Resource ORAS OU Viability Ranking Thread V5 (See Page 43 - Post #1063)

Yeah he describes it pretty well but Shedinja was already a pretty awful pokemon. Its gimmick sounds great on paper but with how many common types it's weak to (rock, flying, dark, etc) not to mention stealth cocks just go to town on its haunted ass. That combined with the aforementioned susceptibility to pursuit and sand and you suddenly realize that Shedinja team would do a hell of a lot betrer without it. Just get it up out, it's pretty misleading to show it as a viable mon to new players, even if it is listed as one of the shittiest ones in the tier.
Shedinja is a mediocre pokemon, there isn't any denying that. I think, however, that you aren't understanding what it does, and focus on what it doesn't do.
First off, shedinja (especially when paired with dugtrio) is an amazing pp staller and momentum thief. Bring it in on something it walls, and fire off a slow BP, from their,t ehy can either switch and cede you momentum, or stay in and cede you PP as you switch into dugtrio, trap them for a turn as you bring shed back in, rinse, and repeat. between BP and switching, you have and effective 128 bp, so they are unlikely to outlast you. Shedinja also beats a number of top metagame picks, most notably walling the godly thunderwave clefable and keldeo, but going on to include mons such as mega lopunny, scizor (unless they decide on Koff), latios, manaphy, mega medicham, mega gardevoir- dozens of extraordinary threatening mons can just be blanket walled no matter how much hax or times you do so. Many of the most common mons that threaten stall are completely walled. Even horrifically powerful cores are flat out no selled, which is an incredible boon. It's certainly not the most amazing of mons, but you are really underselling it.
Shedinja to stay in D, but not go any higher.
 
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HailFall

my cancer is sun and my leo is moon
Shedinja is a mediocre pokemon, there isn't any denying that. I think, however, that you aren't understanding what it does, and focus on what it doesn't do.
First off, shedinja (especially when paired with dugtrio) is an amazing pp staller and momentum thief. Bring it in on something it walls, and fire off a slow BP, from their,t ehy can either switch and cede you momentum, or stay in and cede you PP as you switch into dugtrio, trap them for a turn as you bring shed back in, rinse, and repeat. between BP and switching, you have and effective 128 bp, so they are unlikely to outlast you. Shedinja also beats a number of top metagame picks, most notably walling the godly thunderwave clefable and keldeo, but going on to include mons such as mega lopunny, scizor (unless they decide on Koff), latios, manaphy, mega medicham, mega gardevoir- dozens of extraordinary threatening mons can just be blanket walled no matter how much hax or times you do so. Many of the most common mons that threaten stall are completely walled. Even horrifically powerful cores are flat out no selled, which is an incredible boon. It's certainly not the most amazing of mons, but you are really underselling it.
Shedinja to stay in D, but not go any higher.
A very large number of pokemon supposedly walled by sheddy outright beat it with the right set. Wisp garde, mixed/HP flying thundurus, HP fire manaphy, toxic mlop, HP fire latis, hp ghost keld (imo a viable option with celebi usage low and hoopa banned), etc. The possibility of your opponent reading a switch into sheddy and sending out a pursuit trapper is relevant too, as this happening even once means your sheddy is dead. On top of this there's also all the things I mentioned in my previous post that make sheddy simply ineffective right now.

Edit @ below so it's not a one liner: to be clear I'm talking about doubling into your pursuit trapper rather than hard switching them into sheddy. Sheddy has to play constant mind games and one tiny mistake costs you the match very often
 
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A very large number of pokemon supposedly walled by sheddy outright beat it with the right set. Wisp garde, mixed/HP flying thundurus, HP fire manaphy, toxic mlop, HP fire latis, hp ghost keld (imo a viable option with celebi usage low and hoopa banned), etc. The possibility of your opponent reading a switch into sheddy and sending out a pursuit trapper is relevant too, as this happening even once means your sheddy is dead. On top of this there's also all the things I mentioned in my previous post that make sheddy simply ineffective right now.
Pursuit trappers (especially Ttar) being on the rise are really bad for Shedinja, but 1) it's often pretty obvious when something's coming in to trap you so you can just pre-emptively Baton Pass (or hell, hit Ttar/Bisharp/Scizor with the Wisp on the switch-in and cripple them) and 2) many of those things you listed are very uncommon: HP Ghost Keldeo is almost NEVER seen (HP Electric is far better, hell even HP Flying hits Celebi and Venusaur), Toxic Mega Lopunny is fairly rare (compared to PuP Lopunny or just Ice Punch, both of which are much more common), and you can scout Wisp Gard/Thundy with Protect (which you should always carry). Standard things Shedinja beats like Mega Medicham (becoming more common), Mega Metagross, Offensive Chomp (if they carry Draco over Fire Blast, but you can scout), and so on still are fairly damn common.

