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Introduction to Competitive Double Battles

OrangeManiac

By OrangeManiac
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OrangeManiac

OrangeManiac

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Posted (edited)

Welcome to the Competitive Doubles Introduction Guide. (insert cool banner)

 

 

So I had a break between classes and I realized that for some reason a guide like this does not exist in the forums yet. I've noticed that there has been a theme (well, some of my in-game friends) who seem to be intrigued by the idea of Doubles Battles but don't know exactly how to approach teambuilding, what to look for in Doubles and just in general how to play Doubles. So in short, this guide is primarily written to people who have some kind of knowledge of competitive Pokemon from Singles but don't know how to translate this knowledge to Doubles battles.

 


The dynamics of Double Battles

 


Well, how does the fact you have two Pokemon on the field change the overall dynamics of battles? Quite a lot, actually. The biggest difference in mechanics in Doubles battles compared to single battles is the fact that it is much harder to definitely determine which party has an advantageous position in each turn. In Singles the dynamics often relies on trying to do enough damage to knock out your opponent so your opponent doesn't have the chance to retaliate. In Doubles this is much more complex. In Singles if you do knock out your opponent you're granted protection for the end of the turn as your opponent does not have anything to strike you back. Unless you get a double knockout in Doubles, you always have to fear instant retaliation from your opponent's second Pokemon. Not only this but the possibility of your target Pokemon using Protect might completely save the Pokemon you were targeting to take down. This is why a seemingly good type advantage on the field doesn't necessarily grant you a favorable position in the same way as in Singles.

 

Also the fact that it is hard to tell which party has upper hand in the battle makes prediction lot harder. Where as you might feel like you're in advantageous or disadvantageous position, your opponent might also feel the same way depending of their moveset and for this reason going for too crazy overpredictions against any player is never recommended. Making plays that have high reward and low risk are almost always the way to go, don't matter how obvious those plays might seem.

 

Also notable is that having two Pokemon on the field gives a big role for Support roles in the teambuild of Doubles teams. About the particular ways you can support your other Pokemon and whole team in general will be described later in this guide.

 

 


General teambuild in Doubles

 

 


For the aforementioned reason that your highly offensive power Pokemon aren't safe after a knock out is the reason why so called "Glass cannon" Pokemon are much less useful in Doubles than they are in Singles. Good bulk on every Pokemon, no matter of its role is always helpful to grant protection from the second Pokemon. In addition, a very distinctive nature of Doubles is the high role of support Pokemon in the format. In Doubles teams are much more often build around either a certain kind of theme or built to support some Pokemon or used to take advantage of the support given by a specific Pokemon. This is not to say lots of standards from singles apply: Having variety of different type Pokemon to help to get a risk-free switch in is as useful in Doubles as in Singles.

 

 


 

The fine art of support in Double battles

 


For this sub-section I want to use a game from the highest level of competitive Pokemon: The Masters Division World Championships finals of Video Game Championships 2014. 2014 VGC Master Division finals is most known for Se Jun Park's World Championships win using a seemingly weird wild card Pachurisu in his team. Due to contrary belief Se Jun Park did not use Pachurisu because it's his favorite Pokemon or that he wanted to brag to his friends he is a World Champion of Pokemon by basically using a seemingly terrible meme Pokemon. (That might be part of it too, of course). Every experienced Doubles competitive players knows that the reason why Se Jun Park used Pachurisu is the fact that Pachurisu is an amazing Support Pokemon for his team. Pachurisu has possibly the greatest support (and damaging moves) for a Pokemon with nice defenses and abysmal offensive stats. Follow Me with a Pokemon that has high defensive stats and defensive typing consisting only one weakness is a great base to build around. Then add the fact that Pachurisu gets a Nuzzle which is very underrated move being a Paralyze inducing move that cannot be shut down with Taunt. For offensive move Pachurisu gets Super Fang and it doesn't matter what is your attack stat when you deal that solid 50% damage every hit. In so many ways Pachurisu seems like an ultimate support Pokemon to let the true stars of his team (Garchomp and Talonflame, both the strongest offensive threats of the VGC 2014 metagame) to shine.

 

I'm basically using this game to demonstrate the very difference in the mechanics between Singles and Doubles and show the fact how big of a role Support Pokemon have in the format as long as they're built around the right Pokemon.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Helpful Doubles support moves

 

 

 

There are some moves that are very distinctive in Doubles battles. I'll be describing the most important support moves for you to understand why they are used and what is used to gain from these moves.

 

Protect/Detect: The most common move of Doubles by far. Protect is an amazing move to really keep your opponent on toes when playing against you. It's specifically good for Pokemon with lots of weaknesses but can be slapped to pretty much every Doubles Pokemon there is. Whenever there's a threat from getting KO'd, Protect + attack combos can be really useful to turn seemingly bad situations into winning plays. Because Detect has lower distribution it's a superior option to prevent getting from Imprisoned, by the way.

