how are you typing in times new romanWhy I believe we need a Garganacl Suspect Test in the near future:
Garganacl is a very unique Pokémon with access to a great signature ability and move that makes it very easy to fit on most team structures withouth a big opportunity cost relatively to other Pokémon due to just how good it is.
It is able to wall Choice Specs Dragapult, Skeledirge, Iron Moth, Some Iron Valiant sets and Volcarona, while sitting on basically every passive Pokémon forever due to Status Immunity. Garganacl is able to wall many more pokémon with the use of Tera, which makes it unkillable when your tera type has a good match-up, this alone can be a problem, since Garganacl can be played intelligently with protect, as it is one of the few Pokémon in the tier nothing truly ohkos; therefore it shares the competitiveness problem Melmetal had in gen 8, Garganacl is able to get a decent tradeoff with salt cure on every 1v1 match-up, which not only makes it a bit uncompetitive but also makes it even harder to force out, because if you switch to your garganacl check, losing a lot of HP to salt cure, garga will just protect, switch out and repeat the cycle. Even if it is hit supereffectively and is forced to switch, it is very easy to bring it in on a passive pokemon and heal back to full HP.
Currently, the only Pokémon immune to Salt Cure´s secondary effect are Shield Dust Pokémon, a list that consists of Three Unviable Bug type Pokémon, all weak to Rock.
Adding Covert Cloak to a Garganacl check (which makes it immune to salt cure´s secondary effect), seemed like reliable counterplay at the beginning, with the same applying to switch stalling Salt Cure on bulkier teams. Both of these examples are flawed counterplay, as Garganacl started adapting to these 2, with new sets that for me simply push it over the edge:
Counterplay Method 1: Covert Cloak
View attachment 484753
Gholdengo is currently the Pokémon that utilizes Covert Cloak better, not only because it is a Garganacl Check but because it benefitts from being immune to Clodsire´s Poison Jab poisoning odds after using Tera Flying or because it is immune to Breloom´s Bulldoze Speed Lowering effect, among other things.
Unfortunately, and for the Surprise of many, this dedicated set loses to a very consistent Garganacl set, which does not have to face Covert Cloak Gholdengo to be good:
View attachment 484755
This set, among other Tera Water sets, is able to beat Covert Cloak Gholdengo as the Water type + Purifying Salt allows you to resist both of Gholdengo´s stabs. While setting up on its face, even against Nasty Plot versions to boost Earthquake´s Power in case Gholdengo doesn´t use Tera and Salt Cure Direct damage in case Gholdengo chooses to use Tera Flying.
"Well, can´t I run Covert Cloak on a different Pokémon?"
Sure, go ahead, you will be commiting to an item that is useless outside of the Garganacl match-up (because only Gholdengo truly beneffits from Cloak enough to justify running it outside of Garganacl match-up). Potential Pokémon that would enjoy covert Cloak like Corviknight or Dondozo, really need a lot of team support to be able to run these items, since if you get knocked off or hazard pressured you will just be in a worse position.
(Not to mention that with the right Tera, Garganacl could even set up and 1v1 other Covert Cloak Pokémon.)
Counterplay Method 2: Switch Stalling
View attachment 484756
Switch Stalling is the more consistent method of beating Garganacl, as at least it doesn´t require you to use a specific item.
Unfortunately, it does require you to run a specific set of Pokémon, (at least one regenerator Pokémon) which most offensive teams can not fit.
If you have a double regenerator core and managed to keep hazards off the field or run HDB on both, you will simply have to run, Clear Smog on your Amoonguss, Haze on your Toxapex or Chilling Water on your Alomomola to beat it! Right?
Wrong!
View attachment 484757
It seems like Garganacl has one more trick up the sleeve, as it can utilize Block to prevent it´s other counterplay method, switching around. With this, Garganacl is able to trap Regenerator Pokémon or any other group of Salt Cure neutral walls you might attempt to wall it with. Very few walls have methods to escape trapping moves, the most notable being Corviknight with U-turn which is a steel type, taking more damage from salt cure.
If you know better counterplay to Garganacl please let me know, because this abomination has infested High ladder and every day that passes is a new day where you get counterteamed by a new set!
If it wasn´t clear already, the reason Garganacl wasn´t seen as a broken Pokémon immediately in the post-ban metagame was because the meta simply had not settled and counterplay was still being explored. Now that we know that the main 2 counterplay ideas are flawed, I think it is pretty safe to say that this Pokémon deserves at least a suspect test in the near future!
