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Double Battle Metagame.
- Thread starter Go2Sleep02
- Start date
Feraligatr can take hits from Icicle Spear, but your duo would get bowled over by Discharge teams.
Salamence would have to stick with Spike Cannon.
Steelix is slow, but he resists Spike Cannon, and would fit in just fine for a Trick Room team.
Yeah, I was mainly thinking of using Salamence with a Special Sweeping Cloyster (just to reduce its attack even further) since most other Ragers have.... issues... mainly in the speed area or the survivability area, I mean what can be better than a +5 Attack STABbed Quick Attack from Dodrio, besides the failure of Exploding it now >.< (iirc it worked in third gen, the Exploding of course). But I think I might go with Cloyster Spike Cannoning Salamence, then Exploding while Salamence Protects and then switching in a Scarfed Gengar to Trick Scarf onto Salamence and later on somehow bringing in Gravity to Earthquake everything in sight... I'll eventually figure a way out... although this team seems somewhat doomed to fail
That's an awful lot of setup for what will probably be a four man team. You could give Salamence Rock Slide instead, and let him use that to hit both targets without having to ground everyone as well.
After reading the common team themes from the Platinum Tournament in Japan thread, I think I'm going to just go ahead and trade out Golduck for Politoed prematurely. With all the Trick Rooms flying around, I'd rather be able to take advantage of them than get screwed over by them.
My team and a potentially good one
Two ideas. First off...
My lead-in to doubles.
Lucario (F) @ Salac Berry
Ability: Inner Focus
EVs: 252 ATK/252 SPD/6 SAT
Naive nature (+SPD, -DEF)
- Endure
- Reversal
- Flash Cannon
- Drain Punch
Azelf @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 ATK/252 SPD/6 SAT
Lonely nature (+ATK, -DEF)
- Explosion
- U-Turn
- Shadow Ball
- Thunderpunch
It's all very simple.
Lucario endures and Azelf Explodes with Life Orb. If there's a damper, except for Quagsire, they're all under Azelf's Thunderpunch. Then it's Endure+Explosion. Whatever the case, Lucario eats Salac and sweeps with (200 * STAB = 300) power Reversal. If it needs to, Drain Punch to restore HTP.
And now for a hypothetical team...
Exploding Azelf with Exploding Ghost (Azelf fastest and Ghost right under it). Ghost with Earthquake. Use Explosion from Azelf and Earthquake from the Ghost.Next turn, send in a Protecting Exploder and use Protect. Have your Ghost use Explosion. Send in a PKMN (Ghost or with Protect/Endure and Salac). Have your Protecting Exploder use Explosion. I wonder if this would work...
Two ideas. First off...
My lead-in to doubles.
Lucario (F) @ Salac Berry
Ability: Inner Focus
EVs: 252 ATK/252 SPD/6 SAT
Naive nature (+SPD, -DEF)
- Endure
- Reversal
- Flash Cannon
- Drain Punch
Azelf @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 ATK/252 SPD/6 SAT
Lonely nature (+ATK, -DEF)
- Explosion
- U-Turn
- Shadow Ball
- Thunderpunch
It's all very simple.
Lucario endures and Azelf Explodes with Life Orb. If there's a damper, except for Quagsire, they're all under Azelf's Thunderpunch. Then it's Endure+Explosion. Whatever the case, Lucario eats Salac and sweeps with (200 * STAB = 300) power Reversal. If it needs to, Drain Punch to restore HTP.
And now for a hypothetical team...
