Firstly:Skarmory AND bronzong. They mostly play the same role, but there are slight differences.
I'll admit that i ignore certain pokemon because they don't threaten me, but the fact is that you even have that option to begin with. Garchomp is exponentially more dangerous because you cannot just pack skarm and GG. Yes, it's difficult to pack such a pokemon on an offensive team, but it's still Possible. Also, gliscor's much more predictable;if it lacks toxic orb it's always Sub/SD/earthquake/acrobatics with a flying gem and sand veil.
I didn't really include Bronzong because it's not a reliable counter. At +2 Acrobatics: 178-210 (52.66 - 62.13%) -- guaranteed 3HKO against standard Bronzong. Bronzong itself cannot OHKO with HP Ice, and it needs to contend with the fact that it can miss, and if it's not running HP ice then don't even fucking bother. Gliscor is wins if Bronzong switches into SD. I guess I could accept that it's a good check due to resisting its STAB. But then again there's all sorts of stuff that needs to be kept track of. Bronzong's lack of recovery, Bronzong being a poor choice in general (I don't HATE IT, but I feel that other Steel-types such as Skarmory, Forry, etc are better choices in GENERAL. Bronzong is good by virtue of being able to check sand veil abusers).
The predictability argument is weak. It's a mid to lategame sweeper, so if your opponent doesn't instantly bring out Gliscor, that should tip you off immediately. Regardless you aren't
miraculously capable of stopping Gliscor once you know the set. It gets sent out, sets up and goes wild tearing apart your team, usually pretty maniacally, and sometimes without a way to stop it if Sand Veil is activated.
As for checks; rotom-w and thundurus-t are here. Rotom-w needs a lot of luck or HP ice, but HP ice isn't without merit in this metagame. Thundurus-T speed ties with gliscor, which means that gliscor can't just sub for free. (It i mostly see it scarfed, though.) Also, i'd like to nominate zapdos. It generally has the bulk to beat gliscor, outspeeds it, and it doesn't really cede that much momentum, especially since it can just volt switch. And i actually think standard starmie can take an acrobatics. Also, chomp can force out base 100s, landorus-I, and non-scarf genesect, and has a higher attack. See, garchomp creates problems for ALL teams when sand is up, while gliscor can be beaten in a lot of different ways. Think of it as gliscor being a pistol, and garchomp being a cannon. Yes, a pistol will still kill you if it hits, but at least you can pack bulletproof armor. Now, you can make a bunch of arguments for why that's bad, but at least it is POSSIBLE. What exactly stops a rocket launcher?
Ok I appreciate you trying to refute my points instead of going "NO! SV GLISCOR IS NOT BROKEN OK!" but i'm afraid I have to disagree with your "checks." By your own admission, Rotom-w needs a lot of luck with, which is problem #1. HP ice is meh on Rotom-W, but it's actually a viable move now and that's largely due to the fact that it needs it to deal with
Sand Veil users. I would not run it on average since Rotom-W doesn't really have the room (its hard to pass up WoW or Pain Split.) Hydro Pump is operating at 60% accuracy against them which is just... stick a fork in Rotom-W if Garchomp or Gliscor are behind a sub and you need to rely on Hydro Pump to remove them. There was a funny inside joke that Garchomp was the best Rotom-W counter in the game, but Gliscor's not that far behind if play it correctly. But I digress, This entire line of thought is made irrelevant by the fact the Gliscor beats Rotom-W anyway. All that's required to produce a little bit of extra damage or SR in order to 2 shot it.
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Acrobatics vs 4HP Rotom-W: 204-241 (84.29 - 99.58%) -- 81.25% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
Acrobatics vs 252HP Rotom-W: 204-241 (67.1 - 79.27%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
***
So defensive Rotom-W has to switch into Gliscor as it subs, and prays it hits with Hydro Pump or Hidden Power Ice (the latter of which lowers your effectiveness on average). If it even misses once, it loses and Gliscor ends up beating it. Even the legendary 252 HP / 252 Def Bold Rotom-W needs a little bit of prior damage and its 2HKOed.
Oh and by the way, Thundurus-T is faster than Gliscor (You also said that . It's a crappy check though, because it's a frail as shit. It'll force out Gliscor once, and get completely crippled in the process. Zapdos is slightly more effective at stopping Gliscor as Rotom-W (read: not really that effective.). It's faster, and has enough bulk to survive Acrobatics at +2, but it's SR weak so picking it off defensive varients when they've been weakened is easy. All of these checks lose if they miss once btw. As for your analogy, Garchomp is a like Magnum and Gliscor is like a pair 2 pistols. Bang-bang.
