OM Team Study! [Week 4: DOUBLES with The Exeggutor and Nollan]

[BlankZero]

Approved by Arcticblast​

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OM Team Study​

Certain thread components and idea from Melee Mewtwo!​

Format (and much of the wording) stolen from Princess Bri's OU thread of the same title.​

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Welcome to the OM Team Study. The goal of this project is to help unite the community while improving the overall quality of the player base by studying the art of team building at the highest level.

What is this for?
This project was shamelessly stolen from Melee Mewtwo. Princess Bri created an OU thread of the same type, and PsYch071c created one for UU. I stole the format from them and am just changing basic things to make it make more sense for the OM Subforum, which gets a ton of traffic already, but the ladders are less than stellar, which is frustrating for those of us who enjoy these games. The basic idea of this thread is to look at a high level player's team under the microscope and see what the community can find and learn from each team. Discussing a team helps not only you learn and think about it, but the fellow OM'rs who are new can learn by reading your post. It is a win-win situation! Additionally, you are supplied with high-level teams to take ideas from if you like a build, and it gives us a look at what is "good" in the high-stakes Tournament Metagame. This will also give new players the building blocks necessary to get themselves started in a new Metagame, without the awkwardness of not even knowing where to start.

How does it work?
Each week (more or less) there will be a high-level team from one of the more popular Metagames (as evidenced by forum activity) that will be displayed for the community as a whole to discuss. The aim of this discussion will be to analyze the team by identifying roles and explaining their purpose, investigating specific move sets and Pokemon choices, strong points of the team, flaws it may have and even questions concerning unusual or confusing aspects. Essentially, the team will serve as a model to learn from and an example to refer to. Once the discussion is over, the team builder will post explaining his decisions and answering any questions or false ideas concerning them. This will also allow newer players to the OM scene to get an idea of how different Metagames are played, as well as learn new strategies, new Pokemon niches, etc.

What do I get out of it?

• Good posting can result in nominations for a Ladybug or Community Contributor badge depending on your work in the OM subforum.
• A good look at current tournament teams and trends.
• Insight on how teams are built and more knowledge of the different Other Metagames out there.
• There may be another prize or so, but it's still not worked out yet. Don't let this discourage you, however.
• A good, intelligent thread!

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Links To Previous Weeks' Threads​

Week 1 - Arcticblast's BH Team Week 2 - FLCL's PU Team Week 3 – The_Eevee_General’s and MrOMGness’s STABmons Teams​

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Week 4's Metagame is DOUBLES!!​

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Week 4's team is provided by Eggy and Nollan!!​

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After each week, the winning Metagame will not be voted for again for the following 4-5 weeks, to allow a good rotation of games being showcased.​

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Week 4: Eggy's Doubles Team​

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Togekiss @ Sitrus Berry
Trait: Serene Grace
EVs: 248 Hp / 92 Spd / 168 Spdef
Calm Nature
- Follow Me
- Air Slash
- Helping Hand
- Tailwind

Thundurus (M) @ Electric Gem
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 164 HP / 24 Def / 174 SAtk / 32 SDef / 114 Spd
IVs: 3 Atk / 30 SAtk / 30 SDef / 30 Spd
Modest Nature
- Thunder Wave
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Flying]
- Swagger

Heracross @ Bug Gem
Trait: Moxie
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spd / 4 HP
Adamant Nature
- Megahorn
- Close Combat
- Feint
- Protect

Cresselia (F) @ Expert Belt
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 252 SAtk / 252 HP / 4 SDef
Modest Nature
- Psyshock
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Ice Beam
- Trick Room

Tyranitar @ Chople Berry
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 220 HP / 252 Atk / 36 Def
Adamant Nature
IVs: 0 Spd
- Rock Slide
- Crunch
- Low Kick
- Protect

Garchomp @ Yache Berry
Trait: Rough Skin
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Claw
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- Protect

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Week 4: Nollan's Doubles Team​

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Tyranitar (M) @ Chople Berry
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 HP / 4 Def
Adamant Nature
- Crunch
- Rock Slide
- Fire Punch
- Protect

Landorus-Therian (M) @ Focus Sash
Trait: Intimidate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- U-turn
- Protect

Cresselia @ Sitrus Berry
Trait: Levitate
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 96 SAtk / 252 HP / 96 SDef / 4 Spd / 60 Def
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psyshock
- Icy Wind
- Thunder Wave
- Light Screen

Thundurus @ Sitrus Berry
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 60 SAtk / 196 HP / 252 SDef
Calm Nature
IVs: 2 Atk / 30 Def
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Taunt
- Thunder Wave

