The Double Battle Metagame (GBU)

[Ashenlock]

I faced a team earlier that consisted of Steelix, Arbok, Serperior, Seviper, Dragonair, and Milotic. I audibly yelled "Snaaaaake!" when I realized what his theme was supposed to be.

Has anyone else had experiences with interesting, themed teams, your own or someone else's?

[Joel]

Originally Posted by Fat Ashenlock

I faced a team earlier that consisted of Steelix, Arbok, Serperior, Seviper, Dragonair, and Milotic. I audibly yelled "Snaaaaake!" when I realized what his theme was supposed to be.

Has anyone else had experiences with interesting, themed teams, your own or someone else's?

Only thing close to that I have was a mono-Dark type team in triples.

It was a while back, so I don't remember many details, but iirc, the team was Bisharp, Sableye, Spiritomb, Absol, Umbreon, Shiftry.

Umbreon w/ Helping Hand + Sucker Punch from Bisharp Kept making things really rough. I won, but I was down to only one Poke left. I was using the team in my RMT.

[Tenodera]

Originally Posted by Fat Ashenlock

I faced a team earlier that consisted of Steelix, Arbok, Serperior, Seviper, Dragonair, and Milotic. I audibly yelled "Snaaaaake!" when I realized what his theme was supposed to be.

Has anyone else had experiences with interesting, themed teams, your own or someone else's?

I fought a snake team in singles, but with Dunsparce over Seviper. It looked really awesome until he D/Ced after an unfortunate bout of hax on his Dragonair lead.

I occasionally use Mono-Bug, Mono-Ground, and Mono-Steel on Free mode.

[soul_survivor]

I wish i battle unique team, but then again i battled a all dragon team that outraged and dm'd the whole game. Pretty unique.........


I ran rain room which work amazingly. The team is so far 17-4. I use jellicent, poltoed(derrrr), toxicroak, scizor, parasect, and hydreigon. It started as surf spam as 3/6 of my mons are immune, but eventually after testing i figured toed is slow enough to use tr to his advantage. Here scizor can do even more damage to rain counters such ludicolo, and the many grass as scizor now outspeeds them. Iron ball politoed guarantees me weather though leading with him is risky as parasect and croak can offer the fake out/rage powder i need to set up trickroom safely. Anyone use mix hydreigen? Im looking for a good ev set. I run a basic 252 hp, 156 sp.atk, 100 atk quiet, with dm, surf, crunch rock slide.

[cosmicexplorer]

If I recall correctly, 186 Attack EVs with a Life Orb gets an OHKO on 252 HP Jellicent (which can reverse Trick Room) and Latias, as well as bulkier Latios, and as the latter two can threaten Hydreigon and Draco Meteor's side effect makes it difficult to use repeatedly, it certainly makes a usable spread (70 HP / 186 Atk / 252 SpA), although you'll have to check calcs for physically bulkier Latias spreads; I'm not sure about those.

[risenreturn]

Originally Posted by Fat Larek

I had the longest fight ever on double battle with a Japanese man and his Porygon2/Shuckle pair. I thought is strategy was interesting so I should share.

His Shuckle (leftovers) had:
-Power share (and I guess maybe 0 IV for Attack and special attack) to lower my pokemon’s attack,
-Mimic, that he used to learn Recover from his Porygon 2,
-Acupressure to increase it’s shuckle stats
-Rock slide I believe.

His Porygon 2 (evo stone) had
- recover (that he used often and that his shuckles learned),
- psych-up to take all the stat boost that shuckle had from his acupressure
- Ice beam
- Thunder bolt

Needless to say they were a pain in the A**… I believe this strategy is really what double battles are about. I did not really see it coming and was try to kill his porygon but his schuckle crippled my attacks while it was nicely boosting up. When his shuckle learned recover and porygon used psych-up I realized I was in trouble… after a long time I manage to kill his porygon but then he use mismagus (not to hard you might say) who used psych-up as well to copy Shuckle’s stats. His 4th pokemon was a butterfly dance venomoth…

One of the most interesting but painfully long fight. I had for the moment. It was easier once porygon 2 out of the picture but those 2 leads were great.

