I’ve always liked the concept of Arcanine, and I’ve always tried to incorporate it into my team. Just recently, however, have I realized the flaw in trying to use those attacking stats of his to sweep. Arcanine is too weak and too slow for a full-fledged sweep, as well as having too many easy switch ins on the enemy’s part. Then what? How should one use our little pooch? The answer is startling, as a bulky(!) utility Pokemon to force switches and hit with an assortment of moves!
Arcanine has two things that make a bulky set even remotely possibly. That is the fact that it has a very nice array of defensive stats (90/80/80, compared to Infernape’s 74/71/71) as well as having Intimidate, to severely weaken physical attacks. It also has the moves to stop its counters in it’s tracks, but is even now being used as a choice user, who just doesn’t hit fast enough or hard enough. Now, I shall present the best way to use him, Pepper:
Pepper (Arcanine)@ Leftovers
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
EVs 240 HP, 168 Def, 72Spd, 28SpA
Will-o-wisp
HP Ground
Flamethrower/Fire Blast/Overheat
Roar
The EVs provided are ensured to withstand a multitude of physical attacks (Jolly CBDuggy EQ/Jolly Chomp EQ won’t OHKO this, FYI), outspeed Jolly Tyranitar (And things outspeeding Jolly TTar by one) and be able to 2HKO moderately bulky Heatrans and 4HP Infernapes (52% or so is the minimum, I believe). Leftovers are used to get some HP on switch ins and switch outs.
Now for the key part of the post, the set itself:
Will-o-wisp is the most important part here, as most things that switch into Arcanine can be either a physical resist or special fire/water. The beauty here is that you can cripple those physical switch ins with Will-o-wisp. Gyarados, Garchomp, Ttar, etc and the wide assortment of Ground based walls. They are all crippled by a Wisp, as it cuts their attack in half. The special waters that switch in will have to deal with -12% each turn, which is a bother to the likes of Vaporeon, who pride themselves of being bulky, are suddenly hurt badly. And since people think you are Banded or whatnot, nobody is fool enough to switch in a special wall that isn’t water.
Heatran likes to come in on Arcanine, and for good reason. Only HP Ground and Dig can hope to kill Heatran coming from Arcanine, and most don’t have the move. Now, however you can 2HKO both pokes immune to Burn in OU, and Infernape does rather pitiful damage to you. I won’t bother explaining what else HP Ground can hit, as I’m sure you know.
The next move is your STAB of choice. Do you like reliability? Then choose Flamethrower. Extra kick? Fire Blast. Hit and run? Overheat. The choice is yours, and they all serve the purpose of killing several metagame threats (Weavile, Scizor, Lucario, you can come in on these easily enough) as well as defensive grasses and steels (Celetran just got a whole new enemy!). Self-explanatory move, in any case.
Now for the interesting part of the set, the move Roar. Roar forces the teammates out, so you can not only scout switches and reveal enemy team members, but you can also inflict severe damage from entry hazards (Salamence comes in, is roared and suddenly is going to take 50% from SR before it can come into play! SR is lame.) In addition to both causing damage and scouting, Roar also “stalls” to get some Lefties HP so you can tank even more hits.
This set stops the current counters to Arcanine cold, and it’s going to be a while before they switch in Blissey, by then you’ve done your job and crippled and ruined plenty of enemy Pokemon. This is a great standalone Pokemon, but works even better on several teams: Trap teams, Stall teams and teams with Wishpassers/Leech Seeders.
So that’s Pepper, a bulky Arcanine for support in the hectic OU metagame, ad I hope you like it, I sure do. Go ahead, try it out. If you have any comments or things I can add, be sure to say so.
-Light
P.S. The set isn't named after him, but how could I not include a picture of General Pepper:
