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We've now estabished that in order to adequately check just offensive variants of Gligar, one must run a Choice Scarf user with a super effective move, Bronzor, and a bulky Water-type / Pokemon with high Defense. That's half of your team, for those of you inept out there.
You can post all the stats you'd like, but I think it's pretty common sense to slap something that beats Gligar on most of your Pokemon. From the hysterical tone of all these posts, you'd think Gligar is coming in and KOing five full-health Pokemon with no difficulties. As for "one must run a Choice Scarf user with a super effective move, Bronzor, and a bulky Water-type / Pokemon with high Defense," that's factually untrue. However, what is factually true, as demonstrated by your calculations, is that Gligar is rather easy to revenge-kill. You are dismissing every one of the Pokemon you listed as "2HKOed," but are ignoring the fact that every single Pokemon you listed can easily OHKO Gligar. Hell, it doesn't even have to be a revenge kill since all your calcs are assuming that Gligar got his Swords Dance. That means you had a free turn to go to your Gligar counter or hit Gligar with some kind of move or something.

And emphasizing JUST OFFENSIVE VARIANTS as if they are weaker is disingenuous. Also, if Gligar is constantly causing you to switch? Adapt and toss some random Ice moves on some of the guys Gligar would ordinarily force out. Gligar is FAR from an Invincible God, OHKOing All The Bulky Mons and Raping Our Fair Metagame...

There are ways to beat Gligar not named Bronzor, and you listed a fair few of them. Even if "Scraggy conveniently beats all of them!!!" that doesn't reflect on Gligar. It also bears remembering that if Gligar doesn't OHKO you, there's a very good chance you can OHKO it, especialliy if it's an Acrobat variant. And if Gligar passes either SD or Agility to Scraggy, there are still numerous ways to easily deal with it. If Gligar manages to pass BOTH SD and Agility then, well, you really just deserve to lose.
 
I could care less about all of that really. I do think that Baton Pass Gligar is an incredibly easy way to capitalize on the pokemon that are forced onto team building by it's own presence, and I don't even mean just Bronzor (but Bronzor is the most prolific example because of how easy it is to set up on). All of the Pokemon that Ray Jay listed in his post are set up bait for Scraggy except Staryu, who is coincidentally not something you should be switching in to Gligar >>. Not much is stopping a well-played +3/+1 Scraggy (and most of the things that do are completely fucked by Gligar itself, go figure...).

But that's just one flaw out of many in this current meta. Prem is totally right in saying this meta is stale, and that there are a lack of viable/common pokemon. I would maybe put the list of Pokemon that I would even consider for a team around 20-25 right now, and that's being a generous (side note, don't come crying to me telling me to buck up and try other shit, I think I'm pretty good about that............). That's not enough variety in a metagame I consider desirable (I'm not the only one that seems to think we need a healthy amount of variety though!).

What you could maybe point out here is that it might not be fair to lay all the blame on Gligar, and you could be right. I don't think you are though. Murkrow doesn't have the usage required to be such a negative influence on the meta (especially like as prem said, "murkrow is killing itself or not killing enough 90% of the time), and I think Misdreavus isn't nearly as threating or limiting as Gligar. Here's why: Misdreavus is really good, but it's only really good at one thing. All Misdreavus sets are really pretty similar and stopped by pretty much the same stuff. Gligar is really good, and it's really good at LOTS of things. It can attempt to straight up sweep with the Flight Gem set, or it can go a defensive route, or just BP it's boosts instead of trying to sweep, etc. It really just outclasses a lot more Pokemon than the other two, and thus causes them to fall into disuse/unviability.

