np: UU - A New Beginning

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HeYsUp said:
I think this is very interesting to see, as i know some of the peoples teams and playstyle that they use.

Sorry if you wanted to keep this a secret Eo =p. Eo uses a Chansey on his team, he naturally would not think Raikou as broken as someone using a Registeel/Steelix/whatever. Chansey is a near 100% counter to Raikou. While Eo likely has much more trouble with pokemon such as Mismagius, he really sees no reason Raikou is broken. Stall teams with Nidoqueen+other Phazers will find little trouble from a Raikou.

Now some of the people argueing that Raikou is broken, are the people with much less defensive based teams, with Pokemon such as maybe a Milotic or Registeel as their special wall. And maybe even Steelix and whatever to stop Raikou. Steelix and Registeel don't have the staying power to permanently stop Raikou. After 2-4 HP Ices or Grasses(being the most common i beleive) Steelix is in KO range after a CM. Registeel has very little staying power for the same Reasons. Basically, no recovery move+minimal damage to other threats.


I think im going to have to disagree with you EUM. I'll state the differences in point form:
-Raikou has a MUCH higher SAtk stat.
-Raikou has alot more Bulk.
-Raikou is faster.
-Raikou's counters do pretty much nothing but stop it+random others. (E.G. Registeel stops Raikou and Shaymin temporarily, but the best thing it can do back is Twave)
-Raikou NEEDS counters. Ninetails can be killed by literally any pokemon.

Well, the list goes on and on. The main difference between the two, is just overall Power. Raikou statisticly, and its typing just make it so much better than Ninetails. Ninetails is alot slower, Raikou can set up on Bulky Waters while Ninetails would have Zero set up bait in this metagame, Its fireblast probably Barely 2HKOing a Registeel.

Summary: Raikou is just alot more powerful.
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I really wasn't intending to compare Ninetales to Raikou; I was just using it as an example of another Pokemon reliant on Hidden Powers to stop certain Pokemon from walling it. Ninetales is irrelevant besides that.

Admittedly most of Raikou's main counters aren't going to show up on the most offensive teams. However, it's not that easy to let a Raikou find a free switch in when you're pressuring it with heavy hitters. Raikou has only two resistances, both of which are relatively uncommon (only Crobat and other Raikou come to mind). Raikou is hard to revenge due to its Speed, but its not out of a Choice Scarfer's range.

My point is that I would not believe that Raikou would find much set up bait in offensive teams, and if it does, perhaps said Pokemon is more of a liability.
 
For the record, HP Rock completely smokes every single Ninetales counter sans Camerupt (Altaria and Mantine both get 2KOed after a Nasty Plot, and Calm Mantine finds it difficult to OHKO Ninetales), so the correlation isn't too complete.
 
But HP Rock causes you to immediately lose the speed tie with other base 100s, like Shaymin and Staraptor. Especially Shaymin, who can OHKO you if you don't OHKO it first.
 
I know this is really going into theorymon, but this has been bothering me for a while.

Let's say that we did the same to OU and added Ubers to the tier and start all over. Besides Wobbuffet I don't really see any pokemon outclassing any other enough to be banned, which is why ubers is a playable metagame. The only way we can tell is by how diverse the metagame is and even then looking at December's stats for ubers show 24 Pokemon being in the top 80% and if people were more encouraged to use OU and lower Pokemon I can see that number quickly rising to the thirties. What I'm saying here is that we could have a stack of Pokemon that should be banned, but we don't know because together they cancel each other out.

I also think that smogon should do the same to OU as they did to UU, but that's just my unpopular opinion. :naughty:
 
umbarsc said:
The point he was making was that Raikou can't get complete coverage with one Hidden Power while Ninetales can.
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hi5 umbarsc

I was referring to Ninetales in Old UU compared to Raikou in new UU.

