bugmaniacbob
Was fun while it lasted
Approved by Birkal
Introduction
One of the large gaps in the pool of information provided by our resource areas, such as the CAP main site and the EnCAPlopaedia, are simply the records of what went on during the project and the playtesting, and the lessons that we learned or did not learn from it - we have all the details, the moves, the art, the weight, and how to play the Pokemon in the metagames they were designed for, but short of the odd Smog article there is no written record of what went on and what was concluded from all the effort - hence, the only people who really know much about the goings-on of the past are those who were there and those who are sufficiently interested in the topic to spend their rainy Sundays trawling through the PR and process archives. To my mind this is a serious oversight and one which should be remedied as soon as possible. There are three components that I would like to talk about here: Concept, Execution, and Playtest.
To begin with the last: The concept of a playtest for each created Pokemon has been in existence ever since the genesis of Doug's Create-A-Pokemon server way back in the day. When it was set up in early 2008, playtests for Syclant, Revenankh, and Pyroak were conducted almost immediately, while Fidgit, Stratagem, and Arghonaut were also given a playtesting period once they were created and implemented. Note that for the first six CAPs, the metagame they were introduced to was pretty much the CAP metagame of DPP, with a view to, at least for the first three, implementing revisions now that they could see how the Pokemon actually performed in battle. These revisions aren't particularly important to this thread. Now, mid-way through Kitsunoh, Doug proposed a new way of doing things - for the duration of the playtest, the normal CAP ladder would be replaced by a Playtest ladder which was essentially standard OU plus the new Pokemon, as well as the person at the top of the leaderboard being crowned "playtest champion", and this caught on - Kitsunoh and Cyclohm both received these playtests, which were documented in this Smog article in July 2009. Soon after, it was decided that the first 6 CAPs should also have a 10-day playtest period for 2 months of excitement - Syclant, Revenankh, Pyroak, Fidgit, Stratagem, and Arghonaut were all tested between June and August 2009. Subsequently, we have continued the policy for all CAPs since, namely Colossoil, Krilowatt, Voodoom, Tomohawk, Necturna, Mollux, Aurumoth, Malaconda, and Cawmodore.
So, that's the history lesson out of the way. As you might expect, each of the threads gives a large amount of data on the way the CAP was played, the sets that were suggested or commonly used, and the attitudes towards the CAPs and interpretations of their position in the metagames they were designed for. Hence, they are a useful source of information that is lying tucked away in the back of the collective CAP fridge, as it were. Now, it's at this point that I want to bring in one of my old PRC topics from the past, which is part of the overall package. In this thread, I suggested the introduction of paragraphs or a page on the strategy dex to include information such as the concept, how the CAP was created with reference to that concept, some of the alternative ideas that were considered but rejected, what the verdict was on how the CAP performed at that time, and a record of the revisions that were made since its creation. I think the person who made the most cogent suggestion in the whole thread was DougJustDoug:
Ideally, I feel there should be some part of the strategy Pokedex that deals with the process, playtesting, and appraisal of a particular CAP. Now, for the remainder of this thread I'm going to take the previous statement as a given; it has, I feel, been justified, but briefly: the most important parts of the CAP should be given a more visible pedestal, the important information learned in the past should be compiled and given a place where it can be referred to easily, and there should be a way to log the various changes that have been made to CAPs in the past, ne obliviscamur. So, the proposal I am going to put forward will be suggesting mode of implementation as well as the decision to actually implement, which I hope is not too premature. In the event that this is not approved in any way, then this will not matter. To my mind, both the concept and the playtest deserve their own tabs, but what to include where is more problematic. For the concept tab, I recommend that all the details of concept and execution are given, in the following way: that the first heading, "Concept", give the concept's title and a short explanation of it (as well as possibly the "questions to be answered" from the later CAPs), as well as a short summary of the Concept Assessment, if applicable, and a description of the current metagame at the time of creation. For the first three CAPs, we can still give a description of the "function" aimed for by the CAP creation process. As for the typing, abilities, stats, and movepools, there is ample material in the discussions and potential options we could have gone with, and explaining why we went with what we did, to give each of these their own sub-section. Naturally, these would be ordered depending on the order in which they were decided in the process of the time.
