CAP 34 - Part 10 - Secondary Ability Discussion

[SHSP]

CAP 34 So Far

Please pay very close attention to kenn's posts during this thread and remain on topic. DO NOT begin by posting massive lists of abilities!

Some general rules for this discussion:

• Custom abilities are banned. No exceptions. Posts suggesting custom abilities will be deleted.
• There are ability banlists for the different stages of ability discussion. Posts suggesting banned abilities will be deleted.
• Flavor abilities do not have any place in this thread. Do not bring up flavor reasoning. Posts that rely on flavor reasoning will be deleted.

The following abilities are banned from this discussion:

Fully Banned Abilities group

Arena Trap
As One
Aura Break
Bad Dreams
Battle Bond
Beads Of Ruin
Beast Boost *
Chilling Neigh
Commander
Dark Aura
Dauntless Shield
Delta Stream
Desolate Land
Disguise
Dragon's Maw
Fairy Aura
Flower Gift
Forecast
Full Metal Body
Grim Neigh
Gulp Missile
Hadron Engine
Hunger Switch
Ice Face
Illusion
Imposter
Intrepid Sword
Moody
Multitype
Neuroforce
Orichalcum Pulse
Poison Puppeteer
Power Construct
Primordial Sea
Prism Armor
Protosynthesis *
Quark Drive *
RKS System
Schooling
Shadow Shield
Shadow Tag
Shields Down
Soul Heart
Stance Change
Sword Of Ruin
Tablets Of Ruin
Teravolt
Toxic Chain
Transistor
Turboblaze
Unseen Fist
Vessel Of Ruin
Victory Star
Wonder Guard
Zen Mode
Zero To Hero

* These abilities will only be unbanned on a concept which is based around this ability - Such as an Ultra Beast or Paradox Pokemon

Soft Banned Abilities group

These abilities are banned by default and should not be discussed barring exceptional cases. If you believe one of these abilities should be considered, you can make a post trying to explain why an exception is warranted in this specific case and if both the TL and Ability Leader agree, it will be allowed. If the TLT disagrees with the unbanning proposal, they should be considered fully banned and should not be further discussed.

Bulletproof
Color Change*
Defeatist
Dry Skin
Earth Eater
Flash Fire
Fur Coat
Good As Gold
Gorilla Tactics
Huge Power
Ice Scales
Libero*
Levitate
Lightning Rod
Magic Bounce
Magic Guard
Magnet Pull
Mimicry*
Motor Drive
Parental Bond
Protean*
Pure Power
Purifying Salt
Regenerator
Sap Sipper
Slow Start
Stall
Storm Drain
Truant
Volt Absorb
Water Absorb
Water Bubble
Well Baked Body
Wind Rider

*These abilities can only be considered for an unban if the Ability stage is done before typing.

Secondary Ability ban group

Comatose
Drizzle
Drought
Electric Surge
Fluffy
Grassy Surge
Innards Out
Misty Surge
Prankster
Psychic Surge
Sand Stream
Snow Warning
Speed Boost
Stamina
Steam Engine
Supreme Overlord
Toxic Debris
Triage

Flavor ability only ban group

Ball Fetch
Battery
Costar
Friend Guard
Healer
Honey Gather
Illuminate
Pickup
Power Spot
Power of Alchemy
Propeller Tail
Receiver
Run Away
Stalwart
Symbiosis
Telepathy

-----

Primary Ability banlist

Fully Banned Abilities group + Soft Banned Abilities group + flavor ability-only group

Secondary Ability banlist

Fully Banned Abilities group + Soft Banned Abilities group + secondary ability group + flavor ability-only group

Flavor Ability banlist

Primary ability group + secondary ability group

-----

Ability banlist PRC threads:

• US/UM: http://www.smogon.com/forums/posts/7391668
• SW/SH: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/3659245/
• S/V: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/3715273/

 

[kenn]

Hey there! It is your friendly neighborhood ability leader here to bring all the kennergy that I ken.

