Metagame XY Doubles OU (VR Post #2, Samples Post #3)

[DaAwesomeDude1]

I've been meaning to post some thoughts of the metagame after I won XY cup a few months ago but wanted to wait til after DPL to sum up everything. It's been nice revisiting the format that got me into pokemon all those years ago, even though it's a completely different metagame from 2015 lmao. Although I mostly used the same teams from my run last year, there's been a couple changes in how I view the meta since then.

First, I think HO structures are the strongest teams right now. Gengar HO and Diancie / Talonflame / Bisharp teams have felt really good to use and eat up the balance squads that was everywhere last year. I joke about it a lot but real talk one of my biggest issues with these LTV balance teams is the damage output. A lot of their damage is tied to either Kangaskhan or super-effective hits. Another major drawback is the way they get that damage is oftentimes relying on bulky mons like Volcanion, Conkeldurr, Landorus-T, etc to switch in, tank a hit, and force the opponent's mons out. That becomes way more difficult to do when these HO teams shits out damage making even neutral hits a tough switch in. Zee talked about it a lot in their metagame post last DPL, but XY moreso than other doubles tiers is all about winning trades, and HO teams does so much damage that you're almost always trading favorably. HO mirrors can be a little volatile but imo they're very skillful with it oftentimes rewarding the player who understands who to save for endgame when you're trading KOs early on.

Quick thoughts on Thundurus, I pretty much agree with what eragon and zee talked about above. Every time I use it, what I found good about it isn't necessarily Prankster Thunder Wave (although that's still a really amazing part of its toolkit), but its speed and coverage. It's a fast and strong Electric-type in a tier with minimal Electric resists. And two of the commonly used Electric immunes gets dunked on by HP Ice anyways. You'll have those games where Thundurus clicks T wave and gets a billion full para's but like eragon said, it's just so high variance that I don't think that's a consistent way to win games. Plus I think you're diminishing Thund's value a lot if you turn it into a T wave bot. Good and annoying pokemon, but not banworthy.

Rapid VR noms:
-> 2
3rd, arguably 2nd, best mega in the tier. It has intimidate for balance teams that want better damage output with Lando-I, excellent typing, blob of stats, strong spread move, nuke option in double edge, and matches up really well into the rest of the metagame. People that think mence isn't that good probably use flamethrower as its third move smh. Use roost and your whole world changes trust

-> 2
I use this for Intimidate and then clicks U-turn so I can switch in to an actually good pokemon. Real talk though, lando-t is such an important backbone for balance teams with how splashable it is and its by far the best pivot in the tier. It does that job really well but I find it lacking in everything else. I don't like using SR on it because a lot of its value comes from switch in -> intimidate -> u turn for positioning so I don't want it to stay on the field as much. Its damage output leaves a lot to be desired since you're investing in its bulk a lot for said pivoting. EQ is great but the rest of its coverage moves aren't the best.

-> 2
Maybe another hot take? It's strong and has good coverage. Sash is decent and scarf is a really good set that makes Landorus great at pinning stuff like mega diancie and gengar.

-> 3
Outruns Genesect and Landorus-T, excellent utility in Fake Out, SR, wisp, taunt, tailwind, nice access to snarl, etc. Great mon on balance teams that compresses a lot of roles into one, which allows for a ton of flexibility.

Tier 4 cleanse
-> UR
Kinda neat if you get off a BD, 5v6 if you can't
-> UR
On paper, CM doesn't sound bad but it's so much harder to get it set up nowadays
-> UR
Gonna go as far as to say it should be unranked. We tested a couple p2 squads during DPL and honestly they haven't felt great. If you're not clicking Ice Beam into Landorus/Thund, it basically sits there and does nothing.

Shoutouts that qsns mega mence squad for carrying me for the past year and a half.