I love double battles!

That sounds like an amazing strategy, but isn't that moveeset on Shuckle illegal? Acupressure is an egg move in 4th and 5th gen, but Mimic is only learnable via the Emerald/XD move tutor.So unless The person found some strange way to trade backwards, that should not be physically possible.

[cosmicexplorer]

That's a hacked moveset lol. Completely illegal, but the GBU hack checker doesn't stop moveset hacks.

That post was on page 3 9.9

[NixHex]

edit: ninja'd

Originally Posted by Fat risenreturn

That sounds like an amazing strategy, but isn't that moveeset on Shuckle illegal? Acupressure is an egg move in 4th and 5th gen, but Mimic is only learnable via the Emerald/XD move tutor.So unless The person found some strange way to trade backwards, that should not be physically possible.

or cheated. that bastard. Too bad something like that wouldn't work with, say, smeargle thanks to dumb stats all around :-/

[Havak]

I had two games against a player with the name 'AS' earlier today. The first was really fun, my opponent managed to Skill Swap juggle and get No Guard on his Snorlax, and had also removed Levitate from my Latios then KO me with Fissure. I managed to win the game still, as it came down to his Cresselia locked into Icy Wind (thanks to me Tricking Choice Scarf onto it with Latios) and my Metagross who gained an Atk boost from Meteor Mash the previous turn (not like Cresselia stood a chance against Metagross anyway).

The second game, they disconnected after I predicted most of their OHKO attempts correctly and had eliminated Machamp from the game quite early on. This disconnection was probably down to frustration and the fact we had to play each other twice in a row, but still, I was disappointed as the game was also shaping up to be quite fun.

They had Suicune (Sheer Cold), Snorlax (Fissure), Machamp, Cresselia, Wormadam (Ground), and Heracross.

However, what's more interesting is something I've noticed. The first time I played this player, they disconnected during the 'sending data' process, before I was asked to save the video. I thought 'Cunt, why leave it that late to DC?' and all the usual business. But I've just come back to GBU (played a game against a Korean using a pure Rain team, was 4-1 up and they DC'd) and noticed that I was given the win. However, my rating didn't change.

After I think back, this has happened to me a few times before. Now, do you guys think that people have realised if they disconnect at a certain point, the wins/losses are granted but you keep your rating? Do you think it's possible that the game won't be classed as a disconnection if this is the case, so you can keep your rating and have it show up. I'm not sure why people would DC at this point rather than during the game if they know they've lost.

Something to discuss, at least.

[breh]

I always wanted to use Wormodam Ground and Machamp but never got the opportunity. Could be a fun gimmick to try out.

[Steepled Hat]

I'm having some issues with trick room teams with two trick room users. Anyone have some advice for me? Here's a video of one of those tricky matches:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Steepled.../0/UsQ48ucBrxc

I can deal with them if there's only one trick room user, but I have yet to find how best to deal with two. Thanks.

[cosmicexplorer]

As previously discussed in this thread, Trick Room users with Imprison, such as Chandelure or Musharna, do an excellent job of stopping Trick Room from going up and countering Trick Room teams in general. Taunt users can also work to stop Trick Room from going up. However, an easier and more reliable way to do better against Trick Room is to use a few slower and bulkier Pokemon, so that having Trick Room up doesn't stop your team in its tracks; I noticed you used quite a few fast and frail Pokemon in the video you showed. Rhyperior, Rotom-W, Tyranitar (whose Dark-type STAB does a number to most Trick Room users), and Metagross are good examples of such slow and bulky Pokemon that can help to stop your team from being so weak to Trick Room.

[Steepled Hat]

Thanks so much for your reply. Sorry, I should have read through the entire thread before posting. I like the idea of tyranitar. My team normally consists of Scizor, Kingdra, Zapdos, metagross, weavile, and flygon. I think I'll try running tyranitar over metagross and see how that works out. Or perhaps, an imprison bronzong. Thanks for the info. It's a big help.

[breh]

get rid of flygon and put garchomp there instead. Flygon is a worse Garchomp.

fix your Zapdos' moveset; don't use thunder on a team with no rain.

