First-turn Arcanine at +4?! - with 0kamii

[Spyro190]

(Jul 19, 2017, 08:29 AM)0kamii Wrote:  

Set 1 - Attack Dog

Arcanine @ Firium Z/Life Orb/Aguav Berry
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Protect/Morning Sun
- Flare Blitz
- Wild Charge/Close Combat
- Extreme Speed

  

Set 3 - Wait, you're running WHAT?!

Arcanine @ Aguav Berry/Iapapa Berry
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 4 Sp. Def / 248 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Protect
- Flare Blitz
- Wild Charge/Close Combat
- Extreme Speed

 

Partners:

 

 

This pairing is exclusive for my Justified strategy. Weavile is one of the fastest legal mons in the metagame, and that should get off Beat Up to activate Justified without much of a problem.

First of all I want to say st about those spreads. When a pokèmon has equivalent Def and SpD and you have no calcs to keep valid, you always should think about Download's user. In a 1vs1 late game situation, 4 EVs distributed in Def give P2 a +1 in SpA wich risk to make you lose. 248 EVs at lv50 with odd IVs give the same of 244 EVs; furthermore, 252 EVs should be preferred to reach the speed tie with opponents' max Spe Arcanine, Silvally and Tapu Lele.

Tl;dr they should be changed in 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe.

To be IT: Weavile seems not so good as BUpper. It gets STAB, has quite high base Atk and without running 252 Atk EVs risks to become unusefull. Compared to Whimsicott it's completely inferior. The cotton ball does no considerable damage, has a lot of support moves like Tailwind and a nice typing synergy with Arcanine. A FGW core including Justified Arcanine and Beat Up Whimsicott is a more reliable way to start building a team.
That said, Weavile is objectively the only viable alternative to Whimsicott in VGC17.