Before we get into suggesting any secondary options that may be worth exploring, I wanna answer a very important question first to hopefully determine a direction for the discussion to go so let's get into it!

Does CAP 34 need or even want a competitive secondary ability to complement Armor Tail and/or further enhance its opportunities to setup with Clangorous Soul? Why?

Since it is just the one question, I will give 36 hours to give input and then we can move on!

 

[Ayecrusher King]

Does CAP 34 need or even want a competitive secondary ability to complement Dazzling Armor Tail and/or further enhance its opportunities to setup with Clangorous Soul? Why?

On one hand, I think the answer to that is no. We're pretty straightforward with what we want to achieve, set up with Soul and start blasting ASAP. We could choose a different ability from back in the Primary Ability slate to further our damage output, but at this point, I doubt it's really needed competitively.

ModEdit: Removed flavour reasoning

 

[Lightniong]

ignoring the pun

Does CAP 34 need or even want a competitive secondary ability to complement Armor Tail and/or further enhance its opportunities to setup with Clangorous Soul? Why?

Honestly, I don’t think it’s nessesary, because Armor Tail fits amazingly with the Setup Sweeper/Cleaner Pokemon we want this thing to be. The only other abilities that would work with CAP 34 would be the abilities we discussed earlier in the primary abilities discussion, and even then, that would probably cause a “Tera Volcarona” situation where there is counters for each ability it runs, but picking wrong will automatically lose you the game, which I feel will be borderline broken, especially since Volcarona is so controversial, and CAP 34 has a better boosting move, and a slightly better offensive typing, and also has the ability to Tera, making things worse.

 

[N-Manifold]

I wonder if CAP 34 only having the one competitive ability would pigeonhole us too much. Priority is not exactly a rare feature, but most metas do not have the glut of high powered users we have (tera normal dnite, hemo, gambit, bolt, etc etc) and I wonder if futureproofing this guy would involve giving another ability that targets other possible checks. I have a specific one in mind and think that just about every other ability would be a bad addition, but I risk process jumping now so I'll cut it short.

 

[ausma]

Does CAP 34 need or even want a competitive secondary ability to complement Armor Tail and/or further enhance its opportunities to setup with Clangorous Soul? Why?

In my opinion, while I don't think it's necessary per se, I do think with the rather specific MUs that Armor Tail targets, given its Grassy Glide, Aqua Jet, and Thunderclap resistances, do lower its perceived value on paper and that there is some room for discussion. I do think exploring secondaries is a fine idea, namely lower power ones that don't egregiously flip around matchups and/or ones that are telegraphed (like on-entry abilities). There are some that provide utility into off-matchups that have been previously discussed for the primary ability, in fact. There's one major ability idea in mind for me but seeing as this isn't the time for it, I'll refrain, but there are definitely options.

 

[Da Pizza Man]

Does CAP 34 need or even want a competitive secondary ability to complement Armor Tail and/or further enhance its opportunities to setup with Clangorous Soul? Why?

Do we need a secondary ability?

The answer here is very obvious to anybody whose been paying attention this process so far, which is no.

Do we want a secondary ability?

This, on the other hand, I think is really where most of the discussion for the early part of this stage is going to lie, and is what I'm going to put the majority of my thoughts into. Speaking personally, I don't think giving ourselves a strong secondary ability would be a very good idea. Armor Tail is quite as strong ability, especially on the build that we have right now, and I quite simply don't see much of a solid reason as to why we would drop it in favor of a weaker, more situational ability (Hemo's secondary ability stage made my brain melt, and I would rather not have a repeat of that). However, if we decide to go with a stronger ability, I very much fear that we are going to be putting ourselves in a situation where CAP34 has the ability to effectively choose what counters it to an unhealthy degree.

ModEdit: removing replies to a deleted post

 

[IronTemplar]

Does CAP 34 need or even want a competitive secondary ability to complement Armor Tail and/or further enhance its opportunities to setup with Clangorous Soul? Why?

