CAP 34 - Part 6 - Stat Limits Discussion

[Amamama]

I actually do think that our base speed is going to fairly important for us here,

I guess I didn’t get across what I meant to say. I agree that the base speed is very important here and higher Speed Stats are largely better for this Mon. Ouspeeding mons pre set up allows to force more switches which gives more freedom during set up and benefits from the defense boost of Clang Soul since the cost for using it becomes increasingly higher relative to the amount of damage this Mon takes, which in turn reduces the effective boost to CAP 34s defenses. Also in conjunction with Dazzling (or clones) every Additional threat CAP 34 can outspeed makes it harder to revenge kill.

The reason I favor BSR penalties for higher Speed Spreads is exactly because they are likely better.
The T value fails to correctly capture the value of outspeeding an additional mon at higher speed tiers. Going from 120 to 125 speed barely changes sweepiness regardless of how you set the value, since there are only a few mons at that tier. This completely ignores how valuable every single speed tier is at that level though.

but I think having a higher T-Value would make the most sense, since we have already sort of come to the consensus that speed is going to be critical to our success

Since speed is so critical, technically a low T value is what we are looking for. The lower T is, the more impact the Speed Factor has on the Calc. The calc for Speed in the Sweepiness formula is (Speed Factor+T Value)/(1-Speed Factor+T Value) which then is multiplied with the respective base Atk. The Speed Factor is a number between 0 and 1 representing the percentage of mons that are slower than the spread (a Mon that outspeeds 85% of the tier would have a SF of 0,85) the T value can technically be any positive number afaik, but for our purposes it usually lies between 1 and 4. Thus the Higher T is, the less influence Speed has on Sweepiness and the more influence Special Attack has.

As mentioned above though, the margins between higher speed tiers become smaller as you approach the fastest speeds, bc you outspeed less and less additional mons compared to the previous speed tier. So even a low T value around 1 fails to capture the importance of reaching the next speed tier (maybe someone else can provide numbers how small the change to sweepiness even is between each tier at the higher end (142-110), since I currently can’t load the sheet myself). Maybe at T=1 the difference is enough to be felt in sweepiness? If not though a more “regular“ T Value around 2 with additional BSR penalties for higher Speed Tiers would be better, bc a low T Value has another issue:
In the Mid Range Speed Tiers (79-95) you should be able to get pretty insane with Attacking stats if the T Value is too low, bc now every single point you’re slower likely allows for several additional points in Attack, as you are likely falling below several more mons, dropping the Speed Factor much faster than at higher Speed Tiers.

TldR: Keep T-Value in a mid range e.g. T=2 and create BSR penalties for important Speed Tiers

 

[shnowshner]

Preliminary Stat Limits:

T-Value = Default (Make Sure You Use Updated Sheet In OP)

Physical Sweepiness	Special Sweepiness	Physical Tankiness	Special Tankiness	BSR
95	140	90	100	590
Base Speed >= 110	Base Speed >=116	Base Speed >=119	Max Base Speed	PT + ST Limit
-5 BSR	-10 BSR	-15 BSR	123	175

There were a lot of considerations I had to make looking through different spreads, and I'm not 100% at the point I'm happy with. That said, I'd rather have this out ASAP to keep discussion moving and give extra time for people to give feedback.

I'll explain my reasonings as follows:

PS 95 : We're not looking to use our Attack, so I set a value that keeps our Attack pretty low even on slower spreads (you can't even hit 100 base Attack on a 79 Speed spread). If people really care to have Attack, they can, but I don't want to have it steal the spotlight
SS 140 : 140 feels good in ensuring CAP 34 can achieve both strong speed thresholds and have high Special power, allowing it to pick between boosting to secure a game or simply going on the offensive.
PT 90 : This is about the range where Kingambit's max Overlord Kowtow OHKOs us after hazard chip, and where Gliscor's EQ does likewise.
ST 100 : Calc'd to leave us vulnerable to Glowking Future Sight and Equilibra Earth Power
BSR 590 : About the ballpark a lot of spreads I made fell into, and pretty in-line with SV CAP's general power level.

PT + ST Limit 175 : I had hinted at this earlier, and the general idea is that this would allow users more flexibility in having defensive bias, without allowing for maxed out bulk on both sides. So if you wanted a ~100 ST rating, you are now limited to ~75 PT. I initially had lower individual PT and ST limits but liked this idea, and figured it was safe to raise them slightly to give more freedom, as invariably having one good bulk stat leaves the other noticeably lacking.