Volcarona (F) @ Fire Gem
Trait: Flame Body
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 4 HP
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Overheat
- Bug Buzz
- Tailwind
- Protect

Bisharp (F) @ Dark Gem
Trait: Defiant
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 244 HP / 12 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Sucker Punch
- Low Kick
- Night Slash
- Protect


Some things to consider are:

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• What do you think was the main/inspiring idea/goal they had when building their teams?
• Are there discernible cores that they tried to build around?
• What are the strong points of the teams?
• What are the weak spots?
• How could their use of certain EV/Moveset/Abilities twists help the teams vs specific threats or archetypes?
• How do they use some underrated threats to give their teams an advantage?
• Just about anything else you might want to comment on or ask about.

The next couple of weeks are predetermined. Next week will be Tier Shift, followed by CAP, then Pure Hackmons, then Ability Exchange (it's super fun so I added it.), we will start over again if there is still interest in this thing.
Send me your teams in advance so I don't have to beg in IRC anymore :p

 

[youngjake93]

I guess I'll start it off. Eggy's team has Follow Me and Swagger support with nothing particularly abusing it. Normally Swagger is accompanied by at least one lum berry user that can still benefit from lum if they don't get a chance to abuse Swagger. Also there are no set up sweepers or glass cannons to abuse Follow Me. You have Tyranitar and Garchomp with exploitable weaknesses, but Togekiss doesn't like taking a Close Combat or Ice Beam. However, I do see that Togekiss isn't meant to stick around THAT long since it doesn't have Roost, so Follow Me does pull the pressure off of more important team members after Tailwind is up.

Something else interesting is that there are eight Fighting resists between the two teams and three 4x weak to Fighting. I personally have gotten a kick out of spamming powerful Close Combats on the ladder, but it seems that these two teams are more than prepared to handle Fighting spam.
Going off that last comment, Cresselia and Lando-T really just shut down anything trying to use Close Combat or EQ on Tyranitar. The synergy there is pretty nice. You even have Lando tanking physical hits and Tyranitar tanking special hit+ice moves.


Edit: I never bashed Eggy's team.... I actually was complimenting the lack of over-reliance on common techniques to abuse strategies. That said, it makes the team a little harder to play because you aren't following a blueprint. It could be a bad thing, but the flexibility it brings can definitely make it even more of a good thing.
Plus, I put particular emphasis on the amazing synergy on most parts of the team. How is that team bashing?

 

[Nollan]

A few things to note about Eggy's team that have not been addressed:
1) Follow Me Support can be used in more subtle ways than helping an ally set up. For example, they can be used to A) redirect hits threatening to an ally, B) Draw in priority/status attacks, and C) simply make the opponent nervous. As often said, the threat is stronger than the execution, and this is an example.
2) Swagger is a useful move to fall back on in a tight situation (high risk vs high reward). While it has popularly been used to boost the attack of an opponent, this tends to be more of a gimmick in most cases. On the high-level teams that do use that combination, you will find that they Swagger opponents more often than their allies, as you will need the time to Swagger your ally and you can't just simply do it right off the bat most of the time.
3) Trick Room can be fairly problematic, though Tyranitar is helpful against it. For the most part, however, everything else will have a fair amount of trouble, and since Thundurus lacks Taunt, this is enlarged even more. Still, without knowing the movesets, the team appears very ready to deal with Trick Room, so it can scare off Trick Room setters in this way.
4) Some positives seem to be overlooked. First up, thumbs up for offensive Cresselia, while lacking in power, Cresselia's great super-effective coverage, as well as its general view of not being an offensive threat, really make this set useful. Also note that the team is eagerly ready to blow Cresselia out of the way, through Megahorn or Crunch. This is very helpful, as several teams are very reliant on Cresselia to hold them together.
5) The overall playstyle of this team is fairly direct and all-out offensive. Togekiss is as such a great member, helping against faster attackers, while juicing up its allies' attacks. The lack of a Steel type is very revealing in the fact that the team is obviously not designed overall for tanking hits, but hitting first (Steel types are generally required on the bulkier teams for tanking Draco Meteors, which you see a lot of).

 

[Laga]

OH. MY. GOSH. all these new things on smogon I am semi late for :(

anyways, I am going for both of these teams, since Doubles is my favorite metagame :D

Looking at Eggy's team, the first thing that I see is that the entire team is built to be able to damage things except maybe Togekiss. I have yet to try it out properly (except for the two battles I have played with it using this exact team). This said, I think the idea behind building this team was using Heracross, Garchomp and offensive Cresselia with a good deal of support revolving around them like Tailwind, T-Wave etc.