Anyway, Raikou can't really be compared to Ninetales as Ninetales has a better offensive movepool and Nasty Plot, while Raikou's movepool is shit but it has Calm Mind, a better typing (not SR weak, not weak to Rock or Water, etc), is bulkier, and can SubCM to set up for free against special threats. The two are in completely different classes. (If Raikou had Nasty Plot maybe it'd be a better comparison)
 
So help me God, if you do not read the entire post... I hate you.

Ok, so I caught a lot of flak for my last post because I hyped the Pokemon rather than attempted to show exactly why they are BL, which is fine. I was really just trying to get some discussion going on those Pokemon (mission accomplished). But in the following posts I will look at each of those Pokemon individually and how they fit the criteria of a BL (based on the Portrait of an Uber thread)

The focus of this post will be on Gallade.

Obviously I'm trying to convince you that Gallade falls under the criteria of the Offensive BL Characteristic which is as follows:

Offensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is Borderline if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.

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Now personally, I believe that in order to fit this criterea, you must be able to run one definitve set and accomplish the above. Kind of like Garchomp only needs the one Yache Berry set to pretty much sweep everything. So let's name the Gallade set that I believe accomplishes this.

dpmfa475.png


Gallade (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Steadfast
EVs: 48 HP/252 Atk/208 Spd
Adamant nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Close Combat
- Stone Edge
- Shadow Sneak
- Swords Dance
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Do not question the EVs as I have already done plenty of research on them. The Speed outpaces everything significant that Gallade might want to, and the 48 HP EVs afford Gallade a small amount of bulk that allows for Swords Dancing on Specially based walls (like bulky waters). The only thing the lack of full speed means is that you fail to tie with other Base 80s and personally, I find using speed ties as a reason for maxing speed to be a pretty poor argument. But I digress.

---

Now that we have established the proposed set that may define Gallade as BL let's look at our options regarding stopping this Pokemon. Basically we have two options

Option 1: Bring in a slower Pokemon that can take at least 2 regular hits, or 1 Swords Danced hit and OHKO Gallade.

Option 2: Bring in one faster Pokemon that can take at least 1 regular hit, outspeed and OHKO. Or avoid being OHKOd by Shadow Sneak after a Swords Dance.

There is also one option that I believe people should stop using as a means to call one Pokemon not broken. This option is Revenge Killing. Let's just think about what this actually means. It means that Gallade has just killed one of your Pokemon, and you are bringing in a faster Pokemon that has the ability to OHKO it. But this means that Gallade already did its main job and that was take out at least 1 Pokemon, thus proving its usage on your team worthy (If a Pokemon can take out one Pokemon on your team it is worth having been put on your team). Not to mention that there is NO Pokemon that can guarantee Gallade's death whether it decides to stay in or not. If Gallade were weak to Dark, I might be able to see Revenge Killing as a viable check, because there is Honchkrow who can Pursuit, but it's not. Which means that Revenge Killing is at best going to force out Gallade, which just means that it will come back in later and kill something again. Lots of things can be revenge killed. Rayquaza comes to mind as being revenged quite nicely by a Life Orb Mamoswine. This doesn't mean that Rayquaza is fit to be in OU.

Ok, now that that tangent is out of the way, let's get back to these two options.

Let's look at the possible candidates for option 1.

Slowbro
Spiritomb
Uxie
Weezing
Sandslash
Mespirit
Claydol
Nidoqueen
Vileplume
Venusaur

Ok, these Pokemon look to be bulky enough to at least take one Swords Danced hit. Let's see how they fair against Gallade.

