Metagame np: SV DOU Stage 3: Hands To Myself | Iron Hands Remains DOU

[Yoda2798]

Can't keep my hands to myself
No matter how hard I'm trying to
I want you all to myself
Your metaphorical gin and juice

​

It's time for the next suspect of SV DOU! Despite having not received the most suspect support in the latest survey, the weeks since in DPL have pushed Iron Hands to the forefront of the zeitgeist for suspect discussion.

Iron Hands drew attention early on for its similar statline to Melmetal, the behemoth banned in SS DOU, though in practice it was not a top-tier threat, at least initially. Flutter Mane dominated the initial metagame, and massively held Iron Hands back due to its weakness to Fairy and Flutter Mane's immunity to Fake Out and Close Combat. Tera Steel Heavy Slam was an option to help, but gained a weakness to the partnering Chi-Yu in the process. After Flutter Mane was banned, next came Annihilape dominating the meta, which as another Ghost-type was also unkind to Iron Hands defensively, and could freely Bulk Up against it. Since those two Pokemon were banned, Iron Hands has steadily climbed in the meta, and is now a dominating presence.

With excellent physical stats and HP, but patchy Special Defense, Assault Vest is a natural fit for Iron Hands, and is the set which has been used since the start of the generation. This allows it to spread Fake Out, and to tank hits before retaliating with one of its naturally powerful attacks such as Close Combat, and is one of the most splashable additions to a team in the tier. With Assault Vest, Iron Hands is near impossible to OHKO, yet can still accomplish feats such as OHKOing Hero Palafin with Wild Charge. However, it's the Swords Dance set which has increasingly appeared post-Annihilape that is the real reason behind this suspect. This set uses Iron Hands' natural bulk to facilitate setup opportunities, after which a boosted Drain Punch can be used to KO most targets, and heal back any damage taken in the process. Unlike Assault Vest sets, which after trading will usually be at low enough health to finish off, Swords Dance sets will typically stay healthy unless weakened by a Pokemon with low HP or resistant to Drain Punch. The challenge then is being able to knock out a high health Iron Hands, often requiring a double target into it, with even that sometimes not being enough. The challenge becomes even more difficult when Iron Hands has the likes of Psychic Seed, screens, redirection, and Terastillization on its side to ensure it survives to get that next Drain Punch off.

Iron Hands biggest weakness is its low Speed, letting the vast majority of the tier move before it, and provide many opportunities to double target it before it moves, though this can be mitigated with Tailwind or flipped into a strength with Trick Room. Amoonguss resists both of Iron Hands' STABs, and has Spore and Clear Smog to shut it down, but with Tera Grass or Safety Goggles defensively, and Fire Punch or Ice Punch offensively, there's plenty of options to cover it. Will-O-Wisp can limit Iron Hands' damage output, but Tera Fire can be used for immunity, and if otherwise unthreatened, then Iron Hands can simply Swords Dance another time and still dish out a lot of damage. Great Tusk, Chi-Yu, and Palafin are some of the hardest hitters against Iron Hands, though often require assistance to pick up the KO, and must also watch out for it Terastillizing to another type.

As usual, 60% of the vote must be in favor to ban Iron Hands.

Important: For this suspect, there will be two ways to qualify. The first is the typical laddering period, where players must reach the minimum GXE. The second is by winning a live suspect tournament, to be held in the Smogon Doubles Room. You may compete in the suspect tournament on any account, and will need to post proof of you winning the suspect tournament on the voter ID thread.

There will be two live suspect tournaments:

Suspect Tournament Times
Saturday, April 8th at 12:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-4)
Sunday, April 9th at 4:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-4)

The laddering period will last for a total of nine days.

Laddering Period
Start: Friday, April 7th at 8:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-4)
End: Sunday, April 16th at 8:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-4)

All games must be played on the Pokemon Showdown! Doubles OU ladder on a fresh alt with a prefix of the form “DOUHA [Name]”. For example, I might use the account "DOUHA Yoda" to ladder.

To qualify to vote, you must achieve a minimum GXE of 80 with at least 50 games played. In addition, you may subtract 1 game for every 0.2 GXE you have above 80 GXE, down to a minimum of 30 games at a GXE of 84. As always, needing more than 50 games to reach 80 GXE is fine.

Minimum Games Needed

GXE	minimum games
80	50
80.2	49
80.4	48
80.6	47
80.8	46
81	45
81.2	44
81.4	43
81.6	42
81.8	41
82	40
82.2	39
82.4	38
82.6	37
82.8	36
83	35
83.2	34
83.4	33
83.6	32
83.8	31
84	30

Iron Hands will be legal during this suspect.

 

[Yoda2798]

Congratulations to SuckyLucky for winning the first suspect tour! They will now qualify to vote as a result. Finals replay, semis 1 replay, semis 2 replay.

Bracket (29 Participants)

 

[Noelle]

This is why Iron Hands will be BANNED!

I'm back! I know I swore off SV DOU a while ago, but I've been keeping up with the meta enough to understand what's happening. Iron Hands is stupidly broken and warps the tier around itself to an unreasonable degree. However, I don't think Iron Hands is entirely the problem. Here's why

What is Iron Hands?

Assault Vest

Assault Vest Iron Hands is a strong defensive pivot, and one of the few viable Fake Out users in the SV dex currently. It's mainly a strong defensive stat stick with nice access to Volt Switch and Fake Out that can support team styles like Trick Room and Balance. I actually think that this mode of Iron Hands is healthy in this metagame. SV DOU is currently Hyper Offesne the metagame, and something like Iron Hands which can enable bulkier teams to have ways to deal with potent offensive cores like Chien Pao + Dragonite and Chi-Yu + Iron Bundle is very much a good thing. This set is very strong, but has clearly defined weaknesses, like being terrible into Amoonguss and not as threatening offensively as Iron Hands' other sets.

Swords Dance

This is the real reason Iron Hands is being suspected. Swords Dance Iron Hands behind screens is extremely difficult to remove while doing insane damage and healing itself with Drain Punch. It can even run Psychic Seed and remove the one drawback of not using AV, that being the lower special bulk. It functions very similarly to Annihilape, but unlike Annihilape which relied on Rage Fist cheese to become truly broken, Iron Hands isn't inherently unfair. There's no bullshit mechanics involved here, it simply has better stats than everything else and wins games due to having better stats and simply being better. It straight up just stat checks 90% of the tier, Swords Dances in their face and heals off any damage it took with Drain Punch. Its very similar to Melmetal from SS. Nothing was inherently unfair about Melmetal, it just had better stats than everything else. Iron Hands is further pushed over the edge by Terastallization, as it can use Terastallization to be able to play around its few forms of consistent counterplay. Speaking of Terastallization, I think we should also examine Terastallization as potentially being the problem

crystallized - Is Terastallization the Problem?

Every Pokémon that has been suspected in DOU so far has been pushed over the edge by Terastallization, to the point where I genuinely believe that Terastallization is the problem here. Dondozo could use Terastallization to remove otherwise consistent counterplay like Clear Smog. Flutter Mane could use Terastallization to boost its offensive capabilities to insane levels, as well as avoid super effective attacks and OHKO back by using defensive teras on bulky sets. Annihilape weaseled out of every bad matchup it had with Terastallization, using anything from Tera Fire to avoid burns to Tera Steel to avoid Clear Smog. And now there's Iron Hands, which similarly to Annihilape can beat all of its checks using Terastallization. Allowing any pokemon to become any type seems pretty clearly broken to me, and should be restricted in some way. There is opportunity cost to running specific Terastallizations to beat specific threats, and I do recognize that, but unlike spending a moveslot or item slot on some obscure gimmick, you can afford to just not Terastallize that Pokémon into suboptimal matchups without really losing much, as you have 5 other Pokémon you can Terastallize at any moment. This makes Terastallization extremely low risk and high reward, which does not seem healthy for the metagame, especially post home when we get several insane attacking threats that could definitely become broken by abusing Terastallization (Ursaluna is a good example).

