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destiny bond, taunt, spikes or maybe water coverage in aqua jet or waterfall would all be much better 4th moves when tspikes are rejected
The issue is that there’s no way to have a fifth move just in reserve for that situation, so it would make T-Spikes and Icy Wind a 2/3 roll with the added move. I think the niche L with that is better than making Qwil-H worse 2/3 of the time because it doesn’t have one of its best support moves.
The issue is that there’s no way to have a fifth move just in reserve for that situation, so it would make T-Spikes and Icy Wind a 2/3 roll with the added move. I think the niche L with that is better than making Qwil-H worse 2/3 of the time because it doesn’t have one of its best support moves.
imo it wouldnt make qwilfish that much worse - tspikes are good, but a set of taunt/crunch/gunk/icy or taunt/tchop/gunk/tspikes are both perfectly valid and decent sets. moves like taunt that could replace them just arent as bad as youre making them out to be.
if you really dont want to lose icy or tspikes, then why not just get rid of crunch or throat chop from its movepool, and have 2 users of tspikes. the slight benefit in surprise factor from throat chop or crunch is worth very little to begin with, and most tspike setters rarely want to/are able to get 2 layers of tspikes up, qwilfish especially given how useful intim is.
im gonna be honest i dont think giving any pokemon entry hazards is the move, doubles is so much faster of a format and you get MUCH less value out of stealth rocks and spikes, id also suggest giving every pokemon at least a chance to have protect, that move is so important in doubles and when you have a team with only like two pokemon that can even have protect it just feels awful. there are many cases where one ability is wayyyy better in doubles than singles. for example multiscale dragonite is way way worse than inner focus, and meinshao also prefers inner focus over regenerator, corvinight likes mirror armor, just little things like that. overall id just suggest taking sets from that pokemons pikalytics page that they use in the current vgc format instead of just using smogon sets and smacking on fake out or tailwind or something yk what i mean?
overall id just suggest taking sets from that pokemons pikalytics page that they use in the current vgc format instead of just using smogon sets and smacking on fake out or tailwind or something yk what i mean?
Yeah so, first point is that this isn't what we do at all lol. Feel free to peruse Smogon sets and randdubs sets and find any actual examples that you think are too close and therefore unviable. Smogon sets have not been used in any of the design of the format -- all sets are designed from the ground up to work within our randomisation process, so it would not be possible to just slap a Smogon set into our randomisation process with Fake Out or Tailwind.
VGC sets are different to sets that would be viable in Random Doubles Battle for myriad reasons. The most notable is that VGC exists within a specific meta, and set choices are based around that meta. A good example of this is Dazzling Gleam being used on Farigiraf in VGC, but Random Doubles Battle using Hyper Voice instead. In VGC, Dazzling Gleam is excellent on Farigiraf because it's likely to run into Urshifu-Single-Strike where it is a legitimate nuke, while also dealing more than Hyper Voice to other relatively common threats like Kingambit that otherwise wall it. Because those Pokémon are no more common than others in Random Doubles Battle, Farigiraf wants to run the more generally powerful Hyper Voice instead for its spread damage. And besides, it's not like most of the Pokémon in Random Doubles Battle are ever used in VGC, so there are only so many sample sets we could try to steal anyway.
im gonna be honest i dont think giving any pokemon entry hazards is the move, doubles is so much faster of a format and you get MUCH less value out of stealth rocks and spikes,
This is largely a goal of ours in Random Doubles Battle. We don't value hazards highly in this format, and so hazards are only included in the movepools of Pokémon in more extreme cases. Which Pokémon would you like hazards removed from and, where relevant, what moves would you replace the hazards with? We've already removed hazards from a lot of Pokémon this generation, including even some Sticky Web users.
id also suggest giving every pokemon at least a chance to have protect, that move is so important in doubles and when you have a team with only like two pokemon that can even have protect it just feels awful.
