Policy Review Power Level in ORAS

[Bughouse]

approved by Birkal

I think it is clear to most people that our 3 ORAS CAPs have been a model of restraint. Too much restraint in fact. None of the 3 made any noticeable impact in their playtest metas and would all have been B-ranked at best in OU viability rankings, probably B-. In the past, I've always liked the idea of CAPs being high B-, low A-ranked type mons. I've never wanted to make something super centralizing, so I have been every bit a part of this problem as anyone else.

But it needs to change. The CAP mindset of the power level to which we build is stuck in BW and is holding CAP back.

First of all, aiming towards high B no longer seems appropriate. There are currently 53 mons ranked A- or higher. That's almost all of an entire OU tier, in past gens! Mega Pokemon have inflated this number themselves, but even then it's also just true that OU is more diverse now than it's been in the past and this probably also has to do with the fact that there are around 20 different Megas you might use in OU and each of them might want different teammates.

CAP should explicitly be seeking to make an A-rank Pokemon for the ORAS metagame. That is an appropriate level to make a noted impact in the average game, and not be a burden to build around like Naviathan, Volkraken, and Plasmanta were.

A-rank may have sounded high in past metas. But in BW there are 33 Pokemon in A-rank. In DPP there are 25. In ADV there are 15. There has been a very evident amount of power creep of how many Pokemon can be considered "really good" in a generation. CAP was created in DPP days and Build Triangle came in BW days. These assumptions about power level we have previously had may no longer apply. I was talking about power level on IRC about a month ago. Here's a nugget of some particularly relevant lines of chat:

19:36:37: <bughouse> CAP may need to just acknowledge the power creep in some way, idk
19:36:47: <bughouse> I don't like violating the triangle
19:37:16: <DetroitLolcat> it's just the everything in the triangle is amplified so much these days
19:37:30: <DetroitLolcat> and that quite a few mons (cough mega meta) just straight-up violate it.

------------------------

I will now follow up this introduction of the general power level situation with my specific perceptions about power among non-mega Pokemon in current OU.

 

[Bughouse]

So, what characterizes the (non-mega) Pokemon in A-rank?

Many of these I don't even have to describe. You instantly know. They've got a super unique aspect to them, which typically CAP would consider to be railroading the process or would be worried would break the Pokemon. These are:

• Azumarill
• Bisharp
• Manaphy
• Thundurus
• Klefki
• Magnezone
• Politoed
• Tyranitar
• Hippowdon
• Talonflame
• Gliscor
• Alakazam
• Serperior
• Volcarona
• Excadrill
• Torandus-T (yes Regenerator is that good)
• Slowbro (yes Regenerator is that good)

So now what's left? I know we don't ever talk BST here, but let's be realistic. There's a whole group right now I can distinguish from CAPmons. The 3 ORAS CAPmons have had BSTs of 555, 565, and 560. Obviously BST alone isn't the answer. There are plenty of mons with 600 BST that aren't even good. But if you want to be A rank and you don't have Contrary/Quiver Dance/weather setting/etc... you frequently seem to need more BST:

• Mew
• Celebi
• Latios
• Latias
• Jirachi
• Garchomp
• Heatran
• Landorus-T
• Kyurem-B
• Keldeo (at 580 but best offensive non-mega, and would easily be 600 without an Atk dump stat)

Two things to keep in mind... First of all, these mons don't JUST have 600 BST. They have other huge benefits, most often it seems related to entry hazards. Second of all, you also can have 600 BST AND a defining characteristic separated out in the first category and still be just A rank. Thundurus, Manaphy, Volcarona, and Tyranitar all do it.

So where does that leave us? This is every other A rank mon that isn't in either of the first 2 lists:

• Gengar
• Ferrothorn
• Rotom-W
• Skarmory
• Starmie
• Weavile
• Gyarados
• Raikou

This is a harder group to define, but Ferrothorn, Rotom-W, Skarmory, Starmie, and Raikou (when AV) generally fit in the "glue-mon" category, and like above, also have a lot to do with entry hazards.