Shedinja isn't being nommed for anything above D, but Wonder Guard is so damn good that it still has a solid niche.
 
A very large number of pokemon supposedly walled by sheddy outright beat it with the right set. Wisp garde, mixed/HP flying thundurus, HP fire manaphy, toxic mlop, HP fire latis, hp ghost keld (imo a viable option with celebi usage low and hoopa banned), etc. The possibility of your opponent reading a switch into sheddy and sending out a pursuit trapper is relevant too, as this happening even once means your sheddy is dead. On top of this there's also all the things I mentioned in my previous post that make sheddy simply ineffective right now.
You are really overselluing the value of a pursuit trapper, but that probably has a lot to do with your strange insistance on goggles shed, which only takes on manual sand/hail (not thinking of any, but there might be one), hippowdon, and to take on Excadrill after Tyranatar dies. A sash is virtually always superior, and allows shedinja teams to handily deal with all viable pursuit users bar rolls vs bisharp, sash weavile, and the rare pursuit scizor. When they come in, shed pivots into dugtrio, losing it's sash in the process, and proceeds to have dugtrio trap and kill it. The other ones you listed are better reasons, but sand isn't going to be up that long for excadrill to sweep due to how many turns are used up as you trap and kill ttar (1 as you bring dug in, one/2 as dug kills it, and 1 more as dug dies, possibly after sucker punching. Unless smooth rock ttar or hippowdon become a lot more viable on sand, that playstyle's influence isn't as large as you would think. While chomp rocks is a big issue, there are some very viable teammates for shedinja that take on sd chomp while defogging rocks such togekiss or skarmory (also deals with excadrill). Yes, it requires a ton of team support, but it works really well when it does, nothing competes for it's fairly major niche, and most of the coverage you mentioned are significantly worse and less common than the main sets. As far as the D-Rank goes, its one of the better ones.
 

HailFall

my cancer is sun and my leo is moon
You are misunderstanding me. A sand setter can come in, and then your opponent can switch into something sheddy needs to check like keldeo and put you in an awkward position. A focus sash gives you one chance to make a mistake, but leaves your team painfully vulnerable to exceedingly common sand builds. Safety goggles are significantly more consistent as an item. Also people have brought up scouting... what do you do after realizing a mon is a set you cannot beat? You click X or switch into the actual check you should have in the first place.

Edit: also clicking tect gives your opponent a free turn to switch into a pursuit trapper if they predict successfully. They can also pretend not to have the coverage and then use it the next turn
 
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Shedinja is a mediocre pokemon, there isn't any denying that. I think, however, that you aren't understanding what it does, and focus on what it doesn't do.
First off, shedinja (especially when paired with dugtrio) is an amazing pp staller and momentum thief. Bring it in on something it walls, and fire off a slow BP, from their,t ehy can either switch and cede you momentum, or stay in and cede you PP as you switch into dugtrio, trap them for a turn as you bring shed back in, rinse, and repeat. between BP and switching, you have and effective 128 bp, so they are unlikely to outlast you. Shedinja also beats a number of top metagame picks, most notably walling the godly thunderwave clefable and keldeo, but going on to include mons such as mega lopunny, scizor (unless they decide on Koff), latios, manaphy, mega medicham, mega gardevoir- dozens of extraordinary threatening mons can just be blanket walled no matter how much hax or times you do so. Many of the most common mons that threaten stall are completely walled. Even horrifically powerful cores are flat out no selled, which is an incredible boon. It's certainly not the most amazing of mons, but you are really underselling it.
Shedinja to stay in D, but not go any higher.
On the contrary my dude, you're giving the ninja way too much credit. As awesome an ability as Wonder Guard is, allowing it to wall top threats like Keld and such, it can't save it from everything, as fire and dark coverage is fairly common (knock off and HP fire) which applies for many of the mons you listed as thihns sheddy "beats" (HP fire Latios/Manaphy/Gardevoir and KO Sciz) and other mons it walls are walled by other mons that are way more viable on stall (Keldeo for example gets stopped by Amoonguss a.k.a. the best pokemon in the game Kappa Kappa) which diminishes its niche substantially. Also its ability to wall things depends on the aforementioned stealth cocks being up. Which sure it sounds easy to keep them off the field thanks to Mega Sableye (which is the obvious partner to Shed for obvious reasons) but it's not like Sableye really does its job so well that it can consistantly support Sheddy (hint: rocks clef). Overall I could think of far better mons to support a stall team than one mon that has to have an entire team built around it and even then can be inconsistent on how well it checks things. Unrank.
 