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion
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how are you typing in times new roman
the A at the top of the place where you write messages lets you change fonts, like this or like this
Quaquaval can't get through Corviknight, Dondozo, Toxapex, or Amoongus. Having bad matchups against some of the most prominent defensive pokemon in the tier is a major problem.
anyone else find it weird that this forum is much more active now (midday for most popular timezones, weekday) than yesterday at a comparable time (literal holiday)? wouldn't it being a holiday mean more people are active?
...or are the lot o' ye' just active during school classes when ur also pretending to do work :thonk:
also while im here, here's something GF does that i enjoy: the secondary types of the starter FE mons are complimentary to their bad type matchup. for example, even though water-type quaquaval is theoretically worse off against grass-type meowscarada, quaval has fighting-type stab and can break through if it already has some aqua step speed boosts. meowsc has dark-type stab to break through dirge, and dirge uh, can switch into quaval fighting stab i guess? works better for the other two examples lol. also good example: dark -> psychic -> fighting -> dark secondary types for gen 6 starters , and dark -> ghost -> fairy -> dark for gen7 starters (but ghost gets shafted again because its not SE against fairy lul)
...or are the lot o' ye' just active during school classes when ur also pretending to do work :thonk:
also while im here, here's something GF does that i enjoy: the secondary types of the starter FE mons are complimentary to their bad type matchup. for example, even though water-type quaquaval is theoretically worse off against grass-type meowscarada, quaval has fighting-type stab and can break through if it already has some aqua step speed boosts. meowsc has dark-type stab to break through dirge, and dirge uh, can switch into quaval fighting stab i guess? works better for the other two examples lol. also good example: dark -> psychic -> fighting -> dark secondary types for gen 6 starters , and dark -> ghost -> fairy -> dark for gen7 starters (but ghost gets shafted again because its not SE against fairy lul)
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If Toxic returned so would Heal Bell.
i see. that's pretty neat
anyway, i still don't think garg deserves a ban or even a suspect. half the people complaining about it just don't understand exactly how good of an item covert cloak is (it has won you matches without you noticing). i'd still be fine with a suspect and accept whatever result comes because, you know, will of the people and all, but i doubt it'll get banned from that and we still have more important things to worry about. for example:
- chien-pao
- chien-pao
- chien-pao
- how is this thing still here
- no, seriously, is there something i'm missing? i feel like i'm being gaslit because this obviously busted mon has been completely untouched
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The issue is that it isn't that strong compared to the rest of the tier, like others have mentioned already, it can't break some of the most common defensive Pokémon because of its 4 moves syndrome. Yes, it can be a good cleaner with a free turn, but so does Pao, Valiant, Moon, Volc, Dragonite, Tusk, an so on. With the difference those have better chances to get that free turn since they have better match ups.
Quag isn't bad, it is just outclassed by most of the tier.
hold up...let him cook...
I don't think I'm the first person to say it, but in a weird way, Rock's terrible typing is one of the things that makes Garganacle so hard to deal with. Skeledirge, Toxapex, Clodsire, Amoongus, et al all have things that they can and need to wall without using Tera. Using Tera on Garg has minimal opportunity cost beyond not using it on a different `mon, and while that's no small matter, it does mean Garg picks what wants to wall in the builder, and you don't get to find out until later (unless you put on enough pressure that it doesn't get a chance to play its role). The absurdity of Purifying Salt and Salt Cure are the biggest culprits, but Tera and set versatility are what push it over the edge.
I'm not down on Covert Cloak at all, but it's only sufficient on its own to wall Salt Cure/Rocks/Protect/Recover sets. ID/BP sets can still handle a good number of counters for the SR set by the time you find out what the set is (because depending on the tera, you need a different special attacker to break through it). Obviously, that set can't do much to anything with Cloak or Sub + Ghost typing, but then you have the Curse + EQ set that was mentioned earlier, and that strategy can be further customized via Tera Blast in case Sub/BU/Power Trip Tera Ghost Corv or something similarly absurd really takes off.
All of that is to say, again, it's impossible to build a team with a Garg counter because, even more than most Tera Abusers, Garg isn't one `mon. Purifying Salt is so powerful and Salt Cure is so reliable that it completely dictates the terms of play so long as it is positioned remotely well. I agree that Chien-Pao is the most pressing concern in the tier, but Garg is possibly the worst-case example of what "Ban Tera" voters were thinking of when they said the mechanic is uncompetitive.
I'm not down on Covert Cloak at all, but it's only sufficient on its own to wall Salt Cure/Rocks/Protect/Recover sets. ID/BP sets can still handle a good number of counters for the SR set by the time you find out what the set is (because depending on the tera, you need a different special attacker to break through it). Obviously, that set can't do much to anything with Cloak or Sub + Ghost typing, but then you have the Curse + EQ set that was mentioned earlier, and that strategy can be further customized via Tera Blast in case Sub/BU/Power Trip Tera Ghost Corv or something similarly absurd really takes off.
