first impression on ladder: IT'S ALL WEATHER RAHHHH
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Metagame Triples
- Thread starter HiZo
- Start date
It's a shame that Commander wasn't implemented in Triples; it was one of the strategies I was really looking forward to trying out.
As it stands, it would be better for Commander to be banned outright than programmed not to work. It wasn't obvious to me why my team wasn't functioning and I was disappointed to find the answer buried in an FAQ on the forums.
As it stands, it would be better for Commander to be banned outright than programmed not to work. It wasn't obvious to me why my team wasn't functioning and I was disappointed to find the answer buried in an FAQ on the forums.
Beep beep the RNG police is here.
The Triples council has taken some action, and the following is banned from the metagame!
Abilities: Moody, Snow Cloak, Sand Veil
Items: King's Rock, Razor Fang, Bright Powder
All of these abilities and items are very luck dependent and uncompetitive, so it makes no sense to keep them in the tier.
The Triples council has taken some action, and the following is banned from the metagame!
Abilities: Moody, Snow Cloak, Sand Veil
Items: King's Rock, Razor Fang, Bright Powder
All of these abilities and items are very luck dependent and uncompetitive, so it makes no sense to keep them in the tier.
Why were King's Rock and Razor Fang banned? There's legitimate strategies with Fling and those items to get guaranteed flinches, as a sort of pseudo-Fake Out.
Ok a few things in this replay ( https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/...ay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9triples-2192272852 ) turn 2 raging bolt attacks a non adjacent Mon how is this possible??? Also it says bright powder is banned which it isn’t I found this out the hard when my opponent was using it I didn’t save the replay however I put bright powder on a Mon in the builder and validated t and it say it was legal.
bans take a while to implement, so bright powder will linger for a bit.
this team is insane
https://pokepast.es/4d43b29289c484b2 made it to top 3 on the ladder with this team, (ik its not that impressive bc day 2 but thought I should share the team) the main idea is Chi yu, + after you hilligant + tera fire eruption torkal = the calc below. the rest of the team is meant to abuse sun and beads as much as possible. like having a lot of pulse moves to snipe mons on low HP from an eruption. There is definitely a lot to improve upon with this team of course like the wide guard matchup.
252+ SpA Flame Plate Beads of Ruin Tera Fire Torkoal Eruption (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Cresselia in Sun: 414-488 (93.2 - 109.9%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO
252+ SpA Flame Plate Beads of Ruin Tera Fire Torkoal Eruption (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Cresselia in Sun: 414-488 (93.2 - 109.9%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO
https://pokepast.es/c0fc99f14d5f6585 this team goes quite hard
https://pokepast.es/e68722554bb2700d extra team
https://pokepast.es/e68722554bb2700d extra team
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https://pokepast.es/ae4a849643ec384c this team goes even harder
A powerful strategy that I haven't seen much is Mirror Herb + Swagger. If you aren't familiar with the combo, Swagger is an attack that doubles an opponent's attack stat and confuses it, and
is an item that copies an enemy stat boost. In triple battles a single support mon can double the attack of two sweepers holding , and we have a premium Prankster Swagger user in 
.The combo works well with mons like
and 
who normally run 
and spam priority. This type of mon tends to suffer in the current Triples meta because of Psychic Terrain and Armor Tail. > lets them play around anti-priority tech, and the +2 boost makes a big difference over +1.I'm using a triple Mirror Herb team that uses
to disrupt Psychic Terrain and 
, 
, and 
for extra damage. <– click meAlso, small rant: is there any way we can make the turn timer longer? These battles can be complicated and the time limit from singles barely feels like long enough to click moves, let alone run calcs or think. Idk if that's something the tier leaders have control over but it would be nice :)
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Some stuff I came across while laddering/playing with friends
This mon seems super good, turns out a spread draining move gets better when there are more pokemon to drain from, who would have thought?
Still one of the best mons in the format, NP and choice are great wincons either in the center or hiding in a corner until its time to nuke.
Feels almost required on Psyspam, Hyperspace fury + Dark Pulse + Expanding Force pretty does everything you need for total carnage, but also being able to underspeed or overspeed for maximum damage. Also Hyperspace Fury breaks Wide Guard without being blocked by Armor Tail/Psysurge, take that.
Don't lose to spore, a lot of teams and players don't understand the concept of unlimited sleep. Prep for it how one would in DOU, especially since now there are more spore-able pokemon on the field compared to doubles.
Apparently this mon seems popular to pair with Slaking and Regigigas. Regigigas at least can function as a Wide Guard bot, so maybe this needs refinement?