 

[SingleThunder]

blastoise to 3

 

[Schister]

It's been a long run of Xy gaming from cup into ORAS Underground into DPL into the upcoming ORASPL and I have a lot to say on how the tier has developed. This will be a DPL post first and foremost so let's jump into the teams I loaded up for DPL

Week 1 Vs Kylecole, Week 4 Vs SingleThunder
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Diancie-Shroom Balance

I've been using these 6 since the start of the year as I find it to be one of the most solid comps for mega diancie, which looked like a great bring into kylecole's old scout. Diancie is able to click into basically the entire format and has exceptional type synergy with amoonguss, sharing no weaknesses while also being an elite pokemon in its own right. Conk helps this team's thundurus matchup as theoretically max speed goggles flash thund farms the core here (I'll take fake sets for 300) and acts as a decent general switch for twave and the two choice guys provide great general coverage to bounce off the core with. I ended rebuilding this exact team on accident into single thunder with minor set changes so It's definitely been a fixation of mine into players with diancie-weak scouts. The team is a little weak to talonflame mega mence and scarf landorus-therian thanks to no intimidate but I think with future versions of the team it will be scrafty over conkeldurr since I've grown to really dislike that pokemon recently and the team would appreciate an intimidator. You may notice that i didn't list Choice band genesect as a weakness for this team and that is because the team is EVed such that genesect can literally never get a download boost against it (download doesn't include assault vest in it's calculation, just raw stat) which has made CBG significantly easier to play against and ended up being a major sticking point for me when building this season.

Week 2 vs Nadando
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Salamence Sandstack

Ned is a very strong player who'd been hanging around in the Kitchen for a bit and I knew I wanted to bring something very strong into him while throwing off his lines with some unusual choices. Salamence sand was an archetype that's been heavily disrespected in XY Dou for a bit and I wanted to try a sturdier approach playing off the chip and really strong centerpieces that could wear the opposing team down in aegislash and ferrothorn. This team struggled a bit with landorus-therian earthquake so I opted to be wide-guard landorus instead of sub and centered my play around opening avenues for mence and landorus to clean games. The low pace of the team made kang and amoonguss very difficult to deal with when I was starting out with the original idea of building out roost mence with tyranitar and I ended up using ferrothorn as a solotuion to that problem, being able to eat spores and punish kang a bit while giving me a sandstorm immune chipperthat could be incredibly difficult for some teams to remove. I ended up losing the game due to some poor decision making on my end and losing my salamence early but the team felt pretty great overall and I like it a lot as a juxtapositon to more standard bulky teams by having another layer to winning trades than just good button clicking

Week 3 vs QSNS
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AV Genesect Rain

Despite the loss I felt confident in my ability to load more unorthodox teams after the week versus ned. I knew qsns and eragon would be scouting hard so I decided to load something that was completely out of my scout: rain. Inspiration from SS led me to building AV genesect with Thunder, somethign that while fun, was in hindsight probably not the best bring. I ended up overloading a few slots like my swampert with this one and paid the price for not prepping/practicing harder in game when I played admittedly pretty poorly. One positive thing though is that the genesect itself felt very good in testing at taking trades, and the Life orb ice beam kingdra also felt particularly excellent and securing games, ideas to maybe revisit in the future.

Week 5 Vs Arcticblast
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Diancie Sand Bulky Offense

After losing to arctic in Underground in a very funny get where we both disconnected simultaneously and I threw very bad, I was resolved to bring something very solid into Arctic's scout. The thing I noticed immediately in said scout was a ridiculous amount of thundurus usage, and a general overtendency towards LTV. Spoilers for later in this post but I find Tyranitar to be an excellent LTV punisher with ice beam to punish landorus, STAB rock moves to blow up thundurus and volcanion and Sand chip to scout goggles on thund/volc. It trades very well into that core and hard punishes a few other things in the metagame like deoxys and can seriosuly dent aegislash. To avoid just getting twaved shroom talon and diancie are here to absorb reasonably well and diancie lives a flash cannon in sand from thund. Talonflame and latios both provide ground immunities and punch through landorus forms and fighting types for the rock types, with both carryign a fire move to outspeed and OHKO CBG. Amoonguss and aegislash provide a fantastic backbone into kang/act as general switches with the entire team eating fire moves for them. This is one of the teams I'm most proud of in this tier and I think it's capable of doing serious damage into most players' scouts, even if it lost the game due to a combination of bad luck and bad tilt play on my part.