Exploding Azelf with Exploding Ghost (Azelf fastest and Ghost right under it). Ghost with Earthquake. Use Explosion from Azelf and Earthquake from the Ghost.Next turn, send in a Protecting Exploder and use Protect. Have your Ghost use Explosion. Send in a PKMN (Ghost or with Protect/Endure and Salac). Have your Protecting Exploder use Explosion. I wonder if this would work...
lol... no it wouldn't work, because Gengar cannot learn Earthquake, and Lucario should have Crunch over Flash Cannon, one because Flash Cannon is special, two Steel has terrible type coverage, and three Reversal doesn't affect Ghosts whereas Crunch hits for super, and why would you want to heal if you have Reversal.... Might as well go with Extremespeed to make sure nothing can out speed you with priority
The problem with Plusle + Minun is that they are horrible choices. Let's consider just how your strategy will play out in a real doubles match:
You use Agility and Follow Me. The opponent uses a move like Rain Dance / Trick Room / whatever, setting them up for powerful attacks in the following turns, or perhaps they use a move like Earthquake / Surf / Rock Slide / Explosion, thus ignoring Follow Me, or they use moves like Psychic and Thunderbolt and the like. If they only kill Togekiss, you send out Minun.
Minun uses Helping Hand, Plusle uses Thunderbolt and probably kills one Pokemon. Congratulations, you've lost one Pokemon to take down one Pokemon. In that same turn, you lack the protection of Follow Me, they attack your Plusle, it faints, and now you're down a Pokemon and have no set-up, while they may have set something up the first couple of turns when you're using Agility.
You use Agility and Follow Me. The opponent uses a move like Rain Dance / Trick Room / whatever, setting them up for powerful attacks in the following turns, or perhaps they use a move like Earthquake / Surf / Rock Slide / Explosion, thus ignoring Follow Me, or they use moves like Psychic and Thunderbolt and the like. If they only kill Togekiss, you send out Minun.
Minun uses Helping Hand, Plusle uses Thunderbolt and probably kills one Pokemon. Congratulations, you've lost one Pokemon to take down one Pokemon. In that same turn, you lack the protection of Follow Me, they attack your Plusle, it faints, and now you're down a Pokemon and have no set-up, while they may have set something up the first couple of turns when you're using Agility.
Ahh classic BombVersal. One thing you may want to consider is if for some reason you can't explode on the first turn, you have to really look out for Lucario since the opponent might see it as more of a threat than Azelf and double target it, thus, ruining the strategy.Two ideas. First off...
My lead-in to doubles.
Lucario (F) @ Salac Berry
Ability: Inner Focus
EVs: 252 ATK/252 SPD/6 SAT
Naive nature (+SPD, -DEF)
- Endure
- Reversal
- Flash Cannon
- Drain Punch
Azelf @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 ATK/252 SPD/6 SAT
Lonely nature (+ATK, -DEF)
- Explosion
- U-Turn
- Shadow Ball
- Thunderpunch
It's all very simple.
Lucario endures and Azelf Explodes with Life Orb. If there's a damper, except for Quagsire, they're all under Azelf's Thunderpunch. Then it's Endure+Explosion. Whatever the case, Lucario eats Salac and sweeps with (200 * STAB = 300) power Reversal. If it needs to, Drain Punch to restore HTP.
I'm also wondering why you have drain punch on there since Reversal relies on low HP. A better choice might be Crunch / Shadow Claw and Stone Edge or Zen Headbutt (if you have access to Pt.) instead of Flash Cannon and Drain Punch to deal with Ghost, Psychic, Poison, and Flying types that Reversal does not cover.
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying or I worded the statement incorrectly. I'll explain what I'm trying to say more.
As you probably know endure is like protect, in which it's not always guarunteed to work twice in a row. So if you endure the first turn and you can't explode, then you're relying on someone attacking and actually getting the HP down to 1. Then after that, you have the bigger of problem of keeping Azelf alive in order to explode in the turn after that (unless you want to take the risk of using endure twice).
On the other hand, if you don't endure the first turn there's a possibility of Lucario fainting (which is where the double targetting mention came in). So either way damp, imprison, etc. has the possiblity of being a problem for this combo.
