General Doubles Metagame Thread

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Laga

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Yeah, I usually think that a well built Goodstuff team that deals very well with as many strategies as possible, whilst still being able to damage things back hard. Some commen Goodstuff mons are Bisharp (counters intimidate spam and icy wind spam whilst providing strong STAB priority), Hitmontop (provides Intimidate + Fake Out support, and still able to damage many things hard with Gem CC), Thundurus (counters Tailwind and fast paced teams with T-Wave, and still causes damage with it's BoltBeam coverage), and the list goes on.
 

Audiosurfer

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Stall really isn't a viable strategy in any form in the Doubles metagame (except for maybe like Guard Split Shuckle lol). The closest thing you can get to stall in my mind while still having a good team is bulky offense. One thing I remember bringing up in #doubles a while back was how according to the 1850 stats, Tyranitar is actually being used more than Politoed. The reason I found this so interesting was that towards the beginning of the tier's inception a lot of people thought Sand was just Excadrill.team and wasn't as powerful as the other weathers, something these stats seem to disprove. I've actually been using a Sand team recently to a lot of success, and I think it's probably the best weather right now due to how resilient it is. While other team types can have really good and really bad matchups, a well-built sand team can have really nice matchups across the board and is just a generally solid team type. This also goes for goodstuff teams since a lot of good Sand teams are just Goodstuff + Tyranitar anyways.

In terms of trends, I remember lucariojr asking why Doubles players liked Tailwind so much, and looking back on it a lot of recent teams I've seen that people have performed well with have had Tailwind for some reason. I think this is just that people are relatively underprepared for Tailwind teams where you have multiple high-powered attackers that can suddenly outspeed your whole team. Once a team uses Tailwind, the pressure is really on the opponent to respond since they've got to play around high amounts of offensive pressure (these sorts of high powered offensive strategies were used a lot in the Doubles UU tournament too). I don't think Tailwind strategies are the best strategies in the metagame, but they're definitely viable and popular right now. For that reason, I'd say that Trick Room is (as always) an excellent metagame call. A well-built Trick Room team has a good matchup against a Tailwind team for obvious reasons, as well as threatening plenty of other common team types (Turning fast weather sweepers into liabilities, "outspeeding" things commonly found on most teams under Trick Room, etc.) Most teams usually either have only 1 Taunt user or a single slow Pokemon as their Trick Room check and call it a day, assuming they bother preparing for Trick Room at all, and people have had success with Tailwind in both Doubles and VGC so it's definitely a promising idea that I haven't really seen utilized much lately for some reason.

Also here are some replays showing off Sand's might:
http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/smogondoubles-37013948
http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/smogondoubles-37016635
http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/smogondoubles-37098409
http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/smogondoubles-37602271
http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/smogondoubles-37604290
http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/smogondoubles-39066330
 

Laga

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Well to be honest, a Tailwind team is not well built if it doesn't have clear ways to deal with both Fake Out + Trick Room and Rage Powder + Trick Room. Otherwise, the Tailwind team will almost always lose. The reason why doubles players like Tailwind a lot is because against Trick Room teams, they can just go with their counter strategy whilst not even having to set up Tailwind. Against other teams that are fast paced, almost no other fast paced team will outspeed a Tailwind team; not even Icy-Wind-Spam-Teams or DrizzleSwim teams. The only reason Tailwind is used over Trick Room is because of the fact that it is at neutral priority, and not -7; which Trick room is at. Being at -7 makes it extremely hard for it to get around Taunt, fast Fake Out, Spore and really powerful attacks. Fast Tailwind setters can just outspeed and set it up right away.
 
I don't think Tailwind strategies are the best strategies in the metagame, but they're definitely viable and popular right now. For that reason, I'd say that Trick Room is (as always) an excellent metagame call. A well-built Trick Room team has a good matchup against a Tailwind team for obvious reasons, as well as threatening plenty of other common team types (Turning fast weather sweepers into liabilities, "outspeeding" things commonly found on most teams under Trick Room, etc.) Most teams usually either have only 1 Taunt user or a single slow Pokemon as their Trick Room check and call it a day, assuming they bother preparing for Trick Room at all, and people have had success with Tailwind in both Doubles and VGC so it's definitely a promising idea that I haven't really seen utilized much lately for some reason.