252 HP / 252 Def Bold Slowbro vs. +2 Life Orb Stone Edge (51.78% - 60.91%) - Survives

252 HP / 252 Def Bold Spiritomb vs. +2 Life Orb Stone Edge (67.76% - 79.93%) - Survives

252 HP / 252 Def Bold Uxie vs. +2 Life Orb Stone Edge (51.13% - 60.45%) - Survives

252 HP / 252 Def Bold Weezing vs. +2 Life Orb Stone Edge (57.49% - 67.66%) - Survives

252 HP / 252 Def Impish Sandslash vs. +2 Life Orb Close Combat (103.39% - 122.03%) - Doesn't Survive

252 HP / 124 Def Bold Mespirit (The Standard) vs. +2 Life Orb Stone Edge
(64.29% - 75.82%) - Survives

252 HP / 212 Def Bold Claydol (The Standard) vs. +2 Life Orb Shadow Sneak (54.32% - 64.20%) - Survives

252 HP / 216 Def Bold Nidoqueen (The Standard) vs. +2 Life Orb Close Combat (57.81% - 67.97%) - Survives

252 HP / 252 Def Bold Vileplume vs. +2 Life Orb Stone Edge (61.58% - 72.60%) - Survives

252 HP / 252 Def Venusaur vs. +2 Life Orb Stone Edge (60.44% - 71.43%) - Survives

Ok, so all but Sandslash fit the first criteria of option 1 and that's to survive at least ONE Swords Danced hit. However, as you will see all of these Pokemon are 2HKOd. This obviously means that it is absolutely necessary that they be able to OHKO Gallade during the one turn they get to hit it. So let's see what these Pokemon can muster versus our Gallade.

vs. Slowbro
Surf vs. our Gallade (31.49% - 37.37%) - Fails to OHKO Gallade

vs. Spiromb

Ok, our Gallade does (67.76% - 79.93%) to Spiritomb. That's a 2HKO regardless of whether or not Spiritomb burns us with Will-O-Wisp so doing that is out of the question. Our only options are Shadow Ball if we're specially based, or 2 Shadow Sneaks if we're Physically based.

Shadow Ball vs. Our Gallade (49.83% - 58.82%) - Fails to OHKO Gallade
Shadow Sneak vs. Our Gallade (40.14% - 47.75%) - 2HKOs Gallade after 2 Life Orb Recoils

With Shadow Sneak we are guaranteed to kill Gallade, but unless we roll above average damage while Stealth Rocks are on the field, we are still losing Spiritomb. But I guess Spiritomb counts as a viable counter if you're running Shadow Sneak.

vs. Uxie

Shadow Ball (even though it's never used) vs. Our Gallade (27.68% - 33.22%) - Fails to OHKO Gallade

vs. Weezing

With Stealth Rock on the field, much like Spiritomb, Burning results in a 2HKO anyway. So the only way to beat us is to OHKO with Sludge Bomb. You could obviously use Explosion... but that has the negative side effect of killing Weezing too.

Sludge Bomb vs. Our Gallade (23.18% - 28.03%) - Not even close.

vs. Mespirit

Shadow Ball vs. Our Gallade (29.07% - 34.26%) - Fails to OHKO Gallade

vs. Claydol

As we've shown before, if you're attacking with a weak special attack, you're not getting anywhere. So let's go with Earthquake and see how much that does to it.

Earthquake vs. Our Gallade (39.79% - 47.06%) - Fails to OHKO Gallade.

vs. Nidoqueen
This could be promising seeing as how a it can attack somewhat from the physical side, as well it is the only Pokemon on the list that gets to abuse a -1 Def because it's hit hardest by Close Combat. Let's see how we fare!

Earthquake vs. -1 Gallade (70.93% - 84.08%) - OHKOs with 2 Life Orb recoil a little over half of the time.

Looks like if you have Stealth Rock that Nidoqueen can function well as a counter, but you're going to lose Nidoqueen in the process, just like Spiritomb.

vs. Vileplume

Energy Ball vs. Our Gallade (26.30% - 31.49%) - Fails to OHKO

vs. Venusaur

I'll even throw you a bone on this one and say that it's using Leaf Storm although come on... a 252 HP / 252 Bold Venusaur using Leaf Storm? I digress

Leaf Storm vs. Our Gallade (46.71% - 55.02%) - Fails to OHKO

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As you can see, there are 2 Pokemon that fit Option 1. These two are Spiritomb and Nidoqueen. However both of these must sacrifice themselves in order to take out Gallade.