I feel like you're using Shedinja wrong, your reasonings for dropping it are unfair. Shedinja is the ultimate momentum roadblock, and that's it's only niche in OU. Though you can easily prepare for it, you're rarely going to spend one move slot on all your team members purely to prepare for a rather uncommon pokemon. Shedinja should be used through-out the match to force your opponent to bring out one of the designated Shedinja checks, and for the Shedinja user to recognize them.

Baton pass and protect are crucial for Shedinja, without it's a horrible pokemon. In the early stages of the game, you should either be click those two moves, over and over again. The nature of Shedinja is that you either beat it or lose it, hax rarely has an active effect. So at team-preview you know that your opponent might be able to touch your Shedinja... Or they might not. Your job is to find out! When you've found out you've effectively terminated said pokemon as a threat and a win-con - as long as you keep Shedinja in the back, you can effectively sleep on said pokemon, I'll show a great example of this now!


ULvHhWI.gif

So this was a team early last year, which peaked number one multiple times because of the effective use of Shedinja, Sableye and Dugtrio. It utilised this exact ability to great effect, being able to scout out the opponents... What do we call it, checks? Yeah, Shedinja check works fine. But here it from the man himself

"Although the team is primarily built around Shedinja, the rest of the team benefits equally from Shedinja's immunities. For example, common threats like standard Manaphy, Mega Metagross, Mega "unresisted stab" Lopunny, Latios and NP Thundurus would otherwise be difficult to wall. Other common threats such as Clefable and Altaria have to choose between fire coverage, instant healing and/or setup moves which means that my team would be able to handle any given set. I chose Focus Sash over Safety Goggles, and I believe the latter option is too situational considering the structure and weaknesses of the team. The most common weather setter at the moment is Tyranitar, who also happens to be one of the best pursuit trappers in the tier, thus mitigating Shedinja's ability to deal with Tyranitar regardless. Hippowdon, however, is really the only prevalent downside to running Focus Sash, though seeing Hippowdon on the opposing team doesn't necessarily make Shedinja useless. More often than not, Focus Sash allows me a free turn to land wisp on something like Knock Off BD Azumarill and SD Scizor. Furthermore, Focus Sash ensures that I cannot get pursuit trapped twice by stuff like Bisharp and Weavile, both of which are handled by Dugtrio if they manage to break Shedinja's sash."

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-257728314 (dealing with RD mana/hippo)
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-259810479 (taking full advantage of the "switch-trap loop")
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-259804666 (i'm not actually weak to ttar/keldeo)
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-259525913 (why sash is necessary on shedinja)
 

HailFall

my cancer is sun and my leo is moon
The first paragraph of this is just stating the obvious, i know exactly what sheddy does. The second paragraph is just explaining the set sheddy runs for some reason...?

amazingly enough the example you gave was exactly the "extremely inconsistent" shedinja stall team i hinted at in one of my previous posts. Honestly play with that team and you should see exactly what i mean. It, and many other sheddy builds, outright lose to quite a few threats provided they run the right sets and get heavily pressured by tons of common stuff right now.

