OrangeManiac

He did it

There's probably not a single Pokemon in the game that the Recover PP nerf hurt more than Milotic. 8 PP instead of 16 makes Milotic incredibly short term option to so many things, especially the Flame Orb set. Milotic needs multiple Recovers to "recover" from the damage (pun maybe intended) it takes from switching in against anything. It might consume 3-4 PP by just even Recovering to full and countering the Pokemon it was supposed to counter. But if you're wasting half of your PP by countering a Pokemon once, you're hardly a "counter" to begin with.

Yeah I don't really like the idea of one person controlling the "community's suggestion thread", furthermore some of these ideas in the thread are very old, had multiple discussion threads about it and had some very deep discussion. Linking some new thread about the topics with 1 upvote and 1 comment makes it seem like the whole topic is much less discussed and much less important than the topic actually is. Also what comes to expanding on the topic, you can just post to other people's threads.

Cool idea of a thread, I'll guess I can start by explaining my initial thought process behind my original rain team. It isn't necessarily the best team archetype anymore but seeing it constantly in ladder even after 3 years after I made it kinda demonstrates that it's still effective. Pelipper Kingdra Ludicolo The next Pokemon that I find the most important Pokemon in the team is Scizor. Why Scizor? The next most important Pokemon in the team is Hitmontop. Lastly, I used Jolteon as the last Pokemon. Anyways, good luck with the thread!

Mine is still made from 2020 metagame, I'd still say like 80% of the builds are accurate but it probably needs an update.

If people in your team are only interested about the number of players in your team, either your team is not interesting to begin with or the people you recruit have the wrong priorities. Every major team in the game started out small. But they grew because they offered their players something interesting, whether it's a cool and interesting chat to hang around in or competitive knowledge and experience. But it must be some niche that people feel like they can get here but not in other teams, otherwise they just look elsewhere. So, I'd say you should be more focused on actually making an interesting team than trying to hide information from your players in an attempt to prevent them from leaving. Also, anyone who has run a team that has had less players and more players knows that having more players isn't always a good thing. having a focused and interesting discussion usually happens when the number of people online is generally a little bit lower. There's also advantages for big teams but especially for friendly teams, having a smaller team can sometimes be an advantage as long as you're after the right kind of people.

If you think Knock Off's item removing effect isn't relevant even with lower power then I don't think you have played or watched a lot of high level competitive play.

What a wholesome thread, love the idea. Also thanks for the shoutout JJ. I honestly could name a whole lot of people. Forfi has financially supported me in this game more times than I'd wish to admit and I don't wanna just pay him back "like this". Also I have a whole bunch of teammates right now that are absolute class act people and good friends, so I could name like any of them. But I'd like to give my nomination to @Rakhmaninov. Dude's doing MVP work for Doubles by constantly leading Doubles discussion, maintaining viability rankings, creating a whole bunch of useful and well-written threads about Doubles. I think the amount of people who play Doubles at a decent level has increased a lot from let's say 3-4 years ago and I'd like to think it's at least partly because of the good resources out there. Dude's also just really humble and polite person when talking to anyone, has the level of humbleness I couldn't reach in 10 lifetimes.

I shouldn't be surprised because a lot of things seem to be difficult for you to understand... But how do you not understand that he isn't against having an entrance fee for the tournament but against that the host is contributing absolutely nothing to the event from their own pocket? And honestly donating nothing is even fine if you do it every here and then but you're spamming these events non-stop and contributing absolutely nothing besides establishing a tournament series no one gives a single fuck about. I'm surprised the staff hasn't told you to just stop already. Do not compare my events to yours. I've donated at least a million, usually much more to every single event I've ever hosted - whether it is an automated tournament or unofficial event. The participation fee in automated tournaments was done by me so that the limited 32 spots wouldn't be taken by some absolutely random "just beaten elite 4" player. But I still donated a significant sum to the event which you can see if you are able to do any kind of math.

I also hate it when caioxlive13 forgets to take account the schedule of the legendary PokeMMO Grand Slam. But maybe caoixlive13 just wants people to forget about PokeMMO Grand Slam by adding his own events, so he can retain his title of undisputed champion PokeMMO Grand Slam. Luckily, as a community, we won't let this happen.

It doesn't fit every team but my guess is that it's gonna be OU by usage. It checks a great amount of offensive threats in OU and can sometimes sweep games with Calm Mind. It's also definitely nice in Doubles. Calm Mind set will be strong there as well and also has many supportive options like Snarl, Tailwind, Icy Wind etc.