No. While I definitely think that it does not need one however, I’d suggest any of the other slated abilities during the primary, should one be decided. Unburden in particular synergizes perfectly with the intended usage (though I would need to check the speed for proper balancing)

 

[NewHoovybeast05]

No. While I definitely think that it does not need one however, I’d suggest any of the other slated abilities during the primary, should one be decided. Unburden in particular synergizes perfectly with the intended usage (though I would need to check the speed for proper balancing)

Unburden while a great synergy idea, is not a good idea. Balancing wise, this will become Sneasler2.0 and theme wise idk if it makes sense

 

[Rabia]

Pretty clear no on needing a second ability that changes our matchups. I think Armor Tail is a great primary option and anything else, although it may end up having "some" competitive value, is unlikely to move us.

 

[Brambane]

I don't want a secondary ability for CAP34, and I usually shill pretty hard for secondary abilities.

This is an extremely cut-and-dry Pokemon, and I think our deviation from the primary set (Dazzling Clang Soul/Scales/Sludge/Surf) already occurred in movepool. At a certain point what we add becomes gratuitous. Where you draw that line is always subjective, but for me it is ability. If we do pursue the secondary ability route, then what I would recommend are abilities that do not change the main counterplay of CAP34 being hitting it while it sets up, or position yourself offensively to deny CAP34 set-up opportunities.

 

[Palosaks]

Does CAP 34 need or even want a competitive secondary ability to complement Armor Tail and/or further enhance its opportunities to setup with Clangorous Soul? Why?

I agree with the sentiment that we do not need another ability on CAP 34, Armor Tail suits Clangorous Soul excellently. Now as for if we want another ability, I'd say no. While you can argue that it'd be good to explore the design space of the concept more, you also need to consider how the secondary is interacting with everything we already have. Mainly, any ability that doesn't announce itself on arrival is out of the running due to Armor Tail, giving it anything worth running that doesn't do this creates a 50/50 where you need to guess if you can check it with priority, severely limiting our options. I feel like we're just better off accepting that Armor Tail is perfectly fine on its own as anything else is likely either going to be not worth running or is going to be hard to balance.

 

[dex]

Knew I’d have to say it. Do not use any flavor reasoning in this stage whatsoever please and thank you.

 

[Ehmcee]

Does CAP 34 need or even want a competitive secondary ability to complement Armor Tail and/or further enhance its opportunities to setup with Clangorous Soul? Why?

I'd strictly be against anything along the lines of drastically altering counterplay, particularly Unburden, especially if the opponent has to play a guessing game as to what ability we're currently running. Having to guess whether priority or speed is enough to outpace CAP34 is absolutely not a line we should be crossing.

However I do believe there's some abilities, while excessively niche, could fill an option to solidify our role as a setup sweeper. Any defensive abilities that can make the process of using Clangorous Soul smoother (while not being overbearing), or even slightly offensive abilities that give us some offensive power before committing to activating our Throat Spray could be options that we could pursue with CAP34.

 

[N-Manifold]

I concur with the previous voices here that a second ability is absolutely not necessary. I wanted to correct myself earlier; I don't think that "futureproofing" or rounding out CAP34 is necessarily something we need to do, I just feel that there is some amount of unexplored space in the niche we've created outside of blocking priority.

with that being said, I think that a momentum monster as dangerous as CAP34 might be too much if it can change even a little bit of its counterplay. I still like some secondary abilities but I do not know if it's necessarily a good or needed addition here.

 

[mark6870]

Does CAP 34 need or even want a competitive secondary ability to complement Armor Tail and/or further enhance its opportunities to setup with Clangorous Soul? Why?

Echoing most other posters and saying No, we don't need a secondary ability. We are basically finished with the bulk of the CAP and any new secondary would likely outclass our primary ability or do nothing, none of which is a good outcome. Even a secondary that simply alters our matchups can get extremely volatile given the fact that we have such powerful tools already.

