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What are some good or widely used strategies in Gen 8 Competitive Doubles, and is there any way that Wonder Guard can be improved/utilised really well with things like Soak/Focus Sash etc?

Any answers will ge greatly appreciated, thanks! :)

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Shedinja pairs well with Focus Sash or Heavy-Duty Boots, and to a lesser extent Safety Goggles. As a whole it's too gimmicky to be worth considering often.
k thanks :)
You could also do something like ally switch and play mind games

4 Answers

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Shedinja @ Focus Sash
Ability: Wonder Guard
Shiny: Yes
Hidden Power: Ground
EVs: 252 Atk
Adamant Nature
- Leech Life
- Swords Dance
- Poltergeist/toxic
- shadow sneak

This is what I usually like to use, I use focus sash so that if I mis-click I still have 1 hit-point left and toxic, because what is a better way to beat your opponent than by annoying them.

                                         Hope I helped! (:
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Hidden power and poltergiest never existed in a gen together
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The strategy with the greatest rewards, but also has the greatest risk, is to use it in Triple Battle with a combination of other Pokemon. However, using it this way will dedicate at least 2 other Pokemon to setting it up.

Shedinja @ Safety Goggles
Ability: Wonder Guard
EVs: 252 Attack, (any)
Adamant Nature
- Hone Claws
- X Scissor/Skitter Smack
-Shadow Claw/Phantom Force/Poltergeist
- (any)

This is your centerpiece. It should be in the center of your formation, and you should, ideally, never remove it from the field after it comes out. Safety Goggles will protect Shedinja from Weather, one of the primary ways to bypass Wonder Guard (that said, we won't be keeping Wonder Guard long). Now, onto the support crew.

Eelektross
-Thunder Wave (prevent Shedinja from being Burned or Poisoned)
- Gastro Acid (neutralize Wonder Guard for replacement)
- Thunderbolt
- filler

Carbink
Ability: Sturdy
- Skill Swap
- filler
-filler
- filler

You might already see where this is going. Ideally, you'd manipulate the Speed stats of both Eelektross and Carbink so that they are just slightly off from being the same -- the goal is for Eelektross to get it's turn immediately before Carbink does. The reason for this is to minimize the period in time where literally anything can destroy Shedinja, because Wonder Guard will be turned off.

Turn 1, Eelektross uses Gastro Acid, to neutralize Wonder Guard, to allow for Carbink to use Skill Swap in order to replace it with Sturdy. Hopefully your opponent hasn't used a Dark or Fire type move to obliterate Shedinja before this point. Meanwhile, Shedinja should be using Hone Claws.

Turn 2, Eelektross uses Thunder Wave to paralyze Shedinja. This will prevent you opponent from using Will O'Wisp or Toxic to Burn or Poison Shedinja. If you have reached this state, it becomes almost impossible for your opponent to KO Shedinja.

If you really want to add insult to injury, switch Carbink out and replace it with a Ditto, and have it Transform into your Shedinja. That would be Turn 3 at the earliest, by which time Shedinja should have used Hone Claws at least twice, maybe even 3 times depending on the opponent's team comp and actions. This would mean you now have 2 Shedinjas with Sturdy and +3 to both Attack and Accuracy (but only 1 has Safety Goggles to protect from Sand/Hail). Further, Shedinja's (and now, Ditto's) movepool really doesn't have anything to effectively combat Water and Flying types, but since you have Eelektross... well, do the math.

That doesn't mean you've guaranteed a victory, though. Abilities that allow attacks to bypass other Abilities will destroy a Sturdy Shedinja. Item manipulation strategies can remove the Safety Goggles, making you vulnerable to weather damage. Your opponent may have brought a medic, in which case they may be able to cure your Shedinja of Paralysis, leaving it vulnerable to Burn or Poison. I'm unsure of how multi-hit moves will interact with Sturdy Shedinja. Normally, Sturdy can only take effect if the target is at full health, meaning the second hit would KO any other Pokemon, but since Shedinja would forever be at full health after each hit, it complicates things. It would depend on whether or not Sturdy can trigger multiple times per turn or not.

