Double The Salt: Smogon Doubles UU

Introduction

If you've looked under the "XY Doubles" section of the format menu recently, you've probably noticed a new ladder: Smogon Doubles UU. Every Pokémon that has a usage rate of over 3.41% in Smogon Doubles is banned in Doubles UU. This means that all of your favorite Pokémon that were outclassed in regular Doubles now have a chance to shine. Doubles UU is a vastly unexplored metagame, with amazing cores, threats, and strategies yet to be found. Unfortunately, Doubles UU has not received much attention lately due to the already unpopular nature of Doubles formats. This article aims to reassure the very handsome reader that Doubles UU is a format worth playing.

Doubles UU and PS!

If you browse through the many chatrooms of Pokémon Showdown!, you will notice that there is no chatroom designated specifically for the Doubles UU metagame. "What a tragedy; where will I talk about that really cool core I thought of for Doubles UU now?", you may be thinking. There is no reason to fear, though, because there is a place to talk about that cool Ninetales + Chlorophyll Lilligant core that you just thought of. Look in no place further than Pokémon Showdown!'s Doubles room, the place where there is a perfectly friendly community to talk to about Smogon Doubles and Doubles UU with! The Doubles room is a very laid-back room with some extremely handsome ranked users to talk to about any kind of the Doubles formats. However, in the room, people don't care to completely spell out "Doubles UU." The abbreviation of "duubs" or "dubs uu" is commonly used in the place of the tier's full name. Additionally, the Doubles room's intro contains the link to the most recent Doubles UU thread, which will include the tier's most recent banlists and discussion regarding the tier.

Threats

Landorus @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Earth Power
- Psychic
- Focus Blast
- Protect

Landorus, much like its Therian counterpart, which is common in Smogon Doubles, is immensely versatile and difficult to KO. Landorus possesses a very wide special movepool that includes just about everything that it needs to be a formidable threat. However, if you take a look at Landorus's base stats, you will notice that it boasts an impressive base 125 Attack with a meager-by-comparison base 115 Special Attack. Why would you run a specially offensive Landorus when it has a base Attack stat like that? The answer is simple: Sheer Force. Sheer Force boosts attacks that have a secondary effect by 1.3x at the cost of the move's secondary effect getting removed. For example, the move Earth Power is boosted by 1.3x, but it no longer has a 10% chance to lower the opponent's Special Defense by 1. Landorus's physical STAB moves lack a secondary effect; as such, they do not get boosted by Sheer Force.

Pinsir @ Pinsirite
Ability: Hyper Cutter
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Feint
- Return
- Close Combat
- Protect

Mega Pinsir, while rivaled in usefulness by Mega Scizor in Smogon Doubles, turns out to be an extremely formidable and almost unstoppable threat in Doubles UU. Before Mega Evolving, Pinsir has the ability Hyper Cutter, which prevents its Attack stat from being lowered. No matter what tier it is, if it's a Doubles format, there will be an abundance of Intimidate users. However, after Pinsir Mega Evolves, it gains the ability Aerilate. Aerilate is a very useful ability that changes all of Pinsir's Normal-type moves into Flying-type moves. Furthermore, as referenced in my Pinsir's nickname of "overkill", Aerilate boosts the power of Normal-type moves by an extra 1.3x when changing them to Flying-type moves. Whilst browsing through this Mega Pinsir set, you most likely noticed that I gave it Feint over Quick Attack. Why is this? Well, if you haven't noticed by now, almost everything used in Doubles formats will carry Protect. The uniqueness of Feint is that not only does it have one more priority point than moves like Quick Attack and Bullet Punch, it also just so happens to be able to break through an opposing Protect, allowing a teammate to finish off the attacked Pokémon at little to no cost to your own Pokémon.

Darkrai @ Life Orb
Ability: Bad Dreams
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Dark Pulse
- Ice Beam
- Sludge Bomb/Focus Blast
- Protect

Whenever I use Darkrai on the Doubles UU ladder, I encounter people who are simply shocked and in awe. "Darkrai in Doubles UU? I thought it was Ubers!" and "lol why r u using a legend in uu thats cheating", my opponents will exclaim. But they do have a point, why wouldn't Darkrai be used in Smogon Doubles? The reason behind it is that Dark Void, Darkrai's signature move that puts both opposing Pokémon to sleep in one turn, is banned in Doubles formats. Otherwise, it's mostly outclassed as a special attacker in Smogon Doubles by Shaymin-S and Latios. Despite not being so useful in Smogon Doubles, Darkrai does find itself as a viable special attacker on Doubles UU teams. With a significant absence of viable Fairy-types in Doubles UU, Darkrai can plow through most of the checks to Dark-types with its many coverage moves. Darkrai has access to a good amount of useful coverage, from Thunder for use on rain teams to Ice Beam for KOing Landorus and other Ground-types.

Weather

Like normal Smogon Doubles, weather is an potent and metagame-shaping factor in Doubles UU. With the best weather inducers known as Politoed, Mega Charizard Y, and Tyranitar locked away in standard Smogon Doubles, Ninetales finds its way onto weather teams, being the only Pokémon that can automatically induce weather upon switch-in. This has lead to the undeniable popularity of sun teams on the Doubles UU ladder. Most Doubles UU sun teams with Ninetales feature Mega Houndoom, which is useful under the sun thanks to its ability, Solar Power, which raises its Special Attack to 1.5x with the cost of losing 1/8 HP each turn. However, even without the abilities of Drought, Drizzle, Sand Stream, and Snow Warning, users have still constructed other weather teams. For example, Prankster Tornadus with Rain Dance and Hurricane with Mega Blastoise and Swift Swim Kingdra has recently become a common core on Doubles UU rain teams. Honorable mentions include sand and hail teams, which sometimes feature the weather-inducing Pokémon Snover and Hippopotas. However, these are not very common not only because are they in Little Cup, but they are dead weight to the team for the most part, not able to do anything other than induce weather.

Conclusion

Doubles UU is a very fun and engaging tier. With its relatively new nature, it is vastly unexplored. Maybe even you could come up with the next new core or threat! Unfortunately, the Doubles UU ladder is not very active due to the already unpopular nature of Smogon Doubles. How could this problem be solved? Maybe you and your friends could teambuild in Doubles UU together and play around on the Doubles UU ladder as a start. Who knows, maybe you could be one of the top players of a future popular tier!

« Previous Article

Home