It is true that Slowbro and Uxie can Paralyze them, but these are not only not seen on every set (Slowbro frequently uses Calm Mind or Grass Knot over Thunder Wave and Uxie uses the screens / uturn / psychic / a variety of other moves), but they don't stop the fact that Gallade is going to take out Slowbro and Uxie... and even perhaps continue with a sweep.

Let's get to Option 2.
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It's pretty obvious that the only things faster that are switching IN on a Gallade are those that can survive a Close Combat. anything else risks getting OHKOd by a Gallade spamming Close Combat (which DOES happen).

So let's narrow down the list of faster opponents with the ability to OHKO that do not get murdered by either a +2 Shadow Sneak after switching in on a Swords Dance, or that get killed by a Close Combat.

Crobat
Jumpluff
Scyther
Charizard
Staraptor (Although not if Stealth Rock is in play as it gets OHKOd by Close Combat then)
Arcanine (Same thing applies to Arcanine that applies to Staraptor)
Moltres
Venomoth
Articuno
Pinser
Nidoking
Toxicroak

That's it. Everything else is OHKOd by a Close Combat. Now, do you see anything remarkably similar about all of these Pokemon? That's right, with the exception of Toxicroak and Nidoking, they are ALL weak to Rock. You can check the calcs if you want to, but let me assure you that every single one of these Pokemon are going to be OHKOd by a Stone Edge on the switch if there are Stealth Rocks on the field. That means that with just a little bit of scouting, I can kill your "check" to Gallade and rampage your team. (And a side note, Nidoking is 2HKOd by a combination of Close Combat and Shadow Sneak).

This brings down the feasible counters to Gallade to three: Spiritomb / Nidoqueen / Toxicroak.

And two of those Pokemon have to kill themselves to beat Gallade, and the latter has to run max speed, and even then is taking over 50% of its health JUST TO FORCE IT OUT.

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If this doesn't show that Gallade is BL material I don't know what will. It can set up its Swords Dance on a variety of weak Physical and Special attackers, and its coverage is such that it can deter the faster threats that would be able to come in on a Close Combat rather than a set up move.

and to those that may refute this, I ask you... if this is a reasonable Pokemon to allow in the tier... if this is something that is "balanced." I'd hate to see what an unreasonable Pokemon would do to UU.
 
Ninetales can use Calm Mind too, but Raikou obviously has more bulk to pull off SubCM. Nearly everyone opts for Nasty Plot instead of Calm Mind for Ninetales. So much that most people forget that Ninetales can Calm Mind XD.
 
I would like to posit an addition to your Gallade-stopping list.

Option 1: Bring in a slower Pokemon that can take at least 2 regular hits, or 1 Swords Danced hit and OHKO Gallade.

Option 2: Bring in one faster Pokemon that can take at least 1 regular hit, outspeed and OHKO. Or avoid being OHKOd by Shadow Sneak after a Swords Dance.
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Option 3: Play around the threat using prediction and team synergy/immunities.

This is not as hard as it seems. All that's needed is a Ghost-type that you can switch in on predicted CCs and SDs (especially one that can Burn or Paralyze if you come in on a CC) and a faster Normal-type that switches in on the following turn's Shadow Sneak.

Ghost types are everywhere and most teams have them. Almost any Ghost will do, too, although Froslass is decimated if you mispredict on a Stone Edge.

Staraptor, Swellow, Tauros, Kangaskhan, Ambipom, and Slaking all work for normal types. Of course any tough base 80+ speed poke works if it can handle two +2 Shadow Sneaks. (Shaymin, Scarf Honchkrow, etc, etc)

Of course, everyone is liable to mispredict now and then. But that is what keeps the game interesting - mind games - and what separates good players from poor. But all in all, anyone with decent prediction skills and two very common resists on his team should be able to work around Gallade.