More importantly though for an argument of limiting variety, even outside of outclassing I think Gligar makes a lot more pokemon "unviable" than Misdreavus/Murkrow does. This might just be my opinion, but when I'm teambuilding, a lot more often to I find myself thinking, "Oh man, I wish this thing wasn't screwed over by Gligar so badly, I can't really run it with Mienfoo/Chinchou/whatever without making me really Gligar weak" than I do with Misdreavus. They're both pretty equally revenge-killable and have the same limited number of options for "dedicated counter/check/whatever", but imo Gligar shuts down a bigger number of Pokemon from being used, as well as more 'important' Pokemon, by which I mean Pokemon that I would otherwise consider using as checks to Murkrow/Misdreavus/Scraggy/etc, like idk Shelmet or Shroomish or Larvesta or whatever else. You can try to argue that "oh well Murkrow (or whatever) also really fucks up those pokemon", but you really can't pretend that Gligar isn't more inherently threatening to give a free turn to, since it's so versatile etc.


anyways this probably got really ranty/unclear/lazy towards the end, but I'm suddenly in a rush and don't have a lot of time left to post my thoughts. i'll try and clear up anything that needs clarification later today or something
 

Ray Jay

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I'd like to start off by saying that perhaps I was a bit misunderstood in my post, and I hope to clear some things up.

And emphasizing JUST OFFENSIVE VARIANTS as if they are weaker is disingenuous. Also, if Gligar is constantly causing you to switch? Adapt and toss some random Ice moves on some of the guys Gligar would ordinarily force out. Gligar is FAR from an Invincible God, OHKOing All The Bulky Mons and Raping Our Fair Metagame...
First of all, I emphasized just offensive variants not to say that they are weaker, but to emphasize that Gligar can run defensive sets as well, which naturally have different checks and counter.

Second of all, I've stated before that I don't think Gligar is in and of itself "broken." At least not in the traditional sense. I will wholeheartedly agree with you that Gligar has plenty of checks and even a few counters, the point of showing the bulky Water-type statistics after a Swords Dance was to show that if you rely only on a bulky Water-type, then Gligar cannot get a Swords Dance at all or else you're going to be doing some gymnastics just to get around it. Of course if you play very well, these bulky Water-types will OHKO Gligar, but if the opponent is sentient then they will likely get a Swords Dance or a crit up at some point in time.

Third of all, my tone was perhaps a bit "out there" and I don't want to come across as OMG Gligar is the worst thing ever. In many ways it balances aspects of the metagame (Mienfoo having difficulty comes to mind). The point of the statistics was not to paint Gligar as this invincible god Pokemon, the point was to show some of the arguments made were factually incorrect (ie Ice Shard OHKOes Gligar all day 100% of the time!!!).

I guess my real point is that Gligar is not broken in the traditional sense but has some real imbalancing features nonetheless. I think reduced viability is a big one that em hit on, but the other thing is that the metagame is not ready to handle Gligar in its current state.

As for "one must run a Choice Scarf user with a super effective move, Bronzor, and a bulky Water-type / Pokemon with high Defense," that's factually untrue.
Of course it's factually untrue, no one is going to dedicate 3 slots on their team to countering Gligar. That was the whole point; it is unfeasible to create a team that perfectly handles Gligar 100% of the time (see the next point down)

Even if "Scraggy conveniently beats all of them!!!" that doesn't reflect on Gligar.
Sure it does. If Gligar's set of counters are so specific that they are easily taken advantage of outside of handling Gligar, then teams become either overprepared for Gligar (and thus, underprepared for the rest of the metagame) or underprepared for Gligar. This is admittedly more of a thing that reflects the metagame at large than just Gligar, but again, Gligar is not broken in the traditional sense.
 
While I agree that agility gligar beats scarfed checks, isn't that the case with all the big three? If you guess the wrong set, you die, simple as that really, unless you have a back-up counter, and one trick for successful team building in this meta game is creating a pokemon that works very effectively as a back-up counter to a lot of things but still has other uses. I'm not arguing gligar staying in, I'd be more than happy to see the rear end of him in this meta game, and missy and murkrow too.