I know from experience that Bug Gem Heracross eats lives in Tailwind, and much appreciates the offensive synergy coming from Tyranitar and Thundurus, as extra electrified cold rocks for the flying types are always welcome to keep Heracross as alive as possible :p Basically, if you get Tailwind up, Heracross completely wrecks everything with Follow Me support and the extra synergy coming from above said T-Tar and Thundy. This is probably one of the stronger points of the team, as Heracross shines a lot with the support and synergy provided.

A weak spot of the team though, would be the large weakness to well-built Trick Room teams. It has no direct way of dealing with Trick Room setter + Fake Out or Rage Powder lead. This is because the only thing there really is for it is Tyranitar, which can't even KO some of the more bulky setters like Cresselia and Dusclops.

One more thing I would like to add to my short Eggy team analysis is a comment to youngjake's comment on the team.

Eggy's team has Follow Me and Swagger support with nothing particularly abusing it. Normally Swagger is accompanied by at least one lum berry user that can still benefit from lum if they don't get a chance to abuse Swagger. Also there are no set up sweepers or glass cannons to abuse Follow Me. You have Tyranitar and Garchomp with exploitable weaknesses, but Togekiss doesn't like taking a Close Combat or Ice Beam.

Come on man, these threads are not for bashing the featured teams. It's about digging out the thought process that the team builder had when making the team and (if anything can be improved) to provide a small amount of constructive criticism. Writing 4 lines about how a single supportive pokemon is not doing it's job well just doesn't help much for anything but a negative perspective to a team that actually works. You can do better than that :/

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Anyways, moving on to Nollan's team, he is using three out of four speed control moves in Thunder Wave, Icy Wind and Tailwind, whilst also controlling the opponents attacking capabilities with Light Screen + Intimidate poke. I am loving the idea of Tailwind Volcarona, by the way, as not too many people expect it. If we look at the overall team build, I am seeing some strong bulky offense mixed with a full supporter in Cresselia. I think the general team idea was to build a goodstuff sand team with both speed control and attacking control whilst aiming towards being able to chip away at the opponents health. The idea of this team compared to Eggy's is; "do more damage to the opponent in one turn than they do to me", rather than "kill before being killed".

I believe that the only real synergy in doubles is offensive except on really bulky teams, so I am obviously going to look for offensive synergy right off the bat. One pair I like to see is Bisharp + Volcarona. Volcarona swiftly cleans away the resists to Sucker Punch, whilst pressuring the foe into attacking it (No one lets a Volcarona set up). One wierd thing I see in using a Bisharp on this team, is that it is mostly there to deal with Icy Wind Cresselia and prevent the opposition from spamming Intimidate, both of which are not that large of a problem for this team, though STAB base 80 priority is enough to make Bisharp fit a lot of teams.

Another nice offensive synergy combo I see is Landorus-T + Thundurus / Volcarona. This is because almost all of the powerful Rock Slide spammers are completely shat on by Landorus-T (this is actually defensive synergy too now that I think about it).

If I where to suggest any changes I would personally try running a Hitmontop over Bisharp for Wide Guard and Fake Out support, and since you don't have an exploitable weakness to Psychic types or Intimidate or Icy Wind spam.

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I think that rounds up the last of what I have for analyzing these 2 teams, I am looking forward to making my worst best post in the OM team study next week when it's Tier Shift :p​

 

[Nollan]

If I where to suggest any changes I would personally try running a Hitmontop over Bisharp for Wide Guard and Fake Out support, and since you don't have an exploitable weakness to Psychic types or Intimidate or Icy Wind spam.

As a side note, I chose Bisharp for three reasons on this team (best if you were to know them imo):
1) With speed control options as mentioned, it can be a fearsome sweeper (and an extra thing I put in there which I have been dying to try is using Icy Wind on my own Bisharp).
2) It provides additional support for stopping Trick Room setters (with all the slowing the foe down and speeding myself up, I felt I needed a lot of powerful ways to stop Trick Room before it gets set up). I also wanted it since unlike Tyranitar, it doesn't have as much difficulty with Intimidate + Trick Room leads.
3) I wanted a Dragon resist, which is often vital for tanking Dragon Gem Draco Meteors, which you see a lot of.