All of that is to say, again, it's impossible to build a team with a Garg counter because, even more than most Tera Abusers, Garg isn't one `mon. Purifying Salt is so powerful and Salt Cure is so reliable that it completely dictates the terms of play so long as it is positioned remotely well. I agree that Chien-Pao is the most pressing concern in the tier, but Garg is possibly the worst-case example of what "Ban Tera" voters were thinking of when they said the mechanic is uncompetitive.
it's not been untouched - it was put on the tiering radar 3 times, meaning it was voted by the council on whether they quickban it 3 times. they determined they weren't going to quickban it, that doesn't mean nothing happened.
if it's been on the radar this much it's obviously in peoples' sights, and there's a lot of people who want it suspected now making it the most likely to get suspected.
the process for all this has already banned 7 pokemon in a fairly short period of time and had the largest suspect vote ever on the big mechanic of the gen - let's calm down and let things play out a bit.
I advise people who want action on Chien-Pao to exercise a bit more patience; suspects could occur in the near future depending on survey responses and council discussion.
There is not a need for this as meowscarada exists and we have Greninja on the horizon. There is also gholdengo, Chien-pao, and garchomp.
Garg is basically the most tame form of tera possibly, from a competetive aspect. You mostly know exactly what's going to do, and playing it around it doesn't fundamentally involve guessing on what type + when it's going to tera. Shit like Tera Steel Volc, Tera Fire Kingambit fundamentally flip common counterplay on their heads and use those turns to snowball to a point where counterplay no longer exists. Even if people think Garg is broken (because they build bad teams, mostly), it's sort of an idealized use of Tera, taking a mon whose typing would push it borderline out of viability and making it good, as opposed to being a Press To Invalidate Counterplay button, which is how Tera functions in like 90% of games.
After Tera Fairy, none of these can beat Garg, and the point is not that it doesnt have Checks, but that it has no reliable individual Pokémon that acts as a counter as you have to either rely on cores for safety against a diversity of sets or attempt to out-offense it which may fail completely if it gets the good Tera match-up.
It is true that Garg only has a few Tera Types and that they are predictable but they work sometwhat differently, and a good team will require counterplay to every single one of them. This also happens with other Pokemon naturally, but the key aspect here is that garg is a defensive Pokémon. A good offensive Tera may be able to surprise you and get a kill, but it will never sweep a well built team with tools like unaware or priority moves. If Garganacl gets a good match-up based on its set however, it might be an auto win from lead in case the opponent doesnt have the tools to break through the specific tera type and isnt able to outstall it either.
I'm not saying Garg is broken, u can definitively fit a Tera Water, Fairy, Fighting and Ghost answer on your team, but don't you think the strain it puts on teambuilding is worth a suspect test?
I feel like it is kind of a taboo to claim that a Defensive Pokemon might be overpowered but we already banned Mega-Sableye, Deo D and Zygarde in the past, after all.
I'm not saying Garg is broken, u can definitively fit a Tera Water, Fairy, Fighting and Ghost answer on your team, but don't you think the strain it puts on teambuilding is worth a suspect test?
I feel like it is kind of a taboo to claim that a Defensive Pokemon might be overpowered but we already banned Mega-Sableye, Deo D and Zygarde in the past, after all.
Except Volc and Kingambit have kits that have actual resistances and choose their tera to flip specific matchups against those kits. Iron Hands is always going to resist Kowtow Cleave and Iron Head. Whatever Tera Type Kingambit runs, if I'm running Iron Hands on my team, I know I'll be able to switch in and make progress. Volc running Giga Draing is always going to struggle with limited coverage, and its Physical defense will always be exploitable, even on bulky sets. I can always switch in Dragonite, for instance, and boost up along side it before KOing with ESpeed (or coverage, if it reveals its tera type).
You can't say the same thing about Garg. It doesn't care what your type is, unless you're Water or Steel, in which case it just hates you a bit extra. All Garg does is wear you down unless you're running Cloak or Sub. And even if you are running cloak or sub, you don't know what else Garg is running besides Salt Cure and Recover. Because it doesn't care about type matchups offensively, it also gets to not care about them defensively. Garg isn't trying to capitalize for itself, it's filling a hole on the team. And Purifying Salt means it doesn't even need to worry about things like the added burn/poison/paralysis immunity that some types grant. A builder with Garganacle literally looks at their team and says "what am I weak to that I don't want to be/what do I want to lure?" and then changes the tera type on Garg to fit, and if the other player isn't running Cloak Haze Toxapex (or PhysDef Skeledirge or maybe cloak Dondozo), Garg is probably gonna do its job.