 

[Jewvia]

Does CAP 34 need or even want a competitive secondary ability to complement Armor Tail and/or further enhance its opportunities to setup with Clangorous Soul? Why?

Realistically... Probably not. We are fast, immune to priority, and beefy. We're just itemless and probably took a hit prior to this. In general a defensive alternative would be a nice option worth considering, such as something that either lets us switch in safer or makes the one hit we take while setting up not too big of a worry, or something that prevents a new weakness from introducing itself such as paralysis/encore.

It might be worth exploring a second, weaker/alternative ability. Although we should definitely go for a weaker ability instead of something that would just straight up replace our primary ability (Ex: Volt Absorb Cawmodore)

 

[cyclonez_]

Been lurking on this CAP for a while, first time posting about it besides a concept earlier in this process. Have some thoughts that I wanted to share.

Does CAP 34 need or even want a competitive secondary ability to complement Armor Tail and/or further enhance its opportunities to setup with Clangorous Soul? Why?
First off, I'd like to agree with everyone saying that CAP 34 doesn't need a secondary ability. Armor Tail is practically perfect for its designated role for the power budget designated to that slot, and realistically, any good choice of secondary ability won't be run on CAP 34 95% of the time.

My argument is as follows: why forgo that 5%? Part of the beauty of Pokemon metagame developments is seeing how Pokemon adapt to change over time. By taking away the prospect of a secondary ability, no matter how niche, takes away from the CAP's ability to be flexible and fit into different ideas and structures. I do believe there are low power abilities that allow CAP 34 to expand its design space without taking away from the overall idea of "Clangorous Soul Throat Spray Sweeper". In fact, I have multiple ideas as to abilities that could fulfill this criteria.

I think that it doesn't hurt to discuss possible options. If we decide that no secondary ability is better than alternative options, so be it, but hey, at least we tried, right?

 

[kenn]

I am a bit later than 36 hours, but it seems like there is a general consensus for NCA and I will have to agree as many have mentioned that a competitive secondary could not just overshadow Armor Tail, but could also cause some issues with checking CAP 34 if having to prepare for 2 viable abilities.

With that, I am proposing we settle on NCA and therefore don't need to run a poll, but I will give you guys 24 hours if you feel like you have something that could change my mind!

 

[dex]

My argument is as follows: why forgo that 5%?

I think this is a really great question that I can (hopefully) provide a really great answer to. As someone who often pines for more powerful options in CAP, I can understand the logic behind this question, but more is not always better. Let me explain:

1. CAP has often faced issues of "bloat" in its creation process. In this instance, bloat refers to CAPs getting designed with all the good moves and multiple good abilities. While in some cases, throwing darts at the wall and seeing what sticks is the best path (if you've been paying attention to this process, I advocated for that very practice during moves for Surf + Flamethrower to be a part of the moveset), it is not always the best solution, particularly with abilities, which often have a much larger impact on a Pokemon's playstyle than moves do. Given that much of this process was predicated around priority-blocking being quite strong in the current metagame, additional abilities that cover the "5%" are unneeded bloat in the face of something as ubiquitously helpful as Armor Tail.
2. CAP 34 is an offensive Pokemon and a sweeper, and offensive Pokemon and particularly sweepers that can choose what checks them are incredibly dangerous. There is no way around CAP 34's role: it is a sweeper by design and will be in practice. Its stats, moves, and typing have all led to and supported this conclusion. So, why is offensive Pokemon choosing what checks them so dangerous? Because offensive Pokemon are your progress-makers and sweepers are your game-winners. If you guess wrong between if a Clefable is Magic Guard or Unaware, 9/10 times that isn't that big of a deal even though how you deal with either set differs quite a bit. Equilibra is another example of a Pokemon that can choose what offensively checks it but getting it wrong once is most likely not going to wipe your chances of winning. However, let's think about the flip side of that example: Dragapult. If you guess wrong if a Dragapult is Choice Specs or Choice Band, you absolutely can just lose the game on the spot. You could lose a valuable check to a different Pokemon, or you could bank on certain counterplay for an entire game just to lose it in the end due to saving the wrong check. Also, just like Dragapult, CAP 34 will be able to power through checks with chip, compounding the issue. This is not a phenomenon that I want to foster in competitive Pokemon. TL;DR is that choosing what checks you is a much more dangerous option to give to offensive Pokemon, particularly sweepers, than defensive Pokemon, so accounting for the "5%" is not something we need or should be doing.

