CAP 16 CAP 5 - Part 4 - Primary Ability Discussion

While I know I already posted on a few abilities, I would like to elaborate a bit more on a few. I really feel that a bunch of people are misinterpreting how we should be going about this concept and are failing to recognize problems for the concept where they exist. To do this, I would like to analyze three abilities by directly answering the questions asked by Korski. The three abilities I want to discuss, Flower Gift, Harvest and Natural Cure, I feel are very differentiated from one another and would serve as good general examples of how abilities should be looked at with regard to achieving our goals.


Considering CAP's typing, which aspects of our concept, direction, and/or threat list can be best addressed by an ability, as opposed to stats or movepool?

Well, to start off, I think the simplest answer to this question is that we should try and do something that cannot be done by anything other than an ability. Of course, that is easier said than done. While it might be obvious that Flower Gift is just a stat inflator for sun that could essentially be achieved by simply buffing up our base stats, it is also true that Lum Harvest or Natural Cure could be replicated in the movepool stage via Refresh. Moves in Pokemon are so diverse that almost all abilities can be recreated in some semblance by them. With that said, a Pokemon's BST is not bound, but its number of moveslots is. As such, I would first off look for Abilities that provide something that cannot be replicated by stats or by a move that otherwise has general utility.

When it comes to the specifics of this Pokemon, we want to make it so it is able to beat Latios and Latias, act as a pivot vs. water types, and otherwise help fill in a role on a sun team. Bar the possibility for something like Arena Trap, I feel the last of those will be best addressed by the movepool stage, and the former can easily be taken care of via stats. As such, I believe we would be best served by looking for abilities that help us work a a pivot.

While that is certainly not the only thing to take into consideration when choosing an ability, it is an important one, and when applied to the three abilities I want to talk about, is clearly a benefit for Natural Cure and, to an extent, Harvest, while it is a shortcoming of Flower Gift. Natural Cure is a wonderful ability for a pivot as any bad luck on a switch in, or mis-predict should the opponent use a status move, will not hamper your ability to function later in the battle. Harvest also has this benefit, to an extent, but only if you are running a Lum Berry. Flower Gift, on the other hand simply improves stats in sun. While this has other benefits I will address later, when filling a role as a pivot, it doesn't provide anything stats could not do, if it is providing anything at all.


To what degree does this ability encourage the presence of Sunlight? To what degree does it depend on Sunlight to be competitive? Does the ability discourage CAP's usage in rain?

Now, of all the questions here, this is the one I personally find least important. Our goal is not to make a Pokemon that is dependent on sun, or a Pokemon that can only function in sun. Our goal is to make a Pokemon that increases the size of Sun's piece of the usage pie, so as long as its existence improves sun more than it improves anything else, how well it is tied into the weather is honestly quite irrelevant. So, addressing it in this light, how do these three abilities allow CAP 5 to help out sun more than other weathers?

Well, this is where Flower Gift is the clear winner. Flower Gift is not just a strong ability when sun is out, it is absolutely monstrous. Respectable stats are boosted to massive levels. Large stats become astronomical. Flower Gift is arguably the strongest weather related ability in the game, so its existence on a quality Pokemon would clearly help sun more than any other weather.

On the polar opposite side of the spectrum we have Natural Cure, an ability that on its face has nothing to do with weather. It is for abilities like this, however, that I feel the question, as worded, fails to address what is truly necessary for the concept, as I talked about above. As I said for the first question, Natural Cure would help CAP 5 fill the role of a pivot vs rain, something sun really needs. While the ability itself has nothing to do with weather, the job it would allow us to preform is something that only sun really needs. Rain and Sand have Ferrothorn to pivot on Rain, and their own weather starters do not have any problem being their own pivot for Sun. While the ability itself does nothing to tie CAP 5 to sun, the overall Pokemon would still lean in that direction.

Harvest, is kind of in the middle, and yet I feel it has the most failings of the three. Indeed, it is almost the opposite of Natural Cure in that it on the surface appears to have a clear tie in to sun, but, when you look deeper, it fails to truly establish any real reasoning for why it would help sun. Sun would help it, sure enough, but that is not a goal we are interested in. Now of course, as mentioned earlier, with Lum Berry, Harvest can have a similar effect to Natural Cure. However, the difference here is that while for Natural Cure, what it does is not as relevant to other weathers, with Harvest, there are a plethora of other options you could use that other weathers cannot get elsewhere. Sitrus for constant recovery. Resistance berry for eliminating a key weakness the team struggles with. Now obviously, outside of Sun it is not as reliable an ability, but at 50% regeneration, it is still an incredibly powerful ability that can function almost anywhere. I won't say that this means it will not end up helping sun more than elsewhere, but the sheer versatility makes it virtually impossible to predict what it will actually end up being the best for.


How does this ability support CAP's capacity to act as a pivot, either offensively or defensively? How does it contribute to CAP's synergy with other sun-based teammates?

Now here is a big one. I already addressed the ability to act as a pivot above, so I am not going to reiterate that here, but when it comes right down to it, I think how these abilities allow CAP 5 to synergize with teammates is one of the most important consideration. Starting with Natural Cure here, I believe that it would do a wonderful job synergizing with its teammates. As mentioned for the previous question, pivoting successfully vs. rain is something sun teams cannot do very well. Our typing is already very optimal for this, as that which comes in on CAP will likely be the kind of thing Ninetales will be comfortable coming in on, and vice versa. The very fact that Natural Cure optimizes this role will allow it to comfortably fit in with its teammates.

As with the last question, Harvest has many of the same upsides as Natural Cure. It fills the necessary role, and thus can synergize well. However, this only remains true as long as it sticks to the pivot role via use of the Lum Berry. Once you start changing things up this role starts becoming less optimal and its teammates are not enjoying its presence as much. In fact, one of the things that worry me the most about this ability is the fact that for many of the possible sets, it will not really be concerned at all about synergy, and will focus more on self-optimization. The goal we have in front of us is to make a Pokemon that improves sun, and I worry that Harvest will turn this into a Pokemon improved by sun, rather than one that improves it.

Flower Gift, as usual, takes a different approach to things in that instead of focusing on being a pivot, it would be more apt to fill the role of a Special wall or bulky tank. Now, this is certainly something that sun could appreciate. The sheer power of this ability cannot be denied, and assuming its stats are halfway decent, it could turn into an absolute monster in sun that any team would love to have. However, as far as actually synergizing with the team, I don't think it really does all that much. It's not bad per se, but it's not good either.


Does the ability have potential to aid CAP in fulfilling or consolidating other roles necessary to the sun play style?

Finally, we have what I might consider the single most important question to address: how to consolidate roles. However, while that may be the most important question for this project, I'm not sure if we can look at abilities through this lens and still get an accurate picture. An ability can only really do one thing (or one thing at a time, in the case of Harvest), and unless this one thing is in stark contrast to the role our chosen typing plays, then ability alone will not address filling multiple roles. That said, I think this is the other place where Flower Gift shines above the rest. While our typing gives us the capability to threaten Latios and Latias, it does not give us the clear ability to come in on them, in contrast to the role of a water pivot that our typing already handles very well. With the awesome boosts Flower Gift provides, filling this secondary role as Lati counter becomes much easier.

