Metagame np: SS DOU Stage 5: One More Time | Marshadow, Shadow Tag Quickbanned

[zee]

100% agree with emilio.

urshifu and kartana are absolutely the number one contributors to the brutal offensive state of the meta, this has been especially true in the post-DPL shifts too. Intimidate is just a specific example of a well thought out and skillful feature of doubles' counterplay to offensive threats that has been overpowered, let's not also forget to look at Protect and Rage Powder (but keep in mind the two follow me users are a grassy terrain leaf blade crit away from being deadened) being ignored by thing 1 and thing 2 respectively.

I agree that Urshifu should be looked at first and I think emilio did a great job of explaining why. I feel bad that I slacked in the interim between DPL and Spring ssnl and didn't do my part to realize how limiting it had become. However, I want to elaborate on Kart. If you look at the Pokemon that I included in the DOU Personal Viability Tierlist you can easily see how few of these Pokemon in most people's top 3 tiers can take a CritBlade. And of these that can, it's pretty easy for kart to just fallback and set Tailwind for its common spread using friends, Heatran and Zygarde, to launch their assault or just allow broken CB Urshifu to make up for its average speed tier in an instant. Kartana is just at the point right now where there's 0 opportunity cost to put it in your team, and you're giving yourself amazing odds to beat someone way better than you by just grabbing early momentum and clicking over and over.

A unique point that I want to bring up is that I actually think that based on what comes out of the PR threads on King's Rock etc and Light Clay, we can potentially look into taking action on Scope Lens. Kartana does a lot of good for the tier still I feel like, and we'd be able to evaluate it more in a metagame without Urshifu for sure, but the ability to check waters and be one of the 2 reliable and viable (mew has taken such a huge hit in viability these days I'm really hard-pressed to call it both viable and reliable) tailwinders in the tier. This could just be Stockholm syndrome tho tbh, but I think it is an option we can explore and I'd like to see discussed.

This also gives me plenty of time to talk about the two mons Para brought up. Not the Kyub section, I think I can safely say para is in the minority their based on my discussions with the likes of umbry, emma, Z Strats, Toxigen, Grandmas Cookin, and others. But Necrozma. I think some of Necrozma's best checks, Pokemon like Tyranitar, Scrafty, and to an extent even Zygarde, or too overloaded by the threats in the current meta. When I used psychics I rarely thought it was just Necrozma soloing the game for me but rather the fact that can I abuse the aforementioned Pokemon (and Heatran too, though I don't think it's broken as of right now) to clear the way of any of these checks (if my opponent even has the guts to bring them in the current meta) and then win with Necrozma. Especially in a metagame where terrain users are omnipresent I really, really struggle to see Necrozma on its own being broken.

tl;dr

action on urshifu soon PLEASE -> look at one of kartana or scope lens -> don't lose focus on kyub or necrozma which are nothing more than just two really good mons please lol

 

[zoe]

Entirely agree with emilio and zee, Urshifu is a problem, along with Kartana. I would like to elaborate on the former, however.

emilio already touched on the main thing (Defesive counterplay being non-existant and offensive counterplay being very limited with a certain group of mons), but I want to talk about one thing in paticular he didn't get in-depth with.

Breaking Protect is fucking stupid.

If you've played any Doubles format before, you likely know how important Protect is and why almost every mon carries it. Stalling a death is far better in doubles than singles, as you can bring in a teamate to threaten out your threat, etc. Unseen Fist breaks this logic in two. In my eyes, it is one of the things that push Urshifu over the edge for me. Something with 130 attack and STAB Close Combat shouldn't be able to do something like that. Instead of Protecting and bringing in a mon that can threaten Urshifu out safely, you now have to something far riskier in the form of switching it out instead. Now i'm not going to act like there's zero risk involved in the play I keep refrencing, but that at least has around the same level of risk for both sides. With Unseen Fist in the picture, the risk for the Urshifu user is signifigantly reduced, while it forces the other side to make a risky switch or a sacrifice. This risk is exemplified by two important factors.

1. Urshifu has 130 base attack.
A 130 base attack mon can obviously cause trouble for mons that switch into it, especially when you consider it usally dons a Choice Band. This severly limits switch-ins to a select few mons, some of whom can get decked on the switch my it's coverage.

2. It has U-turn
Urshifu can force switches and has a unblockable u-turn to capitalize on those switches. Do I need to say anything else.

My biggest issue with it, however, involves the style of team it's seen on. A common way of dealing with both Tailwind and Trick Room is by stalling the turns out with protect. You see where i'm going with this? Urshifu brutally boosts Tailwind teams by dissuading this counterplay. Making weathering or attacking the other team during Tailwind the only remaining options. As you might guess, weathering hits is difficult from something that hits like a spaceship taking off into your face. The few mons that can withstand its hits are slaughtered by Urshifu's common teamates, like Heatran and Kartana. Turning the tables on Tailwind teams via Trick Room is difficult when Urshifu mauls the main TR setters in the tier.

