OU Defensive teambuilding vs. Offensive teambuilding

[Oxtail]

This thread is an attempt to discuss/determine how effectively OU pokes perform their duties on the two main types of teams: Offensive and Defensive. And of course when I say offense, I'm including Baton Pass, although that probably deserves a seperate post on this thread.

This is by no means cut and dry, as most OU pokes have both offensive and defensive utility: and as with shoe and shoelace, each is meaningless without the other.

So let's look at the main offenders:

These pokemon are characteristic of offensive teams, and fit easily on most builds(with the notable exception of glass cannon Marowak, who requires more careful planning, and doesn't really synergize with anything.)

(duh)

These guys are a no-brainer for defensive/"stall" teams, and most of said teams will usually have at least 3 on their roster.

(all hail the king.)

(the nuissance)

(see above. when you use these two, you're usually committing to stall.)

Of course one of the most common defensive formulas is:

+

or alternatively

or

.

Most teams that follow this formula will either default to stall, or simply struggle to break through stall due to Skarm's inherent passivity. Also you have effectively made checking one specific threat(Snorlax) your top priority.

Golem fits well on Offensive teams thanks to boom and overall role compression. Rhydon's problem is that he's just dying to pull off a late game sweep(with para support), but he just takes so much abuse from spikes while he's performing his defensive duties. And he absolutely hates toxic! At least with Golem you can blow him up, and he has his own built in RS support.

On the other hand Rhydon is one of the best around at abusing spikes , and curse just makes him all the more threatening.

Rhydon unfortunately just has too many reliability issues to function as the sole-Lax check/switch in on most offensive teams, and gets passed over for the role compression offered by Golem or Ttar, or the sheer defensive prowess of

.

is kryptonite to most physical sweepers, and can even emergency check all non-belly drum Snorlax variants. You almost always see it on stall, but offensive pokes like Nidoking and Tyranitar certainly appreciate it's ability to keep pokemon like Marowak at bay, and it easily forms the best anti-Wak core around when paired with

. Machamp notably also really struggles to get past these two, and you can even put it on a timer with toxic.

This thread will be updated and expanded in the near future. Hope people will enjoy it!

 

[cherryb0ng]

What about Jynx and Hera? Vaporeon?
Good that you mentioned ttar, skarm, golem and rhydon as a separate core because you can see some of these on both offence and stall teams.
I like to think that forry deserves its place on offensive teams just as how ttar finds its place on stall teams too.

 

[Oxtail]

What about Jynx and Hera? Vaporeon?
Good that you mentioned ttar, skarm, golem and rhydon as a separate core because you can see some of these on both offence and stall teams.
I like to think that forry deserves its place on offensive teams just as how ttar finds its place on stall teams too.

I just edited the post and included

under the offensive section.

definitely lends herself more to fast-paced offense than to any kind of stall.

seems like he could go either way, with the RestTalk set walling a good portion of the meta. Edit: These two have now joined Vap in my "offensive" column.

is definitely a viable alternative to

on offensive teams, thanks to his ability to lay spikes on places that Cloy avoids like the plague(ie in front of Eggy). It's just that Forry's inherent passivity can sometimes hinder an offensive team's ability to exert pressure. Although a well timed Explosion can fix that problem.