Metagame BW Doubles OU (NEWLY UPDATED SAMPLE TEAMS!)

[grayblood]

ROA DOU tour was fun, went 3-1 in sets and 5-2 in games (Albeit one of my game wins was disappointingly very lucky, but who knows.) Ladder I was 40-15 with me trying a lot of teams, to varying success.

I'm not a GEN 5 DOU god, or someone who is good at team building; but I enjoy sharing the teams I made for feedback and maybe if someone else wants to try them. Because doubles ou is fun.

Teams I used on the tour:

Double Swim Rain

Kabutops is really good, however due to having kabutops you're electric weak and also you NEED rain up. The bright side is with two swift swimmers, one of them getting para'd isn't as bad and you can throw one out early without worrying about not having a late game cleaner. The frustrating thing is you're relying on 85-90% accurate moves, which can provide frustration. Genesect douse is really fun and skill expressive. In rain techno boost does a shitload. make sure to make it shiny. Rest is standard.

This team went 1-0 in the tour, however on the ladder this was my main team

Hailroom

Very Match-Up dependent. And I wouldn't say it's that good. But I love hail and trick room, so I played it. Glaceon is scary as hell; I love this mon on hail teams in bw and dpp. I probably should've went some stats in glaceon's special attack but I am bad at team building (I think I used just the reccomended stat spread by showdown for this one lol). Also Max def and Max HP allows you to tank a suprising ammount while you're just blizzspamming. Everything else is standard; but I made cress more support based than offensive. Helping hand is good with the blizz spam and heat wave spam. I will probably rebuild this later since I made this team when I just started to get into the game and it hasn't changed that much since then.

This somehow went 1-1.

Sand + Floaters

This is pretty regular. I think there's a sample team just like this. Latias is a cool pokemon and it's bulk is great and allows it to spread para + helping hand. I originally had a cress, but I liked latias better (plus penter told me to use latias instead), It's a bit like the sample team but I like sub on drill over IH. Gastrodon is cool.

This team went 2-0 and this is the other team i played ladder a majority of the time on.

Generic non Goth rain but SG over band Sect

This the last team I cooked, and my genesect set should've been life orb instead of bug gem. Everything else is normal for non goth rain. Rocks are cool for this team so I went lando. Not much to say it's generic, but it worked and got me my only win vs Akaru

1-0.

shitty sun team that probably wont work lol


(It isn't work) I don't know why it's flame burst; I swear I read somewhere it's good but I think I just gaslit myself into thinking I read that somewhere. The two advantages over heatwave is that the secondary damage goes through sub (This won me a game on ladder once), and it doesn't proc flash fire; none of these are worth it, just use flamethrower or heatwave. I probably shouldn't have played this on the actual tour but I prioritized fun over competitiveness since its just a silly ROA tour.

I really wanted to play a sun team too because I played sand, rain and hail lol.

0-1.

BONUS TEAM:

Bulky Rain tailwind offense

I never brought this to a tour, but I really wanted this team to work. E vire because t-wave was my biggest op; however evire is lackluster at best outside of being t wave immune. 60% of my 15 ladder losses were probably because I tried to make tailwind teams work. Teams reliant on tailwind does not work. (Tailwind can work; but not if your whole team is build around it... probably) I think torn-t could work as a bulky rain mon that can set up tailwind to outspeed opposing rain teams + flying gem hurricane is really sheist and volcarona on rain probably isnt the worst thing ever concoted (You don't get walled by those who usually wall you since you're rain boosted hp water!)

I didn't play this at all during the tour. Feel free to try to make it work yourself though.

 

[yuki]

My second DPL down, I actually finished positive personally this time with a 4-2 record with my team finishing 5-2 in the BW slot. I'm really happy with my play and my building this season, and I think in another world there's a chance I get an even better record than I did. Below are the teams that I used, and my process going into every week.

One small aside before that: ban Gothitelle. It is easily the most frustrating Pokemon to prep for, and is totally centralising in every single matchup both in-game and in the builder. This meta would be way healthier without it, and it would mean we don't have to stuff Shed Shells and multiple weird pivots on to every single team to combat that.