Fling Iron Ball Tyranitar is big fun.

Get rid of Kingdra if you're not running Rain.

[cosmicexplorer]

I agree with that except for Fling Iron Ball Tyranitar; while Iron Ball is not a terrible idea, to underspeed all other weather and tie with Iron Ball Abomasnow, Fling is a one-time use (although admittedly quite powerful) attack. I'd much rather use Crunch, as Musharna/Cresselia can't do any damage to Tyranitar anyway (and those are the ones you'd be trying to KO with Fling over Crunch), and the extra power is in many cases useless in my experiences. Trying to fit in Fling and Crunch reduces Tyranitar's coverage severely.

[Steepled Hat]

Please watch some of my other videos. My zapdos runs rain dance. I use rain at times to get the jump on my opponent and counter threats as they come. It works great for me. I almost always win with the exception of Trick Room teams. :P

Like this normally:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Steepled.../8/cA2xj5zvFkg

[breh]

I dunno, it's pleasant to lead against Abomasnow and similar things and not worry about Hail getting up. Also, you don't have to run max speed. Nobody I've ever seen runs Iron Ball snow; you can pretty freely run no speed adamant and it works well enough. Hell, if you want, you can invest enough to troll min hitmontop or something since you're still slower than min snow.

Also, it helps vs. things like metagross or zapdos (in the event of wide guard) to have fling.

anyway, single rain isn't that great. just use politoed; it's a lot easier.

[Steepled Hat]

I know perma-rain has it's appeal, but my team doesn't really need the rain. I just use it to counter.
Zapdos runs Thunder, Rain Dance, Tailwind, and Heat Wave.
Before you say I'm shooting myself in the foot with heat wave, I must say that Zapdos is mainly for support on my team. Plus if it's raining I'm using thunder. If it'd be disadvantageous to have rain at the moment, Zapdos sets up tailwind and either switches or heat waves. I have been considering switching it for roost or signal beam, however. Maybe volt switch... I really should change it. I hardly ever need it.

[soul_survivor]

I canr wait for DW cincinno to come out. I mean a base 115 speed plus skill link. Bullet seed and rock blast cover so many things for SE or regular damage only resisted by steel types ferrathorn and skarm. It also gets a STAB that hits 2-5 times. Also i believe it gets a fighting move that hits 2-5 times to effectively beating ALL weather inducers. Also it outspeeds many common pokemon, can break subs, and sashes.

He's one I believe, once his DW ability gets released will be a great addition on any goodstuff team.

[Steepled Hat]

I don't think cinccino gets a fighting multi-hit move. I may be wrong, but I don't think it does.
Also on the subject of auto-weahter vs move induced weather this match I had a while ago is a good example of why I like to use moves to get my weather.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJVqQBEzwU8

He got stuck with his tyranitar as one of his last pokemon. All I needed was my rain dance zapdos to turn the tides, pun intended, of the match. He's now trapped and can't set up his sand again.

[Ashenlock]

To be honest, though the opponent was not that bad, he wasn't stellar either. Rock Polish isn't very useful at all in the fast-paced Doubles world, for instance. However, you're right that auto-weather isn't the elixir for awesomeness; it has its limits, and counters. But induced weather isn't fantastic either, and I find that it's actually less useful than auto-weather. The "ideal," all other things equal, is to have both an auto-weather Pokemon and an auxiliary Pokemon with the weather move. But that's very much an "all other things equal" situation, and all other things never are; sometimes you just can't spare a move. In general, if you have to decide, go for auto-weather.

[cosmicexplorer]

Cinccino doesn't get a multi-hit Fighting-type attack, unfortunately.

Inducing weather without auto-weather should only be used to regain back some weather or counter weather-reliant strategies, similar to using Tailwind or Trick Room. It's far easier and safer to switch in a Pokemon to induce weather as opposed to setting it up with a move, and if the opponent doesn't have a weather inducer, it's 100% useless.

