np: Doubles Stage 2.5 - Go to Sleep (Suspect Discussion)

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Pocket

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We freed sleep in our most recent suspect test. This will be the interim period before we test anything else (hence stage 2.5) to allow this new meta to adapt and stabilize to this change. This is not an actual suspect stage :0

Here's the plan:

We go enjoy Doubles for the next 2.5 weeks by playing each other on #doubles or ladder. At the end of the week, I will post a Suspect Discussion thread, where we all can post. I will require a screenshot of our alts and ranking to gauge how much playing experience we've had before coming to any conclusions concerning our tier. Good replays would probably be a best way to augment a case (esp. if some of us haven't really laddered much). We will take the widely supported suspect(s) and test it/them in our future test(s).

So look forward to the suspect discussion to determine our next course of action >:] Until then, play a lot of Doubles games to stay up-to-date, and most importantly enjoy this format!

Purpose of this thread:

This is just a General Doubles Pokemon/Metagame Discussion thread. Share here your discoveries and experiences with the new metagame :toast:

EDIT: since everybody is already talking about suspects itt, I will simply have the suspect discussion here as well. The council will evaluate the quality of the arguments to decide on the upcoming suspect. The discussion will last until approximately next Wednesday.

 
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termi

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ITT: Pocket got the music choice entirely wrong


Anyways, I'm really not sure what could improve the meta free Giratina-O but I'll be laddering for a bit. I do plan on making a team for every Mega Evolution out there and see how they perform and maybe write a big fuckin Smog article about it (original idea donut steel :o), regarding suspect discussion I will probably be trying out a PerishTrap team, for I have heard some fuss about that being uncompetitive/extremely annoying to play against, so I'd like to see if it's anything suspect-worthy.
 
Perish trap is just a stupid gimmick which isn't even that good.The fact that any pokemon that hits strong is a threat against it is pretty stupid.Using Perish trap takes mad predictions to do it which means a lot of the times you won't get it.
 

Electrolyte

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I'm really content with our current meta (and have been ever since I started playing Doubles) The cool thing is that on paper it's easy to balance since even OP Pokemon can be checked by dual-targeting and in practice there is nothing that is broken. The Doubles environment automatically checks every single Pokemon and makes it very difficult for a single Pokemon to become broken.

I'm really excited to see if we can open the floodgates and allow some Ubers to drop down. The meta seems like it can handle such a thing quite well. In the meantime, I'll be laddering. See you guys at the top! ;]
 

Haruno

Skadi :)
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Perish trap is just a stupid gimmick which isn't even that good.The fact that any pokemon that hits strong is a threat against it is pretty stupid.Using Perish trap takes mad predictions to do it which means a lot of the times you won't get it.
It's incredibly matchup dependent more than anything.
 
Since I'm basically on vacation right now, I might actually do some laddering.

I think bringing Ubers down might be fun, but we have to be extremely careful about how we go about it, especially since the last thing we brought down (KyuB) was a big controversy at the time. I'm almost 100% sure a higher percentage of players threatened to quit or did quit over KyuB Drop than Sleep Test here in Dubz. Just something to keep in mind.

I'd like to see us take a closer look at what may or may not be Overcentralizing to the Metagame. Currents trends show Heatran is on every competetive team as well as Landorus-T. I'm pretty sure they both have higher usage than Cress in 1760, which is a bit worrying. I understand that when teambuilding, you have to account for top tier threats when you build, but having to pack a Tran and a Lando counter on every team because you are guaranteed to see them nearly every time is a bit much. Maybe it's just me wanting to see greater variation overall, but that's what I have seen since we started Gen6 Bank.
 

Pocket

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Yea, dropping Kyurem-B in BW2 OU was controversial (in Singles mind you, not Doubles). We probably wont drop any ubers, unless there's no doubt in our minds that it can seamlessly camouflage itself into our metagame without causing too much disruption. I personally haven't met such an Uber yet, outside of Kyurem-B.

High usage =/= broken mon. There's no doubt that Heatran and especially Landorus-T are meta-defining Pokemon. However, that's not always a bad thing. In fact, I think their presence are a positive influence to our metagame, keeping some nasty threats in check (Mawile, Kangaskhan, Charizard). Some may say that "broken shit balances broken shit," but that doesn't really apply here, since there are numerous balancing force that keep these top threats (Heatran, Landorus-T, Mawile, Kangaskhan, Charizard, etc) in check, not just the "broken shit".
 
