The State of the Meta
The CAP meta during most of Gen 6 has been mostly heavily centered around bulky offense, with strong utility Pokemon like Cyclohm, Mollux, Tomohawk, and Colossoil preventing hyperoffense from effortlessly wiping out entire teams. You can't just set up once and expect an easy sweep with these Pokemon around, as big threats like Charizard, Talonflame, and Gyarados can get walled pretty easily or at the very least shut down after a Haze. The extra bulk that these CAP Pokemon bring to the table means that easy KOs are far and few between, and using a hard hitting sweeper like Aurumoth requires some intelligent preparation to actually make use of. Stall and Hyperoffense are equally viable as balance but are generally considered deviations from the norm rather than a typical playstyle. The metagame is arguably more forgiving than OU in the short term simply because it is easier for many CAP Pokemon to tank incoming hits, but requires more strategic planning in the long term because taking down CAP cores can require a fair amount of prediction and constant offensive pressure. If I had to make a comparison, I've found that a good CAP match is closer to a fencing match than the out and out slugfests that currently dominate OU.
The CAP Playerbase
In general, there are two types of players who frequent the CAP meta- those who play simply because they like using the CAPmons, and people who believe the CAP meta is fun to play and stands on its own as one of the best metas on the site. In the latter group, most top CAP players agree that there are five traits which the CAP meta does well at (or at least attempts to) in a way which the OU meta is arguably less successful:
1. Everything is counterable, not everything can be countered at once
2. Every threat can be handled through a mixture of utility and teamwork rather than hard checks
3. Team matchups are much less important than long term prediction and strategic planning when it comes to winning
4. Balanced offense is the most consistent strategy, but stall and hyperoffense are also viable
5. CAPmons add a level of versatility to the game that allow similar team lineups to be played in radically different ways
I'd say that the "pinnacle" of the current Gen 6 CAP playerbase happened around January/February of 2014, when the ladder was still fairly competitive and new players were constantly being educated on new team lineups and strategies that were considered most effective. The community is still fairly active for its small size, with players such as myself, Animus, gday, Jiggly, Heal, and others making appearances there practically daily, but people simply do not care about ladder ranks that much anymore. New players therefore are not getting exposure to CAP teams that work, which contributes to a growing lack of sustained interest in the tier outside of this highly experienced group. I will try to explain part of why I believe this to be the case in the next few sections.
Development of the Meta
Early Gen 6 CAP matches tended to have many strategies Genesect was popular because it blew up the genies and was a good pressure tool to deal with Aurumoth, severely limiting its ability to easily sweep. Offesive Bulky fighting types like Revenankh could tank his hits from Genesect and set up easily in the face of many Pokemon which checked it, such as Heatran and Chansey. Tomohawk gradually became more popular because it could deal with these threats easily as well as actually stand up to hard hitting sweepers like Mega Kang and Mega Lucario that the OU tier was not equipped to handle. Megas were not super popular in the early days of the meta, though Mega Venusaur was always a common threat. Fairy types were not incredibly popular because of the constant use of Steel-types like Ferrothorn, Aegislash, and Kitsunoh, but they did see occasional use on bulkier teams.
The introduction of Cawmodore changed the metagame significantly. Running a Cawmodore counter became a huge priority for many players because of how easily it could singlehandedly win matches with little prediction. Early tests showed that a simple two Pokemon team of Memento Tomohawk and Cawmodore could consistently beat players not prepared to deal with it. Cyclohm became much more popular for this reason, as it could comfortably tank everything Cawmodore did and KO it with Flamethrower. It also countered Talonflame extremely well, which in turn became more popular after the loss of Genesect forced the use of other reliable checks to Aurumoth and Syclant. TomoClohm became a standard for excellence in the tier, pretty much marking the point when the average CAP team was considered unquestionably superior than any comparable OU team. It had the perfect mix of bulk, utility, and offense to act as "glue" for practically any team, encouraging variety and careful tweaking of what Pokemon were effective in the tier. This core leaned the meta towards bulky offense, which in turn encouraged further use of CAPmons because this is precisely what they excelled most at.
The Balance Core in particular is a team archetype I helped create with the input from several other major players. I found that it tended to do particularly well against the vast majority of teams, having some difficulty breaking through stall but performing strongly against most other styles when played correctly. I strongly recommended this to new players because it is extremely effective against standard OU teams and isn't particularly difficult for new players to learn. The general lineup looks something like this- Cyclohm, Tomohawk, a specially bulky pivot, a mixed wallbreaker, a revenge killer, and a utility mon. I even
wrote a guide about it several months back that I submitted to Jas and Birkal even though it never got published here. The mix wasn't so much a "jack of all trades" approach as a bag of tricks for any given situation, and for most of December/January variations of this playstyle were heavily dominant on the ladder.