Yeah Garchomp would heavily improve in viability but in all honesty I think it was like A- Pokemon without Clear Amulet and goes to like A+ with Clear Amulet. Countering Follow Me supported Chomp will rely a lot on Icy Wind.

That could be a solution. In an environment when opponent is aware of Covert Cloak, I think the existence of this item has improved the competitive play a lot in VGC.

We already had a good discussion opener in Doubles Tier Discussion request about Safety Goggles, an item that could potentially improve the metagame and playing experience of Doubles. That made me think which other items have we got past Gen 5 that arguably could improve the metagame. I'm keeping my post focused on Doubles because that's what I'm mostly experienced with and I don't want the discussion to go all kinds of different directions if we were to discuss singles as well. To be fair, I think Singles deserves its own discussion thread as well, although the obvious problem is that do we want to open that can of worms and possibly mix up the tiers with upcoming items. Firstly, the devs have shown they are willing to do quite big shakes to the game with the likes of Assault Gear (Assault Vest in core games) to be introduced to the game. From my experience, Assault Gear in PokeMMO has mostly been a positive addition. Because devs have shown willingness to add new items to the game from post Gen 5 generations, I'll do my best to explain which items deserve a spot in the game in my opinion from Doubles perspective. I grouped these items based on the utility and potential risk. Keep in mind, these are only my opinion. Feel free to comment with your thoughts. Group 1 - Definitely good for the game Clear Amulet (please give us this) I would argue Clear Amulet would improve the Doubles metagame the most. Clear Amulet basically is the ability "Clear Body" in Item form. I'd argue the current Doubles metagame is heavily Intimidate focused. It might not feel that way because so many top tier physical attackers are completely immune to Intimidate (Clear Body Metagross, Inner Focus Crobat, Inner Focus Mienshao) or are using Swords Dance just to ignore Intimidates (Swords Dance Scizor, Swords Dance Excadrill). However, my argument that the reason these Pokemon are used is because they get hindered by Intimidate the least. Adding Clear Amulet allows physical attackers that otherwise would be heavily hindered by Intimidate to have some potential usefulness and not get pushed aside in teambuilding just because there are alternatives for physical attackers that do not care about Intimidate. The only downside I see is that it makes Tyranitar arguably even better as Tyranitar could also carry Clear Amulet and not get countered by Hitmontop as heavily anymore. But on the reverse, giving up your Chople berry allows Tyranitar to be far more reliably to be KO'd by Hitmontop instead. Furthermore, I'd argue that Tyranitar itself is not broken but it's a one Pokemon solution for balanced teams to have a better matchup against all kinds of weather. Room Service Room Service gives -1 speed to holder when Trick Room goes up and its on the field. Excellent item to allow more Pokemon to shine in Trick Room archetypes. It's very common to have a Pokemon that could potentially do well in Trick Room but it's just awkwardly fast and not being viable for that reason alone. Having Room Service allows more middle speed to slightly above average speed Pokemon to do well in a team that has a Trick Room mode. Also I think this can be a useful tech to allow teams to have far better diversity in countering opposing Trick Room teams than what we have now. Safety Goggles Necas already made a post about it in Doubles Tier Discussion Request thread. Group 2 - Probably good for the game but there might be concerns Loaded Dice Giving more love to multi-hit moves to me is a good idea. Loaded Dice may allow multi-hits to become very powerful with guaranteed 4-5 hits but while doing so the Pokemon is giving up its item slot for "something better". Also, because of giving up the item slot you can't get the maximum hits and still get Choice Band / Life Orb boost I don't really see this item pushing the damage calculations out of hand with anything. This prevents multi-hits from becoming too powerful in my opinion but I understand if this shakes up Singles tier too much in some regard for someone to object this. Overall, I think it's good though and gives more opportunity to plan out your moves. Also what I love about Loaded Dice is that it prevents Focus Sash Pokemon to be 100% safe (because Sash is a dumb item to begin with but that's another conversation). Eject pack Eject Pack allows a Pokemon to switch out after getting a stat drop. Very niche in my opinion as usually there are better options but it allows some creative strategies in my opinion, none of which intuitively seem too strong to me. Group 3 - Could be fun but potentially cheesy without open team sheet Covert Cloak Covert Cloak gives a Pokemon a protection from secondary effects of an attack. In Doubles, this is mostly used to prevent a Pokemon from being Faked Out. In VGC, I feel like this item has improved both playing and teambuilding experience. You don't have to use Protect just for Fake Out protection and you can use all 4 moves for something useful and just slap Covert Cloak to prevent from being Faked Out. The only issue I see is that in Gen 9 VGC we have open team sheet (meaning you can see opponent's all moves and its held item), so opponent always knows when they can or cannot Fake Out the opponent. Unknowingly not getting a Fake Out flinch because of Covert Cloak might feel unjust and a little bit cheesy when you don't know it's there. In my opinion, a move like Fake Out being good is crucial to Doubles metagame so I could see the argument that Fake Out losing its guaranteed flinch could be bad for the concept of Doubles. Mirror Herb Mirror Herb allows Pokemon to copy the stat boosts its opponent got. While it forces opponents to think twice before mindlessly setting up, I could also seeing this item being slightly cheesy. Setting up can be the appropriate play in many cases and getting reverse set up might feel like a skilless counterstrategy. ____ Last remarks: I didn't discuss about Heavy-Duty Boots because in singles it could be an absolute game and tier changer while providing very little use in Doubles. Anyway, here's my suggestions - I think Doubles probably needs some mix-up as to me the metagame is becoming extremely stale and almost resolved at this point. These item suggestions (especially Clear Amulet and Room Service) allows players to think much more outside the current box. Obviously, you already could use less used options in Doubles but my issue is that people often are significantly hurting their winrate by using more unorthodoxed Pokemon because of the aforementioned downsides of using a Pokemon that isn't i.e. protected by Intimidate. Anyways, feel free to voice your thoughts.

