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Double Battles Viability Thread


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Thanks BF, these are clutch. 

Its a pleasure filming tournaments on the behalf of the community! :)

 

I try to keep it entertaining and informative.

 

 

EDIT: Its a first for me to have a person I am filming with actually win a tournament in the same tape.

Edited by Bestfriends
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Move up:

Salamence - S - The best DDance user in the game as well as having a CB set and mixed attack set which are also deadly. It outclasses Gyarados with a better base stats as well as far better coverage. Paired with Blastoise it can set up with ease and start sweeping.

 

Hitmontop - A+ - Probably the best support poke around. As a fake out user it outclasses Kanga due to its ability. Hitmontop despite not having the highest base stats can still hit things pretty hard due to it having pretty solid coverage and access to helping hand allows for it to forgo attacking moves for the most part while still being threatening.

 

Blastoise - A - Best used as support for Salamence but can also be used to support other pokemon like TTar. Blastoise is a really reliable way to set up Salamence and feels stronger than lightning rod Gyara combo due to having far more staying power than many of the lightning rod users. Blastoise has really good bulk along with an amazing moveset with really nice support abilities.

 

Tyranitar - B+- Now that sandstorm gives SpDef to rock types TTar has become a much more threatening pokemon making it very hard to take down outside of fighting attacks. If you team it with other rock types that benefit from sandstorm like Aero then that makes it exponentially better. TTar can also benefit from Blastoise support to either set up with DDance or hammer away with CB attacks. The only reason I wouldn't put it A is because of how strong Hitmontop is against it.

 

Move down:

Gyara - A+ - See Salamence. While Gyara is obviously still really strong i feel like its just slightly weaker than Salamence.

 

Kingdra - A - I changed my mind about Kingdra. Kingdra only really has one viable move set which makes it really easy to play around and makes rain teams easy to predict. It is really threatening given the right circumstances but if your opponent is runnign anti-rain pokes it makes kingdra so much worse. Also i feel like Kingdra is heavily enabled by Ludicolo since Ludicolo has more utility and a much less predictable moveset, I would say to swap Ludi and Kingdra but i'm not sure Ludicolo is quite strong enough for A+.

 

Kangaskhan - B+/B - Has Kanga's usage dropped low enough for us to move it down yet? It really doesn't have much going for it outside of a fast fake out.

 

Dusclops - B - Explosion isn't really as prevalent in doubles as it used to be making an extra ghost type less needed than before. I also feel like there is a lot more Lum berries around now as well as i've encountered a lot more heracross. Both of these points make Dusclops niche a lot less viable than it was before. 

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I guess there is nothing stopping Gyara being S also.
As for the mix set its an interesting gimmick but you would lose alot of coverage (even more if tbolt as well) and maybe protect and need to invest too much into SpAtk to get a chance at OHKOing for it to be that functional most of the time.

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  • 4 weeks later...

It would be great to see an updated list, especially Kangaskhan being A+ is very misleading (I think i requested this back in July, but this thread never had many people posting in it.) I agree with most of Rendi's changes, except Gyarados. Gyarados is still S rank, most notably because of the fact that it isn't weak to icy wind/blizzard. As far as Blastoise goes, I would perhaps go as far as ranking it A+. I also think Clefable should be at least B rank - it is almost as good as blastoise, but with a bit less bulk and lack of fake out.

 

EDIT:

After taking a closer look at the B-list, I have a couple of other changes:

Rhydon to B, Marowak to B+: While Rhydon's secondary rock typing might seem to give it some advantages over Marowak, such as STAB RS and normal-resistance, these advantages are diminished by the plethora of weaknesses that comes with it. 4x weakness to grass makes it go down to anything that is supposed to counter Swampert, a fairly common pokemon. Marowak on the other hand, survives things like giga drain from Gengar. The 4x water weakness is the same story over again, while Rhydon dies to literally any water move, Marowak survives things like muddy water from Swampert or Vaporeon. Rock also comes with a nasty weakness to meteor mash and EQ, extremely common moves. On the offensive side, Marowak simply hits harder, and can do cool things like DE without taking recoil. The usage of the two pokemon also reflects this argument.