I'm not a fan of that logic. That's how GSC OU got to where it is with Snorlax. I can see your point, but I don't like the idea.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
I'm not a fan of that logic. That's how GSC OU got to where it is with Snorlax. I can see your point, but I don't like the idea.
i cannot even put into words what a bad comparison this is. Look at the GSC OU usage stats for SPL. Snorlax's cumulative usage over 9 weeks was 90%. By contrast, Landorus-Therian had 43% usage over 9 weeks. Furthermore, the comparison is invalid because GSC OU has two generations with a total of maybe 40 Pokemon that can be used competitively just based on BST considerations—only 16 were used more than 10% of the time; Doubles had almost 80 different Pokemon see use in SPL—and 21 with 10% usage or greater. This isn't even touching on the differences between singles and doubles as a whole with regards to how you can check pokemon instead of needing to counter them or even the differences in play between snorlax and landorus. Or the fact that Gligar in LC saw more use in four weeks than landorus did in the entire spl.

Snorlax was a behemoth and an end-game plan. It could set up slowly with curse, or simply shit all over you with Belly Drum. It got Lovely Kiss to put its counters to sleep until they died. It had access to Earthquake, Fire Blast, and Body Slam, which was basically unbeatable three move coverage—if you had a pokemon to wall EQ/Slam, it whipped out fire Blast, etc. It was ridiculously versatile and half of GSC teambuilding was countering all of lax's sets.

Landorus is a glue. It can't be used to end a game unless your opponent is exceptionally bad. It's valuable, but it's mostly used for intimidate, decent coverage, and U-turn. SD is probably shit (never tried it). It fits on so many teams, but takes a more supportive role on all of them. It'd be exceptionally hard to find broken because it is not a sweeper; it'd be like banning cress in gen v doubles

i'm not even going to talk about heatran because if you think it's on every competitive team then you are literally on drugs; it was used only half as much as landorus and is much harder to make work.
 
i cannot even put into words what a bad comparison this is. Look at the GSC OU usage stats for SPL. Snorlax's cumulative usage over 9 weeks was 90%. By contrast, Landorus-Therian had 43% usage over 9 weeks. Furthermore, the comparison is invalid because GSC OU has two generations with a total of maybe 40 Pokemon that can be used competitively just based on BST considerations—only 16 were used more than 10% of the time; Doubles had almost 80 different Pokemon see use in SPL—and 21 with 10% usage or greater. This isn't even touching on the differences between singles and doubles as a whole with regards to how you can check pokemon instead of needing to counter them or even the differences in play between snorlax and landorus. Or the fact that Gligar in LC saw more use in four weeks than landorus did in the entire spl.

Snorlax was a behemoth and an end-game plan. It could set up slowly with curse, or simply shit all over you with Belly Drum. It got Lovely Kiss to put its counters to sleep until they died. It had access to Earthquake, Fire Blast, and Body Slam, which was basically unbeatable three move coverage—if you had a pokemon to wall EQ/Slam, it whipped out fire Blast, etc. It was ridiculously versatile and half of GSC teambuilding was countering all of lax's sets.

Landorus is a glue. It can't be used to end a game unless your opponent is exceptionally bad. It's valuable, but it's mostly used for intimidate, decent coverage, and U-turn. SD is probably shit (never tried it). It fits on so many teams, but takes a more supportive role on all of them. It'd be exceptionally hard to find broken because it is not a sweeper; it'd be like banning cress in gen v doubles

i'm not even going to talk about heatran because if you think it's on every competitive team then you are literally on drugs; it was used only half as much as landorus and is much harder to make work.
Wow overreaction much?

All I said was i don't like the logic of "Broken Shit Balances Broken Shit."

Now if we really wanted to get into it, I could go on about how out of 750+ mons, 1 of them has nearly 50% usage.
 
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Mizuhime

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From fucking around on the ladder and using joke teams, i can say i love this metagame, I was using Liepard and Breloom with 4 random mons thrown together in a 5 minute fun fest. Obviously the team isn't good but neither is the ladder. Sleep isn't over powering or too centralizing at all. Obviously if you use a team that's built poorly you'll have a bad time, but I like the fact that you're forced to use a good team.
 

shaian

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I actually enjoy lifting the sleep clause, mostly because the only people who can take advantage of it are compotent enough to realize it shouldn't be a primary focus. Paralysis and burns are the only really game changing statuses imo, because they cripple mons, while sleep is just luck based stall. What we really need more of in dubz is team core diversity, which is really declining as far as I can see. Too many cores based around kanga-lando, lando-tar, sub-tran-kanga etc. I don't wanna see dubz go the way of ou, so hopefully we get more variety coming up.

