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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion
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FWIW, your original example was fire, not fairy. Also, running Tera Blast on KG is a significant opportunity cost, presumably giving up either SD or Kowtow Cleave and offering no value in the case where you can't Tera. Also, chalk this up as another reason for Iron Hands should be running Tera Steel Heavy Slam :p
Agree there. I'm just saying that, in the suspect thread, there was a constant bogeyman of unknowable types and Garg epitomizes that. There are clearly some types that are better than others because the type chart exists, but it's infinitely tech-able to your team without giving up a ton because 90% of its utility comes from its ability and two moves and none of its utility comes from being a pure Rock Type.
Can mostly agree there, too, though your argument about a mon being oppressive if it can run seven different moves sets is also true of Gholdengo. It's the tension between all of its sets (empowered by its stupid stat spread and insane ability) and the need to scout them that makes Gholdengo so good. That said, I think Garg only needs two sets: the standard utility set and curse plus Earthquake/Tera Blast, and with the move from ID to Curse, Tera Blast sets are definitely coming.
I mean, calcs are always sus, but it's not hard to imagine a match where you see a team with Gholdengo/Scizor/Corv, and Volc and decide to Tera early to handle those threats. At that point, the calc is just showing that it's pointless for Volc to try setting up while Garg is around.
My example was exactly that, an example of the fundamental issues with Tera. Kingambit struggled with the most splashable mon, Great Tusk, which had it using Tera Flying often. In order to circumvent type matchups to deal with Kingambit, people relied more on burns, which leads to Tera Fire Kingambit. This is the fundamental issue with Tera, becuase on setup sweepers if you choose incorrectly, they can easily snowball to end the game, as opposed to defensive Tera mon like Garg, which is pretty static.
Uhm, maybe I'm in the minority? (Which is fine I'm not trying to start anything radical)
But I do think Garganacl is a bigger problem than Chien Pao (And it's not even close)
Garg I don't feel is too oppressive unlike Gholdengo to be honest. I've been running Skeledirge @ Covert Cloak, with 252 HP/136 Def investment with Slack Off/Torch Song/EP (RIP Shadow Ball though Will-O could be traded for it). RS only does ~20% , in return for getting hit for around ~10% for Torch Song. T2: TS again to get +2, and then T3. At that point EP hits for 50%<X<60% and the Garg user has to either switch or die.
It loses the stall war regardless of tera, and if it is tera Water, Rotom, Iron Valiant, and a few other options have it covered. (Same too with Flying bar TS is now neutral and decently effective) Even if it does tera Ghost it doesn't stop me.
Covert Cloak on Skeledirge is actually quite wonderful for trading off leftovers loses some tanking durability but you still have Slack Off at least. Just requires management in matches.
Even if it were to run EQ it does at max ~36% per turn. Which I can just slack off.
It loses the stall war regardless of tera, and if it is tera Water, Rotom, Iron Valiant, and a few other options have it covered. (Same too with Flying bar TS is now neutral and decently effective) Even if it does tera Ghost it doesn't stop me.
Covert Cloak on Skeledirge is actually quite wonderful for trading off leftovers loses some tanking durability but you still have Slack Off at least. Just requires management in matches.
Even if it were to run EQ it does at max ~36% per turn. Which I can just slack off.
I’m not wholly convinced Gargnacl needs a ban, but I’m going to venture one point that makes it especially potent: Protect sets.
Protect is a naturally good move on Garg, as by using it, it earns itself Leftover recovery, Salt Cure chip, Toxic Spikes damage (if you construct your defensive team in this way, as you should) and most importantly, SCOUT OPPOSING TERAS.
When a player chooses to Tera an offensive Mon against Garg on a Protect, they’ve lost perhaps the largest ace in their sleeve of beating the salt lick mon with any kind of surprise factor. At this point, the defensive Garg can opt to Tera to counter beat their counter, or, switch to another appropriate counter.
Tl;dr
Protect Garg + Salt Cure + Toxic Spikes is legit good before even considering your opponent can easily waste their Tera on a Protect.
Protect is a naturally good move on Garg, as by using it, it earns itself Leftover recovery, Salt Cure chip, Toxic Spikes damage (if you construct your defensive team in this way, as you should) and most importantly, SCOUT OPPOSING TERAS.