Week 1 vs Smudge (W, thanks Fragments)

Teambuilding Process

Going into week 1 against a familiar opponent, I knew I wanted to keep the team very very simple against Smudge. Band Genesect is still one of my favourite attackers in the format, so I wanted to pull off a similar team I used against them last season. The key difference in this team compared to the last one was the addition of Amoonguss, as I felt like I was going to run into another matchup where whoever kept their Thundurus would be the more impactful player.

That being said, Amoonguss made this team a bit of a nightmare to craft early on. I started off initially with Sitrus Landorus-T + Fighting Gem Conkeldurr, and found that this team was far too reliant on Thunder Wave and Trick Room to actually pressure offensively. I decided to try and patch up the Speed tiers and bring the special threat of the team up with Dragon Gem Latios > Conkeldurr, but this made the team a lot worse into Kyurem-B and I felt like I'd lost some solidarity into U-turn. Finally the pieces clicked for me later on. Hitmontop was a perfect Pokemon for this team, offering the Fighting Gem nuke that Conkeldurr was providing while also giving me double Intimidate and a Fake Out that ended up being quite nice in the game. Scarf Rocks Landorus was the last change I made to the team, deciding I wasn't really fast enough without it. Rocks were going to be super impactful for me as I felt like Kyurem-B and Thundurus would be common Pokemon for Smudge, and that they prefer Sash Landorus-T over Scarf wherever possible. Rocks + Electric Gem Thundurus made me feel like I had an edge over opposing Thundurus.

I ended up scheduling this really irresponsibly, but Fragments played a really good game and demonstrated a lot of what I wanted the team to do. The Choice Scarf ending up mattering was a really nice feeling in the end, as that last second "vibes" choice ended up being right.

Week 2 vs mimi (W)

Teambuilding Process

In scouting for mimi, I was expecting to run into something with Tyranitar + a Steel, likely with some standard core. Tyranitar was mimi's 2nd most used Pokemon in BW DOU according to my scout, so I decided pretty early on that if I was going to run into a pretty normal team I was not going to play normally. Gothitelle completely disrupts how most people like to play the game, and it even kinda goes against how I like to play in switching to make reads rather than sitting on the field for multiple turns doing not much. Fighting Gem Thundurus did exactly the job I wanted it to do, nuking Tyranitar but on the same turn I was really irresponsible and made the most obvious Landorus switch likely of all time. The Fighting Gem also offered me an extra check into Heatran should I haved needed it, as keeping that off the board with a Ferrothorn team is obviously vital. Double Scarf felt right, as I found that this team really couldn't fit Sub Kyurem-B and that Scarf Toxic + Gothitelle + Leech Seed Ferrothorn is actually a lot of passive damage that is really hard to play into if done right. Landorus-T could have been Sash, but I think Scarf was the right call as positioning my back pieces is really vital to the success of a team like this.

I played this team really weirdly in the first half of the game, but I am happy overall with how I came back into the game. I used Gothitelle fairly unorthodox, switching it out repeatedly on targets that would have been totally good to trap in. My logic behind this was that I'd rather position my field a little bit more aggressively, because even if those same threats got back in later on, so what?

Week 3 vs Amaranth (L)

Teambuilding Process

I feel like every part of me knew this week was going to be against Goth Rain. Amaranth was coming off of 2 losses, and turning to comfort was going to be really easy to do. So I adopted a team that zee once gave me with Blizzard Genesect with Abomasnow. Heatran remained on the team from that original team because I still felt like having an answer to Genesect and Ferrothorn after I cleared the rain away. What I didn't anticipate is just how good Amaranth would be with that Gothitelle. I was fairly powerless early in the game, and, while I did claw some of the game back, I'd already been so irresponsible with the rest of my team that I didn't have enough to actually catch up. In future weeks, I decided to prep for Gothitelle even more and I felt like I did a pretty good job of that in the rest of the tour.

