CAP 34 - Part 2 - Defining Moves 1

[Tunana]

I would like to argue that Boomburst is probably an okay option for this CAP as long as we approach it with a few caveats in mind. When looking at the main prior Throat Spray users with Boomburst, Kommo-O and Toxtricity, it's possible to identify why Kommo-O has Throat Spray as its most common item while Toxtricity only has it as an alternative item to Specs.

• Toxtricity has access to pivoting in Volt Switch, which helps Specs sets come in and out of the battle while dealing large amounts of chip damage. The ability to pivot and come in relatively easily several times throughout the course of the battle makes the constant damage boost that Choice Specs applies more reliable on Toxtricity rather than Kommo-O, who has no access to pivoting and would prefer to only come in once throughout the battle.
• The other factor that makes Throat Spray much better on Kommo-O is the method of activation. Being able to increase speed with Clangorous Soul while also setting up your Throat Spray allows Kommo-O to fire off +2 Boombursts just one turn after setting up. Toxtricity, on the other hand, has to set up Shift Gear, then Boomburst or Overdrive, and only then does your Throat Spray activate along with the speed required to sweep. Taking two extra turns to position your sweep make you far more vulnerable to being killed in that time rather than only taking one turn to get everything in place, which makes Toxtricity prefer to have the immediate raw power that Specs provide.
• There might also be something to be said about Toxtricity's raw power enabling Specs better. It has 14 more Special Attack than Kommo-O, and Punk Rock elevates the power of Boomburst to a staggering 184 base power. This makes the move far more spammable on Toxtricity.

Overall, I don't think Boomburst is necessarily a problem with regards to wanting to run Throat Spray over Choice Specs. If we approach Boomburst while keeping in mind to avoid what can make Specs the preferred option, it could definitely be a positive move addition to CAP 34.

 

[Da Pizza Man]

Gonna post a few quick thoughts. Wanted to make a post going more in depth but I was busier at work today than I was expecting.

Eerie Spell: ngl, this move is just straight up garbage. PP Draining isn't super appealing on offensive mons in general (Unless you are like SubRoost Kyurem, but even that requires a specific build I don't really see happening with this concept), but the move being fairly weak and having barely any PP relative to its power doesn't bode well for it either. Psychic Noise is always going to be a way better option, since in exchange for only a teensy tiny bit weaker, does not suffer from having to deal with low PP and has a secondary effect that synergizes way better with most of the potential routes we can take here.

Boomburst: I'm quite confused around this discourse surrounding this move, ngl. Boomburst is a solid, reliable option that we can work with as strong secondary coverage that could be kinda cool to work with, and I think that a lot of the concerns just came from people not wanting to create another Boomburst bot. mark6780 already did a fairly good job at explaining how, even if Boomburst would make us Tera Normal on every build (Which I actually disagree with btw. That's just a really shallow way of looking at this.), it still wouldn't devalue the importance of our original typing. However, I'm not going to expand on that too much as I want to avoid polljumping.

Clangorous Soul: This move is about as exciting as watching paint dry. That being said, it's already proven that it synergizes well with Throat Spray, so I think it would be fine to go with this even if I would prefer not to.

 

[shnowshner]

I'm fine with Boomburst as one of our defining moves, I think it has a good amount of flexibility available given the raw strength of the move with or without STAB, and there's a good amount of Abilities we can use that interact with it or help in taking advantage of Throat Spray. I've seen talk about other Boomburst users and tbh I'm not buying it. Any of the CAPs that have/had Boomburst either do not use it or are not used period, and a lot of actual Pokemon with Boomburst struggle to make an impact in OU. If you're concerned about Boomburst potentially driving us away from Throat Spray please realize we have both Typing and Ability stages coming up that will almost certainly work towards actualizing Throat Spray as our go-to item.

Clangorous Soul immediately drives us towards utilizing Throat Spray and is the safest option going forward. I am not terribly interested in it given the existence of another Pokemon which does this exact thing in Kommo-o, however it would give us an opportunity to refine this niche so that it feels genuinely playable in CAP. I agree with the sentiment that Kommo-o isn't a good user of Clangorous Soul, it just happens to be the only one that gets the move ignoring Sketch. It's perhaps the most valid route to follow if our greatest concern is having 34 run Throat Spray.