Anyway, my opinion stands that, though he lacks solid "100%" counters, Gallade is easy to play around - moreso even than most offensive threats - and as such is not an unreasonable force in the new UU metagame.
 
um....that logic pretty much works with every single poke.... "predict around its move" "send in something faster that it wont ko" "if you mispredict, well you win some you lose some" i mean can't we apply that to like 95% of every single poke ever
 
This is not as hard as it seems. All that's needed is a Ghost-type that you can switch in on predicted CCs and SDs (especially one that can Burn or Paralyze if you come in on a CC) and a faster Normal-type that switches in on the following turn's Shadow Sneak.
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If your plan is to rely on two back to back turns of risky prediction where in either case a mispredict ends in the ruin of your team, that's not a sound way to play the game.

Staraptor, Swellow, Tauros, Kangaskhan, Ambipom, and Slaking all work for normal types. Of course any tough base 80+ speed poke works if it can handle two +2 Shadow Sneaks. (Shaymin, Scarf Honchkrow, etc, etc)
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And all of these Pokemon are OHKOd if you mispredict.

Also notice that all of the ghost types in UU fail to OHKO Gallade without a Choice Specs, which means he can actually afford to scout you by Swords Dancing on your switch to the ghost type, and then using Close Combat once.

But all in all, anyone with decent prediction skills and two very common resists on his team should be able to work around Gallade.
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If we're assuming that you can predict, we are also assuming that your opponent can predict, and if that is the case, then you are both equally likely to predict the other correctly. "Player skill" should be irrelevent as we should only be looking at cases where both players are of equal skill. This is why "predict around it" arguments don't work.

Garchomp can be "played around"... we did it for over a year in DP. I'm sure that if Kyogre / Groudon / Rayquaza were allowed in OU they could be "played around." But the fact is that you shouldn't HAVE TO play around such obviously broken Pokemon.
 
Aeroblacktyl said:
um....that logic pretty much works with every single poke.... "predict around its move" "send in something faster that it wont ko" "if you mispredict, well you win some you lose some" i mean can't we apply that to like 95% of every single poke ever
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Yes. However, Gallade is a very low-risk workaround Pokémon. Gallade uses Close Combat or Swords Dance as its opening attack alomst 100% of the time, in my experience. The only way it would ever Stone Edge on the switch is if it knows your team and playstyle; it has too much to lose by Stone Edging blindly (possibly getting OHKO'd/statused or missing an opportunity to set up).

Once there's a (fast) ghost in, it only has one attacking option, which is Shadow Sneak. The only possible way it would CC or SE and risk a possible burn/paralysis is, again, if it had already fought you and knew your team and playstyle. (And thus you could take this into account and predict accordingly.)
 
The funny thing about LN's post is that he sticks to a specific set in all of those calculations. Gallade can easly run any of:

-Earthquake
-Ice Punch
-Leaf Blade
-Night Slash
-X-Scissor

..and completely ruin some of it's potential 'checks'. Or, it could run Psycho Cut (you know, it's secondary STAB) and ruin those silly poison pokemon who might get the idea they can wall it.

I really think some people are seriously overvaluing two things in this thread though.

First, relying on risky 'check' prediction by switching faster pokemon into something that could potentially ruin it. Yeah, okay. Switching that Crobat into one of Psycho Cut, Stone Edge, or Ice Punch is going to hurt. Sure, if your opponent SDs the first turn out, your prediction paid off. However, acting like that type of strategy is a solid response to a threat is ridiculous.

The other thing is 'revenge killing'. What matters is not that you can bring something faster in once Gallade kills something. The issue here is what you can bring in. In Standard, Gallade killing something could mean Salamence gets to come in and 'revenge kill', which often means Gallade is trading itself or another pokemon for the kill it got. Is there anything in UU as threatening that Gallade lets in for free after it kills something? Maybe Staraptor, but Staraptor is a serious threat worthy of BL consideration itself. Regardless, the phrasing should not just be that Gallade lets faster pokemon that threaten a KO in on it - it has to include which serious threats Gallade is going to let in.
 
Gallade is seriously too slow to be too broken imo, although a very powerful sweeper, it can only set up on a Sacrifice pokemon, such as if Slowbro Kills Blaziken, and Slowbro could easily Paralyze or 2HKO it. Stone Edge has 80% accuracy as well.

