Chlorophyll will make us a sweeper - We don't have to give it Growth. We don't have to give it good coverage. We don't have to give it sky-high Attack or Speed. We can quite easily make it inferior to Venusaur in every way as a sweeper while making it useful for other roles. We can tailor its stats so that it needs substantial investment in both Attack and bulk in order to beat the things it beats, thus preventing huge Speed investment. Chlorophyll will make us a sweeper if and only if we have zero self-control. Zero self-control with Chlorophyll will make us a sweeper. Zero self-control with Harvest or Flower Gift makes us outright broken.
So in addition to the restrictions we already have for the CAP's stats, which are good HP and SpD in order to handle Lati@s and strong Water attacks, and good Attack in order to hurt Lati@s back with a physical Dark attack, let's see the further restrictions that we have by choosing Chlorophyll. We can't give it a high Attack stat. You said sky-high attack attack, but i disagree as even with 100 or 110 Attack a Pokemon can make for a very good cleaner with Cholorophyll. We also have to give it a low or a very low Speed stat in order for it to be outspeedable in sun, so that it will neither be faster than Venusaur and thus competing with it, nor it will be able to outspeed common Scarfers, to prevent it from being broken. So this means a Speed stat of 70 or less, and even a positive natured base 70 Pokemon can outspeed most Scarfers up to Base 108. And all those for what reason? To outspeed Lati@s in sun?
Chlorophyll makes us incapable of beating Lati@s in rain - First, not necessarily. If we build it to be able to tank one or two attacks, we can beat it with prediction or on on the revenge, and we can still give it Sucker Punch. We become a much shakier check, true, but it's not as though we'd be any better off in that spot with Natural Cure or Flower Gift. Second, why is it even a bad thing if we can't destroy Lati@s in rain? In the last thread there was worry that beating Lati@s or rain outright would cause us to break sun. Now suddenly we're useless if we can't beat both at the same time? Keep in mind that Lati@s are not, currently, very common on rain teams. If rain decides to spend a team slot on one of them specifically in order to beat sun, we are doing something right.
Beating Latios in rain wouldn't make it broken and is actually one of ours musts for this CAP. We will still have many threats used on rain teams that can check or wall the CAP, such as Steels, Toxicroak, Breloom, Keldeo, and Hydreigon, so it will be fine. Rain will very often be up, and what do you do then with Chlorophyll?
Harvest I still dislike. The debate on this, seems to boil down to "it will make us too versatile!" versus "versatility is not bad!" forever, and I admit that I can't add a hell of a lot to that. However, the Necturna comparison really doesn't work for me. Necturna's entire concept was based around being versatile; of course versatility didn't cause it to fail! Our goals right now, however, are clear, well-defined, and limited in scope. I do admit Harvest actually does help with those goals (which is more than I can say for some of the proposed abilities) but it also inherently adds a ton of options which do nothing but distract from them.
First of all i want to say that Harvest not just helps with those roles, but is easily the best out of all the abilities, as far as handling the threats we want to goes. Now let's talk about the supposed cons. Many people vaguely say ''Harvest is very versatile and unpredictable'' and stuff like that so let's break it down. What are the uses of Harvest? Here let me highlight the most viable of them:
- RestLum
- Sitrus
- Sub + Boosting Stat Berry
- Ice or Fighting resist Berry (Fire and Bug moves OHKO or dent the CAP even with the Berry, and all Flying-types beat the CAP with or without the berry)
- SubProtectSeed with Leppa berry
If i forgot anything you can mention it so we can discuss it. So let's see each of those cases.
RestLum is good and doesn't derail us from our goal. Same goes with Sitrus Berry. Both are meant to increase our survivability in order to check the threats we want to, but they still do nothing to cover the CAP's big weaknesses in Bug and Fire moves, nor do they give it coverage against the Pokemon that can wall it and set-up on it.
The type-resist Berrys are good for specific purposes and strategies, but once again they don't strongly derail the CAP from its goal. While it can now survive some Fighting attacks and strike back, is this a bad thing? I would say no. This way it can sort of check Keldeo, a huge rain threat, which is something sun teams appreciate and is not outside of the threats that we would like the CAP to handle but not counter. Chople Berry may surprise some Terrakion that attempt to kill with CC. It will also allow the CAP to take Fighting moves from Pokemon that use it for coverage, such as Thundurus-T and Specs Politoed, which is a good thing, as those are Pokemon that we want the CAP to handle. Every other fighter that is supposed to counter or check us still does, such as Breloom, Toxicroak, and Conkeldurr. Same goes for Yache Berry. It doesn't do anything drastic to change our list of checks and counters, and the basic draw is the ability to switch into Water-types much easier, which once again is something that we want the CAP to do.
SubProtectSeed with Leppa has the potential to be an unstoppable stalling machine, but there is a reason that it is not such a good strategy to begin with. Taunt, Perish Song, Roar and Whirlwind, SD Breloom (Bullet Seed), Mamoswine(Icicle Spear), Cloyster(Icicle Spear), slower U-turn users, faster Pokemon, and priority moves (the CAP is weak to Mach Punch and Ice Shard) are all threats to this strategy, while the CAP will be huge set-up bait for hazard setters, and then forced out by one of the ways i mentioned above. Finally, this strategy will do nothing to solve the Lati@s issues, which will be able to terrorize the sun teams with DMs that 2HKO the cap while it can't do much back.
Sub + Boosting Berry is the only strategy that has the potential to create some unexpected strategies and get out of control, but it won't happen with careful decisons on the next stages. For examples as long as we don't give to the CAP strong boosting moves or coverage moves, which we shouldn't anyway, as they do not match with the CAP's goal, then what will it do with those boosting berries? SubLiechi will be walled by any Steel type, Hydreigon, Breloom, and Toxicroak, while being prone to revenge kills. SubSalac will be walled by the same Pokemon, and except from fearing revenge kills it will fear any Pokemon with good physical bulk that can take its attacks, such as defensive Gyarados, SubSeed Venusaur, BU Conk, Gliscor, Kyurem-B, and bulky Volcarona. These are the most important berries that i think deserve mention, and i won't discuss the others as they are too gimmicky to have any real merit imo.
So tell me please, how will Harvest derail the CAP from its goal, when it doesn't do anything to significantly change the list of Pokemon that it handles or are handled by it?
---------------------------------------------
One last issue i want to adress for everyone...
One of the most serious weaknesses of sun teams is how much they struggle once their weather is down. And what does Chlorophyll do to fix this? Nothing. It just further increases the power difference of sun teams depending on if they have their weather up or not. So this means that Sun teams will win easier games that they have the weather control the majority of the time, but they will lose easier games that they don't have the weather control the majority of the time. And i want to ask, don't they do exactly the same thing right now?