I'm pretty sure that Naive lowers Sp. Defense and not Defense :P
The Strategy is solid but you may be better off running an Exploding Gengar over Azelf to pretty much ensure that you will get that Explosion off. Azelf can be targetted by Fake Out and quite possibly ruining your entire strategy if they decide to go after him and leave next turn with an Endure that has a 50/50 chance of working. You are going to be running a Negative Defense Nature, so with a only 20 IVs in HP and 0 in Defense it would ensure that Gengar's Explosion is always a 1HKO. You may want to consider running a Hippodown or a Weather Changer to prevent Hail from Finishing off your Lucario and a Follow Me user to divert Priority Attacks. ;)
The Strategy is solid but you may be better off running an Exploding Gengar over Azelf to pretty much ensure that you will get that Explosion off. Azelf can be targetted by Fake Out and quite possibly ruining your entire strategy if they decide to go after him and leave next turn with an Endure that has a 50/50 chance of working. You are going to be running a Negative Defense Nature, so with a only 20 IVs in HP and 0 in Defense it would ensure that Gengar's Explosion is always a 1HKO. You may want to consider running a Hippodown or a Weather Changer to prevent Hail from Finishing off your Lucario and a Follow Me user to divert Priority Attacks. ;)
Wait. Why not Mismagius?
I didn't get a chance to see your duo before you edited it, but I'm guessing Rotom-H used to be Gengar, since he has Explosion and Focus Blast in his move set.
Both of which I'm kind of sure Rotom-H can't learn. :b You can find replacements for those, or try using CounterSash Gengar.
Both of which I'm kind of sure Rotom-H can't learn. :b You can find replacements for those, or try using CounterSash Gengar.
Looking at the past 16 pages, I'd say yes, you are allowed to do that. :P
I shouldn't worry about Damp. Only four PKMN can have it: Golduck, Politoed, Poliwrath, and Quagsire. If I even see the first three, Azelf can T-Punch 'em. And as for Quagsire, I'll just attack him. And Imprison? That's only if they outrun me...
I wasn't exactly saying that you won't be able to handle damp Pokemon, I was just saying that you have to use up a turn that you could've used to explode which could, in turn, mess up the reveral Lucario strategy.
Even though I wasn't talking about this, just as a fyi, Azelf only has the possibility of OHKO'ing Golduck.
(Azelf with 252 Atk, + Nature, Thunderpunch
vs. Politoed with Neutral Nature and 252 HP EVs does 75.78% - 89.06%
vs. Poliwrath with Neutral Nature and 72 HP EVs does 70.80% - 83.48%)
All the more reason I want to use Politoed or Poliwrath on my Gravity team.
Speaking of which, using one of the Polis has an added bonus; access to Hypnosis. Even with it's lowered Accuracy in Platinum, it will still have 100 percent accuracy under Gravity.
Speaking of which, using one of the Polis has an added bonus; access to Hypnosis. Even with it's lowered Accuracy in Platinum, it will still have 100 percent accuracy under Gravity.
speaking of Gravity, what is the percentage that it raises accuracy by? Is there a formula? I'm not sure how evasion modifiers work, that's why I am asking.
Evasion and accuracy modifiers are different from other stat modifiers. Whereas attack and defense use 2/2 to determine boosts, Evasion and accuracy uses 3/3.
Basically, if you raise your evasion, the lower number goes up by one. If you decrease your evasion, the higher number goes up by one. So using Gravity means everyone has an evasion penalty of -2, which translates to multiplying the accuracy of any attack by 5/3. What this basically means is that any attack with an accuracy of 60 or higher will have an accuracy of at LEAST 100 under the effect of Gravity.
Ok., so if I wanted to see the accuracy of Zap Cannon under Gravity, I would multiply 50 by 5/3. So that would equal out to 83% accuracy. And if the opponent used Double Team without Gravity, I would multiply 50 by 3/4; and that would mean that Zap Cannon's accuracy would become 37.5, which is rounded down to 37%.
Is that correct?
Is that correct?