I could see him being banned though. Enough things "Stop him" to be debatable.
 
LonelyNess, that's some great work there. Do you mind doing something like that for Raikou or Staraptor?

Gallade appears to be a very serious threat, but Shedinja can come in on anything save Shadow Sneak. And it has a Shadow Sneak of its own. Gallade may run Night Slash over Shadow Sneak, allowing Shedinja to KO it after a defense drop from Close Combat. This isn't theorymon, I've done it, the proof is in my signature.
edit: Ok, it can't switch in on Stone Edge. My bad.

And to those who feel that we can play around Gallade with risky "perfect" prediction, that itself shows that it has a strong case for being banned.
 
@LonelyNess: First of all, nice work on your Gallade analysis. That's much more like what I want to see from you.

However, I still think there is a touch of ambiguity and bias in your interpretation of Gallade's potential in UU. For instance, you quote the Offensive Characteristic for an Uber / BL, which is:

Offensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is Borderline if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.

...and try to convince us that this applies to Gallade. The thing is, you're not convincing me that Gallade is an efficient sweeper of teams. Your analysis portrays Gallade to be more of a wallbreaker, or as Tangerine would rather put it, a 'defensive threat remover'. In fact, by reading your entire post, Gallade seems most comparable to Lucario in OU, except with much weaker priority that fails to take out or even affect many of Gallade's speedy checks.

The main point I'd like to make from this is that you have failed to convince me that Gallade can 'sweep most teams with little effort'. It seems to me that it requires a fair bit of effort to allow Gallade to sweep whole teams. For instance, any team that still has a healthy Staraptor will always stop Gallade from pulling off a sweep. I could give several other examples but I think you get the point.

As far as your defensive list goes, I feel that you're glossing over a few points here also. For the most part you have ignored the possibility that some of these pokemon don't need to attack Gallade directly to beat it or contain it. For instance, Uxie can outrun and set up Reflect, to me it seems that Weezing stands a very good chance of using Will-o-wisp and Pain Split to contain him, Vileplume / Venusaur have the option of Stun Spore / Sleep Powder + Synthesis etc.

And what about fast-paced offensive teams? How does Gallade fare against those? Does it get a chance to set up or significantly hurt anything? These are the points that need to be seriously considered in order to assess just how broken Gallade actually is. That is all for now.
 
hi logical fallacy. you can't say any team with a staraptor will always stop gallade from a sweep. then we might as well allow half of ou in there as well. well shit, any team with staraptor means heracross wont sweep. let's say tyranitar wont sweep either. what does this mean???? revenge killing is a not a means of a allowing something to be played
 
I don't understand why there is so much fuss over Gallade. As previously mentioned he is strong but he is also slow. You may have to sacrifice a Pokemon. That happens at times... big deal. Just revenge kill it. Also, I'm curious why wouldn't on use a Sub/CC/SD/ Filler set instead if speed is really the issue. :/
 
Aeroblacktyl said:
hi logical fallacy. you can't say any team with a staraptor will always stop gallade from a sweep. then we might as well allow half of ou in there as well. well shit, any team with staraptor means heracross wont sweep. let's say tyranitar wont sweep either. what does this mean???? revenge killing is a not a means of a allowing something to be played
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On the other hand, Tangerine's "Counter Mentality" article explains why a lack of counters (which Gallade doesn't even have) doesn't necessarily mean that a Pokemon is broken.

For your Tyranitar/Heracross examples, that is true, but it's also true in OU. There really is nothing that can safely and reliably come in on CB Tyranitar or Heracross (this is even true in ubers, with the sole exceptions of Groudon and Giratina respectively), but both are fairly slow and with exploitable weaknesses so we haven't thrown them in ubers.
 
Salem1 said:
Why don't we merge all of the tiers then? you could just ''revenge kill'' any problems, huh? ;)
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If I made that comment I would of gotten a infraction >.>.

