I'd like to start a discussion and share thoughts on a specific part of the ADV OU metagame.
Forretress.
First of all, I'm going to talk about the roles that Forretress performs and it's uses, talk about the sets. Then I'm going to talk about forre's weaknesses. Then common partners/forre team structures. Then matchups where it's good and or bad. And general thoughts on how to use it. The best, absolute
best part of Forretress is that it can set spikes. It can spike on a lot of the metagame, turn passive pieces into setup fodder, provides checks to some ttar sets, metagross, a normal resist to deny aero from spamming double edge and turn aero into a setup angle for spikes, spike on most blisseys, spike on enemy claydol in its face as it spins and then chip it. Not only this, but because of its typing it can 1v1 the main rapid spinners in the tier comfortably: claydol and starmie. With hidden power bug, it can beat them out by itself and force them to switch as you get a spike up. So forretress teams can
consistently rely on always having a spike up. This is also because forre isnt mag weak, it can quake and ohko mag either on the switch or if mag comes in to trap it it eqs as it tbolts or has a 31% to live hpfire and eq it. Often skarm teams rely on having a spike to beat stuff like suicune and lax on magdol structures, which is why they lose so hard to them. Forre teams don't have this weakness because their spike is much more assured. Forretress can ensure that it gets spikes up versus every team, it has lots of entries to spike on, it can pressure out spinners by itself. It's great offensively for this reason. The second best part of Forretress, is how it can spin on skarmory(and other stuff).
Skarmory versus the other spinners(claydol and starmie) it can toxic them, either permanently crippling claydol or forcing starmie to take chip and recover/switch out, eventually getting its spike up and winning tempo by making use of the time starmie spends not spinning.
Forretress is a steel type. This means that Forretress, if it wants, can just sit on enemy skarmory and spam rapid spin and it will
never get its spike up. (assuming no gengar).
Because forretress can spin versus the predominant spiker in the tier(skarmory) and spike on/threaten out all of the relevant rapid spinners, isn't as mag weak as skarm, it can single handedly deal with all three aspects of the spike war (skarmory setting them, spinners spinning them, and mag trapping the spiker to limit its spikes).
So forretress's HUUUUGE upside is that it single handedly wins a spike war
...Barring gengar.
Versus skarmory + gengar, skarmory can get its spike up and then switch to gengar as you rapid spin. Skarmory won't be able to get up multiple layers versus you easily, but it can get the spike.
Forretress even without this gengar weakness would be paired with tyranitar like 100% of the time because it appreciates tyranitar's sand chipping the enemy team with spikes, and is sand immune itself(part of why it's such a good spiker/spinner, you can use free turns to switch it in and recover it up with leftovers).
Also, forre gives up free turns versus fires(mixmence, charizard and moltres) which are very scary and threatening attackers, which tyranitar checks(less so mixmence but the others).
Forretress is almost always paired with pursuit tyranitar for this reason - it alleviates some of the fire weakness by pursuit chipping moltres and focus punchless zard, can suit gengar and help win the 2v2 spike war of forre tar vs skarm gengar.
And yeah, forre just wants sand up anyways.
There are
options where you run forretress with a different tyranitar set and a different pursuit user like umbreon or houndoom, but they're gimmicky and if you're someone newer/less experienced in the meta and you want to get a feel for forretress, I wouldn't recommend looking into them too much.
So forre's evs are almost always 252hp252+spdef, so it can spike on the most things. It has better rolls to live versus enemy magneton, it can spike comfortably on defensive swampert, blissey thunderbolts, etc.
Also living hits more easily from starmie so it can beat it out more comfortably.
And just help it spike/spin on the vast majority of the metagame.
For its moves, it will basically always run spikes and rapid spin in the first two slots, otherwise you'd probably get more mileage out of a different mon. Forre's big claim to fame is its access to spikes and spin coupled with its unique defensive profile and offense in STAB hpbug vs spinners
The last two slots get a little more customisable.
You want hidden power bug to pressure enemy rapid spinners like claydol and starmie 1v1, and you want earthquake to hit magneton and help you check metagross.
So a standard set might look like:
Forretress @ Leftovers
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Careful Nature
- Spikes
- Rapid Spin
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Bug]
However, there are other solid options for its last two slots:
You can run counter over earthquake, as this still works on magneton's hidden power fire(hidden power base is normal so counter works on it), it still lets you check metagross(arguably even better), helps versus aero and ttar and is generally better than quake. The main downside is that if you see your opps team and you're expecting a mag, you can quake as it switches in and just completely own them.
However, counter has upsides over earthquake that can justify it if your team doesn't rely as much on forre consistently getting 3 layers up/removing layers(which it probably shouldn't, that's a lot of jobs to expect of the poor basketball)
So yeah, spikes/spin/hpbug/counter is a valid and real set.
You can also slot zap cannon over hpbug, because forre can use it to cripple gengar on the switch without having to switch to ttar under spikes, and it midgrounds literally every forre abuser. It also lets you own skarmory harder, by permanently crippling it with paralysis, spread paralysis on the enemy team by clicking it on free turns as a midground, help you versus ddmence by giving you a dubious out vs it(at least doesn't let ddmence sit on forre) and generally make it less passive.
So you can run Spikes/Rapid Spin/Earthquake/Zap Cannon.
Dropping hpbug does suck in that you dont singlehandedly pressure out claydol/starmie anymore, but if your team comes with solid balance crushers that can punish claydol bulky teams and defensive starmie teams by themselves then you can justify the zap cannon slot
Then you can also run explosion on forretress if you really suck versus setup mons in endgame like calm mind suicune, curselax etc, explosion helps in offense matchups where you dont want to be sticking around and spiking 3 times and spinning and relaying - you just want to spike, check something and then trade it off.