So what now? I think we should ban Iron Hands and then suspect Terastallization when Pokémon Home becomes available. As for whether or not I'll be voting, it depends on how much I want tc because I really don't enjoy SV DOU at all.

 

[GenOne]

AV Iron Hands

Decent set but is the "lesser" set for Iron Hands. Relying on unboosted Drain Punches for recovery gives it noticeable less staying power in a game.

Swords Dance Iron Hands

If we're banning Iron Hands it's because of this superior set. Clicking +2 Drain Punches feels like you're basically clicking Recover on the same turn that you're KO'ing your target of choice, which is a big deal when we're talking about a Pokemon with Melmetal levels of bulk. You lose out on Assault Vest's upfront SpD boost, but this is easy to mitigate with Psychic Seed, Sitrus Berry, and/or a screens supporter.

Terastallization and Iron Hands

Tera might be worth reviewing post-Home but am not sold it really matters that much in Iron Hands' case.

A well-timed Tera will bail Iron Hands out of a rough matchup but it still snowballs in plenty of games where it never Teras as well. I think without Tera in the picture, Iron Hands would still run the same set and cause the same problems. At worst it might have to make some small concessions, like running Safety Goggles for Amoonguss and players will have to cover its Fighting/Electric weaknesses more responsibly in the teambuilder.

Terastallization and other banned mons in the current metagame

• Flutter Mane is probably the strongest example of a Pokemon that Tera genuinely pushed over the edge into broken territory. This is because Flutter Mane served as a fast glass cannon that was usually clicking Tera offensively (usually Fairy) for a free 1.3x damage boost that was otherwise not achievable. Of course, Chi-Yu's Beads of Ruin was the other puzzle piece to why Flutter Mane was a problem, but with Tera removed I concede that Flutter Mane would likely be less problematic.
  
  
• Dondozo (as boosted by Tatsuguri's Commander ability) is another example of a mon that Tera may have pushed over the edge, although I argue less so than it did for Flutter Mane. I think Dondozo still does its same jobs as an omniboosting juggernaut even without Tera, but Tera was very important in several matchups for mitigating Clear Smog, Spore, or simply even type weaknesses. Removing Tera would probably make Dondozo easier to counterplay, but overall I think it would still be an annoying and problematic mon.
  
  
• Annihilape is in the same camp as Iron Hands in my opinion; it obviously benefitted from Tera but certainly doesn't need it to run the same sets and cause the same problems.

So when I look at Terastallization as a mechanic as a whole and ask myself whether it is the problem in the current metagame, I only see it being the source of the problem in 25% to maybe 50% of the problematic mons we've dealt with. So I really think at least for now it is wiser to ban the problematic mons, not the generation's battle flagship mechanic.

Terastallization post-home

Post-home, we will get a lot of new Pokemon that might be pushed over the edge by Tera, so that might be a good time to look at Tera more critically. However I think there will also be bigger fish to fry before getting around to Tera, such as individual new mons that might be problematic just by virtue of the power creep they represent, as well as questioning how Beads of Ruin and Swords of Ruin might push these new mons into broken territory.

 

[Yoda2798]

Congratulations to tyo for winning the second suspect tour! However, they already qualified for voting by laddering, and will not receive a second vote. Finals replay, semis 1 replay, semis 2 replay.

Bracket (25 Participants)

 

[Stories]

had to play 4 more games after this happened (all in one game) and because the ladder is so bad that 29-1 wasn't enough to qualify lol. I think Chi-Yu is clearly a much bigger issue than Iron Hands but yea..

Regardless of Chi-Yu, Iron Hands is a necessary force in the current DOU metagame in my opinion. It keeps many absurd Pokemon like Chien-Pao, Palafin, Iron Bundle, and Chi-Yu (the 4 most broken Pokemon in the format imo) in check as it beats them all 1v1 very easily. I do think Iron Hands facilitates thoughtless Trick Room teams on ladder way too easily, I don't play in tournaments but I'm sure Trick Room isn't as omnipresent there as it is on ladder. I wouldn't ban Iron Hands because it makes a lot of other Pokemon more broken if it leaves and I don't think there is time to suspect test everything else when Home is so close

 

[Amaranth]

dont touch hands and especially don't touch tera

build better teams if you find yourself having trouble with SD hands. by the end of ape meta people were figuring out pretty decent ways to check him and that guy is like 20 times the pokemon hands will ever be.

a mon having a lot of presence isnt reason to ban. this feels a lot like "wow this guy is getting a lot of usage, let's suspect" without any actual backing for why it's overwhelming. it isn't.

"melmetal stats" is a lie because melmetal hits you with 120 base power no drawbacks stab. iron hands is a completely different pokemon because of the movepool and even the 'similar bulk' is overstated - melmetal's phys bulk is significantly more oppressive
252 Atk Great Tusk Headlong Rush vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Melmetal: 290-344 (70.5 - 83.6%)
disgusting pokemon
252 Atk Great Tusk Headlong Rush vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Iron Hands: 372-438 (82.8 - 97.5%)
bulky old guy but reasonable

iron hands is a strong pokemon and by far the best fighting type in a meta where a shitload of important mons are fight weak (chiyu bundle chienpao tinglu gambit moon etc)
but it really seems to me like people need to run a few more hands checks and they'll be fine. fire-type intimidates (arcanine tauros) both wonderful at slowing down the setup and having the willowisp threat, armarouge also happens to do fine (perhaps if you ban the blatantly broken fire type these alternatives would be easier to fit, wink wink nudge nudge)
tinglu and especially tusk can both hit it for a lot and fear little, pretty much every special attacker can easily threaten huge chunks, amoonguss is a pain. it is genuinely almost comical how a vast majority of mons in the tier have very decent tools for it. you just can't rely on situational answers exclusively, and if you do, you have to position well to make sure the situations where they work are there.
a lot of these also do their job regardless of tera bc (1) burn and attack reductions always mess with it and (2) strong special attacks always mess with it, regardless of typing
if anything tera allows a lot of mons that would get owned by drainpunch, special attackers especially, to not do that and out trade. it goes both ways with tera.

this reminds me of the "ban volcanion in xy" talks. like wow this mon has good stats & has a very unique typing that's well positioned within the meta, of course they get a lot of usage. but there's nothing unhealthy or uncompetitive about being used a lot / having a good niche lol

not really the topic but as a quick note, tera gives room for fantastic skill expression in the builder and makes everything about 20 times more exciting, i s2g if you guys touch this mech i will lose it

 

[Nido-Rus]

...

The dismissive tone of this post comes across as uninformed at best and disingenuous and ignorant at worst. I'll try and address each of your points.

build better teams if you find yourself having trouble with SD hands. by the end of ape meta people were figuring out pretty decent ways to check him and that guy is like 20 times the pokemon hands will ever be.