In the second tab, the "playtest" tab, we would have details of the dates and duration of the playtest (and possibly the inaugural battle), some battle logs, proposed sets that people liked at the time, and the like. In the first sub-section, "The Playtest", we could have dates and duration, information about sets and an overview of how the Pokemon performed, what was popular, and how the Pokemon affected the metagame. Further, we could have additional sub-sections to detail the appraisal of the CAP based on the opinions of the playtest at the time, and also possibly in retrospect, with reference to the way other CAPs were handled or any policy decisions that were made following the playtest as a result. One interesting point that might be raised is that the playtest section as I currently envision it would be rather similar to the current on-site analyses, but less rigidly formatted, to such an extent that they may be redundant. This may be a topic for another CAP, but I foresee a possibility that the on-site analyses could be removed and replaced with analyses for the CAP metagame, while the useful information they contain could be transferred to the playtest tab. This may even be beneficial in the case of the first 6-8 CAPs of DPP, whose analyses do not reflect the metagame they were created for regardless, but perhaps this is best left here for now. I would see the playtest tab looking something like this:
Though obviously, the above would be in more detail and much less resemble something I dashed off hurriedly to illustrate a point.
One final suggestion is that we have a separate page in which to record revisions and the dates of revisions for those CAPs that need it. This requires little explanation and it would be useful to have this resource somewhere easy to find.
Motions
- That we commit to the production and writing of a Playtest documentation page for the CAP site for each CAP.
- That we commit to the production and writing of a Concept and Execution documentation page for the CAP site for each CAP.
- That we commit to the production and writing of a Revision documentation page for the CAP site for each CAP.
The above are assumed in the preceding discussion, but before discussion of the individual elements or implementation begins it is worth opening the floor to any objections to these suggestions that any PRC members have, and possibly rejecting one, two, or all of them. If there is any level of opposition then a vote on these suggestions will be held following discussion.
It should be noted, finally, that all writing for the site, including both the cataloguing of future information and the writing up of past information must go through the analysis coordinator before it goes on-site, and hence the analysis coordinator will ultimately be the leader of both of the finalised processes, assuming the response to this thread is positive.
Introduction
One of the large gaps in the pool of information provided by our resource areas, such as the CAP main site and the EnCAPlopaedia, are simply the records of what went on during the project and the playtesting, and the lessons that we learned or did not learn from it - we have all the details, the moves, the art, the weight, and how to play the Pokemon in the metagames they were designed for, but short of the odd Smog article there is no written record of what went on and what was concluded from all the effort - hence, the only people who really know much about the goings-on of the past are those who were there and those who are sufficiently interested in the topic to spend their rainy Sundays trawling through the PR and process archives. To my mind this is a serious oversight and one which should be remedied as soon as possible. There are three components that I would like to talk about here: Concept, Execution, and Playtest.
To begin with the last: The concept of a playtest for each created Pokemon has been in existence ever since the genesis of Doug's Create-A-Pokemon server way back in the day. When it was set up in early 2008, playtests for Syclant, Revenankh, and Pyroak were conducted almost immediately, while Fidgit, Stratagem, and Arghonaut were also given a playtesting period once they were created and implemented. Note that for the first six CAPs, the metagame they were introduced to was pretty much the CAP metagame of DPP, with a view to, at least for the first three, implementing revisions now that they could see how the Pokemon actually performed in battle. These revisions aren't particularly important to this thread. Now, mid-way through Kitsunoh, Doug proposed a new way of doing things - for the duration of the playtest, the normal CAP ladder would be replaced by a Playtest ladder which was essentially standard OU plus the new Pokemon, as well as the person at the top of the leaderboard being crowned "playtest champion", and this caught on - Kitsunoh and Cyclohm both received these playtests, which were documented in this Smog article in July 2009. Soon after, it was decided that the first 6 CAPs should also have a 10-day playtest period for 2 months of excitement - Syclant, Revenankh, Pyroak, Fidgit, Stratagem, and Arghonaut were all tested between June and August 2009. Subsequently, we have continued the policy for all CAPs since, namely Colossoil, Krilowatt, Voodoom, Tomohawk, Necturna, Mollux, Aurumoth, Malaconda, and Cawmodore.
