Done Soft Ban on Dominating Primary Abilities

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quziel

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Approval: snake_rattler

It is no secret that in every single CAP process the abilities Regenerator, Magic Guard, Immunity Abilities, and often Weather Abilities will be brought up and in many cases dominate discussion until they are either exhausted or banned by a TL. While they often are the correct solution (Astrolotl is dramatically more able to fulfill concept thanks to Regenerator), this dominance directly reduces the quality of the Ability Stage.

Proposal:
Soft ban high power/conversation dominating abilities with the ability to petition the TLT to unban them during the ability stage.

Explanation:
The proposal would be implemented as such. Firstly a group of high power/conversation dominating abilities (Magic Guard, Regenerator, Immunity Abilities?) would be discussed and put together using the standard ability banlist methodology. During the ability stage we would allow one post to petition an ability to be unbanned for the stage, with the TLT and TL (and potentially one mod?) having to unanimously vote to unban it for discussion. After being unbanned it would be treated as normal. This unban would not be treated as an automatic victory, just an allowance for discussion.

Benefits:
By soft-banning the most conversation dominating abilities we would be able to explore lower-power level and less obvious routes to a success on a concept. This grouping would also allow us to meaningfully split up the current banlist to be strictly process violating, signature, and high power level abilities, with this gradation making the ban reasoning clearer.
 

Zephyri

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This thread (surprisingly) hasn't had any replies yet, so I want to be the first to say that I wholeheartedly agree with this idea. The fact that a sixth of all CAPs have immunity abilities, and the same ability options get polled every single project is telling of the fact that "better" abilities tend to control the ability discussion in CAP. I'm not sure if I have much to add here since I agree with basically everything said in the proposal, except maybe we could have a period of ~1 week before abilities are allowed to be polled, in order to encourage in-depth discussion of low-power abilities. That's basically it though, love what you're trying to do here Quz :)
 

DougJustDoug

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I've also been surprised that there has been no commentary here, but I agree wholeheartedly with the proposal. Almost every CAP, I really look forward to reading the discussion in the ability stage, and then I get disappointed that we tend to fall into the same discussions over and over when it comes to Regenerator and Magic Guard, amongst others. The dominating abilities are not overpowered at all, but they are so splashable that we really don't get much useful discussion about the competitive aspects of the pokemon we are creating.

I think immunity abilities are also not helpful for discussion, because they are a fairly generic buff to typing. Which also is kindof a cop out, because we often use that as a crutch to "repair" the selected typing or to bitch about the typing by proposing additional immunities. I don't think we should allow such an easy bailout for our typing, nor should we waste so much time complaining. But perhaps the memories of all the unproductive and, imo, unfair bitching about CAP 28 typing is still too fresh on my mind. Regardless, I'm not sure that having immunities on the table from the outset fosters good ability analysis, so a soft-ban would be interesting to test out.

And that is how I see this -- an experiment to see if we can improve the ability discussion and perhaps get more CAP's with abilities that are not just "pro-concept" (a term that probably needs to be better defined anyway), but rather, abilities that are more specifically suited to the chosen concept, if possible.
 

Bughouse

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I've long argued that type immunity abilities should be hard banned from secondary ability for sort of similar reasons to the concerns raised in this thread about derailing discussions and rarely being the most appropriately tailored ability for a concept.

So I mean... I get it. That said, I'm not sure that this is really the right solution. As often as Magic Guard and Regenerator, etc get raised we haven't actually picked them that often, and at the end of the day most OU pokemon really do have strong abilities. OU has a high power threshold, which nearly always includes a strong ability, particularly if the mon is anything other than a one dimensional offensive threat which is more based on typing/coverage/stats (ie Urshifu or Garchomp). I don't really know where to draw the bright line between good abilities that merit discussion since OU mons need good abilities vs abilities that are just too generically good and distract from a concept.
 

