spoo
CAP Co-Leader
Cool, slate is up, gonna give my thoughts. A few things first though,
as for the slate-
Color Change: I don’t think there is a ton to say here that others haven’t already said. The ability is pretty horrible offensively but has a lot of possibilities defensively. We can’t actively control it and it gives next to no information about our role, which is really weird and challenging for the rest of the process, but also offers a lot of room for some creative problem solving. Overall I think this ability is probably the most interesting mechanically, but it’s also the ability that I think is the most risky. Like I said, we just don’t get a lot of information to work off of, and this could lead to some serious floundering later down the line, or an end product that flops because we misunderstood something fundamental about what the ability was offering us. I just have a lot of difficulty wrapping my head around what a Color Change mon would even look like, but I’ll reiterate that it’s still super cool and there is just as much possibility for us to succeed with a completely unique end product as there is for us to make something that’s awkward and uninspiring. tldr, really interesting but really hard.
For people saying that it’s a downright horrible ability though, I have to disagree, and I’ll leave you with an excerpt from a post by Rabia in CA that goes a bit more in depth:
Defeatist: Wanted to make a whole post on this ability but never got around to it lol. Me and some others spoke in #cap earlier today about Defeatist, and I’m really happy with the room this ability has to explore some great potential builds and interactions. I think it was quziel in the conversation who mentioned that Defeatist lets us think about how to price in and encourage recovery moves on Pokemon in offensive archetypes that normally wouldn’t run them, which I personally think is very interesting, and even beyond the more offensive archetypes a la Dragapult and Cinderace there’s still a ton more design space. Just for example, it's very possible to make something that functions like Melmetal above half and Ferrothorn below half—ie, a powerful tank that still has a ton of defensive utility if it’s knocked below the threshold—and I see something like this encouraging really interesting play and forcing both sides to ask themselves some weird questions that wouldn’t ever be relevant otherwise. I’ve always been pretty positive about this ability but it’s been gradually growing on me more, and compared to the other “no upsides” ability in Slow Start, I think Defeatist offers a lot more potential routes and is generally less restricting, requiring a much lower amount of compensation from the rest of the process.
Emergency Exit: Again, a lot of this has already been said, but this is probably our “safest” route, and it’s among my top choices. There aren’t a ton of restrictions, there are interesting mechanics at work that encourage cool ingame play, and it has a bunch of possible routes while still offering a strong sense of direction. I like the posts from D2 and Ausma about this ability so go and read those, but yeah I don’t have a ton more to say other than that I’m a fan of this one. I also don’t really sympathize with the “ultimate pivot” argument, unless “ultimate” really means “broken and unhealthy” which wouldn’t be the fault of the ability itself at that point. EExit has a huge built-in weakness in that it only works once unless we have recovery, and even if we are a super good pivot, there will always be a “best” pivot in the metagame so as long as we aren’t broken or unhealthy then I don’t see anything inherently wrong with having that title.
Perish Body: kind of indifferent about this one, it's my least favorite on the slate but I still like it way more than anything that didn't get slated. It's a cool ability for sure, and I'd be excited to build around it, I just like every option more. There are some genuinely cool interactions, but they all seem very situational and a bit contrived to me, so I doubt how often they would really come into play. Darek's post does a good job at highlighting some potential issues with the ability, though I disagree with him that it shouldn't be slated—the ability has some downsides which I'm not a huge fan of, but I still think it has earned its place on the slate.
Slow Start: Won't be talking much about the ability itself because I already made a long post about it here, but I do want to address some fears. The concern that the CAP will be unviable is just not super grounded in reality. Balancing will obviously be difficult but we have had these fears before and they have always been unsubstantiated at the end. The tools exist to make a Slow Start CAP function. Second, I don't think we run the risk of outright ignoring the ability by being a special attacker or something; this is antithetical to the concept itself and it won't happen. The criticism of "the ability will just never come into play" is easier to understand, because I'm of the same opinion that we wouldn't be transforming in every game—however, it's important to realize that the threat of transforming would be in every game, and I don't think that should be written off.