Also im not sure why you literally just copied part of a RMT into this thread as if it proves anything at all lmao one successful team from a year ago no less (which doesn't work exceedingly well anymore because nearly everyone knows the ins and outs of that team as well as how to break it) isnt proof that shedinja is deserving of a rank right now. The point is that with metagame trends being so hopelessly out of favor for sheddy right now, along with the fact that this new thread isnt supposed to be "rank everything with any niche no matter how small", sheddy really doesnt deserve a rank. Yes, you can use it in ou. No, its not the kind of mon someone just learning competitive pokemon should be seeing listed on the viability rankings, even in D rank.

as for the replays, i understand the switch trap loop as well as how rd mana gets cockblocked. ive said this multiple times but yes, every sheddy team is ttar weak as with a clever double on the part of your opponent, your sheddy is dead. Sash shed loses to keld if sand is up regardless (send keld in after ttar dies) so its not like its a magical solution to all of sheddy's problems.
 
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AM

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I mean we're talking about a team where its prime has past and the archetype of stall is pretty set in stone without shedinja. Thats more of a point against it than for it. I know its a trend here to defend or assume what low rank mons do (can tell half of you that mentioned unranking just threw out random assumptions like no shit it dies to sand) but seriously maybe grow some tolerance to not comment on every low rank nom to fit the stereotype of this thread being awful to read. Dont really care what the verdict is but lol its a D rank mon.
 

Sun

Who cares if one more light goes out? Well I do...
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Now i say my opinion about shedinja, i think its pretty " unusable" in this metagame, which sand and pursuit trappers are very common, also a pokemon generally not deserve to be ranked because is usable in " one " specific team, a pokemon deserves to get ranked if it has utility and potential that make this pokemon usable, shedinja is dependent on magic bounce users as Msab and it need an hazard remover( spinner hates ghost types which give troble to sheddy) i think shedinja need to stay in D.
 
Shedinja is overly dependent on team support, and with that much support I could probably build around something much better. Also the fact that there a number of trends going against Shedinja's being played such as CB Tyranitar(Tyranitar in general) being common, as well as the fact that Stall is genuinely much,much better for having something else in Shedinja's spot leads me to believe that so much time shouldn't be spent discussing. It's either D-ranked, or unranked, but either way its pretty bad, and isn't exactly something you should be spending time over D-Rank specifically is for mons that a re semi unusable in most cases, and unranked is for stragiht up bad/outclassed mons and Shedinja can fit in either tbh
 
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Shed does require a lot of support, and multiple things do hamper its effectiveness (sand, pursuit trappers, spamming hp fire on lati, etc.), but the trade off is a mon that can potentially (I use potentially as these mons do have ways of beating it but they dont always have them) wall some important mons , like medicham, keldeo , mlop, sd + sr garchomp, manaphy + a few more mons I don't wish to bother listing. If you fear that these mons have a way to beat shed, Protect is a valuable move to use to scout movesets. Slow BP is also nice to bring in teammates safely after something (say a keldeo) is forced out due to being hard walled or predicting a pursuit trapper to come in. Its performance is inconsistent at times, but the potential to just straight wall some dangerous threats, slow bp, and other cool things like shadow sneak and willo makes it D imo. It still suffers from low speed, 1HP, low power, pursuit trapping, hazards, and passive damage like sand or rough skin, but that's why I recommend it for D rank


Everybody sleeping on this thing man. Prankster Encore is so damn annoying to set up sweepers, basically forcing the opp to switch out as to not give you free turns for risk of your own set up sweeper clicking SD and you win or something. Its interesting typing (Grass / Fairy) nets it some useful resistances/immunities, allowing it to check things like , fighting and dragon types, at least softly. Other gems, like Stun Spore and U-Turn, also contribute to its niche effectiveness, allowing for para spreading (always amazing) and momentum, respectively. Admittedly, it's not exactly a amazingly splashable mon to use on a team (annoying ass weaknesses, pretty weak, bulk is only decent, forcing your speed to be lower than you wish), but Prankster definitely allows Whimsi to act as an effective aids status spreader for a team if you got room for it. Taking its pros and cons into effect, I recommend it to stay at D
 
