Anyone ever try going all out the other direction? (I'm sure someone has) Where they just got the best offensive players possible. I'd love to hear their tales.

I've gone that route before (although, I was not as keen on the importance of Ath and Spd at the time as well). I think the best result I ever got was sweet 16. Maybe if I would have had more Ath and Spd, I could have had better results. Typically these teams had 4-5 guys breaking 70+ per, and another 4-5 with 70+ LP. It's hard to say if I just failed because of lack of defense, because I was still pretty early in the game and learning a lot of the mechanics still.

You can definitely win at d3 with speed/per heavy teams. Not sure about d2.

I temd to have balanced teams.