as well, centralising the metagame around two pokemon is worse than around one pokemon, as it forms a greater proportion of the team, and leaves less space for others.

As for the Clean-up Kid, I think the impact on the game could be interesting, but I do not think the same of the building process. Surely it will merely be something like Deoxys-S without the support moves? Once again I think this is less varied than the hail concept. Although typing is open, as is the ability, we essentially know exactly what the final product will be like. As mentioned above, we also have late-game cleaners that can't sweep, like Starmie, and particularly, Aerodactyl. We do not have viable hail. This would have the least metagame impact of the three, which seems to have been suggested abova as a good thing, but what is CAP for if not disrupting the metagame?

So in conclusion, I voted for Winter Wonderland, but I'm sure this will turn out well whatever happens.

 

[Mektar]

CAP's are supposed to be created with the OU Metagame in mind, not the CAP Metagame right? Well, Hail isn't exactly used often in OU, and we already have some great revenge killers. A CAP should fit in nicely with the current metagame, but it shouldn't be so mighty that its presence would warp OU. What better way to fit a CAP in with OU than to design it as a Perfect Mate to an OU Pokemon that could use a little boost? That's why it gets my vote.

 

[FimPhym]

Voted Perfect Mate

As a design process, inventing new abilities or moves is inelegant. Hail has some room for exploration, as does any idea, but it doesn't strike me as a thorough enough project to challenge the best minds here.

Furthermore, hail immediately prescribes the use of the pokemon. All that is up for debate is how the hail is abused. This immediately puts strict limits on the scope of how this pokemon will ever get used. Less chance of surprising clever synergies, esoteric niche movesets, and so on.

Worse yet, winter wonderland is uncomfortably close to being 'Ultimate Hail User', and as a rule, 'Ultimate X' as a cap is extremely boring. How about a cap that is not ultimate, but merely pretty cool? A single niche of the metagame need not be pushed to the limits with every cap.

Clean up presents various challenges in the design process, and would be fun to try and balance, I'm sure. It's almost worth voting for just to see the inevitable moment where Cap 11 gets a choice scarf to outspeed other Cap 11s. However, the concept again is "The Ultimate X", which I feel is overdone. Though perhaps unjustified, a cynic might predict that popular opinion would give such a fast pokemon the equivalent to Krillowatt's Magic Guard, transforming it into a sweeper and deviating from the design principle.

Perfect mate is my favourite, because it is a distinct design goal with strict parameters yet endless options. It must partner with a good-but-not-great pokemon, that is strict. The choice of pokemon and ways in which the partner can complement them are vast. Typing, stats, movepool, abilities and more are utterly up for grabs, and will allow the full force of creativity. There's also a great chance that CAP 11 will end up good-but-not-great too, which would be a change from 'Top 10 OU material or better'.

Perfect mate has the best chance at being an interesting design challenge, balanced, and unapologetically rooted in true OU, not the CAP metagame.

 

[EdgeHead]

I'm going with Perfect Mate. The hail concept is interesting, but I think study of weather has just been done to death. There are other ways for a team to support itself outside of weather, and I think Perfect Mate will demonstrate to players exactly how the whole of the team can be greater than the sum of it's parts.

 

[Snow Leopard]

Clean-Up Kid

Innovation and trying out new things is the foundation of the Create-A-Pokemon Project. Clean-Up Kid is the solution to the problem we have been looking for.

As for Winter Wonderland, weather is not as important of a concept as is the role a particular Pokemon plays on a generic, diverse team. Besides, having a particular pokemon designed for the OU metagame that is able to abuse the hail would dominate the game and promote imbalance amongst the types currently in equilibrium. Having a type to be considered the "Best Type" is a problem that would be painstaking to fix.

When one examines Perfect Mate in depth, the first thing that comes to mind is limitations. If a Perfect Mate is used independently from its mate, its success in the threatening OU metagame would not be very effective. In addition, seeing one of the Perfect Mates by itself would give the opponent a huge advantage when it comes to predicting. For example, Pokemon X is designed to compliment Flygon well. When Pokemon X enters the battle, who else do they believe is in your party? Flygon. Since many flourish because of intelligent prediction, Perfect Mate would make a currently balanced aspect of the metagame askew.

Players must come to accept the fact that Pokemon typically sweep or stall, revenge killers falling under the category of a semi-sweeper. The game experience that the Clean-Up Kid would provide would add some spice to the Pokemon metagame in general, and in addition would prove to be enjoyable to test. After all, isn't that what this project is all about?

 

[ShravanP]

I voted Perfect Mate because it's far beyond anything we have tried to do thus far, and by doing something radically different, we stand to learn a lot more regardless of how successful we are at realizing the concept. Winter Wonderland was a close second for me, but Perfect Mate delves deeper into unexplored territory, IMO.

 

[Fuhret]

Clean-up kid. I really would like to do Winter Wonderland, but I think that it's impossible with onyl one Pokemon unless we make it incredibly powerful and 'broken.' Clean-up kid also sounds more challenging/fun.

 

[Apocalypse B-C]

In fact, I am of the opinion that the concept will fail completely if it is an ice-type. I have played Hail a lot in OU in the past, and as I'm sure you are aware the issue with hail is that the weaknesses of the Ice-type really stack up very fast. Walrein itself, when properly set up, is actually very powerful (in a loose sense of the word). Essentially, the pokemon would probably have to have a typing that covers the weaknesses of the ice type, and have an ability such as Snow Warning/Snow Cloak/Ice Body.

On that note, does having Snow Cloak as an ability grant a pokemon immunity to Hail damage, like Sand Veil does for Cacturne and sandstorm damage?

Anyway, I ended up leaning toward Perfect Mate, because the idea of perfect partners does really intrigue me (in a different vein, it lets a design come up that's the exact opposite of its partner, like a small and thin thing for a Snorlax partner)....and because with the discussion I've been seeing thus far, the Hail abuser has a much greater potential to fail hard. So between two great options, I leaned towards the 'safer' one.

 

[NARFNra]

Snow Cloak gives Hail immunity, yes.