Regice (Update)

Progress: Incomplete:
* Not enough feedback * Grammar edits done

Changes done:
* Rewrote discussion refering to UU tier
* Added new sets and edited current ones
* Edited "Other Options" to refer to UU tier
* Edited "Opinion" to refer to UU tier
* Edited "Counters" to refer to UU tier
* Added "Team Options" to the guide.

Current analysis http://www.smogon.com/dp/pokemon/regice

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[Overview]

<p>Regice is arguably one of the best Special Defenders in the game. It has gargantuan Special Defense, good HP, Defense and Special Attack. Despite these terrific stats and its ability, Clear Body, it can't handle the metagame's top threats due to its typing, Ice, because it is not the best defensive typing due to the common Stone Edge, Fire Fang, Fire Punch, Close Combat and Bullet Punch which hit it for super effective damage. On top of that, Ice is also takes 25% damage from Stealth Rocks which gives the already strong Physical Beasts an easier time KOing it.</p>

<p> Despite these disadvantages, Regice still has useful sets and spreads that are very good when compared to other Special Defenders in the metagame. It has access to the popular move duo BoltBeam which is resisted only by Lanturn in UU. It also has many stat up moves such as Curse.</p>

[SET]
name: Sleep Talker
move 1: Rest
move 2: Sleep Talk
move 3: Ice Beam
move 4: Charge Beam / Thunderbolt / Seismic Toss
item: Leftovers
ability: Clear Body
nature: Calm / Bold
evs: 248 HP / 80 SpA / 180 SpD

[SET COMMENTS]

<p>This set can provide great walling capabilities and can stop many Special Attackers from sweeping your team. Few Special Attackers can ride through this set as it can take many attacks and shrug off the damage with Rest. Sleep talk is good because it lets you launch attacks when Rest is in effect</p>

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

<p> Ice Beam is given as it provides you with a strong STAB move vital for doing heavy damage. You may opt for Blizzard if you are using a hailstorm team because Hail remedies Blizzard's mediocre accuracy and because Blizzard has more power than Ice Beam at the cost of less PP. Charge Beam is great as it still provides you with the Ice/Electric combination and also has a 70% chance of raising your Special Attack by one point each hit. Thunderbolt can be used if you prefer to use a stalling technique. Seismic Toss is also viable but Mismagius and Spiritomb can easily come in and set up on you. A Calm nature provides extremely high Special Defense and 299 Defense. You can opt for a Bold nature if you think that the extra Special Defense provided by Calm is unnecessary.</p>

[SET]
name: Life Orb
move 1: Ice Beam
move 2: Thunderbolt
move 3: Focus Blast / Focus Punch / Hammer Arm
move 4: Rest/Explosion
item: Life Orb
ability: Clear Body
nature: Calm / Modest
evs: 248 HP / 80 SpA / 180 SpD

[SET COMMENTS]

<p>This set is a great bulky offender and can effectively 2HKO many of UU's threats with its coverage and usual hit for a Super Effective attack. Ice Beam is a prime STAB and is your main attack. Thunderbolt together with it gives excellent coverage. You may use Blizzard if you want to gain quite a few OHKOs.</p>

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

<p>A calm nature can prvide more bulk but a modest nature secures many 2HKOs and some OHKOs. Focus Blast is there to hit Magneton and Chansey for a Super Effective attack and to hit Lanturn for normal damage. Focus Blast is a quite innaccurate so you may use Hammer Arm or Focus Punch if you wish. If you do opt for the latter two, you should change your nature to Sassy or Quiet. It is recommended you use Stealth Rocks when using this set on your team to get a better chance for 2HKOs and OHKOs. Lastly, rest is there to heal any heavy damage from attacks and damage from the Life Orb or you can have Explosion to usually secure a OHKO against the opponent. Again, if you opt for Explosion remember to consider to change your nature to either Sassy or Quiet. You can also change the EVs around a bit to make it more offensive than defensive.</p>

[SET]

name: Curser
move 1: Curse
move 2: Avalanche
move 3: Rest
move 4: Thunderpunch
item: Leftovers
ability: Clear Body
nature: Careful
evs: 252 HP / 252 SpD / 4 Att

