Doubles Tier Discussion Request Thread

[Rakhmaninov]

Because the doubles metagame isn't split into tiers (although DOU/DUU might still be on the cards for discussion!), every once in a while it needs to be struck with a major challenge that everyone needs to adapt to, in order for the metagame to be revivified.

 

If sleep clause were removed, we would see:

- a massive uptick in amoonguss

- lum berry on everything 

- possible gravity+hypnosis/sleep powder teams

- set up/sun/trick room teams everywhere 

- torkoal+venusaur would be much scarier

 

Would it be worth risking these things to shake up the doubles metagame?

 

And if it gets too bad, then we can always just request for sleep clause to be turned back on!

[NecasInTrouble]

On 6/30/2023 at 4:41 AM, Rakhmaninov said:

Although I completely agree that this would be an amazing addition to the doubles metagame, the trouble is trying to convince the developers to code for an item that would only affect a minor metagame, as you say, with only a few niche options in singles.

 

So aside from satey goggles, my question is: should the sleep clause be reconsidered altogether given the increase in viable grass types?

Personally? Yeah I think it should be. Safetly Goggles would be nice but I think the current meta is fine without if we remove Sleep Clause. The increase in viable grass types, with Taunt and Sub being ever more popular I think it'd be fine. The meta would obviously take a bit to settle down from such a big change but overall I still think it'd be fine. Sorry for taking awhile to get back to you had to think about it. 

[PKTxKharma]

Any though about having sword dance garchomp and hydreigon draco meteor on meta dubs game ?

[OrangeManiac]

3 hours ago, PKTxKharma said:

Any though about having sword dance garchomp and hydreigon draco meteor on meta dubs game ?

Never should have been banned from Doubles in the first place, it was just a side effect of those things getting removed from those Pokemon to protect OU. I voiced about this concern before but it appeared to me that there was no intention of putting these moves back and just ban the moves from OU but instead keep those moves removed entirely from the movepools, even if it harmed Doubles tier. Obviously, if this has changed please let me know.

[TohnR]

3 hours ago, PKTxKharma said:

Any though about having sword dance garchomp and hydreigon draco meteor on meta dubs game ?

You can't have that because TC/Devs don't do move complex bans in Singles, their way to ban a move is to remove it from learnset altogether.
I know that sucks for dubs people but that's how devs want to handle their game. Consistent learnsets for every game mod (PVE & PVP)
That or it's easier to code without creating bugs :'D 

[Rakhmaninov]

2 hours ago, TohnR said:

You can't have that because TC/Devs don't do move complex bans in Singles, their way to ban a move is to remove it from learnset altogether.
I know that sucks for dubs people but that's how devs want to handle their game. Consistent learnsets for every game mod (PVE & PVP)
That or it's easier to code without creating bugs :'D

I wonder, if sleep clause is easy enough to remove, whether it would be the most interesting change to the dubs metagame?

 

Any more thoughts?

[OrangeManiac]

1 hour ago, Rakhmaninov said:

I wonder, if sleep clause is easy enough to remove, whether it would be the most interesting change to the dubs metagame?

 

Any more thoughts?

I honestly have my doubts. If we had Safety Goggles, I think Sleep Clause probably deserves to be revisited. However, my main concern is that changes in Doubles are made extremely slowly. If removing Sleep Clause ends up being a bad idea, I would at least hope the decision could be reverted quickly.

 

If we are to talk about Sleep Clauseless meta before actually trying it first, we could first look into the metas where Sleep Clause isn't a thing - VGC and Smogon Doubles. Now, in Smogon Doubles for past generations there has been Gravity + Sleep Clause to prevent the spam of 100% accurate Sleep moves allowing only Spore to be riskless sleep spam while everything else comes with a notable risk.

 

First, if we talk about VGC... It doesn't have Sleep Clause but it's because VGC in general is not really "regulated" in terms of competitiveness. At first look, sleep spam on itself hasn't really been extremely dominant for past years. Amoonguss has always been viable but Amoonguss in general has plenty of amazing traits. Every now and then some Chlorophyll Pokemon such as Venusaur makes a decent run, or someone abuses Gravity Hypnosis and makes a decent run with it. As a whole, sleep has never been anything extremely dominant for past few years in VGC. That could make a case for arguing that Sleep Clause isn't needed in Doubles. However, at a deeper look at those VGC formats it needs to be said that the power level most of the time have been significantly higher than what we have in PokeMMO. While in most VGC formats removing Amoonguss could be done in one turn with a simple double up, in PokeMMO removing Amoonguss in one turn is actually pretty damn difficult.

 

That is my biggest concern. To me, Amoonguss could become obnoxiously difficult to remove from the game, to the extent you start to see it everywhere. It's no longer a supportive Pokemon - it is the metagame. And I know this is subjective but that is not what I think we want from Doubles metagame. Pokemon like Amoonguss being the face of a metagame has always been the most obnoxious kind of metagame, everyone probably has the image of VGC2013 in their head when the World's finals was won by just putting everything to sleep with Amoonguss. The dominance of Amoonguss in Gen5 VGC environment demonstrates that when the power level is lower (and heck, they even had legendaries) and then Amoonguss will become an absolute nuisance. (Yes, sure, in Gen5 there was a bug where Sleep counter would reset after switching out and sleep duration was longer but there is no denying how dominant it was in that environment.)