The only offensive threats in A-rank that are not megas, don't have access to something as gamebreaking as Belly Drum or Quiver Dance, and don't have ~600 BST are Gengar, Weavile, and Gyarados. 3 of the 53 mons in A rank. Not exactly good odds.

With that in mind, I think it becomes clear, to me at least, that making a Pokemon in the vein of Naviathan was doomed to fail from a viability standpoint from the beginning under the power level assumptions we were using. It can still make an interesting discussion topic, I guess, but we all still want to see a product have a chance at succeeding.

That's all of my thoughts. I'm curious what other people have to say. I think it's high time we adapted to ORAS and got over our fears of giving a Pokemon something like Shadow Tag or well-distributed 600 BST, etc. I know this may be hard to swallow, when arguably CAP's two biggest "broken" moments came when we gave Quiver Dance and Belly Drum... but I believe continuing to be timid will be much, much worse.

 

[DetroitLolcat]

I could not agree more with Bughouse on this. We are stuck in a BW mindset and have made three Pokemon so far that just don't cut it in modern OU (although I believe Naviathan would be in B+ or A-, that's splitting hairs). Since we're building Pokemon for the OU metagame, we should build a Pokemon that would be in OU in its playtest metagame. There are 53 Pokemon in OU, and 51 in S or A+/A/A- rank. Therefore, we should want our CAP Pokemon to be no worse than A- in viability. As an aside, usage stats are not particularly relevant here. They're an infinitely worse measure of Pokemon power than viability rankings are.

While I don't believe this is entirely what's holding us back, we need to abandon (or at least greatly revise) the Build Triangle. Pokemon in OU right now don't fit the Build Triangle. It's self-destructive to worry about balancing Speed, Power, and Bulk when well over half of OU are considerably bulky, powerful, and fast. The Build Triangle was a great addition to BW CAP, but it's served its purpose and is only going to further reduce the viability of our CAPs going forward. If CAP swings back in the direction of making overpowered Pokemon, maybe we can bring the Build Triangle back, but right now it's only weakening our Final Products.

CAP has become ridiculously paranoid about making Pokemon too strong. During CAP20, I had numerous multi-hour debates with good OU players about whether giving Naviathan Heatproof would break it. Some influential CAP members argued about how Water Veil means nobody would try to burn Naviathan so it could abuse Heatproof to the point of being an Uber. Another example: Volkraken and Naviathan both had Substitute on the Non-Attacking Moves Poll. That's right, during one CAP we went from giving Cawmodore Volt Absorb to whining about how Substitute would break Volkraken. And during Naviathan we wasted our time talking about Substitute when we should have been talking about Blaze Kick, Close Combat, and Taunt. While CAP has a reputation of making broken Pokemon, I don't think we could break a Pokemon if we tried right now. Until we start making viable Pokemon again, we should admit we have a problem with making CAPs underpowered.

Look at the list of Pokemon Bughouse posted earlier. If we want to keep up with the power creep, it's going to take 580+ BSTs, top-tier Abilities, and giant movepools. In fact, those three might make a better Build Triangle than what we have right now...

 

[Da Pizza Man]

Honestly, my main concern is with movepool, not stats, although stats are a problem. The first topic I want to bring up is the issue of coverage. Most of the offensive pokemon in OU have access to great coverage moves, look at Pokemon such as Manaphy, Kyurem-B, Raikou, and Azumarill, these Pokemon all have really good coverage moves, and Pokemon who don't use much coverage just have really spammable stabs, examples being Serperior, Bisharp, and Talonflame. Looking at the past few caps, all of their coverage moves where really lack luster. Not only did they have lackluster coverage, but the only one with even remotely spammable STAB was Volkraken. Obviously we shouldn't have coverage to beat pokes who we really should be beaten by, such as Drain Punch on Cawmadore or the retarded amount of coverage moves on Aurumoth, but at the same time we shouldn't be afraid to give our CAPs remotely usable coverage.