[SET COMMENTS]
<p>This set can effectively shut down teams end game after your opponent's major threats and physical sweepers are eliminated. The combination of Curse and Rest provides great defensive capabilities while slowly raising your offencive capabilities. Avalanche is your primary STAB as you will become slower than your opponent after curse due to the speed drop. Your final move, Thunderpunch is there to acheive the electric/ice combination.</p>

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

<p>Be careful upon switching this guy in. You want to conserve its HP and so save it for a time later in the game. Watch out for Magneton, Lanturn and Shedinja as they resist this set, so you may want to opt for Hammer Arm instead of Thunderpunch.</p>

[Team Options]
<p>It is a good thing to have a rapid spinner on a team with Regice. It does not make a great deal of difference at first, but can be frustrating if you are constantly switching it in and out. A cleric can be handy if your Regice does not have rest to heal a status allignment or heal it after resting if you want. A Ghost type is nice to have as many pokemon with fighting type moves will try to switch in and take you out.</p>

[Other Options]

<p>Blizzard can be used over Ice Beam for more power and is preferably used on a Hailstorm team otherwise not such a good option. Superpower can be used in the curse set over Thunderpunch in which curse would restore the Attack and Defence drop. Amnesia can be used in combination with curse to provide ultimate defences. Rock Polish can be used as a method to sweep though cannot be done efficiently as Regice does not have the best Offensive potential to go with it.</p>

[EVs]

<p>There really is not much of another option that is prevalent enough to perform well. You can invest in speed if you want to use Rock Polish...or invest in Special Attack for the Life Orb set. Defence and HP is really the way to go in EVs as that is the area in which Regice needs more of.</p>

[Opinion]

<p>Well, Regice is...Regice, your semi-gimmicky Special Defender which lacks the typing to dominate. Still, Special Sweeper still cannot even chip the ice off it!</p>

[Counters]
<p>Aggron, Arcanine, Blaziken, Hariyama, Hitmonlee, Hitmontop, Regirock, Registeel, Rhyperior and Steelix can easily break this Ice with thier Physical Super Effective STABs. Regice does not have much chance against these guys, Physical Sweepers and a few Special Sweepers that can it Regice for a super effective hit. Toxic can prove to be very useful but not so much when it has rest. Taunt can stop it from setting up and resting. Finally, the biggest threat against it is...Stealth Rocks! You just have to hate it when your bulky defender takes 25% damage each time it switches in!</p>

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This is my first ever HTML guys. I look forward to receiving constructive and helpful feedback so I can improve on my guide.

Only grammar corrections.

black-add
red-remove
olive green-change

Vaz said:

Progress: Incomplete: No feedback yet

Changes done:
* Rewrote discussion refering to UU tier
* Added new sets and edited current ones
* Edited "Other Options" to refer to UU tier
* Edited "Opinion" to refer to UU tier
* Edited "Counters" to refer to UU tier
* Added "Team Options" to the guide.

Current analysis http://www.smogon.com/dp/pokemon/regice

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Overview]

<p>Regice is arguably one of the best Special Defenders in the game. It has gargantuan Special Defense, good HP, Defense and Special Attack. Despite these terrific stats and its ability, Clear Body, it can't handle the metagame's top threats due to its typing, Ice, because it is not the best defensive typing due to the common Stone Edge, Fire Fang, Fire Punch, Close Combat and Bullet Punch which hit it for super effective damage. On top of that,[add a comma here] Ice is also takes 25% damage from Stealth Rocks which gives the already strong Physical Beasts have an easier time KOing it.</p>

<p> Despite these disadvantages, Regice still has useful sets and spreads that are very good when compared to other Special Defenders in the metagame. It has access to use the popular move duo BoltBeam which is resisted only by Lanturn in UU. It also has many stat up moves such as Curse. which can be used effectively when a Special Attacker is up against you. remove this because Curse raises Defense, not Special Defense.</p>

[SET]
name: Sleep Talker
move 1: Rest
move 2: Sleep Talk
move 3: Ice Beam
move 4: Charge Beam / Thunderbolt / Seismic Toss
item: Leftovers
ability: Clear Body
nature: Calm / Bold
evs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA

[SET COMMENTS]