Oh yeah, fuck ugly mons.
 

Bluwing

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I agree on a lot off stuff people say here, doubles is an extremely balanced meta and makes the tier a lot more competitive than other metas like OU or Ubers, old gens, etc. Basically because there are so many pokemon viable, and that in my eyes make the meta a lot more fun to play.

Also when talking about sleep cause lift, I totally agree with Shaian saying that it's only effective when not overcentralizing it, but I will also disagree on the luck based stall he talks about because thats not what sleep is about. When sleeping something you basically remove a pokemon from the battle until it wakes up ofc, but in that time you could have killed it, but thats not my point. My point is that, when shutting down an opposing pokemon, it will let you have an easier time switching, but will also give you the momentum, this is why sleep is more like an "offensive" way too deal status. So when this is said, lifting sleep cause will force people to run a way too deal with sleep, which is very viable in this meta, grass, safety googles, safeguard etc. But will also make sleep a lot more viable as a status move as it will be more threathening than before, but it will also give us more viable users of the move. And from the battles ive had with sleep cause off hasn't been too different from the battles with it on, maby because it hasn't adapted too the metagame quite yet, but I think sleep will raise in usage and I will suggest that you have at least one way too handle it.
 
yeah I battled with a guy using a spore, sleep powder, hypnosis team lol like breloom, ammounguss, darkray....
 
Yeah I really like the meta now, it's pretty balanced, with bulky offense the best playstyle imo. Sleep stuff has been long gone and i rarely see it anymore.
 
I'm still spamming Amoongus quite a bit when I do ladder occasionally. Spore is still strong as ever and the added threat of it makes games very tactical.

Something else I am seeing is the return if Latios and Volcarona, probably due to our Gen 5 tour going on. These 2 monsters lost a bit of viability with the changes (no gems and a weaker DM for one and more Fire type competition for the other) but believe it when I say they are still just about as strong as ever.
 

AM

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Since I'm basically on vacation right now, I might actually do some laddering.

I think bringing Ubers down might be fun, but we have to be extremely careful about how we go about it, especially since the last thing we brought down (KyuB) was a big controversy at the time. I'm almost 100% sure a higher percentage of players threatened to quit or did quit over KyuB Drop than Sleep Test here in Dubz. Just something to keep in mind.

I'd like to see us take a closer look at what may or may not be Overcentralizing to the Metagame. Currents trends show Heatran is on every competetive team as well as Landorus-T. I'm pretty sure they both have higher usage than Cress in 1760, which is a bit worrying. I understand that when teambuilding, you have to account for top tier threats when you build, but having to pack a Tran and a Lando counter on every team because you are guaranteed to see them nearly every time is a bit much. Maybe it's just me wanting to see greater variation overall, but that's what I have seen since we started Gen6 Bank.
As Pocket mentioned, uber elements would need to be carefully implemeneted into doubles. Things like choice scarf Kyogre are overpowered and in my own opinion is even more so in doubles. Things like Xerneas geomancy are completely checkable even without a phaser of sorts as both mons can either prioritize, slow down immediate threats, or halt them completely, that just being one example.
 
As Pocket mentioned, uber elements would need to be carefully implemeneted into doubles. Things like choice scarf Kyogre are overpowered and in my own opinion is even more so in doubles. Things like Xerneas geomancy are completely checkable even without a phaser of sorts as both mons can either prioritize, slow down immediate threats, or halt them completely, that just being one example.
Geomancy xern is one of the biggest threats in uber dubs tho
 

AM

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Geomancy xern is one of the biggest threats in uber dubs tho
Hmm true. I play more standard doubles so I guess I can't say for sure it's impact. In game in Y I never had trouble with it using regular mons but that's just me.
 

Haruno

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Out of curiosity, what is actually keeping the ohko/moody clause in effect? From a doubles standpoint, moody is far harder to abuse thanks to double targetting/no dark void among other reasons which makes it incredibly difficult to abuse if at all so no dreaded smeargle/bidoof sweeps like how it can perform in singles. OHKO clause I feel is more iffy as opposed to moody since it is luck dependent but incredibly high risk high return since it allows mons to bypass their usual checks/counters (hello excadrill horn drill).

Overall I'm just wondering on why we still have these two clauses.
 

termi

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Out of curiosity, what is actually keeping the ohko/moody clause in effect? From a doubles standpoint, moody is far harder to abuse thanks to double targetting/no dark void among other reasons which makes it incredibly difficult to abuse if at all so no dreaded smeargle/bidoof sweeps like how it can perform in singles. OHKO clause I feel is more iffy as opposed to moody since it is luck dependent but incredibly high risk high return since it allows mons to bypass their usual checks/counters (hello excadrill horn drill).