Another issue with movepool is talking about moves that really should be on every Pokemon. While thankfully the only move recently where this has been a problem is Substitute, that doesn't mean it won't start happening with other moves. The discussion of Substitute was a extreme waste of time because not only did Substitute almost unanimously get voted to be allowed, but the move was barely used during the playtest. Think about what more important moves we could have talked about if we just allowed substitute from the start of the thread. Personally, I think the moves Toxic, Hidden Power, Protect, Frustration, Return, Double Team, Facade, Rest, Attract, Round, Swagger, Sleep Talk, Substitute, and Confide should always be allowed on all CAP Projects, because these moves are really never broken on any mon that gets them, and if that pokemon is broken it sure as hell isn't because of one of these moves, the only exception to this rule I can think of is Protect on Blaziken, and even that is iffy

 

[jas61292]

I really think this a massive oversimplification of what is going on here. The fact is, our goal is not to create a super awesome top OU Pokemon. Maybe we do, based on the concept, but maybe we don't. Not being one of the top Pokemon in the metagame does not make a project a failure. Of course, it doesn't not make it a success either. What matters most is how it functions relative to its concept. And while it is true that many concepts would need great Pokemon in order to truly be fulfilled that is not necessarily the case, and I believe that trying to whip up a panic over the fact that our past few CAPs were not ridiculous is a very bad approach.

Stats in particular I think are being overly focused on. Yes, a lot of OU Pokemon have amazing stats. But as pointed out this is certainly not true of all of them. We don't need super high stats to make a top OU Pokemon if we want to. We have control over every element of the Pokemon, and if it is weaker than it should be, it can be for one of many, many different reasons. I feel like the only reasons people single out stats is because, due to its more abstract nature, you can get away with things that people feel you wouldn't be allowed to get away with on other steps. That is not a good thing. If we feel we need to abuse one step like that, then we need to address A) do we really need to be stronger, and B) if so, why do we feel that we can't get away with increasing strength in other stages?

Personally, I agree with what Da Pizza Man is getting at, that it is movepools that is really the stage we should be looking at if we are worried about power, especially with regard to coverage. Often recently it feels like the stats we choose are perfectly fine with respect to the moves we think we will be getting, but we end up with STAB moves and very little usable coverage, because we are too worried about being able to do anything at all to potential counters. Now, this is not to say we should ignore counters or anything like that. But if we are making an offensive Pokemon, for example, and not letting us have a way around our counters makes us lack relevant coverage needed to be good at our job, then we really need to reassess things. Obviously there is a difference between "can't beat some counters" and "can't beat everything." But we really can't be so restrictive in this stage all the time. This is also true, though probably to a lesser extent, with non-damaging moves. I agree with DLC that it is kinda ridiculous how we have gotten to the point where we have to discuss and potentially vote on Substitute all the time. These are moves that everything has. If people truly feel such a move will break our Pokemon, we have bigger issues than the move itself. Boosting moves are just about the only place that I don't really think we are being overly conservative, mostly because we have all seen how ridiculous some of the top boosters can be. Since Aurumoth, we have really shied away from anything more than +2 or +1/+1 boosters, but I don't think that is a problem. So few Pokemon have such moves, and they are so ridiculously defining. However, at the same time, we have never been especially shy about giving out Swords Dance, Dragon Dance, Nasty Plot and the like, so long as we didn't believe that being a set up sweeper in general was not within the scope of the project. That is a good thing. If we could just be more open about the rest of our movepools, I think that would fix up the majority of the issues people are seeing.

With that said, there is such a thing as going too much in the other direction with Movepools. The CAP project has a long history of such things, and going from too far one way to too far in the other direction is not going to help things. So, while, as always, I would express caution, I think that if we can be a little more loose and free with regards to what moves we allow (or require, as the new process is), we will see much better results that we would if we did anything regarding any of the other project stages.

 

[Bughouse]

I agree with the movepool points too, although I would like to defend the stats bit too because it seems a much simpler fix.