Enough with the Gallade arguments. It is banned, our game doesn't need it and our game is far better off without it. Also teams defensively have far more leeway to build their cores with less Pokemon because you don't have to bring so many defensive mons just trying to beat every Gallade set at once. Also there are plenty of Pokemon that can beat your aforementioned Gliscor, Amoonguss, Mienshao core. Defensively speaking that core is actually pretty weak, it is twice weak to Ice, Flying and Psychic. Yeah sure, you can patch those weaknesses with other Pokemon but stall teams have always existed and will always exist. People will find ways to stall, that's Pokemon. For the record, I do think Regenerator Amoonguss was a mistake in OU but Gallade was a far bigger mistake. But now about the timer rules, the topic this should be about. First of all, when there are any timer rules then timer becomes a win condition and it allows a player that "shouldn't have won the battle to win the battle". It doesn't matter what arbitrary rules you will set, it will always remain the case. Whether it is a turn counter or a time counter, a player may start to play in the way that focuses them on reaching that cap to win the game rather than winning by 6 KO's. I kinda like the time counter more because I know immediately how long do I need to suffer through if I had to play this to the PP stall. Especially tournament wise if you have a turn cap that is too high and stalling players are taking maximum time every turn, it is also absolutely obnoxious for the other players not to know how long they have to wait. If the turn cap is too low, then the chances that a player wins that wasn't supposed to increases. So I think we're fine where we are at right now, although I could see the argument of lowering the maximum time by a bit especially in tournaments because your stalling isn't ruining just the day of both of you but everyone else in the single elimination bracket. When laddering, it's just two players wasting each others' time anyways so I don't think that itself needs a change. I'm not necessarily against Tie option in stalldowns to allow both players to move on with their day on ladder, I just don't think it's going to be utilized much. If players know what they are doing, then one player definitely should feel like they have a better chance of winning in the end and not accept to the tie anyways.

https://www.twitch.tv/naranjamaniaco first stream in a long time

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.

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.

Absolutely. I think it's even worse when you get a non-shiny prize and you have to use that much money to be able to use something that is supposed to be a prize. Prizes are already bad enough sometimes and having to use money to even use them is ridiculous in so many ways. The funniest thing is CC prizes - you literally have to pay more sometimes for a hidden ability change than to buy a ready one from GTL with the HA included with same IVs.

