CAP 31 So Far
-----
After an incredible discussion led by our Ability Leader, Darek, we will be deciding on CAP 31's ability through two series of polls. If you haven't taken the chance to read through the thread, please refer to the Ability Discussion thread HERE to make an informed decision when submitting your ballot! Lastly, here are the descriptions for each ability slated, pulled from Darek's final post here.
Poison Heal: The benefits of Poison Heal are crystal-clear: Being immune to status, resilient to chip, and indifferent Knock Off, Poison Heal offers a solution to the problems that other Grounds in the tier like Landorus and Garchomp face. While there have been concerns over the ability’s power level, examples in the past(namely Gliscor) have demonstrated that Poison Heal is certainly balanceable, and a Ground with Poison Heal can coexist in a metagame with Landorus.
Water Absorb: Water Absorb has received close to unanimous support in the thread, and for good reason. It’s a clear-cut method of differentiating CAP31 from other Grounds, as well as turning would-be checks like Tapu Fini and Urshifu-R into winning matchups for CAP31.
Flash Fire: Another immunity ability with plenty of support behind it, Flash Fire enables CAP31 to hard switch on Heatran and Astrolotl, granting plenty of opportunities to use Diamond Storm.
Moxie: Moxie has fantastic synergy with Diamond Storm. By attacking and boosting Defense simultaneously, CAP31 can pick up kills while becoming exceptionally difficult to revenge kill, and Moxie fully capitalizes on this fact.
Speed Boost: Speed Boost is a cool ability that surprisingly works very well with Diamond Storm. It’s generally agreed upon that Diamond Storm wants to be used by fast Pokemon, as going first allows CAP31 to gain a Defense boost before getting hit by the opponent. Speed Boost offers a means for CAP31 to do this without dumping all of its stats into Speed, creating more design space in this regard.
Defiant: One of the biggest challenges CAP31 will likely face is Landorus’s ability to pivot in and out on it. Defiant turns this matchup on its head by making Landorus afraid of switching in, giving CAP31 a lot more space to freely click its STAB and Diamond Storm. It also has the added bonus of punishing Defog.
Unaware: Unaware offers plenty of unexplored space for CAP31 by establishing CAP31 as the first Unaware user that isn’t complete fat. It also has excellent synergy with Diamond Storm by denying opponents from boosting to break past CAP31’s Defense boosts, and ensuring that CAP31 is never hard-walled out by Venomicon-P.
Mirror Armor: Mirror Armor provides an alternative means to punishing Landorus switch-ins without being as nuclear as Defiant. Compared to Defiant, Mirror Armor leaves a lot more room for power in future stages. It also offers quite a few defensive bonuses as well, such as avoiding Dragapult Shadow Ball drops, but how much we lean into these other aspects is unclear for now. Still a solid option all around.
-----
This will be a Ranked Pairs vote (RP) (a form of voting where each candidate is ranked according to head to head matchups with each of its competitors in a directed acyclic graph), the details of which were discussed here.
This is a ranked vote: order does matter! You can upvote your favorites and downvote your least favorites. You may choose to rank as many or as few options as you like, but we encourage you to rank as many options as possible to ensure your preferences are taken into account.
Bold your votes and nothing else!
A typical vote might look like the following:
CAP uses blind voting. Other people's votes won't appear in the thread, but they are counted and will be made visible at the end of the voting timeframe. For more information about this change, check out this PRC thread.
Asking for votes for your submission or for the submissions of others is not allowed. Anyone found to have done so risks punishment at the moderation team's discretion. If you find that someone has broken this rule, please contact the CAP moderation team with your evidence and no one else. Mini-moderation of this rule is also considered a serious offense and can be punished.
The voting options are:
Poison Heal
Water Absorb
Flash Fire
Moxie
Speed Boost
Defiant
Unaware
Mirror Armor
This poll will be open for 24 hours.
-----
After an incredible discussion led by our Ability Leader, Darek, we will be deciding on CAP 31's ability through two series of polls. If you haven't taken the chance to read through the thread, please refer to the Ability Discussion thread HERE to make an informed decision when submitting your ballot! Lastly, here are the descriptions for each ability slated, pulled from Darek's final post here.