Alright, can we really sit here and act like Shedinja doesn't deserve a spot on the viability rankings? I mean, it's D rank. . . Yes it requires a tremendous amount of support and can die due to its 1HP very easily from some top tier Pokemon, but that's exactly why it's D and not C- or above. It has the ability to counter a lot of Pokemon that would other wise require another team slot. It's a very team specific Pokemon, and requires a lot of support, but it most certainly should not be unranked. People bring up sand and TTar without acknowledging the fact that Shedinja will never willingly be in on a TTar, nor will it be thrown out in the middle of a sand storm w/o goggles. Shedinja doesn't kill things, leaving room for TTar to come in and Revenge Kill. No, it comes in on a Pokemon it 100% walls, forces it out, and BPs into the appropriate Pokemon depending on the opponent. So that roughly translates to, the opponent has to get the switch right every time it comes in, which is stupid to base a Pokemon's ranking off since if we did, a lot of Pokemon would be lower than they are now. This thread has a tendency to only look at one side of a Pokemon, not just about Shedinja. "But X is just Y without Z" but they fail to mention how X also has traits of Q which make it slightly more appealing than Y. There needs to be less tunnel vision here. Everyone brings up the Vacuum , but refuses to acknowledge they fall into that, myself included.
 
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Alright I'm moving on from Sheddy as I've said my piece and people apparently can't or don't want to recognize my genius ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) (in seriousness the general consensus is keep Shed at D so why beat a dead horse eh) so I'll be proposing my own nom:

Amoonguss to A-

Ever since Venu lost popularity due to stall preferring to run Sableye, Amoonguss has swept in to take its place on stall archetypes, checking Azu, Keldeo, Breloom, and so on. The cool part is, unlike something like Chansey (who I don't really think should rise but I'm not opposed to it either), it's viable on more than one team archetype, as the Shroom Goon fits on Balance and Bulky Offense as well, serving as a check to the aforementioned mons as well as things like Clef, Diancie, M-Lop, the list goes on and on. It's passive as all hell, especially when it's spored something already, but having a pretty free 4th moveslot to run basically anything it wants (HP Fire, Sludge Bomb alongside Clear Smog, Stun Spore, Synthesis, hell even Toxic) which lets it a bit more predictable than people would assume. Excellent utility alongside being a good check to an obscene amount of mons makes Amoonguss a good choice for teams lacking a reliable bulky pivot, which makes it a good candidate for A- in my eyes.
 
Can I put this discussion to rest for a third time?

Shedinja is solidly D-Rank by definition of what it does and the support it requires. No higher, no lower. The consensus a while ago was that Shedinja was ranked appropriately in D-Rank, and now people are under the assumption the metagame has changed in a thousand ways to hurt Shedinja's viability. I don't believe this is true, but here's what I've gathered just from personal laddering experience and usage stats:

-Introduction of volcanion - doesn't directly hurt Shedinja's viability, but is able to put in work against the RMT by picking off Seismitoad with the right predictions
-Rise in pursuit trapper usage - unless this means multiple pursuit trappers per team (which it doesn't), Shedinja still functions the same way by burning its sash to trap and KO the pursuit trapper with Dugtrio
-Drop in hippo usage - greatly beneficial, considering this was one of Shedinja's worst issues
-Rise in SR clef - bad for shedinja, but worse for the RMT because it doesn't have easy counterplay options
-Hoopa's ban - beneficial for shedinja because it puts less strain on Dugtrio's role
-Lando-T > Garchomp - bad I guess? lando is a big more difficult to play around with Sableye due to its versatility and the fact that it can actually damage the common Togekiss
-Overall rise in counterplay - I occasionally encounter the overly-stall-prepared team with stuff like offensive dual stab klefki w/ spikes and hp grass rotom-w. Obviously not good for shedinja but it probably exists because of shedinja(?)

