Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (2024)

since the topic of gliscor came up, here are my thoughts on it.

gliscor was unequivocally broken in dlc1, but i don't think it is right now. very strong? yes. the best spikes setter in this endless bloody war against hazards? without a doubt. annoying as shit? absolutely. but banworthy? i don't think so, and here's why:

PART 1: NEW ANSWERS

between new moves, returning mons, and expanded movepools, dlc2 introduced some options that can beat gliscor 1v1 fairly easily:

  • Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (1) thanks to regaining triple axel, weavile is much more splashable than before and has a much easier time forcing tera water on gliscor. if something else on the team has tera'd, weavile is an offensive hard-counter to gliscor and can even use its protect turns to set up
  • Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (2) for some reason, meowscarada also gets triple axel. (i'm not complaining, it just doesn't make much sense to me flavor-wise.) this lets it threaten gliscor similarly to weavile, with the added bonus of being able to hit it really hard with flower trick after tera water
  • Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (3) primarina might fall out of ou eventually, but it's still a legitimately usable thing and i'm absolutely here for it. liquid voice psychic noise has the benefit of not only heavily denting gliscor but also preventing poison heal from working for a couple turns, so even if it does decide to tera, it still has to briefly deal with the fact that entropy exists. if gliscor's running knock off over toxic, psychic noise draining kiss primarina is actually capable of stalling out gliscor if it teras
  • Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (4) lead darkrai forces a 50/50 onto lead gliscor—if gliscor protects turn 1, it can nasty plot and proceed to start going wild; if it doesn't, darkrai can click the funny cheese move and potentially let gliscor get knocked before getting poisoned later in the game. because of how dangerous giving even a single free turn to darkrai is, this is one of the only lead matchups that gliscor might not want to just automatically turn 1 protect on. also, other darkrai sets that carry ice beam give gliscor a lot of trouble, as strong special attackers with ice moves tend to do
  • Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (5) heavily dependent on the set and positioning, but deo-s can solidly beat gliscor sometimes. if you lead with nasty plot deo-s and they lead with gliscor, gliscor will always protect turn 1 expecting knock off, so that's just a free plot and it's forced to tera or switch to avoid the incoming ice beam. ice beam sets in general are bad for gliscor, especially if something else on the team has burned tera. also, skill swap is a very niche option on deo-s that is incredibly situational and usually bad but can work hilariously well against gliscor
  • Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (6) this doesn't do jack shit against gliscor offensively, but it hard-walls the eq/toxic set, which means you can just either whirlwind it out (if you're carrying that), pp-stall it, or wait for it to give up and switch, then deal with it later after putting yourself in a better position to
  • Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (7) i mean you just kinda sub and then click the leaf storm button, not exactly a grand strategy behind this one
  • Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (8) THE BIG ONE. i saved the best for last here—kyurem is the offensive gliscor answer. physical sets force tera water to avoid being slaughtered by icicle spear, then get ddanced on during their protect turns and slaughtered by scale shot anyway. special sets just click freeze-dry and kill it whether it goes tera water or not. this matchup is practically unwinnable unless gliscor runs a different ice-resisting tera than water, and most of those get bonked by earth power, the one exception being… tera ice. and no one wants to be the person running tera ice gliscor

now, you'll notice a lot of these assume gliscor is going to be tera water, which might make you wonder about tera dragon, which was a somewhat commonly seen alternative in dlc1. that brings me to my next point:

PART 2: EIGHT FUCKING DRAGON TYPES

as we all know, dlc2 came with a massive rise in the quantity and quality of legal dragon-types. in addition to the existing dragapult, dragonite, and walking wake, we now also have raging bolt, gouging fire, roaring moon, kyurem, and archaludon, all of which are top-tier mons at the absolute minimum. this has come with a concurrent increase in viability to things that answer dragon-types well and a decrease in viability to things that don't. this means that gliscor's dlc1 answers that it would run tera dragon for—mainly waterpon and non-ice-beam manaphy—are waaaaay less common, and dragon as a defensive tera type in general is not great when the average ou match is seeing so many more dragon, fairy, and ice moves. thus, gliscor is kind of pigeonholed into a single good defensive tera type, which makes it a lot easier to predict if and when it clicks the button. in theory, it could get around this by running tera fairy, but that just shifts the problem from "eight fucking dragon types" to "seven fucking steel types", two of which are top 3 in usage

so gliscor's got more answers and its tera is easier to play around. but it's still plenty strong and can be very annoying if it does pop that tera. unfortunately, popping tera early is risky and gliscor really doesn't like doing it. which is a shame, because gliscor needs to be a water-type more often now thanks to:

PART 3: CLIMATE CHANGE

weather has made a comeback in a big way. every single weather condition got at least one new abuser in this dlc, and most of that is bad for gliscor on some level. here's how it breaks down:

  • Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (9) sand is the only weather gliscor isn't really worried about and it didn't get anything to directly contend with gliscor, but the return of excadrill means we have one more hazard remover, which means one more opportunity to undo gliscor's spikes progress. it's not much on its own, but even the small indirect nerfs add up. also, sand is by far the least relevant weather right now, which means that when a form of weather is up, it's most likely gonna be something that fucks over gliscor somehow
  • Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (10) hail got kyurem, gliscor's worst matchup. not much to say here that wasn't already said earlier, kyurem claps gliscor six ways from sunday. alolan ninetales itself has also seen a bump in usage because of kyurem, and any mon with access to freeze-dry is a mon gliscor is very scared of
  • Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (11) sun went from being a regular-sized problem for gliscor to a massive problem. in dlc1, walking wake was a terrible matchup for it already, but sun itself wasn't super popular for a number of reasons. now it's back in full force, bolstered by the new protosynthesis mons and the return of volcarona and roaring moon. despite not particularly liking the prospect of being stalled out by toxic/protect or having to eat an earthquake, all of those mons are threatening to gliscor on some level thanks to their setup capabilities as well as their ability to just hit it neutrally really fucking hard. and of course walking wake is still there, giving the exact same amount of problems to gliscor as before but more likely to have sun behind it
  • Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (12) yes, gliscor can tera water to deal with rain's setters and water-type abusers. but those aren't the reason that rain got popular all of a sudden. the one doing the heavy lifting on that front is archaludon, which can massively punish gliscor after a tera with electro shot. if gliscor doesn't tera, it just kinda gets run over by the rest of the rain team

so, in conclusion, that's why i feel that gliscor is not broken at this current period of sv ou: new direct answers, an environment that restricts its tera options, and shaky matchups against the three most relevant weathers. i do suspect there will eventually be bans that remove or hurt counterplay to gliscor, and it might cross that line again at some point in the future, but right now i think gliscor has enough new counterplay to it to no longer be broken

Metagame - SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Kyurem banned] (2024)

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