What happened to Gallade?

maddog

is a master debater
is a Contributor Alumnus
I hardely never see him used on Shoddy. He has a huge movepool, great stats, and has amazing power to sweep teams. Let's take a look...

He has the same base attack as Heracross, but has a Base Speed of 80 instead of 85. But unlike Heracross, he has a huge phyical movepool, a huge support movepool, and can take some hits.

His physical movepool includes: Elemental Punchs, Close Combat, Night Slash, Psycho Cut, X- Scissor, Stone Edge, Shadow Sneak, and Leaf Blade and Earthquake. With all of these moves, he can take on all of the phyical walls in the game. And unlike Heracross, he is not walled by Gliscor (1HKO after SR) or Weezing (Psycho Cut 2HKOs). In fact, if the player using Gallade can predict well, no defensive wall (except for Spritomb) is a safe swith-in.

Unlike other physical sweepers Gallade can status with Will-O-Wisp, Thunder Wave, Hypnosis, Toxic, and Confuse Ray. He can also SD, Bulk Up, Sub, Wish (correct me if I'm wrong), Mean Look and Protect.

It is true that Heracross gets Guts and Pursuit. But Gallade doesn't have to deal with a common Pokemon known as Gliscor. With Gallade you get the same potential power as Heracross with a CB, but with a huge movepool that is not eaisly walled.

Gallade has the power to sweep many OU teams. So why don't you use Gallade? Why doesn't it see much use?
 
Gallade isn't a sweeper, and is best used as a support pokemon instead IMO. Though I think the reason that Gallade isn't used very much is because he doesn't exactly fit one specific niche like other pokemon.

Like you said, Gallade is a strong physical attacker, can inflict every status except poison, and can take special hits fairly well. This, I think, is the reason he isn't used much anymore. There are pokemon who do each of those things better than Gallade, so people use them instead. This happens qutie a bit with pokemon like Gallade. Jack of all trades, master of none.
 
Just for the sake of accuracy, Gallade cannot take on Spiritomb with ease, thanks to dual STAB immunity, and obviously Spiritomb is not weak to any of the other moves, but Spiritomb's STAB Ghost attacks can hit Gallade SE.
 
Gallade's certainly useful, just not OU useful.

Kingdra suffers from the same problem somewhat- it has no big weaknesses( it wasn't surviving draco meteor anyway) and can hit from both the physical and special sides, but it just doesn't quite cut it. Hence, the BL tier.
 
IMO, that's one of his strengths because you never know what to expect, and a mispredict can be costly. With stuff like Hera, you pretty much know its movepool and item on sight.
 
Gallade will always be a niche pokemon that shines well in certain niche spots on a team...which means you aren't going to see very much of him. Just the way it is.
 
BL =/= power. OU vs BL == popularity.

Anyway, Gallade fell out of style because it is simply too slow to be a decent supporter. But as surgo noted, he has some very niche uses.
 
Surgo said:
Gallade will always be a niche pokemon that shines well in certain niche spots on a team...which means you aren't going to see very much of him. Just the way it is.
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I second this comment. Also, Gallade is too slow to be really useful, if you're going to get any use out of physical attacking with it, it will have to be with a Choice Scarf.
 
You could always run a +speed nature to outspeed heracross and the like so I don't really think speed is THAT big of an issue. The fact that he can't absorb status as well as heracross is a huge reason he isn't used as much. I honestly don't think I've actually seen a gallade in action since the last time I battled surgo; which was quite some time ago.
 
SePh said:
You could always run a +speed nature to outspeed heracross and the like so I don't really think speed is THAT big of an issue. The fact that he can't absorb status as well as heracross is a huge reason he isn't used as much. I honestly don't think I've actually seen a gallade in action since the last time I battled surgo; which was quite some time ago.
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Hm. Isn't it that all Scarfcrosses are Adamant, and that all CBcrosses are Jolly, which would outspeed a Jolly Gallade anyway? I guess if you ran a Jolly Gallade w/ Scarf that would outrun Scarfcross.
 
i had a gallade and it wasn't too good. reason why was it would get 2 0r 2 shotted easily. i had a good move pool and but it didn't work out that well.
 
Gallade is like the red mage in the final fantasy series- looks stupid and can't learn level 8 magic.

IMO the only gallade worth using is CB with hypnosis thrown on.
 
It looks really, really good on paper, but too many things counter it. It's slower than Hera anyways, so it'll get slaughtered. Its slot is better used by Gliscor and it'll only work on teams that have plenty of support and its counters are dead. Which isn't that often. Being weak to both Bug and Flying is never a good thing in OU.
 
Aeroblacktyl said:
But Gallade isn't weak to Bug......and the only thing that really uses a Flying move now a days is Togekiss and Skarmory...
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and Yanmega, Staraptor, Crobat to name a few.(yes I know Staraptor and Crobat aren't really OU but are actually seeing some use in the standard games).
 
The point "Gallade is weak to Flying" is moot. There are several other pokemon which are weak to Flying, such as Heracross, Breloom, Infernape and Celebi.
 
You know who is better than Gallade? Medicham. Elementals, HJK, Psycho Cut, Rockslide, and 480 Attack. With a Scarf, its cardboard Defense is not an issue.
 
You know who is better than Medicham? Gallade. The only thing that Medicham has over Gallade is using a Scarf, and even Gallade can pull that off to some degree of success. Gallade has CC and Stone Edge, moves that Medicham would kill for. Medicham is better at using a Choice Scarf, but that's all
 
maddog said:
You know who is better than Medicham? Gallade. The only thing that Medicham has over Gallade is using a Scarf, and even Gallade can pull that off to some degree of success. Gallade has CC and Stone Edge, moves that Medicham would kill for. Medicham is better at using a Choice Scarf, but that's all
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All too true. But that gets back to the "Jack of all trades Ace of none" idea again. It's true that Medicham does the scarf better but can't do anything else. But then, that's all medicham needs to do. Meanwhile Gallade can do other things but maybe it's not THE BEST at any of them. :/

On the other hand, I DO really like your point that Gallade can defeat any of the physical walls, which is bad ass. And I do think that gallade has a lot of really cool merits. People just aren't very creative/outgoing in general.
 
Medicham doesn't even need CC to kick ass. Rockslide and Hi Jump Kick don't exactly hold Medicham back.

Scarfcham is amazing (especially as lead), but Medicham can actually pull off other sets well. It's the game's scariest Choice Bander, with the unique ability to 2HKO Cresselia with Double-Edge. It gets Baton Pass to "keep chains alive"; in BP teams an Agility passed to a Life Orb Cham is quite good, especially since you can keep Passing around.

Also, Gallade's too slow to sweep, has to Egg for Will-o-wisp, has decent but not quite good enough Defenses, and less attack and speed than Medicham. It's basically the "jack of all trades, master of none" everyone's been talking about. But I have to agree, Gallade is a much cooler wallkiller than MixApe.
 
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