Hopefully, that is a good enough answer as to why forgoing the "5%" is the game plan right now!

 

[cyclonez_]

I think this is a really great question that I can (hopefully) provide a really great answer to.

Dex, I appreciate the incredibly detailed reply! Very thoughtful response. After reading that and doing more thinking on this, I do agree that some of the abilities on my list could fall into that trap.

I'll go ahead and propose two options that I thought were interesting, just so all cards are on the table, but I am definitely more comfortable with moving on with Armor Tail as the only primary ability after reading that, and would support that should that be chosen as our course of action following this period.

One I was particularly fascinated with was Pickpocket / Magician. It's not particularly great and uncommon to see it come into play on most users. The only time I can remember seeing that ability genuinely used for its own merits over typically better options is Tinkatink in SV LC serving as a Knock Off absorber (Hoopa-Unbound occasionally uses sets such as Eject Pack, but that's only because it has no better ability. Similarly, you occasionally see it trigger on Weavile, but that's because your only other option is Pressure on a frail offensive Pokemon). With that said, I'm interested in it here as it has synergy into the idea of using consumable items. However, it does, to a degree, change what can check you. It's certainly less so than a better defensive ability, such as another immunity, but I would understand if that changed counterplay too much to be considered in this step. Simply put, I just think it's neat due to that synergy with a typically-mediocre ability, so I wanted to mention it.

The other option I think is interesting here is Frisk. Both Ausma and Palosaks talked about how self-announcing abilities would be preferred here, to help remove that ambiguity between sets. I thought Frisk was an interesting, potentially useful ability that achieves that goal while not outclassing Armor Tail as CAP 34's primary ability. In addition to, more widely, potentially revealing good information about the opposing team, one use case I can envision here for the purposes of supporting CAP34's sweep is through discovering fast Choice Scarf users that may be able to revenge kill after a boost. This is, admittedly, less useful than it may have been in the past due to speed control being more priority-heavy than previous generations (not to mention Booster Energy), but this ability seems to be a step up in usefulness compared to what will be talked about in the Flavor Ability step so I wanted to mention it here.

 

[dex]

Hoopa-Unbound occasionally uses sets such as Eject Pack

Quick note, this was actually a bug on PS until around a year ago when it got patched. Magician is not supposed to proc on the same interaction Eject Pack procs. This would've been cool with Clanging Scales, though! Alas, it doesn't work anymore.

 

[StarFalcon555]

There's really only one secondary ability that I think works for CAP 34 without being too powerful/overshadowing Armor Tail considering the tools at its disposal, and that's Mold Breaker.

1) Mold Breaker announces itself as soon as a Pokemon with the ability switches in, so you immediately know whether a set is Mold Breaker or Armor Tail.
2) Its primary usage on CAP 34 is small yet very noticeable - it counters Unaware tanks that can come in and eat our attacks. This creates distinct and unique counterplay between CAP 34 sets - would you rather be stonewalled by Unaware users or be susceptible to priority?
3) It's relatively low power. Armor Tail in and of itself is a very low power primary ability for CAP standard, so a secondary ability of a similarly low power ensures that Armor Tail is not overshadowed.
4) It synergizes with CAP 34's already chosen characteristics. Most flavor ability suggestions we've seen in CAPs in the past tend to focus on possible alternate routes they could fill, muddying the roles that have been laid out for them and seeing very little use as a result. Mold Breaker, however, is perfectly suited for a setup sweeper CAP, making it just as usable of an option as Armor Tail if you really want that variability.