 

The biggest question to me is that, do we really want that? Is improving the viability of Sun teams just slightly worth all this? We always keep asking ourselves why aren't people playing other tiers as much as OU. If the first experience people get from playing Doubles is that everyone uses Amoonguss and all their Pokemon are put to sleep while there's nothing they can do, is that really tempting to keep playing Doubles? I'd argue not. It might marginally improve the metagame in the very highest level of the game but I'd argue it just makes the playing experience in general worse.

 

With tiering, we have the power to make decisions to make the game more playable and more competitive. We don't wanna throw it down like nothing. Again, I am not against Sleep Clause being tested but we need to be really careful how it affects the overall enjoyability of Doubles.

 

 

[Munya]

Don't know if or when it'll get done but asking if it would be possible to get clauses put on a switch that I can flip to turn them on or off without requiring an update or server restart for faster deployment of such things.

[redbluegreen]

You really don't want sleep back in doubles. Sleep is a toxic mess of a mechanic which feels annoying to both play with and against both through the amount of turns that the status lasts and the multitude of low accuracy sleep moves. Typically when the community ask for rng mechanics to be banned from competitive (RNG items, bslam lax back in the day) we are met with a resounding no from the devs, but when something like sleep is already seamlessly removed from the metagame do you really want the headache of having it added back? Spore is already a strong move and Amoonguss is already strong, re-enabling sleep clause is not needed and all it would do is open an old and rotten wound that multiple people were campaigning to be removed for years. Yes there is more counterplay against it now than when it got banned but even before that it was on the verge of being removed for a long time. Think carefully about if this is actually something that you think would make the game more fun, competitive or necessary before campaigning for a change like this.

[JackSparrow333]

 

wrongly commented in this thread

Edited August 5, 2023 by JackSparrow333
wrong comment

[Munya]

6 hours ago, redbluegreen said:

You really don't want sleep back in doubles. Sleep is a toxic mess of a mechanic which feels annoying to both play with and against both through the amount of turns that the status lasts and the multitude of low accuracy sleep moves. Typically when the community ask for rng mechanics to be banned from competitive (RNG items, bslam lax back in the day) we are met with a resounding no from the devs, but when something like sleep is already seamlessly removed from the metagame do you really want the headache of having it added back? Spore is already a strong move and Amoonguss is already strong, re-enabling sleep clause is not needed and all it would do is open an old and rotten wound that multiple people were campaigning to be removed for years. Yes there is more counterplay against it now than when it got banned but even before that it was on the verge of being removed for a long time. Think carefully about if this is actually something that you think would make the game more fun, competitive or necessary before campaigning for a change like this.

This is kind of why I asked for the clauses to be put on a toggle. The problem with changing clauses currently is it takes an update to do it so once you make a change its that way until the next update.  If it gets put onto a toggle it can be done instantly.  If something like that were done it could then be changed back at a moments notice if it ended up being bad.

[GunkQing]

Is there a reason why the main doubles format picked was smogon doubles over VGC in the first place? Sleep seems to be fine there. Bring 4 of 6  allows some more strats to open up too. Meta's there constantly evolve organically without TPC interfering with tiers and clauses in the middle of it. Smogon does a great job trying to balance the game around singles but for doubles vgc seems to be just fine and less work in general. 

[OldRev]

Guard Split Shuckle + Blissey give me hard times to deal with. No matter what, i am ending up lose agaisnt this match up. Any recommendations?

[OrangeManiac]

58 minutes ago, OldRev said:

Guard Split Shuckle + Blissey give me hard times to deal with. No matter what, i am ending up lose agaisnt this match up. Any recommendations?

Perish Song

Follow Me + your own physical set up

Phasing moves like Roar/Whirlwind

A lot of Taunt

Be untouched by Chansey in the endgame and win PP stall

 

It's annoying for sure but there's ways to beat it

[Axelgor]

1 hour ago, OldRev said:

Guard Split Shuckle + Blissey give me hard times to deal with. No matter what, i am ending up lose agaisnt this match up. Any recommendations?

I wouldn't rely on taunt or roar/whirlwind considering Espeon is usually there to give Chansey magic bounce, but trick shuts down the strategy pretty comfortably. 

[QuantumShift]

Have the devs considered changing doubles format to be like vgc where you bring 6 and pick 4? I personally like the faster games of vgc and I think it impacts team building and strategy alot more

[Axelgor]

50 minutes ago, QuantumShift said:

Have the devs considered changing doubles format to be like vgc where you bring 6 and pick 4? I personally like the faster games of vgc and I think it impacts team building and strategy alot more

It is possible however something that will only be discussed down the line

[DoubleJ]

Dubs #1 though. Just add VGC format.