You're right, at the end of the ape meta there were definitely a lot of good ways to beat ape. Not sure if I saved any replays from then, but there were a few teams I was testing back then and played against you and some others with that had a 70-30 ape matchup or better, where I needed to choke multiple times to lose to ape stuff. To make annihilape actually threatening, the entire team often needed to be significantly dedicated towards supporting ape, be it with screens, redirection, revival, intimidate, wisp, etc. Those teams were specifically annihilape teams, not just teams that happened to have annihilape on them. If you could handle annihilape itself well, the teams were still usable and functional bulky balance teams, but could be overrun a lot more easily than other standard team comps at the time. What made annihilape still bannable though was that it was a very specific set of mons and sets that did this and you needed to run multiple of them. In doing so, you sacrificed matchups against other very threatening team archetypes.
Iron hands teams are different. Unlike annihilape, you don't need to build the entire team around hands at all. It appreciates some support and can absolutely perform well if you build around it, but in itself it can fit on essentially every team comp and not only do well, but be oppressively good at setting up and winning. At the same time though, what makes it suspect-worthy is that it faces a similar problem annihilape did- having very specific checks, each of which mostly only check a specific set or tera type, and a lot of which are just not great pokemon to run.

"melmetal stats" is a lie because melmetal hits you with 120 base power no drawbacks stab. iron hands is a completely different pokemon because of the movepool and even the 'similar bulk' is overstated - melmetal's phys bulk is significantly more oppressive
252 Atk Great Tusk Headlong Rush vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Melmetal: 290-344 (70.5 - 83.6%)
disgusting pokemon
252 Atk Great Tusk Headlong Rush vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Iron Hands: 372-438 (82.8 - 97.5%)
bulky old guy but reasonable

I agree with your point here that Iron hands is a completely different pokemon, but not for the reason you posted here. This is a pretty disingenuous calc. Yes, melmetal's physical bulk is more oppressive, but by the same standards, Iron hands' special bulk is also more oppressive.
252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Earth Power vs. 0 HP / 252 SpD Assault Vest Melmetal: 315-374 (76.6 - 90.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Earth Power vs. +1 0 HP / 252 SpD Iron Hands: 307-361 (68.3 - 80.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
The specific calc itself doesn't speak to anything since hands loses while melmetal clicks ice punch and wins, but landorus doesn't exist in this meta- mostly pointing towards the difference in bulk present here.

What makes this bulk actually oppressive, though, is that with melmetal its bulk was largely a 'one and done' thing. Yes, it traded really well, but trading was really all it did- eventually you chip it down and kill it and it's gone. Still insanely good at that of course, often taking multiple pokemon to just beat one melmetal. With iron hands, you want to deal large chunks of damage to it but also prevent it from just being able to recover back up with drain punch. This is very hard when most of the pokemon that are capable of dealing that kind of damage to hands are either weak to drain punch, neutral to it and lose anyway, or are bad/iffy pokemon to run in current meta. On top of all this, tera allows hands to bypass a majority of its would-be checks and end up with an even narrower set of potential answers.

but it really seems to me like people need to run a few more hands checks and they'll be fine. fire-type intimidates (arcanine tauros) both wonderful at slowing down the setup and having the willowisp threat, armarouge also happens to do fine (perhaps if you ban the blatantly broken fire type these alternatives would be easier to fit, wink wink nudge nudge)

These are not good answers. If hands got bulk up instead of swords dance I would agree, but intimidate is usually setup fodder for hands because it's just too slow. With wisp it's a similar problem- the amount of momentum you lose in actually sending in and trying to wisp with a very projected tauros or arcanine or anything else is far too much in this metagame with all of the strong threats that hands is usually paired with. Even when you do get a wisp off, generally you've just wisped a +2 hands into still being a major threat at functionally +0.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9doublesou-1828465472
freezai has a ton of the mons you mentioned along with a lot of other great hands checks- amoong, wisp, intim, np farigiraf, wake. Doesn't matter when psyspam matchup is rough enough that you don't even get to hands.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9doublesou-1824764254-ngtsauzbq5svv3w46fpaf8wxvav67nxpw
no hands here but illustrating that the same psyspam archetype gets shredded by chi-yu. Major matchup fish that can work in some cases and falls apart in others.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9doublesou-685688
again no hands but you see how arcanine just doesn't come out at all- mizu's using 4 out of the top 6-7 mons and at no point is sending arcanine out actually worthwhile. Which isn't to say arcanine is useless, just really hard to run in this meta.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9doublesou-683136
same here, ratpacker has intim, wisp, strong attackers, but the pokemon themselves are not great into the rest of the team. Ratpacker is forced to use up momentum weakening hands because otherwise hands wins, but it doesn't matter because too much is lost in the process.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9doublesou-683116
Umbry misses wisp and the miss is unfortunate since it guarantees a loss, but it would've been a very uphill battle for umbry even with the burn. Nothing touches tera water hands bar bundle which is doing like 35% with freeze dry through screens.
252 SpA Iron Bundle Freeze-Dry vs. 0 HP / 252 SpD Tera Water Iron Hands through Light Screen: 148-176 (32.9 - 39.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after burn damage
Meanwhile if you predict wrong even once, iron hands just recovers all of it back even with the burn and you've just lost the only mon dealing significant damage to hands
+2 252+ Atk burned Tera Water Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Iron Bundle: 255-300 (100.7 - 118.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO

tinglu and especially tusk can both hit it for a lot and fear little, pretty much every special attacker can easily threaten huge chunks, amoonguss is a pain. it is genuinely almost comical how a vast majority of mons in the tier have very decent tools for it. you just can't rely on situational answers exclusively, and if you do, you have to position well to make sure the situations where they work are there.
a lot of these also do their job regardless of tera bc (1) burn and attack reductions always mess with it and (2) strong special attacks always mess with it, regardless of typing
if anything tera allows a lot of mons that would get owned by drainpunch, special attackers especially, to not do that and out trade. it goes both ways with tera.

The problem is that everything you just mentioned here are all immensely situational answers. It's almost comical how a vast majority of mons can deal a good hefty 30-50% to hands but then it'll just recover most of it back with drain punch because those moves didn't KO.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9doublesou-679728
AV drain punch hands with howl stail instead of SD, functionally the same idea as psychic seed but less committal. Again, a ton of mons that can deal good damage to hands but the sheer amount of effort needed in killing it is insane since it keeps recovering all of its hp back and ends up 6-0ing the opposing team. We even see specs tera ground bundle here, which is a tech specifically intended for hands. It does 59% to hands while hands recovers a good chunk of it back by drain punch. Farigiraf does 46% with psychic, iron hands lives and recovers hp. AV chi yu overheat does 42%, still living. The entire game is centered around trying to beat just this one mon with none of it being enough.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9doublesou-1829778746
A lot of what you mentioned, along with some other 'great' hands checks like sylveon and farigiraf on jomatoes' team here. None of it actually has the opportunity to click an attack against hands because any damage done would just be recovered immediately with drain punch, or is just not usable with trick room up since hands would outspeed and OHKO. In the end we even see tera grass revealed which would've rendered everything on jomatoes' team useless apart from the tera fire chi-yu. Even that doesn't ohko if madara had decided to tera against the chi-yu:
252 SpA Life Orb Beads of Ruin Tera Fire Chi-Yu Heat Wave vs. +1 0 HP / 252 SpD Tera Grass Iron Hands: 374-442 (83.2 - 98.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after burn damage
Neither would this, if jomatoes went for psychic on hands instead:
+2 252+ SpA Farigiraf Psychic vs. +1 0 HP / 252 SpD Iron Hands: 386-456 (85.9 - 101.5%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9doublesou-1833546709
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9doublesou-684816
We've seen almost no rain this dpl and for good reason. Tera grass/water hands pretty much single-handedly invalidates rain.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9doublesou-685196
relicanth has a ton of great hands checks here. psychic fangs for screens, encore, great tusk, strong special attackers like chi-yu and wake. Successfully keeps hands from setting up too. But that doesn't matter, hands still functions as a regular fake out pivot and does enough with its bulk to win the game out at the end.