BSR Penalties : I went back-and-forth a lot over this with dex, and eventually we agreed that a simple approach was better. Initially, I wanted to penalize just SS, so that the more you outspeed the more you had to conceed damage output. This approach proved clunky, however, as faster spreads would end up having more BSR to potentially add bulk too. Faster spreads having more room for bulk felt suboptimal when more Speed + Dazzling makes us difficult to Revenge Kill. As of now, flat BSR penalties are the approach. I am considering Speed Ties here with Iron Moth, Iron Valiant, and Roaring Moon as the benchmarks, simply because of how this Pokemon is likely to play (and partially because of Tera). If a mon like Booster Valiant is your best option to stop a set-up CAP 34, the 50/50 odds of getting outsped and likely OHKO'd may cost you the match. I feel our win condition against mons like Valiant should be neutralizing them as a threat or simply getting the most value we can from CAP 34 before they come in, rather than having a chance to just win anyhow.

Speed Limit 123 : I understand a lot of people may be opposed to a hard limit, but given the circumstances it felt unavoidable. If we want to stay true to our concept, while also having limits that encourage strong builds and aren't too complicated to follow, we simply cannot allow CAP 34 to reach very high Speed tiers. The natural penalty on SS and BSR barely scales as you increase in Speed, so after a while you end up with spreads so fast and still strong enough that Throat Spray feels secondary to just throwing on Boots or Specs. 123 ended up as the limit to ensure that Iron Boulder is a big problem for us if it shows up, and means Cresceidon + Weavile are similarly troublesome should they catch us unboosted. Once again, I valued avoiding Speed Ties given the nature of our CAP and the metagame.

 

[Samirsin]

Preliminary Stat Limits:

Are the special and physical tankiness taking into account the boost from Clangorous Soul and -33% of HP? Or are they unboosted?

 

[Agile Turtle]

The BSR penalties don't seem to have any impact actually, the overall BSR limit is so high, if I ride all the limits while also staying within the total tankiness limit, the BSR hits a little above 565. It would probably make most sense to lower the BSR limit to 565, and increase individual limits slightly to encourage variation while maintaining a BSR limit that reflects the limits you initially calculated.

I think the actual limits for PT and ST are already roomy for a special sweeper, so I would increase the combined bulk limit before increasing PT/ST specifically. Special Sweepiness could stand to be increased by just 5 points. Physical Sweepiness could be increased but it's not really relevant.

I would propose the BSR limit be lowered to 565, and the Special Sweepiness limit be increased to 145. Not convinced bulk needs any adjustment atm.

 

[Tunana]

I would like to recommend raising Special Sweepiness, lowering the bulk, and decreasing the BSR limit.

• Currently, the numbers you get when abiding by the limit either end up being too weak or too slow for a sweeper like this. Something like 145 as Agile Turtle mentioned or even 150 seems more appropriate.
• The bulk feels a little high after playing with some numbers. It seems hard for offense to revenge kill us with how high our tankiness can go, so I think a further restriction would be in order. Not sure what specifically, though.
• I also feel that the BSR limit is far too high for the allowed stats; you don't even come close to 590 when at the max limits for individual sweepiness and tankiness. Again, I don't have a specific number in mind, but I think the current one is far too high.

 

[quziel]

Hey, wanted to make a post requesting the following approach:

I think its fairly obvious that we have more room to play with when we;re using Surf or Flamethrower than Hydro Pump or Fire Blast, at least from a balancing perspective. We've (mostly) all seen those Tera Water Hydro Pump calcs posted to the discord, and they are frankly a lot scarier than anything you can achieve with Surf, even if they only work 80% of the time.

Separately I think the SS limit is set too low; you can only hit 109 SpA at 120 speed, which is well, only marginally better than Greninja, a mon that admittedly is pretty comparable to our situation, though also UU. I'd like to request the following changes.

Increase SS to either 145 or 150, giving a bit more room to play with for faster spreads. If we;re gonna be fast we want neutral power to actually force stuff out.

Similarly provide a SS penalty for selecting Hydro Pump and Fire Blast, and a corresponding BSR penalty to both. Imo the danger of fast spreads comes from being able to bypass walls, and also revenge killers, so making it so that special sweepiness just doesn't allow both to happen with the stronger moves should be functional.

 

[Brambane]

123 is a good Speed limit. At most, I think there is tremendous value in being able to tie with Meowscarada for some pressure instead of letting it freely Knock Off or Triple Axel CAP34 into oblivion. The more offensive Pokemon you can pressure without boosting, the less linear CAP34 needs to play and the more chances it can create for itself to set-up.

With that being said, I think the >= 110 benchmark -5 is kind of pointless, in that I would argue your baseline for this Pokemon is probably trying to tie or outspeed Ogrepon and Walking Wake. You have a good typing to threaten it after an SD and force it into a Tera since it would want that SpDef boost. And being a Dragon-type that is just faster than Walking Wake in CAP already gives this Pokemon a better reason to see use. I think you can keep the -10 at Iron Valiant and -15 at Roaring Moon since those are pretty significant jumps, but that -5 doesn't need to exist for other Speed tiers, and we definitely don't need to encourage sub 110 Speed anymore than the extra SpA or bulk they would be able to afford anyways.

