I'm back from a long hiatus to mess around with a few things. I noticed that Hail was very rapidly rising to prominence in OU, and I saw a little bit of talk about Arctovish as a fringe option on Hail, so I figured I'd give this bad boy a go since it was brought up in SQSA and I always felt like, if Hail were to be good, Arctovish would be pretty solid. Well, I played around with it a bit since the set I'm posting here was linked in that thread, and I really do think it deserves to be discussed as a mon with a niche on Hail teams, even if it isn't quite as oppressively strong as Arctozolt can feel at times.
Arctovish @ Life Orb
Ability: Slush Rush
EVs: 160 Atk / 96 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Fishious Rend
- Blizzard
- Freeze-Dry
- Super Fang
I can say, with absolute confidence, that this thing is not Arctozolt whatsoever... but honestly, I also don't feel like it's trying to be Arctozolt either. It has noticeably better bulk than Arctozolt and that bulk is further augmented by the fact that it has the slightest bit of actual defensive utility thanks to its Water-typing making sure it doesn't get completely bricked by occasional Earthquakes and giving it both a Water resistance and a better Ice resistance than its mismatched Slush Rush-abusing fossil counterpart.
While Arctozolt has STAB BoltBeam, which is pretty much the best offensive typing we'll ever see outside of Ubers, I often find Bolt Beak to be a heavily-flawed move on its own. While no Ground-type would ever be comfortable eating Arctozolt's Blizzard or Freeze-Dry, they do happen to have an immunity to its ridiculously powerful Bolt Beak that can, in a pinch, prove useful. Fortunately, Arctovish has access to the move that singlehandedly got Dracovish banned to Ubers a long time ago: Fishious Rend.
Fishious Rend is a much,
much better move than Bolt Beak and while the coverage it offers alongside Ice STAB is a little on the redundant side at a glance, the move basically removes Arctovish's need to predict too heavily around threats that might give Hail a hard time otherwise; specifically, Fishious Rend always OHKOs SpDef Heatran and thus gives any team using it something to be afraid of:
160 Atk Life Orb Arctovish Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Heatran: 491-580 (127.2 - 150.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO
This is a huge deal; common Water resists still get battered by Fishious Rend even if it isn't coming close to reaching Dracovish levels of power while also being deathly afraid of Freeze-Dry after some chip, and Ground-types can't even make a half-assed attempt to predict around the move because, unlike with Arctozolt's Bolt Beak, they just outright die to Fishious. It's a great middle ground since Water immunities are basically as commonplace as unicorn sightings in a post-Dracovish meta and as such Arctovish has a move that'll always do damage, and as such teams are ill-equipped to predict around a STAB that they have an immunity to in an attempt to burn precious Hail turns.
While some folks opt to run Substitute to ease prediction as they would on Arctozolt (and it's a perfectly fine option as well), I prefer Super Fang; this is something else Arctozolt just cannot do and as such gives Arctovish a genuine niche over Arctozolt. Super Fang
always threatens anything that isn't a Ghost-type, and after entry hazard damage and chip from Hail the move will usually put something in OHKO range of Fishious Rend or one of Arctovish's Ice STABs instead:
96 SpA Life Orb Arctovish Freeze-Dry vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Toxapex: 135-164 (44.4 - 53.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock, hail damage, and Black Sludge recovery
Pex can't realistically take two Freeze-Dry hits well at all if hazards are up, but Super Fang doesn't even require much prediction. Arctovish forces a lot of switches, and if one doesn't want to predict too much one can just hit something with Super Fang and put it into KO range anyway. It's basically an inverse-Substitute on that front since Arctovish doesn't completely gut its longevity to run it. None of the Ghosts want to switch into either of its STABs anyway, so the Super Fang is a pretty safe bet. SubRoost Kyurem also isn't super thrilled about eating a Super Fang, although in a pinch it can stall Arctovish out if healthy; it's a much, much more lopsided matchup if Vish is running Substitute.
Of course, Super Fang offers a little more than just another way for Arctovish to muscle past its opposition; cutting an opponent's health in half is pretty valuable support for its fellow teammates, too. If Arctovish chips away at a team with Super Fang, a Hail team's obligatory Arctozolt in the back has a very easy time sweeping lategame and a hail team's common Volcanion has a pretty easy time blowing up even a Water resist with Steam Eruption and paving the way for either an Arctozolt sweep or a sweep from Arctovish itself. As such, it can form a nasty core with Arctozolt since, together, they can give one-another's checks absolute hell in preparation for one of them to sweep lategame.
TL;DR: I encourage folks to mess around with Arctovish a bit since Hail's already such a strong archetype. It's not something that fits on every Hail team like Arctozolt does, but it offers a few specific quirks that give it a proper niche on Hail.