When a player chooses to Tera an offensive Mon against Garg on a Protect, they’ve lost perhaps the largest ace in their sleeve of beating the salt lick mon with any kind of surprise factor. At this point, the defensive Garg can opt to Tera to counter beat their counter, or, switch to another appropriate counter.
Tl;dr
Protect Garg + Salt Cure + Toxic Spikes is legit good before even considering your opponent can easily waste their Tera on a Protect.
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I mean, that is what all-but means! There's a whopping three fully evolved mons in the Paldea dex that resist both, and Breloom's the only one that sees more than fringe usage in OU (though Toadscruel probably should, too, especially given how it interacts with certain prevalent OU abilities).
Incidentally, Bullet Seed takes a nice chunk out of both Rock & Water Garg, so maybe he's on to something..
I don't think there's a single part of this line that is correct.
1: "Dedicated Set"
The only thing of that Gholdengo that is "dedicated" to check Garganacl is Covert Cloak. Neither the EVs nor the moveset have anything to do with Garg, being actually a pretty standard Gholdengo bulky NP. And even that description is dubious; you'd probably be better off spending EVs on bulk instead of SpA if you're going to depend on Np+Recover. Flying Tera on Gholdengo is the most dubious part; that's something run exclusively to give a harder time to Iron Treads, Great Tusk, Clodsire and partially Garchomp. And Gholdengo doesn't like to stay on the first 3 anyway because of Knock Off, Volt Switch or Rock coverage(Treads), Ice Spinner (Tusk) and simply being hard-walled by Clod and countered if it's running ANY attack in addition to/instead of EQ.
2- "consistent Garganacl set that doesn't have to face Covert Cloak Gholdengo to be good"
Aside from getting OHKO by CB Meowscarada at any level of set-up
252 Atk Choice Band Meowscarada Flower Trick vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Garganacl on a critical hit: 366-432 (90.5 - 106.9%) -- 43.8% chance to OHKO
(94% OHKO if Adamant, not to mention hazards)
you also get 2HKO by CS Iron Valiant with Thunderbolt, who doesn't really care about Salt Cure since their bulk is mostly decorative.
252 SpA Choice Specs Iron Valiant Thunderbolt vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tera Water Garganacl: 214-254 (52.9 - 62.8%) -- 99.6% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Another good option for this is Rotom-Wash. Can't switch into Salt Cure without taking heavy damage, but can Volt-Switch right away and chip it if defensive, can kill if Specs.
Other stuff include Iron Moth or Volcarona, with Specs/Quiver Dance with Tera Grass, which is more situational but Tera Grass has always been a good option on Fire mons.
As for defensive mons, most things with Cloak works against it, too. Skeledirge works naturally against ID/BP sets because Salt Cure is only 40 BP and if it happens to be this one Curse/EQ set, you're not gonna care about the boosts, can tera out of EQ weakness and Torch Song is gonna make you snowball faster and better, even resisted.
0 Atk Tera Water Garganacl Earthquake vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Unaware Tera Fairy Skeledirge: 52-62 (12.6 - 15%) -- possible 7HKO
(note that, even without Tera, Skeledirge takes around 30% HP from EQ, which is enough to have Skel's Slack-Off and Garg's EQ run out of PP, but still doesn't ensure a kill)
Amoongus (again with Cloak) also works wonders as it can take EQ with little trouble
+3 0 Atk Tera Water Garganacl Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 172+ Def Amoonguss: 176-208 (40.7 - 48.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
(made the calc on +3 to specify "when" does Amoongus have to start being careful)
Recover while attacking with Giga Drain, and even clear out Curse with Clear Smog.
but best is, of course, ID Corviknight, the second best user of Covert Cloak and the best Garg check. Cloak Corv will always run Pressure, which means you're gonna get PP Stalled out of Salt Cure if you dare to stay, EQ obviously doesn't work and Garg is gonna be set-up fodder for ID. Can even run Bulk Up+Power Trip Corv since you win the match up anyway and now your opponent's Garg looks stupid while you build up a win-con that is not stopped by Gholdengo any more.
Hell, you can even go for something weird like Iron Defense/Body Press/Power Trip/Roost to maximize on Corv's bulk ASAP and threaten Gholdengo/Dragapult/[insert random Ghost-Tera] that will not expect Power Trip on Iron Defense set (and they shouldn't, you have to be +6 for this to be mildly threatening and still fails to reliably 2HKO Gholdengo, but point is, you could).