Naviathan with an extra 40 BST (really just about anywhere on the stats) would have been a Pokemon much better suited to OU than what we got. Could this also have been fixed with Crabhammer for STAB or better coverage? Probably. But I wouldn't count stats out.

 

[DetroitLolcat]

I really think this a massive oversimplification of what is going on here. The fact is, our goal is not to create a super awesome top OU Pokemon. Maybe we do, based on the concept, but maybe we don't. Not being one of the top Pokemon in the metagame does not make a project a failure. Of course, it doesn't not make it a success either. What matters most is how it functions relative to its concept. And while it is true that many concepts would need great Pokemon in order to truly be fulfilled that is not necessarily the case, and I believe that trying to whip up a panic over the fact that our past few CAPs were not ridiculous is a very bad approach.

It's not a panic over the fact that the last few CAPs weren't ridiculous. It's a panic over the fact that we've made three straight Pokemon that are not viable in OU. It's not that we're making Pokemon that aren't top OU, it's that they wouldn't be anywhere close to the OU cutoff to begin with. The only Pokemon out of our last three that might have been OU is Naviathan, and Making Pokemon that do not affect the OU metagame is by definition a failure.

Personally, I believe that movepool is a bigger offender than stats at the moment (although both are significant), at least with Naviathan. For some reason, we decided that a Dragon Dance sweeper that gets walled by both Ferrothorn and Rotom-W would be viable in OU. We had opportunities to give it powerful STAB like Crabhammer but didn't because it's broken "on paper" (on paper = Adamant nature with Life Orb, which would never see use). We wouldn't even discuss Blaze Kick because we were hung up on Substitute, the most broken of moves on paper because "omg unpredictability gen 4 salamence all over again". Naviathan's stats might have held Calm Mind back, but you could add 40 to whatever you want and the Dragon Dance set would have been garbage regardless.

Stats does need work as well, though. To be an OU stalwart these days, it takes a 580+ BST or an amazing gimmick. Our last three creations have neither. Usually we don't like going above 555-560 because there aren't any non-legendary Pokemon that have that sort of BST. While that was a nice flavor guideline, it's just not compatible with Gen 6 OU anymore. Unless we break the mold with amazing coverage and typing, we need to assume it's going to take 580+ BST to cut it in OU these days.

 

[DougJustDoug]

I think we are seeing the real impact of Megas on the CAP project as a whole. Effectively, Gamefreak added 48 new legendary pokemon this gen and almost all of them are legal in OU. An additional 100 stat points AND an additional awesome ability is the new norm in OU. Yes, technically you can have only one of these awesome "new legendaries" on a team. But from a threat list perspective, the bar has been raised considerably.

The deceptive part of the whole thing is that the new legends are masquerading around as the same old OU species we've been talking about forever, so we don't really feel like there has been such a massive seismic shift this gen. But when people talk about mons like Gyarados and Metagross these days -- it may FEEL like we are talking about the same old OU stalwarts we've been using forever. But the reality is that we are dealing with the massively buffed legendary versions of these mons in almost every case, and we are lulled into a comfort zone by their cozy familiar names.

So yeah, what I'm getting at is -- CAP probably needs to ditch the Build Triangle. Because most legendaries never conformed to the build triangle, and the fact that they didn't conform was what made them competitively legendary (and likely banned from OU) in the first place. But now we have 48 new legends, many of which outright violate the Triangle, and many others blow the upper end of two sides so far out of whack that the Triangle is hardly considered a "constraint". Perhaps we could make a new triangle of "Defining Characteristic (ie. gamebreaking ability or move), Massive Base Statistics, Incredible Movepool Diversity -- Pick Two". I haven't given that one much thought, so I dunno.

