This week's UU winner is
Arifeen! His
rate here is excellent, as it identifies the major weaknesses of the team in the introduction and suggests intelligent changes that patch up holes while not changing the team's composition entirely. Right from the start, Arifeen identifies the team's weaknesses to Choice Band Krookodile, Swords Dance Crawdaunt, and Dragon Dance Gyarados and Feraligatr, all extremely threatening pokemon in the current UU metagame. He goes on to explain why these pokemon cause the team so much trouble; Krookodile having no safe switch-ins, and Amoonguss as the water type check in a metagame where Bounce Gyarados / Ice Punch Feraligatr are common.
The first change he suggests is Entei over Darmanitan, and while this does not seem like a huge change, Arifeen explains why it is crucial. While both are offensive fire types, he justifies the change by noting Entei's access to Extreme Speed and Sacred Fire, which provides the team with a means of revenge killing set up sweepers and scarfers and deterring things like Feraligatr and Gyarados from setting up on it due to Sacred Fire's 50% burn chance. As this change removed the team's scarfer and main revenge killer in Scarf Darmanitan, Arifeen later suggests to change Salamence's set from specially offensive to Choice Scarf. He goes on to explain that, with Entei and Mega Beedrill supporting Salamence by pressuring fairy type pokemon, Scarf Salamence can be utilized as a late game cleaner on top of a revenge killer. Arifeen also notes that this change improves the team's matchup versus Scarf Hydreigon, which otherwise could not be revenge killed easily.
Arifeen also identifies the current team's weakness to Hydreigon, which could click Draco Meteor or Dark Pulse whenever it got a switch-in given the team's lack of Dark resist and Dragon resist in physically defensive Forretress. To remedy this situation, Arifeen suggests replacing Amoonguss with Whimsicott. Arifeen explains that, due to Whimsicott's Grass/Fairy typing, it can effective check Hydreigon (if it chooses to use its STAB moves) as well as Banded Krookodile, which was identified as a huge threat to the team earlier in the rate. Arifeen also explains how Whimsicott acts as a set-up deterrent with access to Prankster Encore, which further improves the team's matchup to Gyarados, Feraligatr, and Crawdaunt.
Lastly, Arifeen makes a few minor set adjustments to truly optimize the team. He acknowledges the situational benefit of Custap Berry on Forretress but goes on to explain why Leftovers is more beneficial in the long run. He mentions that the passive recovery allows Forretress to retain Sturdy more often and allows it to better check certain pokemon. In addition to this, Arifeen suggests replacing Spikes with Gyro Ball, as this allows Forretress to damage common threats like Slurpuff, Mega Beedrill, and Mega Aerodactyl, among others. Finally, he suggests changing Swords Dance to Protect on Mega Beedrill, noting that Mega Beedrill is best employed as a fast offensive pivot and not a set-up sweeper and really benefits from Protect, as it guarantees the mega evolution and allows for move scouting on choice-locked pokemon. He also suggests changing X-Scissor to Knock Off, as this allows Mega Beedrill to revenge kill Chandelure, which otherwise puts a lot of pressure on the team.
Thanks to his excellent rate, which not only identifies the weaknesses of the team but also gives extremely thought-out and well-explained fixes to said problems, Arifeen has earned himself a spot in the Hall of Fame. Congrats!