We make a vested effort to include Protect where it is viewed to be viable to do so. The reason why Protect can be bad is mostly the randomly generated aspect of the game. Sometimes Protect being on a moveset can be an active detriment, if that Pokémon has 3 moves that are otherwise viable but not as only 3/4 of its moves at the same time on one set. Otherwise, the option of Protect can interact challengingly with some of our item generation, particularly AV, so it's left out due to necessity. Feel free to suggest examples of Pokémon who you would like to see Protect added to, and specifically what roles you think Protect would work well on.
there are many cases where one ability is wayyyy better in doubles than singles. for example multiscale dragonite is way way worse than inner focus, and meinshao also prefers inner focus over regenerator, corvinight likes mirror armor, just little things like that.
Already, 100% of Dragonite are Inner Focus and 100% of Corviknight are Mirror Armor in Random Doubles Battle. We disagree that Inner Focus is better than Regenerator on Mienshao, which is a Pokémon whose entire gameplan is clicking Fake Out the most times it can while pivoting around with U-Turn. Regenerator is much better for its current sets. Inner Focus would likely be slightly better on only its rare Choice Band set, but we avoid overly-specific and niche hardcodes so as to not make the code too spaghetti and impossible to read. Considering Regenerator is also quite good on Choice Band, this is certainly not an example that requires a hardcode.
We disagree that Inner Focus is better than Regenerator on Mienshao, which is a Pokémon whose entire gameplan is clicking Fake Out the most times it can while pivoting around with U-Turn. Regenerator is much better for its current sets.
i think giving it inner focus would be much better bc it makes them a fake out pokemon that is immune to fake out itself (and intimidate obv). plus its already so frail that the regen health doesnt matter that much if at all, plus it frees up its item slot so that it can run something like sash instead of clear amulet... which it already kinda has as part of its secondary ability with a flinch immunity to boot so why not just use that
Yeah so, first point is that this isn't what we do at all lol. Feel free to peruse Smogon sets and randdubs sets and find any actual examples that you think are too close and therefore unviable. Smogon sets have not been used in any of the design of the format -- all sets are designed from the ground up to work within our randomisation process, so it would not be possible to just slap a Smogon set into our randomisation process with Fake Out or Tailwind.
by this i didnt literally mean that you take existing smogon sets and tweek them slightly (this is on me tho i worded it bad), i just mean that you take a singles approach to some of these sets when you build them, with the inclusion of hazards and lack of protect namely
VGC sets are different to sets that would be viable in Random Doubles Battle for myriad reasons. The most notable is that VGC exists within a specific meta, and set choices are based around that meta. A good example of this is Dazzling Gleam being used on Farigiraf in VGC, but Random Doubles Battle using Hyper Voice instead. In VGC, Dazzling Gleam is excellent on Farigiraf because it's likely to run into Urshifu-Single-Strike where it is a legitimate nuke, while also dealing more than Hyper Voice to other relatively common threats like Kingambit that otherwise wall it. Because those Pokémon are no more common than others in Random Doubles Battle, Farigiraf wants to run the more generally powerful Hyper Voice instead for its spread damage. And besides, it's not like most of the Pokémon in Random Doubles Battle are ever used in VGC, so there are only so many sample sets we could try to steal anyway.
this is fair, obviously you cant rip the sets straight off of pikalytics, but i think it can be used as a good blueprint to see whats good for certain pokemon to run. youll never see a single hazard in the top moves listed for a pokemon and you will see protect there nearly every time for example. u can just look at a stat like that and be like oh yea hazards blow in doubles so ill remove it from the sets.
yeah this is my b, the only one i knew for certain was the meinshao one and i just brought up those as examples without checking, on me for not doing my due research i apologize, i still stand by my meinshao comments above though
edit: id also like to state im not trying to come in here and be all high and mighty and think i know better than everyone, these r just my takes and i want this format to be as good as possible so i figured id share them
i think giving it inner focus would be much better bc it makes them a fake out pokemon that is immune to fake out itself (and intimidate obv). plus its already so frail that the regen health doesnt matter that much if at all, plus it frees up its item slot so that it can run something like sash instead of clear amulet... which it already kinda has as part of its secondary ability with a flinch immunity to boot so why not just use that
by this i didnt literally mean that you take existing smogon sets and tweek them slightly (this is on me tho i worded it bad), i just mean that you take a singles approach to some of these sets when you build them, with the inclusion of hazards and lack of protect namely
this is fair, obviously you cant rip the sets straight off of pikalytics, but i think it can be used as a good blueprint to see whats good for certain pokemon to run
yeah this is my b, the only one i knew for certain was the meinshao one and i just brought up those as examples without checking, on me for not doing my due research i apologize, i still stand by my meinshao comments above though
edit: id also like to state im not trying to come in here and be all high and mighty and think i know better than everyone, these r just my takes and i want this format to be as good as possible so i figured id share them
Aside from Mienshao (which the prominent doubles players in our team, including Arcticblast, a prominent figure in DOU, disagree with changing), you have not provided examples of which Pokemon you would like to add Protect to and remove hazards from. Please do so, it would help us greatly in our goals!