It doesn't take too much to beat gligar, so in one sense he's not broken, but often you'll have to sacrifice something in the process, either to bring him into KO range for ice shard or whatever. For this reason, I think that everyone's "gligar slot" is actually quite a lot more important than other slots, probably why he's on 80% usage. That's a reason why I think gligar should go, it may seem strange that I'm arguing for gligar to be banned against others who want the same, but if we ban him (or indeed all the three) we need to make sure it's for the right reasons so they don't return again.

Edit: I would just like to add also that having played quite a few games with challenge teams (i.e, no big three) against furai and a bit against EM was great fun and actually allowed for some imagination (though EM's numel was the biggest load of crap ever).
 
I have no idea where we got this mentality that Gligar's sets have incredibly varying counters, especially with respect to Misdreavus, but this kind of needs to stop before something comes from us continuously over-hyping Gligar's versatility. We aren't talking about gen 4 LC Life Orb Rock Polish Gligar or Swords Dance Gligar either, they shared checks and counters but obviously not much had the bulk to deal with them separately.

This is gen 5. We have Eviolite Slowpoke, Porygon, Frillish, Hippopotas etc that deal with all of the variants. We still have <Insert Ice attack>.

Sure Gligar can BP away, but then he only has one attack (or can't Roost or only has one set up move etc) and his counters double. I haven't seen a BP Gligar work in recent memory. The counters are still the same for Gligar. If another Pokemon was impossible to beat at +2 then we would probably be talking about that one, no?

If you want to compare to Misdreavus's versatility, simply "having" Will-O-Wisp, Hidden Power Ground, and Substitute makes its "reliable" counters list at approximately 0 similar to the way having Rock Polish etc lowers its reliable counters. Similar to Gligar, it's checks don't really change, but Misdreavus is actually bulky enough to survive the odd super effective attack while Gligar can't even reliably survive a weak Ice Shard from a not-fully-invested Snover.

To be honest, I'm more scared of Murkrow than any other Pokemon in the metagame right now, I have no idea why it's not seeing more use.

EDIT@ below: I never said any of them were 100% counters, I said they deal with Gligar. They check every single variant and can generally "counter" them as well as long as they don't switch into the wrong move (Swords Dance). I mostly wanted to emphasize that with respect to Misdreavus and Murkrow, Gligar's not quite up to that standard. Usage stats are not a direct measurement of power they are a direct measurement of what some users want, find easy to incorporate, or think they should be using in the current metagame.
 
I would say he does have pretty varying counters myself. Currently, we're only talking about his offensive sets, and they already have a quite different counters. Out of your list, Heysup, all of them are OHKOed by a +2 flight gem acrobatics with SR damage and some of them even struggle to survive without the flight gem (the only exception is impish hippopotas with a lot of HP investment but what is he going to do, roar?), meaning the only option to beat the swords dance set is using a faster ice or water move or bronzor. Agility is a completely different beast, while your defensive counters work here, nothing can stop it offensively except ice shard and you'll have to have weakened it down before hand as well in a lot of cases.

Basically, if you guess the wrong set, you're in some very hot water, especially if it's a double dancing set, but that's the case with all the three so I don't really understand why gligar is being pointed out specifically if we're only talking about offensive sets here.
 

Aerrow

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Just letting you guys know that I've opened up voting for this set of topics (each of the council members has been sent a PM outlining what they need to do) so we should reach a conclusion regarding each of the 'suspects' by Monday.
 
...find easy to incorporate...
I've been gone for about a month now and the fact that this is still being stated is pretty dumb. Gligar is used so often because it does a thousand jobs well. So good, infact, that often times theirs little reason to use other people that fulfill those jobs (Spoiler: the reason is you're already using Gligar as something else, or you're trying to prove a point by not using it on your team).

The problem with gligar specifically, and what seperates him from the Missy/Krow, is not that its way too strong, or has the ability to be an unstoppable sweeper and then pass it, it's that its Defensive set outclasses nearly every other defensive pokemon, it's that its offensive sets have has amazing coverage with 100 / 110 Base powered stabs (with 100% accuracy and AMAZING coverage to boot), it's the fact that it's move pool is deeper than your pool.