Here's a recent match I had with a balance core in action. The match goes on a long time, but you can see how well each team member supports each other and how difficult it is for opposing sweepers to simply overwhelm the team with continual attacks.
Eventual anti-balance sets such as Kyurem-B and the infamous Mixed Landorus set proved themselves to be heavily problematic for standard balance cores and led to a brief surge of hyperoffense as the primary strategy on the ladder, which in turn led to stall teams being custom tailored to shut down these "anti meta" strategies handily. Stall has completely dominated the recent meta, as once an opponent's team/moveset is basically figured out a good stall core is nearly impossible to break through with any degree of consistency. The easily abusable Arghonaut/Mollux/Tomohawk stall sets and a slow decline of bulky offense has much to do with this shift.
In recent times a growing frustration with this situation has lead towards a general antipathy towards teambuilding in general. The teams you see now on the ladder are nowhere NEAR the best we've come up with, and it's depressing to see outsiders from IRC or other chats come in and wonder why we're using mediocre threats like Entei or Mandibuzz on the ladder when they're either outclassed or pathetically easy for competent CAP teams to deal with. People simply don't care about teambuilding as much as they used to any more, and builds are based more on "whatever the hell we feel like" rather than what seriously pushes the limits of what CAPmons can do. The only time you're going to be facing these highly influential and finely tuned teams is if you specifically ask certain players for a private match against them, and even then they probably would have been even better if they had been further improved based on recent improvements on our understanding of the metagame.
Improving the Meta
We know from experience and consensus from the majority of CAP players that several Pokemon in particular have had an enormously detrimental impact to the balance and enjoyment of the meta, stifling improved play in favor of gimmicky strats and "rock/paper/scissors" matchups. While not completely ruining the effectiveness of balance teams, they allow for easy KOs based off of simple "gut instinct" predictions rather than intelligent strategy and team synergy. This is exactly the opposite of what most players found originally attractive about the meta and a major factor in reducing sustained interest in teambuilding and the tier.
A good standard for whether or not an offensive threat is "balanced" is that ANY Pokemon which can singlehandedly demolish both Tomohawk and Cyclohm should have some sort of highly reliable counter that is both viable and common in the CAP tier. These counters do not have to have recovery moves or even be CAPmons, but they need to be common enough that any player can easily use them. Some Pokemon in particular that can be considered reasonably well balanced:
-Mega Mawile- Countered by Mollux
-Azumarill- Countered by Mollux
-Mega Gardevoir- Countered by Heatran, Kitsunoh, Aegislash
-Aegislash- Countered by Mollux, Arghonaut
-Cloyster- Countered by Arghonaut
-Mega Pinsir- Countered by Skarmory (this is a bit more questionable, as Skarm is generally just a mediocre Tomohawk)
-Syclant- Countered by Arghonaut
-Aurumoth- Countered by Volkraken, Heatran, Aegislash, Clefable, and Aegislash
This means that mindlessly throwing out one of these Pokemon and blindly picking an attack, hoping for the right switchin, is not always going to be an option. You actually have to WORK for your sweeps in the CAP tier, weakening these switchins first and preparing hazards to the point where a sweeper can easily finish the job. Yet two Pokemon in particular fail this test entirely:
-Landorus
-Kyurem-B
Both have too much power and too much coverage to reliably switch into, and sit at a speed tier which is MUCH more dangerous in CAP than it is in OU. Simply using faster, hard hitting checks like Greninja or Latios is not sufficient, because those checks are too easily shut down by balance cores which are in turn shut down by Landorus/Kyurem-B. This is not balance, this is the "rock/paper/scissors" matchup we are trying to avoid that forces matches to depend more on team composition than strategy. Dealing with these two Pokemon forces players to use inefficient strategies and Pokemon much in the same way that being forced to use Pokemon like Haze Quagsire to deal with Baton Pass in OU was considered gimmicky and damaging to the meta. I believe the meta would vastly improve if these two Pokemon were banned as soon as possible- or at least quickly suspected- because they are extremely frustrating to deal with and have been nothing but detrimental to improving the teambuilding and competency of play available on the ladder.
