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Metagame DPP Doubles OU (Explosion Banned)

A private vote was ran on Thunder Wave in DPP DOU. The vote was private as I was recommended not to use Blind Voting as DPP DOU votes are not eligible for Tiering Contributor. The criteria to be a voter for this suspect was the following:

DPP Council: zee, qsns, DaAwesomeDude1, bagel, mimi, AIRedzone, sir jelloton
2 wins in Derby II DPP: fespy, Spurrific, Actuarily, Sunrose
Top 8 DPP Cup: sundays, Cao Jie, Banbadoro, MADARAAAA, txitas, For 4LOM

The votes were cast as the following:

Ban (10): Spurrific, MADARAAAA, qsns, sundays, zee, AIRedzone, Cao Jie, DaAwesomeDude1, bagel, Sunrose
DNB (4): Actuarily, sir jelloton, Banbadoro, mimi
Abstain (1): For 4LOM
Hasn't Voted Yet (2): txitas, fespy

10 ban votes out of 16 meets the 60% ban margin. This means Thunder Wave is now banned from DPP Doubles OU.

Similarly to the ADV Boom vote, I would be curious to know if people think a revote on this will be necessary, and if so, when they would like to revisit it. Would appreciate input from anyone on this.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the voting, resources will be updated in the coming days.
 
I'm not a giga high level player (Or even a mid level player LOL) but I play often.

I think banning t-wave is interesting and idk if I agree or disagree since gen 4 and 5 t-wave with it's hits everything but volt absorb/ground + 100% accuracy can be annoying to play vs.

I think revotes on such major changes such as t-wave should be done however, more as a vibe check even if the result would most likely be still keep banned.
 
Good outcome and good vote.

The biggest risk tiers like DPP face is interest drying up and not having enough players for a competitive field in a tournament. Thunder wave contributes to declining interest so removing it increases the chance we'll continue to have sufficient players.
 
I meant to post my comments on why I voted ban on thunder wave earlier, but got pretty busy so better late than never lol. I want to preface by saying this vote was not as clear cut as Latios or Garchomp, so I don't think voting do not ban was a wrong choice either. I thought a lot about this suspect but ended up voting ban because I felt thunder wave was restrictive on the builder. If you look at my dpp friendlies and dpp cup winning team dumps, all my teams look pretty similar and it's more than me just spamming what I think is good. When I was building for these tours, I found it very hard to branch out from this structure because anything resembling HO just loses to t wave. This also applies to trying new Pokemon. If it wasn't something bulky that is useable even when paralyzed, it wasn't worth using. It made building and playing this tier feel very stale. It wouldn't be that big of an issue if DPP was like BW, where there's only one widely used t wave user, but the distribution of t wave here is insane when compared to what little viable counterplay there actually is. You have your known t wave clickers like Zapdos, Clefable, Raikou, and Registeel; even Pokemon like Latias and Tyranitar have used t wave before. Compare that to your t wave counterplay which is really only l-rod Rhyperior, Clefable, and Safeguard Cresselia and two of these options need a turn to before it can stop t wave lol. It's so easy to fit t wave on to teams whereas you have to actively build around your t wave counterplay option. I do think losing t wave can make Latias a problem in the future, but I felt the positives of banning t wave outweighed the negatives of keeping it around.
 
T-wave has been recently banned and I have to agree with everything Dad1 mentioned above ^
Throughout all of DPP DOU lifespan, I went out of my way to try out as much stuff as I could because I wanted to have fun and that's what I got but then Derby 1 changed everything... I wasn't around for Derby's first iteration and everything I knew about the metagame changed. A big reason for that is because all of the players were teambuilding with Latios in mind. Specs Latios was downright nasty and I wasn't surprised that it got banned.

Fast forward to Derby 2 and I was able to play DPP this time :) Unfortunately, T-wave was on every team. I understand the speed control aspect of T-wave but its everything else that came with it: An abundance of mons knowing it, T-wave+Rockslide, and mainly just using it to stop a mon from attacking. I didn't like teambuilding anymore and I ended up hating that I had to resort to mainly using a Trickroom Clamperl team with Lighting Rod Marowak (Lowkey I like using Clamperl lol but it gets boring to use after a while). I even used T-wave spam with swagger one week because I knew if Rng went my way then I would win (Ban Swagger btw). Overall, it was really unhealthy and a lot of players wanted to have a suspect test to get it banned.

