I will primarily focus on the SD set, as this is the only set that the ban side unanimously agrees is “broken.” The utility sets, while solid, are passive and can be exploited with the plethora of strong ice, water and psychic noise coverage in the game. Protect turns can also be exploited with setup and double switching. Overall, these sets are not problematic and many agree.
Gliscor reached peak usage in the two weeks (weeks 4 and 5) that Kyurem was banned, with around a 20% usage rate in SCL. Since then, that usage rate has been cut in half with the exception of one outlier week in 8, with 11% usage in Week 9 and 7% usage in weeks 6 and 7. Its winrate has also consistently been in the low 40% each week, sometimes dropping to 30% with the exception of week 8. Across the entire tournament, Gliscor doesn’t even crack the top 15 in usage for all OU. It is hardly on the level of premier threats like Zamazenta, Gholdengo, and Kingambit which have seen consistent top 5 usage for months across several tournaments with winrates above 50% the entire time. Like xavgb pointed out, while winrate is not a perfect metric, it does beg the question as to why Gliscor’s overall usage is so low and why the winrate is only 44%, with the recent win rates and usage being even lower, despite ban supporters propping it up as some overwhelming menace.
These stats help paint the bigger picture – the reality is that Gliscor is not overbearing in the slightest. Firstly, the overall usage is low because players have realized that SD Gliscor teams are frankly not that good in this meta due to the inherent weaknesses that SD Gliscor forces on team structures designed to support it. Xavgb alluded to this in his post and I will explain it more here.
As many have pointed out, SD Gliscor requires hazard support to beat bulkier teams. This usually means that you will need two of Ting-Lu, Landorus, Tinkaton, Skarmory, Samurott, or Clefable. Immediately we can see that SD Gliscor is a best fit on balance because these required teammates are all either slow or serve relatively defensive roles. This idea is supported by the actual SD Gliscor teams that are being brought to tournaments with some examples below:
The most successful SD Gliscor team was CTC’s famous Keldeo team:
Although other SD Gliscor teams are different, they follow a similar defensive orientation, perhaps using Pokemon like Moltres, Clefable, and Skarmory instead of Ting-Lu, Dragonite, and Sinistcha etc as shown. These teams have fallen off significantly post-Kyurem unban because even the best SD Gliscor teams compound several critical weaknesses. They struggle mightily with Knock-Off Ogerpon, which has seen a rise in popularity. Kyurem alone can hit the entire Keldeo team for 2x+ damage. Darkrai, Dragapult, late game Tera Kingambit, Roaring Moon, Offensive Great Tusk, Mixed/SD Iron Valiant, Hydrapple, CM Primarina, weather teams as a whole, and many others pose serious threats for these builds as well. More niche picks like Tera Steel Latios and Hydreigon also devastate these teams.
As a result, it is no surprise that xavgb, the best balance player in all of SV OU, has stayed far away from SD Gliscor teams. Not only did he not bring it once in all of OLT, he handled it easily when used against him in the finals matchup while using a balance team of his own. So when I see people argue that SD Gliscor invalidates balance, a simple analysis of the metagame shows this to be completely false. Not only are SD Gliscor teams not winning in tournaments, but top-level players have found numerous ways to beat Gliscor both in the builder and in practice with all kinds of playstyles including balance. Some players have attempted to mitigate bad matchups by trading in hazards for mons with better matchups into offense recently as shown below:
These new SD gliscor teams are still balance teams for the most part. By giving up hazards, these teams trade long-term breaking power for better offense matchups in an attempt to mitigate some of the weaknesses I described earlier. As a result, I find that SD Gliscor teams struggle with this catch-22. You can invest heavily in the fat matchup with hazard stack at the cost of all other matchups or try to balance out your matchup spread at the cost of being able to beat other fat teams consistently. SD gliscor teams rarely can have it both ways. This is again evidenced by the fact that the overall win rates remain low for all Gliscor teams. Going back to the win rate and usage statistics, Gliscor has severely underperformed every week except for one in SCL. What this tells us is that SD Gliscor is mostly a matchup fish – players bring it when facing a particular opponent that may have a weakness to SD gliscor based on previous scouts. When the desired matchup isn’t found, which is usually the case, Gliscor is often a negative to the team. This hardly constitutes a broken mon. Plenty of Pokémon have great matchups into one particular style or type of player, like Lokix, Taunt Roaring Moon, Garganacl, Sinistcha etc. while being significantly worse in many other matchups. Therefore, contrary to the ban argument, the actual gameplay and stats clearly show that SD Gliscor or even Gliscor as a whole is not some universal and unstoppable force that shreds every single team there is.
In fact, the ban argument doesn’t even make sense when you actually take a step back – SD Gliscor, the mon that is being used at record low rates, with record low win rates, that is found only on balance yet somehow destroys balance at the same time, despite the stats and gameplay showing that it can’t even consistently beat balance, is somehow broken? Something isn’t adding up here and I am not the only one who has pointed this out.
