The most important thing you should know about Snorlax is that, even though the invention of Close Combat, the rise of mix attackers and Scizor's Superpower have decreased Snorlax from the best special sponge/late-game sweep in the game to a mere regular Pokemon, he's still very, very powerful. If he's let alone to set up, he will destroy entire teams by looking at them. I can't count the number of times my new team has 5-0'd teams (I run Aerodactyl lead, I can't 6-0 someone). So, as part of my attempt to claim the title 'The Snorlax Guy', I'm starting off with this post.
Snorlax has always been one of my most favourite Pokemon, up there with Heracross, Rotom, Dusclops (now Dusknoir) and Deoxys. Snorlax is the oldest of those, and was the kingpin of my RBY team (which wasn't competitive, admittadly). When some time passed and I realised the fun of competitive Pokemon, I'd downloaded Netbattle, and carried my team with Curselax. Admittadly, my team was built mostly of my favourites and was fairly useless. Shuckle and Wobbuffet (before Shadow Tag) were also on the team, but I was fairly good at prediction, so the team still did fairly well in tournaments because Snorlax had so much sheer power.
I missed the RSE era, but now I'm back in DPP, and so the first thing I did was rebuild a Curselax team, this time slightly more competitive. So, skip ahead to now, and we've got my current Curselax team. Although I was using my Rock Polish Aggron team in the tournament to get some good testing on it, I'll probably be using the Curselax team to carry me through loser's bracket. I won't reveal the team just yet, that can get its own post later. For now, let's focus on the mighty Snorlax himself.
First of all, although Curselax is the set everyone sees Snorlax by, because of its sheer defensive -and- offensive power, it takes time to set up. Some people have had success with a CBLax set, although as should be obvious by his base speed, Scarf is completely useless on Lax. For more defensive sets than CB, Snorlax can also do (what really should by synonymous with the name 'Snorlax'), Sleep Talk Lax works as well. Although you can't expect it to last long against a physical sweeper, special sweepers from Gengar to Heatran get walled by Lax, and so once you've got rid of their physical sweepers, Lax can just stand there and Rest. You could also just drop Curse and Rest for Self-Destruct and another attacking move, and not worry about setting up or predicting.
Another possible set Smogon doesn't even discuss is a SubPunch. High health, nice resistances and special defence, as well as the attack to back up Focus Punch makes it quite possible and unexpected to boot. Focus Punch can also be useful on 'normal' Lax teams for predicting switch-ins, although you probably won't have room for the moveslot on Curselax.
On the subject of abilities, Immunity is utterly useless on Curselax and obviously useless on Sleep Talk, as Thick Fat provides great elemental resistances and let's Lax take no damage from Heatran's Fire Blast. It also let's it work well with dragons, as the two options to counteract Salamence is Ice Beam or Dragon-type moves. Snorlax can switch in on Ice Beams easily, as well. If Heatran's Fire Blast can't hurt him, there aren't any Ice Beam users in OU that will be able to dent him, getting you at least a Curse or a nice Pursuit from a CB Lax (I don't understand how Snorlax can chase anything with its laziness, but that's beside the point). Immunity, however, can be useful if you're playing against alot of Toxic Spikes users and you're using a Banded Lax, but in the majority of situations, Thick Fat is far too good to ignore.
Focusing on the moveset for Curselax now, the only slot you definitely have to fill is Curse. Rest, although normally used since most Laxes go for late-game, can also be Self-Destruct, hitting at 300 base (with STAB) with a few nice Curses will take anything out. Next, while a few people like Return for the STAB slot, I prefer Body Slam, because the slight difference in damage is made up for with the potential parahax, which is infinitely better for team support. This leaves you with one slot for move coverage, of which there are a few options.
First of all, we have what I call 'the big 4'. Earthquake is the most obvious, hitting for the highest damage on the most types, but leaves you unable to hit a few Pokemon like Gengar and Rotom. Brick Break/Superpower also helps there, but leaves you unable to hit any ghosts, relegating your Curselax to the end of the game. Fire Punch will give you the ability to hit almost anything for neutral except Rock, but it has the lowest base power, while Crunch prevents you from hitting Steels for anything higher than 0.5x damage but has higher base power than Fire Punch. Ice Punch is also possible, hitting Dragons for nice, but Outrage is almost always superior than Ice Punch if you've got enough Curses to survive a Steel switch-in. Rock Slide is also possible if you're weak to a few fliers, but I'd not recommend it.
Pursuit is useless on Curselax for obvious reasons, as by the time you're setup you'll have nothing to pursue as they'll have had plenty of time to switch to a wall/counter. Focus Punch is too risky to use a slot on on Curselax in my opinion, but if you have absurd prediction skills it'll be a very nice hit. You could potentially use Zen Headbutt, Thunderpunch or Gunk Shot, but their coverage doesn't really add to anything over the previous moves listed, although Gunk Shot could be potentially use to poison something, obviously using Return over Body Slam if you do.
That's it for now, but expect another 'Fun Facts About Snorlax' or, potentially, one of my other favourite pokemon soonish.
roar
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