GMars

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While I do share that concern, I think drawing a line and running with it would be better than not drawing a line because we couldn’t find the exact spot to put it. The approach described here of specifically petitioning abilities to be allowed seems like a good softening measure to prevent the initial placement of the line from mattering too much in the end, and pairing this with a blacklist power from the TLT would hopefully prevent the “unban this ability for discussion” talk from just 1-for-1 replacing the discussion about the abilities themselves.
 

quziel

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I have had a few months to think about this proposal, and I think the ability to draw a line between "this ability is banned because it interferes with process", eg Color Change, Pure Power, or Fur Coat, and "this ability is banned because it is simply too powerful for most concepts", Regenerator, Magic Guard, Water Bubble, is a useful one to draw. The latter category is also the one that is far more likely to be concept-relevant, ie we've had successful concepts with both Regenerator and Magic Guard. They are also the more likely ones to dominate discussion, as seen in Equilibra w.r.t. banning Regenerator early, and Astrolotl/Miasmaw having fairly strong Magic Guard pushes.

On the flip side, any ability on this list should be seriously considered for a temporary unban if its concept relevant. My intent is that any ability on the "overpowered" list should be petitioned if relevant, and if the TLT (or some other committee) agrees, it should be allowed for discussion. Importantly discussion should not clog up the thread before it is unbanned.
 

Rabia

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So when quziel first asked me to respond to this, my initial reaction was "I disagree with it because I feel the opposite (freeing more abilities as opposed to banning more) should be done;" little did I know this thread is actually an attempt to get that done lol

I think the first issue that I have with the abilities process is the arbitrary ability bans that really lack a firm grounding. The major one that comes to mind is Color Change with the argument of it making the typing stage useless somehow? That really is a weird take because your base typing is HUGELY relevant with Color Charge. In ADV NU, for instance, getting Kecleon into battle much of the time involves letting it eat up a hit from a foe like Haunter, but obviously in doing so you lose your STAB on Return/Body Slam/whichever Normal-type attack you opt for. Because Kecleon functions as a wallbreaker a good bit of the time, this obviously sucks because you're fairly weaker without STAB on the moves you want to use, so there ends up being a bit more dynamic gameplay involving how you want to get Kecleon in, what you want to get it in on, etc.. The fact of the matter, though, is your base typing is still extremely relevant in this process, as the interactions between how and when you get x Pokemon in, what moves you give said Pokemon, and more take into account both base typing and ability.

Additionally, there are many abilities---Water Bubble, for instance---that are banned because they're too overpowered. I find this stance confusing because of some abilities that we allow as of now, including Regenerator and Magic Guard, which are easily top tier (and why they're being discussed as potentially worthy of soft banning). However, as we've seen with Miasmaw so far, a great way to ensure a CAP isn't broken on release is assigning it a defined weakness and then compensating for that weakness by allocating strength elsewhere. In Miasmaw's case, its defined weakness is its typing, which offers poor STAB coverage, but one of its advantages is its pretty good normal coverage, which helps cover for threats that wall its STAB attacks. By allowing some of these higher power level abilities, I think we could be far less reluctant to cut power out at other stages for the sake of using a strong ability like Huge Power, and this obviously would also add some more diversity to the abilities CAPs typically get, much like opting for weaker abilities like Natural Cure would.

The general point I'm trying to get across right now is that the ability bans as they are should be reconsidered, and this is especially the case for abilities banned under the rationale of them blanking the point of certain stages. I feel CAP would benefit greatly from an increased willingness to allow more ability options because it'd lead to more discussion in the ability process than "ok Regenerator or Magic Guard which one this time lads?!?!?!?!".
 

DHR-107

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The general point I'm trying to get across right now is that the ability bans as they are should be reconsidered, and this is especially the case for abilities banned under the rationale of them blanking the point of certain stages. I feel CAP would benefit greatly from an increased willingness to allow more ability options because it'd lead to more discussion in the ability process than "ok Regenerator or Magic Guard which one this time lads?!?!?!?!".
I don't really get this latter argument. There are 268 abilities in Pokemon, we remove 52 (currently) for being

A) Broken in some way (Such as some of the Legendary Sig Abilities like Intrepid Sword or Wonder Guard),
B) Mess with other stages (Stuff like Fur Coat or the aforementioned Colour Change),
C) Forme Changes (Schooling or Flower Gift),
D) Mess with a random facet of their design not already covered (like Disguise or Hunger Switch).

Even if we include the "soft banned" flavour abilities (another 16 abilities; these are mostly banned due to being useless in singles) that still leaves 200 abilities. We than have an additional few abilities which we define as being "Primary Only" level abilities. This list currently stands at 20 abilities.