So, that's the history lesson out of the way. As you might expect, each of the threads gives a large amount of data on the way the CAP was played, the sets that were suggested or commonly used, and the attitudes towards the CAPs and interpretations of their position in the metagames they were designed for. Hence, they are a useful source of information that is lying tucked away in the back of the collective CAP fridge, as it were. Now, it's at this point that I want to bring in one of my old PRC topics from the past, which is part of the overall package. In this thread, I suggested the introduction of paragraphs or a page on the strategy dex to include information such as the concept, how the CAP was created with reference to that concept, some of the alternative ideas that were considered but rejected, what the verdict was on how the CAP performed at that time, and a record of the revisions that were made since its creation. I think the person who made the most cogent suggestion in the whole thread was DougJustDoug:
ProposalDougJustDoug said:I would like to see us add a new tab called "History" or "Background" or something like that -- which goes into much more detail about the backstory of the project that created the pokemon. Ideally, this would be written by the TL at the conclusion of the CAP, summarizing key events and decisions during the project. Then it could be added to later, if we revise the pokemon (but I'm hoping we stop that sort of thing in the future, because it has been far more trouble than it is worth). For past CAPs, we'd obviously have to write them up from memory and reading old threads.
Ideally, I feel there should be some part of the strategy Pokedex that deals with the process, playtesting, and appraisal of a particular CAP. Now, for the remainder of this thread I'm going to take the previous statement as a given; it has, I feel, been justified, but briefly: the most important parts of the CAP should be given a more visible pedestal, the important information learned in the past should be compiled and given a place where it can be referred to easily, and there should be a way to log the various changes that have been made to CAPs in the past, ne obliviscamur. So, the proposal I am going to put forward will be suggesting mode of implementation as well as the decision to actually implement, which I hope is not too premature. In the event that this is not approved in any way, then this will not matter. To my mind, both the concept and the playtest deserve their own tabs, but what to include where is more problematic. For the concept tab, I recommend that all the details of concept and execution are given, in the following way: that the first heading, "Concept", give the concept's title and a short explanation of it (as well as possibly the "questions to be answered" from the later CAPs), as well as a short summary of the Concept Assessment, if applicable, and a description of the current metagame at the time of creation. For the first three CAPs, we can still give a description of the "function" aimed for by the CAP creation process. As for the typing, abilities, stats, and movepools, there is ample material in the discussions and potential options we could have gone with, and explaining why we went with what we did, to give each of these their own sub-section. Naturally, these would be ordered depending on the order in which they were decided in the process of the time.
<h2>Concept</h2>
<p>Squiggle was the ninth CAP of the XDS generation, and was created just after the banning of Shucklenite and the subsequent fall of Groudon to UU, where it would remain for the rest of the generation. Because of this, the metagame regained some of the fast pace and offensive predominance that had characterised it prior to Game Freak's reveal of the sixteenth wave of Mega Evolutions, alongside the release of Pokemon Snap XDS, a few months before. As such, Squiggle's concept was always going to be one that revelled as much as the players did in the freedom to break opposing teams apart in a few brief turns, now that the removal of Mega Shuckle and its easy supply of entry support moves made stall teams far less potent. Squiggle's concept was a relatively simple one with the title of "Blood for the War God" - a Pokemon that could make good use of the move "Blood Contract", a move which raised all of the Pokemon's stats by three stages apiece but gave it the perish count condition, and thus only three turns in which to make use of its move, and prevented it from switching out. This was a move that had previously been restricted to the Rumprat and Flugit families, and consequently was not of any particular importance in the metagame, but would undoubtedly be extremely powerful in the right hands. The questions to be answered by this project were as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>Can a Pokemon using Blood Contract be both usable and not overpowered in the OU metagame?</li>
<li>What would be the most favoured strategy for said Pokemon? Would it be most effective as a late-game cleaner or an early-game wallbreaker?</li>
<li>What difficulties might we come across in trying to make such a Pokemon balanced?</li>
<li>Will such a highly specialised Pokemon still be useful even when it has essentially only one strategy?</li>
