After playing
Dubers in Maushold Cup I wanted to give my thoughts on the tier.
Everything is weak to Fairy. This makes the fairy mons insanely good, giving value to stuff like Iron Valiant, Sylveon, and Hatterene that you wouldn’t expect to be good. It also means things that resist fairy are very worthwhile, such as Iron Treads and Glimmora.
Focus Sash is a great item. There’s a lot of glass cannons in the tier, which results in most teams running like 3+ focus sashes. You can either try to play around this, or set up hazards or use something (like sand) to break sashes.
Trick Room is really good - if you can get it up. So many of the teams in the tier are something like Murkrow + Flutter + Box Legends + two fillers. These teams often just lose if you’re able to position an offensive fairy or something similar in TR you can just do so much damage that you’ve basically won by the time TR is done.
Next, my Dubers Tierlist (likely missing something). Tiers 1 & 2 are ordered.
Top Mons Explanations:
:Flutter Mane: Flutter is the best mon in the tier by a lot. Almost everything in this tier is weak to fairy, and with its speed + protosynthesis, it outspeeds and gets big damage on everything. It’s so versatile, can be an offensive TR mon, a fast focus sash mon with icy wind support, or a bulky offensive mon. You can often just lead it and let it do like 200% its health in damage, or can use it late game as a cleaner. Some calcs to be aware of:
252 SpA Flutter Mane Moonblast vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Miraidon: 284-336 (83 - 98.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Flutter Mane Shadow Ball vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Flutter Mane: 210-248 (83.3 - 98.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
:Miraidon: Miraidon is the second best mon in the tier, with a ridiculous ability that both enables partners and itself, alongside box legend stats and a broken move in electro drift. You can run specs or LO and just kill everything, or can go with scarf or sash and still do crazy amounts of damage. It also gets stuff like dazzling gleam and overheat to check its checks.
:Koraidon: When I first started, I thought Koraidon was pretty mid, just something that enables protosynthesis mons. Then I found its best set: AV Tera Fire with Flame Charge. This thing beats everything in the tier other than like Dondozo. This is probably the best user of Tera in the tier, its natural typing is very bad, but once you Tera fire, you just have to flame charge once to outspeed Iron Treads, and the game is basically won. If you want you can try to fit drain punch, but it needs Adamant to really ohko Iron Treads:
252+ Atk Orichalcum Pulse Koraidon Drain Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Iron Treads: 318-374 (99 - 116.5%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO
:Iron Hands: Iron hands is the 4th best mon in the tier, might be T1 worthy. AV is insane, it can eat hits from all the top threats in Flutter Mane & Miraidon, and hit them back hard. Fake out is obviously great utility, and it’s a solid TR check. Play Rough should always be on this mon, as it beats the dragons & allows you to hit hard on opposing Iron Hands. Some calcs:
252 SpA Life Orb Flutter Mane Moonblast vs. 4 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Iron Hands: 257-304 (57.1 - 67.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Iron Hands Wild Charge vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Flutter Mane: 252-297 (100.3 - 118.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
:Murkrow: Murkrow is here for two reasons, prankster tailwind & Haze. Speed control is super important in a tier with so many glass cannons, and so prankster tailwind is king. Haze is the easiest counter to Dondozo & Tatsugiri, and since Murkrow gets both its a top 5 mon.
:Iron Treads: When I first started looking at the tier, the thing that immediately stood out to me was how good a ground/steel type would be. Immediately realized Iron Treads has the perfect typing & ability for the tier. It beats the top two mons, provides a valuable fairy resist, and is still solid into a lot of the Pokémon on the periphery. Just a classic case of a Pokémon being perfect into the top threats in an Ubers format, despite it being very mediocre in OU. One thing to note is that you need attack quark drive boost to ohko Miraidon, so you run 180 speed EVs jolly, or choose to not ohko it and instead outspeed it.
252 Atk Life Orb Quark Drive Iron Treads Stomping Tantrum vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Miraidon: 374-445 (109.6 - 130.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 Atk Life Orb Iron Treads Stomping Tantrum vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Miraidon: 289-343 (84.7 - 100.5%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO
:Chien-Pao: Another great haze & focus sash user, with great offensive typing & priority moves. It does have a bit of 4 move slot syndrome though, since it wants to run each of haze/ice spinner/ice shard/sucker punch/protect.
:Iron Bundle: Good speed control in icy wind, but it doesn’t do much damage on its own, especially since sun is so frequently up, making hydro pump almost worthless. But being faster than all the 135 base speed mons and having icy wind is enough. Just run sash next to miraidon and spam icy wind + electro drifts.
:Dondozo: &
:Tatsugiri: These 2 can absolutely win games at the dubers level, but there is so much haze murkrow around it can get tough to sweep. In my mind, the best way to use these two is to either try to lure and ko the opposing haze murkrow before you set up the Dondozo (either through using tatsugiri to hit Murkrow, or by setting your own tailwind and forcing them to get murkrow on the field to respond), or to use these two to take out their murkrow, and then win while the opponent's speed control is neutered. That being said, even getting a boosted Dondozo isn't an automatic win like it nearly was in DOU, as the power level here is quite higher with stuff like Miraidon being able to OHKO a boosted non-tera'd Dondozo, while also preventing rest variants with electric terrain.
Some Teams: (Just click the mons for the paste)
:Glimmora: :Murkrow: :Koraidon: :Flutter Mane: :Miraidon: :Iron Treads:
This team is all about setting up hazards with Glimmora to break focus sashes and then setting tailwind to win with the goodstuffs. My first real Dubers team, I got to #1 on the ladder with it in like only 3 losses.. but most hardcore ladderers are ready for it now.
:Flutter Mane: :Miraidon: :Iron Moth: :Oranguru: :Chien-Pao: :Iron Hands:
A fun little weakness policy + bulldoze Oranguru team. Idea is to try to self-activate weakness policies on either Iron Hands or Iron Moth and sweep as much as you can under trick room, and after that Flutter + Miraidon + Chien-pao can win in the end. The speeds are all set up so that Oranguru will go first under Trick room to use bulldoze, and then after that Iron Hands and Iron Moth are slower so you can use an attack + instruct. Leading Iron Hands + Oranguru pretty much always gets TR up.