Hands is uniquely problematic not just because of how easy it is to set up with its bulk, but also because it's so non-committal in its usage while forcing very committal options from an opponent in response. You can fit hands on pretty much any team comp and it does well. Your opponent is more than forced to respect it in the teambuilder and on the field. When you do set up, which happens easily with hands' natural bulk, the opponent needs to spend very significant effort in stopping you. Often this effort means that the rest of your team has a lot more space to work with instead, also because of how easy it is to pair hands with any and all major threats. And in a lot of cases, you can simply just switch out and treat hands as a normal fake out pivot if you can't set up. Hands singlehandedly makes team archetypes viable or very sketchy depending on how they match into it. This is not to say that hands needs a quickban and should be voted on immediately by council. We also see several games where hands does indeed do very little because it gets burst down by strong attacks, or loses because of interesting techs. But its presence and influence over the meta is undeniable.

I appreciate this post, but I would also love to see more thoughts from people who build and play in current meta. A whole lot has changed in the 2-3 months since the ape ban.

 

[Stories]

You can fit hands on pretty much any team comp and it does well. Your opponent is more than forced to respect it in the teambuilder and on the field.

I don't really see how this is a bad thing? Better Pokemon tend to be easier to use and more difficult to manage.. because they're good. Your post comes across as more of an analysis for why Iron Hands is good than a post explaining why Iron Hands is broken and should be banned. You also call Amaranth's post dismissive while also saying you'd prefer input from "people who build and play in the current meta" as though you could know if they play the format currently or not, maybe you do know, but from an outsider perspective it seems really elitist to say that.

In this same replay you show of joematoes and Madara to showcase how "broken" Iron Hands is, we also see the opposing Iron Hands get completely shut down by Will-O-Wisp and Intimidate; this replay showed someone taking an early lead and winning off it, nothing insane in any regard.

In the replay with JRL, you site that despite Relicanth has plenty of checks, but I watch him let his Walking Wake go to sleep turn 1, I watch him sac his Great Tusk to a Hydro Pump and Chi-Yu to Extreme Speed before even getting a chance to hit Iron Hands. Then I watch a Pokemon with 65 base attack fail to beat Iron Hands 1v1 as if that's unexpected. JRL kept his wincondition healthy and Relicanth let his offensive Pokemon go down before his passive support Pokemon, again nothing insane at all.

I pretty much play exclusively on ladder if not for the occasional tour test game with a friend, but this suspect test seems so easily boiled down to "skill issue" and "Pokemon are allowed to be good" and Iron Hands is definitely just really good.

 

[eragon]

I don't really see how this is a bad thing? Better Pokemon tend to be easier to use and more difficult to manage.. because they're good. Your post comes across as more of an analysis for why Iron Hands is good than a post explaining why Iron Hands is broken and should be banned. You also call Amaranth's post dismissive while also saying you'd prefer input from "people who build and play in the current meta" as though you could know if they play the format currently or not, maybe you do know, but from an outsider perspective it seems really elitist to say that.

In this same replay you show of joematoes and Madara to showcase how "broken" Iron Hands is, we also see the opposing Iron Hands get completely shut down by Will-O-Wisp and Intimidate; this replay showed someone taking an early lead and winning off it, nothing insane in any regard.

In the replay with JRL, you site that despite Relicanth has plenty of checks, but I watch him let his Walking Wake go to sleep turn 1, I watch him sac his Great Tusk to a Hydro Pump and Chi-Yu to Extreme Speed before even getting a chance to hit Iron Hands. Then I watch a Pokemon with 65 base attack fail to beat Iron Hands 1v1 as if that's unexpected. JRL kept his wincondition healthy and Relicanth let his offensive Pokemon go down before his passive support Pokemon, again nothing insane at all.

I pretty much play exclusively on ladder if not for the occasional tour test game with a friend, but this suspect test seems so easily boiled down to "skill issue" and "Pokemon are allowed to be good" and Iron Hands is definitely just really good.

No one is arguing that there is no counterplay to Iron Hands. There are plenty of soft checks that mitigate or even eliminate the impact of Iron Hands in a particular game. However, Nido illustrates numerous examples of teams with several Iron Hands checks that are just not enough to stop it from taking over a game. The general problem is that Iron Hands, much like Annihilape, can pretty much choose what its answers are by making adaptations to totally beat the traditional "counters" (Tusk, Amoonguss, etc). This is only furthered by the other 5 mons on an Iron Hands team- adding multiple backup answers to Iron Hands necessitates weakening one's matchups into other common threats, which enhances the already annoying matchup fishing in SV. It's pretty undeniable that Iron Hands is quite centralizing after the metagame development of DPL, which the replays provided above demonstrate.

I also think it's a little condescending to say this is just a skill issue, especially since these replays feature many of the best DOU tournament players. While some of the replays may not feature totally perfect play, if players of this caliber are having such difficulty beating Iron Hands even with multiple counters, there's far more at play than "haha skill issue".

 

[Stories]

No one is arguing that there is no counterplay to Iron Hands. There are plenty of soft checks that mitigate or even eliminate the impact of Iron Hands in a particular game. However, Nido illustrates numerous examples of teams with several Iron Hands checks that are just not enough to stop it from taking over a game. The general problem is that Iron Hands, much like Annihilape, can pretty much choose what its answers are by making adaptations to totally beat the traditional "counters" (Tusk, Amoonguss, etc). This is only furthered by the other 5 mons on an Iron Hands team- adding multiple backup answers to Iron Hands necessitates weakening one's matchups into other common threats, which enhances the already annoying matchup fishing in SV. It's pretty undeniable that Iron Hands is quite centralizing after the metagame development of DPL, which the replays provided above demonstrate.

I also think it's a little condescending to say this is just a skill issue, especially since these replays feature many of the best DOU tournament players. While some of the replays may not feature totally perfect play, if players of this caliber are having such difficulty beating Iron Hands even with multiple counters, there's far more at play than "haha skill issue".

I say skill issue facetiously but I do think that the people who won these games played better than the ones that lost, at least from a spectator position (obviously "better" is subjective but one of the Madara replay really showed both sides of how to play against Iron Hands and how to NOT play against Iron Hands). The better player winning sounds like a good thing to me. Obviously I don't mean to discredit the skill of any individual player but in a game-to-game basis nobody plays perfectly, I just think it felt like cherry-picking replays where Iron Hands could have been played around better and it wasn't, so it won. Annihilape is in a completely different dimension than Iron Hands; Immune to Intimidate and can easily get a ~200 BP Ghost-type attack with much better speed and a better typing, the comparison doesn't stick to me beyond "Fatass Fighting-type". Regardless I don't mean to call names to anyone I just think these replays just.. don't showcase Iron Hands being broken at all.

 

[Nido-Rus]

I don't really see how this is a bad thing? Better Pokemon tend to be easier to use and more difficult to manage.. because they're good. Your post comes across as more of an analysis for why Iron Hands is good than a post explaining why Iron Hands is broken and should be banned.