 

[Audiosurfer]

Ok, since I feel like others have done a good job going into how the teams work, Ill talk about weaknesses a bit. I don't actually think there's a Trick Room weakness on these teams. Both of them either carry mons that disrupt it or that threaten the mons that can set it up. Even if it does get set, Bisharp has priority and TTar is slow enough to fair well. A bigger weakness to me is definitely Rain. Altho they both have Thundurus that can act as a check to fast Swift Swimmers, neither of them actually have a water resist on their team, and although SDef Thundurus can tank hits well enough, they could definitely be placed under pressure by repeated Rain boosted attacks (especially SubKingdra, which can play around Bisharp). Eggys team has Tailwind and Nollan's has Tailwind and Light Screen though, so they have ways they can potentially beat it, but it definitely seems like it can put them under pressure. Another thing that could be a nuisance if not played around properly is Hail teams (but both teams have multiple Pokes that can threaten hail as well so it's not a huge thing). Overall both teams are pretty solid though so props to them, just wanted to talk a bit about that.

 

[BlankZero]

Good writes folks! Keep em coming!

 

[tofucocoa]

lemmie start by saying these are good teams looking at the lineups, but i feel like a few moveset changes could make the teams even better.

im gonna have to agree with youngjake about swagger on eggy's team. i mean it /can/ pull you out of tight spaces, especially with twave backing it, but as it stands that's basically all it has going for it. i like swagger because i can use it on myself to boost my attack AND that it can pull me out of tight spots, especially with some special attackers, but i feel like it's out of place here. i don't understand the reasoning behind it otherwise other than spreading confusion, which isn't something to rely on. if it were me, i'd get rid of it in favor of taunt in order to prevent spores (notably from breloom since thund pretty much hard counters it 1v1), trick rooms and protects.

i will also agree that eggy's team has a lot of fighting weaks (and by this i meant she didn't have much to KO them with before they started doing damage). although i will admit that she has a few checks, they aren't as solid as i think they could be. one simple fix is for thundurus to run hidden power flying, and perhaps even change the set to a semibulky modest attacker (there were a few at nats and it's becoming popular on gbu, so even if i've never used it i can vouch for its effectiveness), though if it can 2hko stuff without having to go more offensive who am i to judge lol. i'd replace garchomp with latios as well, specifically a life orbed latios because garchomp is very lacking in offense. not only does it have amazing synergy with togekiss and thund, you have hail checked with tyranitar and psyshock does a number on pretty much every fighting type. if a fighting type survives its STABs, chances are that its slow enough to be KO'd by air slash.

there's more i would like to talk about on eggy's team (cos eggy sux at teambuildin), but i'll wait and see what you guys think of this.

i like nollan's team a lot, even though it looks a lot like the japanese standard GBU team (when they're not spamming minimize starmie/blissey) but again i think there's a few changes that would make the team run a little more smoothly.

first of all, i don't care for tailwind volcarona, especially when you have plenty of speed control already. id reccomend changing it to rage powder or something because tailwind is just plain overkill. whats also overkill is cress with icy wind AND thunder wave. it'd probably do you more good to change thunder wave to trick room than to overlap with thundurus in that regard. trick room allows you to negate enemy trick room (which isn't the best imo, but it works) as well as enabling you to, again, run a little trick room mode on the side with ttar and company. if you don't want to do this, i'd also suggest helping hand to help landog/ttar get the OHKO on stuff like latios, metagross and tornadus.

one last thing; if you run night slash bisharp, you're a pansy. bisharp pretty much requires you to predict, and given that, night slash+sucker punch seems like the kind of thing casuals use (heat wave+flamethrower charizard, anyone?). i mean come on, you have friggin taunt thundurus to help you with hitting those sucker punches! i'd suggest swords dance, substitute, or another taunt to help you put pressure on your opponent. bisharp is one of those pokemon that forces you to make some really tough decisions that either pay off or make bisharp dead weight for the rest of the match. truly, there are other pokemon that can just as easily fit into bisharp's slot, but you're a big boy; i'm sure you can handle it ;) just imagine: bisharp sets up a swords dance, gets hit with intimidate and cress helping hands it with dark gem still intact. thats basically a +5 bisharp right there. i think that speaks for itself, don't you?

ps, make sure you guys are using enough speed on your thundurus to outspeed jolly breloom. it's kind of important that you do this so you can take care of it a lot more easily. also that makes you faster than the vast majority of base 80 speed mons, so that's reason in and of itself imo.

e: the teams are pretty similar in that they try to control speed as much as possible and capitalize on hitting first with strong attacks like megahorn and earthquake. the speed controllers are typically the thundurus, which give great support with not only paralyzing stuff, but also prevent protects and pressure the opponent, along with going a long way in covering the teams' bases. while the teams don't have any particular goals in mind, they make up for this by being incredibly versatile, and although many people with goodstuffs try to simply cover their bases and leave it at that, those gemmed moves are exactly what the teams need to keep up their momentum and give the teams an edge in the pokemon arms race.