Natural Cure, on the other hand, simply takes one of our roles and makes it more optimized. I don't think there is any problem with this, as I believe most other roles may be better addressed at other stages of the process, but it is something to be taken into account.

And last of all, Harvest is once again the middle option. It can focus on one role and leave the rest for other stages like Natural Cure. It can focus on artificially increasing bulk via Sitrus or a resist berry to make it a better wall like Flower Gift. Or, it could do something else completely unrelated.


Overall, looking at these three, I feel that the two most opposite ones, Flower Gift and Natural Cure are actually much more similar then they would appear to be. While the paths they take are different, they are focused on a necessary role, and both connect in deeply to something Sun wants and needs, even if it is in completely opposite ways.

Harvest, on the other hand, I feel tries to do way too much, and in the end falls short due to it. It can do almost anything we want it too, but much of the time what it does can be done nearly as well by other abilities that don't consume an item slot. At the same time, how it would end up working is highly unpredictable as its versatility is just so huge. It may have potential, but it also has a lot of downsides, and I feel it is really hard to tell where the positives end and the negatives begin.

Now, while this post may have addressed three specific abilities, my point with this was to show the kind of things that I believe are best for the concept. I'm hoping that the kinds of analysis here can be applied to more abilities, and I am in no way suggesting that these three are in any way special. In general, I'd say that the abilities specifically targeted at helping a single role would do us the most good in the long run, with those helping to pivot being preferred over the other roles as it is the most difficult to address during other stages. Additionally, abilities that are multifaceted and not centrally focused on a role we need are more likely to lead us astray as any roles it provides not specifically beneficial to sun have the potential to end up helping other playstyles just as much if not more.

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As an aside, I just want to give a brief word on versatility in general. There have been a couple of posts recently saying "versatility is not a bad thing," and while I will not try and say that versatility is inherently bad, I want to caution people about this kind of thinking. You need only look back a single project to see what I mean. Too often have we said "It can only do so much at once. Versatility is not bad," only to have our creations run awry because of it. Versatility is not bad, but only if every option it has is not bad. We are only as strong as our weakest link, and if we give it one option that screws us up, then it doesn't matter how fine our other options were. Now this is not targeted specifically at Harvest, or anything else for that matter, but is just something people need to keep in mind. Versatility is neither a positive nor a negative. It is exactly as good as the options that it includes.

Putting my support behind Harvest. Why? Harvest has the potential to be a great ability: HarvRest, as I call LumRest with Harvest, Resistiharvest (probably for Bug), a strong, status-immune sun sweeper, you name it. However, it's best user, Tropius, is only used in OU by the insane. Harvest would not make it a niche mon by any standards: niche means it only has one specific purpose (usually). Harvest has many berries. Rest being viable, sweeping support, a Bug-resisting tank, you name it.

Using up an item slot? Why not! That's simply a balancing measure to Harvest. I think the previously mentioned HarvRest with a Lum would be amazing; look as Breloom. Bre's great abilities make it viable in OU, with Technician and Poison Heal. Harvest with Lum, similarly, would turn this thing into an unstoppable wall until Rest PP runs out, so long as the opponent has no OHKO moves. This mon would force switches, wall it the death and do any number of other things if built right.

However, Harvest is not OP by any standards. If the Sun goes down and stays down, that 50% chance is a gamble, and makes that item slot practically useless. Likewise, the lack of an item slot is risky: a necessary price to pay, I think, and well worthwhile.

I also like Chlorophyll, but not nearly as much. Sure, it encourages Sun even more, but everyone knows it alredy via Venu. Harvest is an interesting, unexplored ability that I think will pay off to learn about.

jas61292 said:

On the polar opposite side of the spectrum we have Natural Cure, an ability that on its face has nothing to do with weather. It is for abilities like this, however, that I feel the question, as worded, fails to address what is truly necessary for the concept, as I talked about above. As I said for the first question, Natural Cure would help CAP 5 fill the role of a pivot vs rain, something sun really needs. While the ability itself has nothing to do with weather, the job it would allow us to preform is something that only sun really needs. Rain and Sand have Ferrothorn to pivot on Rain, and their own weather starters do not have any problem being their own pivot for Sun. While the ability itself does nothing to tie CAP 5 to sun, the overall Pokemon would still lean in that direction.

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this is a dangerous approach to take.

Let me explain: under a normal ladder (for most people anyway), this may be a perfectly fine approach. Someone will say, "hmm, i want to make a new team. How about... rain?" They will then assemble the best possible rain team, and proceed to eat up the ladder. In another circumstance, they may just say "let me build the best possible team ever." Either way, the goal is to make a general team idea, and then flesh it out with Pokemon.

HOWEVER. The CAP Playtest ladder is not a normal ladder, because it is a playtest. The teambuilding process radiates from CAP5 outward. People say "I'm going to make the best possible team, and it's going to use CAP5, no matter what." The team idea is a secondary goal, unlike on a normal ladder; the primary goal is to use CAP5 in the best way possible. So if CAP5 is best used on a sand team, even IF a sun team is the most improved by CAP5, sand will be dominant on the playtest ladder. There is a difference. You are begging the question by assuming CAP5 on a Sun team and then proving it works better than on other teams. Under normal circumstances you may be right, but whatever team helps CAP5 work best is what's going to be most used on the ladder. Under normal circumstances the "piece of the pie" approach may work, but a playtest ladder is not normal circumstances. If we don't make Sun the /best/ kind of team to put CAP5 on, sun's usage will drop, not rise.



edit: this may not be entirely true, as seen in the "counterteam" approach of the mollux playtest, who undoubtedly fit best on rain but was countered best by Sand, ergo sand teams did the best on the ladder. Still, I don't believe this is the approach we want to take here.


edit2: I'm going to answer korski's four essential questions with Chlorophyll as the focus here: (Note: a lot of my arguments will be based on the suppositions laid out in DougJustDoug's post here. If you haven't read it, I highly suggest you do. It provides a very clear direction for our Pokemon.)

Considering CAP's typing, which aspects of our concept, direction, and/or threat list can be best addressed by an ability, as opposed to stats or movepool?

Everyone get the myth out of your heads that a high base speed is reasonable. The problem with these things is simple: investment. CAP5 can't afford to invest Effort Values into Speed when they're already going to be spread so thin across four of its stats. The only way we can possibly outspeed Latios and SubDisable Gengar is with Chlorophyll. The former is important to outspeed because it allows CAP5 to not have Cresselia-level Special Bulk yet still be able to check the latis. Secondly, Subdisable gengar cockblocks our CAP unless it either outspeeds or runs both Pursuit and Crunch, the former being accomplished only by Chloro and the latter being, well, impractical as all hell. If we want to spin against the #1 ghost or beat the #1 dragon, Chlorophyll is nearly a must.

To what degree does this ability encourage the presence of Sunlight? To what degree does it depend on Sunlight to be competitive? Does the ability discourage CAP's usage in rain?

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How does this ability support CAP's capacity to act as a pivot, either offensively or defensively? How does it contribute to CAP's synergy with other sun-based teammates?