Gimmicks feel inferior from just clicking the nuke, which make up for most of my wins on the ladder, especially if they rely heavy on setup to do things. Spore/Taunt/Encore/Trick Room/board wipe spread move + feint/etc. are all really good ways of preventing stuff and crumbling gimmicks apart.
Council does have some stuff we have eyes on, but want some more time to pass before we officially have a vote. Anyways, hope yall have enjoyed the metagame so far!
This mon seems super good, turns out a spread draining move gets better when there are more pokemon to drain from, who would have thought? Still one of the best mons in the format, NP and choice are great wincons either in the center or hiding in a corner until its time to nuke. Feels almost required on Psyspam, Hyperspace fury + Dark Pulse + Expanding Force pretty does everything you need for total carnage, but also being able to underspeed or overspeed for maximum damage. Also Hyperspace Fury breaks Wide Guard without being blocked by Armor Tail/Psysurge, take that. Don't lose to spore, a lot of teams and players don't understand the concept of unlimited sleep. Prep for it how one would in DOU, especially since now there are more spore-able pokemon on the field compared to doubles. Apparently this mon seems popular to pair with Slaking and Regigigas. Regigigas at least can function as a Wide Guard bot, so maybe this needs refinement? Gimmicks feel inferior from just clicking the nuke, which make up for most of my wins on the ladder, especially if they rely heavy on setup to do things. Spore/Taunt/Encore/Trick Room/board wipe spread move + feint/etc. are all really good ways of preventing stuff and crumbling gimmicks apart.Council does have some stuff we have eyes on, but want some more time to pass before we officially have a vote. Anyways, hope yall have enjoyed the metagame so far!
Hey all, I'm a doubles regular who wanted to get his hands on this format, ended up topping the ladder after a day of playing. Let's go over the team i used!
- - - 
- 
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Chien pao + Dragonite + Gouging Fire, you'll often find these 3 on the same team in doubles due to their incredible synergy, and that synergy is perhaps even greater when all three can be on the field at the same time! Gouging fire's howl affects your entire team, regardless of position, and its breakneck speed a la booster energy allows it to fire off breaking swipes to reduce enemy damage output whenever it needs. Pao can remove psychic terrain for the team and boosts damage output and dragonite clicks the funny buke buttons. Tera ghost helps get around fake outs.
Amoonguss offers critical counterplay against trick room, sleeping opponents and redirecting critical attacks such as tachyon cutter from iron crowns that may try to stop chien pao from removing psychic terrain. Tera dark helps greatly with the Psyspam matchup, and sludge bomb can do some nice chip into certain targets and threaten the ever present (and irritating) Lilligant-Hisuis
Raging Bolt is absurd. This pokemon is able to eat damn near everything, attack with priority, vaporize stuff with draco and offer speed/damage control with snarl and electrowebs. The 20 billion torkoals on ladder only serve to make bolt even stronger, giving it a much appreciated protosynthesis damage boost while hardly scratching bolt back. Even if you don't use this specific team I HIGHLY recommend using bolt in this format, as it was great into just about every matchup I faced and really has all the tools you could ever need.
Swampert is a fantastic wide guard user with a great set of resistances and fantastic bulk. Fire and rock resistances are useful for all the heat waves, rock slides and eruptions going around, Liquidation and earthquake do solid damage, especially when boosted by howl or sword of ruin, and flip turn off of Swampert's slow speed stat gives you a decent tool to reposition with in a format where hard switching is absurdly risky. Tera Grass patches up Swampert's one weakness while protecting it from spore/sleep powder, and since it's wide guarding it usually isn't at risk of taking damage from the most common fire moves in the format.
Some high ladder replays of the team in action:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9triples-2199048065
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9triples-2199057811
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9triples-2199045961
This format's ladder has an unhealthy obsession with using Torkoal, Psyspam, and Trick Room (which to be fair, so does DOU ladder) and I really believe there is room for more stuff to be explored. I saw a few much more defensive teams utilizing friend guard being stronger in a triples contexts, screens and intim spam and these teams were often harder to deal with than Hyper Offense Button Clicker team #6372 and I think these teams as well as ting lu, a mon extremely competent at slowing down the pace of the game, have some sorely underexplored potential in this format. I saw a bunch of imprison wide guard stonjourners on the ladder, those were cool, but I think bulkier users like Swampert and Garganacl or users with fake out such as Hariyama, Hitmontop, and Mienshao are worth exploring in this format a bit more.
P.S. Please stop using Torkoal, it's not as good as you think it is.
- - - - - Chien pao + Dragonite + Gouging Fire, you'll often find these 3 on the same team in doubles due to their incredible synergy, and that synergy is perhaps even greater when all three can be on the field at the same time! Gouging fire's howl affects your entire team, regardless of position, and its breakneck speed a la booster energy allows it to fire off breaking swipes to reduce enemy damage output whenever it needs. Pao can remove psychic terrain for the team and boosts damage output and dragonite clicks the funny buke buttons. Tera ghost helps get around fake outs.