Like, the only way you're gonna make such a time-consuming set that has Salt Cure as it's only way to make any progress (albeit, it is a very good move to do so) is by making it face Gholdengo. Which kinda tells me, going back to the previous point, that this Garg is the one dedicated to counter Gholdengo, and not the other way around. ID/BP garg has more immediate firepower and works well with Purifying Salt to not be exploited by Ghosts, and SR+Protect is just much more consistent, giving up entirely on doing anything to Covert Cloak mons, scouting what mon in your opponent's team has it to try to Knock it Off, and exploiting Salt cure's effect to its fullest with Protect against any other mon. This set is not even a fraction as consistent as that.
The fact that we don't have many Special Attackes in the tier that are good against Water types is the reason why this mon on Tera-Water (and dondozo, while we're at it) feel hard to crack, but it's not like we don't have any options. In fact, I'd say Tera Elec and Tera Grass for offensive Special Mons should be considered a priority in the current meta, and not just because of Garg as it also works on Dozo, Corv (Elec)/Tusk (Grass), and any Tera Water (the lost Anniliape, now Garg, maybe Skeledirge...)
3, "LOSES TO"
My favorite problem is that that's not even accurate:
+6 252+ SpA Gholdengo Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Purifying Salt Tera Water Garganacl: 226-267 (55.9 - 66%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+4 252+ SpA Gholdengo Make It Rain vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tera Water Garganacl: 253-298 (62.6 - 73.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+3 252+ SpA Gholdengo Make It Rain vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tera Water Garganacl: 211-249 (52.2 - 61.6%) -- 97.7% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
0 Atk Tera Water Garganacl Earthquake vs. 20 HP / 0 Def Gholdengo: 150-178 (46.8 - 55.6%) -- 74.6% chance to 2HKO
+1 0 Atk Tera Water Garganacl Salt Cure vs. 20 HP / 0 Def Tera Flying Gholdengo: 134-162 (41.8 - 50.6%) -- 1.2% chance to 2HKO
this is a VERY complex fight, where timing matters for everything. Garganacl cannot allow Gholdengo to get 2 NPs and is lost if they get 3. Gholdengo cannot get hit by EQ twice or after boosting. Gholdengo can Tera into flying on a predicted EQ and get a free turn, which is likely to happen if Garg tries to Curse cuz you'd be revealing your set, and no way you're using Curse with only Salt cure/Body Press. And Garg needs to have found a chance to use Curse once to force Gholdengo to run out of Recover, and twice to actually threaten to kill.
Who enters the battle when? Have you tried using Salt cure first to scout Cloak? when do either of these mons Tera? When do you predict each move? ALL of these questions become relevant in this 1v1. Not gonna explain all the ramifications of this fight because this is already a big enough wall of text, but it's not a simple win for Garg.
Which takes me to point 2: that Garg is most likely fine-tuned to counter Gholdengo with Cloak, where as this Gholdengo is running suboptimal Ev, Moves and specially Tera-types to counter Garg. And EVEN THEN it's a close match. Sure, that set MAY win against Gholdengo, but mess up the timing or a read and you might get a trade at best, and a loss to a set-up Gholdengo at worst.
Now, I do agree that Garg deserves a Suspect test, but I'd lean towards no ban. Even if we do, I don't think it'd stay banned if we get more special attackers with offensive options against Water mons, which we desperately need.
And as for Covert Cloak, I do can see the argument about Garg being unhealthy to the meta if we're forced to run one mon with it in each team, but as someone else pointed out in the past, we wouldn't be discussing how Cloak is a bad item tailor-made to counter Garg if we still had the meta filled with mons with Scald. Same for the much more recent statement on how it helps against Serene Grace abusers, although I consider Scald a more relevant example.
This ^
this reasoning always feels to me like a thinly disguised "please don't ban the thing i'm carried by". i've seen this exact argument, and i think maybe even this exact sentence, trotted out against the bans of flutter mane, iron bundle, palafin, and annihilape. i feel like it's a disservice to the council, which is working extremely hard to get this tier into a balanced spot (you guys are doing great btw), to complain about the speed at which they're banning things. then again, your post wasn't really a complaint, and you do make a valid point that pao was put on the radar every time. i'm just surprised garganacl got more qb votes in one slate than chien-pao got in three
fair enough, i just wanted to use that breloom reaction image
i don't want to be rude, but i feel like you could have just clicked "like" instead. although i did make a post that was just a picture of breloom only like two hours ago so i don't exactly have much room to talk
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I've also never seen a single EQ Garg in my life, but Covert Cloak Gholdengo is definitely getting more popular, which means that it is actually becoming one of the safest and most common Garg counters.