Week 6 Vs Laptops
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Darkrai Flier Balance

A long time ago when I was first starting the tier I notice how good Hydreigon's typing was into so much of the metagame; I marveled at how well it performed into LTV and how effective dark pulse was at putting Aegislash down. Then I saw it's speed stat: disgusting. Darkrai freed me of that horrible speed tier and gave access to ice beam, albeit at the cost of some of hydreigon's defensive merits. That was okay though, because Mega Salamence has almost the exact same defensive profile as Hydreigon but can click actual good moves with tempo wow! I've held onto this idea for awhile and Laptop's scout with high mew fake out balance usage seemed like the perfect target. With Darkrai being able to dispatch aegislash for Salamence, I opted to run full physical with stone edge for thundurus and paried it with scarf lando-t for funny earthquake spam and superpower to cover kang. To build on darkrai and have a kang switchin, amoonguss joined the team as a fairy/fighting resist, greatly appreciating darkrai's ability to dispatch Deoxys and landorus forms that threaten it with psychic damage and having funny synergy with Bad dreams + spore. Volc and aegi joined the team for ice resist/deoxys sitters and just being generally good. The week was already decided so laptops decided to load a funny but this team rocks.

Week 7 Vs Bagel
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MichaelDerWeste wanted to play XY DOU

With the team already in playoffs srvoltmike begged me to let him play XY, and I relented. Bagel/Voltix scout was filled to the brim with mega diancie and very little rain respect so we decided to commit to goth rain to put the punish on that. Goth rain is nowhere near as oppressive in XY as in bw, without perma weather and significantly more things to check ferrothorn, but swampert and talonflame provide some nice tools and let this team keep the pressure up. Mike didn't really like curse on ferro since ferro is a bit of a shitmon so we went with leech to give the team some more recovery and play around getting positional advantages more. This team tested quite well aside from thundurus which took some tinkering until finally the goat sir jelloton gave us his disgusting bulky specs thund spread that lives mega diancie diamond storm. This singular spread was a bit formative for me, as a couple months ago I played jello in a test game using this spread and lost because the thundurus is so physically invested my genesect got a special boost and couldn't use Extreme speed to close the game out. The realization that you can just disrespect CBG espeed with smart ev investment really opened my eyes for this tour and has shaped a number of building decisions seen here, so if you see wierd defensive EV spreads know that it's jello's fault.

Semifinals vs Arcticblast
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Entei Bulkshit

0-2 against arctic had me in a rough spot in builder; both of my last two brings into him recently rolled favorable matchups but bad luck into tilt gameplay had netted me a lot of frustration. I wanted to load something that felt solid and stick to that while playing test games to get super comfy and keep my mental in check. Initially I played with a variant of big-six but after multiple teammates told me it looked bad I ended up building this team with eragon . Conkeldurr-rotom-landorus were insurance into Arctic's tendency to load paralysis spammers and mence just kind of ended up being my comfort mega this tour despite vibing with a lot of other megas way harder in underground and cup. Eragon suggested entei to spam burns into aegislash and between that double intim and rotom this team ended up being extremely good at shutting down any and all physical attackers. i ended up memorizing lines into deokang and mega diancie and found most matchups to be extremely playable, with lando-i being a minor pain point. However the more I tested this team the worse guts conkeldurr felt, simply not doing enough damage and sort of just being a generic late game guy that barely contributed to progress making so I ended up making it iron fist to get some more trading power out of it. In the end I played my lines versus arctic as safe as possible and ended up losing the game to a burn after opting to use my rotom's hp early versus the deokang instead of entei's, a frustrating way to end the tour but at least I finally played a game versus arctic where I wasn't furious with my own gameplay.

I didn't get the record I wanted out of DPL and ended up struggling with my own vibes a bit, for that I apologize to my team. LogIce srvoltmike Thanks to you guys in particular for always being such a positive force in teamtours and keeping me in check a bit, I had a bit of a rough one between IRL and my tour results, sorry we couldn't bring it home. Chris32156 Terekusai Knull You guys did outstanding this year and I'm so glad I got to be your teammate and watch those games on your side. To the rest of my dpl teammates, it was a good run and I'm glad to be on a non-west team where nothing silly happens for once and everyone just had good vibes. On an XY note I feel really in-tune with the state of the XY metagame and know exactly where I can improve my gameplay and mental in the future, so everyone better watch out for my return next year, but for now let's delve into my VR