In my experience at least, I have been encountering more and more Trick Room counters on the ladder (1700+ players), and I think this is in response to the once extremely popular Trick Room, which towards the start of the ladder (along with Rain) was immensely popular. This doesn't mean that Trick Room is bad though. It is a very effective strategy (I don't use it much unfortunately, mostly a playstyle thing that I should try to eradicate), and good against Tailwind, and overly fast-paced teams, which are getting some more use. It should be noted that the top 2 teams on ladder are built around Trick Room, though the top ranked players aren't necessarily the best, due to the whole deviation concept (Blank_Zero, for example, had a relatively easy win against the current #1). I tend to run semi-Trick Room when I use it, I'll provide an example team like that I used once (too lazy to add in sprites):

Tyranitar @ Chople Berry
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def
IVs: 0 Spe
Brave Nature
- Crunch
- Rock Slide
- Low Kick
- Protect

Hitmontop @ Fighting Gem
Trait: Intimidate
EVs: 244 HP / 252 Atk / 12 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Close Combat
- Sucker Punch
- Wide Guard
- Fake Out

Cresselia @ Expert Belt
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA
IVs: 2 Spe
Quiet Nature
- Psychic
- Ice Beam
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Trick Room

Gastrodon @ Rindo Berry
Trait: Storm Drain
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 SpD
IVs: 0 Spe
Sassy Nature
- Earth Power
- Ice Beam
- Stockpile
- Recover (also ran Protect w/ Sitrus at one point iirc)

Excadrill @ Life Orb / Lum Berry
Trait: Sand Rush
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- X-scissor
- Rock Slide
- Protect

Thundurus @ Sitrus Berry
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 196 HP / 40 SpA / 252 SpD / 20 Spe
Calm Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice] / Swagger
- Taunt
- Thunder Wave

Basically, a SandRoom team with the ability to clean up afterwards with Excadrill, and stop other Taunts and Trick Rooms with Thundurus, though offensive Thundurus can trouble him. Basically, the concept was, if I could get Trick Room up, I would generally lead with CressTop or CressThundy, based on whichever one worked. Then I would get Trick Room up, and from there I would proceed to weaken the foe down as much as possible while he stalled out Trick Room. Then I could continue this or simply go bulky attacking, since no pokemon on this team really relied on Trick Room to do its job. After I was done beating away, I would clean up the mess with Excadrill. Pretty simple. I started off with a Swagger + Lum thing for Excadrill, but since I usually didn't use him until late-game, I just switched both of those sets to standard movesets & items. What I liked about this team was its ability to trouble opposing Trick Room heavily. Anyways, apart from the speedy Excadrill & Thundurus, it is pretty standard, so I son't need to say much more.
 

Laga

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yes, that has been done before, but i do not find it effective at all, considering that

1) Priority moves exist
2) Cobalion can easily be killed whilst trying to set up
3) Cobalion has no spread moves, and can therefore be killed by the surviving pokemon if someone where to let him set up.

This strategy is already very well known, but usually not very effective against skilled players.

And Terrakion also would do this job better than Cobalion due to it's STAB Rock Slide, but still, it's not that good of a strategy in my opinion.
 
Yeah everyone knows and is prepared for it. Which is a shame because in the early days of the ladder I had a trollish follow me/justified Lucario specifically to counter it. The results were hilarious... too bad Lucario sucks nowadays.
 
Beat Up + Justified/Rattled is a pretty mediocre combo overall. The results if you pull it off can be devastating, but pulling it off is difficult, and as Laga said, priority is very common in this metagame. The only time I have ever used it was on a standard team with Terrakion and Weavile, and I hardly ever used it, it generally was a side option for those rare moments when the opportunity arose. The most successful use of this combo was on a team with Justified Gallade that ran Trick Room, and it peaked at something like 1936, which soon fell down and down as it started running into the high ranked teams, who were pretty good at dealing with it.
 

Level 51

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Coincidentally, I think Beat Up + Justified is a pretty good example of a metagame trend (in the opposite direction from most of the ones we were discussing). In VGC '11, TerraCott was a pretty devastating strategy worthy of (a) a set in the Whimsicott analysis called "Terrakion Partner" and (b) sufficient preparation for it. Nowadays, especially in Smogon Doubles, many more powerful threats have been released and people are chucking this strategy in favour of more brute power. This is seen even more clearly in Smogon Doubles where Kyurem-B and Scizor are pretty ubiquitous threats.