Aside from Mienshao (which the prominent doubles players in our team, including Arcticblast, a prominent figure in DOU, disagree with changing), you have not provided examples of which Pokemon you would like to add Protect to and remove hazards from. Please do so, it would help us greatly in our goals!
i think you should remove hazards outright from every set, and give every pokemon that does not have a choice item have a chance to have protect, if that is not doable bc of the randomization algorithm i understand but that is my suggestion
why does this person disagree with my meinshao idea? can i get a reasoning from them
Hi Leeum8, I'm one of the people who helps design the Random Doubles sets.
In case you weren't previously aware, Smogon has its own 6v6 doubles format known as Doubles OU. It's existed since around 2012 and became official on the release of X and Y, and I've been playing that format since just about the beginning. Additionally, I'm an active VGC competitor - money has limited my ability to play in majors for a long time, but I attended three regionals this season (with a day 2 at Pittsburgh), and I've also attended a regional in each of 2015, 2016, and 2017.
i think giving it inner focus would be much better bc it makes them a fake out pokemon that is immune to fake out itself (and intimidate obv). plus its already so frail that the regen health doesnt matter that much if at all, plus it frees up its item slot so that it can run something like sash instead of clear amulet... which it already kinda has as part of its secondary ability with a flinch immunity to boot so why not just use that
I like Regenerator Mienshao; it just does a thing I really enjoy. With that said, I'll keep my ears open and ask some more people how they feel about Regen/IF roll versus Inner Focus hard code.
Focus Sash is a tricky subject, and it mostly has to do with how all random battles are coded. Currently, sets are built into roles that define what items they can get and how their moves are determined; you can read about the role system here. Currently, no roles will naturally generate Focus Sash - but there are a few other items that will generate that aren't naturally generated by roles. All of those items have specific rules that govern when they show up. For example, Clear Amulet will show up on Dragon Dance users and on some offensive Fake Out users when they aren't leads. Magnet will generate with enough Electric moves, and Mystic Water will generate with enough Water moves - you're going to see these particularly on Regieleki and Palafin, but these rules will extend to other Pokemon that meet the conditions. (Off the top of my head, I think Basculin will also generate Mystic Water, but I'd have to check.)
Focus Sash is a tricky one because the Pokemon that would really like Sash do a bunch of different things. You have your fast Fake Out users like Sneasler and Salazzle who might want it for one reason, then you have Chien-Pao who likes it for other reasons, and then Breloom, and then some Glimmora sets but not all of them... it's difficult to find a one-size-fits-all rule for Focus Sash, so for now, it mostly just doesn't exist. Currently the rules for Focus Sash look like this:
Glimmora without Meteor Beam will always generate Focus Sash.
Any generated set with the Doubles Fast Attacker, Doubles Wallbreaker, or Offensive Protect role will generate Focus Sash if it is in the lead slot, the total of its base HP, Defense, and Special Defense stats is under 230, and another item rule does not overwrite Sash. Sash almost always replaces Life Orb in these instances.
With natural generation and special rules out of the way, that leaves hard coding it onto Pokemon. Random Battles of all types try to avoid hardcoding when possible. They make the formats more difficult to learn for new players and they make code maintenance more difficult on the programming side. Hardcodes are a powerful tool, but we try to use them sparingly. Without a clean rule for general Focus Sash implementation, the only way to get Sash on everything that might want it would be a slew of hardcodes, which we simply don't want to do. Even Glimmora's Sash rule is tucked neatly into the conditional Sash implementation.