Chlorophyll's utility as a pivoting Pokemon is offensive in nature. The only Pokemon I envision our CAP coming in on regularly without Chloro activated is Politoed, who can be handily beaten with Power Whip with or without the move. What it really helps with is forcing out things that threaten sun teams with an offensive presence: Scarfmence, Latios, Alakazam, Landorus. Yes, a lot of these pokemon can be pivoted on by Venu, but having a pokemon that doesn't need to sweep being able to do it is much more healthy.

Does the ability have potential to aid CAP in fulfilling or consolidating other roles necessary to the sun play style?

I think this is largely addressed by my response to #1: if you read doug's post, you'll see that spinning, killing lati@s, and killing toed are more than enough roles to make sun more effective in the ou meta.

erisia said:

Here's some traits that CAP5 would like to be able to satisfy to help it successfully fill its roles as determined in the concept assessment.

1. It needs to be able to take on Latios and Latias exceptionally well.
2. It needs to be able to switch into Water-types in Rainy conditions.
3. It needs to be able to spin reliably and effectively to promote Fire type sweepers like Volcarona.
4. It should not be able to be used almost as effectively on Rain teams, which intrinsically benefit Grass types more due to the Fire neutrality.
5. It could do with being able to remove Scald burns, as the only mons immune to its Burn will be hit super-effectively (or at best neutrally, if Sun is up) This is important as CAP5 is most likely going to be physically offensive, to better fulfill its trapper niche.

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Now that I have some actual free time, I'm going to provide some reasoning on why I think CAP5's primary ability should be Chlorophyll.

First of all, Chlorophyll helps CAP5 fulfill points 1) 3) and 4) that will help it achieve its concept goals.

Looking at point 1), and bearing in mind that we ideally want CAP5 to be able to soft-counter Latios if possible, CAP5 is either going to have to be capable of taking two powerful (possibly Specs) Draco Meteors if it switches in and is slower, or capable of taking one Draco Meteor if it outspeeds. Obviously the latter of these options is more reasonable and doesn't require an absurd amount of special bulk to fulfill, but the problem is, if CAP5 invests enough EVs to outspeed Latios, then it won't be able to invest in its defenses as much and Latios could probably break through anyways. Chlorophyll is an excellent solution to this problem, as in Sunlight, it allows CAP5 to outspeed Specs Latias with uninvested base 70 Speed, meaning it can invest in enough bulk to take the Specs Meteor and still be able to trap-kill it effectively. This means that we don't have to give CAP5 absurd special bulk, which would make checking it with the special attackers we want to promote (Ninetales, Rotom-H, etc) much harder. Other abilities such as Harvest and Natural Cure don't help us out as much with this problem, and would thus require higher overall stats to achieve our goals in beating Latios.

While there are concerns that this means CAP5 will be useless against Latios in Rain, this isn't really the case; CAP5 just wouldn't be able to switch into Latios and expect to follow it up with a kill. It could still come in after a death if necessary and Pursuit trap effectively, so I don't think this is as bad a problem as people are making it out to be. While Rain would make CAP5 worse at checking Latios, it wouldn't make it unable to check Latios like a lot of people are suggesting. No more so than a Harvest CAP with equivalent stats.

Looking at point 3), Chlorophyll would make CAP5 an extremely effective Rapid Spinner in Sun, while being mostly outclassed by Starmie, Tentacruel, and a few other candidates outside of Sun, depending on what Speed we decide to give this thing. Being able to spin against fast opponents has great utility; for instance, CAP5 could spin on +1 Dragonite while being foddered, breaking the Multiscale before dying and letting something like Mamoswine mop up. Alternatively, CAP5 could spin against an opponent like Landorus-T and intentionally be foddered to U-Turn, so you could bring in a 100% Volcarona or Dragonite of your own against their switch-in. High Speed inherently gives CAP5 more opportunities to be useful when spinning, which other abilities such as Harvest and Natural Cure don't really help CAP directly with, and given we're aiming to replace the current Rapid Spinners on Sun teams, this is a big advantage for Chlorophyll.

And yes, I'm poll-jumping in saying this thing gets Rapid Spin, but the only other way to deal with hazards outside of perfect play with Taunt is Magic Bounce... and that's not happening.

Looking at point 4), Chlorophyll obviously fulfills this criterion better than Natural Cure, Regenerator, Adaptability, or any other ability than those boosted directly by Sun, and this is important so that we can promote Fire types and demote Water types as efficiently as possible. However, I'm not as adamant as before on the view that "CAP5 will be used by Rain if we don't give it incentives to be used on Sun" Depending on Speed stat choices, we must bear in mind that Rain already has some of the best Rapid Spinners in the tier at its disposal, and it also has excellent defensive Grass-types such as Ferrothorn and Celebi that give CAP5 a lot of competition outside of Sun. Unless we make CAP5 stupidly good (which admittedly, would be possible given some of the ability suggestions, and the high stats required to beat Latios effectively without Chlorophyll), Rain doesn't have a massive reason to use CAP5 instead. The same could be said about Sand, although the choice of spinner would likely shift to Forretress or something. SO I guess it's not the end of the world if CAP5 gets a weather neutral ability. However, a Sun orientated ability certainly does nothing but help to fulfill it concept, and given Chlorophyll's utility in spinning and beating Latios without absurd stats, so we might as well go with a Sun-orientated ability to maximize CAP5's impact on type usage overall.

Chlorophyll doesn't address points 2) and 5) unfortunately, but it'd be silly to suggest that one ability can cover every eventuality. A secondary ability such as Harvest, Natural Cure, or Cloud Nine could help it in this regard.

Also, Chlorophyll will NOT NOT NOT make CAP5 into a Venusaur clone, or outclassed by Venusaur. We will most likely be giving CAP5 an entirely different movepool, stat spread, and possibly a competing ability, not to mention the fact that it will be satisfying a Spinner role and we're sick to death of sweepers after Aurumoth, so if you believe that CAP5 would become a Venusaur clone or competitor, you're being either paranoid or naive.

So I suppose those are my main reasons for supporting Chlorophyll as the primary ability. I really, really like Harvest as a secondary ability for the versatility it provides, but I think Chlorophyll is going to be more prescriptive on (and beneficial to) the stat spreads, so it makes practical sense to go for it as the primary ability when given the choice between the two. Again, we can give this thing absurd special bulk to soft-counter Latios instead, but the implications of that could be risky, and it might be difficult to make it a reality in the Stat Limit Discussion.

I'm not quite convinced that an ability that has no direct relation with sun will be sufficient for sticking us to the concept. The big three sun abilities being discussed - Harvest, Flower Gift and Chlorophyll - are going to be the most effective way of ensuring that we fulfill the concept. I believe that the ability stage is an opportunity to do something big and obvious, instead of leaving the concept to small details in movepool and stats that we'll inevitably get mixed up. I feel that problems in the ability stage had a distinct negative impact on the past three projects. I want to change this with CAP 5.

