CAP 23 CAP 23 - Part 1 - Concept Assessment

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10. Is it more important for the concept to make the opponent "fear" the trapping move or "expect" the trapping move? Why?


I think it is important to "expect" it to be there due to its nature as a trapping move. Anchor Shot and Spirit Shackle are absolutely incredible moves simply because of their secondary effect (P.S. trapping is counted as a secondary effect, and is effected by Shield Dust and Sheer Force) and 80 base power is suprisingly high for those types physically, especially Ghost. Because of this, there is likely no reason not to run these moves on any moveset that you run. Because of this, you can instead make the opponent fear that they are actually not carrying a trapping move, but are carrying a coverage move for one of its checks. With this idea you can play serious mind games with the opponent. This is why I think it is important to expect the trapping move.

As coverage.

I personally think that Decidueye is a terrible example of what "expecting" a move is, as expecting something means that it is likely that something will happen. With Decidueye, Spirit Shackle is pretty much guaranteed to be run cause there is no better Ghost STAB option than what Spirit Shackle can offer. This is why STAB move trapping is bad for this question, as it turns the "most likely" into a "will".
That's going to pose severe problems for our project, since the trapping moves have some of the worst coverage typings and power in the game, to the point that that list basically shrinks to Spirit Shackles on the spot given the severe awfulness of Anchor Shot as a coverage move and the sheer underwhelmingness of binding moves for coverage.

Simply put, if Anchor Shot is a overage move, CAP will never run it. Steel typing is by far one of the worst coverage typings in the game. Even Talonflame wouldn't use Steel coverage back in Gen 6, and it actively couldn't touch Rock types any other way. Many of the better Fairy pokemon in CAP aren't actually weak to it. Ice effectiveness basically just translates to Syclant, and if Anchor Shot is the only way our CAP deals with Syclant, it's going to have much worse problems than whether it's running a trapping move. Tyranitar is not near so much a threat in CAP as it is in OU, and Stratagem can't even take most resisted hits. That means Anchor Shot is only super effective against Crucibelle and a select number of Fairies. Contrast that to it's inability to do any significant damage to Fire and Water types. Further, at this point we're forced to give it a coverage move to take on Cyclohm, as Cyclohm is pretty much the definition of the sort of mon we're supposed to be trapping and not having coverage for Cyclohm as a physical Pokemon severely hamstrings CAPs usefulness. Even Gamefreak realized how bad Anchor Shot is for coverage and actually gave Dhelmise Steel STAB on its ability to compensate for how dreadful it is.

We're starting to fair a little better with Spirit Shackles, but not much. Pokemon weak to types weak to Ghost like Tapu Lele and Alakazam will opt to run Ghost coverage. That limits us to just three types: Fighting, Poison, and Psychic. Without one of these types, Spirit Shackles also won't see play as anything but a gimmick. Adding to the complications, Poison and Fighting are both heavily overrepresented in the CAP metagame, meaning CAP will suffer from and overabundance of competition.

Frankly speaking, this interpretation seems like it will either end with the trapping move being unplayable or CAP23 itself being unplayable.
 
I think that making it too prone to 4MSS discourages the Cap from running the trap move as it takes up a lot of moveslot space which could possibly be used better for something else. As long as the Cap has options which are too good in comparison to trapping, the cap will always use those options instead of trapping.
I get your point, but in the end it would really depend on the other options CAP23 gets in its movepool. The point I made is also pretty vague at this point, since the definiton of "good alternative options" heavily relies on CAP23's STABs.
I just wanted to bring up the possibility that a carefully gauged 4MSS could make CAP23 unpredictable in whether it runs the trapping move or not.
 
Even Gamefreak realized how bad Anchor Shot is for coverage and actually gave Dhelmise Steel STAB on its ability to compensate for how dreadful it is.
And even then it is outclassed, damage-wise, by Heavy Slam in most cases.

Spirit Shackle does have the fact that it is one of the best Physical Ghost moves going for it. Although i do not get the rest of the post: Why would going with Spirit Shackle limit us to those three Psychic-Weak typings? TrapCAP probably wouldn't want to stay in, even if it had a super effective attack. I'm pretty sure the better way to go would be to pick a typing that wouldn't care as much for using a Ghost or Steel type attack, which would make using them in a trapping set more deliberate.
 
10. Is it more important for the concept to make the opponent "fear" the trapping move or "expect" the trapping move? Why?

Ima be a hipster real quick

I think it is fine if we expect the trapping move, as this CAP is developed around making a trapping move viable, and how is it viable if it has to be niche enough for there to be a viable set without said trapping move? Instead, I think we should fear what comes after the trapping move. I think we should be worried about how the Pokemon is going to deal with the trapped Pokemon. If we have individual sets which can, say, wallbreak or break down offensive Pokemon or stallbreak then we can focus on making the trapping move viable no matter what set its run on. If we focus on the utilization and what happens after the trapping move we can make it work in a lot of circumstances. As Victor S. Court said above, when playing against CAp23, we should expect the trapping, but fear the set which TrapCAP is packing.
 
