Double Battles Viability Thread

[Rendiz]

Imo Blissey should be A+. Its pretty strong in the new more stall oriented metagame that became popular to fuck the scarf metagame. but still struggles a lot vs offensive physical teams which are still pretty viable right now. Blissey really isn't very threatening offensively and still relies a lot on T-Wave to do anything vs a lot of these attackers.

 

TBH the entire tier list needs to be revised. Not going into much detail for the majority of them since they are fairly self explanatory but if you want more reasoning I can further elaborate wherever is needed.

 

My tier list:

S+ Rank:

Metagross - Read the definition of S rank and you know why.

 

 

S Rank:

Gengar - Best revenge killer in the tier with a few other flexible options.

Milotic - Best physical wall we have in the tier with good recovery, one of the main reasons for the current slower metagame. Has icy wind to support the rest of the team

Blastoise - Best support in the tier. Access to loads of great support moves, insane bulk + good typing.

 

A+ Rank:

Salamence - Strong revenge killer with intimidate to support your team. Struggles to dent any of the walls without CB

Gyarados - On paper weaker than Salamence but has better typing and easier to play around weaknesses.

Tyranitar - Sandstorm bulk allows this to beat most special attackers, best pursuit user in the tier. Really strong wall breaker / sweeper with support.

Hitmontop - Best pivot in the game with access to a lot of strong support moves

Blissey - Strongest special wall. Really strong status user with natural cure to avoid getting toxiced itself. Really strong vs slower teams.

Venusaur - Risen to prominence by the slower meta by having strong match ups vs the popular walls

 

A Rank:

Ludicolo - Once a S rank god, now a lot less popular due to the popularity of toxic and Venusaur.

Aerodactyl - Lacks the power to break most of the slower teams + doesn't fare well vs scarf users. Still solid late game sweeper

Heracross - Very strong wall breaker /  revenge killer, able to dent all of the current walls with CB mega horn or threaten out attackers with scarf.

Manectric - Best T-Wave absorber in the tier as well as best Gyarados support. Can sweep easily if it gets a boost and paired with a strong attacker to force its counters out.

Blaziken - Best mixed wall breaker in the tier but requires some support to be effective. Can kill pretty much everything with the right set / prediction. Also great scarf sweeper.

Tentacruel - Has a good match up vs a lot of the common walls and is great vs slower teams as well as countering RD teams very effectively. Fairly unpredictable move pool can make lots of offensive threats wary of switching in and paired with a strong physical attacker can tear through wall teams.

Starmie - Typically one of the best anti-meta mons at our disposal. Has access to screens as well as super effective moves vs a huge amount of the meta game. Great support or sweeper, can lack the firepower to kill some walls if using on a slower team.

Vaporeon - Great support with a strong offensive presence itself. Access to HH and Icy wind makes it a prime candidate to support wall breakers as well as being able to hit everything that doesn't resist it hard with Muddy water.

 

B+ Rank:

Jolteon - Overall really strong sweeper but is held back my lots of bad match ups and the ability to fuck you over by giving the opponent lightning rod boosts

Snorlax - Doesn't have the sticking power that the other walls tend to have but if you can get it in for free on toxics or other low impact turns it is able to fuck shit up with Double-Edge

Dragonite - Another really strong mixed wall breaker. Able to destroy most of the tier with prediction but its typing + lack of speed forces it to run often due to being OHKOd by ice attacks.

Gardevoir - Has a lot of really cool sets at its disposal. Has access to numerous status and support moves as well as having very respectable base stats. It usually requires a lot of support but with the correct support it can tear through teams.
Kingdra - Very strong rain dance sweeper. However it requires a lot of support to be effective as well as RD being a somewhat risky strategy.

Arcanine - Good intimidate user but struggles to find many switches since it takes super effective damage from most of the spread moves in the game but still a fairly strong wall with quite an unpredictable move set making it risky to switch into.

Typhlosion - Very strong late game sweeper in the ideal situation. Pretty much a Charizard on steroids with scarf eruption. The only problem is that it has lots of counters are requires a lot of support to be able to sweep effectively. High risk / High reward.

 

B  Rank:

Swampert - Still a really solid physical wall but can often by detrimental to your team by not enough enough vs other walls and having to run vs Venusaurs and Ludicolos.

Hariyama - Solid support that hits hard. But is very slow and has a lot of bad match ups.
Scizor - Has a really strong defensive typing due to fire typing not being very prevalent, resists a lot of the common threats attacks and immune to toxic makes this thing an amazing physical wall but random troll fire attacks can cost you.
Clefable - Mostly outclassed by Blastoise but has a few cool things it can do as well as being a better support to types weak to electric / grass.
Kangaskhan - 

Raichu - Has a really fast fake out + lots of other strong support moves. Also has a lot of strong mixed attacking moves that forces other Pokemon to be wary of it, Although can't take any hits for shit.

Marowak - Alternative lightning rod support. Really strong killing power but lack of speed fucks it. Also can be a liability as Gyarados support since you can take multiple double intimidates.