DPP DOU is the gen that introduced new forms of speed control (Choice Scarf, Trick room, Tailwind) and even though the last one doesn't see as much usage as it does in newer gens, I always thought it could be valuable since it doubles your mons speed, albeit it is only for 2 turns so t-wave was just better to use. T-wave is banned now so I can finally use Tailwind teams and Dou Vintage was my first opportunity to see how effective it can be.
I went 1-2 in DPP games and I wasn't upset about my teams. I played against very good opponents and I think I will get better at teambuilding and playing as the metagame evolves again. Here are the teams I used and the replays to watch them in action!


Priority Spam

:zapdos: :mew: :tyranitar: :arcanine: :swampert: :scizor:

DOU Vintage Round 1 vs Zee: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4doublesou-2205555523?p2
DOU Vintage Round 2 vs Amaranth: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4doublesou-2210694549?p2

Double Scarf

:metagross: :zapdos: :hitmontop: :suicune: :abomasnow: :heracross:

DOU Vintage Round 4 vs qsns: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4doublesou-2221767331

Good luck to the rest of the participants in Vintage and to everyone who makes Old Gens Invitationals!
 
We've had four weeks of post-Thunder Wave gameplay since Vintage started. Here are my thoughts on how the metagame has shifted, for the better imo.

:dp/azelf:

I really like this guy? And I used to be one of its biggest haters. Azelf sits at an incredible 115 Speed tier which puts it above Latias. So many useable moves including stab Psychic, fast U-turn, the fastest viable Explosion in the tier, Fire Blast, Stealth Rock, and Taunt. Super strong guy when it comes to generating momentum, would definitely bump it up in the VR.

:dp/mew:

Speaking of legendary Psychics, here's Mew. I think Mew was probably just on the cusp of tier 1 status again after Derby but I think the Thunder Wave ban has been a nice boost for it. Things that went for Twave on Mew were generally more comfortable taking the paralysis than Mew was (I'd sure hope so after all, we know what Synchronize does). It shouldn't come as a shock that this is the most versatile Pokemon in the tier, though I wouldn't call it a master of anything, it can always find something to do for literally any team.

:dp/latias:

Speaking of legendary Psychics, here's Latias. Here's the thing. I really don't think Latias is banworthy right now. I think it still cements itself as the best Pokemon in the tier of course, but I think allowing faster Pokemon like Raikou, Azelf, and Scarfers to actually contend with Latias instead of getting crippled by Thunder Wave is a good thing.

:dp/zapdos: :dp/raikou: :dp/rotom-mow: :dp/rotom-heat:

Electrics! I think the gap has definitely narrowed between them. Zapdos was clearly the best at spreading Thunder Wave as its bulk and Ground immunity make it more resilient than Raikou. I do think the Tailwind Zapdos that Sunrose has been using is pretty good. I used Calm Mind Raikou for one of my vintage rounds and was pleasantly surprised by its effectiveness. Bulky Specs and Scarf Rotoms also definitely feel good to play with again. The former has a formidable damage output and can be quite hard to remove quickly while Scarf sets do an excellent job at cleaning. I think I like Mow's Leaf Storm coverage more than Heat's Overheat in the current meta, hitting Swampert, Tyranitar, and Rhyperior is some pretty huge value. Don't use Washtom, just run an actual Water type.

:dp/hitmontop:

Hitmontop is another old meta relic I've definitely found myself using more. If you can't gain control of the board through paralysis you're gonna need to resort to other methods and Hitmontop is a pretty good guy for the job. Dude's just got a great kit - the only Intimidate + Fake Out option we've got, Fighting + (priority) Dark coverage, and even a free moveslot for things like Toxic, Helping Hand, Rapid Spin, or even just Protect on the guy most people assume won't have it.

:dp/heatran: :dp/metagross:

I really like running Substitute on these guys. Fast sub Steels just have the ability to get behind a sub and emit a wave of pressure that the pilot can easily abuse. Obviously they're solid Pokemon outside of these sets but just a set I've liked using a lot on both.