Across CaP (30 Pokemon + 1 Mega) we've used 66 Abilities [63 Real and 3 Custom] (including a number of Flavour abilities across [I think] 82 "slots"). There is only one triplicate ability (Technician) and 15 we've used twice (Compound Eyes, Drought, Frisk, Guts, Infiltrator, Intimidate, Justified, Levitate, Light Metal, Magic Guard [one mega], Regenerator, Telepathy, Trace, Vital Spirit and Volt Absorb). I think, overall, we have done a pretty good job at representing a good amount of abilities across the board. While I agree the "strong" abilities come up too often, we tend to shy away from them when we can.

I've talked about this on Discord a couple of times, but I think we could possibly change to a tiered Ability list. Its fairly similar to what we have now but with an extra tier. My idea would be Tier 1 Abilities are to remain hard banned (So stuff like Legendary Sigs or Forme Changes).

Tier 2 Abilities would be "Pokemon Defining Abilities". This is where the big change would be. I would argue Abilities which change stats (Such as Fur Coat or Huge Power) would be lowered to this tier, as well as moving certain "Well discussed or Explored" abilities up into this tier. I would guess that Magic Guard et al would be going in here. I think it would be at this point the TLT could have a 24 hour period (if at all) where we talk about if any of those specific abilities are relevant to the concept. If they aren't, then all those abilities go bye bye and can't be brought up again. Either that, or we just move those abilities into the banned list. We could run through our current "Secondary Ability" list and split them into this and into Tier 3.

Tier 3 Abilities would be "Strong general Abilities" much like we already have defined now under the Secondary Ability Ban list. I would also add into this the type immunity abilities like Levitate or Volt Absorb that Bughouse mentioned earlier. We could also add things like Tough Claws or the "-Late" abilities here under power boosts. These would have to be Primary Abilities.

Tier 4 Abilities would be "Everything else not covered" minus those abilities we deem to be for Flavour only which would be in Tier 5.

Not sure if I got this idea across particularly well, but I do agree with the sentiment of what quziel wants to do. Even for someone who doesn't get overly involved in that side of CaP, it is irritating to see the same abilities rock around every time.
 

quziel

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I've talked about this on Discord a couple of times, but I think we could possibly change to a tiered Ability list. Its fairly similar to what we have now but with an extra tier. My idea would be Tier 1 Abilities are to remain hard banned (So stuff like Legendary Sigs or Forme Changes).

Tier 2 Abilities would be "Pokemon Defining Abilities". This is where the big change would be. I would argue Abilities which change stats (Such as Fur Coat or Huge Power) would be lowered to this tier, as well as moving certain "Well discussed or Explored" abilities up into this tier. I would guess that Magic Guard et al would be going in here. I think it would be at this point the TLT could have a 24 hour period (if at all) where we talk about if any of those specific abilities are relevant to the concept. If they aren't, then all those abilities go bye bye and can't be brought up again. Either that, or we just move those abilities into the banned list. We could run through our current "Secondary Ability" list and split them into this and into Tier 3.

Tier 3 Abilities would be "Strong general Abilities" much like we already have defined now under the Secondary Ability Ban list. I would also add into this the type immunity abilities like Levitate or Volt Absorb that Bughouse mentioned earlier. We could also add things like Tough Claws or the "-Late" abilities here under power boosts. These would have to be Primary Abilities.

Tier 4 Abilities would be "Everything else not covered" minus those abilities we deem to be for Flavour only which would be in Tier 5.

Not sure if I got this idea across particularly well, but I do agree with the sentiment of what quziel wants to do. Even for someone who doesn't get overly involved in that side of CaP, it is irritating to see the same abilities rock around every time.
This is an efficient framework and I wholly agree with a 24 hour period to discuss "tier 2" abilities, that is, abilities that are so strong/defining that they completely define a mon so that they don't dominate discussion during the ability stage at the detriment of other abilities. I think its important that we define which of the "tier 2" abilities are relevant specifically to the concept during the initial 24 hour period, and that we only allow further discussion on them if they can be proven to be relevant. Without a lock on discussion after the initial 24 hour period, there's essentially no change from the status quo, which while workable, is not optimal.
 