I do agree we have swung too far on the conservative side when it comes to movepools. Everyone has mentioned the Substitute arguments on the past few CAPs, and I will pile on too. I was stunned that Substitute was contentious on Naviathan, because I agree with Pizza Man that Toxic, Hidden Power, Protect, Frustration, Return, Double Team, Facade, Rest, Attract, Round, Swagger, Sleep Talk, Substitute, and Confide -- ALL should be REQUIRED on every CAP. For all intents and purposes, every other pokemon in the game gets those moves and every player of competitive pokemon is prepared to deal with those moves (if they are allowed in competitive play) on every pokemon in the game. If we make a CAP pokemon that is broken because of those moves -- well... it won't be broken because of those moves. We obviously fucked up big somewhere before that, and we are using those moves as a cop out. And we sure as hell aren't going to correct our mistake by disallowing those moves on the last competitive step of the project.

 

[capefeather]

Putting aside the whole debate on whether movepool or stat spread impacts more on the balance of a CAP, we might need to adjust our attitude on stats simply because of what we've currently been doing with them. We consistently make Pokemon with BSTs of 540-570, which is an aberration as far as non-legendary Pokemon go, but then we shy away from the big 580/600 because that literally goes into legendary territory. We maintained this tenuous illusion of making "realistic" Pokemon spreads with respect to BST, but with the advent of highly competitive Mega Pokemon, there doesn't seem to be a reason not to see the illusion for what it really is. We've been pretty unrealistic with stats for practically every CAP.

Maybe at some point before stats/ability/movepool happens, we need to outline what stages we will use to beef a Pokemon up to viability. Winging it while doing each stage one at a time has frequently resulted in either half-assing every stage or splurging in too many stages (as was the case with Aurumoth and Cawmodore, each of which probably would have been fine with one major component taken out) due to fear of railroading the process. I feel like, in most cases, a lot of the process is railroaded to a significant extent regardless of what we tell ourselves.

 

[nyttyn]

Maybe at some point before stats/ability/movepool happens, we need to outline what stages we will use to beef a Pokemon up to viability. Winging it while doing each stage one at a time has frequently resulted in either half-assing every stage or splurging in too many stages (as was the case with Aurumoth and Cawmodore, each of which probably would have been fine with one major component taken out) due to fear of railroading the process. I feel like, in most cases, a lot of the process is railroaded to a significant extent regardless of what we tell ourselves.

frankly we need to splurge in all stages because there's almost 0 pokemon who don't nowadays. I mean Breloom was the erstwhile champion of "BST DON MATTERS" and now breloom is no longer any good in OU at all. Not to say we should go Arecus-tier on every stage, but I don't think we really need this, for the sheer sake of us not being really able to hold back too much in any one area anymore.

Pokemon are just universally fantastic now, and there's no stuffing that genie back in the bottle.

 

[Exclaimer]

frankly we need to splurge in all stages because there's almost 0 pokemon who don't nowadays. I mean Breloom was the erstwhile champion of "BST DON MATTERS" and now breloom is no longer any good in OU at all. Not to say we should go Arecus-tier on every stage, but I don't think we really need this, for the sheer sake of us not being really able to hold back too much in any one area anymore.

Pokemon are just universally fantastic now, and there's no stuffing that genie back in the bottle.

A couple things in this aren't true. We don't need to splurge in every stage, because not every OU viable Pokemon does this. A good example is, ironically, Breloom, who maintains OU usage despite having shitty stats and two abilities that aren't even that overpowered. It's good at what it does, which is why it's a B+ Pokemon, despite all of the power creep this generation.

However, what you say still has truth to it. It's going to be really difficult to create a good Pokemon that doesn't have a generous amount of power in most of its stages. Still possible, but probably too difficult to realistically carry out if we decide to create a low BST Pokemon with a small movepool.

 

[Qwilphish]

I completely agree with Doug's proposed Updated Build Triangle as it is a much more accurate representation of what it takes to be successful in the OU Metagame. If we consider the Offensive abilities (-Ate abilities and Tough Claws for example) to simply be an addition to the movepool and stats departments then most of the Pokemon in OU including the Megas follow this triangle besides like maybe Mega Charizard-Y (and that is a slight stretch in the Movepool department). The updated triangle is also better than the old version because it helps to streamline the CAP process even more than it already is by allowing us to go into each stage knowing whether the CAP necessitates a bit of splurging for the sake of viability instead of only the stats process being controlled by the triangle.

