OU Team Study [Week 3: Dice]

[msox]

• What do think was the main/inspiring idea/goal Dice had when building this team?

Dice's team fits the playstyle of sun semi-stall, a rare find in today's offensively dominant metagame which also features rain and sand more commonly than sun. It appears the team's main goal is to wear the opposing team down with entry hazards and keep the sun up at all costs to allow Venasaur to pull off a late game sweep.

• Is there a discernible core that he tried to build around?

As this is a semi-stall team, defensive synergy is very important. this is achieved by the core of Heatran, Slowbro and Forretress who resist 15/17 types together. (16 if you factor in Heatran's air balloon for a ground immunity. the three check many of the tiers offensive threats, making the core difficult to break.

• What are the strong points of the team?

A strong point as previously mentioned is the defensive core of Heatran, Slowbro and Foretress. Additionaly, the use of Garchomp and Venasaur in conjunction to eliminate each others counters is very strong. this team also has very few glaring weaknesses, with maybe specs toed being the biggest issue.

• What are the weak spots?

This team's sweepers benefit greatly from entry hazards, and this team lacks a spin blocker. Perhaps Jellicent in place of Slowbro can help with this, as he can keep hazards up while still resisting 15/17 types with the other members of the defensive core and an immunity to specs toed's hydro pump.

• How could his use of certain EV/moveset twists help his team vs specific threats or archetypes?

I personally use a moveset of magma storm/ sunny day/ solarbeam/ earth power on Heatran to eliminate opposing weather setter while being a secondary sun setter. I feel that ninetales is not enough for this team because of how reliant Venasaur is on the sun.

• How does he use some underrated threats to give his team an advantage?

Dice uses Slowbro on this sun team which is a very underated defensive threat. He checks counters so many physical threats including Terrakion and is often overlooked due to his uu status.

 

[Kingler]

Ok. Before starting on the team, I'd like to say, can't anyone from the thread actually outline what a good analysis would include at the end of the week? Because I'm not even sure what I should do to analyze it better. Whatever.
What do you think was the main/inspiring idea/goal Dice had while making this team?
Hipster. Just hipster.
In all seriousness, I believe Dice wanted to create a sun stall team that deals with the main sun checks/counters.
Is there a discernible core he tried to build it around?
We all see the forry/tran/slowbro core. He also uses yache garchomp to deal with potential revengekillers such as mamoswine and scarfrachi. Mamoswine, terrakion and latias are threats to sun teams. Using yachechomp, slowbro and magmastorm heatran respectively, he can deal with these threats.
What are the strong points of the team?
The strong points are the surprise factor and the core. The core, as mentioned earlier, resists about 15 of all 17 types(16 if air balloon is counted, though rock still isn't resisted by the core, garchomp resists it)
Also, this team fucks up common sun checks and counters. Latias is messed up by the heatran set(trapping+toxic+taunt) whereas slowbro checks the mess out of terrakion. Yache garchomp at +2 can lure in mamoswine, a threat to sun teams, to revenge kill it, only to be OHKOed by a +2 earthquake.
What are the weak spots?
Well, the team only carries one rock resist and no ground resists(heatran's air balloon will have to pop sometime) , making pokemon such as SD rock gem terrakion and mamoswine problematic. The team cannot preent hazards from being spun by starmie and a few team members such as ninetales and venusaur abhor hazards, which spinblockers can easily spinblock against forretress.
How could his use of certain EV/moveset twists help his team vs specific threats or archetypes?
Well, he could make ninetales max SpDef to act as a special sponge. The EVs do allow him to outspeed jolly breloom, a dick to his defensive core, and will-o-wisp it, as well as absorbing spore, but venusaur could deal with breloom and ninetales has chesto anyway. His venusaur set can easily wreak havoc on weatherless teams and heatran gives the middle finger to sun teams even with dugtrio.
How does he use some underrated threats to give his team an advantage?
While I haven't used or even heard of one or two of these movesets, magma trapper heatran with a twist as well as chestorest ninetales who fucks breloom up are underrated if at all used. Slowbro is a great defensive pokemon that deserves its spot on this team.
Anything else you might want to talk/ask about.
Y u call urself dice
Loljk nothing.