You're right, I should've done a better job at focusing on what exactly makes me consider it unhealthy and broken. In particular, it's this part here-

what makes it suspect-worthy is that it faces a similar problem annihilape did- having very specific checks, each of which mostly only check a specific set or tera type, and a lot of which are just not great pokemon to run.

There are a lot of ways to beat hands. The problem is that a lot of the better ways of doing so, at least from the tournament games we've seen so far, involve using pokemon or sets that are shaky against the rest of the meta. What this ends up causing is that you can run a team that either
A- is good into hands but sacrifices a lot in the process, making it worse against other meta threats. This is problematic because you're left with a matchup fish team, either it gets a good matchup and wins or it gets a bad matchup and loses. And even if it gets a good hands matchup, it might still just have a bad matchup against whatever else is on the hands team since you can run hands on everything.
B- is not great into hands but is otherwise a solid meta team.
Neither of these situations are great especially considering hands has been at >50% usage in the last 3 weeks of dpl and jumped to 75% usage last week, and make SV a pretty unhealthy and unfun metagame right now to build in or play.

You also call Amaranth's post dismissive while also saying you'd prefer input from "people who build and play in the current meta" as though you could know if they play the format currently or not, maybe you do know, but from an outsider perspective it seems really elitist to say that.

You're also not wrong here, it was maybe a bit much for me to word it that way. This is mostly based on amaranth not playing SV dou for his dpl team, and his dpl team not introducing any particularly remarkable new metagame innovations (not meant to shade any team or game from them, I just mean that there's nothing that significantly changed my evaluation of hands). Maybe there actually are hands techs that haven't been used so far that will innovate the metagame and make it more healthy. At any rate, nothing so far has indicated as such to me. Hands has been in talks of being suspected since over a month ago and since then it's just been becoming more and more relevant.

In this same replay you show of joematoes and Madara to showcase how "broken" Iron Hands is, we also see the opposing Iron Hands get completely shut down by Will-O-Wisp and Intimidate; this replay showed someone taking an early lead and winning off it, nothing insane in any regard.

Yup, hands is hardly unbeatable. We see one interesting tech used to do so here. What we do also see is a semiroom team with two great semiroom hands checks that just can't make any headway once hands is on the field and trick room is up. This is a great example of how hands takes advantage of that lead, functionally 1v2ing the entire way through the rest of the game. Taking the early lead is useful, but maintaining that and winning off of it in this manner is worth taking note of.

In the replay with JRL, you site that despite Relicanth has plenty of checks, but I watch him let his Walking Wake go to sleep turn 1, I watch him sac his Great Tusk to a Hydro Pump and Chi-Yu to Extreme Speed before even getting a chance to hit Iron Hands. Then I watch a Pokemon with 65 base attack fail to beat Iron Hands 1v1 as if that's unexpected. JRL kept his wincondition healthy and Relicanth let his offensive Pokemon go down before his passive support Pokemon, again nothing insane at all.

This is part of what I'm getting at. These were primarily good plays by JRL. JRL recognizes a possible sash tusk and doubles into it in a situation where targeting the dragonite is what relicanth might have expected. The game in itself doesn't really show off hands being broken, I agree, it's mostly just me showcasing that even a setup mon like iron hands can still more than pull its weight in situations where it doesn't actually get to set up, something that can't be said for a lot of the setup mons we normally see in doubles.

I pretty much play exclusively on ladder if not for the occasional tour test game with a friend, but this suspect test seems so easily boiled down to "skill issue" and "Pokemon are allowed to be good" and Iron Hands is definitely just really good.

I should've focused more on the unhealthy matchup metagame part of it, but that's mainly what I'm trying to get at for why hands is banworthy. What causes the unhealthy matchup is all of the other stuff I brought up

 

[Stories]

You're right, I should've done a better job at focusing on what exactly makes me consider it unhealthy and broken. In particular, it's this part here-

There are a lot of ways to beat hands. The problem is that a lot of the better ways of doing so, at least from the tournament games we've seen so far, involve using pokemon or sets that are shaky against the rest of the meta. What this ends up causing is that you can run a team that either
A- is good into hands but sacrifices a lot in the process, making it worse against other meta threats. This is problematic because you're left with a matchup fish team, either it gets a good matchup and wins or it gets a bad matchup and loses. And even if it gets a good hands matchup, it might still just have a bad matchup against whatever else is on the hands team since you can run hands on everything.
B- is not great into hands but is otherwise a solid meta team.
Neither of these situations are great especially considering hands has been at >50% usage in the last 3 weeks of dpl and jumped to 75% usage last week, and make SV a pretty unhealthy and unfun metagame right now to build in or play.


You're also not wrong here, it was maybe a bit much for me to word it that way. This is mostly based on amaranth not playing SV dou for his dpl team, and his dpl team not introducing any particularly remarkable new metagame innovations (not meant to shade any team or game from them, I just mean that there's nothing that significantly changed my evaluation of hands). Maybe there actually are hands techs that haven't been used so far that will innovate the metagame and make it more healthy. At any rate, nothing so far has indicated as such to me. Hands has been in talks of being suspected since over a month ago and since then it's just been becoming more and more relevant.


Yup, hands is hardly unbeatable. We see one interesting tech used to do so here. What we do also see is a semiroom team with two great semiroom hands checks that just can't make any headway once hands is on the field and trick room is up. This is a great example of how hands takes advantage of that lead, functionally 1v2ing the entire way through the rest of the game. Taking the early lead is useful, but maintaining that and winning off of it in this manner is worth taking note of.


This is part of what I'm getting at. These were primarily good plays by JRL. JRL recognizes a possible sash tusk and doubles into it in a situation where targeting the dragonite is what relicanth might have expected. The game in itself doesn't really show off hands being broken, I agree, it's mostly just me showcasing that even a setup mon like iron hands can still more than pull its weight in situations where it doesn't actually get to set up, something that can't be said for a lot of the setup mons we normally see in doubles.


I should've focused more on the unhealthy matchup metagame part of it, but that's mainly what I'm trying to get at for why hands is banworthy. What causes the unhealthy matchup is all of the other stuff I brought up

Now I'm already more convinced knowing that it has negative effects on the builder, a lot more convincing than just showing Iron Hands winning games. I do think the mindgames of Tera Grass / Fire can make statusing Iron Hands a nightmare when that's supposed to be its main weakness, but I've also seen teams manage with with combinations of Encore, Reflect, Intimidate, etc.. I also think banning Iron Hands would have a negative effect on the metagame in some ways; the 4 Pokemon I mentioned in my first post all seem really absurd even with Iron Hands in the tier, I can't imagine what they're like without Iron Hands. If DOU council is quick to respond to any developments should Iron Hands be banned, I would definitely be more on board with banning it, but the only reason I would personally vote ban is because Iron Hands facilitates all the Trick Room spam on the ladder.

 

[Mizuhime]

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9doublesou-685688
again no hands but you see how arcanine just doesn't come out at all- mizu's using 4 out of the top 6-7 mons and at no point is sending arcanine out actually worthwhile. Which isn't to say arcanine is useless, just really hard to run in this meta.

Not really fair to point to this replay as a bad reason to use Arcanine and it having no reason to come out. I gave my opponent no reason to use their bulky fire type cause after a scout I saw they had used a fire type, as well as glim on nearly every team made and I built a team accordingly.

Scout on Ratpacker

Every team is weak to Bundle / Great Tusk / Gambit.