It is also important for capefeather's concern about when we choose our focuses to be addressed also as if we go with the Updated Build Triangle it would mean that we would need to outline the direction of the CAP from the very beginning. This will likely be done during the Concept Assessment stage after we actually assess the concept. I don't know whether or not this will mean that we should add a secondary concept assessment stage in order to choose our build but nevertheless it needs to happen here before we do anything else so that we can have an idea of what the rest of the process is going to look like and so there is no confusion in the earlier stages about what the later stages will sort of look like.

That's all I've got so in conclusion (nasty phrase, sorry :[ ):
1. Change the current Build Triangle to Doug's Updated one (Defining Aspect / High Stats / Diverse Movepool)
2. Decide the build of each CAP after the initial Concept Assessment whether in a new thread or just after the TL's assessment conclusion

 

[Bughouse]

I want to be clear that I don't think all of those attributes Doug mentioned, or even two of them, are necessary to be good in OU. That system would, I guess, not allow for Volcarona to be made (since it hits all 3), but it would allow for Cawmodore. Cawmodore just had a super defining aspect. No one would call its movepool diverse - just perfectly tailored to what it needed to become broken, nor were its stats particularly high. So I'm not sure that a new triangle that expansive is definitely the right way to go. There are easy to find holes in it, such as Cawmodore.

Beyond that, in my rundown of the good OU mons, there were indeed /some/ Pokemon left over at the end. Numerous glue mons, two big offensive threats (Gengar and Weavile), and a set-up sweeper (regular Gyarados). Not every OU Pokemon even comes close to hitting 2 of the 3 parts of Doug's new proposed triangle. Pokemon that are good, despite being less obviously so, can be done, so I'm not sure it's the best idea to more or less codify a certain degree of power that might be more than is needed.

However, if we do want to continue making more "normal-looking" Pokemon, we need to really hone in on what that mon has to do to be usable. That's what some of us were doing on IRC to make CM Naviathan good. The specific set of CM Taunt Recover Scald with Water Veil came up in discussions all the way back in typing. That set had a very clearly defined niche. Weavile is OU because it does what it does better than anything else. Starmie too (or at least equally well to Excadrill). These types of mons can work, they just need to be in a space with little to no competition. That's why CM Naviathan worked a lot better than DD Naviathan. But I'm not sure there is enough informed discussion and voting to truly "get" whether a niche exists or not. I mean, CAP voters voted for Plasmanta's concept even though there was next to no way it would ever work in OU, according to numerous players whose opinions I respect.

So with that all said: I have my reservations about the proposed new triangle. I think its ceiling is not restrictive enough and could run into some problems. I also think it will set a power floor for CAPs that is higher than the baseline needs to be.

 

[nyttyn]

I think the biggest problem is the voter mentality right now, and...really we can argue about changing the build triangle all we want, but I don't think that alone's going to be enough to change voter/discussion bias.

Perhaps after this thread concludes we could have an announcement in the main CAP forums that stays up for a bit addressing the power creep in ORAS, and urging people to match their votes and way of thinking to be more in line with this power creep? idk i just think that'd be a good idea.

also full support for univesral TMs being auto includes, my hesitancy on substitute last CAP was a bit dumb in hindsight, only like sand veil borks it.

 

[NumberCruncher]

I also approve of universal TMs on CAPs.

