I'm posting this very late and abbreviated from my initial plans. The week the suspect launched was really bad timing for me, personally. Between drought induced forest fire smoke giving me migraines, the USA election, and other real life circumstances, I have had literally no mental space left to devote to this suspect like I originally wanted to. And I really don't think I'll be needed in any way. That said, I wanted to bring up a few points I haven't seen made here or in the qualified thread.
1. Psychic Noise, Hex, and Tera.
Psychic Noise and Hex are really good anti-Gliscor tools that don't necesarrily rely on having to hit it super effectively. Tera Normal is a common Tera for Facade and certain defensive benefits, but this comes with the cost of a Fighting weakness. People have already talked about hazards and losing that great Ground/Flying typing, but I feel like the Fighting weakness is even worse for it.
Fighting moves and mons are extremely common in gen 9 OU, and arguably even necessary because of Kingambit. But practically every Tera that Gliscor would realistically use to counter Hex and/or Psychic Noise loses to Fighting STAB. Hex's Ghost typing is only resisted by Normal and Dark, but Fighting moves beat that. Psychic is only resisted by Dark, Steel, and Psychic. Dark and Steel Tera types can be rationalized. Psychic is a trash Tera type that makes no sense on Gliscor. But the rest mentioned are usable and weak to Fighting.
There are several other defensive Tera types that that can be decent, namely Water and Fairy. Water also has the benefit of boosting Crabhammer, which is niche, but maybe plausible. Fairy has the benefit of still resisting Fighting coverage. But these don't really do anything against Hex or Psychic Noise.
The point is Hex and/or Psychic Noise + the Fighting moves you already need for Gambit is basically like the perfect anti-Gliscor system. And while I won't get into it here, it still has plenty of other uses in this metagame.
2. More mons can deal with SD Gliscor using the right team support or structures.
SD sets tend to have 4 moves that they us out of Facade, Knock Off, Earthquake, and sometimes Ice Fang (usually with EQ.) The thing is, Gliscor can generally only carry two of those moves due to needing both SD and Protect. Each move has several drawbacks:
- Facade is high power with the 140 activation, but non-STAB unless Tera Normal.
- Knock Off is great utility, but non-STAB and halve in power after the opposing item is lost. Anything defensive that isn't weak to Dark can often take the subsequent Knock Offs more easily.
- Earthquake is the only STAB. But there also has several ways to mitigate it like Air Balloon, G-terrain, and Tera Flying. It can also potentially be PP stalled due to the lower PP, making Gliscor then easier to deal with.
- Ice Fang is sometimes good with EQ's Ground coverage, but it's a low base power non-STAB move that mostly only works well if it is supereffective.
Aside from Dozo and the metal birds, which don't super mind any of these moves, there are actually a lot of mons that can answer 2-3 of these moves. For example, Sinistcha can counter EQ/Facade coverage, but hates Knock Off.
However, I believe the most common SD Gliscor is Facade/Knock Off. Common mons for balance like Gambit and Garg do great into this set. They also are immune to Toxic and do great in general against any Gliscor as long as you avoid and/or mitigate EQ. Tera could also potentially be used.
Another thing you can do is overlap pokemon that counter different Gliscor variants. For example, a team with Gambit + Sinistcha is fine and would still probably counter the sets. I won't be getting into every mon and combination, but I do believe that reasonable team structures can be built with this in mind. Like you aren't exactly sacrificing a ton by using viable mons together in this way.
3. Have you considered not relying on boots spam?
Gliscor has to compromise too much. Gliscor has massive 4MSS. The need to carry Protect means it essentially has 3 moves to work with. SD makes it 2. Gliscor can try running a set without Protect, but it's much harder to make that consistent for obvious reasons. Gliscor can not be both bulky and make of the most of its mediocre base 95 speed tier. The speed tier is enough against slower teams, but offensive teams obviously don't care about base 95 speed. Slower teams might, but the trade off is Gliscor is frailer since it invests less in bulk.
The most common SD set, as far as I'm aware, is a speed invested Facade/Knock Off set. This is a great example of these trade offs. It trades bulk for more speed, it runs non-STAB moves Facade and Knock Off, and it needs further hazard support to make the most of Knock Off and its lacking base 95 Attack. It also loses to one of the most common mons in Gambit, among other things.
Anyways, this Facade/Knock Off set doesn't beat slower teams. It mainly beats slower teams that rely on boots spam to deal with hazards. Something like a Corv/Ace balance or a Geezing could keep the hazards at bay and make this less of an issue. There is also Hatt, which conveniently counters the passive Spikes/Toxic Gliscor sets. Hatt can be paired with a mon to deal with SD Gliscor, such as an ID mon, and that pretty much covers most of it.
I won't turn this into a how to deal with hazards post. The point is there are some creative options that balance teams can use that could make you less vulnerable to the combination of hazards and Knock Off. In general, hazard stack is really common and you probably should have an answer for that on your team anyway.