Sparkling Aria/Alluring Voice/Overdrive are harmless STAB moves and have little reason not to be considered going forward. Psychic Noise has a strong enough secondary effect that it's probably worthwhile even without STAB, so long as we have great synergy with Typing and Ability. It's a great compliment to our predicted role as an HO sweeper, either using the move to weaken something for a teammate, or abusing its effect to run through an otherwise insurmountable wall.

IDK where the discourse on Bug Buzz came from, if our activation move is an attack, we want to be forcing the opponent's hand by dealing significant damage and boosting at once. Bug Buzz is not threatening anything. This isn't the CAP looking to make incremental progress, it wants to cause problems immediately.

 

[snake]

To cap off my thoughts in this thread, I want to just comment on the power of the options we've converged on in this thread. The boost that Throat Spray provides to CAP34 is great but ultimately just a +1 boost. It's going to take a concerted effort to make the boost go the distance, especially in a metagame with as many competent sweepers as SV CAP. We still have plenty of steps to facilitate this, but I want to scrutinize our shortlist of moves one more time with this perspective.

Overdrive and Alluring Voice, while not bad options, are very underwhelming at just 80 Base Power. For a sweeper that's getting only a +1 boost (and doesn't have the option to boost to +2 like a Calm Mind sweeper one), it's likely going to need a very high special attack stat and the STAB boost to make it work. These are viable paths, but that's just the reality of these moves. Psychic Noise is slightly more redeemable for having a fairly oppressive secondary effect, but it is still very weak in terms of pure damage output. Sparkling Aria's competent 90 Base Power makes it more redeeming compared to these other options. Clanging Scales's 110 Base Power is where I think the Special Attack stat might not need to be "very high" anymore. On the other hand, Boomburst's 140 Base Power is undeniably excellent, but STAB Boomburst dwarfs most other moves' effective power, so it feels hard to count on STAB Boomburst while not making CAP34 hit like a wet paper sack when it chooses another attacking move. That is to say: non-STAB Boomburst should be on the table as one of CAP34's integral tools when considering these 6 moves.

However, this is where Clangerous Soul comes in. If we build around Clangerous Soul, CAP34 will be a sweeper build that uses Throat Spray. There won't be the danger of it potentially switching to Choice Specs because we can most certainly make Clangerous Soul the most lucrative set. Restraints such as choosing typing for certain STABs, choosing ability to make Throat Spray worthwhile, and choosing just how high CAP34's Special Attack has to be become much looser when we know Clangerous Soul is on the table. I really think this move is good for this project and we shouldn't just throw it aside because it's a strong option.

I don't really like the argument that Clangerous Soul CAP34 will just be Kommo-o 2.0. Saying "giving any existing Pokemon Clangerous Soul would make it similar to Kommo-o to be worth exploring” feels an extremely hard position to defend. We can tailor CAP34 to use Clangerous Soul perfectly, rather than Kommo-o's more jack-of-all-trades build. Least of all: Kommo-O isn't used in OU/CAP, so the typing, ability, stat spread, and moves should all have differences compared to Kommo-o. Clangerous Soul might be the most straightfoward approach to fulfilling the concept, but sometimes the straightforward approach is the right option.

 

[SHSP]

I wanna start off this closing post with a huge thanks to everyone for the great discussion and conversation, you guys really make my job a whole lot easier with great posts. Moving forward, our defining moves pool for this first leg of the process will be Overdrive, Sparkling Aria, Psychic Noise, Alluring Voice, Clanging Scales, Boomburst and Clangorous Soul. These moves really should be in consideration as we move through the early steps, and narrowing it down to this list keeps our options open for good discussion in typing and ability while offering us some much-needed direction. Boomburst and Clangorous Soul were both divisive at points, but it makes the most sense to have them in consideration as we go forward. Though both are among the strongest of options decided on in this stage, they shouldn't center discussion any more than the rest of the defining moves pool.

With that being said, I'm ready and excited to hand off to ausma for our next step!