<p>This set can provide great walling capabilities and can stop many Special Attackers from sweeping your team. Few Special Attackers can ride through this set as it can take many attacks and shrug off the damage with Rest. Sleep talk is good because it lets you launch attacks when Rest is in effect</p>

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

<p> Ice Beam is a given as it provides you with a strong STAB move vital for doing heavy damage. You may opt for Blizzard if you are using a hailstorm team because Hail remedies Blizzard's mediocre accuracy and because Blizzard has more power than Ice Beam at the cost of less PP. Charge Beam is great as it still provides you with the Ice/Electric combination and also has a 70% chance of raising your Special Attack by one point each hit. Thunderbolt can be used if you prefer to use a stalling technique. Seismic Toss is also viable but Mismagius and Spiritomb can easily come in and set up on you. so watch out. A Calm nature provides extremely high Special Defense and 299 Defense. You can opt for a Bold nature if you think that the extra Special Defense provided by Calm is unnecessary.</p>

[SET]
name: Life Orb
move 1: Ice Beam
move 2: Thunderbolt
move 3: Focus Blast / Focus Punch / Hammer Arm
move 4: Rest/Explosion
item: Life Orb
ability: Clear Body
nature: Calm / Modest
evs: 252 Def / 252 HP / 4 SpA

[SET COMMENTS]

<p>This set is a great bulky offender and can effectively 2HKO many of UU's threats with its coverage and usual hit for a Super Effective attack. Ice Beam is a prime STAB and is your main attack. Thunderbolt together with it gives excellent coverage. You may use Blizzard if you want to gain quite a few OHKOs.</p>

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

<p>A calm nature can prvide more bulk but a modest nature secures many 2HKOs and some OHKOs. Focus Blast is there to hit Magneton and Chansey for a Super Effective attack and to hit Lanturn for normal damage. Focus Blast is a quite innaccurate so you may use Hammer Arm or Focus Punch if you wish. If you do opt for the latter two, you should change your nature to Sassy or Quiet. It is recommended you use Stealth Rocks when using this set on your team to get a better chance for 2HKOs and OHKOs. Lastly, rest is there to heal any heavy damage from attacks and damage from the Life Orb or you can have Explosion to usually secure a OHKO against the opponent. Again, if you opt for Explosion remember to consider to change your nature to either Sassy or Quiet. You can also change the EVs around a bit to make it more offensive than defensive.</p>

[SET]

name: Curser
move 1: Curse
move 2: Avalanche
move 3: Rest
move 4: Thunderpunch
item: Leftovers
ability: Clear Body
nature: Calm
evs: 252 HP / 252 SpD / 4 Att

[SET COMMENTS]
<p>This set can effectively shut down teams end game after your opponents major threats and physical sweepers are eliminated. The combination of Curse and Rest provides great defensive capabilities while slowly raising your offencive capabilities. Avalanche is your primary STAB as you would be slower than your opponent after curse. Lastly, your final move Thunderpunch is there to acheive the electric/ice combination.</p>

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

<p>Be careful upon switching this guy in. You want to conserve its HP and so keep it for a time later in the game rather earlier. Watch out for Magneton, Lanturn and Shedinja as they resist this set, so you may want to opt for Hammer Arm instead of Thunderbolt.</p>

[Team Options]
<p>It is a good thing to have a rapid spinner on a team with Regice. It does not make a great deal of difference at first, but can be frustrating if you are constantly switching it in and out. A cleric can be handy if your Regice does not have rest to heal a status allignment or heal it after resting if you want.</p>

[Other Options]

<p>Blizzard can be used over Ice Beam for more power and is preferably used on a Hailstorm team otherwise not such a good option. Superpower can be used in the curse set over Thunderpunch in which curse would restore the Attack and Defence drop. Amnesia can be used in combination with curse to provide ultimate defences. Rock Polish can be used as a method to sweep though cannot be done efficiently as Regice does not have the best Offensive potential to go with it.</p>

[EVs]

<p>There really is not much of another option that is prevalent enough to perform well. You can invest in speed if you want to use Rock Polish...or invest in Special Attack for the Life Orb set. Defence and HP is really the way to go in EVs as that is the area in which Regice needs more of.</p>