Lets use your Volcarona Example! Are you afraid of Tera Grass/Steel Volcarona? Well, now, for the low price of running Boots instead of Leftovers, you don't need to worry about it ever again.
+3 0 SpA Tera Steel Volcarona Fiery Dance vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tera Fire Garganacl: 108-127 (26.7 - 31.4%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
+1 0 Atk Tera Fire Garganacl Tera Blast vs. 248 HP / 108 Def Tera Steel Volcarona: 318-374 (85.2 - 100.2%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO
Obviously, Volc could be running Ground or Water with Tera Blast and then you're out of luck, but Volc is also arguably a top 5 tera abuser in the tier (and one of the few that's actually reasonably likely to run Tera Blast).
I get that setup sweepers getting a free turn probably costs more games and is arguably less "competitive" in that way. I've done my share of clicking Tera Poison on SD Chien-Pao and winning games I should have lost. But even if you "know exactly what Garg is going to do" and can "play around it", you still have to kill it at some point to win the match, and it's such a blank slate (again, because it *wants* to get rid of its typing and it doesn't particularly care about maximizing its existing coverage) that you may not know that you're best counter to it is gone until it already is or that that unassuming Garg on preview is going to wall your best setup sweeper to hell and back.
all of these lose to garganacl after tera. tera fairy, flying and steel in particular are tera types that are not only rather common but also beat a lot of these pokemon 1v1, it just depends on which option you decide to go for. really don't see how any of these are sufficient garganacl answers aside from maybe covert cloak or choice scarf gholdengo
I could post a bazillion replays of the king HO Emperor using Fairy Tera Blast Kingambit to send dark resists to the grave, but i digress. Again, my point wasn't that really that Garg is broken or not, it's that Garg isn't why Tera is unhealthy. I would say pretty much all defensive Tera users are pretty healthy users of the mechanic. Tera mostly becomes stupid when used on bulky setup sweepers.
Yes, if we pretend that Garg can run 7 movesets at the same time, it's gonna be pretty oppressive. The reason Garg started running Earthquake is because the actualy most oppressive pokemon, Gholdengo, absolutely warrants it. And guess what! It still loses when the Gholdengo inevitably Teras. The thing about the Gholdengo - Garganacl stalemate that's the driving force behind the meta right now is that Gholdengo is actually the much bigger problem.
Did you take a big hit of crack before coming up with this scenario?
are we playing the same meta? i haven't once seen eq garganacl and that seems bad against everything that isn't specifically covert cloak gholdengo
all right, thanks for confirming, we are definitely playing two different metas
I run a Curse EQ Salt Cure Recover Garg and it's definitely viable. Can tank an Energy Ball (even at +1) and KO Iron Moth in return. Also helps keep the pressure up against Clodsire and can nail Glimmora. Also means you're not giving away free turns on Ghost switch-ins to Body Press. There are other benefits but those are just the ones off the top of my head. It's probably not better than the other sets but it complements my team pretty well.
Incidentally, it's actually still terrible against Covert Cloak Gholdengo because it just doesn't do that much damage unless you've managed to get 2-3 Curse's off which almost never happens.
So, what should I replace my duck with? Toxapex? Azumarill? Dondozo?
Not to be a downer but like its hard cope that there is any other issue in the tier as large and as prevalent as Chien Pao. Users will naturally talk about a mon that is obviously gonna get banned (Hopefully somewhat quickly) and somehow avoided the previous bans because the stuff that was still in the tier was so much more broken.
While I understand things take time of course, its natural that users will get frustrated at something that so blatently skews the power of the tier by itself. This is especially true when its special counterpart just got banned for the exact same reasons and it will probably get banned for those same reasons as well.
This is a set i'm actually shocked isn't more popular. Rock/Ground is an all-but-unresisted combination in gen 9, and if you Curse without using Tera, you're making your opponent predict whether or not you've decided to run a Tera-Ghost set. It might not be the best set, but it's versatile and a strong meta call.
I mean, absolutely. But it's hardly the first time that Covert Cloak would have been a counter to a non-ban-worthy OU mon. Let's say, hypothetically, that instead of Salt Cure being the problem, we got a new, quality Serene Grace mon.
Would it really be such a big deal to put Covert Cloak on a mon that is a check/counter to something when it isn't being flinched 60% of the time?
Bruh. Greninja got a huge nerf to both of its insane abilities. Battle bond no longer lasts throughout the whole game which is a big change because ash would flinch through a wall, come back in and fire specs water moves.
Bruh. Garchomp would not be OP after 5 generations of power creep. Fairy types, and many mons faster than it prevented it from being banworthy. If you hate tank Garchomp, you have skill issues.
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