Overall I'm just wondering on why we still have these two clauses.
Much like why we have evasion clause and much like why OU is suspecting Swagger, these things rely not partially, but entirely on luck. Moody is basically just hoping for an evasiveness boost or something alike (which isn't hard to get when you consider Protect is a regular thing in Doubles, which makes it even more viable to just stall for turns while you're getting boosts) and not healthy for the metagame. If you have to face a Smeargle with +2 Speed and +2 Evasiveness that just Spores everything while accumulating boosts, you're not gonna like it, honestly. OHKO is even a worse offender, because it means that any Pokemon that learns any of these moves can potentially get around its counters, which is ridiculous (Pokemon are supposed to have counters because if they don't, they tend to end up in Ubers js).

Basically, these things make the metagame trade in skill for luck, which is highly, highly unfavorable and it would be an absolutely ridiculous decision to even suspect these clauses. The metagame as it is right now encourages good teambuilding and skill, you can't, however, teambuild your way around Moody or OHKO moves, nor can you really do much to them in-battle.

E: Oh wait now I get it u were trying to fool me haha april fools good ruse 7/10
 
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Bluwing

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I totally agree with Robert when it comes to OHKO/Moody Clause they will just be too damn powerfull. Can you even imagine Gravity + OHKO attacks lol ? Thats just ridicoulus imo. Also Moody Smeargle with Spore + Baton Pass would have just been ridiculously powerfull, and would absically power up every threath in the meta too exceptional levels.

Edit: Also april fooling on the forums might confuse newer members off the site, so I don't support those kind off "jokes" if thats so, then grow up.
 
El oh el

Y do we have nething banneded.

On the real note though, can we please have better discussion now? Is there anything that anyone is seeing that might be a bit broken?
 

Laga

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I'd probably say that if we were to vote on Kangaskhanite right now, my vote would be for it to leave. Mega Kangaskhan is just such a no brainer of a mega evolution to carry on your team. It punishes bulky offense as nothing wants to switch into a PuP + Return, but offensive teams crumble when they are torn by Fake Out and Sucker Punch. The fact that it has a plain typing actually isn't a bad thing for Kangaskhan, considering it can easily stomach almost any neutral attack.

I think the main reason why Kangaskhan was voted to stay so convincingly (like 90+% of the votes iirc) was because of how rushed the suspect test was. I mean we even knew that we were going to test Sleep Clause with the advent of XY, yet we still fsr decided to test Kangaskhanite first (this decision still bugs me, but I guess it's in the past. Due to this, many people hadn't really grown that much on the metagame, and it was really impossible to have a full understanding of it. Now I'm not saying that Kangaskhan is outright broken, but when you think about it, this thing actually gives you a straight up advantage from team preview if the opponent isn't using a Fighting-type like Terrakion or Hitmontop. Other Fighting-types check it, of course, but no way in hell your Keldeo is switching in on a Return. I think the raw beefy stats of Kangaskhan is just too much to bring into any Pokemon metagame, even one such as Doubles where most things are checked fairly easily. What I always liked about Doubles is the fact that all your switches have risks (for example having rock-weak mons out against Landog and switching into your Bisharp when there is a risk he would EQ). This risk is no longer a Risk / Reward when facing Kangaskhan, because there are only ~3 Pokemon who can switch into Kangaskhan as well as deal relevant damage the next turn (hitmontop, scarf superpower landog, terrakion off the top of my head). The rest are knocked out by the combination of Return / PuP + Return / Sucker Punch, and this makes Kangaskhan too powerful for the metagame in my eyes.

tl;dr kangaskhan is aids
 

BLOOD TOTEM

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I'd probably say that if we were to vote on Kangaskhanite right now, my vote would be for it to leave. Mega Kangaskhan is just such a no brainer of a mega evolution to carry on your team. It punishes bulky offense as nothing wants to switch into a PuP + Return, but offensive teams crumble when they are torn by Fake Out and Sucker Punch. The fact that it has a plain typing actually isn't a bad thing for Kangaskhan, considering it can easily stomach almost any neutral attack.