I can't think of any other significant changes other than the fact that I haven't used the RMT much since January, so it's not nearly as common as it used to be. I would like to dispel another false belief that non-shed stall is objectively more consistent. It isn't. When it comes to iconic metagame stall teams, the current front-runner is ABR stall which obviously works much differently from anything built around Shedinja. On paper the team looks sturdier; it has all of the classic blanket checks and components of cookie-cutter stall, plus some obvious offensive presence in banded weavile. I could weigh the pros and cons of using ABR stall vs Wonder Trio, but in the end they're both capable of handling most of the current metagame, and they're both susceptible to a number of relatively uncommon threats. The difference is that one of them appears to be much more match-up based, by nature of having Shedinja and thus relying more on a hazard-free environment. In actuality Shedinja teams are as matchup-based as you make them. Same goes for any stall team. One team might get tossed around by SR clef/mold breaker excadrill while the other struggles with Mega Gardevoir and LO KyuB.

Bottom line, Shedinja should be ranked because it is viable in the current meta, and its presence should not be ignored outright. It should not drop unless the metagame changes in a way that makes Shedinja significantly worse. It has been proven that with the right support, Shedinja can turn a bunch of common threats into liabilities that would otherwise be difficult to handle. On the other hand it should never rise above D-Rank simply because of the support it requires to be effective. Unfortunately Shedinja (and Shedinja teams) are not quite able to achieve 100% consistency because yeah well no shit. If it was actually consistent it would be easy to get #1/2/3 ranking on the ladder oh wait lol
 
As a counterpoint to CTC is a lord's post, maybe it's time for Mega Venusaur to drop instead, probably to join Amoonguss in B+. Obviously it's still an effective mon on paper but there's a lot of trends that make it quite a bit worse than it used to be. A lot of the mons that you used to used to run Venu to deal with are struggling in the first place ie. your offensive electric types, Mega Altaria, Sylveon,, Mega Gyarados. Hell, even Azumarill also dropped for a while there with the release of Volcanion, no idea if it's recovered by now. Quite a few mons operate a bit differently now, such as Mega Diancie being primarily physically offensive, TWave Clefable being standard, SD Bisharp being the only set worth running. These changes make it a lot tougher for Mega Venusaur to check them adequately. There's also the issue of Tyranitar being really strong right now. A huge selling point of Mega Venusaur is its ability to check Keldeo without being Pursuit weak, but given how Keldeo and Tyranitar are so good together, Venu suffers anyways. The combined pressure of sand, rocks, a potential Scald burn, and gimped recovery means that Venusaur is going to be heavily pressured to keep its HP up and will probably be handing out free turns left and right. There's also a bit more competition. The Amoonguss vs Venusaur debate has been beaten to death enough times and you've all got your opinions on which one is better so I'm not going to go into that. Tangrowth is another thing to consider, since it stops a lot of the same things that Venusaur does on the physical side, isn't as prone to being worn down thanks to Regenerator, and in general is just very solid. Compared to these two, Venusaur has certain selling points but nothing that identifies it as being objectively better than them, so it'd make sense that Venu drops down to B+ to match them.

http://i.imgur.com/ILWCNhD.png
RecEdit: You saw nothing
 
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As a counterpoint to CTC is a lord's post, maybe it's time for Mega Venusaur to drop instead, probably to join Amoonguss in B+. Obviously it's still an effective mon on paper but there's a lot of trends that make it quite a bit worse than it used to be. A lot of the mons that you used to used to run Venu to deal with are struggling in the first place ie. your offensive electric types, Mega Altaria, Sylveon,, Mega Gyarados. Hell, even Azumarill also dropped for a while there with the release of Volcanion, no idea if it's recovered by now. Quite a few mons operate a bit differently now, such as Mega Diancie being primarily physically offensive, TWave Clefable being standard, SD Bisharp being the only set worth running. These changes make it a lot tougher for Mega Venusaur to check them adequately. There's also the issue of Tyranitar being really strong right now. A huge selling point of Mega Venusaur is its ability to check Keldeo without being Pursuit weak, but given how Keldeo and Tyranitar are so good together, Venu suffers anyways. The combined pressure of sand, rocks, a potential Scald burn, and gimped recovery means that Venusaur is going to be heavily pressured to keep its HP up and will probably be handing out free turns left and right. There's also a bit more competition. The Amoonguss vs Venusaur debate has been beaten to death enough times and you've all got your opinions on which one is better so I'm not going to go into that. Tangrowth is another thing to consider, since it stops a lot of the same things that Venusaur does on the physical side, isn't as prone to being worn down thanks to Regenerator, and in general is just very solid. Compared to these two, Venusaur has certain selling points but nothing that identifies it as being objectively better than them, so it'd make sense that Venu drops down to B+ to match them.

http://i.imgur.com/ILWCNhD.png
Ehh I think if you're gonna Drop Venu (which I agree with btw) you should also raise Shroom Goon, putting them on the same rank is pretty disengenous as the whole reason that Amoonguss is so viable is because it's a better alternative to Venu. Having them on the same rank would suggest that they're about even to each other or that Amoonguss is just slightly even more viable, which isn't close to the case.
 