A few points: 1. A Pokemon's usage doesn't necessarily define how "broken" it is in terms of tiering. There are multiple other aspects, such as "in which ways this Pokemon affects the overall experience of battling in this tier?" or "does this Pokemon reward skillful playing" or "does this Pokemon render certain kinds of playstyles unviable?" also matter when defining if a Pokemon shouldn't belong to the tier. Now, these kinds of questions usually relate to the unhealthy aspect of Pokemon's existence in a tier, while Vaporeon was banned for Defensive / Uber characteristics, but Pokemon's usage isn't be-all-end-all. 2. You seem to be focusing on Life Orb Blaziken calcs, while Choice Scarf is the most common Blaziken set. If you wanna make an argument with maximum damage, you could also take other examples from middle speed powerful attackers in NU tier and notice that there are other very powerful hard-to-wall attackers in NU tier besides Blaziken, yet they aren't getting Blaziken's level of usage. Going all in with attack power leaves Blaziken very vulnerable to Pokemon over base 80 speed. 3. I have never literally ever heard anyone argue that Rotom-base is broken, so that at least is the first one. I really have hard time understanding why are you even making a point of Rotom being a menace with Trick, Thunderbolt and Shadow Ball coverage. Even by NU's standards those are extremely mediocre traits, not to mention its abyssmal 440 BST. Rotom is mostly used due to being NU's one of the only (good) Ghost-types, thus being a Spinblocker and it also has access to Defog, a move that in NU standards isn't exactly wide spread. There's nothing even remotely broken about Rotom, it just fills a role no other Pokemon in NU can. 4. Even if we were to accept Blaziken was broken (which I do not agree with), you don't keep an unhealthy Pokemon in the tier to keep in check another Pokemon deemed too powerful. Lastly, I do think the post to ban Vaporeon was a little bit narrow. I personally think that if you make a case of Pokemon being "Defensive / Support Uber" (something that is very rare btw) you should at least back it up with some examples, although the decision on itself necessarily isn't wrong in my opinion. To me, it feels like the case of Vaporeon was mostly that it just makes the playing experience in NU notably worse (which I think it did), and ban it for that reason but I also think Vaporeon's discussion should have sheered more towards the unhealthy side of Vaporeon being in NU.