Not that I think this by any means makes it ban worthy, but Garganacl has so many tools and variation in its toolset that its so difficult to find a true counter to ALL variations. Like almost all Covert Cloak counters to Garganacl lose to Block Ghost Curse, and the reliable answer to that is Gholdengo which almost all variations of cheesestring lose to EQ coverage. Let alone the most common set uses Stealth Rock and Protect to be flexible, and Iron Defense Body Press while fallen off the meta can still be a great sweeper against weakened teams.
who's running block ghost curse garg in this day and age? as based of a set as that is, i don't feel like it actually consistently performs well enough to be worth running on ladder
Me lol. I see it maybe 5% of the Garganacl I find on ladder. Which isn't much, but autolosing 5% of the games if you're not prepared for it is kinda lame. Honestly it performs well enough to warrant a spot, but its not splashable like SR Protect Garg
Yeah but you’re missing a big Tera for Garganacl in water which Meowscarada easily checks
Honestly Greninja might be stepped on when it steps into OU, and I probably expect it to fall to a lower tier. Greninja got absolutely shit on this gen (Protean only activates once and Battle Bond no longer triggers Ash form and is a glorified Beast Boost for 3 stats.) The top tier mons also deal with it hella easily, Chien-Pao has Sword of Ruin Sacred Sword, Gholdengo has Dazzling Gleam/Tbolt, and Gren is weak to Garganacl's Salt Cure. It does have its notable aspects though, it has a really good speed stat in 122 and it does have a notable Water/Dark typing, and having an offensive special Water- and Dark- type might be a good niche for it. Honestly Gren could have a niche but the top tier Pokemon in OU that check it easily might make it fall to UU. (Edit: Terastal could probably screw it over too)
So using an item to just check a mon is ok, but using 1 mon to check other isn't?
Before the Chi-yu ban I was saying that Pao was going to get this kind of reactions but for some reason Garg which might be even more problematic to check in teambulding somehow doesn't have the same support for a ban.
I'm all for suspecting Garg as far as I'm concerned.
not comparable. Using covert cloak is a small investment to make, and for the most part, it doesn’t adversely impact the holder when opportunity cost is taken into consideration.
for example gholdengo with covert cloak benefits from switching into nuzzle, moonblast, mystical fire, thunderbolt, flamethrower, etc. there is also some ability to bluff a choice item, as gholdengo frequently runs balloon or leftovers, which are items you notice easily.
committing to 252 bold toxapex plus a dark resist on the other hand… it’s giving urshifu single strike vibes
Well, the nice thing about an item is that you can put it on a mon that you already wanted to put on your team. In the case of Covert Cloak, it's actually a pretty good item, even in a meta that's relatively light on the things that it counters. In turn, you don't have to design the rest of your team around already having an otherwise-suboptimal slot taken by a mon you didn't want to run.
I'm not sure why Covert Cloak is such a magnet for this kind of false equivalence, but running a different (but still good!) defensive item is absolutely not on the same level as starting your teambuilding with a mon that can actually take a hit from Chien-Pao on either side.
Gholdengo for example loses a lot by not using choice item, it loses the ability to cripple walls with trick and it is way worse against offense without the choice scarf boost since almost everything outspeeds Gholdengo.
Yeah, convert cloak has other uses outside countering salt cure but so does Tauros and Azu and being realistic, most of the users of CC wouldn't use it outside specific builts if Salt Cure didn't exits and that is my point, Garg is as bad as Pao from a teambuilding perspective.
If the justification for garg not being broken is that you gotta run a suboptimal item on a mon that already is questionably problematic (gholdengo), then I think the pile of salt needs the boot. It's like saying dugtrio was fine cuz you could always run shed shell if it really bothered you. Garg is absolutely OBNOXIOUS in teambuilding, and not a healthy presence in the metagame imo.
And if garg being banned means other mons don't have checks anymore, whatever just ban those too. It's smogon precedent that "broken checks broken" is not a good argument, especially so early in a metagame.
And if garg being banned means other mons don't have checks anymore, whatever just ban those too. It's smogon precedent that "broken checks broken" is not a good argument, especially so early in a metagame.
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