Cutting DUU is a major disservice to the historic player base and those wanting to try something fun for a tour. It's no surprise that I would be one of DUU's major advocates, as I've played DUU in a team tour setting since I started competitive doubles. At the same time, however, I dabbled in playing games with DUbers mons in both
Derby 1 and the
DUbers friendly series. While the friendly series may not have as fleshed out of a meta as a RDU slot in Derby, it still does not represent something I would personally want to play competitively in a tour, especially over a DUU slot.
DUU in comparison, has always been a competitive slot no matter the tournament, metagame or generation surrounding it. It is a tier that has always rewarded innovation due to its shifting landscape while proving that these innovations are countered in time. People may point to Pokemon like Basculegion as potentially problematic for the tier, yet this is similar to other potentially overwhelming Pokemon in other tiers. It functions similarly to Archaludon in how its power grows over time and often in tandem with rain, but with potentially even more counterplay in tera normal, strong dark types and the necessitation of fainted teammates. It remains a balanced metagame to this day.
UU slots are always partially filled by players who want a break from other tiers. For players who played at least 1 game of DUU last Derby we had four that participated in the most recent SCL. These players went a combined 6-5, which demonstrates that it is not a tier that rewards blind clicking ability but a blend of metagame knowledge, building fundamentals and the aforementioned in-game piloting. Many players who were DUU starters in previous tours continue to have successes outside of the tier as well, such as xqiht, bagel and ESM - irrespective of their records within the tournaments themselves. DUU, as a result, is a tier that is easy to draft and plan around. Only two players who played 1 or more DUU games last Derby had a cost of 3k, proving that managers are either planning around their preferred starter before the draft or recognize the players as being valuable contributors regardless.
DUU has proven itself in previous tours as a slot that rewards proper draft planning and as a training ground for players to learn how to be contributing members of a team. Cutting it in favour of less developed metagames may have the unintended consequence of decreasing the accessibility of tournaments in the future. That would not be appropriate for Derby which is intentionally removing older, less accessible slots to begin with. The metagame remains relatively unchanged since last Derby as well, with new resources such as sample teams being updated in time for the tournament to start. I urge the hosts to keep the slot in this tournament since every year we see new exciting faces emerge from it.