 

Fake Out: Arguably the best overall Doubles metagame move. Forcing a flinch can really turn the tides of a battle. Shutting down the more threatening Pokemon from attacking for even for one turn can often help to take this threat down or to force a switch the very least.

 

Follow Me and Rage Powder: Follow Me and Rage Powder directs all attacks towards the user of the move. This really helps both setting up your other Pokemon as well as just to give general protection to anything that otherwise could be weak to attacks. The best supporters for this are Blastoise and Amoonguss: If your opponent does not have super effective moves against these respective Pokemon, your opponent could potentially have you even in a lockdown.

 

Wide Guard and Quick Guard: These moves were introduced in Generation 5 and they have a large impact over the Doubles metagame. Wide Guard protects your both Pokemon from spread damage moves, which are very prominent in the Doubles format mostly due to be able to beat Follow Me/Rage Powder combos. Really great move to have if your teammate (or you) are weak to Rock Slide, Earthquake or Heat Wave, for example. Quick Guard protects both Pokemon from priority attacks. This is a really helpful move if you decide to run some kind of a glass cannon Pokemon, such as Alakazam or you have Tailwind up and are prone to getting outsped by priority moves despite of your high speed.

 

Tailwind: Aforementioned Tailwind helps you boost the speed of your team for 4 turns. When your bulky attackers are now suddenly fast and bulky, the effect can be enormous.

 

Helping Hand: Really good move for defensive Pokemon when paired with an offensive one. If these Pokemon lack their own offensive presence, the smartest thing to do is help to make your partner's moves become 1,5x stronger. Most commonly used by Pokemon like Hitmontop and Vaporeon.

 

Feint: Feint breaks a Protect for the respective turn. This can be a really helpful and rather surprising move to take down a Pokemon that expects to be safe.

 

 

 

Helpful Doubles support abilities

 

 

Intimidate: The most common Doubles support ability and it's not hard to see why. Getting a -1 on Attack is nice against one Pokemon but even nicer against two. Really annoyance for every physically oriented team. Clear Body is basically the reason Metagross was so prevalent in old PokeMMO Doubles metagame: Because Intimidate is so annoying.

 

Lightningrod/Motor Drive: Great for any Flying or Water-type oriented team, and double the better with Gyarados. Redirecting the attacks of your main weakness can be the best support a Pokemon could ask for.

 

Inner Focus: Great for leads to protect yourself from getting Fake Out'd flinched.

 

Prankster: Mainly only for a thing for Whimsicott but getting a priority for non attacking moves is huge for a support Pokemon to set up priority Tailwind, which is Whimsicott's main role.

 

 

 

Possible themes in Doubles teams

 

 

 

It is very typical to build a Doubles team around a certain theme, much more than in Singles. This is mainly due to the fact that pulling off any strategy containing non-damaging moves is much more easier and safe with two Pokemon on the field rather than one. Here are a few example of teams you could run in Doubles fairly easily:

 

Weather: Let's start from the most obvious ones. Thanks to introduction of Drizzle Pelipper and a couple of new Sand Stream mons, weather is highly prevalent in Singles as well. But you could argue it is probably even more prevalent in Doubles. You can revert a weather mid-turn and still have offensive presence. You're in much lesser risk in bringing your weather Pokemon in Doubles if you predict correctly where as the risk is very much there in Singles.

 

Trick Room: A highly useful move in Doubles. This is because using two slow mons to take advantage of the reverted speeds for 4 turns is much more useful than taking advantage of this with one Pokemon. Also, in Doubles you only use 50% of the turn to set up a Trick Room - your other Pokemon may still perform an attack. Like mentioned before slow bulky attackers are much more valuable in Doubles than in Singles, which also gives Trick Room a big role in Doubles. When you can turn the one thing that is good about fast sweepers against themselves you can see why Trick Room is really a threat in Doubles.

 

Tailwind: Very useful move in highly offensive metagame. Doubling the speed of your whole team can really help you to annoy possible scarfers as well let your bulky attackers be the stars of the game.

 

This is not to say your team has to be any of these and there are endless of other teams to build your team around in. But this is just to get you a kind of an idea what to look for.

 

 

 

The differences in Doubles metagames

 

 


To conclude this guide, I want to also make an example how much the dynamics of the Doubles metagame may change for having (or not having) dominant Pokemon in the metagame. For this case I'm going to use VGC 2016 and VGC 2017 as examples.

 

Because of VGC 2016 allowing the clearly broken Primal Kyogre and Primal Groudon, the whole metagame revolved around supporting these two Pokemon. VGC 2016 is the ultimate example of what I would like to describe as a "support heavy Doubles metagame". In support heavy Doubles metagame, the metagame basically revolves around supporting the obviously strongest Pokemon of the metagame with the right Pokemon.