<li>Will this Pokemon find other strategies that it can also use that we have not yet thought of?</li>
<li>What teammates and playstyle best allow such a Pokemon to succeed?</li>
</ul>
<p>In a close-run poll, "Blood for the War God" was voted as XDSCAP9's concept over "Let it Snow" with six hundred and twenty-two votes to six hundred and twelve, making this the fifty-third straight CAP in which the hail concept had been defeated in the final concept poll. The Concept Selection Committee praised the concept for its unique direction and specialist interest, and sheer difference from CAP8's concept of "Ultimate Torment User". The concept assessment was a fairly quick and painless affair, as the vast majority of contributors opined that the CAP need not be particularly strong in any area, but that it should be exceptionally strong once boosted, and yet hard to set up successfully. Hence it was decided that a frail sweeper build would be ideal, but with relatively low Speed in order to limit its potential setup opportunities. A few members voiced objections on the grounds that Squiggle would have no use for the rest of the battle if it was designed for one single suicide run with no application besides that, but were overruled by the Concept Appreciation Committee, who agreed with the majority that Squiggle would be far too powerful if it were given alternative uses, and more importantly that the objective of the concept was to work out how this single strategy and this one move worked, and thus making the Pokemon reliant on the move was the best option available.</p>
<h2>Typing</h2>
<p>From the outset, there were vocal disagreements on what the typing should set out to accomplish. One school of thought suggested that the Pokemon should have an exceptionally poor offensive and defensive typing that granted many weaknesses and would allow many Pokemon to resist its STAB moves, hence giving Squiggle's opponents a way to fight back against it and making it heavily prediction-reliant. From this camp, the typing Bug/Grass would eventually be put through onto the final slate. A related school thought along similar lines, but were more lenient in what they thought should be allowed, and instead pushed for complementary but individually limited STAB attacking types, such that CAP9 would have a vast range of super effective coverage, and so still be prediction-reliant, but not to the extent that the first camp were convinced was necessary. This group gave rise to two potential typings, Ice/Fighting and Electric/Fighting. Finally, the last school of thought wanted overall neutral coverage so that the Pokemon could simply spam its STAB attacks to execute its strategy, while trusting to the Pokemon being extremely defensively compromised and limited in its Speed in order to compensate. This was the reasoning behind the proposal of the mono-Ghost typing. Eventually, the winner in the final poll was Ice/Fighting, beating out mono-Ghost by sixty-five votes to nineteen.</p>
(you should be able to see where this is going)
<p>Squiggle was the ninth CAP of the XDS generation, and was created just after the banning of Shucklenite and the subsequent fall of Groudon to UU, where it would remain for the rest of the generation. Because of this, the metagame regained some of the fast pace and offensive predominance that had characterised it prior to Game Freak's reveal of the sixteenth wave of Mega Evolutions, alongside the release of Pokemon Snap XDS, a few months before. As such, Squiggle's concept was always going to be one that revelled as much as the players did in the freedom to break opposing teams apart in a few brief turns, now that the removal of Mega Shuckle and its easy supply of entry support moves made stall teams far less potent. Squiggle's concept was a relatively simple one with the title of "Blood for the War God" - a Pokemon that could make good use of the move "Blood Contract", a move which raised all of the Pokemon's stats by three stages apiece but gave it the perish count condition, and thus only three turns in which to make use of its move, and prevented it from switching out. This was a move that had previously been restricted to the Rumprat and Flugit families, and consequently was not of any particular importance in the metagame, but would undoubtedly be extremely powerful in the right hands. The questions to be answered by this project were as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>Can a Pokemon using Blood Contract be both usable and not overpowered in the OU metagame?</li>
<li>What would be the most favoured strategy for said Pokemon? Would it be most effective as a late-game cleaner or an early-game wallbreaker?</li>
<li>What difficulties might we come across in trying to make such a Pokemon balanced?</li>
<li>Will such a highly specialised Pokemon still be useful even when it has essentially only one strategy?</li>
<li>Will this Pokemon find other strategies that it can also use that we have not yet thought of?</li>
<li>What teammates and playstyle best allow such a Pokemon to succeed?</li>
</ul>
