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Since most of the tournaments have been cancelled and so I haven't been able to test it (also I don't really want to test ways to exploit the game). Can you explain how this isn't exploitable? For most of us the only information we have to go off is: Standard Tournament brackets will now be randomized between each round. (Players who are waiting for the next round are now paired together randomly.) If we are to take these words literally it sounds as though if you win your battle early you will likely be facing off against other players who have also finished their battle early. So for example if I wanted to avoid playing against you, I could ask a friend to spectate your battle and tell me how close the game looks to being over. If my friend was to reply "it's still 6v6" I could then try and close out my battle faster to try and avoid the possible window where I could be matched against you. Conversely if you are about to win I could deliberately extend my battle and run down the timer. This would then become even easier to abuse the later it gets in a tournament where there should be a larger discrepancy in which round everyone is still playing in since there may be a round 1 battle at the same time as a round 3-4. I really hope that I am wrong on this subject and that it is not as exploitable as it sounds, where you can almost chose your matches and can lead to match fixing, but as of right now most of us can only go off the words of the devs.

Some players do. Most of the time it's in the form of new players who only play one team being preyed on by a hard counter team that is usually not very good vs the rest of the meta but since the newer player has more limited resources they're unlikely to be able to adapt to it. Which I agree isn't the most healthy gameplay. There are exceptionally few players who are able to make counter teams on the fly based on scouting/prior knowledge of their opponent while still not being too weak to the rest of the meta, but that is not to say that it is impossible. For example I think old school lyle did this pretty well way back in the day, although the meta back then was easier to build in than it is now. To me the whole argument boils down to ease of access for newer players to blindly spam their MM team in tournaments without getting cteamed & more experienced players who don't want to build more than one team vs a players ability to adapt and team build being tested & more innovation in the later rounds. In this regard I always lean towards the latter argument since, lets be honest, if a new player only has one team and has no resources, no friends, no team mates who can help them with new builds. The chances are they aren't getting far in the tournament anyway and if they somehow do manage to get far, they will ultimately get cteamed in the finals regardless.

Which is exactly the reason why it is a skill. Most players just blindly counter team the last team their opponent ran and then get ran over by their opponent when they switch teams. There are very few players who can actually do this well especially in tournaments with just a 10 minute window to build a team on the fly. I personally never cteam in automated tournaments, not because "cteaming is lame" or anything like that, it's because I am simply not a good enough team builder to do it effectively. I try to use these cteaming principles in PSL where I have a lot more time to build and I have had a huge amount of success doing it, and when its gone wrong its been due to my oversight of something instead of the concept being flawed. I would love to be able to develop this skill more and use it in tournaments to become a much better player and team builder for it, but that looks as though that is no longer a possibility.

I guess It wasn't clear from my post. But since I was specifically referring to later stages of a tournament in my post I was of course referring to better players who you likely have prior knowledge about and so was talking more about building around each players individual tendencies, as well as the common cores they/people in their team often run. Not about blindly hard counter teaming the last team that they ran. In PSL it is often fairly easy to predict a large amount of your opponents team, in tournaments where there is far less time to build and test between rounds people will default back to their tried and true more often than not leaving less room for unique strategies. The point I was trying to make is that although this new system helps new players with the transition from matchmaking to tournament play I think this actually hinders player growth in the later stages. In my opinion the ideal solution to this would be for tournaments to stay automated at the start and then switch back to a standard bracket at either the ro8 or ro16 depending on bracket size.