:dp/swampert: :dp/gyarados:

I don't really think Swampert has gotten any worse than it was at the point in the meta where everyone realized they should run multiple Grass coverage options for it specifically. It sits on a lot of Pokemon. Clicks pretty powerful moves. All well and good. But man Gyarados just feels soooo much better now that the pool of mons it can DD on has increased by a pretty significant amount. I was quite hesitant to run the Stone Edge set but honestly the coverage on Zapdos and opposing Gyarados is so good that I think the accuracy fears are worth it.

Here's a team that features 6 mons I talked about in this post, it won me a round in vintage and I think it is pretty epic (click sprites)
:azelf: :hitmontop: :rotom-mow: :metagross: :latias: :gyarados:

My enjoyment of this tier has significantly improved following the twave ban. I am so excited to keep playing and building DPP again. This tier rules.
 
1736824715746.png
I'd say this is the boogeyman for the players in this thread but most of you are too new to even know what an XY is judging by this wuss TWave ban. New players get to whine until banning TWave and Freeze Clause is cleared for comp, but we can't even get suspects on Pokémon locked in OU tiers for the sake of "old gen preservation". Try playing VGC15 or Turbo 2 some time so you can remember that life isn't fair and house rules don't cut it
 
Ignoring the meme that is the convo above…..Can you put Boom on whatever vote/survey is next. I dont think I’ll qualify with anything outside of that rando trio old gen tour last year but It’s the only element of the format I find pretty jarring and unbalanced in an otherwise good format.
 
I ran a PBR doubles tourney between some friends and limiting Explosion to 1 user per team alleviated the power that it has. They were decent players and we were modding the game, but it did help a ton nonetheless. It'd be worth limiting TWave to 1 user per team if the people here are comfortable with it. It's not a tier that will be scrutinized for house rules by any upper admins and ADV did 1 million backflips to keep Baton Pass over the years. Highly recommend this if you look into Explosion
 
Derb Derb Derb Derby Week 1

[IIR] AIRedzone vs DaAwesomeDude1 [SPW]
DaAwesomeDude1
:Hitmontop: :Tyranitar: :Swampert: :Zapdos: :Scizor: :latias: Good Stuff Scizor SD Offense (I'm not good with team names)
AIRedZone
:Latias: :Metagross: :Hitmontop: :Zapdos: :suicune: :shaymin: Lati Screens Offense

Turn 1 was cool: DAD1 Leads Fake out Hitmontop and Rocks Tyranitar , which is pretty good into AI's Screens Latias + Lorb Metagross. AI makes the smart call to go Hitmontop and set up screens at a later turn, DAD1 gets a good rocks call. When T-tar and Hitmon top, both now intim'd get forced out turn 1 for Swampert and Zap it allows for Screens to be set up. From there is a standard game, However I enjoyed DAD1 having scizor, I think scizor is pretty good in gen 4 right now with good stab + priority. I think the T-wave ban definitely allows it to greed for SDs if there is no immediately threatening mons due to not having to worry about status otherwise. Along with that AI brought Shaymin a cool mon I rarely see and I'm intersted in what it is. DAD1 brought toxic hitmontop however so with that toxicing shaymin and with Scizor killing AI's hitmontop and latias with a bullet punch that hurts like hell, there is no Shaymin sweep.

[ATC] bagel vs Kegged [RSR]
Kegged
:Raikou: :mew: :Scizor: :Latias: :Salamence: :unown: Raikou Screens Scizor SD Offense
Bagel
:Hitmontop: :Tyranitar: :Bronzong: :Rhyperior: :Gyarados: :latias: Halfr oom Rhyperior Offense

Turn 1 was a fake out trade for the opposing mon. After which Kegged sets up screens with Raikou and u-turns into scizor while Bagel switched out hitmontop for bronzong and sets up trickroom and switches tyranitar for rhyperior the turn, gyarados coming in a turn after for bagel. Later, a well timed mew explosion + scizor protect allows Raikou to come in safely and kill the now explosion + SD Bullet punch chipped rhyperior with hidden power + Set back up reflect on the turn after reflect goes down. Bagel does get a field restart by exploding with The bronzong after to make it 3 mons left for each, but Kegged played very smart knowing Bagel's team. Kegged knows Gyarados + T-tar + 1 unknown for bagel. So being able to get one last reflect up allows a great advantage. Kegged bringing out hp Electric mence and Draco latias vs bagel's already known gyara + now revealed latias. at this point it's gg. Kegged felt like they just had control the whole game. Bagel played well too but it felt like Kegged had just a great read on the game.

