Hoopa-U has always been one of my favourite pokemon in doubles, specifically offensive trickroom. However in this meta where every team has a tapu and incineroar being everywhere its been kinda hard to find a use for hoopa. I knew I wouldn't be able to use hoopa for fullroom because of its faility and lack of utility. However the concept of tailroom came to mind. With hoopa being able to counter tailwind offense or other very fast teams but isn't relied upon for the teams speed control. So I got to building.
First I needed the first team mate for hoopa. Tapu fini seemed to fit the best in terms of synergizing with hoopa. Fini can deal with dark types like incineroar and hoopa can beat poison types like amoongus and give speed control. Misty terrain allows hoopa to use a misty seed to boost spdef to make setting up easier and frees up magician early to steel items. Calm mind fini makes the most sense because I want to be putting as much offensive pressure on as possible (but specs would be a bit much lol) and allows fini to act as a blanket check to alot of threats.
The next thing I needed was a fake out user. Even though psychic terrain is a thing, I have fini and it really helps hoopa. However alot of good ones share a weakness with hoopa which would make lead matcgups difficult. But I finally settled on incineroar. He shares no weaknesses with any of the other members and provides fakeout and intimidate support for hoopa. He also starts a FWG core and has access to u-turn.
Next I needed a tapu counter and a grass type. At first amoonguss seemed like a great pick, however its spore is blocked by misty terrain and it can't beat lele. So my next pick was ferrothorn. Ferrothorn is an unkillable tank in doubles.with double leech seed and pinch beeries ferro will stop almost anything. And is very importantly still has an offensive pressence which helps keep momentum.
Now at this point I was lacking a few things.
1: a ground immunity
2: tailwind users/abusers
3: a mega and a z move
This gave me a few limitations in the mons I wanted to use but I finally decided mega mence was my best option. Fills my mega, ground immune, tailwind user, finishes the "fantasy" core (this was by accident) and provides intimidate pre mega. I'm quite a big fan of having double intimidate on this team because it allows me to easily deal with big threats like meta gross. It also allows fini to set up easier and hoopa set trickroom because they both boost their spdef. Mence also can act as a late game cleaner with high speed and damage output if need be.
This last spot was kinda hard to figure out. I knew I wanted something fast because at this point the team felt too centralised around getting up trickroom and i wanted reliable speed. This mon is the most likely to change because there wasn't much thaught put into it. Originally i liked the idea of raichu with fake out and lightning rod. Being able to take away electric attacks for fini and provide more fake out support with a 110 base speed. But it was too weak and didn't do enough. So i decided to use zeraora. Zeraora does basically the same thing but faster and stronger. Electrium Z does alot of damage to neutral targets and hp ice allows it to threaten lando chomp and zygarde. CC lets it do damage to ferro but maybe something like volt switch or protect is a better option.
Weaknesses:
These are things I've noticed that the team struggles with through testing and want to fix.
Fullroom - Especially the porygon staka bulu team going around, the team has a very hard time keeping speed control and has to take big hits from them.
Gothitelle - being trapped limits the teams ability to improve its defensive matchup which is a large component of how the team functions. Gaining speed control and constant pressure can work but it gets difficult if you can't take out gothitelle.
Team: https://pokepast.es/7dcde94c0b2ef7d2
Sorry for the bad format, I ran out of time and had to do it on my phone.
First I needed the first team mate for hoopa. Tapu fini seemed to fit the best in terms of synergizing with hoopa. Fini can deal with dark types like incineroar and hoopa can beat poison types like amoongus and give speed control. Misty terrain allows hoopa to use a misty seed to boost spdef to make setting up easier and frees up magician early to steel items. Calm mind fini makes the most sense because I want to be putting as much offensive pressure on as possible (but specs would be a bit much lol) and allows fini to act as a blanket check to alot of threats.
The next thing I needed was a fake out user. Even though psychic terrain is a thing, I have fini and it really helps hoopa. However alot of good ones share a weakness with hoopa which would make lead matcgups difficult. But I finally settled on incineroar. He shares no weaknesses with any of the other members and provides fakeout and intimidate support for hoopa. He also starts a FWG core and has access to u-turn.
Next I needed a tapu counter and a grass type. At first amoonguss seemed like a great pick, however its spore is blocked by misty terrain and it can't beat lele. So my next pick was ferrothorn. Ferrothorn is an unkillable tank in doubles.with double leech seed and pinch beeries ferro will stop almost anything. And is very importantly still has an offensive pressence which helps keep momentum.
Now at this point I was lacking a few things.
1: a ground immunity
2: tailwind users/abusers
3: a mega and a z move
This gave me a few limitations in the mons I wanted to use but I finally decided mega mence was my best option. Fills my mega, ground immune, tailwind user, finishes the "fantasy" core (this was by accident) and provides intimidate pre mega. I'm quite a big fan of having double intimidate on this team because it allows me to easily deal with big threats like meta gross. It also allows fini to set up easier and hoopa set trickroom because they both boost their spdef. Mence also can act as a late game cleaner with high speed and damage output if need be.
This last spot was kinda hard to figure out. I knew I wanted something fast because at this point the team felt too centralised around getting up trickroom and i wanted reliable speed. This mon is the most likely to change because there wasn't much thaught put into it. Originally i liked the idea of raichu with fake out and lightning rod. Being able to take away electric attacks for fini and provide more fake out support with a 110 base speed. But it was too weak and didn't do enough. So i decided to use zeraora. Zeraora does basically the same thing but faster and stronger. Electrium Z does alot of damage to neutral targets and hp ice allows it to threaten lando chomp and zygarde. CC lets it do damage to ferro but maybe something like volt switch or protect is a better option.
Weaknesses:
These are things I've noticed that the team struggles with through testing and want to fix.
Fullroom - Especially the porygon staka bulu team going around, the team has a very hard time keeping speed control and has to take big hits from them.
Gothitelle - being trapped limits the teams ability to improve its defensive matchup which is a large component of how the team functions. Gaining speed control and constant pressure can work but it gets difficult if you can't take out gothitelle.
Team: https://pokepast.es/7dcde94c0b2ef7d2
Sorry for the bad format, I ran out of time and had to do it on my phone.