Seeing how scouting and counter teaming are such contentious and polarising points within the community I want to make a thread for discussion about it as well as bringing to light some possible concerns. The Change being discussed: Standard Tournament brackets will now be randomized between each round. (Players who are waiting for the next round are now paired together randomly.) I'm in two minds about this change. I see some positives and some negatives to it. Starting with the positive; The way I see it. If I'm in 2nd round vs random69 I really don't want or care enough to scout him and try and counter build his dumb fuck team with dumb fuck sets and if I do counter team them I don't feel good about it and neither does the other player. This change makes entering tournaments and doing well in them much easier for entry level players coming straight from matchmaking since they will require far less teams and will likely just use their matchmaking team throughout. As well as making it much more relaxing and less stress intensive for the early rounds since you don't have to constantly worry about changing your team or countering every player you face. However, this change could be seen as problematic especially for later stages of tournaments, for a few key reasons: Imagine you are in semis and out of your 3 possible opponents you have a team which you believe will crush 2 of them but isn't as good vs the other, you would be crazy not to take a 2/3 guaranteed victory. But as every pokemon player knows 33% chance things happen all the freaking time which could really fuck people over, making team building in the later stages especially weird and likely more luck than skill dependant. Knowing how to adapt to opponents is a skill and with the current system it will not be taught to players unless they are able to make it to the very end. It is a huge part of learning to team build and is not something that should be removed completely. This basically comes down to general vs specific team building. While both are important I don't think it is good for everyone to just spam their MM team until later stages just for someone to get stomped in a very uncompetitive finals by someone who clearly has far more experience adapting to opponents than they do. Better/More prominent players are at a disadvantage. There's no way in knowing what everyone is running and so your resources are very limited. When watching a battle between your matches or talking to other players you are far more likely to check up on what the better players are running and are far more likely to build around that. As a lesser known player you are likely to go almost completely unscouted throughout most of the tournament giving yourself a large advantage. Separation of Tournaments and Matchmaking. This isn't really such a big deal but I feel like this kind of blurs the lines between MM and tournaments and makes participating in tournaments feel less unique. Now onto the potentially scary thing: (Players who are waiting for the next round are now paired together randomly.) Depending on how this is implemented this sounds like it could be exploitable. If people are paired together based on who is waiting for the same round as a player, you can use this in order to be more/less likely to be matched against specific people. If have been playing slower and your matches lasting longer than the people you consider to be the hardest competition, you are not going to be matched against for that round them since they would have been matches for that round during your previous battles. This essentially encourages players to play faster or slower depending on what players they want to dodge. If this works the way that it is implied it should be possible to go through almost the entire tournament while avoiding players you think are the biggest threats or your friends/teammates. I'm hoping I am wrong about this and there is a system in place to prevent this.

After reading through the update a couple of times I gotta say there's a lot of things in there that were not previously mentioned and I wasn't expecting that are really cool. So many great QoL changes and general pvp related changes that are going to be so nice. Big props to the devs, positively surprised for the first time in a while even if we did have to wait for it.

F

Can confirm:

I feel like it would have made more sense to do a vote between the showdown singles format with the most votes vs vgc, since all the singles tiers were likely splitting votes before doing the showdown format vs no showdown. Is this our first psl without a showdown tier included? Will be interesting to see if it makes a meaningful difference.

Quick maff bro. Except I really didn't miss your point. Your entire point was to revive a week old argument (which was originally about if there was enough active doubles players for it to be included in managers choice in comparison to LC, which is very easily provably the case). The argument was already settled and all you are doing is trying to bait gb back out into arguing about doubles for the millionth time.

64x0.75>16

Sold. Is it possible to change votes without having to submit new answers for everything, since that would skew the other results.

Just going to throw in a few of my thoughts. With a lot of these multiple choice answers there is a lot of overlap between them which would cause them to split votes. Therefor I'm hoping there will be a follow up poll with more concise options. So for example where the no showdown format may be leading in votes if you are to combine the answers with showdown formats listed together, now showdown has more votes. Likewise, even though VGC may have more votes than the other tiers, VGC is the only doubles format mentioned so therefor it will not be splitting votes like the others are. if the option was just between 1 singles showdown tier and vgc the results may end up being very different. On the topic of managers choice tiers, I have absolutely no clue where this magic number of 16 consistent players comes from in order to qualify for managers choice (and if that ever was the requirement then there is absolutely 0 justification for not including doubles). You need to account for the managers themselves subtracting players from the pool, as well as possible roster limitations with the possibility of one manager trying to hoard the players who are capable of playing that tier as well as a lot of the players who signed up for that tier also being split between the other tiers they signed up for. And this is not even mentioning the possibility for opposing managers to both select the same tier. If the argument is to have a consistent player available to ensure quality games the number you should be looking for should be 30+, if not more. But given our player base that is probably only achievable in OU, although admittedly UU&NU come closer than Doubles&LC. We have seen in every single event, especially WC, PSLs with 10 tiers & PSLs with managers choice tiers plenty of dog shit quality games in every single tier including OU, this is just what happens when our small player base is split. Again on the topic of managers choice but more biased this time. I think adding doubles to the managers choice adds a lot of strategic depth to the drafting process and can really help differentiate the good managers from the bad. Most of the top singles players are capable of playing every singles format to almost the same level. It becomes very easy to pick up players like Enchanteur, Mkns or Bluebreath and expect them to perform well in every managers choice tier. This just makes managers choice as a concept feel like a fairly unnecessary inclusion to the event. If we decide to include managers choice I would prefer to see it set up in a way that gives managers more agency and creativity in roster building rather than simply just buying who they deem to be the overall best players. Lastly maybe I missed something but I saw no mention of playoffs. What exactly is the plan for it? 4 team play offs? 6 team play offs? Are the teams that placed higher up in the regular season going to get any kind of advantage maybe in the form of a bye or extra managers choice tier? Or is top 4 going to be the only thing that matters?