As the posts above have explained, this strategy has many flaws in it that prevent it from working very effectively or even very often. It seems that the trend of ally-targetting has increased slightly since the publication of The Smog Article "Uncommon Doubles Strategies" (by me ^_^); I even caught Pocket using TR + After You Musharna in his Doubles Dash team! Thus, I would like to introduce the question: Under what circumstance would it be useful and beneficial to target your ally?
 

Laga

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well, there is also Discharge + Volt Absorb / Lightningrod as well as Surf spam teams with Water Absorb and Storm Drain. Those situations are probably beneficial to aim at your allies. :)
 

Punchshroom

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Speaking of Snarl, what of Zoroark's potential in Doubles? Insane mindgames for the poor opponent, can punish with good sweeper stats, good 2-move coverage, and either a fast Imprison to stop Protects or Flamethrower to roast Steels Focus Blast can't hit (and there are plenty).
 
Zoroark is probably decent, but it is A) very frail, and B) hates any opposing form of speed control. It is also outclassed somewhat by Darkrai, who has a better movepool apart from lack of Flamethrower, higher speed, higher Special Attack, and higher bulk.
 
on the subject of targeting your own pokemon, there's a rare circumstance that i'd like to mention besides the obvious 'target your own terrakion with sucker punch for free boost lol!'. when a pokemon that can take out an opposing pokemon on the field but will soon die to sandstorm or other passive damage. in such cases, should you have a move like drain punch, you should target your own pokemon so the game changing pokemon can live another turn rather than try to attack into a substitute. alright, so maybe that explanation was kinda lacking, so here's a video to illustrate my point (starting at 7:24 because this auto youtube thing is shit);


note how the conkeldurr can easily knock out the excadrill, but will soon faint from sandstorm damage. knowing this, the excadrill can simply protect to stall out that one turn and knock out the hydreigon with rock slide to win the game. if this were the case, honchkro could have easily drain punched his own hydreigon to live that one turn of the game and live to mach punch another day (effectively giving honch a 75% chance to win providing his opponent didn't pull off the legendary triple protect as dpunch would put it at around 34 HP, enough to live two more turns of sandstorm).

e: also see the nationals finals where human knocks out his own abomasnow in order to renew his scrafty's fake out. cannibalizing your own team can open up new win conditions if you know how to use them :)

zoroark is never used in doubles simply because it can't hit hard enough. the only things it can really catch off guard is scizor and chople-less tyranitar if you're running something like night daze/flamethrower/low kick/protect, and outside of that little circle, it just can't make use of the great surprise value of illusion. snarl is an under-appreciated move though, and it's probably best used by raikou and suicune.
 
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on the subject of targeting your own pokemon, there's a rare circumstance that i'd like to mention besides the obvious 'target your own terrakion with sucker punch for free boost lol!'. when a pokemon that can take out an opposing pokemon on the field but will soon die to sandstorm or other passive damage. in such cases, should you have a move like drain punch, you should target your own pokemon so the game changing pokemon can live another turn rather than try to attack into a substitute. alright, so maybe that explanation was kinda lacking, so here's a video to illustrate my point (starting at 7:24 because this auto youtube thing is shit);


note how the conkeldurr can easily knock out the excadrill, but will soon faint from sandstorm damage. knowing this, the excadrill can simply protect to stall out that one turn and knock out the hydreigon with rock slide to win the game. if this were the case, honchkro could have easily drain punched his own hydreigon to live that one turn of the game and live to mach punch another day (effectively giving honch a 75% chance to win providing his opponent didn't pull off the legendary triple protect as dpunch would put it at around 34 HP, enough to live two more turns of sandstorm).