While we're here, there are some other coding intricacies that make certain sets incredibly difficult to design without hardcodes that are specific to sets, which is even more awkward than species hardcodes, if not downright impossible. Sapphire and I tried to argue for the inclusion of Choice Band Tera Blast Arcanine-H for literal days before finally backing down and understanding that it more or less could not be done; the same applies to a set like Scarf Tera Blast Lando-T. There are a few other things that the existing code can make awkward, but we occasionally find ways around them by splitting one set of six moves into two or three sets of four moves each, for example; roles allow for a fair bit of flexibility by design.
I am loud and annoying and literally will not let this happen.
We do occasionally borrow some things from singles though. For example, if you've ever rolled Assault Vest Grafaiai, that's a set pulled from random singles that's proven to be good enough to keep around. It's not stellar, but honestly, neither is non-AV Grafaiai.
This is where the Doubles OU part comes in - hazards are good in DOU! Turns out that even if you don't switch very much, more Pokemon means more hazards damage over the course of a game. I'm feeling lazy, so I'll just copy paste what I said earlier in the development channel:
(responding to Celever proposing removing Spikes from Ting-Lu)
[5:32 PM]Arcticblast: Spikes Ting-Lu is one of its best DOU sets and that’s not really a meta thing so much as “it is a big lunk who gets free turns just by existing”
[5:32 PM]Arcticblast: I think hazards both here and in DOU are like
[5:32 PM]Arcticblast: actually let me make this a complete sentence
[5:32 PM]Arcticblast: Hazards are good
[5:33 PM]Arcticblast: Having hazards can often make a significant difference in a game
[5:33 PM]Arcticblast: However, they aren’t so singularly good that you include a hazard setter on every team, and outside of a couple Pokémon who can (sometimes!) free roll removal, you don’t really bother with hazard removal unless things are really dire
[5:34 PM]Arcticblast: like if you’re playing SM or NatDex and you want to use Zard Y
[5:38 PM]Arcticblast: Stealth Rock is great! Spikes are still pretty good! Neither are necessary, and not every Pokemon capable of using hazards actually wants to do so on every set
One of our goals on the dev team is to keep the frequency of entry hazards relatively low. However, we - or at least I - do feel that hazards have a place in the format. My personal goal is to keep hazards on the sets where they feel like a good addition, and remove it from sets where they feel forced. Hazards should be good to have but not imperative to click every game.
With that said, we can't really ignore Sticky Web when talking about hazards. Sticky Web can occasionally win or lose a game on the spot (if you've ever loaded lead Galvantula into a Kingambit or Slowbro, you'll know what I mean), but it's also really the only thing a select few Pokemon have going for them. Please don't take away Kricketune's webs, they're all he has :(
and give every pokemon that does not have a choice item have a chance to have protect, if that is not doable bc of the randomization algorithm i understand but that is my suggestion
Like the reduction of hazards, one of our goals with the format is to increase the rate of Protect. It's something we've been slowly working on as the generation plays out; if you looked at the set list when we first made it and compared it to now, you'll see that the rate of Protect-enforced roles has gone up, and the rate of Protect on non-enforced roles has also increased (though a little bit less so). There are a number of situations where I would not want to give a Pokemon Protect, however:
Pokemon whose only sets are Choiced or Assault Vest. A lot of Pokemon that can roll Choice items or Assault Vest will also have Protect sets available, but sometimes we get something as consistently good as Specs Inteleon and decide not to mess with a good thing.
Screens setters. They have two slots dedicated to Reflect and Light Screen already, so their other moves need to pull some weight.
Pokemon who always have Fake Out, or other forms of turn disruption like redirection or fast Encore. One of the goals of Protect on a set is to let you disrupt an opponent's turn; other ways to prevent moves can sometimes prove just as strong. Some of these Pokemon already forgo Protect in DOU or VGC; if someone tells you to run Protect on Incineroar, you're probably not listening to them.