[Opinion]

<p>Well, Regice is...Regice, your semi-gimmicky Special Defender which lacks the typing to dominate. Still, Special Sweeper still cannot even chip the ice off it!</p>

[Counters]
<p>Aggron, Arcanine, Blaziken, Hariyama, Hitmonlee, Hitmontop, Regirock, Registeel, Rhyperior and Steelix can easily break this Ice with thier Physical Super Effective STABs. Regice does not have much chance against these guys, Physical Sweepers and a few Special Sweepers that can it Regice for a super effective hit. Toxic can prove to be very useful but not so much when it has rest. Taunt can stop it from setting up and resting. Finally, the biggest threat against it is...Stealth Rocks! You just have to hate it when your bulky defender takes 25% damage each time it switches in!</p>

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This is my first ever HTML guys. I look forward to receiving constructive and helpful feedback so I can improve on my guide.

Click to expand...

That's all I have time for at the moment. I'll continue with the other sets if I find more time.

There really is no reason to run Max HP/Max Def on Regice. It shouldn't be trying to live Close Combats, Stone Edges, Flare Blitzes, etc. You also make it inferior to Chansey that way, which should be avoided. Regice's main niche is that of an offensive special wall, and it should be EVed that way. I think the spread made a while back was something like:

248 HP/80 Sp. ATK/180 Sp. Def

It may need some tweaking, but it should work fine in the UU metagame. It takes a maximum of 73% from a Timid Life Orb Moltres Fire Blast, meaning Moltres can't come in and KO you (Even after SR), and you can cripple it Thunder Wave or kill it with Thunderbolt if its at low enough health. If you can manage to keep SR off the field (since Regice should almost always be used with Spin support). You can take 1 Fire Blast AND 1 Air Slash. Since Moltres's Fire Blast is likely the strongest special attack Regice could be hit by (with the second strongest being Timid Choice Specs Alakazam's Focus Blast), Regice would be able to wall Special attacks MUCH better with that spread than with just 252 Def Bold. It already has Base 100 Def, so there's no need to dump EVs there like there is on Chansey.

As for the rest of the EVs, 363 HP rounds down residual damage. The rest is dumped into Sp. ATK to give Ice Beam a good kick, as Ice is a wonderful offensive STAB.

Also, shouldn't that be Careful and not Calm on the Curser set?

I was going to grammar check this, but then I saw the astronomical number of rather obvious mistakes in it and stopped. The purpose of people grammar checking an analysis is not to make changes every sentence (which is what I was doing), but to just catch small errors. You need to go back and re-read your entire analysis and check it for any errors, because they certainly are abundant in this analysis, and all I read was the Overview and the first set <_<. You may also want to make the analysis and sets longer; I'm all for having nice, concise analysises, but you really do not expand on Regice enough. It's a pretty solid UU Pokemon from my personal experience, and just reading this so far I would say that you need to expand on its strengths and weaknesses a lot more. There's quite a difference between a concise analysis and an analysis so short that the information is lacking, and I'm sorry to say that the information presented here really is lacking. When you add more and proofread your own work I'll grammar check this. Don't get me wrong, the writing isn't bad, it could just be better. ;)

I made edits and did some more checking for grammar mistakes. Wow, I had a lot of errors I blindly did not realise, even after checking it before posting it x_x

Moving to QC. Not too sure about the Curser / nature on the LO set, among other things.

I think Substitute needs to be mentioned somehow on the Restalker set. I tried a Sub + Charge Beam set with Regice, and imo is just as effective as the Restalker.

name: Sub + Charge Beam
move 1: Substitute
move 2: Charge Beam
move 3: Ice Beam
move 4: Rest / Thunderwave
item: Leftovers
nature: Calm
evs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD

Regice's biggest counters are Fighting-types, and Regice functions better behind a Substitute, getting a free hit on them every time they switch in. It also protects Regice from status, which Rest cures anyway, but Regice wants to Rest as little as possible.

The curse set confuses me. Regice has 50 base ATK? It has nice special bulk, sure, but 9/10 times Curse Registeel is going to be better.Will probably be rejecting that set.