<p>In a close-run poll, "Blood for the War God" was voted as XDSCAP9's concept over "Let it Snow" with six hundred and twenty-two votes to six hundred and twelve, making this the fifty-third straight CAP in which the hail concept had been defeated in the final concept poll. The Concept Selection Committee praised the concept for its unique direction and specialist interest, and sheer difference from CAP8's concept of "Ultimate Torment User". The concept assessment was a fairly quick and painless affair, as the vast majority of contributors opined that the CAP need not be particularly strong in any area, but that it should be exceptionally strong once boosted, and yet hard to set up successfully. Hence it was decided that a frail sweeper build would be ideal, but with relatively low Speed in order to limit its potential setup opportunities. A few members voiced objections on the grounds that Squiggle would have no use for the rest of the battle if it was designed for one single suicide run with no application besides that, but were overruled by the Concept Appreciation Committee, who agreed with the majority that Squiggle would be far too powerful if it were given alternative uses, and more importantly that the objective of the concept was to work out how this single strategy and this one move worked, and thus making the Pokemon reliant on the move was the best option available.</p>
<h2>Typing</h2>
<p>From the outset, there were vocal disagreements on what the typing should set out to accomplish. One school of thought suggested that the Pokemon should have an exceptionally poor offensive and defensive typing that granted many weaknesses and would allow many Pokemon to resist its STAB moves, hence giving Squiggle's opponents a way to fight back against it and making it heavily prediction-reliant. From this camp, the typing Bug/Grass would eventually be put through onto the final slate. A related school thought along similar lines, but were more lenient in what they thought should be allowed, and instead pushed for complementary but individually limited STAB attacking types, such that CAP9 would have a vast range of super effective coverage, and so still be prediction-reliant, but not to the extent that the first camp were convinced was necessary. This group gave rise to two potential typings, Ice/Fighting and Electric/Fighting. Finally, the last school of thought wanted overall neutral coverage so that the Pokemon could simply spam its STAB attacks to execute its strategy, while trusting to the Pokemon being extremely defensively compromised and limited in its Speed in order to compensate. This was the reasoning behind the proposal of the mono-Ghost typing. Eventually, the winner in the final poll was Ice/Fighting, beating out mono-Ghost by sixty-five votes to nineteen.</p>
(you should be able to see where this is going)
In the second tab, the "playtest" tab, we would have details of the dates and duration of the playtest (and possibly the inaugural battle), some battle logs, proposed sets that people liked at the time, and the like. In the first sub-section, "The Playtest", we could have dates and duration, information about sets and an overview of how the Pokemon performed, what was popular, and how the Pokemon affected the metagame. Further, we could have additional sub-sections to detail the appraisal of the CAP based on the opinions of the playtest at the time, and also possibly in retrospect, with reference to the way other CAPs were handled or any policy decisions that were made following the playtest as a result. One interesting point that might be raised is that the playtest section as I currently envision it would be rather similar to the current on-site analyses, but less rigidly formatted, to such an extent that they may be redundant. This may be a topic for another CAP, but I foresee a possibility that the on-site analyses could be removed and replaced with analyses for the CAP metagame, while the useful information they contain could be transferred to the playtest tab. This may even be beneficial in the case of the first 6-8 CAPs of DPP, whose analyses do not reflect the metagame they were created for regardless, but perhaps this is best left here for now. I would see the playtest tab looking something like this:
<h2>The Playtest</h2>
<p>The Squiggle playtest officially began on January 4th 2023, with Prime Topic Leader yamchafan1337 and Vice Topic Leader GroovyGreenGoblin facing off against Deputy Topic Leader Irrelevance and Assistant Topic Leader Don't_tell_the_wife in a multi-battle featuring four Squiggle in total. Unfortunately, all of the Squiggle were sent out on turn one and all held a Focus Sash, so were all eliminated by turn 2 courtesy of GroovyGreenGoblin's Protect Tyranitar. As such, the inaugural battle told us little about how Squiggle worked in practice. Over the first week, it rapidly became clear that Squiggle was immensely difficult to set up against the majority of offensive Pokemon, and given how the metagame was extremely biased towards offensive teams at that time, trying to set up Squiggle seemed almost to be a lost cause. In addition, even when set up successfully it was easy prey for priority users such as Scizor, Breloom, Talonflame, and Quiche, all of whom could hit it super effectively with their STAB priority attacks, and Squiggle had no way to retaliate thanks to its lack of priority of its own. After about a week, the initial furore over Squiggle, and most battlers putting Protect on any Pokemon that could spare a moveslot, had abated, and most teams after this point tended to resemble those more commonly seen in OU at the time - without Squiggle. The playtest concluded on January 25th, with OwMyFace being declared the CAP playtesting champion for the twelfth time in a row, a record at the time.</p>