I briefly touched on this early this morning but i'm also planning on voting DNB on Hands. I know it's not very good reasoning but I am of the opinion it really only runs people over if they put them selves in a position where they allow it to, either that be in the builder or just general misplays.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9doublesou-1844057405

This game happened this morning where the opposing hands from raf "almost came back." Iron Hands came out into the battle on turn 4, the same turn Raf switched in an Arcanine for intimidate putting it at -1 instantly. Good play, he then played around it via some switches while also targeting down the partners. This continues for 10 turns before Raf lands a single attack on the Iron Hands. Ten entire turns. I don't claim to be an SV expert but I think i'm better than your average player, but when you don't really target a Pokemon for 10 turns of course it's going to become a problem eventually. Raf did end up winning so maybe im overlooking this situation a bit but I have a real hard time calling Iron Hands a broken Pokemon in this case.

In general, I think if you take a look at a lot of the teams people are bringing they're going to be weak to hands simply because of the sheer amount of Dark Types in this meta. It punishes people who play too slow around it and it punishes poor positioning. Easier said than done I know but banning a Pokemon that punishes weaker play isn't a great idea in my opinion. Simply put if you don't have a way to pressure it and stop it from getting going then of course you're going to lose it. I'm also dreading the meta that comes afterwords where Chi-yu has 99.9% usage and Ting-Lu has 98% usage.

I'm very much in the Do Not Ban camp on this suspect.

 

[GenOne]

• Build better teams if you are struggling
• A good counter to Iron Hands teams is Iron Hands
• Never underestimate the power of Tera as a way to beat or protect an Iron Hands
  
  
• I am not voting in this suspect, do with this info what you will
• Have a great day!

 

[Level 51]

• Build better teams if you are struggling
• A good counter to Iron Hands teams is Iron Hands
• Never underestimate the power of Tera as a way to beat or protect a Iron Hands
  
  
• I am not voting in this suspect, do with this info what you will
• Have a great day!

• Build better teams if you are struggling
• A good counter to Flutter Mane teams is Flutter Mane
• Never underestimate the power of Tera as a way to beat or protect an Flutter Mane
  
  
• I am not voting in this suspect, and therefore do not claim to have a qualified opinion on this matter
• ???

 

[Fran]

Iron Hands is definitely one of the worst mons to ever be suspected, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's not broken. I do not agree with the comparison to Melmetal, which was a pokemon which could get past pretty much every one of its counters depending on its set and even the things that checked it offensively were not able to take it out and often lost the 1v1. Hands does have a full counter in Amoongus and a couple of solid checks like Scream Tail, Armarouge or Sylveon and is nowhere near as strong, meaning even if you have a mons that are neutral / weak to it on the field it doesn't mean it's going to run through your team. Tusk can comfortably switch in on Drain Punch, while it certainly couldn't do that against Melmetal.

That being said I do think it does have a negative impact on the metagame. Having just 1 full counter (that can still be played around pretty well with its most common partner Safety Goggles Indeedee) is still problematic and it forces builders chose between being good vs Hands or building something creative. You can see a good example of this in the robjr vs Chris32156 game from last week, where Chris gained an advantage due to having a) a full counter in Amoongus with Red Card b) a check in Tera Fairy Gholdengo c) his own Hands. We had our own lure in Psychic Chi Yu in terrain, but it was slightly less effective than their idea so we lost the game. I don't think its healthy when the players are rewarded so much for overprepping for one mon or coming up with a slightly new way to support it in a new way like umbry did in her game.

It's especially worrying that everyone seems to be using the same structure of Iron Bundle / Chi You / Iron Hands / Gholdengo / Amoongus or Glimmora / filler and the outcome of the games is decided by who has the more creative Hands tech or a filler that gives them a slight match up advantage. When scouting our opponents for Week 5 I've noticed a surprising thing: out of the 8 games their starters have played so far, 6 of the teams were a variant of this framework. In a healthy metagame we should have been able to capitalize on this and when Chris ended up bringing a team just like that the match up should've been in our favour. However we really couldn't find anything better than just bringing the same thing with some surprise sets. This might have to do as much with Chi Yu as it does with Hands, but it definitely seems like there is something wrong with the current metagame and I do think it would benefit from some changes.

When the differences between teams get small and the opportunity cost for not using the most meta framework gets high, the game becomes less fun to play, building gets less creative, surprise sets and luck start to matter more. This is why I support banning Iron Hands and would likely support a Chi Yu suspect test if the metagame doesn't improve.

 

[GenOne]

• Build better teams if you are struggling
• A good counter to Iron Hands teams is Iron Hands
• Never underestimate the power of Tera as a way to beat or protect an Iron Hands
  
  
• I am not voting in this suspect, do with this info what you will
• Have a great day!

In retrospect this post was probably one of my woat posts lol.

The gimmick was just that the bullets spelled out "BAN IH" when read vertically. I did mean it however when I said I won't be voting and I hope y'all have a great day!

 

[Actuarily]

There are still votes remaining, but the result is decided. With Do Not Ban having received over 40% of the vote already, Iron Hands will remain legal in SV DOU. The current voting breakdown is as follows:

Ban: 12 (25.5%)
Do Not Ban: 24 (51.1%)
Votes Remaining: 11 (23.4%)
Total Voters: 47

 

[Redheron]

Has any thought been put into suspecting dragonite?

Seems like everywhere 1500+ is Chien pao dragonite teams as far as the eye can see. And there’s honestly very little counter play. You either also run paonite or you have to build a team specifically to counter it.

I’m just kind of shocked at the other mons that have been banned or at least suspected while Tera normal e-speed dragonite is steamrolling the entire tier.

 

[Stories]

Has any thought been put into suspecting dragonite?

Seems like everywhere 1500+ is Chien pao dragonite teams as far as the eye can see. And there’s honestly very little counter play. You either also run paonite or you have to build a team specifically to counter it.

I’m just kind of shocked at the other mons that have been banned or at least suspected while Tera normal e-speed dragonite is steamrolling the entire tier.

I think this is 1000% a statement about Chien-Pao's presence in the meta, rather than Dragonite's. Chien-Pao also enables other silly physical attackers like Palafin and Dragapult, while also being a menace itself.

 

[Fangame10]

Has any thought been put into suspecting dragonite?

Seems like everywhere 1500+ is Chien pao dragonite teams as far as the eye can see. And there’s honestly very little counter play. You either also run paonite or you have to build a team specifically to counter it.

I’m just kind of shocked at the other mons that have been banned or at least suspected while Tera normal e-speed dragonite is steamrolling the entire tier.

There is quite a lot of dragonite counter play atm that has made it a lot more difficult to run recently:

Psyspam (indeedee-F) and farigiraf prevent dnite from using extreme speed.

Iron Hands is very bulky and if dragonite has tera normal'd already it risks drain punch


Iron Bundle can threaten it and force it to tera normal early to avoid a ohko (jepordizing dnites plate game

A lot of mons like chi yu can use tera ghost

Arcanine is pretty good at shutting dnite down
(Unless facade)

 

[Redheron]

There is quite a lot of dragonite counter play atm that has made it a lot more difficult to run recently:

Psyspam (indeedee-F) and farigiraf prevent dnite from using extreme speed.

Iron Hands is very bulky and if dragonite has tera normal'd already it risks drain punch


Iron Bundle can threaten it and force it to tera normal early to avoid a ohko (jepordizing dnites plate game

A lot of mons like chi yu can use tera ghost

Arcanine is pretty good at shutting dnite down
(Unless facade)

That doesn’t feel very accurate. Chien pao and dragonite are on basically every team I encounter. Is there any usage statistics to go on?