Tyranitar Scizor Rotom Wash Gengar Hitmontop Reuniclus

Can you please feature iMat's team from CC#195 finals? I think it would be very informative for new players

A couple of things to say mostly about Haze, Firstly I'm not sure if you know this but it seems implied but Haze doesn't work against Focus Energy so it doesn't work very well against Kingdra teams unless you are using it for the taunt, but there are other taunt users that more reliably beat follow me. Secondly I personally don't think a fast haze is very required. Most offensive boosters boost speed (QD Volca, DDance Gyara) with the only real exception to that being ofc Garchomp. But considering Bat still takes a lot of damage from neutral DClaw and for the most part you will have a much better time beating Follow me Chomp by using a mixture of intimidates and spread moves which will beat other non SD chomp sets much better a swell. In my opinion the main threats that require Haze is things like Double Dance Reuniclus and QD Volca, and I think in those cases Milotic or Bulky Dnite do a better job. I also don't think you should compare Bat to Aero. I feel like they both feel very different niches; Aero with Sky drop shuts down follow me and supports boosters substantially and Crobat works very well as an Anti Lead with its immunity to fake out and access to Acrobatics. This all being said I think Bat is still fine and is either high C or low B- for now. But I think it's a bit strange to discuss Bat right now when it is about to get 2 giant buffs to both Inner Focus and to Tailwind in a couple of weeks time which will probably move it up to A, but probably best not to discuss theorymonning too much for now.

I never once said I was comparing it to Reuniclus, that is putting things in my mouth. The most obvious comparisons to make is first to Cofagrigus, which also has similar bulk, reasonable special attack, access to nasty plot/cm, similar support moves and in most cases the better ability. The next most obvious comparison would be to the other eviolite TR setter porygon. And while yes it doesn't quite have the bulk that clops has or the ghost typing it has reliable recovery and is able to threaten most common taunt users as well as checking lots of the metas more viable threats. When something is both taunt and set up bait it really needs something going for it other than it being bulky otherwise it only fulfils a very limited function (d rank definition) Except you said it yourself. Infernape is better. The pros for using it: Fake out, feint, ability to run mixed and ohko a good chunk of the meta game (ttar with fighting moves, dragons with hp ice, volca with stone edge, ect.) Infernape literally does the same thing and in most cases does it better. And it's not like we are comparing it to an S tier mon, infernape is being argued for B- or C and it hard outclasses it. And this is before even talking about it's lack of a reliable stab move with high bp. Regenerator alone on something that simply does not have the bulk to abuse it does not justify a reason to use mienshao. This was kinda my fault. I was supposed to write it struggles vs intimidate not follow me, I guess my mind was lost when I wrote that. -1 252 Atk Mamoswine Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Metagross: 68-84 (36.3 - 44.9%) -1 252 Atk Mamoswine Icicle Crash vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Hydreigon: 108-128 (64.6 - 76.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO -1 252 Atk Mamoswine Ice Shard vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Garchomp: 100-120 (54.6 - 65.5%) My Point was if I didn't misspeak should have been that in general it could be played around too easily with intimidates. In a lot of cases it just hit things into berry range and could get ohkod in return. This all being said Mamo is really not the hill I'm going to die on so I'm fine with it being C since it would have to get moved up with the intimidate changes anyway. To address your point. If it would have the support required to sweep due to it's lack of bulk and generally being fairly reliant on it's single target fire stab it would really require follow me support to be effective. But even with follow me support it's still in danger of it being ohko'd due to it's weakness to 3 of the most common spread moves in the meta. It is overly reliant on scarf to be effective and it becomes very easy to protect scout it and play around it. If you were going to make any argument for it to be moved up out of D it would be because of it's role as a revenge killer and even then I still don't think it's very good. Not sure in what world Darmanitan is ever sweeping an entire team but I'll just give you the benefit of the doubt and presume that was hyperbole. It is in no way a stupid comparison to make, it is very clearly a gimped version of what it should be and pointing that out is perfectly reasonable and justifiable. With how things stand in MMO atm Scrafty simply doesn't have a role. With a lack of viable Psychic types (no latios/latias/cresselia) it's dark typing becomes fairly obsolete. Out of our viable psychic types it loses vs Metagross and Doesn't even reliably beat Reuniclus. Looking at the ghosts, Gengar typically carries focus blast, chand usually spams fire moves and the TR ghosts will just burn it. It's only role that is serves is to be a worse top that is less shit vs Reuniclus and even at that it doesn't do a good job. If you are too look at it's offensive capabilities (ability to carry ice punch for chomp, threaten Reuniclus, ect.) Conk outclasses it. 252+ Atk Scrafty Crunch vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Reuniclus: 150-176 (69.1 - 81.1%) 252+ Atk Guts Conkeldurr Facade (140 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Reuniclus: 175-206 (80.6 - 94.9%) And even Breloom does a better job at shutting down Reuniclus by being able to prevent Trick Room by threatening with spore + being able to threaten Reuniclus even through rage powder amoonguss support. So again just like the other mons that I mentioned, Scrafty has a "very limited function" and is "easily outclassed by pokemon in higher rankings" Also known as the defintion of D tier. I don't know why you are quoting the tier definitions at me like I can't read, when I literally wrote about their functions and how they are limited as well as writing about how they get outclassed in pretty much every single example. At least you are right about Magnezone.