To be honest, the simple fact is that Gligar is not overly powerful. It has it's answers and these answers, as heysup said, do not vary *too* much from set to set.

The problem with Gligar in the metagame, is that there is literally no reason not to use it. Its all been said: it's offensively and defensively solid, and it has utility for ages to back it all up. This is why we're seeing it's such a large amount of use. It's litterally, "Oh i need a revenge killer, better slap on gligar. Oh, I need a co-sweeper, better slap on gligar. Oh, i need a physical wall with decent recovery, better slap on gligar."

I don't really know the definition of "over centralizing" but, tbh - the only unhealthy thing Gligar does to the meta is being way too solid. It prevents the use of many of the other hundred or so mon's in the teir because it out classes their only role, and it forces a lot of *really boring ass* pokemon (bronzor) onto teams.


For what its worth, I've found a HP ice Mienfoo can deal with Scraggy/Gligar cores, as even a negative nature with 0 input into SpA always OHKO's Flight gem variants of gligar after a lowsweep.
 
I've been gone for about a month now and the fact that this is still being stated is pretty dumb. Gligar is used so often because it does a thousand jobs well. So good, infact, that often times theirs little reason to use other people that fulfill those jobs (Spoiler: the reason is you're already using Gligar as something else, or you're trying to prove a point by not using it on your team).
Or you're tired of people throwing HP Ice on random shit. Or you don't need Gligar for its defenses and need a scarier Pokemon (ie Murkrow). Or you find Gligar is trying to do too many at once and thus fails at doing one of those things because of the others. It would be a good idea to not be so ignorant and condescending especially when you're spouting exaggerated and ill-supported nonsense.

Methmite said:
The problem with gligar specifically, and what seperates him from the Missy/Krow, is not that its way too strong, or has the ability to be an unstoppable sweeper and then pass it, it's that its Defensive set outclasses nearly every other defensive pokemon, it's that its offensive sets have has amazing coverage with 100 / 110 Base powered stabs (with 100% accuracy and AMAZING coverage to boot), it's the fact that it's move pool is deeper than your pool.
You should have read the thread a bit more, no one has even brought up the defensive set because it's the same as every other defensive Pokemon with a 4x weakness. Just the fact that it "can" run a defensive set doesn't mean anything. Gliscor isn't going to be banned and it has the ability to run a huge number of great sets. Quality =/= Quantity and we all need to get over this.

Also bringing up unboosted base powers is stupid considering that those stabs are weaker than a shit load of random Pokemon's attacks simply because of Gligar's slightly above average attack stat and lack of Life Orb. Something with 16 attack and an 80 base power move hits harder.
The problem with Gligar in the metagame, is that there is literally no reason not to use it. Its all been said: it's offensively and defensively solid, and it has utility for ages to back it all up. This is why we're seeing it's such a large amount of use. It's litterally, "Oh i need a revenge killer, better slap on gligar. Oh, I need a co-sweeper, better slap on gligar. Oh, i need a physical wall with decent recovery, better slap on gligar."

I don't really know the definition of "over centralizing" but, tbh - the only unhealthy thing Gligar does to the meta is being way too solid. It prevents the use of many of the other hundred or so mon's in the teir because it out classes their only role, and it forces a lot of *really boring ass* pokemon (bronzor) onto teams.
You completely over stepped the scope of banning - which has been my point all along - but thanks for making it so clear. We do not ban things because of subjective "we don't like dealing / using Gligar" or "Gligar doesn't let me use Mienfoo to its fullest potential and I like Mienfoo better!". The only reason to ban something is because it's "too powerful/hard to beat/etc", and thus, broken.

