Articuno [Optimized]
Abilities: Pressure | [HA]
Filter
Stats: 90 HP/ 80 ATK/ 125 DEF/ 100 SPA/ 125 SDF/ 85 SPE (605 BST)
Added Moves: Calm Mind, Defog (legal with HA), Aura Sphere, Icicle crash, Air slash, Aeroblast, Moonlight, Moonblast, Spikes, Light screen (why doesn't it get this og?)
Summary of Changes: -5 ATK, +25 DEF, +5 SPA
Articuno suffers from an incredibly awful typing in ice/flying. With 4 common type weaknesses, and a 4x weakness to SR, articuno definitely has trouble putting its best stats, it's defenses to use. In articuno's Gold pokedex entry, it states: "The magnificent, seemingly translucent wings of this legendary bird POKéMON are said to be made of ice." Now, this might be a far stretch, wouldn't other mons have trouble seeing a translucent enemy? That was my thought prosses when i was going to give it wonder skin, but I then decided that filter vaguely works with that entry, and provides a useful addition of kinda only having one weakness, allowing it to use it's better bulk to use now. It also recieves less SR damage entering the field. It now has a larger arsenal of moves to round out it's kit. You could run a bulky set with moonlight (or roost) and CM, a spiker, a screensetter, a bulky offensive mon, etc.
Moltres [Optimized]
Abilities: Pressure | [HA]
Healing Flames (triage clone, exactly, just for lore purposes)
Stats: 90 HP/ 120 ATK/ 90 DEF/ 125 SPA/ 85 SDF/ 95 SPE (605 BST)
Added Moves: Brave Bird, Aeroblast, Flare Blitz, Fusion Flare, Beak Blast, Morning sun, Wish, Petal Blizzard, Air slash, Earth Power
Summary of Changes: +20 ATK, +5 SPE
Like articuno, moltres has a bad typing, a weak movepool, and a 4x weakness to rocks, all problems I had to try to work around. Unfortunately, it took too many moves to improve moltres's STAB and coverage, as it really lacked. So after i buffed up its movepool, I looked for a creative solution to rocks. I really did not want to just throw regenerator or an absorb ability on there, but I felt i needed to solve it. Enter the pokedex: "Ruby/Sapphire- MOLTRES is a legendary bird POKéMON that has the ability to control fire. If this POKéMON is injured, it is said to dip its body in the molten magma of a volcano to burn and
heal itself." Perfect, if you take damage from rocks, you now have the ability to roost, morning sun, or with/protect off the damage. This also allows moltres to use its moderate bulk to pas fast wishes to teammates. The movepool expansion allows moltres to carry a vast amount of physical and special attacks, and works good as either type of attacker.