e: also see the nationals finals where human knocks out his own abomasnow in order to renew his scrafty's fake out. cannibalizing your own team can open up new win conditions if you know how to use them :)

zoroark is never used in doubles simply because it can't hit hard enough. the only things it can really catch off guard is scizor and chople-less tyranitar if you're running something like night daze/flamethrower/low kick/protect, and outside of that little circle, it just can't make use of the great surprise value of illusion. snarl is an under-appreciated move though, and it's probably best used by raikou and suicune.
The attacking the partner concept is one of those rare and interesting moments. Using your partner to gain an advantage is very diverse, from everything like a simple KO to get in safely, to a Swagger on the ally, this is a pretty unique part of the metagame. Note however, these moves involve a very high amount of risk. In the match kingofkongs vs Human (mentioned briefly be lucariojr), kingofkongs switches to Ludicolo rather than the expected double Protect, basically meaning Human lost Abomasnow for very little advantage, which can happen should the opponent predict/not do what is predicted, making these moves fairly risky. Many "attacking an ally" combos, such as Beat Up + Justified, Fake Out + Steadfast, etc, are really not worth it. But overall, you should always be keeping your eye out for situations where attacking your own pokemon rather than the foe's might be the best option. I haven't really done much like this, but I did have one team with both Hitmontop and Terrakion, and I occasionally Sucker Punched my own Terrakion in order to snag some extra KOs with Rock Slide. Point being, always be on the lookout for these possibilities.
 

Laga

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I use plenty of Lum Berries, but I see what you mean. The thing about Resist Berries and Gems increasing in popularity is probably because Spore and Thunder Wave are getting less popular. Also, Gems and Resist Berries are extremely useful with the fast pace of the metagame; thus making them a tad more consistently useful than Lum Berry on a lot of things. That is at least what I believe happened and is the reason why Resist Berries and Gems are seeing more use than Lum Berry.
 
I use plenty of Lum Berries, but I see what you mean. The thing about Resist Berries and Gems increasing in popularity is probably because Spore and Thunder Wave are getting less popular. Also, Gems and Resist Berries are extremely useful with the fast pace of the metagame; thus making them a tad more consistently useful than Lum Berry on a lot of things. That is at least what I believe happened and is the reason why Resist Berries and Gems are seeing more use than Lum Berry.
Agreed. I don't really have much to add to this, but in Smogon Doubles especially, Spore is torn apart in viability due to the fact Smogon Doubles has a Sleep Clause, and this in turn makes Lum Berry less popular since Spore is less popular. As for Thunder Wave, most teams have slow pokemon who won't mind those as much. Still, Lum Berry is popular on Follow Me/Rage Powder abusers to draw in status, especially Volcarona.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
I feel like Lum Kingdra should be higher in usage, just because it destroys even bulky Thundurus.
No. Kingdra hardly can afford to use its item slot for something so niche when it really needs the extra KO power that it gets from the item. Calcs of Draco Meteor damage without a boosting item such as a Gem or LO are kind of sad (only a chance of OHKO on cube or latias) and non-lum Kingdras can still destroy thund just fine with Muddy Water, albeit being crippled in the process.

In general, lum is a bad item because it is so situational. You have to consider a) the odds that you will be in a scenario where lum is able to soak up status, b) the odds that after lum has soaked up the status you can actually KO the pokemon that used the status, and c) the odds that you'll actually be the target of that status move should it happen. I know I hate it when people say "this isn't VGC," but the changes between the metas really did hurt the viability of lum. For one, sleep clause, as mentioned, means status is less prevalent. For two, a stray para or sleep is MUCH less crippling to a team of six than a team of four, and i could explain all the little ways in which this alters the effect of status on the match but just take it on faith. These two factors combined mean that you're less likely to run into status spam, and it's less likely to be an issue to the point that you need to run Lum to beat it.
 

Arcticblast

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I wouldn't go so far as to say Lum Berry is a bad item - it's still nice against things like Blizzspam and the occasional Scald, and it's certainly better than having no item. In fact, it might even be better than a resist berry on some Pokemon, especially ones like Musharna who can usually get away with taking a 2x attack but hate status like nothing else (except maybe Taunt).

Speaking of Taunt... Where is it? I've been using a Taunt Toxicroak on a Rain team, and it's been putting in way more work than normal against Trick Room teams, which almost seem ridiculously unprepared for it. Why would Taunt be so rare here when it's so powerful?
 
Yeah, a lot of the teams you see on ladder are very "self-centered", thinking only about their strategy rather than including the opponent's thinking as well. This results in a lot of teams unprepared for their own weaknesses, which simply put (and as Blank said), makes the ladder really bad. :>

In other terms of ladder, I have been seeing more and more priority lately, which is a good thing (and a common trend I should add).
 
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