There was no mention of certain Gen 8 Mechanics, mostly the dynamic speed changes and the nerf to the 50% healing berries. Both of these changes are hugely impactful in doubles and if we are getting doubles matchmaking it would be very important to know these changes. (Please don't add the dynamic speed changes, gengar NP or remove levitate)(Also give Hydreigon draco meteor)

My suggestions of what to move down: Dusclops: It really doesn't do anything unique. Sure it's bulky but in comparison to all the other TR mons it is by far the weakest after getting taunted and even if it does get TR off it is the least threatening out of all of them inside of TR. It just seems too passive to even make use of the 4 turns you should have to go aggressive inside of TR. Mienshao: As far as fast fake outs go it gets outclassed by infernape. Mien doesn't even have a reliable fighting stab since HJK is a huge risk in doubles where protect is everywhere so it has to restort to using Drain Punch without having any bulk to make drain punch really worth it. Golduck: I feel like in almost all scenarios you would rather just have your own weather to reset the opponents weather rather than having to run a sub par mon just to remove it. Seismitoad: It does some things but it is really very niche. If you are looking for a bulky support Swampert is better than it in most aspects. If you are looking for it to be a rain sweeper kabu outclasses it. Ground stab doesn't seem very splashable or required on a rain team. Machamp: Kinda weak since we have only 1/3 confusion chance. Doesn't really do much that top/breloom/conk don't do better. Medicham: Read Mienshao Mamoswine: In theory should be good against dragons with ice shard or scarf but struggles a lot vs follow me and with rotom being everywhere it doesn't really do much. Darmanitan: Just an infernape with a worse movepool, doesn't live anything without sash, doesn't outspeed anything it needs to without scarf. Scrafty: Read Machamp, kinda sucks until we get HAs. Excavalier: Movepool isn't that great for doubles. Struggles a lot vs the common intimidate mons . As far as TR sweepers there are just better options, and scizor for the most part outclasses it with it's plethora of support moves. Got some thoughts about other things in the other tiers that I think should be moved, will post that later.

With so many people suggesting meme mons C is getting far too overcrowded, also feels weird to see viable mons and meme mons in the same tier, feels like we really need D or should kick out some of the worse C ranks. Side point but Slowking should always be at least a little bit above Slowbro. It's simply just the better mon. The defence swap while sounding minimal is a pretty big deal. With TR setters the main thing is making sure you have enough bulk to set up the TR. Against special threats such as Dragon Gem Mence, Hydreigon, All Rotom Forms, Gengar, Volca, Chandelure & Abomasnow the extra special bulk helps massively and you can even EV it to live Sniper Kingdra Draco Meteor without losing too much spatk. Looking at the top physical attackers: Chomp, Top, TTar, Metagross, Conk, Exca, Ferro, Scizor. It already hard walls Top, Most meta sets and Conk. Chomp even at +2 doesn't ohko Slowking, Exca doesn't really threaten it, Not does a choice locked TTar. And Ferro and Scizor have to play around flamethrower. And all of this is before even mentioning that you can use intimidates to make up for slowkings lack of defence