The final two concerns I've heard the most are the most reasonable, but actually contradict each other: the first is that we're pigeonholed into creating some kind of bulky utility tank with recovery, and the second being that we'll end up with a regigigas esque turn-stalling playstyle that will be horrible for the meta. I actually agree with the first concern, and I outlined this some in my previous post, but yeah we are probably going to be decently constrained. It doesn't make the ability any less interesting within that specific role, it just means that we'll have less to discuss at some points, which I'll admit isn't great; though, it also means that the ability is one of our safer options because we're given a strong direction for a predictably good route to take, as opposed so something like Color Change where we'll have a harder time figuring out where to go. It's pretty clear how the second concern contradicts this, but we can't end up with both a) defensive utility mon at the same time and b) annoying stab/bulk up/sub/protect mon, so the fear of having an annoying stally playstyle isn't that justified, and it seems like a very easy criticism because, well, there's a bad route to go down with every ability here and it's easy to point them all out, but that doesn't mean it's likely to happen either.
Slow start isn't even my favorite option, it's behind eexit/color change/defeatist (in no particular order) for me, but a lot of the criticisms against it feel kind of weak so I wanted to try and clear them up.
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Normalize: Probably my least favorite option to be honest, even among abilities like Stall and Klutz. Jas's post a few pages back summarizes my thoughts pretty well- basically there is very little that this ability offers us mechanically, and there aren't enough moves that benefit (not just change) from becoming normal, to the point that I don't see what there is for us to learn from pursuing this. What also bothers me about this ability is that all of its options seem incredibly incoherent- flying press, freeze dry, thunder wave (glare already exists), extreme speed, weather ball, future sight, multi attack... all of these moves seem very strange and incoherent to cram on the same moveset, so we would realistically only be focusing on one or two of them and at that point I just don't see what the payoff is. The only thing that has interested me so far about Normalize was Ho3n's post that argued for a more defensive route, as opposed to the more wallbreakery routes that I think people are thinking of more often, but either way it's still a very narrow ability. I also don't see how normalize would have any smaller of an anchor on this CAP than something like Defeatist- personally this is one of the most crippling abilities by far. All in all, there's a myriad of flaws here which I've tried to lay out- restrictiveness, we don't really learn much, incoherent options, narrow design space, encourages incredibly binary play due to having the most binary checks and counters in the world... ultimately I just can't get on board with this one.
1) The concept isn't "a mon with an objectively terrible ability", it's "a mon that succeeds in part because of an ability that most other mons wouldn't want". It's literally impossible to succeed because of Defeatist or Slow Start, unless you have Entrainment / Skill Swap, which we're already treating as banned.
I don't mean for this to be a personal attack, this goes for anyone else who is arguing this line, but please stop- the person who wrote the concept has already come out in this thread and said that this isn't true, so if you're saying what the concept "is" and "isn't" to try and claim that slow start and defeatist don't fulfill the concept, then at this point the information you're providing is actively misleadingThe point of this concept is that the ability should provide some sort of limitation to the pokemon and that limitation must be worked around (not ignored). Defeatist says that you have half attack and special attack below half HP, but still full speed and full bulk, so a pokemon that can still make progress under half and has the ability to heal up would completely fulfill the concept; "Defective Ability is an Actualization concept; aiming to create a Pokemon that... works with an ability that would be considered bad on most pokemon."The concept clearly spells out that abilities that the only real qualifying factor here is that the ability itself should be considered bad on most pokemon, that the ability should limit the mon in some way, and the pokemon should be set up in such a way that it can make the most of the ability and work around its limitations.
