Thundurus-I

[Haki]

Note: Please don't discuss anything about whether or not Thundurus should be banned, moved to another tier, etc. If you do talk about that in this thread, you'll unfortunately get infracted. Visit the suspect discussion thread if you want to talk about banning or unbanning a certain Pokémon, or just the Smogon Doubles metagame in general.

Approved by Pocket :]

Thundurus Analysis

This is a discussion thread for Thundurus-I. Here are some ideas of what you can talk about:

• What sets do you like to run on Thundurus? How does it work?
• What are some types of teams where you like to utilize Thundurus, and what are some effective partners for him?
• What do you use to counter or check Thundurus?
• What effect has Thundurus had on the Smogon Doubles metagame, thus far? (please don't say whether it's a good or bad effect)
• Talk about anything else related to Thundurus. :D

You don't have to address all these points, these are just ideas to get the discussion going. :] I'll start off with some simple Thundurus sets.

Thundurus-I (M) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Thunder Wave
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Taunt

This is pretty much your standard Thundurus-I set; the EV spread with the Timid nature maximizes his offensive output while the Sitrus Berry is a pretty neat source of recovery to increase his survivability in battle. Thunder Wave is obviously there for speed control and that occasional 25% parahax, while STAB Thunderbolt inflicts significant damage to most Pokémon who don't resist it. Hidden Power [Ice] provides you with coverage against Ground-type Pokémon, most specifically Lando-T and Garchomp for a nice 4X super-effective attack. Taunt can prevent Trick Room teams or support Pokémon from setting up and also helps disrupt Sleep-inducers such as Amoonguss and Breloom in this new "no sleep clause" metagame.

Discuss!

 

[finally]

As for thundy-i, I see a lot of offensive thundy-i's. Besides what pinoy mentioned, these thundy's opt for moves like sub and/or nasty plot. They usually also carry a life orb. The benefit of this type of set is that you get priority setup, the priority of sub even acting as protect sometimes. Nasty plot is especially beneficial when you set up a nasty plot when the opponent thinks you are going to twave or taunt. Then you have them staring at a +2 thundy with which you can smack something extremely hard.
Note: usually nasty plot and sub will not be on the same set unless the user is willing to sacrifice protect on a setup mon. Personalamente, I always run protect on things that setup in any fashion, and thus to have both would mean your set is sub, nasty plot, thunderbolt, protect. Note the lack of hp ice coverage which allows thundy to hit things that resist electric (dragons, grass, ground, etc). Thus that means the sets will usually be: sub, tbolt, hp ice, protect. nasty plot, tbolt, hp ice, protect. And if you are ~risky~ sub, nasty plot, tbolt, hp ice. Tip for being risky: use sub as a temporary protect while your partner helps eliminate threats!

One of the more for fun sets that I've played around with is mono-attacking charge thundy-i. What charge does is give you a +1 spdef boost, and a one time boost for an electric attack. This pretty much acts as a calm mind for thundy-i. The optimal time to use your one time electric boost would be to blow away the one thing that checked a +0 thundy the turn after it switches in. Once that check is gone, your thundy can go to town assuming that you've eliminated the other checks.
Thundy-I can actually run defiant as exhibited in some cool vgc battles, and in smogon doubles by yours truly Memoric. This set consists of wild charge, knock off, superpower, protect and sometimes people fit in fly if they are feeling cool.

My personal thundy-i spread differentiates from pinoy's in that is much more bulk oriented. It's meant to stay around and continue to help the team with twaving and taunting as opposed to direct damage (although uninvested 125 spatk is still very respectable).
dynamo (Thundurus) (M) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 124 Def / 124 SDef / 8 Spd
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 30 Def
- Thunder Wave
- Taunt
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
The key component about this set is sitrus berry. Sitrus berry allows you to live m-kanga return and also take two timid char-y heat waves. You can also just eat up non stab rock slides and stone edges from stuff like garchomp. You can also live stuff like ttar rock slide if you get some intimidate action going.

I don't think pinoy mentioned thundurus-i's crucial role in speed control on a team. A lot of the time when I need a ground immune to help with speed control, I will choose thundy-i because of its reliable ability to slow down fast threats for a medium speed/bulky offense team.
Finally, thundy-i does a phenomenal job at stopping the popularizing skymin. It can paralyze it, prevent flinches, and ultimately expose its defensive underbelly. It can also slap it with an hp ice to simply ohko it (although it should be noted that twaving first before hp iceing is the recommended course of action because skymin could have sash, yache, or could flinch you).

tl;dr: thundy-i :]