(I don't honestly understand any of this above just thought it fits this guide) The guide to customized EV spreads Introduction Deciding EV spreads appears to be one of the most common hurdles to new competitive players and it's not hard to see why. EV spreads are the most customisable and most fine-tunable things in Pokemon teambuilding and it's easy to get "paralyzed" with the overwhelming amount of options you can have with them. As a matter of fact, I'd argue this complexity is the main reason why I would argue people would go for 252/252 spreads. You don't have to think about it too much and it focuses your Pokemon at a specific role. Keep in mind, this is not necessarily bad. In fact, I would argue in many cases maxing out a Pokemon in two stats can be the most productive thing you can do with a Pokemon. However, it is generally a good idea to explore some other options as well in terms of EV spreads and after scrapping any alternative ideas, you may consider just min-maxing a Pokemon. I want to point out that my background lately has been mostly in VGC and Double battles, so that obviously is going to affect on my perspective. A lot of the ideas that I use are something that many high level VGC players also consider when building EV spreads. However, I would argue you could use these ideas equally as well in singles. The point of this guide is not to give you answers, it is to develop the correct mindset to build and develop EV spreads and challenge you to think about your EV spreads more creatively and precisely. How do EVs work? Basics To talk about building EV spreads, it is good to start with the very basics - how do EVs work? The very basic idea is that at level 100, 4 EVs will raise a Pokemon's stat by 1. At level 50, in which PokeMMO is played, 8 EVs will raise a Pokemon's stat by 1. There's a small caveat to this at level 50, though. If your IV is an ODD number (for example 31 IV), first 4 EVs will raise a stat by 1. Then they will raise every 8 EVs. In other words, with 31 IV you will get a stat boost at 4/12/20/28/36.... EVs (maxing at 252). With EVEN IV, for example 30 IV you will get a stat boost at 8/16/24/32/40.... EVs. This effectively results being unable to max out your stat unless you have a 31 IV. Having 30 IV is acceptable if you are not going to put any EVs in the stat (as 30 and 31 with 0 EVs have the same stat) but when putting any EV investment, having a sub-31 IV will negatively affect you. Boosted nature Boosted nature will slightly alter how EVs affect to stats. Without a boosting nature, 8 more EVs will always result in 1 additional stat. However, if you are investing EVs in a stat which is already boosted by nature, at some points you will gain 2 stats instead of one with 8 EVs. In VGC, I sometimes call these "EV bumps" (taken from Barry Anderson who I heard to use this term the first time) This is a tiny optimization that can be useful to keep in mind when developing EV spreads. I demonstrated this below with pictures. Normally, 8 additional EVs will give you 1 additional stat. However, sometimes you will get 2 additional stats like shown below. Here you can see with 8 more EVs you were able to get 2 more stats. In these cases, it can be justifiable to insert EVs until you hit the spot where you get 2 stats instead of 1. Typically, there are 3 times between 0 and 252 EVs where you get this small EV bump. In some rare cases (depending of a base stat), this may also happen 4 times. It is a very tiny optimization but if you don't have any other idea (and dont want to 252/252 a Pokemon) then investing into multiple stats by hitting the EVs of your boosted nature into this EV bump can be a good idea. Reasons for a customized EV spread I will start out by saying that there is not - and cannot be - any definitive list of things you could keep in mind when developing an EV spread. It is always metagame dependent and for some Pokemon, building custom spreads can feel like an impossible task. "I cannot beat everything with 508 EVs" is a problem many players struggle with and it is easy to see why. In terms of EVs, you always have to make compromises. For me, there is still some list of priorities that I always keep in mind when developing EV spreads. These may very depending of your team, the metagame and the role but I've discovered this checklist in most cases works pretty well for me. 1. What do I have to outspeed? 2. What do I want to outspeed? 3. What attack do I have to survive? 4. What KO would I prefer to have? 5. Is putting EVs into "what I want to outspeed" taking too many EVs out of what I want to survive or what I want to KO? 6. Does this all align with what I want from this Pokemon? In short, this is the list of priorities I keep in mind when building EV spreads. In Pokemon, going first is important (especially with offensive Pokemon). If you think about it, the power levels in Pokemon are generally pretty high. Many Pokemon are capable of one-shotting other Pokemon if they have a super effective attack. Attacking first in many cases can be the difference being +1 or -1 at Pokemon count. If you think about it, that can be an effective difference of two Pokemon. This is why you need to figure out what are the Pokemon you absolutely have to outspeed and prioritize that in your EV spread. In some cases, you may have a very defensive Pokemon that does not care about outspeeding anything and focuses on survivability. In these case you can completely skip this part. There's a difference between "having to" outspeed something and "wanting to" outspeed something. The first one is a must, the second one is a preference that can come up useful in some particular scenarios. Those however do not often dictate the winner of the battle. It is important to figure out which Pokemon are useful to outspeed and keep them in mind but also be ready to accept if you can't. The next thing to consider is what attack do you have to survive in order to improve your matchup against a specific Pokemon. We tend to talk about Pokemon as "offensive" and "defensive" Pokemon but every Pokemon in the game has some defensive utility. Every Pokemon is capable of living at least something. It is important to figure out if some defensive investment can guarantee you living an attack that otherwise can become detrimental to you. Investing into a guaranteed survival can be the difference of having a strong retaliation against opponent or just getting straight up KO'd. It is also important to know if there is some specific OHKO or 2HKO you want to hit. If you can achieve this with offensive investment, it is good to keep in mind. However, I would not usually start EV spread from this as barely missing out on a KO can be acceptable in many cases. Lastly, evaluate your EV spread in total. Which are the priorities for me? Is outspeeding something not-so-important going to take away too much of my offensive or defensive capabilities? If so, you may shift the focus a little bit and invest in what you truly consider important for this Pokemon. Again, by no means, is this a definitive checklist. But more often than not I recommend to start going through potential EV spreads from this