General Doubles Metagame Thread

[nyttyn]

70/90/90 defenses, bad defensive typing, super fake out weak, no priority, no void, but on the other hand, ungodly 135 spatk, decent attacking type, blazingly fast 125 speed, damn good movepool. I can see nasty plot or hell just darkrai in general being a huge threat lategame.


I'd probably run something like

Darkrai @ Dark Gem / Life Orb
Trait: Bad Dreams
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Dark Pulse
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Fighting] / Ice Beam
- Substitute

Get behind Substitute, make opponent's life a living hell. Or alternatively come in lategame and just clean up shop. HP fighting because you can't really afford focus miss accuracy with something this fragile. BoltBeam coverage can also be used. Life orb is a viable option as Darkrai isn't going to be living through much anyway. Thunderbolt is there over ice beam because water types are really fugging common, what with Rain teams running amuck.

 

[Manitary]

Sneasel lolwat.

It's rarely used instead of Weavile beacuse of Inner Focus, they usually start with Terrakion+Sneasel: if your pokémon threaten terrakion (like Shaymin-S or Tornadus) they go for Protect+Icy Wind, and if you don't kill Sneasel in time then he uses Beat Up and make the sweep start since he's faster than Terrakion.

Seeing the movepool of Darkrai, I think he can work very well abusing Gravity to obtain 100% accuracy in Blizzard/Thunder/Focus Blast/WoW/Hypnosis. 70/90/90 is pretty 'meh', you may want a Chople Berry, or a Substitute to live longer if you manage to setup since Dark is a bad defensive typing. Disable can be a nice move but he hasn't the bulk (neither the moveslot) to use it.

Some calcs

252 Dark Gem Darkrai's Dark Pulse vs 252/4 Cresselia: 72.07% - 85.59%
252 Dark Gem Darkrai's Dark Pulse vs 252/252+ Cresselia: 54.5% - 64.86%
252 Dark Gem Darkrai's Dark Pulse vs 252/252+ Musharna: 69.27% - 81.65%
252 Dark Gem Darkrai's Dark Pulse vs 252/4 Musharna: 96.33% - 113.3% (75% chance to OHKO)

some sets

Darkrai @ Dark Gem
Trait: Bad Dreams
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 4 HP
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dark Pulse
- Focus Blast
- Blizzard/Hypnosis
- Substitute

Darkrai @ Chople Berry
Trait: Bad Dreams
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 4 HP
Timid Nature
- Dark Pulse
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
- Focus Blast/HP/Thunder Wave/WoW

 

[VarunR]

It doesn't make a difference, you know. I'm not making comparisons between PO and Smogon, but there's a similar situation with the Monotype tier in PO (amazing tier, not that popular) and DW abilities are allowed. It works great, probably better. I'm not saying DW should be allowed, but let's hear everyone?

EDIT: I actually agree with Pwnemon. :)

 

[nyttyn]

And now for some light hearted fun in the replays department:
ALL HAIL KING SHUCKLE

http://www.pokemonshowdown.com/replay/smogondoubles8209706

Shuckle (F) @ Stone Plate
Trait: Contrary
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 HP / 4 Def
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spd
- Rock Slide
- Power Split
- Rest
- Gyro Ball

This set is not for the eyes of men. Beware thyselves, for the queen of doubles has arrived. Sporting a massive 612 attack after power splitting Kyurem-B and getting memento setup by her old pal Whimsiscott, this Shuckle set completely rips apart Doubles. I fear for the safety of the metagame if this monster does not get the boot to Doubles Ubers ASAP.



In all due seriousness, this is a textbook case of "What not to do" in a doubles battle. My setup in this fight is extremely complicated, extravagant, and hell even over the top. The gameplan is to turn 1 suicide Whimiscott with memento into Shuckle, thus giving it +2 attack. Then we send out Kyurem-B, who after power split raises Shuckle's attack to 612. Jynx is insurance against rain teams - you can turn their super dangerous water type attacks into healing for shuckle with skill swap (the only pokemon who has both skill swap and a water immunity ability), thus completely turning the usual counters on their head. Latias is just there to be a heal pulse/helping hand bot.

How do you stop this presumably unstoppable onsalught, you ask? Well for starters, most Swift Swim abusers outspeed and really put the hurt on Shuckle if you get in fast, leaving the team effectively crippled beyond repair. Secondly, while it has a lot of defense, it's still far from immortal - a few strong attacks like draco meteor should do the trick eventually. Thirdly, this battle shows the utility a Taunt user can bring to the team - one taunt, and my shenangins would be over. Finally, this battle teaches you a important lesson: shoot the medic first. If someone's relying on heal pulse to keep a monster of a setup pokemon alive, kill the heal pulser first.

