ADV Doubles saw a great period of optimization during the money tour that was ran during the start of the year. Since then, the tier has undergone a feature in ALTPL I and ADVPL III, alongside the banning of Deoxys-Defense. As ADVPL III moves to its playoff stages, the council would like to take action on Latias based on feedback from ADVPL players and specific feedback from the tiering survey, notably pointing out the tier's issues with forcing Speed ties. While the survey did turn up an overwhelming response for Latias feeling generally balanced, we believe there are a few elements that could lead to tiering action on Latias, these will be laid out as follows.
1. Latias is too good not to use.
Quite frankly, this statement isn't opinion, but a matter of fact in the metagame post Deoxys-D's ban. If you want to go offensive, STABs + HP Fire is a near unwallable coverage combo. Want to spam Thunder Wave? Latias can do that. Click screens. Use weather moves. Support with Helping Hand. Latias is the ultimate package of whatever your team needs. It boasts an excellent speed tier and its guaranteed team presence means an Earthquake immunity for your partners.
In a vacuum, this might not sound problematic. While nowhere near as common in Doubles OU, there are numerous oldgen metagames where certain Pokemon are auto-includes, however it is not unfair to say that how Latias interacts with the tier is unhealthy.
2. The Speed Tier
Base 110 Speed is a rather contested speed tier within the metagame, as between the ubiquitous Latias, Gengar (a top 3 Pokemon with >90% ADVPL usage), and Tauros, a staple cleaner, it is pretty likely to assume you are going to be risking a speed tie at some point during an ADV match. Banning Latias would reduce the clutter on this speed tier and work to cut down on the impact of RNG on games. Speed ties in this tier might honestly not be that big of a deal if the Pokemon didn't interact with each other in such a volatile fashion, but Gengar v Latias can often come down to Destiny Bond/Explosion going off before Latias can click Psychic or not.
2.1 The Latias Mirror
Everything that was just said about the 110 tier and the Latias vs Gengar interaction can of course be applied to Latias itself. A 100% usage Pokemon that is able to beat itself as long as it's moving first is less than desirable for the tier's overall health, especially when outright Latias answers are already slim, which encourages more players to opt into the Dragon Claw mirror. For reference, from ADVPL data at the time of this post, Dragon Claw is eclipsing 40% usage.
In conclusion, the council believes that a metagame without Latias will greatly improve tier health, which is how we arrived at this suspect.
The ADV Council has already agreed to run the vote on Latias, so please keep comments in this thread to the matter of if Latias is broken or not. All discussion is welcome, even if you aren't a qualified voter. The list of voters for the suspect is as follows:
ADV Council (4): zee, SuperEpicAmpharos, Xrn, Grandmas Cookin
ALTPL Players (5): Memoric, tyo, Concept Everything, zoe, Dj Breloominati♬
ADVPL Players (5): Z Strats, ArcticBreeze, QWILY, Mako, BIG WILL
ADV DOU Money Tour Top 8 (5): Frania, Lhions, SMB, gorex, SoulWind
Suspect Tour Winners (2): *
Total: 21 Unique Voters
* Suspect Tour Times (in GMT-4)
Saturday, May 27th: 5 PM
Sunday, May 28th: 9 AM
more details on the suspect tours will be in a follow-up post in this thread in a few days
This thread will be open for about 2 weeks, with voting beginning Monday, June 5th.