VR and stuffs

Note: this entire tier list is ordered, except megas. Megas are ordered with themselves

T1
No surprise on lando-t but yes surprise on Lando-I. I may be early on this but I agree with eragon 's post from last year where he said one of Lando-i and Lando-t belong on almost every team in the format (I'd say about 80%), and to me that makes them both T1 as I rate them equally. Landorus-therian is the avatar of item choices in this tier, being able to confidently run Av scarf band rocky helmet and goggles with no issues and check a large swath of the metagame, it's been tier 1 forever and that's really not changing even as lando-I continues to grow and eat some of its usage. Lando-I, on the other hand is more strictly scarf or Lorb (I have one team i ran goggles on it but for the life of me I can't find it :P) and represents a much larger trend of offensive teams growing in usage in the tier. LTV has been dismantled a lot recently as teams lean into more offensive pieces like lando-i mega-diancie hoopa-unbound and play to trade through raw damage output rather than through playing off bulk/type chart. Lando-i excels at this, being very difficult for lando-t to do anything to while being able to hit it hard, outspeeding kang and CBG and threatening 70% and 95% of their hp with earth power and OHKOing any non-av volcanion or rocks-chipped AV volcanion. Further Lando-i can break down defensive cornerstones like aegislash and amoonguss by taking updwards of 90% of their hp and allowing any partner to clean up. Landorus's solid bulk also make sure anything that isn't supereffective or blatantly stupid like mence DEdge isn't OHKoing it. Lando-i is a defining pokemon in this trend to dismantle balance teams reliant on slower trades with brute force and easily the biggest contributor to recent metagame shifts in my eyes aside from maybe Mega-Diancie. Lando-t is still slightly stronger in my eyes but it has to sacrifice something with all of its sets and earthquake is of course a harder move to use than earth power, and it really doesn't appreciate how annoying wide guard makes aegislash's matchup for it compared to lando-I.


In a vacuum, AV Volcanion probably the best pokemon in the metagame. However as the metagame gets more offensive, the mian things volcanion can prey upon have become less prevalent, and stuff that can trade 80% of its hp in a single turn like lando-i, mega-salamence or mega-diancie. Furthermore certain pokemon like mega-salamence blastoise keldeo and washtom that can sit on volcanion and gradually remove it are quite solid and can make positioning volcanion a challenge. That said fire is a critical type to have in this metagame and volcanion is still indisputably the best, but it's indomitable position as a threat you can slap onto anything has definitely been challenged in my eyes as teams become more and more resilient to it.


Maybe personal bias but this is easily amoonguss' best DOU gen bar what a sleep clause-less BW would look like. Spore is extremely pressuring in builder and forces you to respect it, severely punishing any team that doesn't sacrifice at least one item slot to the shroom gods, but amoonguss is incredible even beyond this. Redirection for megas like gardevoir Diancie and DD mence is extremely powerful, being able to freely run a rocky helmet with so much HP to screw over kangaskhan is a miracle and having STAB grass moves for rain matchups is an extremely rare tool in this metagame. Foul play to ruin aegislash is a funny innovation as well but amoonguss' base kit is just so incredible into so many of the top threats in the tier that it almost makes me want to rank it tier 1


As good as thund is, it can't quite do everything. This pokemon to me has always felt like it wants another 252 evs and 2 move slots and it constantly has to make a sacrifice into some matchup for whatever team its on. Flash cannon that ouspeeds mega diancie is great but can you really afford to outspeed it and still try to do utility things? Utility TWave is stupid as all hell but can get absolutely mauled by Mega diancie CBG conk and makes stealth rocks a bit annoying to position around. Defiant is cool but it can't actually hit landorus very effectively and is very fragile.
I definitely don't like using this pokemon very often and part of that is just hatred but another part is that sometimes it feels like I can find better ways to solve my builder problems than just slapping on twave bot that clicks hp ice for 30 into av landorus. Still a very good pokemon and thunder wave remains a piece of the metagame I wish I could play without, but not the end-all of XY.