Stall in recent months has turned out to have several strategies which are nearly as problematic as hyperoffense, being being able to shut down offensive threats that even the best OU stall cores have difficulty dealing with. Haze/Reflect Tomohawk is a particularly nasty source of this, being able to neutralize and beat practically every physical sweeper in the game that cannot hit it with a super-effective STAB move. Bulky sweepers like Reuniclus and Revenankh can gradually punch through stall, but when they can be effortlessly Hazed and Roared out with Arghonaut or set up on with some gamebreaking, status immune sweeper then you're basically forced to run gimmicky stallbreakers like Gengar which are either too weak to balance cores or get demolished by hyperoffense. The metagame is once again becomes less about strategy and more about team matchups, which is exactly what we are trying to avoid. I do not believe that these Pokemon are nearly as problematic as Kyurem/Lando but they do deserve to get discussed and possibly suspect tested at the very least:
-Haze on Tomohawk (the specific move, not the Pokemon)
-Roar on Arghonaut (shuts down bulky setup sweepers too easily)
-Clefable (the Cosmic Power set in particular is too difficult for the Fighting/Dark centric bulky offense meta to deal with)
-Gothitelle (arguably as bad as Mega Gengar was in OU, as trapping Tomohawk/Mollux/Cyclohm is way too powerful)
Once these Pokemon/strategies are dealt with, we can go back to building a coherent, balanced meta that focuses on CAPmons and educating players on what basic team builds are considered efficient and widely effective for every archetype. With the way the meta is currently headed, this is becoming more of a crapshoot, though the
current discussions in the OU forum on suspecting certain heavily problematic Pokemon give me some hope that this may happen eventually regardless.
A final
possibility is discussing unbanning certain Pokemon that are considered too powerful for OU but aren't all that unbalanced in the CAP meta. Mega Lucario and Genesect in particular are two Pokemon that I think are much easier to check/counter in CAP than in OU, encouraged greater variety and better quality of teambuilding, and in no way were too powerful for the meta. I believe that this should be last on our priority list, however, as dealing with the above problematic Pokemon is much more important right now.
Improving Player Discussion
There is an enormous amount of community knowledge about what sets work best for each individual CAPmon, and what their specific role is in the Gen 6 meta. Unfortunately, most of it is not written down. Heal has listed a few recent attempts at community outreach, but a general sense that the IRC CAP community treated the CAP meta as little more than an irrelevant sideshow and that the Smogon staff didn't particularly care either meant that most of the highly dedicated CAP players have had little incentive to try to create public content. Players interested in the meta generally have been getting help on an individual basis, being tutored on what works and prepared with teams that tend to work well against a variety of threats. While this worked fine for the members involved, it didn't help players who may have not had the best English speaking ability or simply didn't have the time to find someone to teach them how to play.
Discussions like these are a relatively minor improvement to the initial situation, though creating a subforum for the meta and allowing the players who actually know what it plays like (it isn't hard to find us, try going to the CAP room sometime!) some leeway in deciding what projects get worked on there would give us much more incentive to put in the time and effort to make this kind of content happen. Maybe give a few of us the ability to sticky threads in the subforum, because right now it's annoying not having metagame crucial threads stuck in a place where new players can easily get access to them.
Eventually, I would like to see:
-Updated analysis' for all Gen 6 CAPmons linked to their official articles
-More RMTs/warstories being posted in the board
-Publicly advertised tournaments
-Tutoring sessions put in for players interested in learning how to use these Pokemon
-Guides for basic team archetypes and what kind of cores work well (you don't have to use Tomo/Chlom to be successful, but everyone should at least know how it works)
-An automated message that pops up every time anyone enters the CAP room that links them to information about the meta and to this subforum
Buffing Older CAPmons
Anyone who has had extensive experience in the tier can tell you that CAPmons tend to fall (roughly) into three categories:
Representative of the best of the tier: Tomohawk, Mollux, Colossoil, Cyclohm, Aurumoth, Cawmodore
Needs slight buffs/tweaks: Arghonaut, Kitsunoh, Krilowatt, Necturna, Revenankh, Syclant, Volkraken
Needs large buffs: Fidgit, Malaconda, Pyroak, Voodoom
The bottom four are especially problematic in that they simply have little to no place in the current meta, either due to being outclassed by newer Pokemon or losing out to this gen's power creep. There is a very strong desire among newer players to try out CAPmons based on what looks cool and has a personal interest to them rather than what is technically the strongest available, and I strongly believe that buffing the CAPmons they want to use would go a long way in improving player retention. This is, after all, a
metagame dedicated to CAPmons, and we are by NO MEANS required to simply "accept" that some are vastly superior to others. This is not OU, after all. I also believe that through these changes we could also fix some of the external balancing issues in the process. One example of this I brought up earlier in the chat was how giving Kitsunoh access to a hard hitting fire move like Flare Blitz and a slight attack increase would not only increase its viability but allow it to reliably revenge kill Cawmodore, which is currently considered quite frustrating for offensively oriented teams to check. Pokemon like Fidgit may need significant movepool additions to justify their use, but I believe this can be done while keeping in the spirit of the original designs given to us in the CAP process and preserving the original versions of the CAPmons for posterity.
Making These Changes Happen
My suggestion is that we make all of these suggested changes as a general purpose endgoal and then work on all three large scale changes as open ended PRC projects with no fixed timeframe. Some short term metagame improvements on the blatantly broken stuff would be nice, but we definitely want to take our time on any changes to existing CAPmons we make to ensure they're done right and with the approval of the CAP community.
