Depending on precisely which combination we're using we would win in different ways. They pretty much all involve me as Sedna, which means you won't kill anything. If we're playing a version with UB, I can use cure to get him into melee range, at which point you die. If we're playing a version with DPS Reg, he'll eat you alive. If we're playing a version with Horn-LE, the minion horde will eat you alive. If we're playing the version with TB, he can out-harass you from long range. If we're playing a version with Oak, he can repeatedly poke you with Penitence or bulldoze in with Shield. Or dominate you with a minion swarm. 

The overriding factor here is that you have no monks which means you auto-lose the early game, and become even more disadvantaged in the midgame, so by the time you are trying to pull off all these fancy uber-snare tactics, you'll be way behind in levels and money. 

This discussion is way meaningless right now. Those who say doubles r Ok have explained in many different ways why its ok, proven, over and over again that there is no problem.

So I'm going to try to give a solution.

If one of the guys who posted on this topic fells like there is a double or triple that is imba (chose map as well), pls, send me a msg in game, form your "imba" team to face my non doubles or triples team. Whoever wins posts the SC on this topic. Sounds fair to me, and I will go a little further, if u don't find me, send a msg to SoFFacet, face his non "imba" team, I'm pretty sure he will accept the "challenge". The other 2 on my team are Kassaum and Pacov, msgs us anytime.

No one has "proven" anything, other than the fact that people will do what they want to do.

Actually, the idea of "doubles" being imbalanced can be technically "proven". It is skills that may not align properly, and currently there are none that I have seen. All this thread has proven again is how much casual gamers can whine.

It would require much data.  Data that no one has gathered.  Data that is not a screenshot of a game where you beat some doubles team.

I'm not saying it's not possible, but don't pretend like any of us have access to the metrics that we would need to assert an verifiable conclusion.

Clearly you don't understand. The concept of "doubles" is easily proven without any kind of metrics using logic. It is the skills that is up for debate, and whether the idea of them being stronger together, than would be a duo of another is the real question. I havn't seen any skills that have super doubly power when worked together, and lol chain grasp isn't that threatening, neither are weak towers.

What?

Well, something is OP if a less skilled player wins against a more skille player consistently with a uncounterable tactic. Agree?

If a more skilled player wins over a less skiled player its gonna always be blamed on the skills, and not the tactics. Interestingly enough, on this topic, ppl don't think it has anything to do with skills, but with DG selection.

So it can be easily proven, no blah blah blah about data. Its about what teams can do on a daily basis, any player.

Discussions like these are useful for thinking about these things in the absence of data, but I doubt that they'll ever be enough to convince anyone to change their mind once they've already made it up, regardless of how many good points are made. Therefore the best way to prove that doubles are or are not OP would be to have a large amount of data regarding the win rates of high level doubled teams, compared to high level non-doubled teams. Of course, that data does not currently exist. However, it is the burden of the anti-double faction to show that they are in fact OP and thus should be banned - in the absence of proof that is the case, we must assume they are not OP. 

The only way to gather data regarding the supposed OP-ness of doubles is to permit their usage. 

On average, yes.

You need the data to show that on average, less skilled players win against more skilled players consistently.  Agree?

You're absolutely right, but I'm thinking most of the double haters wouldn't want to see things this way.  They should.

Yes, now I understand what u said.

We should host a doubles tournament. One team doubles/triples and another team counters. Then the other team plays the double and the original team plays the counter. If one team wins both rounds, then skill is probably a contributing factor. If the doubles win each time, then this would suggest that the double was better against the counter. If the counters win both times, then the counters were probably proven to be stronger than the doubles. I'd want to do this.

Count me in

That would never prove anything. Theres far too many variables in that equation for it to have any significant meaning. The one thing this community needs to learn is patientce. Theres so may stratgies unchallenged and untried that to declare anything at all atm is nothing more than speculation.

I never said anything about "declaring." We've got to start sometime. It's possible as an observant player to make an educated guess whether you are winning/losing due to synergy or teamwork. That's all I'm proposing. Of course there are ton's of variables, that's why I'm trying to simulate a control group by having players switch sides.

It doesn't take into consideration that players familiarity with the heros for example, just one of many more issues. I understand what you're trying to do, but.. im the skeptic type.

I apologize if this has come up before, it's a big thread.

You know how everyone says Sedna is the Queen of 1v1?  Do you think that's because she does so much damage or mitigates almost all of yours?  (Hint - door # 2) 

I think the focus on doing damage when it comes to duplicating abilities is kinda missing the point - the most powerful abilities in the game are about mitigation (the same way they were about control in Beta - you can still get some of the old hands frothing at the mouth when you mention stunlocking or slowstacking), and you will get closer to the ragequit-worthy effects you are looking for when you stop looking at quad sniping and start in on quad Brambleshields.

For 12 cumulative skillpoints a team of 4 Oaks could have 24 seconds of invulnerability on the target of their choice.  At level 7.  That's more than they'll need, though.  I'd probably go with a team of 3 Shield/Penitence/Surge Oaks who stack their priests and all use Cloak of Night and one Bestial/Ooze UB Can-Opener.  Put them on Vent, practice chaining their buffs and debuffs so they don't waste effects or just play them pub, assign everyone a number, and teach them how to count to 6 - "Curly should Shield/Surge/Penitence first, wait six seconds then Larry, wait six seconds then Moe"

Or if you want to be a real set of punks you could play defensive early, upgrade death timer, get your points in Shield, some spirits at base and soul power, get BoTF, Charm of Life, or stack Blood Soaked Wand and a couple of DPS items, and just swarm the enemy citadel with Last Stand at level 8...great way to win a game you shouldn't in less time than it takes your enemy to react..