<h2>The Verdict</h2>
<p>In all, many thought that the measures taken to make Squiggle not broken had been far too excessive. While perhaps this is an exaggeration considering its impact in the more defensive CAP metagames, it was still a sentiment shared by the majority. Squiggle couldn't switch in, couldn't set up, and if it did manage it it was dispatched all too quickly. Furthermore, it lacked the means as a standalone Pokemon to support its team and its typing belied a number of easily exploitable weaknesses that made it even less trouble to take down. Even so, once it ceased to be in the spotlight and every single battler on the Playtest ladder stopped running teams to counter it, it seemed to greatly increase in effectiveness, to the point that at one moment during Generation IX it was considered thoroughly broken in the CAP metagame. Perhaps the lesson that we learned from it, then, was that niche strategies of this nature require scarcity in order to function properly. They certainly can be effective; whether or not Squiggle was such a Pokemon, however, remains open to interpretation.</p>
<h2>The Sets</h2>
Squiggle @ Life Orb<br />
Ability: Refrigerate<br />
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def<br />
Adamant nature (+Atk, -SpA)<br />
- Blood Contract<br />
- Double-Edge / Return<br />
- Close Combat<br />
- Power Whip / Giga Impact</td>
<p>Squiggle only ever really had one set for the duration of the playtest, as its low Special Attack made sets with that stat in mind implausible, and though its Attack stat was low at only base 95, after a boost it was more than sufficient to OHKO just about the entirety of the OU tier with the appropriate attack, even when resisted. Thanks to Refrigerate, Return and Double-Edge both become absurdly powerful Ice-type STAB attacks, with Close Combat a nice secondary STAB move with virtually no side-effect thanks to the short-lived defensive boosts from Blood Contract. Return was seen as the safer option thanks to the fact that it had no recoil, but Double-Edge was often far too powerful for Squiggle to do without. In the final slot, Giga Impact was often used at the beginning of the playtest for a last-ditch suicide bomb on Squiggle's last turn of play, but eventually Power Whip began to see more use as a way of beating Unaware Quagsire and Mega Slowbro.</p>
<p>Attack was maximised in order to allow Squiggle to OHKO bulky Pokemon such as Skarmory and Mega Gulpin after a single boost in conjunction with Life Orb, and the rest of the EVs were added to HP and Defence to increase the chances of surviving an attack and continuing its rampage, as well as to soak up Double-Edge and Life Orb recoil. Thanks to Squiggle's base 70 Speed, it required no EVs at all to outspeed Timid base 150 Speed Pokemon such as Mega Mewtwo Z after a boost, although some preferred to add 140 EVs in order to outrun Timid Choice Scarf Latios and other base 110s. While some tried running extra EVs to try to get the jump on other base 70s such as Breloom, it was often far less successful and these EVs went to waste. The final 4 EVs could be useful in Speed in order to get the jump on other Squiggle that did not bother with them, however.</p>
<h4>Other Options</h4>
(insert as appropriate)
<h4>Checks and Counters</h4>
(insert as appropriate)
<p>The Squiggle playtest officially began on January 4th 2023, with Prime Topic Leader yamchafan1337 and Vice Topic Leader GroovyGreenGoblin facing off against Deputy Topic Leader Irrelevance and Assistant Topic Leader Don't_tell_the_wife in a multi-battle featuring four Squiggle in total. Unfortunately, all of the Squiggle were sent out on turn one and all held a Focus Sash, so were all eliminated by turn 2 courtesy of GroovyGreenGoblin's Protect Tyranitar. As such, the inaugural battle told us little about how Squiggle worked in practice. Over the first week, it rapidly became clear that Squiggle was immensely difficult to set up against the majority of offensive Pokemon, and given how the metagame was extremely biased towards offensive teams at that time, trying to set up Squiggle seemed almost to be a lost cause. In addition, even when set up successfully it was easy prey for priority users such as Scizor, Breloom, Talonflame, and Quiche, all of whom could hit it super effectively with their STAB priority attacks, and Squiggle had no way to retaliate thanks to its lack of priority of its own. After about a week, the initial furore over Squiggle, and most battlers putting Protect on any Pokemon that could spare a moveslot, had abated, and most teams after this point tended to resemble those more commonly seen in OU at the time - without Squiggle. The playtest concluded on January 25th, with OwMyFace being declared the CAP playtesting champion for the twelfth time in a row, a record at the time.</p>
<h2>The Verdict</h2>