[soul_survivor]

Well as predicted vgc rules are the same as gbu. So now I have a question. What team style is the most effective out of:

Sun offense(clorophyll, gastrodon, darmanitan, etc)
sand offense( excadrill, garchomp, discharger)
sand trickroom(Slow fighting mon, jellicent, cresselia, reuniclus)
drizzle offense(kingdra, scarf toed, swift swimmers, scizor)
blizzard spam(infernape/fighting pokemon, Scarf abamasnow, starmie, etc)
Hail tr(hariyama, jellicent, abamasnow reuniclus, etc)
rain trickroom (trickroomer, parasect, slow toxicroak, mixed hydreigon, etc)
tailwind(tornadus, zapdos, whismicott, suicune)
goodstuff(pretty much anything)
regular trickroom(slow mons)


I've tested all of the, and i believe Sand trickroom is definitely the dominant in doubles followed by trickroom, rain offense, sun offense, hail tr, tailwind, etc,

[Ashenlock]

Originally Posted by Fat soul_survivor

Well as predicted vgc rules are the same as gbu. So now I have a question. What team style is the most effective out of:

Sun offense(clorophyll, gastrodon, darmanitan, etc)
sand offense( excadrill, garchomp, discharger)
sand trickroom(Slow fighting mon, jellicent, cresselia, reuniclus)
drizzle offense(kingdra, scarf toed, swift swimmers, scizor)
blizzard spam(infernape/fighting pokemon, Scarf abamasnow, starmie, etc)
Hail tr(hariyama, jellicent, abamasnow reuniclus, etc)
rain trickroom (trickroomer, parasect, slow toxicroak, mixed hydreigon, etc)
tailwind(tornadus, zapdos, whismicott, suicune)
goodstuff(pretty much anything)
regular trickroom(slow mons)


I've tested all of the, and i believe Sand trickroom is definitely the dominant in doubles followed by trickroom, rain offense, sun offense, hail tr, tailwind, etc,

I honestly don't know how to feel about "open" VGC. It could be a good thing for Double Battles in general, opening a whole new interest in its strategy, but I kind of liked Doubles being a distant thing, and separate from the specific VGC. Either way, I hope Double Battles do flourish and have an abundance of attention paid to them now that they are more "open."

Personally, I think right now rain-offense-but-with-diverse-members is the dominant strategy. By the over-hyphenated term above, I mean teams where there is basically just Politoed and Ludicolo/Kingdra/etc. and maybe a Thundurus or something, then the rest apparently non-rain-specific Pokemon like Metagross, Scizor, Dragonite, Ferrothorn, and about anything that covers the remaining weaknesses. I don't think of Tailwind as being especially potent, but your list seems pretty acute otherwise. I'd put hail TR above sun offense, though.

[soul_survivor]

Originally Posted by Fat Ashenlock

I honestly don't know how to feel about "open" VGC. It could be a good thing for Double Battles in general, opening a whole new interest in its strategy, but I kind of liked Doubles being a distant thing, and separate from the specific VGC. Either way, I hope Double Battles do flourish and have an abundance of attention paid to them now that they are more "open."

Personally, I think right now rain-offense-but-with-diverse-members is the dominant strategy. By the over-hyphenated term above, I mean teams where there is basically just Politoed and Ludicolo/Kingdra/etc. and maybe a Thundurus or something, then the rest apparently non-rain-specific Pokemon like Metagross, Scizor, Dragonite, Ferrothorn, and about anything that covers the remaining weaknesses. I don't think of Tailwind as being especially potent, but your list seems pretty acute otherwise. I'd put hail TR above sun offense, though.

Well im happy all that time I spent in gbu might actually pay off, which is why I like the idea of open VGC.

I also agree in seeing tailwind not really too effective, probaly only vs goodstuff, but nonetheless tailwind is still a viable playstyle like everything else. Its main selling points is being able to outspeed weather abusers, but thats a whole turn to set up.

And I believe every playstyle has many different variants, I just posted the main ones you'll be seeing though skipping over many.



Also I believe intimitop might be a top 10 this year. I don't know why most U.S/EU players don't use him. He seems to be a staple pokemon in most jp teams. Same for gastro. I see most jp players recently use unique combos. Like a scarf rage powder to set up trickroom and battle 3-4, or one person used skill swap to give heatran levitate to protect it from my incoming eq and nab the victory.