 

The first and most clear demonstration of this is the fact that both finalists used Lightningrod Pokemon in their team in finals. Wolfe Glick used Raichu and Jonathan Evans used a Manectric. This is clearly to support Primal Kyogre from getting struck by electric attacks, which both deems as probably their most important Pokemon in their team. In addition to this looking at both of their teams you can see that rather bringing the strongest seeming Pokemon and slapping them in one team, they used support Pokemon like Hitmontop and Bronzong rather. 

 

Spoiler

 

 

A contary to this is what in Smogon was referred a "Goodstuff" teambuild and this is more common when there isn't Pokemon that are notably superior than others. Metagames supporting Goodstuff teambuilds allow much more room in teambuilds and they allow you to bring a large variety of different things. Basically the options are endless. An example of this is the VGC 2017 metagame. Notice that neither players had a single same Pokemon in their team, which for a format like VGC is quite incredibly unique.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

The challenge to you as a reader is to try to figure out if you find our Unova Doubles metagame more of a "Heavy Support" or "Goodstuff" metagame. I don't personally know yet, I guess only time will tell.

 

Anyways, I hoped I liked this guide. All the input is more than welcome, even though this particular guide I would like to keep as my own written. I don't want to hold any kind of monopoly to demonstrate how to play Doubles so if there's anyone who wants to do same kind of guide, all the power to you.

 

 

Disclaimer: I know that 6v6 Doubles and Battle Spot Doubles are two very different formats. If I see someone mentioning this even once I'll swear I'll find you. Regardless, VGC battles are still great to demonstrate the difference in dynamics between Singles and Doubles and showing the very highest level of gameplay I think is very much needed to demonstrate what my points base on.

 

 

Edited by OrangeManiac
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MaatthewMLG

MaatthewMLG

Posted
Posted (edited)

where is this guys who always say 

Spoiler

VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC

VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC

 

Edited by MaatthewMLG
vgc
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GeneralVenican

GeneralVenican

Posted
Posted
29 minutes ago, MaatthewMLG said:

where is this guys who always say 

  Hide contents

VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC

VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC VGC

 

@RysPicz @Blu3Breath

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OrangeManiac

OrangeManiac

Posted
  • Author
Posted
1 minute ago, fredrichnietze said:

wot

 

Because a guide which is specifically made to give builds to a certain metagame is definitely the same thing as trying to get the reader to understand what the Double Battles strategies and mechanics are all about. Yes, JJ does explain some of the core mechanics what comes to Doubles play in his first post but it is nowhere as much in-depth about this subject and furthermore that was not the emphasis of that guide. Not to take anything away from that JJ's guide because we all know it was great during Generation 3 era, all I'm saying this is a completely different thing than what JJ was writing about. Which you would have obviously realized if you read at least one paragraph before commenting.

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notmudkip0

notmudkip0

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, OrangeManiac said:

Forgot that was actually a thing in Gen5. Well, you aren't wrong. If there's a legitimate way to get Dank Void on Smeargle through Metronome or something then I guess I'll change that.

Depends on the mechanics, if it goes by Gen 7 then it'll be a 50 acc move locked to Darkrai, but if 4-6 then yeah it'll be one of the best moves you can use.

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DoubleJ

DoubleJ

Posted
Posted
56 minutes ago, OrangeManiac said:

Because a guide which is specifically made to give builds to a certain metagame is definitely the same thing as trying to get the reader to understand what the Double Battles strategies and mechanics are all about. Yes, JJ does explain some of the core mechanics what comes to Doubles play in his first post but it is nowhere as much in-depth about this subject and furthermore that was not the emphasis of that guide. Not to take anything away from that JJ's guide because we all know it was great during Generation 3 era, all I'm saying this is a completely different thing than what JJ was writing about. Which you would have obviously realized if you read at least one paragraph before commenting.

So sensitive Orange, be chill. 

 

@fredrichnietze, someone else is doing our job for us. Praise them. 

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DoubleJ

DoubleJ

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, OrangeManiac said:

kek

 

I mean, it's pretty hard to figure out from the initial post if Fred was being just joking or did he accuse me to wrongly made that statement as he was quoting to. Seems like he was just dank memeing around so myb.

In all fairness Fred is probably the most serious dude I know...

 

... in bed =)

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fredrichnietze

fredrichnietze

Posted
Posted
Just now, OrangeManiac said:

kek

 

I mean, it's pretty hard to figure out from the initial post if Fred was being just joking or did he accuse me to wrongly made that statement as he was quoting to. Seems like he was just dank memeing around so myb.

im confused am i somehow not giving the impression i wanna fight m8? lets fight for real 1v1 blind yugioh m8 serious as seaseme street. 

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