Amoonguss offers critical counterplay against trick room, sleeping opponents and redirecting critical attacks such as tachyon cutter from iron crowns that may try to stop chien pao from removing psychic terrain. Tera dark helps greatly with the Psyspam matchup, and sludge bomb can do some nice chip into certain targets and threaten the ever present (and irritating) Lilligant-Hisuis
Raging Bolt is absurd. This pokemon is able to eat damn near everything, attack with priority, vaporize stuff with draco and offer speed/damage control with snarl and electrowebs. The 20 billion torkoals on ladder only serve to make bolt even stronger, giving it a much appreciated protosynthesis damage boost while hardly scratching bolt back. Even if you don't use this specific team I HIGHLY recommend using bolt in this format, as it was great into just about every matchup I faced and really has all the tools you could ever need.
Swampert is a fantastic wide guard user with a great set of resistances and fantastic bulk. Fire and rock resistances are useful for all the heat waves, rock slides and eruptions going around, Liquidation and earthquake do solid damage, especially when boosted by howl or sword of ruin, and flip turn off of Swampert's slow speed stat gives you a decent tool to reposition with in a format where hard switching is absurdly risky. Tera Grass patches up Swampert's one weakness while protecting it from spore/sleep powder, and since it's wide guarding it usually isn't at risk of taking damage from the most common fire moves in the format.
Some high ladder replays of the team in action:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9triples-2199048065
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9triples-2199057811
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9triples-2199045961
This format's ladder has an unhealthy obsession with using Torkoal, Psyspam, and Trick Room (which to be fair, so does DOU ladder) and I really believe there is room for more stuff to be explored. I saw a few much more defensive teams utilizing friend guard being stronger in a triples contexts, screens and intim spam and these teams were often harder to deal with than Hyper Offense Button Clicker team #6372 and I think these teams as well as ting lu, a mon extremely competent at slowing down the pace of the game, have some sorely underexplored potential in this format. I saw a bunch of imprison wide guard stonjourners on the ladder, those were cool, but I think bulkier users like Swampert and Garganacl or users with fake out such as Hariyama, Hitmontop, and Mienshao are worth exploring in this format a bit more.
P.S. Please stop using Torkoal, it's not as good as you think it is.
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So... we have a Deoxys shaped problem, and also an Iron Crown shaped problem, and also a Hoopa-U shaped problem, and not to mention Hatterene, Armarouge, and what not. What I am trying to say is Psyspam has clearly shown to be very much a prominent playstyle. Too prominent, I might add. After some internal discussion with the council, we observed this and decided to take action.
A majority (4-1, with unanimous support to take action) has decided on a scorched earth approach to the playstyle, and in discussion with the OM higher ups in terms of the best action to take is banning Indeedee and Indeedee-F. (Author's note: This is a Psysurge ban but bans prioritize the Pokemon instead of the Ability.)
Psyspam has options to win in whatever speed tier under the sun, with super slow Pokemon and super fast ones too. Expanding Force is an all out nuke coupled with support from Indeedee-F with either Helping Hand or Follow Me. While Wide Guard is a very reasonable measure to take (and you all should be running it, anyways), players often can get lulled into a false sense of security when Hoopa-U can break through it thanks to Hyperspace Fury. We will revisit this decision later, and we have other problematic elements we are looking at as well, but immediate action must be taken for metagame health. If you feel inclined to continue to run psyspam anyways, you can always run Prankster Meowstic.
(Also, with this ban, we're unbanning Deoxys-Attack)
dhelmise can you implement this ty
A majority (4-1, with unanimous support to take action) has decided on a scorched earth approach to the playstyle, and in discussion with the OM higher ups in terms of the best action to take is banning Indeedee and Indeedee-F. (Author's note: This is a Psysurge ban but bans prioritize the Pokemon instead of the Ability.)
Psyspam has options to win in whatever speed tier under the sun, with super slow Pokemon and super fast ones too. Expanding Force is an all out nuke coupled with support from Indeedee-F with either Helping Hand or Follow Me. While Wide Guard is a very reasonable measure to take (and you all should be running it, anyways), players often can get lulled into a false sense of security when Hoopa-U can break through it thanks to Hyperspace Fury. We will revisit this decision later, and we have other problematic elements we are looking at as well, but immediate action must be taken for metagame health. If you feel inclined to continue to run psyspam anyways, you can always run Prankster Meowstic.
(Also, with this ban, we're unbanning Deoxys-Attack)
dhelmise can you implement this ty
Could you tell us a little more about the council's thoughts on metagame health? What is meant by "too prominent"?