The individual tankiness could be way higher and should be way higher. This Pokemon needs one way or another to find set-up, and a Cloyster-style build is a way it can validly achieve that. With that being said, combined tankiness should be slightly above average for the "conventional sweeper".

Example:
Cloyster has 139.42 physical tankiness and 44.35 special tankiness, combined for 188.77 tankiness.
Ogrepon has 89.37 physical tankiness and 100.58 special tankiness, combined for 189.95 tankiness.

Ogerpon is only 0.58 over the current special limit, and its 80/84/96 is as valid as Cloyster's 50/180/45 in my opinion; CAP34 would focus on very different things in how it sets up using this model. With this in mind, I think you could easily bump individual PT and ST up to 140, and PT +ST increased to 190. I think Cloyster/Ogerpon bulk is a good model here given it also has an overall neutral defensive profile and we are not a Pokemon to ever invest in bulk.

Bear in mind for CAP34, its "effective bulk" is getting cut into by losing 33% of your HP to set-up. If you get knocked into that range by an attack, with or without hazards, there goes Clangorous Soul. This isn't like Cloyster or Volcarona or w/e that can set-up at 20%. Bulk and Speed should always keep this factor in mind.

Special sweepiness scrapes sufficient, but it does leave 123 Speed at 108 Special Attack. This is probably fine with Hydro Pump or Fire Blast, but with only Surf and Flamethrower its bad. I think if you -Fire Blast and Hydro Pump, you can +5 Special Sweepiness (or +10, but definitely +5 minimum) or set it to 145/140 and penalize Blast/Hydro, whatever works.

Overall BSR is fine, no changes needed there.

 

[Agile Turtle]

140 tankiness is a lot to ask for without specific hits you're looking to live to be honest, but I do like where your head is at. There is also something to say about the PT limit being based around getting ohko'd by a non-super effective hit from Kingambit, or a super effective but uninvested hit from Gliscor, it does make things quite tight. I would support raising the tankiness limits, but I think the total limit should remain tight (contrary to what I said earlier). There should be recognizable cost on the opposite defensive side, and at 190 we can ride both tankiness limits and potentially turn all of the aforementioned counterplay into rolls.

I'd support putting both tankiness limits at 100-110, but keeping the total tankiness limit to 175-180.

 

[shnowshner]

It's not been too long by now but consensus seems to have drawn towards the following:

1. BSR is too high for any spread to really approach
2. SS feels too low for faster spreads to work with
3. PT + ST seems like a good idea to ensure balanced bulk, but needs better tuning to be a worthwhile idea
4. Penalties for Hydro and Fire Blast would help tone down our power and make high SS spreads less scary

What I am considering so far is raising SS to 148, to better enable strong and fast spreads, and to make our BSR limit (and thus any potential reductions) have more of an impact on builds. PT and ST can go up to 110, with the limit on their sum now sitting at 180. You can now push harder into high bulk on one side, or have slightly higher average bulk. I think our typing, while not amazing, has enough defensive merit that we don't need to go too crazy with bulk limits: I understand the Cloyster comparison Brambane made, but Cloyster is using a significantly different setup move and has a much worse defensive typing to play around. CAP 34 is already matching well into Pokemon like no Hurricane Venom, Wellspring, Skarmory, Rillaboom, Mollux, debateably even Hemogoblin, so the need for very high bulk feels overrated.

Finally, here's updated BSR penalties.

Base Speed >= 110	Base Speed >=116	Base Speed >=119	Hydro Pump	Fire Blast	Hydro + FB
None (Was -5 BSR)	-10 BSR	-10 BSR (Was -15 BSR)	-3 SS	-3 SS	-5 BSR

Please note that these are cumulative, I hadn't made that clear before but yes, if you reach 119 speed you have to work with -20 BSR, and if you have Hydro Pump + Fire Blast you have -6 SS. In total the biggest penalty you can have is -25 BSR -6 SS.

These changes are not finalized, though I would like to get this thread wrapped up by tomorrow or even tonight if possible. This would help maximize the time I have to look over spreads and make sure they both adhere to the limits I put in place and appear balanced. On that note, please remember that stat limits exist to help guide users in how they want to design their spread, and should not be treated as the "maximums our stat ratings can reach before the CAP is too powerful." It is up to you to make a balanced spread, and I along with the rest of the TLT reserve the right to deny spreads that come off as overbearing.

 

[shnowshner]

Stat Limits

PS – 95
SS – 148
PT – 110
ST – 110
Sum of ST + PT – 180
BSR – 590

Penalties (Cumulative)

(Base Speed >= 116) -10 BSR
(Base Speed >= 119) -10 BSR
(Hydro Pump) -3 SS
(Fire Blast) -3 SS
(Hydro Pump + Fire Blast) -5 BSR

It seems people are content with the limits suggested yesterday, so it's time for us to get moving along. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback and insight during this stage, it's always a huge help! Gonna pass the the torch to dex so we can open up submissions.

 

[dex]

Open ‘er up, these limits be good!