Nominating Doublade for D rank (mostly due to its niche on hard stall teams).

Doublade’s Traits: Doublade’s niche is in its unique Ghost/Steel typing and very respectable bulk when paired with Eviolite, resulting in an immunity to Fighting as well as the resistances of Steel, which results in its ability to flat out wall many Fighting types, as well as many sweepers and wallbreakers that use Fighting type coverage to break down Steel types. Importantly, the Ghost typing gives it an immunity to Magnet Pull, meaning that Magnezone cannot trap Doublade (resulting in typical Fairy + Magnezone cores failing against Doublade). Doublade's access to Pursuit also allows Doublade to act as a budget pursuiter for Stall, which can do around 60% to a standard Latios uninvested, as well as punishing frail pokemon such as Mega Gardevoir and Tornadus-Therian.

Doublade's Role in OU: It’s a counter to many pokemon that are common in the OU metagame, such as Mega Gardevoir, Terrakion, Mega Heracross and Mega Medicham. . Doublade also checks Mega Pinsir, Mega Diancie, Latios, Tornadus Therian and Kyurem-Black (especially the banded set, which is gaining more popularity).

Somewhat rarer threats can also be walled by Doublade, such as Staraptor, Stallbreaker Togekiss (although excessive flinches can break Doublade) and Hawlucha.

Doublade’s Weaknesses: Although Doublade’s weaknesses are glaringly obvious (weakness to Pursuit and Knock Off, no reliable recovery), Doublade’s natural bulk means that Doublade can usually survive one Pursuit or Knock Off, although will still be heavily weakened. Doublade can also mitigate recovery issues with Rest + Heal Bell /Wish support (run on almost every stall team). Doublade can even run Sacred Sword to lure and OHKO Bisharp, Weavile and 2hko standard Tyranitar (who cannot OHKO back) on the switch, if the weakness to common pursuit trappers is a concern.

Although Doublade is admittedly a subpar pokemon on almost all teams but Stall, it’s niche typing and stats make it a very viable option for stall teams who are uniquely able to support it (and benefit from Doublade in return), and therefore deserving of D rank.

Replays:

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-382252812 Doublade walls a +2 mega Heracross effortlessly. (turn 22-23)

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-382250486 Doublade eliminates a LO Tornadus Therian for my team. (turn 5-7)

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-381343152 Second example of Doublade defeating Taunt LO Tornadus-Therian (turn 18-20)

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-381763726 Doublade blocks Mega Medicham,, while it’s presence deters High Jump Kick. (turns 5-6)

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-381368964 Doublade blocks Terrakion, although Earthquake does eventually break through.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-375161616 Doublade and Skarm defeat a Mega Pinsir together.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-374178257 Doublade and Chansey defeat Stallbreaker Togekiss.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-379594458 Doublade switching into Mega Gardevoir multiple times.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-378285309 Doublade checks both CM Latios and Terrakion.
 
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I think it is too early for nomination like that. Now doublade is heat because of unique typing but when people start preapring for that team it might be changed. Let's wait a bit and see if doublade is solid or if it is just gimmick.
 
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Doublade has been on and off since Aegislash was banned. I don't really think there's any need to hold off on its nomination when everyone has been aware of what Doublade can and can't do for nearly two years.

Edit @ Below: I was actually referring to Seth's post above mine where he suggested that we hold off on the Doublade nomination, which I don't believe is necessary.
 