But uh, I never meant for it sound as if you can revenge kill anything. I'm just saying that because of his lowish speed he is subject to a revenge kill more readily.

Also.. nothing is wrong with revenge killing as long as your up a Poke ^^
 
LonelyNess said:
If your plan is to rely on two back to back turns of risky prediction where in either case a mispredict ends in the ruin of your team, that's not a sound way to play the game.
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If by "the ruin of your team" you mean one Pokémon dies, so be it. The prediction isn't all that risky and the chance of a mispredict on the first turn of battle is slim. As I said before, Gallade have a propensity to using certain moves before they know your team and tactics. No Gallade user I have fought has blindly used Stone Edge or Night Slash when there was a possibility of setting up an SD or killing me outright with CC.


And all of these Pokemon are OHKOd if you mispredict.

Also notice that all of the ghost types in UU fail to OHKO Gallade without a Choice Specs, which means he can actually afford to scout you by Swords Dancing on your switch to the ghost type, and then using Close Combat once.
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If he wants to eat a WoW or T-wave. Unless he knows your team and playstyle I can't imagine any intelligent Gallade user being this reckless.


If we're assuming that you can predict, we are also assuming that your opponent can predict, and if that is the case, then you are both equally likely to predict the other correctly. "Player skill" should be irrelevent as we should only be looking at cases where both players are of equal skill. This is why "predict around it" arguments don't work.

Garchomp can be "played around"... we did it for over a year in DP. I'm sure that if Kyogre / Groudon / Rayquaza were allowed in OU they could be "played around." But the fact is that you shouldn't HAVE TO play around such obviously broken Pokemon.
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Garchomp also had 102 base speed and was bulky with great resists. Garchomp swept teams. Gallade has base 80 speed and is physically frail. As posters above me have pointed out, Gallade will almost never sweep an entire team without large amounts of paralysis support. The two are hardly comparable.

Let's not forget Gallade is hard to get in. If it comes in on any physical attack or status, it's meat. If it comes into a special attack it has the ability to take maybe one more special attack, then it dies with a couple turns of LO recoil. The only way it gets in for free is on a revenge switch-in. (or, okay, maybe on Blissey's Softboiled.) If it kills something, you can bet it will be forced out by a revenge killer next turn, meaning something else on your team has to die to get it in for free.
 
Exclamation Point said:
I don't understand why there is so much fuss over Gallade. As previously mentioned he is strong but he is also slow. You may have to sacrifice a Pokemon. That happens at times... big deal. Just revenge kill it. Also, I'm curious why wouldn't on use a Sub/CC/SD/ Filler set instead if speed is really the issue. :/
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Who says you need to run Swords Dance in the first place? Even without Swords Dance, Gallade can act as a mini-Lucario in UU, denting virtually everything with a STAB CC. Give Gallade decent team support and you have a physical sweeper that can basically KO most of the metagame. Gallade is definitely not something I want to contend with in UU, regardless of how many revenge-killers can defeat it. Gallade has no counters in UU (an obsolete point, but important in deciding whether it ravages through the majority of the metagame, which is does). I'm sorry, but if you're idea of winning is sacrificing random Pokemon to Gallade, you're probably not gonna win the majority of games.
 
steinhauser you make it seem like gallade cannot sweep at all, base 80 speed isnt the greatest buts its not the worst, it can take a special hit and CC right back, it also has a priority move that is super effective against ghosts so if it gets an SD off, you can switch in your ghost to take the CC but unless its spiritomb shadow sneak will OHKO it, his fighting type also makes it incredibly easy to wall break, here are some of the big walls in UU, the regi, chansey, clefable, steelix, slowbro,
gallade is capable of hitting all of these for supereffective damage,

his special defensive bulk means that you cant rely on special sweepers to revenge kill gallade so he can continue to sweep your team, not all physical sweepers are faster than him, blaziken, feraligator, azumarrill(CB aqua jet doesnt OHKO), staraptor comes to mind as a revenge killer but not every team is going to have staraptor and may have to rely on other slower physical sweepers to revenge kill gallade
 
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