Week 4 vs xMarsh (W)

Teambuilding Process

xMarsh is a player I'm less familiar with overall, so I decided that this should be the week I play into my comfort picks and go with triple genie + Sub Kyurem-B, which is also the team I used to get my first win in DPL last season. The major differences between this year's team and last are the inclusion of banded Genesect instead of Tyranitar feeling that I wouldn't be coming up against rain this week anyway and wanting the extra offensive pivot in case of other Gothitelle stuff; and using Scrafty over Hitmontop, simply because I felt Scrafty was a better Pokemon overall. Toxic remained on Scrafty as it did Hitmontop to improve matchups like Jellicent and Gastrodon as much as I could, plus having naturally good synergy with Sub Kyurem-B. Thundurus again took HP Fire in order to have matchup into Ferrothorn as often as possible. Double Taunt was something I found handy last time I used this team, so kept it for this year. I got a bit of positive luck in the matchup, but I felt I played it really well but damn this Scrafty was determined not to lose.

Week 5 vs Idyll (L)

Teambuilding Process

It may be obvious this week, but I knew I was going to end up facing Gothitelle. Shed Shell Jellicent is something I saw my opponent using the week prior, and I found it nifty so took it to get arguably my most useless piece into Gothitelle off the board. Other than that, this is a very simple VoltTurn balance using Volt Switch Thundurus instead of the more common Taunt in order to facilitate the team's pivoting more. This became even more crucial an idea as I elected to go with zero Protects, as I felt I wanted to be on the front foot as much as possible and use my switches to defensively read Idyll while trying to trade my attackers positively. Gothitelle was effectively useless against this team after the Scarf was Tricked to my Latias. I wanted to keep my priority intact for Kingdra into the middle-to-lategame. I get fairly lucky with a Landorus crit on Amoonguss to avoid being put to sleep, but then later the universe balances everything out in a tough endgame decision where I miss Stone Edge as I was slightly too afraid to Explode in case of a switch or Protect from Thundurus losing me the game.

Week 6 vs DaWoblefet (W)

Teambuilding Process

In prep for this game, I would describe DaWoblefet as a creature of comfort. His scout over the last couple of seasons suggests he picks a core group of around 10-15 Pokemon, and almost exclusively builds fairly safely within those groups. This team echos a really old team from Biosci using the Trick Specs Gothitelle with Sand as I felt Excadrill Tyranitar actually matchup fairly positively into DaWoblefet overall. I felt I could get away with this type of team as well as he generally ran less Genesect than some of the scouts I had seen prior to this week. I felt this game was really nice overall, utilising Shadow Tag really well in the early game with a Spore from Amoonguss creating a fairly nice pin on the Bisharp and Mew. I think I played the endgame especially well, recognising that Conkeldurr was the most important piece in the endgame as if it went down, Excadrill had almost free license to stomp for the rest of the game. I was also happy with how I preserved Latios' HP to always live the Scarf Landorus U-turn. I was happy that I decided not to bring Intimidate this week, as I felt very early on Bisharp was a pick used for me as I'd brought Landorus every single week up until this point, with Double Intimidate being in 3 of them.

Week 7 vs Mishimono (W)

Teambuilding Process

Early on in prep, I actually wanted to use Sub Metagross as the main idea of the team. On paper, it seemed pretty good into Mishimono but in the builder I just couldn't make anything that I actually wanted to use. I pivoted back into my usual comfort with Sub Kyurem-B, but with this team I paid particular attention into the Gothitelle Rain matchup. Shed Shell Tyranitar makes another appearance in this team, this time taking Fire Blast as a measure for Ferrothorn which ended up paying off for me. Shed Shell also paid off against the Gothitelle, being able to pivot the Tyranitar out of the lock on a Muddy Water, healing my Jellicent. Explosion Landorus was used to attempt to punish as many Politoed switch ins as possible, and it ended up doing just that getting a bit fortunate with the Fire Blast burn that followed. I ended up in the endgame I wanted with Fire Blast Tyranitar not likely to drop to any of Ferrothorn's moves, while Gothitelle was its lone partner and unable to do anything back to it. I get the read right at the end, opening me up to the win.