CAP 11 CAP 11 - Part 13b - Complete Movepool Poll 1

[Deck Knight]

Time for a Showdown!

Our CAP so far:

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

• 
  
  
  Typing: Fighting / Dark
  Stat Spread: 90 HP / 85 Atk / 80 Def / 105 SpA / 80 SpD / 110 Spe
  Abilities: Volt Absorb / Lightningrod
  Name: Voodoom
  
  Submissions:
  
  Jibaku
  
  DrkSlay
  
  danmantincan
  
  Rising_Dusk
  
  bugmaniacbob
  
  petrie911
  
  Elevator_Music
  
  Utopio
  
  capefeather
  
  Rules:
  
  Because of the number of submissions, this will be a preferential poll. BOLD your Top 3 selections in preferred order. The 3 movepools that get the most points will advance to the next poll. Do not bold any other text in your posts, if you wish to argue something on the merits use different emphasis tagging. Do not attempt to "game the system," there are nine entrants, so each will need as much support as they can get. I have selected this slate for its broad range of flavor and competitive choices.
  
  This poll will be open for approximately 24 hours.

 

[The Other Doug]

DrkSlay
capefeather
petrie911

 

[Apocalypse B-C]

Meant to submit one put ended up forgetting about it. But personally I went with the less competitively-supported reasoning of picking the sets I thought had the most realistic levelset. There were 2, so then I just picked one of the two most minimal movepools VGM-wise. So, that gave me....

Rising_Dusk
DrkSlay
Utopio

 

[firecape]

Jibaku
Rising_Dusk
Elevator Music

 

[Chateau]

capefeather
bugmaniacbob
danmantincan

 

[hyperbeem]

DrkSlay
capefeather
Jibaku

 

[petrie911]

petrie911
DrkSlay
bugmaniacbob

Ice Beam is an important inclusion to me, so I picked both movepools that have it. After that, I liked bugmaniacbob's the best.

 

[Gothic Togekiss]

Jibaku
Rising_Dusk
DrkSlay

 

[Jebus McAzn]

capefeather
Jibaku
Rising_Dusk

 

[Jibaku]

Jibaku
Rising_Dusk
capefeather

:)

 

[RandomUserXD]

Rising_Dusk
Jibaku
capefeather

 

[tennisace]

Jibaku
Rising_Dusk
Elevator Music

No Ice Beam on all of these, which is good. However, since they're all so similar, I went with Jibaku's first since it doesn't have Twineedle/Needle Arm and it has both Aura Sphere and Substitute in Level-Up, which is cool. In addition, it doesn't have any attacking Electric-type moves, while the other two have Thundershock. Finally, I chose Rising_Dusk over Elevator_Music because of no illegalities. On EM's movepool Aura Sphere is illegal with Pursuit, which is a somewhat feasible combination.

 

[DougJustDoug]

Wow, this was tough. Lots of good movepools, but here's my votes:

Rising_Dusk
RD has been hating on just about everything related to Voodoom, since I first posted the art. I was secretly hoping he would screw something up on the movepool, just so I wouldn't be tempted to vote for him! (I'm only half-joking there...) But, I gotta admit that Dusk did a great job on the movepool. I know he worked his butt off on it for a long time, and he has been shaping it tirelessly and helping others shape their movepools too. I'm the type of guy that likes to see hard work pay off, so it was pretty easy for me to cast this vote for Rising_Dusk. The movepool is cohesive, the competitive reasoning is solid, and the flavor descriptions read like a great story. Very nice work, RD.

Jibaku
This is another vote deeply influenced by the time and effort put in by the submitter. Almost every day for the past couple of weeks on #cap IRC, I've been hearing Jibs and Dusk talking about movepools. So, I admit I'm a bit predisposed to these two, just because I've seen them take shape over time. Jibaku made some cool key decisions on a few flavor moves, that I thought were pretty innovative, and the movepool just "makes sense" to me. I like the way Jibs presented all the various aspects of the movepool, and really shows off the amount of preparation that went into it.