Point is, duplicating direct offensive abilities like Snipe is going to be less effective than stacking a defensive ability as powerful as Shield...

You could pull this with Sedna's heal or QoT's Bramble or even Erebus Mist too, but while in some cases the abilities are better the DGs won't be as versatile as Oak, imo...

tl;dr - Mitigation is OP when stacked, the same way stunlocking used to be...

I honestly would not be scared of massed Shield. All you would have to do is spread out your damage and coordinate target changes.

I agree that defense is very powerful in this game, but I would be much more concerned about a combination of different skills synergizing together than a stacked group of any given one. 

Yeah.. even damage on those oaks would be GG for them really. Not to mention what would happen to them when they used all their shield cooldowns. Massive heals with no damage also wont let you take down anyone either. Maximizing the unique builds in each different hero has always been more effective than doubling any skill.

Hey all. Throwing my 2 cents in again.

So far in this thread, every single advocate of "doubles are bad" has thrown out what they think is imba/game breaking/etc. Then, following good logci and argument reasoning, the advocates have of "doubles are fine" have, i think, shown that they are not imbalanced.

I dont think the discussion is "meaningless anymore" but it is definetly starting to look like one side of the argument is mroe sound than the other currently.

Advocates of "doubles are bad" need to throw out some well founded, well backed up arguments now, other than "omg, 1500 damage is a lot". People have shown over and over that there are many uilds and strategies that could be used to possibly counter this. No one has brought forth a truly solid reason why doubles should be BANNED AS PART OF THE STANDARDIZED RULES. If you want to use doubles or not in custom games, that is beside the point. This discussion is about the "standard" rules.

As for the simple way to solve this that Kokujin put forth:

Instead of saying, fight me once, and it solves everything....when teh demigod cash tournament comes out, why doesnt everyone post what builds they will be using, and lets see how many doubles teams there are, and how many make it to the finals.

I think that would be a good metric to see if there really is a problem with doubles....

(The only doubles in teh whole game that has a problem right now is double erebus, on prison, both spamming minions at the citadel archer towers from teh safe spot, and then spamming the citadel. This is not a problem with the double in and of itself, but rather a problem with the map, and the fact that minions need a little tweaking as far as what happens when you kill them goes.)

Ultimately, if/when there is some kind of functional "Arranged Team" automatic ladder system, I highly doubt that doubles will be banned.  So you can either play with doubles now and try to find effective counters to overpowered doubles teams, or you can get blindsided by them when you're inevitably matched up against one.

If you hate doubles for whatever reason, then fine, ban it from your custom games.  That's why they're custom.  But a legit ladder system of any significance involves playing against opponents that you cannot preselect.  So however difficult a doubles combo may be to fight against, I'd say either find a way to beat them, or join them, if you're a serious player.

Just say both ESL and GR tournaments do not allow doubles. So there is something good consensus why doubles are broken like hell (which they are.)

"Its what other people do so it must be right." What a terrible argument. 

I think the rationale goes something like this, with the seemingly lopsided effectiveness of some tactics in comparison to others, that doubling or more of a narrow tactic like that is imbalancing.

I know I'm not really arguing the same point as you guys, but here's the thing:  A few DGs when doubled up require specific DGs, items, skill levels, and/or actions to counter them.  Without pre-game coordination to counter them it takes an unreasonable amount of skill to defeat and hence they are forbidden.

The main example in my experience has been dealing with double regs on a 3v3.  If I do well they resort to simply hitting me with snipe every single cooldown from across the map.  If I don't get heals, I'm either dead, dropping way too much money on potions, or going home to heal over and over again.

I've only had two memorable experiences with double reg and both times I had a general on my side.  The first time I encountered them I was pummeled into the ground and we only won because quite frankly they weren't very good and they needed those snipes to finish anyone but they were alwkeepays on cooldown from keeping me en route to the crystal.  The entire game was frustrating and the win wasn't paritcularly gratifying.

The second other time the EB on my team sent a monk over to my lane and followed me with it a good 80% of the time.  Whenever it would start up a suicide run he would pull it back and whenever  the other team managed to kill it off he'd resummon.  I was able to be aggressive enough to get some kills, bulk up on HP, and shrug off the snipes without his monk when priets hit the field.

It took much more effort on the EB's part to counter the snipes than it did for the Reguli (I propose we all use this word :)) and hence if doubles were more frequently allowed it would not generally be fun to play against since having a partner who knows what they're doing is hardly reliable.

So again the real problem is a lack of a proper matching system and the fact that the competitive players are playing in customgames with house rules.  The general community's rules shouldn't apply in high skill level games, but there's currently no distinction between them so you either spend 30 minutes each game finding good opponents, play the way people want to play, or don't play at all.

Combinations of DG's require specific DGs, items, skill levels, and/or actions to counter them.  Without pre-game coordination to counter them it takes an unreasonable amount of skill to defeat and hence they are forbidden.