In my experience, arcanine does nothing as Dragonite and Chien pao both outspeed and obliterate him round one. Esp if dragonite is running inner focus. You are forced to run tailwind and pray for a will o wisp to land. If it misses, you lose. Because Dragonite is way too bulky for anything arcanine does to seriously damage it.

The only one that isn’t one shot by dragon claw out of what you mentioned is iron hands. So you’re basically forced to run iron hands on every team to hope to counter dragonite.

 

[Noelle]

Has any thought been put into suspecting dragonite?

Seems like everywhere 1500+ is Chien pao dragonite teams as far as the eye can see. And there’s honestly very little counter play. You either also run paonite or you have to build a team specifically to counter it.

I’m just kind of shocked at the other mons that have been banned or at least suspected while Tera normal e-speed dragonite is steamrolling the entire tier.

I am going to use this as an opportunity to go on a bit of a tangent about the ruinous legendaries (actually just Chi-Yu and Chien-Pao)

DISCLAIMER: This is not me asking for any tiering action to be taken, as i understand Pokémon home is right around the corner. I just want to both answer this person's question and give my thoughts on why these Pokémon are stupid


I know people generally talk about Chi-Yu being broken in the context of its synergy with another very dumb Pokémon by the name of Iron Bundle (Iron Bundle post coming soon???), but I feel like people really underestimate how ridiculously powerful Chi-Yu is even when removed from the context of this pairing. Effectively having a base 194 Special Attack stat due to its ability, higher than the likes of Deoxys-Attack and Mega Rayquaza, Chi-Yu has the ability to chunk Pokémon that resist its attacks, to say nothing of the havoc it can wreak when the opposing Pokémon are neutral or weak to its attacks. Its STAB attacks hit almost the entire tier for at least neutral damage, further adding to its potent wallbreaking capabilities.

While you can use Terastallization to more effectively pivot around Chi-Yu's Heat Waves and Dark Pulses, if we are willing to consider Terastallization in the context of Chi-Yu's opponents, we must also acknowledge the fact that Chi-Yu can effortlessly break through Pokémon that commonly run Tera Water specifically for Chi-Yu such as Amoonguss with Life Orb Tera Grass sets, which can afford to fit Tera Blast into its moveset. Natural Heat Wave resists like Walking Wake get obliterated by a Tera Fairy Tera Blast or even a simple Choice Specs Dark Pulse.

Its defensive stats aren't unusable either, allowing it to even run Snarl + Will-O-Wisp sets or Assault Vest sets to provide utility to its team, or even a simple bulky Substitute set to take advantage of the many switches it forces with its powerful STAB moves. These sets allow it to overcome its already limited counterplay and establish a true stranglehold on the current metagame. Its existence makes popular Psyspam Trick Room teams inconsistent at best due to its ability to almost singlehandedly claw back an advantage in an otherwise completely lost position.

All of this is without even considering its potent pairings with other strong special attackers like Iron Bundle and Walking Wake, boosting their already high damage output to levels that even some of the bulkiest Pokémon in the tier struggle to withstand. The pairing of Chi-Yu and Iron Bundle alone significantly hinders the development of the metagame, requiring multiple techs and dedicated switchins to have a serviceable matchup into them. While not as oppressive as Flutter Mane and Chi-Yu, its hard to deny the popularity and effectiveness of this pairing when you look at the data:


| 2 | Iron Bundle | 85 | 50.60% | 54.12% |
| 3 | Chi-Yu | 83 | 49.40% | 46.99% |

Anyone who knows me knows I have to tie everything Pokémon related back to SS DOU in some way, so lets look at Rillaboom's usage in DPL as a comparison:


+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokemon | Use | Usage % | Win % |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1 | Rillaboom | 25 | 44.64% | 52.00% |


Both Iron Bundle and Chi-Yu see more usage in SV DOU than Rillaboom in SS DOU, which people complain about significantly more. They aren't even the most used Pokémon in SV, that title going to Iron Hands (I have no idea how that thing stayed unbanned) with a towering 55% usage. To be completely fair this is comparing a pre home meta to a solved oldgen, so taking this with a grain of salt is both reasonable and recommended. I am a firm believer that usage stats and winrates are terrible at measuring the actual viability of a pokemon and are kinda pointless, but people still use them for whatever reason and its a neat way to visualize the absurdity of Chi-Yu and friends.

My main problem with Chi-Yu is that, even outside of being broken, its just boring. Instead of relying on a deep coverage movepool or interesting, unique traits that make it play in an interesting way and add depth to the metagame like something like Dragapult or Pheromosa from SS (Dragapult's deep special movepool but lack of ways to take advantage of its superior physical attacking stat giving a limitation to an otherwise unreasonably good Pokémon, Pheromosa being a potent late game cleaner if played perfectly, but is extremely frail, adding depth to the teambuilder through finding ways to allow it to trade up consistently), Chi-Yu just uses STAB attacks and still 2HKOs or OHKOs 90% of the tier through brute force. Its not interesting or deep in any way, you just click the Heat Wave button and shit dies. It's hard to even talk about because it does very little/nothing interesting. The closest Chi-Yu has gotten to even remotely being a genuinely mechanically complex Pokémon is the Chople Berry Snarl + Will-O-Wisp set, but this set is pretty niche due to Arcanine filling a similar role arguably better than Chi-Yu does and other Chi-Yu sets providing more value to a team in most cases. This isn't even the only Pokémon in SV like this, most strong attackers in the tier are like this with a few exceptions like Dragonite. This is more of a personal gripe than anything and I don't think we should ban Pokémon for the simple crime of being boring, but when combined with Chi-Yu's already overbearing presence in the metagame, it just makes me want it gone even more.


Chien-Pao looks more reasonable in comparison with Chi-Yu, but make no mistake, Chien-Pao is still a menace in it's own right. Chien-Pao is moreso an enabler for strategies making use of Dragonite and/or Palafin to break through teams with Sword of Ruin boosted priority attacks. From personal experience, when I played SV, I find Chien-Pao + Dragonite and Chien-Pao + Palafin teams to be among the most consistent archetypes in the tier due to their complete indifference to speed control and high damage output, making them easy to pick up but difficult to play around if your team doesn't have priority blocking. Though, that's the thing, even if your opponent runs priority blocking, the Chien-Pao player will always have outs against it by resetting the terrain with Ice Spinner or removing Farigiraf and Tsareena with Throat Chop and Ice Spinner respectively. Tera Ghost to get around Extreme Speed is also swiftly punished by Chien-Pao's STAB Sucker Punch/Throat Chop. If the Chien-Pao player knows what they're doing and gets enough turns right, they straight up have the tools to just negate any and all counterplay you can generate. The problem with this is, due to Chien-Pao's frailty and terrible defensive typing, it relies on getting turns right to actually get anything done, and punishes you pretty hard for playing it recklessly.

Looking at the usage, Chien-Pao is used a decent amount, but is not nearly as widespread as Chi-Yu (albeit with a higher winrate but winrate means literally nothing and its a marginal improvement anyway)

| 12 | Chien-Pao | 29 | 17.26% | 55.17% |

As an SS comparison, its usage stats can be compared to Urshifu-R, with a similar winrate and a lower but close enough usage:


11 | Urshifu | 11 | 19.64% | 54.55% |

I don't think Chien-Pao and the teams it enables are as broken as what Chi-Yu can do, but I could definitely understand a suspect in an ideal world where we don't have to worry about Pokémon home.

Why Chi-Yu and Chien-Pao haven't been BANNED!