<p>In all, many thought that the measures taken to make Squiggle not broken had been far too excessive. While perhaps this is an exaggeration considering its impact in the more defensive CAP metagames, it was still a sentiment shared by the majority. Squiggle couldn't switch in, couldn't set up, and if it did manage it it was dispatched all too quickly. Furthermore, it lacked the means as a standalone Pokemon to support its team and its typing belied a number of easily exploitable weaknesses that made it even less trouble to take down. Even so, once it ceased to be in the spotlight and every single battler on the Playtest ladder stopped running teams to counter it, it seemed to greatly increase in effectiveness, to the point that at one moment during Generation IX it was considered thoroughly broken in the CAP metagame. Perhaps the lesson that we learned from it, then, was that niche strategies of this nature require scarcity in order to function properly. They certainly can be effective; whether or not Squiggle was such a Pokemon, however, remains open to interpretation.</p>
<h2>The Sets</h2>
Squiggle @ Life Orb<br />
Ability: Refrigerate<br />
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def<br />
Adamant nature (+Atk, -SpA)<br />
- Blood Contract<br />
- Double-Edge / Return<br />
- Close Combat<br />
- Power Whip / Giga Impact</td>
<p>Squiggle only ever really had one set for the duration of the playtest, as its low Special Attack made sets with that stat in mind implausible, and though its Attack stat was low at only base 95, after a boost it was more than sufficient to OHKO just about the entirety of the OU tier with the appropriate attack, even when resisted. Thanks to Refrigerate, Return and Double-Edge both become absurdly powerful Ice-type STAB attacks, with Close Combat a nice secondary STAB move with virtually no side-effect thanks to the short-lived defensive boosts from Blood Contract. Return was seen as the safer option thanks to the fact that it had no recoil, but Double-Edge was often far too powerful for Squiggle to do without. In the final slot, Giga Impact was often used at the beginning of the playtest for a last-ditch suicide bomb on Squiggle's last turn of play, but eventually Power Whip began to see more use as a way of beating Unaware Quagsire and Mega Slowbro.</p>
<p>Attack was maximised in order to allow Squiggle to OHKO bulky Pokemon such as Skarmory and Mega Gulpin after a single boost in conjunction with Life Orb, and the rest of the EVs were added to HP and Defence to increase the chances of surviving an attack and continuing its rampage, as well as to soak up Double-Edge and Life Orb recoil. Thanks to Squiggle's base 70 Speed, it required no EVs at all to outspeed Timid base 150 Speed Pokemon such as Mega Mewtwo Z after a boost, although some preferred to add 140 EVs in order to outrun Timid Choice Scarf Latios and other base 110s. While some tried running extra EVs to try to get the jump on other base 70s such as Breloom, it was often far less successful and these EVs went to waste. The final 4 EVs could be useful in Speed in order to get the jump on other Squiggle that did not bother with them, however.</p>
<h4>Other Options</h4>
(insert as appropriate)
<h4>Checks and Counters</h4>
(insert as appropriate)
Though obviously, the above would be in more detail and much less resemble something I dashed off hurriedly to illustrate a point.
One final suggestion is that we have a separate page in which to record revisions and the dates of revisions for those CAPs that need it. This requires little explanation and it would be useful to have this resource somewhere easy to find.
<h2>Revisions</h2>
<h4>January 2023</h4>
<p>Squiggle creation process finished and Final Product thread posted.</p>
<h4>October 2024</h4>
<p>Squiggle updated for Generation X. Receives new TM moves Ice Meteor, Frozen Wind, Volley, and Tornado Fist. Receives new level-up move Broad Stroke.</p>
<h4>January 2023</h4>
<p>Squiggle creation process finished and Final Product thread posted.</p>
<h4>October 2024</h4>
<p>Squiggle updated for Generation X. Receives new TM moves Ice Meteor, Frozen Wind, Volley, and Tornado Fist. Receives new level-up move Broad Stroke.</p>
Motions
- That we commit to the production and writing of a Playtest documentation page for the CAP site for each CAP.
- That we commit to the production and writing of a Concept and Execution documentation page for the CAP site for each CAP.
- That we commit to the production and writing of a Revision documentation page for the CAP site for each CAP.
The above are assumed in the preceding discussion, but before discussion of the individual elements or implementation begins it is worth opening the floor to any objections to these suggestions that any PRC members have, and possibly rejecting one, two, or all of them. If there is any level of opposition then a vote on these suggestions will be held following discussion.
It should be noted, finally, that all writing for the site, including both the cataloguing of future information and the writing up of past information must go through the analysis coordinator before it goes on-site, and hence the analysis coordinator will ultimately be the leader of both of the finalised processes, assuming the response to this thread is positive.