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HailFall

my cancer is sun and my leo is moon
Doublade feels so awkward as a stallmon idk the reliance on rest (it doesn't even get lefties) is a massive problem which results in it rarely ever being at full and I'm not trying to act like this isn't something that was addressed but it really is a big deal. It really is just aegislash but worse and it shows. Getting easily overwhelmed by the special attackers it needs to check is never fun, and if doublade is mid rest when it comes in on something that can cause problems for it (especially if sleep talk isn't working in your favor). Not saying it shouldn't be ranked but I'm hesitant to say it should.
 

Sun

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I would not say doublade take very good shots Life orb Tornadus-Therian, looking at the calculations I have noticed that in 1v1, Tornadus Therian wins detriment rocks using heat wave (which makes 2HKO to doublade with eviolite) if Tornadus remove eviolite from doublade becomes difficult against tornadus-therian in a stall build if the only answer to it "was doublade", also Tornadus not have a bad coverage list, i do not think doublade is a good switch to Tornadus, i agree for the rest, it is a good check for common CB Kion and mega Cham, who put fear to stall builds finally talking about CB Kyurem , it doublade you can reveal very good to deal with, but it is very difficult read the set by team preview, also the core chansey + doublade should be able to control all sets of Kyurem, after that, despite doublade is a good pokemon now, i do not think it deserve the D-rank, because the metagame is seeing many Tornadus, specs Keldeo, volcanion, rotom w-around and other special attackers, who put a lot of pressure, and I think that if a pokemon is only used to control those "specific threats" has no real utility in the metagame, that's all .
 
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my lord i can't believe the amount of shit you talked in that second replay

your opponent made THE worst plays (like in the majority of the other replays), took no initiative and you're using the most braindead team thinking you're flexing on them

the redundancy of doublade+skarmory+mega eye on your team is hilarious, too (ie: most of the shit you mentioned in favour of doublade is actually beaten by those two members alone). literally the only thing doublade does on your team is make sure you don't get weakened by taunt mega gardevoir and mixed outrage kyub (which you can just pivot around once locked into outrage)

all of the replays you provided have this kind of buuuut alongside them

"Doublade blocks mega medicham while its presence deters high jump kick" the fuck does mega eye do then? give mega medi free reign to nuke everything? and cmon fam ur facing someone using cb talon in 2016, donphan, and pz. please, they've played 1700+ games to get 1700 on ladder

"Doublade blocks terrakion, although earthquake does eventually break through" translates to "doublade actually didn't do what I claimed and really I only won because I miraculously didn't get full parad vs the serp"

"Doublade and skarm defeat a mega pinsir together" wow I'm seeing a trend here I think. Just use Skarm to whirl it out and set rocks up later.

"Doublade and chansey beat near-irrelevant mon" ok the only reason this happened is because togekiss didn't get any flinches that mattered at all lol. Doublade realistically is not taking on Togekiss reliably (like everything on full stall). Not to mention your opponent pre-emptively setting up for some wacko reason.

"Doublade switching into Mega Gardevoir multiple times." ur opp's team was wack as fuck and so weak to stall it's unbelievable. also they're like 126/118 with their w/l so...

please guys, just because some ladder tryhard hit number one with what is basically standard stall+meme mon doesn't mean that it needs to be ranked/actually deserves it. this is not a team which is not consistent, go check their w/l if you want proof. ladder means nothing

tldr: it actually does nothing noteworthy
 
Honestly making sure you're not weak to Mega Gardevoir is probably enough to warrant a D ranking. Mega Garde screws up stall in such a ridiculous way it's not even funny. Doublade also checks CM Mega Latias (which chansey/mega sab/quag can't do reliably) and Clefable (aka not forcing skarm to run steel wing lol). Stop downplaying Doublade -_-

Yeah, Doublade for D
 
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Honestly making sure you're not weak to Mega Gardevoir is probably enough to warrant a D ranking. Mega Garde screws up stall in such a ridiculous way it's not even funny. Doublade also checks CM Mega Latias (which chansey/mega sab/quag can't do reliably) and Clefable (aka not forcing skarm to run steel wing lol). Stop downplaying Doublade -_-

Yeah, Doublade for D
There's better counters to Mega Gardevoir than Doublade, Jirachi can pass wishes, pressure with flinches, spread t-wave and set up rocks among other things. What Tiger jaws was really spot on
 

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