Rabia

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I don't really get this latter argument. There are 268 abilities in Pokemon, we remove 52 (currently) for being

A) Broken in some way (Such as some of the Legendary Sig Abilities like Intrepid Sword or Wonder Guard),
B) Mess with other stages (Stuff like Fur Coat or the aforementioned Colour Change),
C) Forme Changes (Schooling or Flower Gift),
D) Mess with a random facet of their design not already covered (like Disguise or Hunger Switch).

Even if we include the "soft banned" flavour abilities (another 16 abilities; these are mostly banned due to being useless in singles) that still leaves 200 abilities. We than have an additional few abilities which we define as being "Primary Only" level abilities. This list currently stands at 20 abilities.

Across CaP (30 Pokemon + 1 Mega) we've used 66 Abilities [63 Real and 3 Custom] (including a number of Flavour abilities across [I think] 82 "slots"). There is only one triplicate ability (Technician) and 15 we've used twice (Compound Eyes, Drought, Frisk, Guts, Infiltrator, Intimidate, Justified, Levitate, Light Metal, Magic Guard [one mega], Regenerator, Telepathy, Trace, Vital Spirit and Volt Absorb). I think, overall, we have done a pretty good job at representing a good amount of abilities across the board. While I agree the "strong" abilities come up too often, we tend to shy away from them when we can.
(assuming you were just talking about the last sentence in that quote)
That was more a reference to the OP and how discussion revolves around the same abilities far too frequently, even if the end result has seldom resulted in an ability that has been used before being voted for again (off the dome the only duplicate ability has been Magic Guard being on both Krilowatt and Mega Crucibelle). I think allowing discussion of other abilities, particularly those with, in my opinion, questionable ban reasoning could be helpful to freshen up discussion.
 
Alright, I think it's time we start wrapping this up. I'd like to propose we implement these new ability banlists for CAP 29:

Fully Banned Abilities:

These cannot be discussed in the thread at all and any post mentioning these should be deleted. I tried to keep this list as short as possible, but still included abilities that are legendary signatures, change forms, change typing, have no competitive application, or are otherwise blatantly broken/uncompetitive. I think the only part of this list that maybe needs more discussion are the type-changing abilities (Protean, Color Change, etc.). Personally I recommend keeping them banned, as I'm not very comfortable with the idea of practically invalidating a previously chosen typing but I can see arguments for the opposite.
Air Lock
Arena Trap
Aura Break
Bad Dreams
Battle Bond
Color Change
Dark Aura
Dauntless Shield
Delta Stream
Desolate Land
Disguise
Fairy Aura
Flower Gift
Forecast
Full Metal Body
Gulp Missile
Hunger Switch
Ice Face
Illusion
Imposter
Intrepid Sword
Libero
Mimicry
Moody
Multitype
Neuroforce
Power Construct
Primordial Sea
Prism Armor
Protean
RKS System
Schooling
Shadow Shield
Shadow Tag
Shields Down
Soul Heart
Stance Change
Teravolt
Turboblaze
Victory Star
Wonder Guard
Zen Mode

Ball Fetch
Battery
Big Pecks
Friend Guard
Healer
Honey Gather
Illuminate
Pickup
Power Spot
Power of Alchemy
Propeller Tail
Receiver
Run Away
Stalwart
Symbiosis
Telepathy
Soft Banned Abilities

These abilities should be considered banned by default and we should try to avoid them whenever possible; however people can petition for these to be unbanned and if both the TL and Ability Leader agree, they can be allowed for a project. If the TLT disagrees with the unbanning proposal, they should be considered fully banned for the project and should not be further discussed.This is a much more subjective list and there's a few ones I might be missing but here's the abilities that I think should fall on this list:
Bulletproof
Defeatist
Dry Skin
Flash Fire
Fur Coat
Gorilla Tactics
Huge Power
Ice Scales
Levitate
Lightning Rod
Magic Guard
Motor Drive
Parental Bond
Pure Power
Regenerator
Sap Sipper
Slow Start
Stall
Storm Drain
Truant
Volt Absorb
Water Absorb
Water Bubble
Types of abilities included:

Abilities with negative effects: These have traditionally been banned but on certain concepts (like here for example) they can have a lot of merit, so I wouldn't group them with the fully banned abilities. Stall isn't currently included in any banlist, as it technically could be used to guarantee a slow pivoting move. However, this is an incredibly niche use that isn't really applicable in 99% of concepts and could easily be replicated with slow speed or Gen 8 Teleport, so I think I'd be fair to put it alongside the rest of these abilities.

