Oh my gosh, it's going to be Nollan taking home this one too. Great posts coming from this man :D
I'll try writing a bit on the metagame as it is at the moment though.
I am going to try to look at it from a different perspective than Nollan. At the moment, the metagame is shaped a lot by 2 categories that are / can be considered strategies; weather and speed control. There are 4 types of both, and all 8 perform different things. Weather can easily be combined with speed control, and some high-level teams also use more than one type of speed control, just to go even more anti-meta. I would not recommend combining 2 weathers though, as that will basically mean you are having a weather war against yourself.
First, I am going to talk a bit about
weather. Here is a short list of pokemon that benefit a lot from the different types of weather, and a brief explanation on why one would use the weather type.
Sandstorm
- Excadrill: With it's unbanning in the change from OU to doubles, Excadrill now gives Sand teams a huge boost, especially as most of it's threatening moves are spread moves, allowing it to damage both opposing pokemon in one turn. Another important trait is it's immunity to Electric, so no checking this fast mon with Thundurus.
- Landorus-I: Basically, it is a more powerful, slower Excadrill with more bulk and different typing. It does the exact same thing best as Excadrill does best: spam Earthquake and Rock Slide under Sandstorm.
- Literally every Rock type: Rock types are usually more physically defensive than specially, but in Sandstorm, they get a nifty 50% boost to their Special Defense, something that is very significant in making these pokemon much harder to take down.
- Literally everything immune to Sand: residual damage can mean the difference between KO and survival with 2 HP, making Sandstorm a nice little extra damage added to offensive Steel / Rock / Ground types.
Sandstorm is also very liked, considering how large of a threat Tyranitar is in doubles. Tyranitar can effectively both check Trick Room
and work in it, whilst also having a powerful STAB spread move in Rock Slide. Sand also helps keep Swift Swim users in check, prevent BlizzSpam and generally just shit on Sun's life.
Rain Dance
- Swift Swimmers (most notably Kingdra, Ludicolo and Kabutops): DrizzleSwim was deemed to powerful for OU, but it is completely allowed in Doubles. Doubling speed can be very deadly, especially if you are spamming a STAB spread move. The reason why DrizzleSwim is unbanned in doubles is because of all the Trick Room and Thunder Wave flying everywhere, including spread moves doing less damage and of course priority everywhere, most well-built teams should be able to withstand the mighty Swift Swim pokemon.
- Everything with a Water type move: Water moves are obviously boosted in Rain, making them more threatening.
Ferrothorn: that little bitch
- Pokemon weak to Fire type attacks: Obviously, Rain will help them in surviving the hits.
Rain is very popular due to Water being an above average good typing both offensively and defensively. Also, Politoed has a some cool supporting moves in Helping Hand, Encore, idk Hypnosis or something, and can also be offensive on it's own, boosting it's own STAB like that.
Sunny Day
- Strong Fire types: Heat Wave spam in Sun can hurt a lot of pokemon hard, whilst their Water weakness is somewhat mitigated by the presence of Sunny Day.
- Chlorophyll pokemon: It's basically the exact same thing as Swift Swimmers; just without boosted STAB and that they become more weak to Fire (they are all grass types). They do of course kind of shit on Rain teams, which is something Sun teams might struggle with.
- Victini: too strong.
- Pokemon weak to Water type attacks: Again, they might survive some more hits.
The reason why Sunny Day is not a very popular weather, is that it struggles a lot against Sandstorm and Rain Dance teams. Another reason is because Ninetales would be a complete waste of a moveslot if not for it's ability. Even worse of a pokemon than Politoed.
Hail
- Blizzard: strongest spread move in the game; now with perfect accuracy.
- Abomosnow: with the right spread, it can OHKO Politoed and Tyranitar, and since Hail is used literally just 2 things (blizzard and disrupting other weather), it is a much better pokemon than it's stats look to be.
- Residual damage.
Yeah that's pretty much it, also worth a mention that Hail goes extremely well with Trick Room because of how anti meta it is. It is anti-meta because you not only get to disrupt all other weather forms, but also get to completely shut down Tailwind / Icy Wind / Thunder Wave teams.
That's it for weathers, now onto
Speed Control. This will be notably shorter, since how they work and why the work is like the most obvious information for anyone.
Icy Wind: Being a spread move that lowers both of the opponent's speed stats, you can literally just click Icy Wind constantly whilst sometimes protecting with your ally. Probably the biggest reason why this is such a relevant move is because of the fact that Cresselia has access to it. Cresselia, being such an awesome bulky support pokemon, can easily throw >5 Icy Winds at the opposition, potentially deciding the match.
Trick Room: This is the one form of speed control that simply stands out from the rest. Basically, you need to have almost half a team filled with pokemon pet there
just to set it up. Trick Room is susceptible to Taunt, Fake Out and strong Dark / Ghost type attacks. It also has the problem of either the Trick Room setter or the Trick Room supporter (usually an Amoonguss) to become almost complete dead weight once Trick Room has been set up. All this bullshit said, Trick Room is extremely deadly in the right hands. Not only does it completely shut down all other speed control, and seem to last much longer in doubles, it also allows you to invest into bulk over speed, making the entire team extremely hard to take down.
Tailwind: Undoubtedly the easiest speed control to set up. Slow Taunts will miss out on preventing it, it allows both your pokemon to almost always outspeed both opposing pokemon by using a single turn, and it doesn't require frickin Rage Powder. It also has some very good setters in Zapdos, Suicune, Latias, Tornadus and Scizor, and don't even get me started on how many good abusers of it there are. Everything in an awkward speed tier can now outspeed a lot of common threats. For example, with some investment, something like Tyranitar can even outspeed max speed Timid Lati@s. The downsides though, are of course that it lasts for 4 turns (the 4 turns for some reason counting the turn you set it up), is still weak to Prankster Taunt, and faces hard competition from Trick Room teams, and generally frickin hates prankster T-Wave. Which leads to the next form of speed control...
Thunder Wave: Spreading paralysis is much more viable in doubles than in regular singles. Being that 1) Thundurus is now unbanned and 2) it can almost guarenteed be spammed 2 times, as compared to in Singles, where the opponent could stay in, thus giving you more mindgames. Also, it completely shits on Tailwind teams, and Icy Wind teams to an extent.
It also helps you hax the shit out of Audiosurfer
Just to comment on Nollan mentioning Goodstuff, I think that anything that targets to shit on other team goal rather than having one yourself is goodstuff, just like you mentioned. But I do think that you can combine goodstuff into almost any one of the speed control or weather categories, if not more than one.
That is all for my post :)