Trick Room setters. These Pokemon often drop Protect already in traditional formats. While many of them would be better off with Protect or with higher odds of Protect, it isn't strictly necessary on them, and removing it from the set allows for greater freedom in set design and technical implementation. Porygon2 is one of my favorite examples; that Pokemon has been dropping Protect for years now and it has stood the test of time.
Support Pokemon with a variety of moves. This overlaps a lot with the last two categories because they tend to have speed control or disruption. Volbeat and Illumise both sit near the top of the format because they have Prankster Tailwind and Encore, for example.
Pokemon whose sets are so powerful that they don't need Protect. Think of something like Registeel - the existing set of Body Press / Iron Defense / Iron Head / Thunder Wave is already really good; Protect on any slot here would probably just make it worse. (Registeel usually dropped Protect in Reg F and does so in DOU anyway.)
Pokemon who are so bad that they can't afford Protect. There's only so much we can do for Pokemon like Blissey and Delibird; giving them four useful moves is the way to make them feel a little better. Fortunately, these Pokemon are few in number.
As previously stated by Cake and Celever, if you have suggestions for Pokemon that don't have Protect and should, or Pokemon that can sometimes roll Protect but should have it enforced, please let us know.
this is fair, obviously you cant rip the sets straight off of pikalytics, but i think it can be used as a good blueprint to see whats good for certain pokemon to run.
Celever mostly covered this, but I want to reinforce it too: VGC (and DOU) is a metagame. You can expect to play certain Pokemon more than others, and the choices you make are deliberate. Random Doubles is not. When I find a Random Doubles game, I can't predict what six Pokemon I'm about to face or the six I'm about to use. As a result, sets are designed to be stronger into as many things as they can, rather than geared towards specific threats. You'll generally see more coverage moves in Random Doubles than you'd consider putting into your teambuilder. Taunt Incineroar is great in Reg G, where you wall the dumb horses and can threaten Taunt into them or their partner, but I would rarely consider that in Reg F or DOU. Tera Ground Foul Play Farigiraf, Rocky Helmet Amoonguss, and Heavy Slam Iron Hands are more examples of things that are great in formats where you build your own team but don't translate well to a random format.
I hope I've conveyed some of the thought that goes into set design and why we don't just rips sets 1:1 from VGC. If you have any other questions or suggestions, you're welcome to post them here, or even find me on Showdown or Discord if you just want to talk about any of this stuff. (also play DOU, it's cool, we actually get to ban broken stuff and we can use cool mythicals like Diancie)
Hi Leeum8, I'm one of the people who helps design the Random Doubles sets.
In case you weren't previously aware, Smogon has its own 6v6 doubles format known as Doubles OU. It's existed since around 2012 and became official on the release of X and Y, and I've been playing that format since just about the beginning. Additionally, I'm an active VGC competitor - money has limited my ability to play in majors for a long time, but I attended three regionals this season (with a day 2 at Pittsburgh), and I've also attended a regional in each of 2015, 2016, and 2017.
I like Regenerator Mienshao; it just does a thing I really enjoy. With that said, I'll keep my ears open and ask some more people how they feel about Regen/IF roll versus Inner Focus hard code.
Focus Sash is a tricky subject, and it mostly has to do with how all random battles are coded. Currently, sets are built into roles that define what items they can get and how their moves are determined; you can read about the role system here. Currently, no roles will naturally generate Focus Sash - but there are a few other items that will generate that aren't naturally generated by roles. All of those items have specific rules that govern when they show up. For example, Clear Amulet will show up on Dragon Dance users and on some offensive Fake Out users when they aren't leads. Magnet will generate with enough Electric moves, and Mystic Water will generate with enough Water moves - you're going to see these particularly on Regieleki and Palafin, but these rules will extend to other Pokemon that meet the conditions. (Off the top of my head, I think Basculin will also generate Mystic Water, but I'd have to check.)
Focus Sash is a tricky one because the Pokemon that would really like Sash do a bunch of different things. You have your fast Fake Out users like Sneasler and Salazzle who might want it for one reason, then you have Chien-Pao who likes it for other reasons, and then Breloom, and then some Glimmora sets but not all of them... it's difficult to find a one-size-fits-all rule for Focus Sash, so for now, it mostly just doesn't exist. Currently the rules for Focus Sash look like this:
Glimmora without Meteor Beam will always generate Focus Sash.