The argument of “we will just be making X mon but better / X mon 2.0” has been thrown around a lot and I don't think it's very sound. Personally I've seen it most often said about Emergency Exit, Slow Start, and Defeatist, and frankly I do not follow this logic at all and I don’t think it should be used as a reason to vote for/not vote for an ability. There are literally concepts that have been slated in the past that are “make an NU mon OU viable” or “make an RBY strategy OU viable,” so I don’t think it’s something that’s inherently bad in the first place, but beyond that, I don’t really think it’s even true here. Golisopod, Regigigas, and Archeops have a million things holding them back and are not really tooled to take maximum advantage of their abilities. This also isn’t to say something like Archeops wouldn’t be insanely good without Defeatist—it would—but that its tools aren’t optimal for working around Defeatist specifically, and that the same is true for Goli and Regigigas as well. Even if we make a “fast strong pivot” for Defeatist in the same way that Archeops is a “fast strong pivot,” there is still a ton of room to explore within that one archetype. So yeah, I just really dislike this train of thought and I hope that people don’t lean into it too much when they vote.
as for the slate-
Color Change: I don’t think there is a ton to say here that others haven’t already said. The ability is pretty horrible offensively but has a lot of possibilities defensively. We can’t actively control it and it gives next to no information about our role, which is really weird and challenging for the rest of the process, but also offers a lot of room for some creative problem solving. Overall I think this ability is probably the most interesting mechanically, but it’s also the ability that I think is the most risky. Like I said, we just don’t get a lot of information to work off of, and this could lead to some serious floundering later down the line, or an end product that flops because we misunderstood something fundamental about what the ability was offering us. I just have a lot of difficulty wrapping my head around what a Color Change mon would even look like, but I’ll reiterate that it’s still super cool and there is just as much possibility for us to succeed with a completely unique end product as there is for us to make something that’s awkward and uninspiring. tldr, really interesting but really hard.
For people saying that it’s a downright horrible ability though, I have to disagree, and I’ll leave you with an excerpt from a post by Rabia in CA that goes a bit more in depth:
I also think that Color Change needs to stop being referenced as a bad ability like, now; it's very situational in terms of being good or bad and largely depends on what you expect the function of the Pokemon in question to be.
The issue with going too in-depth w.r.t. Color Change is that the only Pokemon with it---Kecleon---has never been good, but I attribute this to stats rather than the ability. The only setting I have experience with Kecleon in is ADV NU, and I can say with certainty that it's not a net negative ability. Complicating how special wallbreakers can play into Kecleon is a fantastic boon for it; foes like Haunter, Flareon, and Wailord are significantly less problematic for it because they cannot spam their primary attacks as easily because of Color Change. Sure, for more offensively oriented sets it can be obnoxious losing your STAB on Return/Frustration or whatever move you opt for, but overall I think the notion that this is an objectively bad ability is a bad one.
The issue with going too in-depth w.r.t. Color Change is that the only Pokemon with it---Kecleon---has never been good, but I attribute this to stats rather than the ability. The only setting I have experience with Kecleon in is ADV NU, and I can say with certainty that it's not a net negative ability. Complicating how special wallbreakers can play into Kecleon is a fantastic boon for it; foes like Haunter, Flareon, and Wailord are significantly less problematic for it because they cannot spam their primary attacks as easily because of Color Change. Sure, for more offensively oriented sets it can be obnoxious losing your STAB on Return/Frustration or whatever move you opt for, but overall I think the notion that this is an objectively bad ability is a bad one.
Defeatist: Wanted to make a whole post on this ability but never got around to it lol. Me and some others spoke in #cap earlier today about Defeatist, and I’m really happy with the room this ability has to explore some great potential builds and interactions. I think it was quziel in the conversation who mentioned that Defeatist lets us think about how to price in and encourage recovery moves on Pokemon in offensive archetypes that normally wouldn’t run them, which I personally think is very interesting, and even beyond the more offensive archetypes a la Dragapult and Cinderace there’s still a ton more design space. Just for example, it's very possible to make something that functions like Melmetal above half and Ferrothorn below half—ie, a powerful tank that still has a ton of defensive utility if it’s knocked below the threshold—and I see something like this encouraging really interesting play and forcing both sides to ask themselves some weird questions that wouldn’t ever be relevant otherwise. I’ve always been pretty positive about this ability but it’s been gradually growing on me more, and compared to the other “no upsides” ability in Slow Start, I think Defeatist offers a lot more potential routes and is generally less restricting, requiring a much lower amount of compensation from the rest of the process.