Porygon2 - Fairly bulky and good typing. But often just tends to be a weaker Blissey spreading T-Waves. Can troll teams with trace.

Charizard - Mostly outclassed by Blaziken due to not having fighting typing but can sweep late game if you can remove its many counters

 

Everything after this nobody cares about anyway. If you think i missed something tell me.

Edited November 27, 2016 by Rendiz
forgot snorlax, forgot typhlosion also.

[OrangeManiac]

I agree mostly with everything Rendiz mentioned but gonna give my thoughts on a few ones.

 

Blastoise is good Follow Me supporter but not S good. It's especially good when helping Salamence to set up but stopping this is fairly easy. So many Pokemon have access to Icy Wind/Blizzard which makes the whole strategy unreliable to say the least. Blastoise also checks Dragons and has Fake Out which is all fine and nice but for me something to be an S I really need to go out my way to teambuild particularly against certain Pokemon/combo. Is throwing Ice moves centralizing? Sure, but relatively easy. A+? Not really on board with that either. A? Sure.

 

Tyranitar is fine at A. It's fairly easily dealt by pretty much anything movepool wise. Barely has chance to set up DD and when it does it doesn't get lots of hits off. If everyone and their mother didn't run Metagross I would probably sign this but Tyranitar offensively doesn't seem A+ threat to me. Also the high usage of Top shuts Ttar down even on difficult looking cases.

 

Venusaur is too high at A+ imo. It checks multiple Pokemon nicely, stalls the shit out of the fattys but being weak to pretty much everything Life Orb users should have not many problems with him. I find A better because it works really well against defensiveish Pokemon but not so much against offensive. And for me the highest ranks belong to Pokemon which do perform on a high level regardless of the teams they face.

 

Teentacruel is a bit too rarely seen to be A at this point. It sure has some nice traits and shutting down RD has some nice value but considering how RD teams are getting less trendy I think this a bit too much of a niche to be A rank. Speed and movepool are nice but the inability to take Rock Slides and EQs make Tenta really a switch in against Psychicless/Thunderboltless special offense. And mainly only bulky waters+Venusaur fit in in this criteria.

 

Edit: I think Kanga has too little love. Yeah I know it's main reason for existence is fast STAB Fake Out but it's a nice hit'n' run Pokemon if there's support like Intimidate users. B+ seems fair to me.

 

 

Edited November 27, 2016 by OrangeManiac

[DoubleJ]

8 hours ago, OrangeManiac said:

I don't think Blissey is anywhere near Metagross usage. My rough estimation would be 25-35 % usage for Blissey.

 

However, as usage isn't the sole arbitrer of ranks I'm gonna say it's A+ worthy as how good it is. Special offense has become so much more deadly with Life Orbs. What you can do now is to absolutely shut down two special attackers on the field with Blissey and guarantee at least one of your Pokemon are saved in any case possible, possibly two if other Protects. At worst the special attackers can look hopeless doing no damage on Blissey while draining their own HP with Life Orb. In addition physical attackers don't completely laugh at Blissey and even when facing one they need to really concentrate on it because of Blissey's Tbolt/Ice Beam/Flamethrower can really hurt the powerful Doubles attackers.

You'd be surprised how disgusting Doubles is right now. Nearly every team packs a Blissey these days and that's simply to spam Toxic/Twave with a Natural Cure pokemon that can double as a Cleric to combat the nasty stall meta we currently live in. Right now, Blissey is an A+ from a support standpoint at least.

 

#ripdoublesusage 

[DoubleJ]

Also, I'm going to give this a reboot later today. 

[Rendiz]

@OrangeManiac

I was 50/50 with Blastoise between S and A+. I feel like it's really hard to justify a pokemon running almost exclusively support moves to be S rank. I honestly feel as though you are under rating Toise a bit and seem to be stuck in the old Follow me + DDance mindset, with the introduction of Orb a lot of Pokemon don't need to have set up moves to be threatening. I also feel as though toxic on blastoise is under utilized considering how much it helps most of the pokemon you would want to pair with it (hits bulky waters / hitmontop for dragons / ttar). Also the fastest common fake out is not to be underestimated.

 

Ttar I would make a similar argument as with Toise. I can't even remember the last time I used a DDance TTar and I feel as though if you use one and are expecting for it to sweep you are being relatively naive. One of the reasons why I rate it so highly is because of the popularity of scarf gengar with Ttar being able to pursuit trap is with ease. Not only this but with the rise of popularity of status you can easily wear down a toxiced hitmontop in order to let ttar be more threatening. Not only this but you are under estimating its wall breaking potential, with fireblast it can hit metagross very hard and unless its scarf meta which is becoming less and less used it will outspeed meta. Admittedly it won't OHKO it but it is enough to threaten it severly. TTar covers a huge variety of roles and imo is one of the best pokemon to blind pick as well as having niche sets to counter people. Its a great check to the majority of special attackers in the tier, it can pursuit trap multiple threats such as gengar, jolteon and typhlosion. Its a strong revenge killer with scarf and can threaten out things like gyara / manectric core relatively easily. its able to remove rain allowing you to forgo rain counters where needed and shut them down using just one mon as well as being an amazing wall breaker with support.