I haven't used Psyspam myself, and I haven't found the Psyspam matchup problematic given that Rilla/Tailwind slot onto many teams naturally and strong dark types like Chien-Pao (w/ Ice Spinner), Chi-Yu, Tyranitar, Incin, etc exist. It feels early to me to declare a Psyspam problem given my own laddering experience, and I can't find high ladder replays to demonstrate that its Psyspam is restricting teambuilding.
When I do look at the top replays by rating, I see a lot of Chien Pao, Pelipper, Gouging Fire, and these are the mons I'd be more inclined to take action on. But with so much underexplored in the tier I'm hesitant to call anything broken.
I haven't used Psyspam myself, and I haven't found the Psyspam matchup problematic given that Rilla/Tailwind slot onto many teams naturally and strong dark types like Chien-Pao (w/ Ice Spinner), Chi-Yu, Tyranitar, Incin, etc exist. It feels early to me to declare a Psyspam problem given my own laddering experience, and I can't find high ladder replays to demonstrate that its Psyspam is restricting teambuilding.
When I do look at the top replays by rating, I see a lot of Chien Pao, Pelipper, Gouging Fire, and these are the mons I'd be more inclined to take action on. But with so much underexplored in the tier I'm hesitant to call anything broken.
It's a funny meme, but I want to point out that even under the conditions in the comic, the Heatran survives and gets a KO back in return.
252 SpA Life Orb Tera Psychic Deoxys Helping Hand Expanding Force (120 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Heatran in Psychic Terrain: 263-309 (81.4 - 95.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
At the end of the day, Psyspam is a huge nuke but it takes the whole team's resources, so if you weather the storm you win. And people don't seem to be disproportionately losing to it on ladder, so why ban it?
252 SpA Life Orb Tera Psychic Deoxys Helping Hand Expanding Force (120 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Heatran in Psychic Terrain: 263-309 (81.4 - 95.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
At the end of the day, Psyspam is a huge nuke but it takes the whole team's resources, so if you weather the storm you win. And people don't seem to be disproportionately losing to it on ladder, so why ban it?
Its incredibly overcentralizing in terms of usage to the detriment of the tier imo, not that counterplay doesnt exist (rillaboom, darks, screens, etc) but it forces a few key very volatile turns (indeedee follow me 50/50s, most of these incorporate a trick room mode + fast mode either of which could potentially come out on a turn, wide guard protect 50/50s, etc) that can win the game in a moment. And theres a lot of different tools available to the archetype to potentially bypass the cplay. Small thing but also in a very special leaning tier free psychic seeds are kinda nice
It always attacks the center and the corner slot you target. If you target the center, the second hit seems determined by RNG
Saw the combination of Neutralizing Gas + Toedscruel and knew I had to try it in Triples. Here's what I came up with:
<– click meThe team looks like shit and probably is, but it's worked pretty well and is really fun to use. Weather/Psyspam/gimmick teams rely on their abilities so you get lots of good matchups on ladder. I also think Sableye is an underrated support option with Gravity and Feint to support Sandsear Storms.
Shoutout to Schister for the Bolt set it's broken as fuck
Somewhat gimmicky pairing but
The idea of this core being that Blastoise having Water Spout and being the only legal Pokemon with said move, and then being buffed to the point where you OHKO and Outspeed almost everything.
Araquanid having the role of Entrainment Water Bubble so that Blastoise gets x2 on its water moves, and Pelipper providing Rain. Both support Pokemon additionally having moves like Icy Wind, Wide Guard, and Helping Hand.
With this combo you can even 2HKO Chansey and nearly OHKO it too.
252 SpA Mystic Water Water Bubble Tera Water Blastoise Helping Hand Water Spout (150 BP) vs. 4 HP / 252 SpD Eviolite Chansey in Rain: 506-596 (78.8 - 92.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Thankfully Kyogre is not legal here. Could you imagine?
The idea of this core being that Blastoise having Water Spout and being the only legal Pokemon with said move, and then being buffed to the point where you OHKO and Outspeed almost everything.
Araquanid having the role of Entrainment Water Bubble so that Blastoise gets x2 on its water moves, and Pelipper providing Rain. Both support Pokemon additionally having moves like Icy Wind, Wide Guard, and Helping Hand.
With this combo you can even 2HKO Chansey and nearly OHKO it too.
252 SpA Mystic Water Water Bubble Tera Water Blastoise Helping Hand Water Spout (150 BP) vs. 4 HP / 252 SpD Eviolite Chansey in Rain: 506-596 (78.8 - 92.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Thankfully Kyogre is not legal here. Could you imagine?