 

[mimi]

Hi guys, Good job so far, and my team has been edited, and also thanks to joim for editing the OP to change my edits. Feel free to comment on the new edits and eveyrthing,

Trickroom > protect on cresselia
Modest bulky Thundurus with hp flying
Stone edge > rock slide on chomp
Feint > stone edge on Heracross
Adamant > Jolly on Heracross

 

[BlankZero]

Hi guys, Good job so far, and my team has been edited, and also thanks to joim for editing the OP to change my edits. Feel free to comment on the new edits and eveyrthing,

Trickroom > protect on cresselia
Modest bulky Thundurus with hp flying
Stone edge > rock slide on chomp
Feint > stone edge on Heracross
Adamant > Jolly on Heracross

You could have just asked me to edit it Eggy :p

 

[mimi]

You could have just asked me to edit it Eggy :p

you weren't on irc

 

[Laga]

I guess I'll commenting on the changes Eggy made to the team.

Trickroom > protect on cresselia
This is probably the most notable change of the team, as in my eyes, it had a pretty hard time dealing with powerful Trick Room teams. In placing Trick Room on cresselia, not only lol full T speed control with Trick Room Tailwind and T-Wave, but it does put a thorn in the side of these annoying Trick Room teams. As Cresselia is such a crazy bulky mon, it won't very often need Protect, and it being good at setting up Trick Room, it is pretty darn good at tearing the setup back down too.

Modest bulky Thundurus with hp flying
Not the biggest change, but it does succeed at doing much more damage now, and since T-Waving things isn't the most useful thing on a Tailwind team, Eggy probably saw the oppurtunity to make Thundurus more of an offensive pokemon with a few supportive capabilities.

Stone edge > rock slide on chomp
Obviously, Rock Slide only really hurts badly when used on very strong pokemon with STAB on it like Terrakion and Tyranitar. Since the goal of this team is to kill before being killed, Stone Edge is a more reliable alternative in the fact that it is much more powerful than Rock Slide.

Feint > stone edge on Heracross
Feint is a really underrated move in doubles, and Heracross makes a fantastic abuser of it. Since you cannot save your pokemon from death through protect, you just kill them with certainty whilst gaining a Moxie boost. Besides, half of the pokemon on this team completely shits on Heracross' counters.

Adamant > Jolly on Heracross
Simple mindset. With all the speed control on the team, the lovely power is usually going to prevail over the extra bit of speed.

Keep in mind that I am trying to think like Eggy, not just telling you guys why it just is a better option, so if you read this post as a lot of obvious facts about why some moves and natures are better than others, read it again and think of it as someone trying to think like the teambuilder :]

 

[Nollan]

I have made some changes based on lucariojr's post.
1) Volcarona: Rage Powder > Tailwind
2) Cresselia: Helping Hand > Thunder Wave
I didn't change Night Slash on Bisharp because I want to be able to hit Trick Room setters if Thundurus is not out or if they hold Mental Herb. If I were to change it, I would probably try something fairly uncommon like Substitute, in order to play some mind games.

 

[BlankZero]

Bumping for more analysis before I start next week!

We need Nollan and Eggy to post finishing thoughts as well about their teams as well as the adjustments made.

 

[Nollan]

Bumping for more analysis before I start next week!

We need Nollan and Eggy to post finishing thoughts as well about their teams as well as the adjustments made.

I just did. In the subject of finishing thoughts, I don't have much more to say then those changes. Thanks for the suggestions though. ;)

 

[mimi]

o final thoughts, my team is pretty straight forward. Togekiss is used to get tailwind up and lure hits away from Heracross, Tyranitar and Garchomp well they all cause some havok. Cresselia has saved me more then a few times, The addition of Trickroom on it allows me to keep my opponent from getting it up reliably. Not only does it do that but in a pinch, Cresselia can use Trickroom to save Tyranitar from faster opponents. Modest Thundurus helps the fighting type weakness Tyranitar has, more specifically the Hitmontop problem. Since Heracross, Ttar, and Garchomp all hate dealing with it. Cresselia takes care of ever other Intimidate user. As Nollan mentinoed earlier on in the thread, this team really doesn't rely on much bulk. The general play style for it is hit hard, hit fast, Hyper offensive. I don't really know what else to say accept TOGEKISS PUTS THE TEAM ON ITS BACK DOE