 

I agree that venu tends to fair better vs defensive teams than it does vs offensive teams but it still isn't that bad vs offense. If the offensive threats aren't able to OHKO venusaur you can bet your life that they are scared AF about the potential of sleep powder to completely ruin their day, often all it would take would be an intimidate / fake out switch and you are guaranteed some free turns of screwing over their team. Allowing a Venusaur to stay alive can be a huge risk for both offensive and defensive teams as well as it being exceptionally strong in the current meta.

 

In Tentas case I probably rated it higher than most because I like it so much right now in the current meta and most of the time it feels really strong. Maybe I'm onto something that others aren't onto yet with liking it as much as I do and I guess only time will tell. I admit it is pretty niche but I personally couldn't justify putting it any lower than B+.

 

In Kangas case I honestly can't justify putting it any higher. It just feels really low impact when it does anything outside of fake out. It's not that fast, it's not that strong, it gets fucked by intimidates. This is not to say it's unusable, I still think everything I put at B rank is viable which is the reason why I included them, but to put it in the same category as the other B+ I listed was simply impossible since it isn't nearly as strong.

 

 

 

These are all just my opinions and it's fine if you disagree with them. But going a little bit more into my reasons for my rankings. These are mostly from my experiences in my PSL battles as well as practise battles and discussions with some of the better doubles players. And it seems as though currently the common core that is used is: Metagross + Gengar + Milotic + Venusaur with the last 2 slots tending to be a mixture of support + intimidate users with the occasional wall breaker thrown into the mix. Most of my ranks either show how well they fit into a team build similar to this or how well they matchup vs these teams.

 

I honestly did the write up most for my own benefit, with this only being a fraction of what I came up with. As I felt like I needed to work on my teambuilding and how to beat the current metagame, just felt like throwing my tier rankings out there to help revive this thread.

[Viking]

here some statistics usages i've made by myself. I assume some ppl run blissey in 100% of their teams and gg to those who dont use it :D

I never had any problems with blissey in the last months because it could be broken quite easily but actually i see some matches won by toxic stall / twave ...

(don't ask from where and how i've calced that it's top secret)

[DoubleJ]

5 minutes ago, Viking said:

here some statistics usages i've made by myself. I assume some ppl run blissey in 100% of their teams and gg to those who dont use it :D

I never had any problems with blissey in the last months because it could be broken quite easily but actually i see some matches won by toxic stall / twave ...

(don't ask from where and how i've calced that it's top secret)

Lordofangmar the real MVP for sitting down for hours watching the doubles replays from the tournament system. 

[fredrichnietze]

4 hours ago, OrangeManiac said:

 

Blastoise is good Follow Me supporter but not S good. It's especially good when helping Salamence to set up but stopping this is fairly easy. So many Pokemon have access to Icy Wind/Blizzard

remember that match i brought a blizzard vaporeon vs eloy in psl season 1? 7 blizzard misses in 4 turns. thats right, 3x turns missing BOTH opponents. blizzard has a 51% chance of missing one of two opponents and if you are fighting a dragonite or salamance that miss could cost you a game.

[DoubleJ]

Announcement:

• This viability thread has been updated to better represent the current doubles meta. Please review the changes and weigh in should you feel strongly about making a change yourself.
• The "S-Rank" is now comprised of Metagross, Gengar, Blastoise, and Milotic, simply because these four pokemon are the best of the best at what they do and they have the versatility to remain successful no matter how the meta changes. 
• Any changes from rank A through C were made based on my own practice, discussion in this thread, and with what I've seen in the current doubles metagame. 
• Rank D is comprised of any pokemon with prior usage that simply lack much viability at all in our current doubles meta. 

 

Enjoy =)

 

 

EDIT: Added a disclaimer noting that our usage statistics are over one year old. Also moved Ninjask from D to C rank.

Edited November 28, 2016 by DoubleJ

[Rendiz]

Honestly would probably just be better to remove the usage. It just seems really misleading for anyone trying to get into the tier.

[DoubleJ]

Just now, Rendiz said:

Honestly would probably just be better to remove the usage. It just seems really misleading for anyone trying to get into the tier.

It was so much work for me, but eventually it's gonna go. Just not tonight. It's too soon Rendiz brah, just too soon. 

[OrangeManiac]

5 hours ago, fredrichnietze said:

remember that match i brought a blizzard vaporeon vs eloy in psl season 1? 7 blizzard misses in 4 turns. thats right, 3x turns missing BOTH opponents. blizzard has a 51% chance of missing one of two opponents and if you are fighting a dragonite or salamance that miss could cost you a game.

Icy Wind is superior on most cases, but I'm just saying Blizzard is an option and not a bad one. You don't need to hit both opponents, just the dragon. And that's 70%. Yep, 70% to OHKO the dragon by pretty much any Pokemon. So I'm just saying when I run Toise and Mence and I face a potential Icy Wind/Blizzard user I'm not feeling really easy on that situation.

Edited November 28, 2016 by OrangeManiac