Any generated set with the Doubles Fast Attacker, Doubles Wallbreaker, or Offensive Protect role will generate Focus Sash if it is in the lead slot, the total of its base HP, Defense, and Special Defense stats is under 230, and another item rule does not overwrite Sash. Sash almost always replaces Life Orb in these instances.
With natural generation and special rules out of the way, that leaves hard coding it onto Pokemon. Random Battles of all types try to avoid hardcoding when possible. They make the formats more difficult to learn for new players and they make code maintenance more difficult on the programming side. Hardcodes are a powerful tool, but we try to use them sparingly. Without a clean rule for general Focus Sash implementation, the only way to get Sash on everything that might want it would be a slew of hardcodes, which we simply don't want to do. Even Glimmora's Sash rule is tucked neatly into the conditional Sash implementation.
While we're here, there are some other coding intricacies that make certain sets incredibly difficult to design without hardcodes that are specific to sets, which is even more awkward than species hardcodes, if not downright impossible. Sapphire and I tried to argue for the inclusion of Choice Band Tera Blast Arcanine-H for literal days before finally backing down and understanding that it more or less could not be done; the same applies to a set like Scarf Tera Blast Lando-T. There are a few other things that the existing code can make awkward, but we occasionally find ways around them by splitting one set of six moves into two or three sets of four moves each, for example; roles allow for a fair bit of flexibility by design.
I am loud and annoying and literally will not let this happen.
We do occasionally borrow some things from singles though. For example, if you've ever rolled Assault Vest Grafaiai, that's a set pulled from random singles that's proven to be good enough to keep around. It's not stellar, but honestly, neither is non-AV Grafaiai.
This is where the Doubles OU part comes in - hazards are good in DOU! Turns out that even if you don't switch very much, more Pokemon means more hazards damage over the course of a game. I'm feeling lazy, so I'll just copy paste what I said earlier in the development channel:
(responding to Celever proposing removing Spikes from Ting-Lu)
[5:32 PM]Arcticblast: Spikes Ting-Lu is one of its best DOU sets and that’s not really a meta thing so much as “it is a big lunk who gets free turns just by existing”
[5:32 PM]Arcticblast: I think hazards both here and in DOU are like
[5:32 PM]Arcticblast: actually let me make this a complete sentence
[5:32 PM]Arcticblast: Hazards are good
[5:33 PM]Arcticblast: Having hazards can often make a significant difference in a game
[5:33 PM]Arcticblast: However, they aren’t so singularly good that you include a hazard setter on every team, and outside of a couple Pokémon who can (sometimes!) free roll removal, you don’t really bother with hazard removal unless things are really dire
[5:34 PM]Arcticblast: like if you’re playing SM or NatDex and you want to use Zard Y
[5:38 PM]Arcticblast: Stealth Rock is great! Spikes are still pretty good! Neither are necessary, and not every Pokemon capable of using hazards actually wants to do so on every set
One of our goals on the dev team is to keep the frequency of entry hazards relatively low. However, we - or at least I - do feel that hazards have a place in the format. My personal goal is to keep hazards on the sets where they feel like a good addition, and remove it from sets where they feel forced. Hazards should be good to have but not imperative to click every game.
With that said, we can't really ignore Sticky Web when talking about hazards. Sticky Web can occasionally win or lose a game on the spot (if you've ever loaded lead Galvantula into a Kingambit or Slowbro, you'll know what I mean), but it's also really the only thing a select few Pokemon have going for them. Please don't take away Kricketune's webs, they're all he has :(
Like the reduction of hazards, one of our goals with the format is to increase the rate of Protect. It's something we've been slowly working on as the generation plays out; if you looked at the set list when we first made it and compared it to now, you'll see that the rate of Protect-enforced roles has gone up, and the rate of Protect on non-enforced roles has also increased (though a little bit less so). There are a number of situations where I would not want to give a Pokemon Protect, however:
Pokemon whose only sets are Choiced or Assault Vest. A lot of Pokemon that can roll Choice items or Assault Vest will also have Protect sets available, but sometimes we get something as consistently good as Specs Inteleon and decide not to mess with a good thing.