A lot of people have argued that Flower Gift's benefits can be replicated in stats. Technically, this is true. However, I would really like to stress that this is going to be difficult to pull off in stats without having really borked[-looking] stats or not doing everything we need to do with the stats. There are very, very few viable non-Steels that can claim to go toe-to-toe with offensive Dragons. Tyranitar is the go-to example and it has that Special Defense boost. We have precedent, and with Flower Gift we'd be using that precedent to marry CAP 5 to sun in a very decisive way.

Because of this approach, Flower Gift plays an important role in emphasizing the traits that CAP 5 needs to do its job in countering offensive threats. Typing already went a long way defensively, and Flower Gift bolsters the typing's strengths. CAP 5 is going to have a lot on its plate, and Flower Gift is a very efficient way to address that.

Now, I've seen the arguments against Flower Gift. It makes CAP 5 generally weaker against Politoed. It doesn't really address Scald burns. It might lower CAP 5's effectiveness in emergency outside-of-sun situations. I think that the fears of Ice Beam / Focus Blast Politoed are kind of overblown. Even if the Choice Scarf set beats non-Choice Scarf CAP 5 with prediction, is that necessarily a bad thing? I don't think that we should necessarily strive to counter every Water-type, just threaten them (which the typing does well enough). I think that Scald is kind of overblown, too, especially when we're supposedly toting a weather that will cut its already modest power in half.

Viability outside of sun is the big one. I don't think that the gap between normal CAP 5 and sun CAP 5 would warrant making normal CAP 5 suck or something. I think that some people are underestimating the power of some of the things that CAP 5 is supposed to threaten, leading to the notion that CAP 5 wouldn't have very good normal special bulk. Others might be overestimating the impact that something that is only super-awesome in the sun can really have on the metagame. Ironically, these fears could be precisely what CAP needs to keep on track and not start splurging in the stat and movepool stages. Regardless, we are expecting a lot out of CAP 5. I don't think that CAP 5 will be all that bad outside of sun, at least, not bad for long enough for Ninetales to get sun going again.

What I think some people need to realize is that there are quite a few Pokemon that seem like they should help sun, but are not actually used in sun. Celebi has Natural Cure, so why doesn't sun seem to use it? In a similar vein, I'm not really against Chlorophyll, but some of the arguments seem to simplify the situation a lot. I don't buy that we can easily compel a player not to max Speed on a Chlorophyll user, precisely because not much with Chlorophyll or Swift Swim is known not to at least invest heavily in Speed. When Swift Swim was allowed in concert with Drizzle, we had people spamming Kingdra, Kabutops and Ludicolo, all probably max Speed, and notably Ludicolo doesn't even have to use its setup move. I just think people need to be sure they know what they might be getting into when they support certain abilities.

Now, I think that all three of the big sun abilities we're considering would do really well for CAP 5, even if jas disagrees with Harvest. In the end, I just think that a sun-based ability will do the Pokemon and the project a lot of good. The only way - the ONLY way - to stop a bad guy of the sun... is a good guy of the sun. (Sorry, I just had to use that last line...)

erisia said:

1. It needs to be able to take on Latios and Latias exceptionally well.
2. It needs to be able to switch into Water-types in Rainy conditions.
3. It needs to be able to spin reliably and effectively to promote Fire type sweepers like Volcarona.
4. It should not be able to be used almost as effectively on Rain teams, which intrinsically benefit Grass types more due to the Fire neutrality.
5. It could do with being able to remove Scald burns, as the only mons immune to its Burn will be hit super-effectively (or at best neutrally, if Sun is up) This is important as CAP5 is most likely goingto be physically offensive, to better fulfill its trapper niche.

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Using that as a guide, I will further support Harvest by answering those points. #/2 means from a scale of 1-2 how well it preforms, 0/0 means the ability doesn't take effect with that condition.

1. LumRest with constant recovery via Harvest. As long as the Lati@s set isn't specifically designed to counter this CAP, this will be easy. Knock Off will be our eventual death, but regardless. 2/2

2. Grass-type. Predict with a Bug move? Type resist berry. You're screwed. This ability in no way hinders that. Harvest still works in Rain, albeit not reliably, thus balancing it out and still encouraging Sun. 2/2

3. Although Scrappy could help, why use Scrappy? Really, abilities can't really help this, so let's move on. 0/0

4. Admittably, point 2 counteracts this. This ability works in Rain; however, the reliability is low, so it's better in sunlight. 1/2

5. Lum berry. 2/2

So, the score? 7/8, at least in my opinion. Mission accomplished. If you want to argue, go ahead, but it's still pretty darn high. After all, not much else- not even Chlorophyll- achieves this.

I'd just like to make a small point about Flower Gift CAP5 potentially being too weak out of Sun. After thorough investigation, if we give CAP5 a powerful physical STAB like Power Whip, it would be able to 2HKO defensive Politoed without hazards or a Life Orb with even just base 70 attack, which is incidentally also enough to do some decent damage against Latios, almost threatening a OHKO with Crunch after SR, and definitely 2HKOing Latias without it. This attack stat also isn't enough for CAP5 to be broken in Sun even with a really high Speed stat like base 120, so long as we're sensible with coverage. So i don't really think we'll risk making CAP5 too weak unless we give it a terrible attack stat or just don't invest in attack at all. Just a random thought.

Now that the quoting is over let me discuss some things that a lof of people talk about and i disagree with. First, huge special bulk and better Speed than Lati@s are not the only ways to deal with the Eon Pokemon. Decent special bulk and Harvest + Lum Berry does that too.

Second, Water Absorb and Storm Drain are terrible options that defy the purpose of the typing we chose. We chose Grass as a typing for our CAP mainly to switch into Water-types that rain teams carry, and to be ablet o hit them back hard. If we give to the CAP one of those abilities, then we just tossed our reason to chose Grass into the river. We want to take advantage of the water resist that Grass type gives, not completely ignore it, because then why the hell did we pick that typing to begin with?

Also if we pick Natural Cure for the CAP, a comparison with Celebi cannot and should not be avoided. SpD Celebi is a pretty damn good check to Lati@s, counters almost every single water-type rain teams carry, provides a Ground resistance, and finally has good moves for a pivot (SR, U-turn, Heal Bell, Recover, T-Wave). Yet Celebi is never seen on Sun teams but is a staple on sand teams and is used a lot on rain teams too. So what are the differences that the CAP has compared to Celebi, regarding the role we want the CAP to fill, meaning the role of a pivot/check against Lati@s and Water-types, based only on the typing and the ability (Grass/Dark with Natural Cure)? Are those differences enough to make the CAP so different than Celebi, that not only it will be used in sun, but it will be used than it will be on any other weather?

Finally, i want to say that after thinking it over, i agree that we should pick abilities that work better in sun, to encourage the use of the CAP in sun. While jas is right in saying that even if we don't pick an ability that works better in sun we can still create a Pokemon that is best used on sun teams, i believe that finding which non sun related ability would create such a Pokemon is going to be almost impossible.

I'm throwing my support behind Flower Gift, Harvest, and Chlorophyll (in that order) as well for the primary ability. Since this is the only ability that will affect the stats, we should focus on building CaP5 around an ability that will keep it in sun. We can worry about abilities like Natural Cure, Regenerator, and the like during the secondary ability discussion.

inanimate blob said:

Solid Rock
. . . it doesn't work at all aesthetically [but] . . .