 

[VarunR]

Hey, it was you. I did not anticipate that set at all, well done. I missed the crucial Air Slash and Will-O-Wisps and Intimidate'd right in Shuckle's face, worsening it, although you inexplicably Heal Pulse'd my Bisharp.

 

[nyttyn]

Heal Pulse automatically selects a target if your original target dies. So, uh, yeah that means I wound up healing your pokemon by accident since I didn't expect heatran to outspeed.

 

[AuraRayquaza]

This is a battle of me vs Pwnemon. His rain team against my gravity/trick room team. There were some very nice predictions (me killing my own poke :L) but a little bit of hax that mattered quite a lot. Overall it was a great game against a great team.

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/smogondoubles8212152

Lets improve the quality of this discussion and stop bickering at each other.

What do you guys think of Darkrai right now? I actually haven't seen any at all, which is quite surprising. I mean, I know it does not have that much going for it without Dark Void, but that excellent Speed and Special Attack surely makes it at least somewhat useful.

Darkrai + Hitmontop sounds like a decent combination because of their great offensive synergy. Hitmontop can also Fake Out stuff to allow Darkrai to set up Substitute and Intimidate attackers so Darkrai doesn't get killed as easily.

I haven't used Darkrai yet, but I'm going to try it soon when I have a good idea of what to use with it.

I am using darkrai to great effect on a gravity team. I can either come in and clear up a poke with dark pulse or focus blast (nearly 100% accurate in gravity!) or use a very accurate hypnosis to cripple the opposing threat. Hitmontop does have some great synergy with Darkrai for the reasons mentioned already as shown in this battle:

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/smogondoubles8214536 (yeah i ended up losing, but the first part showcases what I am saying).

Darkrai is also surprisingly bulky as well. a chople berry allows it to survive lot of fighting type attacks, so it can put the poke to sleep. This is the set i use:

Hide

Darkrai @ Chople Berry
Trait: Bad Dreams
EVs: 252 Spd / 40 SAtk / 216 HP
Timid Nature
- Hypnosis
- Dark Pulse
- Focus Blast
- Protect

216 HP evs allow me to survive max attack adamant fight gem boosted close combat by hitmontop 100% of the time with chople, so i can neuter it with hypnosis or my partners attack.

Overall, i think that darkrai is a very good poke in doubles and should be used a lot more often.

 

[doughboy]

If you really want to capitalize on Darkrai, you do not want it to be the sleep inducer. Why have it be he sleep inducer when he has only a 60% move to sleep with and all that excellent coverage to boot? Thus, Darkrai's ideal partner is Breloom or Amoonguss.

With Breloom you can take down Darkrai's premier check, Terrakion, without a hitch. In addition, its powerful Bullet Seed can take out opposing Focus Sashed Leads. in return, Darkrai can take out Cresselia, which is freaking everywhere and stops Breloom from dominating (unfortunately it can not outspeed skymin). Meanwhile, Amoonguss pairs better with Nasty Plot Darkrai, since its Rage Powder allows it to set up against opposing Hitmontop. I am not sure of Breloom's movepool, but I am pretty sure it can use helping hand to help Darkrai power through targets.

 

[Manitary]

Helping Hand is an egg move for Breloom so yes, he can

 

[nyttyn]

If anyone's interested, I just made a warstory featuring smogon doubles!

Also, upon reflection, 70/90/90's pretty decent bulk. Darkrai actually looks pretty gosdhang good all things considered.

 

[Arcticblast]

Me vs. Pwnemon
While Pwnemon is complaining about how he played badly endgame, this battle also exhibits the power of Choice Scarf users. I didn't get to use Breloom much though, unfortunately.

 

[Skore]

Just trying to get a handle on usage stats right now so I can predict threats when team building.

I'd say the top 5 pokes I've run into are:

Excadrill
T-Tar
Cresselia
Whimsicott
Abomasnow

What other common threats are people seeing and what strats are they employed in?

Also, status. With matches lasting such a short time, I'm not seeing a lot of toxic being thrown around, not seeing much status at all apart from secondary effects from Scald/Discharge etc.

 

[Agonist]

Hmm, I've seen Toxic tacked onto a bunch of random mon's, mostly to deal with bulky stuff like Deo-D that they can't really otherwise hurt. I've been successfully using Thunder Wave, and it's given me fairly good results.

 

[voodoo pimp]

I've also had a lot of success with Will-O-Wisp Dusclops on my TR team. The damage actually does add up with games lasting longer than they do in VGC.

As for your usage stats, I usually see more Politoed than Abomasnow, and almost never see Whimsicott outside of TerraCott teams. And lots of Hitmontop too.