Yikes, sorry just a dash of stupidity ruined for you.
HA HA, good comeback man! I completely GET your creative comebacks. Keep it up!
TL;DR Basically, with gliscor AND garchomp you have the ability to run bulky stuff and hope for no miss. The difference is, the former can be checked much more easily, because you can just resist/be immune to both of his moves, and is much more predictable, because 99.9% of gliscor lacking toxic orb are that exact set, whereas garchomp might have a choice band or scarf. Also, gliscor can be hard-walled, whereas garchomp cannot.
I didn't intend to bring Garchomp in on this. Garchomp is so much better than Gliscor with Sand Veil like that pretty much goes without saying. However I disagree with the notion that Gliscor is THAT MUCH EASIER to check.
How about we look at some cold hard numbers taken from the August usage stats (maybe not a
complete survey but as close as we can get) and see what we get.
I'm going to stop you right there. You shouldn't place much stock in usage stats, and you can't use them argue your point, especially when you consider:
1. We're a few months in BW2, the current stats don't represent the current metagame whatsoever. (IE players are a lot more likely to use the shiny new threats instead of some old ones like Gliscor)
2. Teams are lot weaker on average. The suspect ladder has definitely changed this however.
If you were to gather usage stats from tournament matches or the suspect ladder, you'd have a stronger case. As for your point of banning Sand Veil/Snow Cloak on principle? I've got no problem with that whatsoever. I'm not exactly why we're even trying to keep these inherently broken abilities. There are a lot of bad ideas in this game that happen to work because they're usually balanced by other factors but Sand Veil/Snow Cloak are just not meant to work in a competitive environment.
PK Gaming, SV Acro Gliscor was NOWHERE NEAR metagame-defining as Garchomp was last year. Yes, SV Acro Gliscor was powerful and a solid replacement after Garchomp left, but it's far inferior to the landshark. The power levels between the two is analogous to the power gap between Landorus and Flygon.
I also don't think you fully understand the issue with Sand Veil + Cacturne. It's not all-or-nothing deal here; a complex ban of Sandstream + Sand Veil removes the uncontrollable hax while keeping Cacturne's viability intact.
Bans are meant to restrict or prohibit the usage of overpowered Pokemon; they are NOT meant to restrict or discourage the usage of NU Pokemon. That's the issue.
You're not paying attention Pocket, i've made it clear that power levels between the 2 are irrelevant. Is there really a difference between an A++++ and A+?!?
One of the worst things about Sand Veil Gliscor is how underrated it is by the majority of the site. We know from most of the competitive tournaments that Gliscor is kind of a "big deal." It had a huge influence throughout this years WCOP, you can ask any of the WCOP regulars, and they'll tell you straight up that Gliscor was a nightmare. I'll be gathering tournament logs, so stay tuned. I'll admit that dropping tournament data isn't a substitute for an actual argument, but I don't like how they're their completely disregarded .Gliscor isn't metagame defining because most players don't use it. This leads to flagrant misdiagnoses of what's going on in the actual metagame as some pretty poor players (Read: not you or anyone in particular really) always try to shoehorn their opinion here as it actually means something. They're biased in that "if I don't have a problem with this, then it's obviously not broken!"
And way to miss the point on bans. Bans are meant to ban an overpowering element in any given game. That's it. Everything else is gravy. I'm really baffled by the source of your outrage here, but your post seems to share a sentiment with some other weird posts I'm reading on the banning of Sand Veil and it's effects on Pokemon as a whole. That is, the complete and utter opposition of "nerfing" Pokemon's movepools. I hate how people are actually trying to fight to keep this broken ability in the game, merely because banning it would nerf a few (and I seriously
mean a few) Pokemon. You didn't actually address my earlier question. Would you be opposed to banning Sand Veil if it didn't result nerfing Pokemon? Be honest.
Should Smogon have them all these players instantly gratified in the exact way they desired? Why not unban Blaze Blaziken if that's the case, it wasn't fair that thing got banned because of it's speed boost ability. (I don't actually think this, i'm trying to show you how futile it is to bring "fairness" to the table).
And no, complex banning Sand Veil doesn't really "fix" anything. It's just an arbitrary nerf to sand teams.
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So as usual, tough to please everyone.