So again, if your team is packing good options into defensive teams, you can justify explosion over either earthquake or hpbug
You pretty much always want one of earthquake/hpbug so you can still emergency check agility metagross/tyranitar(ttar spamming focus punch into you is a SIN and should never be allowed to happen lol).
Your forre set is 8 times out of 10 just the one above the spikes/spin/earthquake/hpbug, if you're already good versus balance then you can drop hidden power bug for zap cannon or explosion, if you're already good versus magneton balances you can drop earthquake for counter or explosion.
So forretress teams usually end up being balanced teams - not dedicated
stall per se, but more on the defensive end - teams that appreciate the progress making machine of spikes because they aren't super offensive without them and teams that use the rapid spinning utility of forretress to shore up its defenses.
Common partners for forretress and pursuit tyranitar are defensive swampert and calm mind blissey
This is because defensive swampert can alleviate the fact that forretress lets in offensive physical pokemon like dragon dance tyranitar and aerodactyl by completely sitting on them AND threatening them out.
Swamperts on these teams often pack roar and refresh as well, making them even more impenetrable for enemy physical offenses, dealing with statpass stuff with roar, giving you information about the enemy team(v important vs offense), punish switches by spreading spikes damage around more. Swampert is a really good friend of forretress.
Calm Mind blissey deals with the other side of pokemon taking advantage of forretress's passivity - suicune calm minding on it, jirachi calm minding on it, celebi calm minding on it, zapdos throwing out thunderbolts
It also provides a strong win condition versus enemy stall teams, in that if they only have one pokemon with toxic, you can come in and set up calm minds forcing them to toxic to force you out, until eventually they run out of toxics
It's a good spikes abuser in that ice beam + thunderbolt is hard to switch into under spikes, and superman structures(teams that run 4+ floating pokemon so they can deal with spikes by ignoring them) are often getting 6-0d by calm mind blissey because in order to facilitate their team structures they cant run good specially defensive mons into electric + ice attacks, often relying on spdef zapdos to deal with special threats, which doesnt like +1 ice beams at all, let alone +2.
So calm mind blissey helps offset the passivity of forretress by beating the specially offensive mons that abuse it for free turns, and also help offensively by providing a win condition versus teams built to not be weak to spikes and versus dedicated stall teams as well
Calm Mind blissey also has the added benefit of wrecking ZapDug special offense, in that their dugtrio drops to an ice beam after one layer of spikes goes up, and no longer is able to trap and remove Blissey, and as mentioned above forretress has lots of entry points to get one layer of spikes up. So calm mind blissey is defensively enabled by forretress's spike helping versus dugtrio, and swampert's defenses helping versus physical threats that come in on blissey. The issue would be that physical offense spam with aerodactyl + metagross + ddtar could break through swampert, right? Metagross booms swampert and then ddtar + aero wins? This is where the forretress itself comes in - forretress beats out metagross 1v1 either with earthquake or counter, thus alleviating some pressure on swampert. Defensive swampert can easily 1v2 ddtar and aero with rapid spin support, and forre helps versus metagross. For the rest of your team, you want something that can threaten progress versus spikes and help versus offensive teams in general to not get blown over, something that can deal with annoying pokes like leech seed celebi, more answers to special attackers that arent blissey(vulnerable to being chipped down), ideally some utility in the form of Wish in that all four pokemon already mentioned are huge enjoyers of wish, ideally another metagross check so in the matchup versus ddtar + aero + meta + skarm you dont have to use forre to deal with metagross, and you can keep using it to infinitely spin away skarmory's spikes.
Oh, and something to help deal with mixed attacking threats -> using physdef swampert and spdef blissey is well and good, but when mixed attackers come along they become tricky to pivot around.
And something to deal with fighting types - so far fighting types can spam fighting moves on our whole team and rip tons of damage
This is why Mixed Salamence and Wish Defensive Jirachi is a common way to round out this team - Mixed Salamence is a mon that can make progress with spikes and threaten the enemy team, make offensive progress(always good), defensively check fighters, defensively check some mixed attackers(enemy slower mixmence, blaziken, subpunch charizard).
Mixmence also provides a ground immunity to the team so that choice banded earthquake from metagross and aerodactyl isn't such a free click for the opp into us.
Wish Defensive Jirachi helps shore up salamence versus fighters, in that salamence is vulnerable to being worn down, it provides wish utility that Tyranitar and Forretress both heavily appreciate, it can lure Magneton sometimes for your forretress and beat it down with fire punches, use toxic to help versus enemy calm mind blissey forcing it out, its a metagross answer helping in the aforementioned matchup versus ddtar + aero + meta + skarm(very common team structure).
So a standard forretress team would look something like this:
Tyranitar @ Leftovers
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Crunch
- Fire Blast
- Pursuit
- Ice Beam
Forretress @ Leftovers
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Careful Nature
- Spikes
- Rapid Spin
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Bug]
Jirachi @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 240 Def / 16 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Fire Punch
- Protect
- Wish
- Toxic
Salamence @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Brick Break
- Dragon Claw
- Fire Blast
- Hidden Power [Grass]
Swampert @ Leftovers
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 252 HP / 228 Def / 28 SpA
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Surf
- Refresh
- Protect
- Roar
Blissey (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 Def / 248 SpA / 8 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
- Soft-Boiled
You can change some techs around, tweak stuff, but this hits generally all the things a forretress team wants to do, defensively answers most of the metagame, has good offensive tools.
Happy hunting on the adv ladder loading the ball!