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You know, Filter exists as well and does the exact same thing, so I feel that we can choose WHICH of the two we want AFTER we see the artwork if we decided that we want one or the other of these for function. Incidentally, neither ability is a bad option.




Personally, I really like the idea of Thick Fat.
Part of what makes water ypes so dominant is that they pack ice-typed moves like it's their job, and that destroys grass's ability to "check" them as gamefreak intended. Thick fat takes away their weakness to ice, and takes away water types ability to frighten this mon out of play so easily, effectively allowing the mon to do what the CAP intends "to lessen the doinance of a dominant pokemon type". As for Latios, We'll deal with the stat distribution portion as it comes up . . . but ultimately wasn't the goal of this cap to combat a TYPING, and thick fat helps it combat that water typing decently well (especilly if it can pick up a coverage move or two for water types that pack some resistance to grass types).
FURTHERMORE, if we see the role of this pokemon as also acting as a sort of pivot out of rain, there's a good chance that YOUR team is going to want sunshine . . . in that case, you're already weak against fire, and thick fat helps to eschew the beating you'd take in the sunlight from fire just for doing your job.



Other abilities to consider:

Cloud Nine
if you're worried about weather boosted STAB attacks, ignoring the weather is a nice way to fix that worry. It kinda locks the mon into only hard coutering the typing it's supposed to counter when it was planning on running rain anyway, wheras Thick Fat is a more generalist pick and does a better job of adhering to the CAP's intention. All in all, a great potential ability, and certainly a great option for a 2nd or 3rd ability, but not my choice for his primary.

Storm Drain / Water Absorb
I'd hate to commit to one without knowing the direction we intend to take with the Mon's stats first since they have different responses to dealing with the same situation. Both do something good for the Mon though and let it hurt waters by punishing them for using STABs. If the CAP is scary enough, it could even discourage water types from using their STABs for much of the game so as not to risk a predicted switch-in which, alone, could help to elevate types screwed over by water STABS, and that helps to accomplish the "type elevation" that this CAP is supposed to. One, or both of these abilities have strong potential.


Adaptability / Regenerator
not much needs to be said about these two: one boosts the Mon's ability to threaten with strong, forceful STABs and the other lets it pivot effectively with little concern for attrition. Honestly they are just more reliably, less prediction-dependant alternatives to Storm Drain and Water Absorb respectively.



Dangerously attractive abilities:

I don't think this are awful ideas by any stretch, but they have spme traction at this point, and I don't know if that's such a good thing given the directio they take our CAP.

Chorophyll
I really really feel like this doesn't do much to separate it from EXISTING grass chorophyll users. Itd feel like we were just taking Shiftry and injecting it wih steroids, or chaning Venusaur's typing. Also, the ability may make the pokemon GOOD, but does it actualy fulfil the role our CAP is supposed to accomplish?
I feel that far too often we lose sight of the CAP concept and focus too much on things like checks and counters. We end up with a bunch of big trees, but no forrest. Mollux is a great example of this, he's a good pokémon that in no way really resembles the direction he was intended to take. I feel that that is EXACTLY what giving this CAP chlorophyll would do; it would no doubt prove to be a useful ability for the pokémon, but it would be one that doesn't help it fulfill it's concept. If you want the CAP to have a versitile alternative set, and Chorophyll fits the bill without being overpowered, it would make a fine secondary or tertiary ability, but I really think that's something to be considered AFTER we tailor it's stats towards the ability that we want to define our pokemon. Solar Power and Flower Gift have the same problems but in ways that are even worse IMO

Harvest
I get it, it's a potentially powerful ability that has some amazing synergy with Natural Gift and sunlight and it's WOEFULLY misused by gamefreak by, really, not giving it to any pokemon that could potentially use it well, but I feel that that' the main reason we're looking at this ability:
it ties our CAP to the sun to some extent, and it lets our CAP perform some fairly neat tricks that other pokémon can't really do very well, but it gives us a lot of constraints to avoid abuse cases and it, again, doesn't really promote a focused buff to its ability to specifically counter one or two types of pokemon reliably. (again... why have harvest Yache when you could just have thick fat?). It's a gimick pregnant with posibilites, but I just don't feel that THIS CAP is the place to explore it.



A bonus note for those who want Harvest for the CAP to have versitility.
You know, the CAP does have the potential to have three very different abilities, and your foe doesn't necessarily know which you have. Getting to choose between, for example, Thick Fat, Cloud Nine and Storm Drain for example would give the CAP a lot of potential uses to counter water types by tanking their coverage moves with thick fat, ignoring their weather with cloud nine or turning their STABs into free boosts for a more agressive moveset and feels less gimicky than giving our AP harvest just for "versatility"

I didn't want to post again so soon, but I feel a need to respond to alexwolf's post since I feel the attitude behind some of the responses is quite concerning. And this is not something specific to him, I get the same feeling from multiple people, so I just want to take a minute to address it.

It would allow the CAP to act as a better pivot against Water-types and Lati@s with the use of either Lum Berry + Rest or Sitrus Berry, which is supposed to be its primary role. It also does it way better than Natural Cure, as Rest + Lum Berry is better than Natural Cure + Rest/Recover and even Lum Berry alone outclasses it, as even if burned or toxiced it can still easily remain healthy and threaten back with status or removal of hazards, if we give it Rapid Spin. Also i don't see why the other options that Harvest allows for are troubling you... As long as Harvest can be used to make the CAP a better pivot, why does it matter if it has other uses as well, if they don't make rain any better that is.

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The thing that stands out immediately here is the attitude that anything that makes it better is a good thing. I don't know how much everyone knows about the history of the CAP project, but I can emphatically say this is about as far from the truth as you can get. We are going to try and stop Latios and Latias, and Harvest is a defensively tuned ability, meaning we are likely going to trying and beat them through defense not offense, should we get it. The bulk required to do this job is quite immense, and immunity to status and single turn instant full recovery is obscenely powerful. Need I remind everyone that we have an otherwise mediocre pokemon in Manaphy sitting in Ubers because of the ability to do something like this. Now, I am not saying that Harvest is broken. But I am saying that the cavalier atitude of "its better so we should use it" does not make for a valid argument. And aside from that the sentiment of "why does it matter if it has other uses as well" is very dangerous as I addressed in my last post. It doesn't matter how well it can do what we want it to do if it can do something we don't want it to just as well. If a single good way of using it is contradictory to the concept, then the entire Pokemon will likely fail. Remember, this concept is not just about making sun more powerful. It is about increasing the usage of types, and if we just end up increasing power levels all around rather than specificially shifting the ratio of usage towards sun, then we will not have succeeded.

Now don't take this as me trying to make a case against Harvest. I already addressed it last post, and I acknowledge that it has positives alongside the negatives. I just wanted to address this type of argument that in general can cause grave problems for projects like this.

capefeather said:

What I think some people need to realize is that there are quite a few Pokemon that seem like they should help sun, but are not actually used in sun. Celebi has Natural Cure, so why doesn't sun seem to use it? In a similar vein, I'm not really against Chlorophyll, but some of the arguments seem to simplify the situation a lot. I don't buy that we can easily compel a player not to max Speed on a Chlorophyll user, precisely because not much with Chlorophyll or Swift Swim is known not to at least invest heavily in Speed. When Swift Swim was allowed in concert with Drizzle, we had people spamming Kingdra, Kabutops and Ludicolo, all probably max Speed, and notably Ludicolo doesn't even have to use its setup move. I just think people need to be sure they know what they might be getting into when they support certain abilities.