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Are you able to play Triple Battles in NatDex? That's the only format in which all sets/Pokemon you give are allowed (I think, please correct me if I'm wrong).
Also, the question mentions Doubles already.
0 votes

There are quite a few gimmicks you can perform with Shedinja in doubles, however none of them are viable at high level play. Some teams could instantly lose to some of these gimmicks, though.

Also, for most of these sets I recommend using Safety Goggles as your item, so Shedinja doesn't just faint to a single hailstone or a grain of sand, or Focus Sash, to guarantee that you survive a hit. Entry Hazards are rare in doubles.

One thing you can do is change Shedinja's type with moves such as Soak and Magic Powder. If the opponent lacks moves to hit Shed super effectively after a Soak or Magic Powder, you could potentially win the game turn 1. Intelleon makes for a great partner to Shedinja here, as it has the highest speed out of every Soak user. This can be stopped by double teams from faster opponents, or fake out. Mold Breaker and Teravolt invalidate this completely.

Another thing you can do is pass Wonder Guard to an ally via Entrainment. This takes 2 turns to set up, so I suggest using Focus Sash as your item for this. For this gimmick, lead off with Loppuny and Shedinja. Start by having Loppuny use Entrainment on an opponent, then have Shedinja use Mimic on Loppuny, allowing Shedinja to use Entrainment itself. After that, swap Loppuny out and, with Shedinja, use Entrainment on the ally coming in. With that, Shedinja’s ally now has Wonder Guard. Some great recipients for this are Air Balloon Drapion / Skuntank, pure electric types with an Air Balloon or a pure fire type with Burn Up. In case you don’t know, Burn Up causes you to lose your fire typing. When a pure fire type uses this, it becomes typeless, losing all weaknesses and gaining none. This gimmick can be stopped by taking down Shedinja before it used Entrainment, Fake Out and fast double teams. Mold Breaker and Teravolt still ruin this strategy.

Also, Shedinja can be used as a support mon to great effect. How? Ally Switch.

You could also do something like ally switch and play mind games
commented 11 hours ago by Demon Hunter

Demon Hunter is correct about this. With Wonder Guard, Ally Switch Mind games can put an opponent in a really tough spot. If they target Shedinja's ally, they risk Shedinja just taking the hit instead and dealing an astonshing 0 damage. If they try to predict an Ally Switch and use something like High Horsepower on the Shedinja slot, but if Shedinja doesn't Ally Switch, well, yeah. Shedinja also has some other options, such as Will-O-Wisp, Shadow Sneak, Protect, Skitter Smack, or even manually setting sunlight with Sunny Day. Here's a moveset:

Shedinja @ Safety Goggles / Focus Sash
Ability: Wonder Guard
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Ally Switch
- Will-O-Wisp
- Protect
- Shadow Sneak

Hope this helps! :)
Also it's 1:30 AM at the time of me making this. I might add more stuff another time.

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edited by
Shedinja cannot transfer Wonder Guard to other Pokemon; Skill Swap fails if the ability is Wonder Guard.
Oh I didn’t know that. I’ll edit it out for now.
Edit: I’ve put in a gimmick involving Entrainment and Mimic instead.
For the record, you actually can move Wonder Guard, but it must have been suppressed by Gastro Acid first, rendering it inactive.
0 votes

Shedinja @ Focus Sash

  • Toxic
  • Endure
  • Protect
  • Hex

The idea is that Sash will guarantee you set up Toxic, then just run between Endure and Protect to stall them out and prevent the failure chance for consecutive use.

Hex is there if you can anticipate a non super-effective attack. Double power from Toxic plus STAB can make for good power.

I feel its too gimmicky to pull off over and over again but as a surprise build it could catch a few people out. Definitely good fun to try out.

Feedback would be appreciated as I'm new here and I love this community.

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