I feel like on it's own Urshifu is very manageable, but when combined with Kartana's tailwind, Heatran, and other factors, it becomes opressive.

I ackowledge that I may not be the most qualified user to be making this point, nor do I feel like I've given the subject justice, but I live by the quote, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take", so I figured I might give it a shot.

Oh and Scope Lens is also stupid btw.

 

[SMB]

It's been awhile since offense is the only playstyle worth using on the tier, or at least the safer bet if you want to win games, call it grass spam good stuffs, psyspam, set up or whatever. Even myself, someone who actually enjoys playing stallish teams in doubles, has given up on the idea of playing any sort of defensive team and I'm starting to think the same about balance teams just because of how easy offensive teams overwhelm them.

Anyway this is not a post claiming a ban for x mon or saying how broken it is, although I think the main targets are obvious and have been mentioned on the previous posts. I'm just going to give my own insight on how I have been preparing to check these offense teams since I've seen almost no one trying out this stuff. Hopefully this will help make develop the meta a bit and make people trying this or new stuff they come up with.

- Chople berry: Great in mons like dd kyub and heatran. In fact I'd say this is arguably the best item you could run in kyub. DD kyub can beat these kind of offense teams pretty reliable, sometimes it just needs to take a hit if you lose the momentum and the most common coverage offense teams have for kyub is fighting. Chople berry heatran lives urshifu's cc with a little bit of investment (I don't recommend this if you don't have good water resists on the team because your opponent just will click surging strikes. Fighting resists are more difficult to fit on teams), also lures kartanas when it is in sacred sword range. I've used this chople berry set without eruption. Instead I've used nature power + rillaboom, flash cannon or taunt depending on what I needed to check.

- Buzzwole: I talked about buzzwole on heroes dpl discord last week, and I'm actually impressed no one, or almost no one (madaraaaa used it against me this weekend), has tried this mon. For real, it's not like you are using a tier 9 mon, buzzwole is easily tier 4 at least. Great at checking offense good stuffs since most of these teams run the same 4-5 mons: rillaboom, kartana, kyub, urshifu, zygarde, zeraora... And buzzwole can beat all of them. The main issue I see is the psypsam matchup, but even then, I wouldn't dare to say it's deadweight on that matchup. I'm not sure what set would be optimal for it but this mon is naturally faster than heatran and has the same speed tier than necrozma so yeah.

- Rocky helmet: I haven't tried this myself but I've read about using it on certain mons. The idea doesn't seem bad but idk if dealing with a 84% health kartana instead of a 100% health kartana would make a difference (same for other common mons). Still worth exploring.

- Dragapult and moltres-g: Both have a positive mu against these playstyles but sometimes lack the raw power to make a difference or need some turns to be effective (moltres). They are not going to beat offensive teams alone but with the right support they should have a hard time dealing with them.

- Naganadel: Similar to buzzwole for having a positive matchup and threatening with an OHKO on most mons seen on this builds while also having a bad psyspam matchup. Completely walled by heatran and can't switch into stuff but a really fast tailwind can make the difference when paired with the right mons.

This is for sure not the only stuff that can check offensive builds, and I'm sure someone will come up with better ways to check them as the weeks go by. At the end of the day most of my ideas are checking offense with offense, which won't solve the issue with defensive or balance builds.

Hopefully with the shadow tag suspect test this will change. My next insight is just theorymoning, since I, like everyone, have a 1 week experience playing with gothitelle in dlc2, while it was on a metagame with many elements identified as broken. I don't want to give arguments on why stag ban was wrong though so I will focus on the topic that was brought up yesterday.
Gothitelle is great at punishing these offense builds, using items like choice band or choice scarf has a higher cost on a metagame with shadow tag. Urshifu and kartana can't ohko goth, which means the threat of setting trick room is always there and this fact alone will make more playstyles be viable. Balance builds wouldn't feel as close as being owerwhelmed as they feel right now since mons like urshifu or zygarde would claim 1 or 2 kills at best.
Nevertheless there is a question worth mentioning, will the addition of gothitelle on offensive builds make them better? This is hard to answer right now. I don't see goth fitting on any of the popular offense teams at the moment except maybe set up (which is not that popular rn tbh). Hopefully on the next few weeks we will have a clear answer to this question.

 

[MajorBowman]

While we are moving forward with the Shadow Tag test (which has been in the works for a couple weeks), the recent conversation in this thread is fantastic and will absolutely be revisited after the Shadow Tag test concludes. Thanks as always for sharing your opinions!