EDITERINO: I totally just remembered the best set. RAIN DANCE THUNDY-i. Are you mad about char-y switching the weather on your politoed. Do you want to run rain without garbotoed? Do you have an extra moveslot on your thundy because you are ~risky~ and like to not run protect? Well look no farther, because rain dance thundy-i is your guy!
Besides being a super surprise, this guy can now run thunder over thunderbolt on his set. He can also just throw up rain when your team needs to take a fire hit, or when you need a swift swimmer to be sonic fast. Or if you just need to switch the weather to get the sand out of your eyes or because it is too bright or you get cold in hail, you can just hit that nice rain dance button. (kill sand to weaken ttar's spdef, kill sand to make sure excadrill isn't sonicdrill, kill sun to weaken chlophyll users and fire attacks substantially, kill hail to make blizzard miss, kill sun to stop solar beam, the list goes on. just be creative :])
The primary boon of this guy is that he has "negative" priority weather. Switching in to change weather is +7. Mega evolving to change weather is +6. Thundy-i's rain dance is +1. That means he will go last and his weather will stay. Example: Go char! Go thundy! go random teammates! char mega evolved into char y! the sunlight became harsh! thundy-i used rain dance! It started to rain! Get dunked charizard!
I highly recommend trying rain dance thundy-i first out of all the sets I mentioned because it is so ~edgy~. :]

 

[Arcticblast]

Bulky Thundurus is probably my favorite Thund set.

Thundurus (M) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 248 HP / 28 Def / 12 SAtk / 188 SDef / 32 Spd
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Taunt
- Thunder Wave
- Thunderbolt
- Protect*

*The fourth slot is usually taken by Hidden Power; I filled it with a non-HP move to display the EV spread when all IVs are 31.
Alternate spreads:
248 HP / 32 Def / 8 SAtk / 188 SDef / 32 Spd | 0 Atk / 30 Def (HP Ice)
248 HP / 28 Def / 4 SAtk / 192 SDef / 36 Spd | 1 Atk / 30 SAtk / 30 SDef / 30 Spd (HP Flying)
All of these spreads are designed to do three things:
- Survive a Modest Charizard-Y Fire Blast in Sun
- Survive a Jolly Landorus-T Stone Edge
- Outspeed all Mega Tyranitar - I tend to pump more Speed than necessary into things, so depending on team needs this can be lowered or even removed entirely

This thing can do so much work in a single battle. Taunt and Thunder Wave are two of the best support moves to use in the metagame, and bringing both - with priority - while being a decent offensive threat is even better. A bulky set allows for safer play with Thundurus - if your Taunt ends up hitting a Conkeldurr on the switch and you get nuked by a Char-Y Fire Blast, you can survive the hit and save a clutch Thunder Wave for later.
It's too late for me to be posting anything more than this.

 

[Stratos]

Thundurus-T and Thundurus-I are two different Pokemon so I split the threads.

Thundurus should never be using Taunt on a 252 Spe / 252 SpA set; Taunt is a move exclusively for the bulky sets that can afford to run it. Offensive sets should be taking advantage of its awesome speed tier to be one of the fastest attackers in Doubles. Thunder Wave is cool, since Thundurus only needs (has?) two-move coverage, but the attacker set should be running protect. If you want to use the moves in the op, use them on a spread like Arcticblast's—though I would advise arctic to run enough bulk for adamant Landorus-T Stone Edge because literally nobody uses Jolly.

Sets i like: rain dance / protect / hp ice / thunder thundurus because it shits all over charizard teams; bulky thundurus ARCTIC FORGOT TO MENTION $WAG THO; sub+nasty plot thundurus. I'm not a fan of sub+protect or sub+3 atk thundurus though. Sub+Protect tends to work best when the Pokemon is threatening enough to attract a double target like Terrakion or else bulky enough to be able to end-game sweep like Heatran, and while Thundurus comes close on the former, HP Ice is simply too weak to be scary anymore. Sub + 3 atk is in a similar boat; while it can resolve the weakness problem somewhat with extra coverage, it's now not running protect and simply still not hitting hard enough. If you want to run subThund, use NP

 

[Bughouse]

...Thundurus having only 2 move coverage? May I introduce you to Knock Off and Superpower, common on OU sets?

While I haven't actually used it, and I would fully admit that Prankster is its primary niche, I would imagine Defiant Thundurus pulls off a pretty nasty all out attacking set.

 

[Darkmalice]

...Thundurus having only 2 move coverage? May I introduce you to Knock Off and Superpower, common on OU sets?

While I haven't actually used it, and I would fully admit that Prankster is its primary niche, I would imagine Defiant Thundurus pulls off a pretty nasty all out attacking set.

I tried a Life Orb Defiant Thundurus with Thunderpunch, Knock Off, Superpower and Protect (think itemless Tornadus with less power on its STAB but more power on its coverage). Every match against a non-intimidate team, I was wishing that I had used a Life Orb special set - LO Thunderbolt >> LO Thunderpunch. Special sets also have Focus Blast if you really want Fighting-type STAB, and Bisharp does the Knock Off thing better due to STAB. Against Intimidate teams, you also have to consider that Thundurus still loses to Landorus-T 1v1 thanks to Stone Edge OHKOing.

One of the main reasons Defiant is common in singles is Defog is common place, which doesn't exist in Doubles.

 

[Bughouse]

This is why you would want to go mixed with HP Ice. Even 4 SpA LO HP Ice has a chance to OHKO.