Saw this thread and thought I would offer my input as someone who has been a very prominent figure in the pokemmo doubles metagame since 2015. Somewhat disagree with Togekiss. While it is certainly one of the strongest mons in the current meta it has a big weakness in which it is a follow me abuser that is weak to a lot of most common and best spread moves (Rotom Discharge, Abomasnow Blizzard & Tyranitar Rock Slide) making it significantly easier to play around than it was pre sinnoh. Solid A+ (could still maybe be S but it's nowhere near as clear as some people make it out to be.) Agree on A+/S for Chomp. Leaning more towards A+ though. Since it really relies on follow me support to be that effective and even with follow me it gets far too threatened by icy wind/blizzards to sweep reliably. Kingdra, I agree with most of what Julian said. Imo critdra is massively overrated and feels more like a cheesey gimmick than anything. It's typically ran with double follow me support and even then it's not that difficult to chip it down with spread moves, not to mention the numerous support moves that help to shut down this tactic that for some reason people aren't utilising. Rain kingdra still good though A- Blastoise I have mixed feelings about. While it is really good in most cases it just gets outclassed by togekiss so struggles to find team slots, and having it on the same team as togekiss is kinda trolling. That being said I think there are a few common Togekiss pairings that should probably be used by Blastoise instead and so I wouldn't mind putting it kinda high. B+/A- Pretty much agree on Arca and Gengar and don't think either opinion is that controversial. Maybe it's just me but I've always found ludi very underwhelming. It suffers badly from 4MSS and doesn't really offer much to a rain team other than dealing with Rotom-W and Gastro which IMO other mons do better. I would rate it C+ or B. But it seems like everyone else is valuing it higher. Out of the mons mentioned above: Aero is a really solid support mon that also helps deal with togekiss well. Solid C+ Dusclops, despite what it's ability is called puts out no pressure and is complete taunt bait. It does some things well (not die and set up TR) but does everything else terribly. Imo you would need to add a D rank to even include it on the list. Bisharp as others have mentioned is solid and has some cool uses. Could fit into C or B Breloom like Julian said is actually good. It has a lot of uses. It has a lot of really good matchups vs a lot of the top mons and the ones that it doesn't it can usually sleep especially if it has follow me support. It is one of the best checks against Rotom Wash and Mow, has a really good matchup into sand, disrupts TR teams with spore and completely shuts down Gyarados and Gastrodon as well as being a status absorber. B at a minimum Gigalith is a monster and is criminally underutilised. Incredibly bulky TR sweeper + weather setter and has access to some cool support moves, also abuses the doubles damage bug well. B at a minimum Jellicent Pretty much agree with Orange. Solid B Manectric is pretty bad tbh. But it's one of the only lightning rod users we have. Could go into C Slowking as Julian stated isn't really that useful and is generally a worse reuniclus. It's main advantage is being able to handle metagross (which is often a very difficult mon for TR to deal with) significantly better. C Crobat is mostly just a worse Aero but deals with Hitmontop better so it has it's niche. C Kabutops agree with others it's probably a C Abomasnow is fucking insane and has some really good matchups against some of the other top mons. Really should be A- imo. The other ones that I haven't talked about are all really bad 100%. People are really sleeping on these. Can't say I've ever played BW doubles so there is likely some reasoning behind these. But from a purely Pokemmo metagame perspective this looks so very wrong. As Orange mentioned a Kingdra core is probably worth mentioning because it's so used. Probably best to limit it to just togekiss since the double follow me cores are all pretty flawed in their own way and new players won't know how to build around them. Imo you shouldn't include Chomp + Togekiss without also including something that covers the ice weakness. Most likely Rotom-W as Orange mentioned or Metagross You could also include Discharge Rotom-W + RS Chomp with or without togekiss as a Para Flinch core. I'll link below my own viability rankings that I made a couple of months back if anyone wants to compare: (Was very torn in S ranks and honestly any of Rotom-W, Toge, Top, or Chomp could be put in S) Closing thoughts: Jolteon is trash, Wide lens is a meme.