Poison Heal: The benefits of Poison Heal are crystal-clear: Being immune to status, resilient to chip, and indifferent Knock Off, Poison Heal offers a solution to the problems that other Grounds in the tier like Landorus and Garchomp face. While there have been concerns over the ability’s power level, examples in the past(namely Gliscor) have demonstrated that Poison Heal is certainly balanceable, and a Ground with Poison Heal can coexist in a metagame with Landorus.
Water Absorb: Water Absorb has received close to unanimous support in the thread, and for good reason. It’s a clear-cut method of differentiating CAP31 from other Grounds, as well as turning would-be checks like Tapu Fini and Urshifu-R into winning matchups for CAP31.
Flash Fire: Another immunity ability with plenty of support behind it, Flash Fire enables CAP31 to hard switch on Heatran and Astrolotl, granting plenty of opportunities to use Diamond Storm.
Moxie: Moxie has fantastic synergy with Diamond Storm. By attacking and boosting Defense simultaneously, CAP31 can pick up kills while becoming exceptionally difficult to revenge kill, and Moxie fully capitalizes on this fact.
Speed Boost: Speed Boost is a cool ability that surprisingly works very well with Diamond Storm. It’s generally agreed upon that Diamond Storm wants to be used by fast Pokemon, as going first allows CAP31 to gain a Defense boost before getting hit by the opponent. Speed Boost offers a means for CAP31 to do this without dumping all of its stats into Speed, creating more design space in this regard.
Defiant: One of the biggest challenges CAP31 will likely face is Landorus’s ability to pivot in and out on it. Defiant turns this matchup on its head by making Landorus afraid of switching in, giving CAP31 a lot more space to freely click its STAB and Diamond Storm. It also has the added bonus of punishing Defog.
Unaware: Unaware offers plenty of unexplored space for CAP31 by establishing CAP31 as the first Unaware user that isn’t complete fat. It also has excellent synergy with Diamond Storm by denying opponents from boosting to break past CAP31’s Defense boosts, and ensuring that CAP31 is never hard-walled out by Venomicon-P.
Mirror Armor: Mirror Armor provides an alternative means to punishing Landorus switch-ins without being as nuclear as Defiant. Compared to Defiant, Mirror Armor leaves a lot more room for power in future stages. It also offers quite a few defensive bonuses as well, such as avoiding Dragapult Shadow Ball drops, but how much we lean into these other aspects is unclear for now. Still a solid option all around.
-----
This will be a Ranked Pairs vote (RP) (a form of voting where each candidate is ranked according to head to head matchups with each of its competitors in a directed acyclic graph), the details of which were discussed here.
This is a ranked vote: order does matter! You can upvote your favorites and downvote your least favorites. You may choose to rank as many or as few options as you like, but we encourage you to rank as many options as possible to ensure your preferences are taken into account.
Bold your votes and nothing else!
A typical vote might look like the following:
CAP uses automated scripts to count votes. For this reason, it is very important for all ballots to be submitted correctly. If you do not compose a legal ballot, your post will be subject to moderation.
- The scripts count bold words in ballots, so do NOT bold anything in your ballot other than the options you are voting for.
- Do NOT put any formatting other than bold in your post.
- Only one option per line.
- The spelling of options must be EXACTLY correct and must match the spelling listed above.
- Capitalization and spaces are ignored by the vote counting scripts, but you probably should not depend on it.
CAP uses blind voting. Other people's votes won't appear in the thread, but they are counted and will be made visible at the end of the voting timeframe. For more information about this change, check out this PRC thread.
Asking for votes for your submission or for the submissions of others is not allowed. Anyone found to have done so risks punishment at the moderation team's discretion. If you find that someone has broken this rule, please contact the CAP moderation team with your evidence and no one else. Mini-moderation of this rule is also considered a serious offense and can be punished.
The voting options are:
Poison Heal
Water Absorb
Flash Fire
Moxie
Speed Boost
Defiant
Unaware
Mirror Armor
This poll will be open for 24 hours.