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Celebi isn't used on Sun teams because it's a thoroughly mediocre response to Rain. It has average defenses, can't take on Dragons at all, and provides very little support to a Sun team that it really needs. Celebi cannot use Rapid Spin, cannot counter Latios, cannot do a thing to Latias without Perish Song, cannot Pursuit, and has generally poor stats without investment. CAP5, on the other hand, will probably deal with both Lati twins very easily, have Pursuit, maybe even Rapid Spin, and the bulk to handle Draco Meteors and still invest in offensive stats.

Unlike Celebi, we're designing this Pokemon to be the glue every Sun team needs. Natural Cure lets this Pokemon contend with Politoed, Gastrodon, Jellicent, every Pokemon that can use Thunder and paralyze us, and everything that commonly uses Toxic without fearing permanent status problems. Just as Rain employs numerous Pokemon, many of whom Water-type, that can throw status around, giving Sun a Pokemon that can both absorb status and tank Water and Electric moves gives Sun and its Fire-type friends a big leg up over the competition.

However, there are concerns that Natural Cure would be good on a Rain team. In fact, can anyone think of a better partner for Keldeo and Thundurus than a physically-attacking Natural Cure mon with great Special bulk Note:(these are not guaranteed, but those who frequent the IRC channel almost unanimously believe the final product will attack physically and defend Specially. I am not endorsing those stat biases, but I can confirm they are very popular) Those claims are incorrect because on a Rain team, CAP5 will contend with Ferrothorn for a team slot, and honestly Ferrothorn is the gold standard of defense on a Rain team. Even if we accidentally design Keldeo's Perfect Mate(TM), CAP5 would probably not fit on a Rain team that well because it compounds Ferrothorn's weaknesses while failing to compound its strengths.

Harvest is also an ability I like on this Pokemon, as it first and foremost promotes use in Sun and gives this Pokemon two great options for the item slot. You have hands-free healing in Harvest+Sitrus Berry or automatic Refresh with Harvest+Lum. These are great benefits for those of us who prioritize status immunity or ensuring we defeat Latios and Gengar, as the auto-restoration to over 50% HP when you dip under guarantees us at least one extra switch into the high-Special Attack Pokemon we need to counter. However, one problem with Harvest+Sitrus is that it is extremely unreliable after the first use. If your HP ever drops below 25%, you Harvest the Berry twice, sure, but once you've consumed it the second time it doesn't grow back. That means you're stuck between 50% and 75% without an item after your first switch-in.

On the other hand, Harvest and Lum together make a great status-stopping combo. Scald burns, Toxic, and paralysis do not affect this Pokemon if it continually heals it off with Lum and immediately Harvests the Berry. What matters most, here, is that it is a Sun-based ability, which almost immediately makes this ability concept-friendly. The only concern is that this ability can also work in Rain, as 50% effectiveness still makes this ability a souped-up Shed Skin.

But as you just pointed out, isn't CAP5 competing with Ferrothorn for a place on Rain teams? Harvest isn't as much as menace in rain as it is in Sun, and it also adds on to Ferro's weaknesses. I see very few reasons why Harvest CAP5 would be used on rain teams.

Eol said:

But as you just pointed out, isn't CAP5 competing with Ferrothorn for a place on Rain teams? Harvest isn't as much as menace in rain as it is in Sun, and it also adds on to Ferro's weaknesses. I see very few reasons why Harvest CAP5 would be used on rain teams.

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I think one of the things we're attempting to avoid is having a Pokémon that can function well on Rain teams, only against Rain teams. In this way, lesser-used types could arise from a "nerfed" Rain.

Supporting this, however, I see another issue with Harvest - it depends on having the berry at all times. As such, moves such as Trick and Bug Bite are viable threats to CAP5, if we choose to go with Harvest.

Now, Bug Bite isn't too much of an issue. It's mainly used on Scizor, and why would you stay in with a Dark/Grass type on a Scizor anyway?

No, the real threat lies with Trick. Now, you're probably thinking but most Pokémon suffer when Tricked. This is true, but take into consideration two of the Pokémon we're trying to "nerf" with CAP5 - Lati@s. Lati@s is able to carry Trick, and as such, having CAP5 come in and try to threaten it out with its berry may actually encourage the use of Lati@s as a counter, assuming your opponent doesn't feel like using either other huge threat with Trick, Rotom-W and Jirachi. Effectively, if you try to build a Pokémon off of an ability that can fairly easily be shut down, the Pokémon it's attempting to counter may end up actually being good counters to it.

Even though I agree CAP5 holding specs would become close to a dead weight, you have to admit a Latios holding a Sitrus Berry is far less threatening than one with Choice Specs.

I don't think that any one ability can leave no holes open. Other playstyles can use some abilities and others have flaws besides that. Natural Cure/Regenerator don't really lean towards sun any more then they do towards rain or sand. Harvest is better in sun, but there are definitely possibilities to use it on other teams. Chlorophyll must have sun, but outside out this one type of weather, it is a useless ability, and furthermore, it doesn't address status problems. The other abilities mentioned also have their own downsides.

For the primary ability, it needs to be sun-related so that we fulfill the concept clearly. I support Harvest because it does better in sun than out of sun, so it will help to boost those sun types we want, but it can also function in different weather conditions. That is where chlorophyll and flower gift lose me: If you make a bad prediction and Ninetales dies, or you have some bad hax, you don't only lose your weather, but CAP5 becomes much less useful as well. Harvest would at least let this pokemon continue to be help to the team. Also, since CAP5 can only have one berry at a time, it is certainly beatable. A skilled player with a well-built team should be able to find out which berry it is holding, and exploit the other weakness(if Lum, repetitive damage; if Sitrus, use status).

Yes, other playstyles will use it, yes it is almost a bit too versatile, and yes it loses to trick and knock off, but what ability can close all these loopholes: None. Harvest will push sun's usage up, and therefore fulfill our chosen concept.

Much like Korski tried to save Grass/Dragon with a final post in Typing, I'll try the same here for Cloud Nine.

I feel as though a lot of very unintelligent things are being said about Cloud Nine as an ability for CAP5. I'm not saying it has to be the ability. But here are the criticisms I have seen and my confusions/refutations:

Beats Scizor:
I admitted fully in my first post about Cloud Nine making HP Fire an easy kill on any Scizor regardless of weather. One thing to remember is if Scizor's not under Rain that's a likely OHKO anyway. Second of all, we can fix that strength against Scizor by making Bullet Punch a 2HKO against CAP5 so that CAP5 still can't switch into Scizor, even on a neutral Bullet Punch. As a side note, being 2HKOed by a neutral CB Scizor Bullet Punch is not weak or uncommon. That's pretty par for the course in OU.