Though, I guess it's april 1st and banning Gligar for those reasons I listed would be a fitting joke :)
 
I'm a little hungover so you'll have to deal with me like this but that last part of your post is your totally subjective opinion, which I happen to disagree with. I think if a Pokemon makes the metagame shitty/boring/(there are only a handful of mons i consider using--whats the word for this??) then it should be banned, and I'm not the only person that feels that way.

i also agree that methmite was wrong too though
 
I wouldn't say that Gligar is broken but it is so good all around that it centralizes the whole metagame. As much as I love Gligar, the fact that he is on nearly every team and you MUST have a check or two for him, makes the metagame stale. I feel the same way about Missy, Murkrow, and to a lesser extent Scraggy. I don't think any of them are broken, but they all are over centralizing. I'd be fine with a ban on all of them just so that there is a new metagame with more pokemon viable to actually be given a slot on a team.
 

Aerrow

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Aerrow

Murkrow: Leave Unbanned
Misdreavus: Leave Unbanned
Gligar: Ban
Berry Juice: Leave Banned
Meditite: Leave Banned

Vader

Murkrow: Leave Unbanned
Misdreavus: Leave Unbanned
Gligar: Leave Unbanned
Berry Juice: Leave Banned
Meditite: Leave Banned

Elevator Music

Murkrow: Leave Unbanned
Misdreavus: Leave Unbanned
Gligar: Ban
Berry Juice: Leave Banned
Meditite: Leave Banned

iss


Murkrow: Leave Unbanned
Misdreavus: Leave Unbanned
Gligar: Leave Unbanned
Berry Juice: Leave Banned
Meditite: Leave Banned

Ray Jay

Murkrow: Leave Unbanned
Misdreavus: Leave Unbanned
Gligar: Ban
Berry Juice: Leave Banned
Meditite: Leave Banned

little gk

Murkrow: Leave Unbanned
Misdreavus: Leave Unbanned
Gligar: Leave Unbanned
Berry Juice: Leave Banned
Meditite: Leave Banned

macle

Murkrow: Leave Unbanned
Misdreavus: Leave Unbanned
Gligar: Ban
Berry Juice: Leave Banned
Meditite: Leave Banned

Farewell, Gligar (banned 4-3). I'll get this implemented on the server soon; until then, start making your teams for this new, Gligar-less metagame!
 
DAMN IT ALL OF MY GOOD TEAMS ARE RUINED!
Will the council be releasing there reasonings for the banning anytime soon?
back to that paper
 

prem

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FINALLY NO MORE ACROBAT BULLSHIT. other than that lets try to not spam murkrow and missy on every team. be creative !
 
For the record, none of my teams have had Gligar.
Hopefully people can now use Sub Roost Krow and realize it's the nuts.
 

Badal

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Very very interesting. Gligar banned, I'm interested to see whether we're now going to have any surprising Pokemon being used more often due to the lack of Gligar
 

Furai

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Fuck, I did not get to try Defensive Gligar. Oh well, I hated Acrobatics.
 
Just to rub it in, Toxic Taunt Gligar was my favorite set cause it could tank a ton of hits and stall out quite a few things.
 
Gligar ban causes:
Snover to drop
Bronzor to drop
Mienfoo to rise

Snover and Bronzor dropping means an increase in dragon stuff. Tested DD Axew already, strongth.
 

Rowan

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Also, me and Chieliee discussed in IRC earlier, now Scraggy can run Zen Headbutt over Ice Punch. So Croagunk actually won't benefit too much despite Gligar's absence.
Of course, this will cause Mienfoo's usage to climb even higher, now it will be the most consistent Scraggy counter.
 

macle

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Very very interesting. Gligar banned, I'm interested to see whether we're now going to have any surprising Pokemon being used more often due to the lack of Gligar
I doubt any mons usage will climb to sky high proportions because of the ban, but I do see stunky moving up since the ban freed up spots for shit to stop missy.

Of course, this will cause Mienfoo's usage to climb even higher, now it will be the most consistent Scraggy counter.
wasn't it already the most consistent counter?
 
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