I think the main reason why Kangaskhan was voted to stay so convincingly (like 90+% of the votes iirc) was because of how rushed the suspect test was. I mean we even knew that we were going to test Sleep Clause with the advent of XY, yet we still fsr decided to test Kangaskhanite first (this decision still bugs me, but I guess it's in the past. Due to this, many people hadn't really grown that much on the metagame, and it was really impossible to have a full understanding of it. Now I'm not saying that Kangaskhan is outright broken, but when you think about it, this thing actually gives you a straight up advantage from team preview if the opponent isn't using a Fighting-type like Terrakion or Hitmontop. Other Fighting-types check it, of course, but no way in hell your Keldeo is switching in on a Return. I think the raw beefy stats of Kangaskhan is just too much to bring into any Pokemon metagame, even one such as Doubles where most things are checked fairly easily. What I always liked about Doubles is the fact that all your switches have risks (for example having rock-weak mons out against Landog and switching into your Bisharp when there is a risk he would EQ). This risk is no longer a Risk / Reward when facing Kangaskhan, because there are only ~3 Pokemon who can switch into Kangaskhan as well as deal relevant damage the next turn (hitmontop, scarf superpower landog, terrakion off the top of my head). The rest are knocked out by the combination of Return / PuP + Return / Sucker Punch, and this makes Kangaskhan too powerful for the metagame in my eyes.

tl;dr kangaskhan is aids


I do still stand by my original vote. Khan is obnoxious as fuck as laga said, there are very few switchins to Mega Kangaskhan and when teambuilding, I often feel pressured to have at least one of these Pokemon on my team. Recently, I've resorted to running Ferrothorn, Aegislash, and Landorus-T on a single team, this has not stopped khan from being a huge threat simply because it's so easy to support and has such a McLarge Fuckhuge damage output. Seriously, this think is cantankerous to face.

I decided it would be fun to look through the arguments to keep khan and here are a few I find pretty bs.
  • It's predictable
For one, predictable =/= bad. If a Pokemon is that predictable, any good player can turn that on its head. Turn one most players would expect to see khan do the standard thing, use Fake Out. It is not hard to run a surprise set utilizing this predictability to get up a cheeky Substitute which now makes you double the threat you were before. Khan is only predictable because it's so damn good at what it does, with great bulk and offenses it can easily switch into a huge multitude of attacks and use Fake Out to disrupt and buy free turns or straight up attack and score some KOs.
  • Intimidate shuts it down
Um OK.
-1 252+ Atk Parental Bond Mega Kangaskhan Return vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Landorus-T: 195-231 (51 - 60.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
-1 252 Atk Parental Bond Mega Kangaskhan Return vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Landorus-T: 177-211 (46.3 - 55.2%) -- 66.8% chance to 2HKO
+1 252 Atk Parental Bond Mega Kangaskhan Return vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Landorus-T: 397-469 (103.9 - 122.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO

-1 252 Atk Parental Bond Mega Kangaskhan Return vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Hitmontop: 168-199 (55.2 - 65.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+1 252 Atk Parental Bond Mega Kangaskhan Return vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Hitmontop: 382-450 (125.6 - 148%) -- guaranteed OHKO

-1 252 Atk Parental Bond Mega Kangaskhan Return vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Scrafty: 144-171 (43.1 - 51.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
+1 252 Atk Parental Bond Mega Kangaskhan Return vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Scrafty: 324-382 (97 - 114.3%) -- 81.3% chance to OHKO

tl;dr it doesn't
I recognise that Hitmontop and Scrafty will both carry Fake Out but the point is neither switchin particularly well and it isn't hard to switch out of Fake Out or, run Quick Guard support.
  • WoW infested meta
Is it? Sure almost every Rotom will be carrying WoW, but this argument seems to forget the fact that there are tons of ways around the move. Follow Me and Rage Powder support are common when using Mega Kangaskhan. I've faced teams running Togekiss, MegaK, Heatran and Landorus-T so many times in my recent ladder binges and honestly, I can't see WoW phazing these kinds of team that much since switching exists and WoW is easy af to predict. In addition to this, Rotom isn't particularly hard to take down, a double target or use of something like Shaymin-S makes it pretty easy to handle. The only Pokemon that can reliably switch in to Khan and fire off a WoW (ignoring Rage Powder and switching :<) are Ghost-types like Sableye, Chandelure and Gengar. Some of these Pokemon don't even want to be running WoW tbh.
  • Diversity
One point was that khan diversified the pool of Fake Out users. I think this is a pretty lame argument, whilst I agree more Fake Out users is nice, I also believe that it would be nice if I wasn't forced to run at least one solid answer to khan as well as a couple of shaky ones. I feel like removing this fuck from the meta will really open up a lot of new options. Other Mega Pokemon that you might have previously overlooked can come to the forefront and we can see some real development in the meta.

#suffering
 
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