All that said, I think going physical has some good built-in balancing factors, including having to deal with Brave Bird recoil damage, burns, and contact-punishing abilities/items. I really enjoy the idea of CAP30i being terrifying to face at high health but then being more vulnerable at low health.
I don't think we need to be as scared of giving 30i a high raw attack stat, as being able to solidly 2HKO most Pokemon in the metagame on paper isn't always going to work out as well as expected due to the general obstacles to physical attackers in the metagame.
As listed in the Checks and Counters section, Skarmory, Slowbro, and Toxapex should not be able to be 2HKOed cleanly. I also think that Corviknight should not be 2HKOed without Stealth Rock
I think, that Snake and MDS are right in saying, that we should not be scared of giving 30i a lot of raw power, if we’re going to lean physical.
Brave Bird recoil, Contact abilities, Helmet, Burn and Stealthrock all pose a serious threat to 30is health and intimidate and burn are able to cripple 30i to a point, where it will not be able to reliably break its checks.
I do think physical is the way to go and these interactions are the reason why.
I also believe, that these are the reasons we should allow the capacity to 2hko any physical wall in the tier with the aid of hazards or 30is own utility.
I don’t think, that any mon should be able to face it regardless of these measures.
I see the fear of 30i being able to break the meta with brave bird alone.
I don’t share this fear, bc if we only were to give 30i Brave Bird and no other move, really nothing, it might be able to kill Pex or even Skarm etc. with enough power, but it also would die itself over two turns, bc of recoil, stealth rock and helmet chip or be so crippled, that it would become unusable afterwards.
Factoring in their most commonly run items Skarmory, Corviknight and toxapex have the same bulk. Only slowbro excels them by a tiny margin if it’s running boots.
If we don’t beat Skarm, we will not beat Corvi unless it’s knocked (which is not too hard to achieve, but would be necessary).
If we allow Corvi to be beat with say rocks up, this means we beat all of these mons except Slowbro.
126 Atk
252+ Atk Sky Plate Tinted Lens Crobat Brave Bird vs. 248 HP / 168+ Def Corviknight: 188-222 (47.1 - 55.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Sky Plate Crobat Brave Bird vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 135-160 (44.4 - 52.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Sky Plate Tinted Lens Crobat Brave Bird vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory: 144-170 (43.1 - 50.8%) -- 97.7% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Sky Plate Crobat Brave Bird vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 171-202 (43.4 - 51.2%) -- 6.6% chance to 2HKO
TBH I think reaching this amount of damage would be the way to go. Allow only Slowbro as the mon that takes on 30i, if and only if it’s still holding it’s heavy duty boots and doesn’t get fully paralyzed.
Now this might seem crazy at face value. Ang mon has at least some switch ins right?
Well not any mon does:</p><p>Dragapult
can break common checks with a bit of luck (Shadow ball drop) or the right nuke (Draco puts most ghost checks into a position, where they can’t reliably come in on a shadow ball afterwards). Blissey
is basically the only defensive mon, that will reliably sponge any hit from special Pult and then even that just gets unturned on and abused by the switch in.
Urshifu-R
Ever Switched in your Arghonaut into Shifu and wished you were running pex or bro bc Close Combat does 55%? Toxapex
and Slowbro
are the only defensive mons that are able to deal with Rapid Strike consistently without any risk (and I guess Jellicent and Shedinja if you are fancy).
Weavile
and Garchomp
are one swords dance (and one Arghonaut) away from deleting the defensive backbone of your team and if you don’t have a faster check, sweep.
Kyurem
and Lele
are able to go 6-0 against an unprepared team.
Specs Kyurem can blow up any of its switch ins with the right move prediction. And Lele just klicks Psychic until smth dies.
More fringe options like Specs Blacephalon and Banded Darmanitan can delete even their bulkiest switch ins with just Stabs and hazards.