Capefeather
This third vote was very tough for me. I really wish I could cast a vote for DrkSlay and Elevator Music too. But, when forced to pick just one more vote -- I had to go with Capefeather on the strength of his amazing backstory for his movepool. From a competitive standpoint, I have a few issues with it here and there. But, my competitive concerns were fairly minor, certainly not enough for me to "veto" the movepool entirely. And when reading the full submission, I just fell in love with the whole concept of duality and light/dark voodoo and all that. Very creative stuff, and a wonderful spin on the concept.


Other comments
Honorable Mentions to DrkSlay and Elevator Music for making movepools that I would be perfectly happy to see advance. Nice competitive and flavor combinations from both of them. I also liked several aspects of Bugmaniacbob's movepool submission, but also disliked a few things as well -- so it was kind of a love/hate thing there. Danmantincan had some really nice flavor and presentation points, but I felt like it lacked cohesion on the competitive side. Petrie911 and Utopio just didn't give me enough information in the submission to really compare it favorably to the others.

 

[Crux]

Rising_Dusk
Jibaku
capefeather

 

[Umbreon Dan]

bugmaniacbob
rising_dusk
elevator music

<umbreon_dan> i really want bmb to win
<umbreon_dan> his movepool is half of the reason why i didn't bother submitting one
<umbreon_dan> it has everything i want, and nothing i don't want

subject to change.

 

[Sonic The Hedgedawg]

DrkSlay
Rising_Dusk
petrie911

 

[DarkSlay]

DrkSlay
Jibaku
Rising_Dusk

Good luck to all of the competitors!

 

[Raseri]

danmantincan
Rising Dusk
DrkSlay

 

[NightShadow]

Elevator Music
Jibaku
DrkSlay

 

[Bughouse]

DrkSlay
Rising_Dusk
petrie911

 

[reachzero]

DrkSlay
capefeather
Jibaku

DrkSlay had almost all of what I wanted: top priority was no Sucker Punch, second priority was the presence of Psychic, third priority was having Ice Beam. I would have taken petrie911's as my third, but the lack of Close Combat make me a little nervous.

 

[FlareBlitz]

DrkSlay
petrie911
capefeather

My priorities were pretty similar to what Reach's were: having ice beam, lacking Sucker Punch, and having Close Combat. DrkSlay's movepool had basically everything I was looking for (and not looking for) in the movepool. Petrie comes in second despite the lack of Close Combat, and my third pick was Capefeather because his movepool was probably the most interesting one to read through flavor-wise, although I'm not too fond of its competitive implications.

Good luck to all the participants :3

 

[capefeather]

capefeather
Jibaku
Rising_Dusk

Bleh, why am I always ranked third in votes containing all three of us? I don't think I'll like the next poll :(

As I said quite clearly in my submission, aside from the three "main" moves and the requirements, my thoughts on the movepool went entirely to flavour, and this attitude translated into my votes. I honestly didn't care that much whether Ice Beam or Psychic or whatever is in. Thus, I put a lot of stock on about how the movepools were explained.

There are two things that turned me off of most of the other submissions. The less frequent one was people's tendency to write a lot about what they didn't include, especially when they started complaining about requirements and disagreements with previous decisions on the project (particularly allowed/disallowed moves). I felt that it took away from the message that the submitters were trying to put forward. The other, more frequent turn-off was the tendency to explain moves in unnecessarily excessive detail. (We all know and love how flavourful Pain Split is, guys.) This also detracted from "the message".

I picked Jibaku and Rising_Dusk because they showed that they had clear and well-formed ideas in their minds when building their movepools. There were quite a lot of elements in Jibaku's level-up description that I really liked, particularly the bit about Acupressure eventually releasing pent-up Aura. Rising_Dusk put forward a similarly great description and argued for many of the more controversial moves admirably (though I still disagree a bit with them :P but obviously not enough to withhold my vote).

 

[SgtWoodsy]

Rising_Dusk
Jibaku
capefeather

 

[viol and bass]

Jibaku
capefeather
Elevator Music