Emergency Exit: Again, a lot of this has already been said, but this is probably our “safest” route, and it’s among my top choices. There aren’t a ton of restrictions, there are interesting mechanics at work that encourage cool ingame play, and it has a bunch of possible routes while still offering a strong sense of direction. I like the posts from D2 and Ausma about this ability so go and read those, but yeah I don’t have a ton more to say other than that I’m a fan of this one. I also don’t really sympathize with the “ultimate pivot” argument, unless “ultimate” really means “broken and unhealthy” which wouldn’t be the fault of the ability itself at that point. EExit has a huge built-in weakness in that it only works once unless we have recovery, and even if we are a super good pivot, there will always be a “best” pivot in the metagame so as long as we aren’t broken or unhealthy then I don’t see anything inherently wrong with having that title.
Perish Body: kind of indifferent about this one, it's my least favorite on the slate but I still like it way more than anything that didn't get slated. It's a cool ability for sure, and I'd be excited to build around it, I just like every option more. There are some genuinely cool interactions, but they all seem very situational and a bit contrived to me, so I doubt how often they would really come into play. Darek's post does a good job at highlighting some potential issues with the ability, though I disagree with him that it shouldn't be slated—the ability has some downsides which I'm not a huge fan of, but I still think it has earned its place on the slate.
Slow Start: Won't be talking much about the ability itself because I already made a long post about it here, but I do want to address some fears. The concern that the CAP will be unviable is just not super grounded in reality. Balancing will obviously be difficult but we have had these fears before and they have always been unsubstantiated at the end. The tools exist to make a Slow Start CAP function. Second, I don't think we run the risk of outright ignoring the ability by being a special attacker or something; this is antithetical to the concept itself and it won't happen. The criticism of "the ability will just never come into play" is easier to understand, because I'm of the same opinion that we wouldn't be transforming in every game—however, it's important to realize that the threat of transforming would be in every game, and I don't think that should be written off.
The final two concerns I've heard the most are the most reasonable, but actually contradict each other: the first is that we're pigeonholed into creating some kind of bulky utility tank with recovery, and the second being that we'll end up with a regigigas esque turn-stalling playstyle that will be horrible for the meta. I actually agree with the first concern, and I outlined this some in my previous post, but yeah we are probably going to be decently constrained. It doesn't make the ability any less interesting within that specific role, it just means that we'll have less to discuss at some points, which I'll admit isn't great; though, it also means that the ability is one of our safer options because we're given a strong direction for a predictably good route to take, as opposed so something like Color Change where we'll have a harder time figuring out where to go. It's pretty clear how the second concern contradicts this, but we can't end up with both a) defensive utility mon at the same time and b) annoying stab/bulk up/sub/protect mon, so the fear of having an annoying stally playstyle isn't that justified, and it seems like a very easy criticism because, well, there's a bad route to go down with every ability here and it's easy to point them all out, but that doesn't mean it's likely to happen either.
Slow start isn't even my favorite option, it's behind eexit/color change/defeatist (in no particular order) for me, but a lot of the criticisms against it feel kind of weak so I wanted to try and clear them up.
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Normalize: Probably my least favorite option to be honest, even among abilities like Stall and Klutz. Jas's post a few pages back summarizes my thoughts pretty well- basically there is very little that this ability offers us mechanically, and there aren't enough moves that benefit (not just change) from becoming normal, to the point that I don't see what there is for us to learn from pursuing this. What also bothers me about this ability is that all of its options seem incredibly incoherent- flying press, freeze dry, thunder wave (glare already exists), extreme speed, weather ball, future sight, multi attack... all of these moves seem very strange and incoherent to cram on the same moveset, so we would realistically only be focusing on one or two of them and at that point I just don't see what the payoff is. The only thing that has interested me so far about Normalize was Ho3n's post that argued for a more defensive route, as opposed to the more wallbreakery routes that I think people are thinking of more often, but either way it's still a very narrow ability. I also don't see how normalize would have any smaller of an anchor on this CAP than something like Defeatist- personally this is one of the most crippling abilities by far. All in all, there's a myriad of flaws here which I've tried to lay out- restrictiveness, we don't really learn much, incoherent options, narrow design space, encourages incredibly binary play due to having the most binary checks and counters in the world... ultimately I just can't get on board with this one.
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