[TWT] laptops vs sir jelloton [GOG]
Laptops
:salamence: :Kangaskhan: :empoleon: :Rotom-mow: :bronzong: :unown: Offense
sir jellton
:bronzong: :rotom-heat: :Salamence: :celebi: :rhyperior: :Tyranitar: Half Room Rhyperior Offense

Turn 1 is the funniest option, Laptops just goes for outrage + fake out and lands on rotom-a. Real boss shit. After that Jellton tries to go for a smart half-room transition using celebi to ensure a safe switch with rhyperior. just to get frozen by empoleon IB. Laptops goes for rotom-mow after, exactly as Jellton goes for the explode. Jellton reveals tyrantiar last, Laptops switches for their own Bronzong. It just is gg after that as Jello just gets butchered after that. Only losing their empoleon in the turns that follow. Not much to write for this one sadly :psysad:

Cool teams overall, I had thoughts about scizor being more dominant as the post t-wave ban meta continues and it does fee lthat way. I'm a Scizor fan. Also Mew is a good lead ngl.


This is my first time writing a report since I love DPP DOU and wanted to write my thoughts, feel free to flame me :blobthumbsup:
 
Guys, I'm new here. Are then any gen 4 OU Doubles tournaments that are organized that I can register for? If so, where?
 
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BlaBlaPel said:
Guys, I'm new here. Are then any gen 5 OU Doubles tournaments that are organized that I can register for? If so, where?
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hi there!
so a few things
A) this is the gen4 thread, so gen5 discussion doesnt happen here, in future you should probably ask in the BW thread
B) if you are looking for smogon tours, Doubles OU Vintage will be starting on the 21ST of April, a tour that includes Gen 3 (ADV), Gen 4 (DPP) and Gen 5 (BW), and BW Cup will be starting on the 1ST of September. Signups will open around the time that the tour starts.
The are also daily oldgen tournaments in the Doubles OU Room on PS!.

Happy to help ^-^
 
Politoad With An A said:
hi there!
so a few things
A) this is the gen4 thread, so gen5 discussion doesnt happen here, in future you should probably ask in the BW thread
B) if you are looking for smogon tours, Doubles OU Vintage will be starting on the 21ST of April, a tour that includes Gen 3 (ADV), Gen 4 (DPP) and Gen 5 (BW), and BW Cup will be starting on the 1ST of September. Signups will open around the time that the tour starts.
The are also daily oldgen tournaments in the Doubles OU Room on PS!.

Happy to help ^-^
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Click to collapse...
Thank you so much! I meant to say gen 4, was an inconvenient typo ;). Do you know by chance if that doubles vintage cup that includes gen 3 and gen 5 means you have to compete in all of these formats? Or can you also only register for the gen 4 (dpp) format? And can anyone apply?
 
BlaBlaPel said:
Thank you so much! I meant to say gen 4, was an inconvenient typo ;). Do you know by chance if that doubles vintage cup that includes gen 3 and gen 5 means you have to compete in all of these formats? Or can you also only register for the gen 4 (dpp) format? And can anyone apply?
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Click to collapse...
you have to compete in all 3 im afraid, more info on the pages i linked (click on the blue links)
and yes, anyone can apply to Cup and Vintage, so good luck, and have fun :3
 
There used to be allot of talk around the “Livetours”. Are these still being organised? And when did the ladder of gen 4 ou dou get removed from Pokemon showdown? Does anyone have a screenshot of the ladder before it got removed?
 