Edited by PandaJJ
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Good point, but it still doesn't change the fact that Marowak outclasses Rhydon in almost all areas.

 

I also want to see Dodrio in F rank, just to illustrate a point.

Choice band rhydon has some extra power over marowak and the stab rock lets it ohko dragonite/salamence/gyarados, and the extra power lets it ohko metagross. It has enough bulk for surviving stuff like hp ice from gengar, meteor mash from metagross, depending on hp investment, and even stuff like +2 earthquake from salamence/dragonite. Marowak can barely handle non invested water attacks from vaporeon/swampert anyways, assuming that neither of them just bops marowak with a hydro pump for the ohko. 

 

Also rhydon stops dodrio, unlike marowak.

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Choice band rhydon has some extra power over marowak and the stab rock lets it ohko dragonite/salamence/gyarados, and the extra power lets it ohko metagross. It has enough bulk for surviving stuff like hp ice from gengar, meteor mash from metagross, depending on hp investment, and even stuff like +2 earthquake from salamence/dragonite. Marowak can barely handle non invested water attacks from vaporeon/swampert anyways, assuming that neither of them just bops marowak with a hydro pump for the ohko.

Also rhydon stops dodrio, unlike marowak.


Low kick tho. So op. S rank is obvious
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Choice band rhydon has some extra power over marowak and the stab rock lets it ohko dragonite/salamence/gyarados, and the extra power lets it ohko metagross. It has enough bulk for surviving stuff like hp ice from gengar, meteor mash from metagross, depending on hp investment, and even stuff like +2 earthquake from salamence/dragonite. Marowak can barely handle non invested water attacks from vaporeon/swampert anyways, assuming that neither of them just bops marowak with a hydro pump for the ohko. 

Not only does it not OHKO after intimidate using CB Rhydon means losing protect which is extremely important on rhydon especially as it has weaknesses to almost every move around. Marowak simply outclasses Rhydon due to typing.

 

I also want to see Dodrio in F rank, just to illustrate a point.

Dodrio to F. But Doduo to S+ (Because Doubles, geddit?)...

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Choice band rhydon

 

I guess I should say, if Rhydon is not carrying protect, I don't see why you would be comparing the two. As a lightning rod supporter, not having protect kinda kills the purpose. Its power is still only equal to Marowak when holding choice band, and obtaining more powerful RS at the cost of being locked into a move is a bad exchange imo. All of my comments about their defensive typing still remains, in which case Rhydon clearly sucks.

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Not to be the bearer of bad news, but staff *never* took doubles usage unfortunately. I'm not sure if they changed their mind about it in the past month when I wanted to see it, but for a while, no doubles usage was recorded. 

Yeah, it was more of a plea towards the staff than anything else. I feel like as doubles is still a relatively unestablished tier and has been in a state of perpetual change. Therefor usage for doubles especially would be extremely helpful both for ranking Pokemon and for team building. Yes we can make good educated guesses but they don't hold the same weight as statistics. It feels like the staff are pushing pretty hard to make doubles be a viable competitive tier recently and usage would really help with that.

Edited by Rendiz
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Ya I haven't been given doubles usage in a long while. Fortunately the meta hasn't shifted hardly at all.

This is hardly true. Starme 22%? Kangaskhan 19%? Tyranitar 9%? If you go into a doubles tournament and expect to see more starmie and kanga than ttar, you will be surprised. I'm not sure exactly where ttar is at the moment, but I would be very interested in knowing. Not directing the lack of statistics at you of course, but I'm sure the current statistics are rather outdated.

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Ya I haven't been given doubles usage in a long while. Fortunately the meta hasn't shifted hardly at all.

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Counting only my Blastoise uses it is far above 2.3% and that isn't including all the other people who use it. You can't honestly say the meta has barely changed with Blastoise / Clef usage being so far off as well as the the pokes that Panda has already stated. I could make a whole list of Pokemon which usage is far from being applicable anymore if I was that petty.

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