Want an offense team? Here slap the bird that does 80 to everything on and play off rocks chip! In my opinion priority is extremely valuable in Xy right now for consistency into so many varied scarfers and fast threats like mence deoxys and swift swimmers. Talonflame is extremely splashable and really enjoys playing the game at a faster pace into or with lando-i structures as a non-volcanion fire type. With lando-i in particular, teams are less concerned about aegislash and genesect so having a much more offensive fire that doesn't focus on checking those two is a lot easier to justify. Conversely, talon really enjoys playing into landorus, havign a very strong chance to OHKO it after rocks chip and coming in on hp ice and earth power very freely. Slotting this pokemon on offensive teams right now feels very free to me, and it's still stellar as ever on older structure like rain that always had it.


One of the most destructive pokemon in the metagame, and it hasn't tapped into the limit of its potential. Life orb ice beam off deoxys-speed effectively murders all landorus forms and items with almost no gameplay cost and it causes some very degenerate gameplay in my eyes. As the metagame gets more offensive it has become clear to me that deoxys-speed can do whatever it wants while it's on the field, freely setting rocks, blowing up targets with psycho boost and diving into a bottomless pool of coverage moves. Playing against this pokemon feels like scouting a draft team sometimes, I can never be sure if that last attack is energy ball flash cannon hp fire or even if it's decided to dip into some wierd shit like dropping rocks or running superpower. I realize this may not be a common experience in the tier as it's only really run with kang with minimal exploration done elsewhere but i do not look forward to the possibility of it being used with other megas and as it stands is the primary thing that makes a lot of kang teams seem strong at all to me. Playing around coverage that OHKOes half the format's most important backbone pieces at a speed tier that no reasonable scarfer can contest, doesn't get choice locked, lives most priority with relative comfort and has a fantastic click to punish passive play is just too good for me to rate lower than tier 2.


I think these three are all extremely close in viability right now and they all share in having a manageable volcanion matchup. if you went based off my usage stats you could easily argue that I think Mence is number 1 and diancie number 2 but truthfully I use those two more as targetted but safe counters to scouts and believe kang is still the most well-rounded mega. That said I don't think kang is significantly stronger than the other two (or even mega gengar, which barely didn't cut tier 2 for me) and it on its own doesn't cause me too much stress in builder these days (in part due to the next two guys on this vr).


Do not fall for Grandmas Cookin 's propaganda anymore, this pokemon is very good. Fake out is obviously an incredible tool to have and intimidate off of lando-t give scrafty a permanent niche, though how it capitalized on said niche wasn't clear to me until recently. This pokemon is a perfect partner for landorus-incarnate. Lando-I is able to capitalize on the space scrafty makes in game and greatly appreciates having a low-cost intimidate partner that is particularly good at dealing with one of its biggest predators, deoxys-speed.
252+ Atk Scrafty Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Deoxys-Speed: 296-350 (97.3 - 115.1%) -- 81.3% chance to OHKO
A good enough roll for me, and most deoxys can't afford to run that much HP, lest they miss ice beam calcs on lando-t or speed benchmarks on certain scarfers/pert. Scrafty has an open item slot and an open 4th move slot with ice punch dragon tail protect quick guard and super fang all as options, but drain punch/hi jump kick into kang and knock off into deoxys/aegislash and for item removal is incredible compression in this format. being solid into both components of deokang is fantastic on its own but scrafty's ability to remove items in a format where so many pokemon are reliant upon them is too good for me to ignore
A team from Oras underground that has felt quite good built around lando-scraft


A good typing and good enough moves with a solid speed tier and good bulk, keldeo is a great and consistent Kang check when I need one. Being able to outspeed lando-i and kang and OHKO them is great, quick guard is a useful tool in a format littered with priority moves, secret sword does good damage into most of the format and notable lets keldeo outtrade AV volcanion, which cannot hit it and suffers a softer physical defense stat, keldeo is a good compression filler mon on a some of my pastes. Taunt for amoonguss/diancie and icy wind have also been useful clicks in the right situation, I think keldeo is a solid respectable guy with useful good matchups off its typing. Use scald if you hate hydro pump it still kills lando-i with lorb.


