CAP 9 CAP 9 - Part 13a - Attacking Moves Discussion

[Deck Knight]

Deck Knight, I don't think your argument is valid. You're essentially saying "If CAP9 gets u-turn it'll always just use u-turn instead of attacking".

No, I'm saying the U-turn, when used by nearly all its current non-Scizor users, is used to do weak damage and pivot to a counter, especially early-game. Next turn CAP9 will not be in to attempt any of its various means to stop secondary effects. That is how unSTAB U-turn tends to be played, like it or lump it. CAP9 will be no different than Jirachi, Flygon, Infernape, and Ambipom in this regard.

If you read my (and others) posts, you'd see that u-turn would only be situationally useful, since the majority of the time you'd just want to use Pursuit against a secondary user. For instance, if you switch in against a Rotom and grab its WoW for a Guts boost, you're going to want to use Pursuit, because it really doesn't matter whether the Rotom switches or stays in. On the other hand, if you switch in on a Bronzong and bounce its Hypnosis back at it, there's really no point in pursuiting it because it'll still do meh-ish damage, especially if it decides to stay in. You might as well use u-turn and switch to counter whatever Pokemon they bring in next or, if they keep Bronzong in, switch to something that can set up using the free turn. That's when u-turn has value.

So you eat up a moveslot just for an incredibly rare scenario where regular switching could probably do the same thing? In your scenario their pokemon cripples itself. Why U-turn when you can a) attack directly, most likely with Crunch rather than Pursuit if they are trying to protect hazards b) use a utility move like Taunt or Rapid Spin to break secondary strategies, or c) U-turn and either not see a switch, which means your rare scenario wasted a moveslot, or maybe they do switch and you've scouted successfully.

In either case the advantage to having the weak, unSTAB, little additional coverage U-turn is minimal. I'd rather not have the temptation be there to begin with.

Also, your arguments regarding sucker punch seem contradictory. Earlier you stated that Sucker Punch would be a waste of a moveslot on offensive CAP9, now you say it's never a waste of a moveslot.

No, what I said was it would be ineffectual against support iterations of faster, Dark-weak checks without an additional Dark STAB (or Megahorn I suppose) for coverage purposes. i.e. that Sucker Punch is useful, but not overpowering. My argument there was that Sucker Punch was not overpowering. I have never stated Sucker Punch is a "waste of a moveslot."

Taunt/Sucker Punch is definitely a waste though. It plays no mindgames that Taunt/Crunch doesn't already play against secondary users, most of which will be slower than CAP9.

This statement is ridiculous. A number of revenge killers happen to be faster than CAP9 and use secondary moves. Taunt/Sucker Punch isn't even about mindgames as much as it is to force faster support secondaries out to try and switch in again.

Sucker Punch is not really broken against secondary users. But what breaks Sucker Punch is its possible usage against offensive Pokemon. Instead of using primary attacking moves (which we want) these Pokemon will be encouraged to use Trick or Recover or any other secondary move (including Taunt, on some!). That's the opposite of what we want.

Which is why you would combine it with Taunt, or some other Dark STAB. The argument that Sucker Punch promotes using secondary attacks can be applied to nearly every single non-attacking move CAP9 is going to get (bar, again, Taunt and Rapid Spin). There is no cost to using most support moves against Sucker Punch, but the same can be said of U-turn unless the opponent is weak to it. U-turn really is an sub-optimization of resources if it doesn't hit (e.g. isn't used) on an opponent's switch.

Unless of course your name is Scizor, and you're nuking something in the process of using it.

 

[ReysonTheNoble]

Deck Knight, you say you want to disallow U-Turn, but your arguments are all for Allowing it. Saying it's too weak and is very situational is a prime example of something that goes on the Allowed list. If you don't want to see it on CAP9, that's fine, but leave that for movepool voting (Or in your case, your submission. =P).

 

[Plus]

cool, closing thread