order. Investing EVs into high stats or into low stats? One question people often also consider is when is it good to invest into low stats and when is it good to invest in high stats. These obviously vary, so let me provide some examples. The most common example of investing into low stats is Chansey. A Bold Chansey with no EVs in defense has a defense stat of 27, while 252 EVs in defense gives Chansey a stat of 62. You have more than doubled your stat with 252 EVs and given Chansey far more noticable physical defense. Now Chansey can at least take some attacks physically. This is the most obvious case where investing into low stats is a good idea. Investing EVs into low stats has a far greater impact on the stat than investing into a high stat. However, in case of offensive Pokemon investing into high stats can also make sense. While 0 Attack EVs Garchomp reaches 150 attack and 252 attack EVs Garchomp reaches 182 attack, it can often determine whether Garchomp had enough power to get a KO. While the stat difference is less noticable in this case, it doesn't mean it's not valuable. So in short, it varies. However, it is important to keep in mind that EVs will technically give a more significant boost when invested in low stats, and this is an idea I recommend to explore when building EV spreads. HP EVs or defense EVs? Other question people ask a lot is "should I invest into HP or defenses" when I want more bulk? In this case, it also varies. Generally, investing the same amount of EVs in HP is better than defenses - however this is not true if your base HP stat is very high and base defenses are low. I will provide two examples of where it is good to invest in HP and where it is good to invest in defenses. Lanturn has a very high base HP but very mediocre defenses. This is one of the cases where investing into defenses may make more sense. Providing examples with calcs below. 252 SpA Alakazam Psychic vs. 0 HP / 124 SpD Lanturn: 85-102 (42.5 - 51%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery 252 Atk Mienshao Close Combat vs. 0 HP / 124 Def Lanturn: 127-151 (63.5 - 75.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery 252 SpA Alakazam Psychic vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Lanturn: 100-118 (43.1 - 50.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery 252 Atk Mienshao Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Lanturn: 153-181 (65.9 - 78%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery The difference is extremely minor but if you look at it, 124 Defense + 124 Sp Defense makes Lanturn take slightly less damage in total compared having 252 HP. I'd say Lanturn is kind of a good benchmark Pokemon for this dilemma. If Pokemon has higher base HP than Lanturn and low defense, it is a good idea to explore whether investing into defenses is better. However, in vast majority of the cases investing into HP is better. Dragonite is an example of a Pokemon where its base HP and base Defense and Special Defense are near equal. 252 SpA Alakazam Psychic vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Dragonite: 79-94 (39.8 - 47.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO 252 Atk Tauros Return vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Dragonite: 76-91 (38.3 - 45.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO 252 SpA Alakazam Psychic vs. 0 HP / 124 SpD Dragonite: 70-84 (42.1 - 50.6%) -- 1.2% chance to 2HKO 252 Atk Tauros Return vs. 0 HP / 124 Def Dragonite: 67-81 (40.3 - 48.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO In this case, it is quite evident that investing 252 HP rather than putting those EVs into defenses is a much better idea when providing defensive utility for the Pokemon. In vast majority of cases you should focus on HP investment. Optimizing for HP fractions One additional optimization you have for EVs is to select the exact HP stat you want. This most often comes into play when increasing Leftovers recovery or reducing Flame Orb damage. For example, a Conkeldurr with 208 HP stat would take 13 HP damage from Flame Orb burn each turn. With 207 HP stat, Conkeldurr would only take 12 HP damage each turn from burn. Over the course of multiple turns, this slight 1 HP difference could add up and taking slightly less damage each turn could be game-changing. Investing EVs into HP to purposely be 1 stat under next HP burn damage may be optimal. In other way around, adding more HP to gain 1 point from Leftovers could also potentially be an option to explore. Prime numbers This is an area I haven't explored a lot personally but VGC players have gone quite in-depth about this. What they discovered is that having defense stats that are prime numbers is generally a good idea and results in lower damage, probably due to how the game handles fractions. I haven't researched too much into how big of an effect these will have but out of habit from VGC community, if I don't have any better idea I might set my defense stats into prime numbers because apparently this may have a positive effect. Conclusion Even though EV spreads may seem like a small an insignificant part of your team composition, it may have a very big effect on the overall composition of your team. Designing EV spreads allows you to discover the metagame, learn the common calcs and forces you to think which Pokemon are you beating and which Pokemon are you not. That's why I highly recommend using some of these tips in this guide to make you think how can I improve my team to the fullest where I feel like every stat is what I want it to be. Thanks for reading. (This guide is finished and may be moved to the main section)

This is definitely one of the posts of all time

Streaming some VGC https://www.twitch.tv/naranjamaniaco

Rakhmaninov's viability rankings are mostly up to date, even taking consideration Hidden Abilities as he constantly updates his list based on the constant discussion we do in Discord. He also regularly takes part in those Discord discussions, or at least actively follows our discussion. The latest incoming HAs have done relatively little to change the viability rankings of Doubles, only 1-2 Pokemon arguably may have had their rankings changed because of HA in Doubles. Also, this tierlist is just not accurate. I'll give the OP credit and respect for trying to make a tierlist of Doubles Pokemon but to be completely honest, I'd say like at least 1/4th of them are simply misplaced and I think most Doubles players would probably agree. The OP is definitely allowed and welcomed to share their opinion about the viability of each Doubles mon but viability rankings is always a collaboration of multiple experts in that metagame, rather than ever being fully made just by 1 person. Also, if I was you, I'd probably refrain from evaluating which tierlist is "the most accurate" because to put it simply - you just lack the experience, knowledge or any kind of competitive achievements to be considered a credible source for such evaluation.

This already exists both in forums and in Discord https://discord.gg/enXd3YRt You are more than welcome to contribute to it but it's better to make your rankings in an already existing thread.