these next mons don't particularly enjoy switching directly into a salt cure, but if you can get them in safely against it by slow pivoting, eject buttoning, doubling them into a predicted garg switch, letting something die and using them to revenge, or simply just having them out before garg even comes in, they can fuck it up real bad with sheer strength alone.
RILLABOOM
he's the leader of the bunch, you know him well, he's finally back, to send garg to hell. his hammer of wood, puts you in the dirt, if he hits ya, it's gonna hurt. rillaboom is a frequent partner of garganacl, but it's also one of its best offensive answers. grassy terrain offsets half of the damage that salt cure does, so rillaboom has the distinction of being the only mon on this section that can actually come in on it without sweating too much. after it's in, rillaboom just nukes garg with wood hammer—at +2 defense with full investment, it's a guaranteed 2hko even after lefties and gterrain. if garg is running tera water, possibly its most frequent tera type (although i can't confirm this), it can't even save itself by clicking the save-itself button. the only way garg wins this matchup is by having a tera that resists grass, or being +2 before rilla comes out
and having a tera that's neutral to grass.
OGERPON-WELLSPRING
thankfully, i'm not 100% sure whether this will be relevant for much longer, but she's still here for now so i gotta include her. waterpon has to be very wary of salt cure, but she does massive damage with either one of her stabs and immediately puts garg on the defensive if you can get her in safely.
SERPERIOR
haha contrary leaf storm go brrrrr. not only can serperior dish out huge special hits that garg can't boost itself against and that get significantly stronger every time they land, it's also a prominent user of substitute, a powerful anti-salt-cure tool that i'll cover in more detail in the next chapter.
KINGAMBIT
oh great, it's this guy again. if brought in properly, kingambit can bonk garg with an iron head for plenty of damage. tera fairy, another common garg type, is equally weak to steel, so gambit is capable of threatening some post-tera sets as well.
MEOWSCARADA
flower trick crits through both ironpress and curse sets, making them think twice about clicking their setup move if they even see the cat at team preview. doesn't do super well against body press, but being able to deal good damage to garg is enough to put it on this list.
GOLDEN JOE
equipped with covert cloak, it's immune to the salty effects of salt cure. equipped with air balloon, it's instead immune to both of garg's other attacks. either way, it can sling a powerful make it rain in garg's direction. gholdengo beats tera fairy garg as well, but notably loses to tera water garg, necessitating caution if you don't know what tera type garg is running. in fact, with
all of these you should proceed with caution if tera isn't in the picture yet, which is kind of obvious but it's especially true with a mon that's rewarded this much for clicking a single move. one of the most consistent ways to win against garg is to either draw out its tera or one of its partners' teras to remove the surprise factor, in which case it becomes infinitely easier to play around, especially if you bait the tera of something else and garg is stuck as a rock.
GREAT TUSK
tusk poses a significant danger to garg if something else on the team has tera'd. both its ground and fighting stabs hit garg for a lot, and rapid spin can undo its progress if it's a stealth rock set. tusk does have to worry about salt cure, but its buzzwolesque physical bulk lets it easily power through garg's other attacks, so it can stay in for a couple turns after being cured if it leads to garg dying.
IRON VALIANT
valiant does lots of damage with close combat, and its purely special sets target garganacl's weaker defense for pretty solid damage as well. knock off is also a big problem for garg in the long run. can you tell i'm kinda running out of steam as i write more and more?
WALKING WAKE
and speaking of steam (man am i good at segues), walking wake absolutely nukes garg from orbit with steam of the hydro variety. wake's introduction into the meta was the initial thing that turned a whole bunch of anti-garg people into pro-garg people and its matchup isn't any worse now than it was then.
LANDORUS-THERIAN
lando has to watch out for being chipped down, so he doesn't particularly like salt cure, but the irritatingly popular earth power set deals quite a lot of damage to garg and lando also has access to taunt to prevent garg from spamming recover. more on taunt later! …which, since this chapter is over, i guess is actually now.