Battle Spot: Umbreon Doubles strategy

Build set as of Gen 6

• Ability – Inner Focus
• Stats – HP (252), Special Defence/SpD (252), Defence (4)
• Nature – Sassy
• Item – Mental Herb
• Move set – Helping Hand, Foul Play (stab), Heal Bell/Taunt, Toxic

Umbreon in Trick Room? Nope, I'll be taking a break from Trick Room setting for awhile. So in this entry, I'll explain about how Umbreon can be used in Doubles format from my experience. Usually, Umbreon guides online are based on 1v1 because it's hard to use it in Doubles, and it is, because Doubles format is too fast for its cleric support role. But ah, there's a way.

Strength

Umbreon has one of the best defensive stats especially its SpD (130!), and even the Defence isn't that shy as well (110!). It's an amazing tank, so it's ideal to use it against many offensive-type Pokemon and you don't even need to invest in Attack because it has Foul Play and has a ton of support moves, more on that later.

It also has two useful abilities which are Inner Focus and Synchronize, personally, I personally recommend Inner Focus because as a supporter, it's essential not to get flinched especially when it's kinda slow. On the other hand, Synchronize is useful too, as it can simply “Synchronize” burn, poison and paralyzed status back to the enemy and heal itself with a Heal Bell (or a Lum Berry, if you like). However, the Gen 6 mechanic indirectly made the ability less awesome since Fire-types can’t be burn, Electric-types from being paralyzed, and same goes to Poison status to Poison-types. Oh, as a supporter a Mental Herb is important too.

Weakness

Back then, it only had to be worried of Fighting-type Pokemon in Battle Spot. But now that the game has Fairies running around, you're forced to add in another partner to cover up that weakness. Plus the occasional Bug-type weakness, having an Umbreon as a core in your Doubles team could easily require around 2-3 Pokemon to cover up its weakness. Shucks, choose wisely. 

Not only that, Taunt and Trick Pokemon users are an annoyance too especially the latter. Veterans will force you to waste a round to change your Umbreon with another teammate if you want to use another move, so keep an eye out as there are only a few who can learn that move, particularly Rotom-W. 

Moveset

Ah, I almost forgot. The only reason you should use Umbreon in Doubles is because of only one move - Helping Hand. Why Helping Hand? Well as I said earlier, Doubles is too fast for a slow cleric like Umbreon to execute the moves; besides, Helping Hand has a +5 priority to compensate for its slow Speed. Thus, the best type of partners to pair with Umbreon is an offensive Pokemon that knows a spread move (Earthquake, Heatwave, Blizzard, etc).

Foul Play is also commonly used, so sometimes it's good to provide some assistance instead of supporting all the time. A partner with Swagger move is quite ideal and this could prove annoying to the opponent who has a SpA-focus Pokemon. To add on to that, it's not wise to make Umbreon learn Payback or Assurance move; the Attack stat is too low to consider, even if you boost it with Curse, you're wasting too much time setting up. 

Heal Bell is another fantastic move to have as it cures everyone in the team from Burn, Sleep, Freeze, Poison and Paralyzed status, Taunt isn't so bad too so that depends on your preference.  

Speaking of curing your team, Snatch is a quite interesting move because it functions like a +4 priority Taunt (very useful since Umbreon is slow). The only problem, though, is you really need to be good in mind reading to predict what your opponent would do. Snatch will steal any status move (except Status moves, Taunt and Encore). For example, if the opponent uses Tailwind and you used Snatch in the same round; Tailwind will be stolen and Umbreon will cast Tailwind instead. It's too bad that it can't steal Status moves, Taunt and Encore, or else it would've been really beneficial.

Lastly, Toxic is another way of assisting your partner especially on other tanky Pokemon such as Suicune itself. Yawn is another good move to shut down threats in the next round, but this won’t stop them from waking up with Lum Berry and Safeguard. 

Closing thoughts

Using Umbreon in Doubles is not easy, if you really want it to be part of your Doubles team, you'll need a lot of trials and errors to get it right (especially if it's a core Pokemon). But once you get the correct ingredients, your team will actually be almost unbeatable taken if you take advantage of Helping Hand, and not many opponents have experience facing a mix Doubles team which will keep them on a wild guess.

So Umbreon, I choose you! Glhf!