Most people here don't play Double Battles, so they don't know the IMMENSE change this made to the double battle metagame. It cannot be overstated.
If you wanted to rack up Double Battle wins in Gen IV, Explosion abuse was the way to go. It can't be compared to weather effects, not just because it doesn't contradict their usage but largely because it was just in another echelon altogether. It was like a big, red "Win" button if you had the intuition to tell you were up against an easy player (about 85% of the time, this meant a non-JP player). Of course, if that's all you relied on, another player could kick your ass if he saw the typical users on the field. Sometimes you'd win by sheer force anyway.
At first I was baww'ing that my primary 2v2 strategy had been utterly nerfed, but then I realized that it had only REALLY been effective against casual opponents who didn't have Protect or Ghost-types and didn't expect it, and that I could have beaten them anyway with an actually well-thought team and not the cookie cutter crap I'd been running so typically. About a month's worth of Free Mode proved my speculation; there was about 10x as much strategy there than there had been on PBR. Nintendo was looking at Double Battles when they shot Explosion with the nerf rifle, and I think it's the best thing they ever did to make Doubles a serious metagame.
Remember that Singles is not the only battle style in existence. Just as Singles effectively "owns" Stealth Rock, which is relatively useless in other formats, Doubles effectively "owned" Explosion, which, even though it saw use in Singles, saw so much more in Doubles that the two metagames could not be compared int that regard.
If you wanted to rack up Double Battle wins in Gen IV, Explosion abuse was the way to go. It can't be compared to weather effects, not just because it doesn't contradict their usage but largely because it was just in another echelon altogether. It was like a big, red "Win" button if you had the intuition to tell you were up against an easy player (about 85% of the time, this meant a non-JP player). Of course, if that's all you relied on, another player could kick your ass if he saw the typical users on the field. Sometimes you'd win by sheer force anyway.
At first I was baww'ing that my primary 2v2 strategy had been utterly nerfed, but then I realized that it had only REALLY been effective against casual opponents who didn't have Protect or Ghost-types and didn't expect it, and that I could have beaten them anyway with an actually well-thought team and not the cookie cutter crap I'd been running so typically. About a month's worth of Free Mode proved my speculation; there was about 10x as much strategy there than there had been on PBR. Nintendo was looking at Double Battles when they shot Explosion with the nerf rifle, and I think it's the best thing they ever did to make Doubles a serious metagame.
Remember that Singles is not the only battle style in existence. Just as Singles effectively "owns" Stealth Rock, which is relatively useless in other formats, Doubles effectively "owned" Explosion, which, even though it saw use in Singles, saw so much more in Doubles that the two metagames could not be compared int that regard.