Stat doubling abilities: This kind of abilities have always been pretty controversial, as their effect can usually be replicated with high enough stats; however there's nothing inherently wrong with them and they could have interesting interactions with a secondary ability, allowing a project to fulfill 2 very different roles.

Immunity Abilities: CAP has always been very dependent on these abilities. Stratagem, Mollux, Cawmodore, and Equilibra, all use these to cover for a weakness and they very much define how these CAPs play. Even outside of these, Voodoom and Plasmanta also make great use of this kind of ability (even if both of them have been historically underwhelming) and they have been extensively discussed in many other ability discussions. I know that there are times when these can actually be niche or outright bad choices (just our last process proved this, with Water Absorb/Storm Drain being very niche in comparison to other options discussed), but this is clearly the exception not the rule. Given all of this, I think it would make the most sense to include them in the soft ban list.

I know Bulletproof is not strictly on the same category as the rest of these but I think our experience with Bulletproof Equilibra shows that this ability can be just as defining as any of the others, as it block many key moves like Focus Blast, Aura Sphere, Shadow Ball, and Pyro Ball which can easily invalidate certain Pokemon. For this reason, I think it would be more consistent to treat it like an Immunity Ability for the purposes for this list.

Other powerful miscellaneous abilities: Regenerator and Magic Guard are probably the most obvious inclusions of the entire list, as they have been discussed to an extent on practically every project. Gorilla Tactics, Parental Bond, and Water Bubble are currently banned, but while they're all incredibly powerful abilities that should be used with extreme caution, they don't inherently interfere with the process or have optics issues, so I think it would make sense to include them on the soft ban list. There are probably various other abilities that could be included here like Adaptability, Drizzle, Drought, Tinted Lens, or Tough Claws but I'm not completely convinced they are necessary to add, as they don't tend to be nearly as centralizing in discussions as Regenerator and Magic Guard.
 

quziel

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I agree with the above, but put Protean, Libero, and Color Change in the Soft-Ban section if and only if ability is done before typing. If Ability is done first they don't really cause the same issue that they do otherwise, so should be unbanned. Not too much else to say.
 
Alright with CAP 29 already underway it's time to finalize this thread. As shown in my previous post, the Ability banlist will be divided in 2 separate lists. The final list is essentially the same as the one I proposed earlier except the type-changing abilities were moved to the soft banlist under the condition that they can only be used if the Ability stage is done before typing. As One, Unseen Fist, Chilling Neigh, Grim Neigh, Transistor, and Dragon's Maw have also been added to the Fully Banned list, as these recent DLC abilities hadn't been added yet.

Do not discuss these abilities on any of your posts.

Arena Trap
As One
Aura Break
Bad Dreams
Battle Bond
Chilling Neigh
Dark Aura
Dauntless Shield
Delta Stream
Desolate Land
Disguise
Dragon's Maw
Fairy Aura
Flower Gift
Forecast
Full Metal Body
Grim Neigh
Gulp Missile
Hunger Switch
Ice Face
Illusion
Imposter
Intrepid Sword
Moody
Multitype
Neuroforce
Power Construct
Primordial Sea
Prism Armor
RKS System
Schooling
Shadow Shield
Shadow Tag
Shields Down
Soul Heart
Stance Change
Teravolt
Transistor
Turboblaze
Unseen Fist
Victory Star
Wonder Guard
Zen Mode

Ball Fetch
Battery
Big Pecks
Friend Guard
Healer
Honey Gather
Illuminate
Pickup
Power Spot
Power of Alchemy
Propeller Tail
Receiver
Run Away
Stalwart
Symbiosis
Telepathy
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
Flash Fire
Fur Coat
Gorilla Tactics
Huge Power
Ice Scales
Libero*
Levitate
Lightning Rod
Magic Guard
Mimicry*
Motor Drive
Parental Bond
Protean*
Pure Power
Regenerator
Sap Sipper
Slow Start
Stall
Storm Drain
Truant
Volt Absorb
Water Absorb
Water Bubble

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

Additionally, the secondary ban list will also be updated to no longer include Magic Guard, as that has been moved to the soft ban list above.
 
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