All of these factors make Mold Breaker the most suitable option for a secondary competitive ability, in my opinion. It offers some unique design space and counterplay to Armor Tail sets while not being very overwhelming and fitting into CAP 34's role perfectly. While No Secondary Ability might be the better option, if we really need one, Mold Breaker is the best option by far.

 

[dex]

1) Mold Breaker announces itself as soon as a Pokemon with the ability switches in, so you immediately know whether a set is Mold Breaker or Armor Tail.

This is not as big of a factor as you are making it out to be. In many cases, CAP 34 is going to act as a coup de gras and kept in the back similar to a Volcarona or a Kingambit. At that point, you now have to play around both powerful options, meaning that the announcement only really has an effect when you get your opponent to send CAP 34 out early, a situation where you are likely winning anyways.

2) Its primary usage on CAP 34 is small yet very noticeable - it counters Unaware tanks that can come in and eat our attacks. This creates distinct and unique counterplay between CAP 34 sets - would you rather be stonewalled by Unaware users or be susceptible to priority?

This is not small. Unaware Pokémon are an important part of the current metagame. We already saw a Mold Breaker Pokémon, Ogerpon-H, get the ban hammer in part because of how it could just rip through popular unaware cores.

3) It's relatively low power. Armor Tail in and of itself is a very low power primary ability for CAP standard, so a secondary ability of a similarly low power ensures that Armor Tail is not overshadowed.

This is pretty similar to the above point, but no, it’s not low-power. As I said, Unaware Pokémon are really common, particularly in CAP. There’s a reason this ability was almost chosen for CAP 34’s primary. Mold Breaker is very good.

4) It synergizes with CAP 34's already chosen characteristics. Most flavor ability suggestions we've seen in CAPs in the past tend to focus on possible alternate routes they could fill, muddying the roles that have been laid out for them and seeing very little use as a result. Mold Breaker, however, is perfectly suited for a setup sweeper CAP, making it just as usable of an option as Armor Tail if you really want that variability.

I am repeating myself once again. Don’t use flavor reasoning in this stage. Also, just because Mold Breaker is a good choice for a sweeper does not make it a good choice right now. The big knock against Mold Breaker is that it makes CAP 34 exceedingly difficult to prepare for in the builder. If you want an example of this from the past, the dominance of both Venomicon formes on launch made them exceedingly difficult to check in the builder. This quality goes beyond any ease of information given by Mold Breaker announcing itself on switch-in. Pokémon that have this quality are often described as “restricting” or even “unhealthy”. I’d rather avoid these terms being applied to CAP 34.

 

[spoo]

If we want a secondary ability then realistically I think mold breaker is the only choice. Non-argh unaware mons do exist in CAP, especially dirge, but are fairly uncommon all things considered (dirge/clod are usually just seen on full stall) so honestly I agree that this ability’s impact is on the smaller side. Or at least, it’s small compared to something insane like ignoring priority altogether. Ogerpon-H had a lot more going for it than just being able to send unaware mons to hell anyways. There are some niche upsides of mold breaker outside of killing unawares but I don’t think they make a particularly large difference. The ability announcing itself is also pretty important for our purposes, as others have already mentioned.

That said though, I’d rather NCA. Mold breaker is fine enough but I feel like we spent our “versatility budget” in movesets with stuff like encore/dbond, fire coverage, stored power etc so I’d just rather not overdo it in that department. I believe the best route would just be to run a poll with two options since it’s basically standard procedure, but there’s definitely an “I want more stuff” impetus in CAP that can result in bloat sometimes, especially when it comes to the secondary ability stage, so yeah I don’t mind just calling it NCA either. Whatever works.