hi

been thinking about explosion (or mew) in this tier for a little bit. the conclusion i've come to is that I think one of these two components is too overtuned for the metagame and should probably be looked at. Take a look at this game where Kegged whoops my ass. Turn 1 the Mew lures me into a false sense of security by showing Psychic. My SD Mew teams run Life Orb, but they sure don't run Psychic, so my assumption was that I was staring down one of these avatar Mew sets that run 3-4 Special Attacks with Rocks or Fake Out last. Then I get boomed on and lose way too much material to stay in the game. I don't wanna go replay hunting and frankly I shouldn't have to - this situation isn't isolated to this game and I think it's time we talked about it. I wanna be absolutely clear this is just my personal opinion and is not currently indicative of any tiering action.

on Mew:
:dp/mew:
DPP is really the perfect storm for Mew to exist as a threat in Doubles. The power creep from ADV means it has a bevy of powerful and useful options from SD Boom to Fake Out + Rocks to Trick Room to full Special to something like what the replay above showed. On the flipside, the other options aren't so powerful that Mew is easily kept in check like future generations. I think this and the Team Preview-less environment of DPP renders Mew to be especially powerful. I think the argument to look at Boom and not Mew is that really none of these sets do anything stand out if they aren't clicking Explosion, and I don't refute the point.

on Boom:
:dp/bronzong: :dp/metagross:
Of course the other thing to do in this scenario is ban Explosion/Self-Destruct entirely, the scorched earth approach. I think I prefer this one less because I don't really think Bronzong and Metagross are oppressively strong users of the move, and for the most part the list of meta-relevant users ends here. Still not really opposed though. Explosion introduces some pretty unhealthy mindgames, on these guys especially you're forced to play around it until it's revealed, when it could not exist or just be delayed to a turn where you're more vulnerable. Not much really changes here from the arguments it had against it in ADV except it has an effective BP of 375 instead of 500 since there's a spread nerf in this gen but that's still plenty for anything with a moderately high attack stat.

Anyways I'm curious what yall think. The conversation came up in doucord so I decided to go ahead and post now instead of waiting another 4 weeks for the tour to end after tiebreaks.
 
mew is a really good lead; no doubt about it, their fake outs are supreme and you never really know what set it is until it's too late. idk if it's ban worthy tho. I think mew/boom could be interesting in looking into after vintage is done.
 
I think explosion is a negative influence on the tier to the point that it lowers its legitimacy and it's probably better for everybody if it's banned. Mew is a cool mon but I do fear it might be too effective for the amount of range it has in its sets. Personally I'd ban boom first but I'd wager mew might end up being a little too strong anyway.


May make a more elaborate post after derby as well, but I'd also like to make a case for best of 3 in this tier as well. it may be a little more stable then advanced but no team preview makes predicting sets so difficult that I've seen and played plenty of games where the game was entirely dictated by an unexpected set on turn 1 or 2 and I think bo3 is necessary for the tier to be an acceptable amount of competitive.
 
TLDR; DPP should be played Bo3, free Thunder Wave, keep Mew and Boom (for now)

Switching tournament games to Best-of-3 would provide a fairer representation of skill and strategy in DPP. In the current Bo1 format games can come down to match-ups (exasperated by the lack of team preview) and luck still plays a large factor too, whether its dumb Gen 4 crit mechanics or other RNG which wildly swings game outcomes. A Bo3 format allows for more varied strategies to shine and reduces the impact of random chance. This change would align DPP with ADV DOU's successful model which has fostered longer, more competitive matches that better reflect players' abilities.

Hot take: Thunder Wave should be freed. Stripping out a single move because it has undesirable RNG side effects is arbitrary tiering policy, particularly because Thunder Wave is a core mechanic in Gen 4 where there are more limited viable speed control options (Tailwind only lasts 3 turns and Icy Wind has limited distribution, leaving just Trick Room with TWave banned). Swagger and Brightpowder deserve to be banned because they have no competitive application, whereas Thunder Wave does have legitimate use. ADV and DPP DOU are a parallel to RBY and GSC OU; RNG management is more prominent in these older gens because of more primitive mechanics and balancing, but it's just a part of the game. You might have to run a Lum Berry on your team, but it wouldn't be oppressive especially if we switched to Bo3.

We've barely played any tournaments post TWave ban (just Derby III and Doubles Oldgens Invitationals), so I'm very hesitant to go ban Mew or Boom based off such a small sample size. Let's wait until after Vintage to make big decisions. I am a fan of the status quo right now because the meta is fun, competitive, and still developing.
 
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