How can the opponent not fear the Trapping move if it doesn't expect it? Trapping+3 Attacks (or Trap+2 Attacks+Boost), Trapping+Safe Cleric, Trapping+Spikes, Trapping+Bulk, Unaware Trapping+Heart Swap/Haze/Topsy-Turvy, Pursuit/Stakeout Trapping, or even something ridiculous like Normalize+Skill Swap on a Ghost-type, or even just the ability to go full Krilowatt with a Sheer Force Life Orb kinda thang. That said, the threat however needs to primarily come from Trapping, or else you have the Krilowatt problem of it not actually fulfilling the concept, and the opponent no longer expects, and thus no longer fears the trap, but expects, and fears the non-trapping set.

Also go for Ghost/Normal typing suggestion if you worry about Ghost counters. Then all you have to worry about is M-Lopunny and Dark-types, which you can mitigate with Justified or Rattled if you so choose to nominate for an ability to punish things like Parting Shot or anything just trying to Knock Off or even a possible mirror match Pursuit spam with a Colbur Berry; perhaps give it another hidden ability like Unburden for a weakness policy/unburden combo. Out of interest, why Cyclohm? It's barely top 30 in the 1760 band, and with Static, Phys Bulk, Healing, access to Fire Blast/Flamethrower, Steel Resist, it seems like it's one pokemon we shouldn't even try and trap in. Try throwing something like Clefable, Krilowatt or AV Colossoil at it.

The world is the literal oyster at this stage, and saying "CAP23 gonna suck because it has to choose Steel or Ghost" STAB is one of the more ridiculous things in this thread, and that includes my posts.
 
We're starting to fair a little better with Spirit Shackle, but not much. Pokemon weak to types weak to Ghost like Tapu Lele and Alakazam will opt to run Ghost coverage. That limits us to just three types: Fighting, Poison, and Psychic. Without one of these types, Spirit Shackle also won't see play as anything but a gimmick. Adding to the complications, Poison and Fighting are both heavily overrepresented in the CAP metagame, meaning CAP will suffer from and overabundance of competition.
Well, that depends. Say that TrapCAP will become Normal / Fighting, which means that its STABs would be unable to hit Ghosts. In this case, Spirit Shackle would help it deal with the untrappable Ghosts and to handle Psychics better. Not that said CAP would like to trap Psychics, but you get the point.

However, I agree with what many users have already said, and that it would be preferable for CAP23 to have STAB with either Anchor Shot or Spirit Shackle. And regarding the fact that TrapCAP's trapping STAB move may risk to become predictable and be run in almost all sets… well, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.

Take for example Zygarde with Thousand Arrows and Keldeo with Secret Sword. Any player knows that both Pokémon carry them as STAB since they are such good moves with nice secondary effects, but this doesn't undermine the fact that they are huge threats, despite knowing one attack in all their sets.

So, even if its trapping move would become almost mandatory, it wouldn't necessarily mean that TrapCAP will be like an open book. I personally like the idea of TrapCAP having many potential tools to threaten directly the opponent after trapping it, which shouldn't be a problem since both trapping moves are quite spammable.

As such, it would only be a matter of choosing which move to give it: Anchor Shot is basically a guaranteed trap on any non-Ghost Pokémon with weak coverage, while Spirit Shackle has better coverage and punishes Ghosts at the price of being unable to affect Normal-types. Personally, I'm leaning more toward the latter, and I would compensate its inability to trap Normal-types by giving Fighting coverage or something like this.
 

snake

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I think it's time to wrap things up! I believe this is the general direction we want to go with CAP23 (keep in mind that nothing but the concept is really set in stone). Question 10 got some interesting responses, and I think I've found a nice way to sum it up in Point 4.

How CAP23 will generally play out:
1. This CAP will not use stalling tactics as its primary strategy - it will not be a wall.
2. Anchor Shot, Spirit Shackle, and binding moves are the trapping moves we want to use.
3. Fairy Lock, although a very niche move, will be discussed in further detail in Moveset Discussion.
4. Opponents should expect a trapping move set but fear a) the other moves CAP23 will run and b) non-trapping sets. (i.e. a) "Now that I've been trapped, is A, B, or etc. going to happen?" and b) "I've been playing around CAP23 like it's been running a trap move, but it's really not!")
5. By nature of trapping moves, CAP23 will likely trap bulkier Pokemon.

In addition, what we have learned two major facts:
1. Trapping moves' biggest advantages over trapping abilities are being able to run an ability and being able to cause 50/50s between trapping or other moves.
2. Trapping moves guarantee safe plays if used correctly, particularly with one-time-use Z-moves.

Now we move will move onto the Typing Discussion! Again, thanks to everyone who participated over the last week in this discussion. See you all in the next thread!
 
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