Could be used on other weathers, even as a switch-in against sun:
This is partly madness, partly fair. So the clear advantage of Cloud Nine is easing the switch-in for Sun teams against Water attacks, essentially starting us off taking 2/3 the damage we'd be taking if Rain were up. This is a significant amount. On the other hand, using a Cloud Nine Grass Pokemon makes no sense on a Rain team. It helps and hurts the wrong types. It doesn't even help against the key thing Cloud Nine could affect - Chlorophyll. We can make CAP5 lose to Venusaur regardless of the weather. It wouldn't even be that hard. Just be slower, so you get Sleep Powdered/Sludge Bombed. Now for a Sand team, a Cloud Nine CAP5 could find use, maybe. But I struggle to see just how it deserves a team slot. As a Rain counter, Sand has Gastrodon and Jellicent who perform quite well. Again, it wouldn't even help against Venusaur, and it's still weak to Fire, so it's not directly threatening Sun's sweepers in any way, even with the temporary weather removal. It really only helps Sun. It weakens Rain's spamming that so threatens Sun today and also helps against passive Sandstorm damage. I disagree with the statement that Cloud Nine is equally useful against all weathers. We're not talking about Cloud Nine in te abstract. We're talking about it in the context of a Grass type Pokemon aimed at helping Sun teams and hurting Waters. There, it clearly does its job.

Once Politoed is dead, it's pretty useless:
Um....... ok? I'll take it. Wouldn't a Sun team be willing to trade anything 1 for 1 with opposing Politoed? Seriously? That was a concern?

Increases accuracy of Hurricanes as compared to Sun:
Yes, from 50% to 70%. It also decreases them as compared to rain from 100% to 70%. And as has been discussed before, Hurricane is a much smaller threat now with Tornadus-T banned.

Cloud Nine neglects the concept:
The concept is to aid Sun. Not necessarily to make a Sun abuser i.e. Harvest, Chlorophyll etc. One way to aid Sun is to provide a good switch-in to, say, Specs Toed's Hydro Pumps. It has even been suggested that with Cloud Nine, CAP5 could run Hidden Power Water and threaten Sun teams. May I remind you that CAP5 can already "threaten" Sun teams with HP Rock. Don't talk about paper tigers as if they're real. If Sun teams lost to a Grass type carrying a super-effective Hidden Power, they'd be a bit beyond redemption. Clearly they're not that weak.

The Water spammage can be handled with good stats anyways:
I mean sure they can. But even Celebi, with it's 100/100 special bulk has to invest. Offensive Celebi sets are 2HKOed by Specs Toed. That's hardly a reliable long-term switch in. So unless we're advocating that CAP5 become a dedicated Special Wall with its EVs, it's going to have to have insane natural Special Bulk just to switch into the resisted attacks. And yes, Sun teams need a good switch-in to Specs Toed. Ninetales can't come in safe. It's a 2HKO there too, plus Ninetales hates hazards.



We decided we wanted to threaten Water types and Latis. We can threaten Latios with Pursuit after Latios has weakened itself to -2. Heck, we can give CAP5 Sucker Punch if we absolutely feel we must. But one thing cannot be changed by a move alone: Sun lacks good switchins to spammy Hydro Pump. If Rain is up, Venusaur takes at least half damage from just about anything's Hydro Pump. And Sun isn't even up, so Venusaur will likely be outsped and KOed the following turn. CAP5 can help there with one simple addition of Cloud Nine. That's the biggest impact I can see any ability making.

If you still see clear-cut reasons for why Cloud Nine is not good for the project, please provide a detailed response. I want to know why it's wrong. Because it sure seems right to me.

I think a point should be addressed, since it has being mentioned already a couple of times in this discussion. While I like Harvest and all, there's no way you can check offensive Latios without resorting to Sitrus or Haban Berry. Some users (alexwolf comes to mind, but I guess some others assumed that too I guess) said that only average special bulk (90/90 if I remember correctly) will do the trick, even if holding a Lum. Now, let's do some calcs since noone posted any (yeah, this may be poll jumping again, but it's intended to show what levels of bulk are required to switch into Latios and live if not holding Sitrus / Haban, or outspeeding, or having Flower Gift in sun.

All the calcs assume 252 SpA Choice Specs Latios Draco Meteor agains 252/252+ CAP5.
(Keldeo level special bulk) 90 HP / 90 SpD: 264-312 (68.75 - 81.25%)
(Jirachi+ level special bulk) 100 HP / 105 SpD: 238-282 (58.91 - 69.8%)
(Latias level special bulk) 80 HP / 130 SpD: 205-243 (56.31 - 66.75%)

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If CAP5 doesn't outspeed and doesn't hold the two previously mentioned berries (maybe we should exclude Salac too), it won't realistically be able to do anything before taking two of them. Considering Stealth Rock, to be able to take two Draco Meteors it needs to take less than 58.67% damage from a DM, since if we're assuming it's taking two of them, (58.67% * 1.5) = 88%, add SR in the mix and we have a dead CAP5. In most of the cases outlined here, CAP5 fails to take this kind of damage even with minimum damage rolls and maximum special bulk. While I see the merits of Harvest, it's cool in general, allows very high level of versatility, reliable recovery in Rest, whatever, to accomplish our goal (that was very explicitly stated in the previous thread by DJD: "We want CAP 5 to be an effective "answer" for the Latis", "CAP5 will be a one-stop shop for handling Lati@s in all its common forms", etc) we are forced to use Sitrus or Haban or Salac. This is not to say it's unacceptable or something, just don't expect to run LumRest while not outspeeding AND be a reliable answer to Latios; Sitrus is cool in my opinion, but it's almost a forced choice if we go that route and want to check Latios.

This is basically the idea that makes me more likely to support Flower Gift and Clorophyll: they allow us to switch into Latios in Sun without having to worry about very, very good special bulk (if you guys don't consider very good the special bulk of Jirachi or Latias, we're in a disagreement here...).

Korski said:

So, points of discussion for proposing abilities:

• Considering CAP's typing, which aspects of our concept, direction, and/or threat list can be best addressed by an ability, as opposed to stats or movepool?
• To what degree does this ability encourage the presence of Sunlight? To what degree does it depend on Sunlight to be competitive? Does the ability discourage CAP's usage in rain?
• How does this ability support CAP's capacity to act as a pivot, either offensively or defensively? How does it contribute to CAP's synergy with other sun-based teammates?
• Does the ability have potential to aid CAP in fulfilling or consolidating other roles necessary to the sun play style?

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I have decided to take the time to answer these questions for a few abilities I'm throwing my vote behind, with long explanations for each.

NOTE: ALL CALCULATIONS I DO FOR CAP 5 ARE WITH BASIC 80/80/80 DEFENSES, UNINVESTED, NEUTRAL NATURES. ALL CALCULATIONS ARE THEORETICAL AND SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN TO BE A SUGGESTION FOR ACTUAL STATS, THEY ARE JUST FOR THE PURPOSES OF MY EXAMPLES. I simply used the average base stats for fully evolved Grass mons, averaged with the average base stats for fully evolved Dark mons, then rounded to the nearest 10 (got those average base stats from Bulbapedia).