Screens setters. They have two slots dedicated to Reflect and Light Screen already, so their other moves need to pull some weight.
Pokemon who always have Fake Out, or other forms of turn disruption like redirection or fast Encore. One of the goals of Protect on a set is to let you disrupt an opponent's turn; other ways to prevent moves can sometimes prove just as strong. Some of these Pokemon already forgo Protect in DOU or VGC; if someone tells you to run Protect on Incineroar, you're probably not listening to them.
Trick Room setters. These Pokemon often drop Protect already in traditional formats. While many of them would be better off with Protect or with higher odds of Protect, it isn't strictly necessary on them, and removing it from the set allows for greater freedom in set design and technical implementation. Porygon2 is one of my favorite examples; that Pokemon has been dropping Protect for years now and it has stood the test of time.
Support Pokemon with a variety of moves. This overlaps a lot with the last two categories because they tend to have speed control or disruption. Volbeat and Illumise both sit near the top of the format because they have Prankster Tailwind and Encore, for example.
Pokemon whose sets are so powerful that they don't need Protect. Think of something like Registeel - the existing set of Body Press / Iron Defense / Iron Head / Thunder Wave is already really good; Protect on any slot here would probably just make it worse. (Registeel usually dropped Protect in Reg F and does so in DOU anyway.)
Pokemon who are so bad that they can't afford Protect. There's only so much we can do for Pokemon like Blissey and Delibird; giving them four useful moves is the way to make them feel a little better. Fortunately, these Pokemon are few in number.
As previously stated by Cake and Celever, if you have suggestions for Pokemon that don't have Protect and should, or Pokemon that can sometimes roll Protect but should have it enforced, please let us know.
Celever mostly covered this, but I want to reinforce it too: VGC (and DOU) is a metagame. You can expect to play certain Pokemon more than others, and the choices you make are deliberate. Random Doubles is not. When I find a Random Doubles game, I can't predict what six Pokemon I'm about to face or the six I'm about to use. As a result, sets are designed to be stronger into as many things as they can, rather than geared towards specific threats. You'll generally see more coverage moves in Random Doubles than you'd consider putting into your teambuilder. Taunt Incineroar is great in Reg G, where you wall the dumb horses and can threaten Taunt into them or their partner, but I would rarely consider that in Reg F or DOU. Tera Ground Foul Play Farigiraf, Rocky Helmet Amoonguss, and Heavy Slam Iron Hands are more examples of things that are great in formats where you build your own team but don't translate well to a random format.
I hope I've conveyed some of the thought that goes into set design and why we don't just rips sets 1:1 from VGC. If you have any other questions or suggestions, you're welcome to post them here, or even find me on Showdown or Discord if you just want to talk about any of this stuff. (also play DOU, it's cool, we actually get to ban broken stuff and we can use cool mythicals like Diancie)
thanks for the reply, and considering my mienshao take. if any changes end up happening that would be so sick, ill try n stay updated, i read over ur whole reply and it looks like pretty sound logic, i just think we just have different ways that we view doubles and that's okay, and a lot of is just seems to be issues with how randomization works as a whole which is a bummer. thanks for the response though i can tell you put time into it. have a good night!
Is there a place to view the possible random doubles sets?
I appreciate this thread a lot for information on format goals/philosophy, as well as the EV distribution, which is what I was originally looking for.
Is there a place to view the possible random doubles sets?
I appreciate this thread a lot for information on format goals/philosophy, as well as the EV distribution, which is what I was originally looking for.
All the sets are above. EVs, however, are 85 in all stats with a neutral nature. Exceptions are rare, and exclusively are EV reductions, but include 0 speed IVs with Trick Room, or 0 attack IVs if the Pokémon doesn’t have a physical attack. The EVs are this way because when nothing can invest into one stat it ends up being relatively balanced, and it also happens to relatively increase the average bulk of each Pokémon slightly which makes a format with broken wallbreakers and shitmons more playable. It also makes mixed sets more possible which can be a helping hand for some of these worse Pokémon (and some good ones like Infernape even).