I mentioned it in my teampost, I think this pokemon is excellent into LTV and a great way to punish players who neglect the rock type in their scouts. Able to punish the most common rock resist in the tier and set rocks with ease, Tyranitar has become a small fixture of mine in Underground/DPL, being another great punish to deo-kang and having tools into most things int he metagame. Please run ice beam to hit landorus-therian i promise its fine. The scrafty-gengar team linked above under srafty has the following tyranitar set to beat deo-kang:
Tyranitar @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 24 Atk / 124 Def / 108 SpD
Brave Nature
- Crunch
- Stone Edge
- Ice Beam
- Stealth Rock
That team felt pretty consistent and tyranitar did a great job on it dispelling one of Gengar's worst matchups, and I think leveraging ttar's access to ice beam to steady the landorus matchup lets it be a very consistent piece on a lot of teams. The Ttar mega-diancie team linked in the dpl dump has scarf mixtar, which I also think is good and gets the jump on a lot of pokemon in the metagame. I think the tier's Fighting types are very easy to cover for and the upsides of tyranitar into much of the metagame are understated by a lot of the playerbase. Just a greatly underexplored pokemon.


Had a pretty successful DPL all things considered. Heatran has benefitted from the slight fall-off of volcanion of late and distinguished itself as a fire type that doesn't implode upon ingesting stealth rocks. Singlethunder and Idyll have been exploring fast scarfed sets but I also like sub/utility heatran a bit on some teams, I used it twice in Oras Underground. In particular I think heatran pairs particularly well with genesect for both flash-fire induced reasons but also because genesect is excellent at finding openings for it to enter the field and trade well. Heatran's speed tier being above volc and bisharp is useful for cleaning with full offensive investment, getting over most midrange pokemon and letting it click buttons.
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I think this second team in particular is one of the best teams I've built all year, incredibly fun to pilot and feels very distinct with the pieces playing off each other so well. Double dragon double steel is insanely fun and scrafty/lando-i formed a great 2-mon stabilization core to end it off.


Idyll water types that sit on volcanion and whittle it away while clicking useful buttons, also applies to rain. Blastoise has been a standout annoyance lately, subverting stealth rock metagaming and showcasing the unholy power of follow me as it gets 3hkoed by lando-i earth power. Rotom typing is cool and useful and good and I probably ranked it too high but I don't feel like editting the screenshot again because half the mons got deleted when i refreshed the page. Rotom does sit forever on some teams though and is one of the best pokemon at switching in on just about anything and bringing in a new guy safely.


There is a large gap between these guys and gar is definitely closer to t2 than any other pokemon in t3. Gengar and Garde have both recently been explored with more optimized comps and proven themselves to be solid parts of the metagame, and I expect gengar in particular to benefit from the recent upturn in offensive stuffs. I know others don't feel the same but i personally don't think I would build rain without pert, the ground STAB into volcanion and rock resist for the fliers rain likes feel too important to me.


The more I try to use this thing the more I dislike it right now. Conk has to invest all of its evs into bulk just to take good trades and the only reward is maybe doing enough with drain punch over time to be annoying. I find keldeo and scrafty to provide much more actively beneficial utility to my teams and provide actual switchins off resistances rather than taking 230 from every stray hit and doing nothing back because it has to click pathetically weak damaging moves with no evs invested. I much prefer volcanion as a generic bulky fat guy to throw on teams and other fighting types to to fighting type things since conk doesn't actually beat deokang if they double up like scrafty does and it feels like it just takes too much switching around stuff and baiting lando-t entries with drain punch. Mach punch is useful and iron fist/guts are cool and its definitely not unviable but I just prefer my pokemon to be a little sharper and actively dislike using conk.


Sort of fishy, but unique for its innate ability to switch in on both spore and kang hits for decent return. Not too great outside of that though and definitely not a guy I'd go out of my way to look at.


What if Hydreigon had ice beam and a real speed stat? Basically this guy, has felt really good with tyranitar as a matchup patch, taking down Landorus fightings and hitting CBG with fast hp fire. Used it on just enough good teams to make my list here, similar to darkrai which I discussed in the dpl teamdump.


Fake out disruption has become more useful lately and these guys are all ok at this. Hitmontop also bundles in rapid spin for a few niche archetypes like zard sun. Raichu is really annoying with nuzzle and saw some especially annoying use with Gengar recently.


Stupid matchup fish, not consistent at all and incredibly easy to account for.


Speed good, coverage good, both abilities good. This is a fine and honest pokemon to run when you want and it can definitely win.