But what about Tera? Gliscor can just Tera to overcome all these issues right? Sure, in a 1v1 vacuum, any mon can win vs any other mon in theory. But in practice, this isn’t true. Firstly, the default SD Gliscor set now is max speed. There is some variation with other EVs, but max speed is true for 90% of top-level teams running SD Gliscor. This is because it is critical to speed tie with mons like Kyurem and other SD Gliscors and outspeed mons like Landorus and Great Tusk. As a result, SD Gliscor has significantly reduced longevity compared to defensive variants. It can no longer tank hits like Gking Ice beams and Ogerpon-Wellspring Ivy Cudgels, and neutral attacks from mons like Darkrai, Roaring Moon, and Iron Moth become clean 2HKOs with minimal chip. Furthermore, most SD Gliscor run Knock Off + Façade. This lack of STAB means that Gliscor’s immediate power is practically nonexistent. Therefore, Gliscor needs several free turns to setup prior to a sweep, which is difficult to get versus any competent team or player. This also results in an over reliance on Tera to gain STAB on Façade to eliminate key weaknesses and muscle through threats. Sure, Gliscor can use Tera to get a KO on that turn. But once it Teras, it gives up the spike immunity and amazing defensive profile it had before. Now it is easily revenged by common mons like Zamazenta, Iron Valiant, CC Tusk etc. and can no longer setup freely on mons it used to be able to abuse like Landorus and Ting-Lu. Its switchins are now limited by hazards as well. If you give it multiple turns to setup/heal afterwards, that is a symptom of a passive team or misplaying. Additionally, Knock Off + Façade cannot beat Kingambit or Skarmory / Corviknight. A common tactic, and one that I have used, is to stack hazards and use a slow pivot like Gliscor or Corviknight to bring in a Pokemon like Darkrai or Kyurem to force tera on SD Gliscor early. Something like Zamazenta or Corviknight can force it out immediately after, and then spikes limit how many times it can swap in after. New teambuilding developments have also seen innovative cores like Hex Pecharunt + Zamazenta being able to force tera and deny SD Gliscor any opportunity to sweep. The opportunity cost of using tera on a mon like Gliscor is very high, and now that the opponent has exhausted their most valuable resource, Tera, they are ill-equipped to handle even scarier threats like late game Kingambit or Zamazenta which often sweep with ease afterwards. In short, you can see why SD Gliscor has fallen to the bottom of the pack post-Kyurem unban.
The only teams that struggle with SD Gliscor, are do-nothing teams, AKA passive balance and stall. As someone who is familiar with stall (
link), I can attest that this is true. Stall can fit in options like Corviknight and Galarian Weezing to help this matchup at the cost of other matchups. This is a healthy compromise and balances stall as well. As for passive balance teams like those I discussed in my Kyurem DNB post here,
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/np-sv-ou-suspect-process-round-14-hazy-shade-of-winter.3751394/post-10279537, these teams should not exist in the first place. They are greedy, uninteractive, and are rightfully punished by Gliscor. We have already seen what happens to the metagame when Gliscor is banned. Mons like Ting-Lu and Zapdos become significantly better. Ting-Lu is already a behemoth into most offense, and with Gliscor gone, mons that destroy offense but are weak into Gliscor, like Zapdos, are simply free. As a result, we end up with a stale and centralized balance-heavy meta like in DLC1, which I described in my Kyurem post. Some may brush this warning aside, saying that one cannot predict the future. These are the same people who were surprised at how quickly SD Gliscor balance usage skyrocketed after the Kyurem ban and subsequently fell to record lows once Kyurem was unbanned. Once again, I am not making baseless predictions, but rather educated guesses based on precedent tiering decisions and simple cause and effect. Everything that happened post-Kyurem ban was consistent with what I had argued in my Kyurem post. We are once again faced with a similar situation as back in DLC1. Many players have expressed how unenjoyable that meta was post-Gliscor ban, and I can guarantee you we will find ourselves with something similar should Gliscor be banned again.
As a result, keeping Gliscor is critical to ensuring diversity and a healthy meta. No, having to slot ice coverage to deal with Gliscor is not overbearing. Many top usage mons like Dragapult, Raging Bolt, Landorus, Great Tusk, Dragonite, Ting-Lu etc. are all hit hard by ice coverage. Pokemon like Slowking-Galar and Darkrai being forced to run Ice Beam and not Thunder Wave/other coverage or Zamazenta being forced to choose between things like Substitute or Rest + Chesto instead of lefties to avoid status, or Ice Fang on AOA sets instead is a good thing. It prevents any one set or any one Pokemon/archetype from becoming the de facto best option and discourages greedy building and polarizing team/move choices. As I pointed out earlier and as evidenced by xavgb’s OLT win, balance is doing just fine with Gliscor in the meta. A stale meta occurs when you remove mons like Gliscor because actual top usage / centralizing mons like Ting Lu, Slowking-Galar, and Zamazenta become so much better as DLC1 showed. In fact, the meta is as balanced as it has ever been post-Kyurem reintroduction. All styles of teams are viable. Players are able to win with everything from HO to Stall and everything in between at the highest levels of the game, and that is the way it should be.
Vote DNB. Thank you.