You just listened to me explain, in many words, why Chi-Yu and Chien-Pao (mostly Chi-Yu) are problematic. This begs the question: Why aren't they banned? The main reason for this is Pokémon home. Because Pokémon Home is most likely going to become available in the coming weeks (I say most likely because Game Freak refuses to give us a release date for some reason?), and it would be unwise to direct tiering resources to making a meta that won't exist in 3 weeks more balanced. Waiting for Pokémon Home availability and see if Chi-Yu and/or Chien-Pao are still broken afterwards. That's just about everything I wanted to say, thank you for reading.

 

[ryo yamada2001]

Post DPL 9 Report — Introduction
(link to Google Doc)

Average enjoyment of survey respondents: ~4,30
Survey responses: 40 (which is ~42% of a total of 95 unique players and managers)​

Here is a report on the Post DPL 9 Survey responses and my own thoughts on hosting DPL 9. The survey has stalled at 40 responses for two days at time of writing, and the overarching sentiment is very positive. However, 22 of 40 responses came from playoff teams; we can presume that more successful performers are more inclined to share their positive thoughts, while less successful performers likely do not feel motivated to share their negative feelings. Other likely non-respondents are players who are not active in DOUcord.

Nevertheless I do believe we have sufficient responses to evaluate and I am glad that the DPL 9 experience was overwhelmingly positive for those more involved in the Doubles community.

Storms (8 responses); Church (7 responses); Thieves (6 responses); Lands (5 responses); Cold Crew, Sp_ndas, Cratermakers (4 responses); Tramplers (2 responses)

Unsurprisingly it is SV DOU that connects most of the playerbase, for it is the most represented within DPL and the rest of the circuit. I was positively surprised at DUU’s high level of involvement, even over more popular older generations.

During the signups phase I had raised concerns over dwindling numbers of BW (and XY) players. This issue seems to have been largely unfounded, as the tournament shows we still have many capable and dedicated players even within the oldest generations. However, we must still make sure to preserve and grow the tiers as much as possible if we want to maintain competitive integrity and their DPL inclusion.

All in all, I believe there is a healthy spread of involvement across various tiers, which bodes well for future installments.

SV DOU
SV DOU Usage Stats

Average: 3,2 of 25 responses​

The overarching sentiment around SV DOU is fairly negative, relative to other tier’s responses. It has also drawn most of the additional comments:

Many SV DOU players are desperate for Home. The common sentiment is that the metagame is stale and centralized around various power picks. Two responses call it outright ‘boring’, whereas another calls it a ‘lost cause’ at this point in time.

• 8 out of 20 responses explicitly identified Iron Hands as a problematic element in SV DOU;
• 6 out of 20 responses named Chi-Yu as a problematic element and mentioned they're waiting for Home specifically;
• 5 out of 20 responses named Iron Bundle;
• 2 out of 20 responses name Chien-Pao and a blanket ban on Ruin abilities, respectively;
• Two individual responses call for a Booster Energy ban and a Flutter Mane unban, respectively.

Many comments identify different issues in our pre-Home metagame. As such I imagine it would take extensive tiering action — the likes of which are unfeasible within the timeframe of Home — to improve enthusiasm around the tier, but even these would be bandaids at best.

I also believe this dissatisfaction with SV DOU could be why other tiers such as DUU, DPP DOU, and the newly formed NatDex DOU have seen a surge of popularity.

SV DUU
SV DUU Usage Stats

Average: ~4,33 of 15 responses​

The common sentiment around SV DUU is very positive. I am happily surprised about the many responses we gathered! While this popularity could be attributed to SV DOU dissatisfaction, responses also indicate that DUU is a mostly balanced tier to prepare in — even after the meta shifts.

From a neutral viewing perspective DUU was a unique metagame with a high quality player pool; one that included several debutants proving their worth on the big stage. For these reasons, I believe DUU is an essential part of the Doubles ecosystem and we might want to consider making it the flagship tier of the upcoming Derby — assuming it stays a ‘good’ and balanced tier post-Home.

Several responses noted that SV DUU includes some power picks that somewhat skew the tier’s balance, but few responses advocated for actual bans. There were 2 mentions of potentially suspecting Booster Energy for causing a significant amount of speed-ties and speed creeping the tier.

SS DOU
SS DOU Usage Stats

Average: ~4,31 of 13 responses​

The common sentiment around SS DOU is very positive. While it commonly draws ire as a ‘boring’ tier, this survey shows there is still a significant and dedicated player base that enjoys playing and preparing in this metagame.

Two responses call for a potential Kartana re-test, with one suggestion being to free Kartana and banning Scope Lens instead. Other responses remark upon Rillaboom and Incineroar’s power levels, but the majority of comments indicate that SS DOU is currently in a good place and should not be subject to major metagame shifts for the time being.

Rillaboom saw 48.4% usage with a 53.3% win rate.
Incineroar saw 37.1% usage with a 56.5% win rate.

SM DOU
SM DOU Usage Stats

Average: ~4,36 of 11 responses​

The common sentiment around SM DOU is very positive. This tier seemed to me like it had the strongest pool of DPL veterans, which to me indicates that this tier has competitive longevity and is well-balanced.

Incineroar and Mega-Metagross received two calls for bans each. In general there is an increasing sentiment around revisiting Mega-Metagross and its centralizing prowess in SM DOU. We also received a response that said ‘free lax’. 4 out of 9 responses suggest nothing should be changed about SM DOU.

Incineroar saw 48.4% usage with a 63.3% win rate.
Metagross saw 38.7% usage with a 54.2% win rate.

XY DOU
XY DOU Usage Stats

Average: 4,0 of 15 responses​

The common sentiment around XY DOU is mostly positive. Curiously, while it has a lower average rating than most older generation tiers, there were no additional comments that identified any problematic elements. As such, it appears that XY DOU caters to a group of diehard players who think the tier is ‘perfect’, ‘best tier’, and balanced overall.

One response simply mentions the sample teams need to be updated.

BW DOU
BW DOU Usage Stats

Average: ~3.67 of 12 responses​

The common sentiment around BW DOU is mixed. We received very polarizing responses and commentary, ranging from paragraph-long criticism on the metagame to simple “keep it the same”. The following were pointed out as potential problematic elements:

• 3 out of 10 responses specifically mention Thunder Wave as a problematic and metagame defining move. One response questions how broken Thundurus-I is, but is still curious what the metagame would look like without it. Another response simply calls it “hax gen”, despite finding it fun to dabble in.
• Another response remarks upon the number of overwhelming power picks (such as Kyurem-Black, Latios, and Conkeldurr) which — in combination with perma-weather, Thunder Wave, and old crit mechanics — make for a metagame with simply too many broken elements.
• One suggestion is to modify Sleep Clause implementation in some way.
• Another handful of responses suggest keeping the tier as is.

A lack of easily fixable problems does raise slight concern for BW DOU’s future as a competitive DPL format. I hope BW DOU continues to develop however possible, with possibly a new BW council to consider tiering action.

Format questions

With the overwhelmingly positive responses to the format questions it appears we’ve hit a sweet spot in length and size of the tournament. Some playoff players and managers mentioned a faint sense of burnout towards the end — to alleviate the preparation burden next year, we might want to look into expanding to four substitutes. We certainly have enough talented players that warrant a bench position, at least.

We received some fringe suggestions such as 6 teams x 10 starters and reducing the regular season to 5 weeks through a divisions format, which will be talked over within the hosting team eventually.

Thank you everyone who filled in the survey!