 

[HabibsHotDogs]

hey nyttyn, that was incredibly aggressive of you... how about a DW Doubles tier.. I didn't even directly suggest I wanted doubles to have DW abiltities.. just that DW abilities could be introduced to doubles

 

[voodoo pimp]

hey nyttyn, that was incredibly aggressive of you... how about a DW Doubles tier.. I didn't even directly suggest I wanted doubles to have DW abiltities.. just that DW abilities could be introduced to doubles

It's probably not going to happen. Right now we don't have the popularity to split into two tiers, and if we do get there most of the other DW abilities will probably have been released anyway (who knows what's going to happen when Gen 6 comes out). Changing the whole tier is out of the question, because as mentioned we want to stay as close to cartridge mechanics as possible.

 

[Agonist]

Oddly, I've only ran into one Hitmontop, instead running into Scrafty (even non-Intimidate ones!). I've only ran into one or two Abomasnow, which doesn't bother my team. As for Politoed, most teams seem to have them, but generally, I don't have a hard time eliminating it, and getting my hail up instead.

 

[VarunR]

Ironically, I haven't faced a Intimidate pokemon since I began using Defiant Bisharp. Before every team had at least one. :|

 

[Sphoofle]

I completely agree with someone earlier saying that Murkrow is complete boss, though I use a completely different set.

Murkrow @ Eviolite
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 252 SDef / 248 HP / 8 Def
Calm Nature
- Thunder Wave
- Roost
- Snarl
- Substitute

I didn't think I needed Haze because set up sweepers never really get enough boosts to keep OHKO sweeping the team, so TWave is good enough. And play your cards right, and Murkrow is incredibly hard to take down; I've had him last the whole battle without switching once, just spamming Snarl, effectively shutting down most of his sweepers.

 

[nyttyn]

It's probably not going to happen. Right now we don't have the popularity to split into two tiers, and if we do get there most of the other DW abilities will probably have been released anyway (who knows what's going to happen when Gen 6 comes out). Changing the whole tier is out of the question, because as mentioned we want to stay as close to cartridge mechanics as possible.

Thus, the reason for my aggression. I understand you think it's a good idea HabisHotDogs, but please think of the bigger picture outside of "Oh hey using Contrary Serperior might be cool!"

Also, I have to say, that Murkrow set looks really cool if your team has issues with special attackers. Might want to watch out for rock slide though - especially from Excadrill, who will ruin your day.

Speaking of the absence of intimidate pokemon: More people should start using them. Really! Intimidate is a very powerful tool on this meta, and it has enough users that you should be able to find one that'll fit on your team. Arcanine's a really cool offensive one, try using this set:

Arcanine @ Life Orb
Trait: Intimidate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Flare Blitz
- Close Combat / Wild Charge
- ExtremeSpeed
- Protect

Intimidate, powerful attacks, and 80 BP (albiet non-stab'd) priority, all in one neat little package. Probably best to run on a team with weather other then Rain though, as he reallllly doesn't like Rain nerfing his fire STAB.

 

[AuraRayquaza]

I've also had a lot of success with Will-O-Wisp Dusclops on my TR team. The damage actually does add up with games lasting longer than they do in VGC.

yes i use WoW on duclops too, my team has the potential be ripped apart by excadrill and the such in sand so it really helps under trick room

 

[youngjake93]

Thunder Wave+Rock Slide is pretty common higher up on the ladder and is a bitch to deal with.
I have to say yet again, that Gastrodon is the most useful Pokemon by far. It resists or is immune to most common attacks, only really having to worry about Breloom and Skymin(maybe the odd Giga Drainer). It has swept so many teams for me and if you pair it with Heatran it can get free Hydro Pump/Surf boosts or Heatran can come in on obvious grass attacks.
I'm not sure if I'm bad with Skymin... or just every time I use it the opponent just focuses all there attention on raping it.

Edit: 1844 ACRE going up and down, 2012 Glicko2

 

[VarunR]

Ladies and Gentlemen! The longest Doubles game you will see in a while! A terrible 85 turns; 65 turns of PP Stall.

http://www.pokemonshowdown.com/replay/smogondoubles8270477

 

[BlankZero]

Ladies and Gentlemen! The longest Doubles game you will see in a while! A terrible 85 turns; 65 turns of PP Stall.

http://www.pokemonshowdown.com/replay/smogondoubles8270477

Already had a 90+ turn battle in VGC and Doubles, but PP Stall lol

 

[youngjake93]

For real... once you get over 1800, Stun Spore and Thunder Wave is EVERYWHERE!! Especially from Prankster users!
I'm about to start running Safeguard or maybe Milotic..