Thick Fat



Adaptability



Cloud Nine



Natural Cure and Regenerator

Yeah, I'm leaning more and more to either Chlorophyll or Flower Gift. A major issue I had with Chlorophyll is that it doesn't help in the match up versus Toad, because you won't have your speed boost then. But honestly, Toad is only sitting at 70 speed. I see no reason why we can't sit at a comfortable 75 speed and always outspeed Toad naturally, while needing the Sun boost to get more comfortable fighting chances against Lati@s.

I didn't like Flower Gift for the exact same reason, it basically relies on Sun to net a decent Sp.Def, because I assume that if we choose this ability, I'd assume we'd factor in this ability in the stat department. But honestly, all we have to do is have enough base Sp.Def to counter the Toad, which we fare rather well against because of typing. And for Lati@s again, we'll need the Flower Gift boost again to be able to very comfortably tank the Draco Meteor's.

Of course, in both situations, both abilities will have one haeck of a time against a Lati@s on a rain team, as it kind of relies on said abilities in combination with Sun to actually check these mons, which could be an issue.

Another thought that's just slipped my mind (again, possibly concerning Flower Gift) We keep saying that we don't want CAP5 to have absurd special bulk... but having a look at the things we want to threaten us, none of them solely use special attacks, and those that do either have Bug or Fire STAB. I've got a list of things below that still threaten CAP5 if we give it, say, Blissey level bulk while Flower Gift is active and fully invested, while leaving it with modest physical bulk.

That's a pretty big list, and by no means is it exhaustive, and doesn't it look very, very close to our current threat list? Yes Ninetales isn't on there, but bleh, it can still Wisp CAP. So if you're concerned about massive special bulk removing threats from our threat list... that's not the case. And massive special bulk sure makes checking Latios a hell of a lot easier... Even with out Flower Gift, an uninvested 69HP / 180 SpD CAP5 can take a Specs Latios Draco Meteor (or two Scarf Meteors) and follow it up with Life Orb Crunch without dying, meaning it's certainly not useless in Rain, while still getting much better in Sun. Combined with my previous post about Flower Gift, I'm seeing fewer and fewer reasons to think Flower Gift would be broken, as long as we're careful with the Attack stat. Looking back at the criteria I answered from my earlier point, Flower Gift also satisifies points 1) 2) and 3), sorta satisifying point 4) and not being affected by point 5) So at this stage it's either Flower Gift or Chlorophyll for the primary ability imo, as they are more constrictive on stats than the also awesome Harvest.

EDIT: To the below, that's exactly my point. We can give this thing absurd special bulk and it'll still be threatened by the things we want it to be threatened by, as discussed earlier. This is a good thing, as it means CAP can wall latios all day with blissey level bulk while still being threatened by a lot of Fire, Bug, and Ice types.

erisia said:

Things that still threaten us

• Scizor, lol
• Ferrothorn, can probably 2HKO with Gyro Ball
• Dragonite, could either set up on us or kill with Outrage
• Jirachi, any set with Fire Punch or U-Turn
• Heatran, still 2HKOs with Balloon Fire Blast
• Breloom, can Mach Punch us to death
• Terrakion, if it can switch in safely
• Keldeo, Secret Sword bypasses SpD
• Salamence, slightly worse than Dragonite
• Volcarona, always 2HKOs with Bug Buzz and can set up
• Skarmory, walls and KOs with Brave Bird
• Mamoswine, if it can switch in safely
• Infernape, hits hard with physical STABs, U-Turn
• Cloyster, can still hit hard
• Lucario, lol
• Kyurem-B, lol
• Toxicroak
• Conkeldurr
• Hydreigon, if it has Superpower

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We WANT to be threatened by Bug-types, Steel-types, Fire-types, and some Fighting-types. The only Pokémon from that list who we REALLY don't want to be threatened by are Keldeo and Cloyster. Most of the others we are fine with being threatened by, as they aren't what we will be switching in against anyways.

Okay, now this is going to seem really contradictory to what pretty much everyone else is saying, but I truly beleive this is the right direction, so here goes:

We should not give CAP5 a good ability.

Drop the pitchforks and torches and hear me out for a minute. As it stands CAP 5 is going to need some pretty insane special bulk and at least modest attack to get its job done, which is going to put huge strains on balance. So it only makes sense to start cutting out unnesescary things, and as it stands CAP5 doesn't really NEED any ability, but it does need great stats.

Ergo, we should go with something like Water Veil, an ability that does something nice for CAP5 while not really being anything to write home about. Since the most important stage has yet to come, and will require some pretty generous allocations, it makes more sense to be conservative for now.

Also Water Veil's kind of nice because it lets us eat scalds without worry about burns.

nyttyn said:

We should not give CAP5 a good ability.

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While your point is understandable and has its merits, I don't see how we can then make our CAP5 better in Sun compared to the other environments. Rain will surely appreciate a mon able to Pursuit trap Latis, Jellicent, and Celebi for Keldeo, that doesn't care about burns, can Rapid Spin (judging from the threats discussion, it is not unlikely CAP5 will have access to it) and doesn't even change the weather like TTar does. Flower Gift forces the player to run Sun (or Sunny Day at least, I guess) which directly hampers Keldeo and Rain mons in general. Clorophyll does the same, in a different fashion. Harvest preserves a good amount of usefulness even in Rain, and that's a legitimate concern too; however choosing the no-ability route basically ensures CAP5 will be good in other weathers too, and while this does not threaten Sun directly, it has the potential to make Sand / Rain better, which can make more unlikely the achievement of our goal.

ganj4lF said:

While your point is understandable and has its merits, I don't see how we can then make our CAP5 better in Sun compared to the other environments. Rain will surely appreciate a mon able to Pursuit trap Latis, Jellicent, and Celebi for Keldeo, that doesn't care about burns, can Rapid Spin (judging from the threats discussion, it is not unlikely CAP5 will have access to it) and doesn't even change the weather like TTar does. Flower Gift forces the player to run Sun (or Sunny Day at least, I guess) which directly hampers Keldeo and Rain mons in general. Clorophyll does the same, in a different fashion. Harvest preserves a good amount of usefulness even in Rain, and that's a legitimate concern too; however choosing the no-ability route basically ensures CAP5 will be good in other weathers too, and while this does not threaten Sun directly, it has the potential to make Sand / Rain better, which can make more unlikely the achievement of our goal.

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Actually, I agree with both of you, if that makes sense at all.

While CAP5 is hoped to work well on Sun teams, I've always been under the impression that a good Pokèmon needs a few options if people are going to use it - some Pokèmon are able to get by off of one great asset, like Scizor, while some Pokèmon work off the basis of multiple great sets, like Breloom. So, perhaps a Sun ability for those in need of helping a Sun team, or perhaps a crappy ability for those who need a good Pokèmon but have no chance of ever using Sun.

I understand one of the points of CAP5 is to help Sun and other lesser-used types rise in usage, but maybe the way we need to look at this Pokèmon is like with Jirachi - lots of great sets means lots of great Pokèmon.

Some "crap abilities" we could look at could be things like Filter, Water Veil, Water Absorb, or maybe Unaware.