I have two issues with Doug's proposed new build triangle. The first is that the voters tend to highly overvalue the gimmick of the CAP. As an example, we really heavily overestimated how much surprise would actually boost the viability of Naviathan, especially when Rotom-W's Volt Switch (and to a lesser extend Special Defense Scizor's U-Turn) essentially negates all the surprise Naviathan can create. This led to a heavily undersaturated DD set getting overshadowed by an insanely predictable CM set. A similar thing happened with Plasmanta, where the M-Gyrados team-up was supposed to lend it viability when in reality Gyarados has enough opportunities to get himself set-up that he doesn't really need help and could get what little it needed from Heatran anyway. The led to Plasmanta having awkward typing in a weird speed tier that had far more shortcomings than was really warranted. I'm just worried "defining characteristic" is going to get picked way more than it applies

The second problem is that I don't think that would have helped any of the future CAPs to not be awful. Naviathan's defining characteristic is only bad because his movepool is pretty awful for what it wants to do, and its stats would actually be pretty good if it weren't for its movepool letting it down. Malaconda has great stats and a great movepool, but still has no gimmicks that make it worth using. Heck, I don't see us giving and CAP as many gimmicks and as nice a movepool as Nidoqueen, and even that struggles from having abysmal stats. It would raise our top end without overextending it. We certainly wouldn't design the next Mega Kangaskhan under this system while also making things like Hippowdon designable, but there are far too many Pokemon in UU that would be plenty designable under these conditions as well.

 

[DougJustDoug]

So it appears we agree the Build Triangle, in its current form, should be retired. As for a new Build Triangle of some kind, I'm not so sure we should go there. As I stated in my post where I threw out a possible new structure, I really didn't think much about that ahead of time. And after thinking about it further, I'm not seeing a need for a triangle at all. While the general structure of the new triangle I mentioned (Defining Aspect, High Stats, Diverse Movepool) seems to fit ORAS well enough -- I don't think CAP suffers from the general problems a Build Triangle is meant to solve.

The reason we made a Build Triangle was really for one reason: Prevent CAP from making pokemon that are good at everything. That used to be an issue in CAP, but it isn't a pressing problem these days. I'll admit I'm a little hesitant remove checks and balances on this sort of thing, because it has been such a pervasive problem for so long with CAP, that I really cringe at the thought of broadcasting the implication to CAP: "Hey we really need to stop holding back and make pokemon that are awesome at everything!" Because, I feel like we'll make something that will give MegaRayquaza a run for its money! (jk, ofc) But ORAS has much broader pokemon than previous gens (mostly due to Megas, imo) and CAP doesn't need to keep restrictions in place if they aren't necessary.

So I think a Build Triangle of any kind is "a solution looking for a problem" right now. So maybe we keep it in the back of our mind as we go forward, but that's about all.

I think the another way to help address this issue is by collecting some better objective information about ORAS power levels. I'm a stats junkie and always have been, so I'll admit I tend to put more faith in data than most people. But I think we can do a lot to educate the CAP user base about the objective facts of what makes "a good ORAS pokemon".

Back in the early days of CAP, people like X-Act (man, I miss that guy) and me used to do all sorts of data analysis on the game of Pokemon, with the goal of informing various steps of the CAP process. Stuff like Type Effectiveness, the BSR formula, Movepool composition analyses, and many, many, more. Since that time, we have a ton more data about all Pokemon metagames than we ever had in past, thanks to the awesome work by Antar and others in processing Showdown stats. But CAP hasn't done as much work as we used to do to synthesize that information into our project.

I can certainly blame myself in that regard, because I haven't done nearly as much data crunching as I used to here. But I think as a project overall, we aren't asking for that kind of information, so the kinds of people that are into that sort of thing (stats, data analysis, etc), are not really hearing a call for their services. I admit this is a bit of a "chicken and egg" problem, in that people that are into data analysis tend to be the ones that ask for data analysis to be done! I get that. But CAP has always viewed itself as a "Pokemon science experiment" of sorts, and as such we should always value objective data where we can get it. That seems to have waned a bit here in recent years, which might be contributing to the problems raised in this thread.

 

[Birkal]

I'd like to see jas61292 and/or DetroitLolcat come up with a conclusion here. It seems like we are (generally) in the consensus that the Buld Triangle concept is hampering our ability to contend with the power-hitters in the ORAS OU Metagame. Should we expect to see any other sort of formal proposal here, or should we move forward, keeping the Build Triangle in mind, but not strictly adhering to it?