252+ Atk Choice Band Sheer Force Darmanitan Flare Blitz vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 118-139 (38.8 - 45.7%) -- 18.4% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252 SpA Choice Specs Blacephalon Mind Blown vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Toxapex: 150-177 (49.3 - 58.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252+ SpA Choice Specs Blacephalon Mind Blown vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Blissey: 348-409 (48.7 - 57.2%) -- 94.1% chance to 2HKO
I used the Band Calc for Darm to show Flare Blitzes insane Power Potential, but Life Orb is probably even more threatening as it allows to switch attacks, which is closer to what 30i will be able to do.
Darm basically has anything a Wallbreaker would want, except a typing not weak to rocks and maybe more speed/bulk.
It has High base attack, High Power STAB, that even gets boosted further by its ability, high power perfect coverage, that hits a huge variety of mons super effective, the freedom to switch moves between turns so it doesn’t get punished as hard by predicting wrong a solid Speed tier for Wallbreaking and a pivoting move to yeet out of unfavorable situations.
Note how it still is only Viable on Sun teams and even there struggles to find a spot next to other absurd fire type Wallbreaker like Eruption Heatran, Victini or Blacephalon.
30I is pretty similar as a Wallbreaker.
It will run an Incredibly spammable high power STAB move, that gets boosted by its ability and item and has Free move choice, but it also has to deal with recoil and stealth rocks.
Now 30is typing offers more defensive utility, it will have better utility options and recovery, so I’m not exactly advocating for 140 Atk.
But considering, what I’ve read in the discussion so far, it seems, that the community wants a frailish, fastish mon with good but not great atk.
For comparison
Darmanitan: 105/140/55/30/55/95
With normalized bulk that’s: 74/140/74/30/74/95
Obviously, there haven’t been stats proposed yet, but from what I get from the discussion points above and on , this would look like a possible submission for 30i:
85/<120/80/x/80/120>30i>95
This is definitely stronger, than Darm, considering it’s defensive utility and probable speed tier BUT it lacks its immediate wallbreaking power and has almost the same issues with survivabilty.
Recovering will be for 30i, what hitting Heatran with Ice Beam is for Kyurem: A “lost” turn. You might say, that recovering Heath makes it not a lost turn, but a wallbreaker, that gives its walls room to breath is a huge momentum sink, regardless of its health.
Additionally it will face even more competition for a Team Slot than even Darm, bc it not only has to compete with the other “broken” Wallbreaker, which it still could be used alongside of, but with its own sibling, which to be frank will outclass 30i just bc it is going to be build much more consistent and will have the ability to bullshit it’s way through endgames, once Special attackers have been worn down.
Considering all this, I think, that we should allow stat submitters the option to create stats, that 2hko any given mon, with the aid of hazards or 30is own utility, with a fully invested positive nature Attacking stat.
I don’t think that we need to give a hard ceiling to its Attack stat, as long as the Physical sweepiness is low enough to not be able to go full Dragapult (120//142)/ Weavile (120/125) and the BSR limit set, so that it can’t be strong/fast and bulky at the same time.
Edit: I also want to shortly broach on the speed tiers discussion.
I agree, that we don’t want 30i to be super slow (unless it has Melmetal style bulk) and that outspeeding common walls should be emphasized. Buzz
is probably the fastest wall we want to beat and outspeeding it, will help facing defensive sets running Ice Punch or Stone edge, that threaten to hit us SE. Uninvested this would require 80 base Speed.
I also think that our Speed is pretty open upwards and I am still not opposed to make this mon the fasted mon this side of eleki town.
Previous posts have not addressed how speed can enable or disable certain utility options.
For example Twave and Rapid Spin, become a lot more useful on Slower bulkier builds, that will gain the ability to outspeed Checks in addition to hitting hard/tanking hits.
Although having a super fast mon, that can serve as speed control bc of speed and twave is something we have seen a lot in past generations.
Taunt on the other hand is going to get better the faster 30i gets until around 130 Speed, where most mons stop running utility.
Toxic and Knock Off are probably the most Speed agnostic, but obviously knock off likes spreads with higher Attack so it still does good damage, while Toxic would be better, the bulkier 30i gets. Last but not least SD is going to become more dangerous, the faster the spread is.
For me this means, that a lot of different speed tiers are possible and would probably depend on which utility is favored and on the way we want to use our utility.