The EVs and moves on the LO set are rather odd too. Imo it should look something like this:

Regice @ Life Orb
Modest
128 HP/252 SATK/124 SPE
-Ice Beam
-Thunderbolt
-Focus Blast/Charge Beam
-Rock Polish/Substitute

That's probably not optimal, but it's way better than having Explosion and Focus Punch off 50 base ATK with a - nature...

RestTalk looks fine. Be sure to mention its merits as a special wall over other things (statistically better than Milotic, not set up bait for some things like Chansey is, counters....uh, Jynx?)

Bump...why the fuck are there two Regice updates...?

That was my bad you can do it vaz if you want.

I know this has been inactive for a while, but I have some things to say.

You need to expand on the Team Options section. Emphasize just how important a Rapid Spinner is when using Regice, while giving an example as well. With a handy resistance to Rock, Hitmontop can switch-in on Rock-type moves directed at Regice, making him a great partner. At the same time Hitmontop can use Rapid Spin to get rid of Stealth Rock, which Regice greatly appreciates. Rapid Spin support is especially important on defensive sets since you'll be switching constantly, and you don't want to be deprived of 25% health each time you come in. So yeah, Hitmontop deserves a mention there!

Curse Regice doesn't seem very effective; the set has several problems. Regice has an abysmal 50 base Attack, which means he won't be dishing out much damage, even after a Curse or two. Also, Regice's typing is horrible for a Curse user. Weakness to the common Fighting-, Rock-, Fire-type attacks is a problem. Registeel shares two of the three aforementioned weakness, but unlike Regice, Registeel has a plethora of resistances, allowing him to use Curse more effectively. Regice only has one resistance (Ice), which is a big letdown. All of these problems hinder Regice's viability as a Curser...so I don't think that should be listed as a set. Perhaps shift it down to Other Options?

The Life Orb set needs some tweaking. The slashes make it look messy, and the listed nature's / move options are really obscure. Could look something like this:

[SET]
name: Life Orb
move 1: Ice Beam
move 2: Thunderbolt
move 3: Focus Blast
move 4: Explosion
item: Life Orb
ability: Clear Body
nature: Timid
evs: 252 SpA / 4 Atk / 252 Spe

There's absolutely no reason to run Rest on this set. You're meant to be attacking, and sleeping for two turns really slows this Regice down and leaves you wide open to several threats. Just pack a spinner (like Hitmontop!), and you'll have more survivability.

I would simply run Focus Blast as your main Fighting-type move to deal with Registeel and weakened Chansey. Focus Punch requires too much prediction and is unreliable, while Hammer Arm is quite weak coming from a Pokemon with 50 base Attack and a nature that lowers attack. Explosion is there to completely eliminate Chansey, but she'll have to be slightly weakened if you wish to KO her.

There's no reason to be running Calm on a Regice that's meant to be attacking. Instead of focusing on HP + Special Defense like the EVs currently listed on the Life Orb set, you really should focus on maximizing Regice's damage output by adding more SpA. Max Special Attack accomplishes that, while max Speed allows you to outpace Milotic and strike it with Thunderbolt. You can either run this EV spread, or the one FlareBlitz outlined in his post.

With that said, if you ever get around to working on this again, I'd add more information to the OP and consider the suggestions made in this thread. Like Snorlaxe said, some of your sections are lacking in content and could really use some expanding. Other than that, cool stuff.

Vaz, when you update this, please add any of the suggestions/concerns/sets from alex 67's thread here. Thank you!

okay, for starters i am rejecting the curse set

secondly, definitely run modest on the life orb set. what exactly is it outrunning with timid? modest already gets clefable, donphan, rhyperior, etc. the only thing important you miss out on is milotic, who you deal 51.78% - 60.91% to with life orb modest thunderbolt so i guess you lose out on that, but the power is much appreciated vs things like clefable, who you can knock out with a thunderbolt + focus blast while modest, but not while timid, as well as 2hko with ice beam after ~15% prior damage. the extra damage is very appreciated overall.

i'll think of something maybe with the restalk evs but consider this approved

Vaz gave me permission to take this over, as I'm going to completely redo this, I'm going to start a new thread, and a believe this can be locked. Thanks.

OK sounds good.

Moving.