Base Stats: 68 HP / 125 Atk / 65 Def / 65 SpA / 115 SpD / 80 Spe
Abilities: Steadfast | Sharpness | Justified (Hidden Ability)
Notable Moves (Sharpness-boosted moves underlined):
- Aerial Ace
- Aqua Cutter
- Agility
- Bulk Up
- Destiny Bond
- Drain Punch
- Knock Off
- Leaf Blade
- Night Slash
- Psycho Cut
- Sacred Sword
- Shadow Sneak
- Slash
- Substitute
- Swords Dance
- Taunt
- Trick
- Will-O-Wisp
- X-Scissor
- When boosted by Sharpness, Gallade's attacks become extremely powerful in combination with its good Base Attack of 125
- Excellent coverage options in Sharpness-boosted attacks to allow Gallade to hit every Pokemon for at least neutral damage, if not super effective damage
- Boosting options in Agility and Swords Dance allow Gallade to break past offensive and defensive checks as it chooses
- A wide range of coverage and utility options allows Gallade to utilize a variety of sets, allowing it to fit onto many teams
- Decent special bulk and Fighting and Rock resistances allows Gallade some switch-in opportunities
- Poor physical bulk and a lack of resistances makes Gallade vulnerable to strong physical attacks, priority moves, and faster revenge killers
- Middling Speed means that Gallade needs to use a Choice Scarf or gain an Agility boost before outspeeding many offensive Pokemon
- Weaknesses to Flying, Ghost, and Fairy prevent Gallade from setting up or switching in easily versus many Pokemon
- Lack of a coverage move to hit certain type combinations super effectively, like Fairy + Psychic and Ghost + Dark, allows certain Pokemon like Hatterene, Scream Tail, and Sableye to switch in on Gallade's STAB options and force it out if it has not boosted itself with Agility or Swords Dance or is Choice-locked
- Tera Steel provides Gallade with useful resistances to Fairy, Flying, Psychic, and Steel, while making it take neutral damage from Ghost-type attacks.
- Tera Psychic boosts Gallade's Psychic STAB while making Gallade take neutral damage from Fairy- and Flying-type attacks and resisted damage from Psychic-type attacks.
- Tera Fighting boosts Gallade's Fighting STAB while making Gallade take neutral damage from Ghost-type attacks and resisted damage from Bug- and Dark-type attacks.
- Tera Dark boosts the damage from Night Slash and Knock Off, while making Gallade take neutral damage from Flying-type attacks, resist Ghost- and Dark-types attacks, and giving it a Psychic immunity. It also makes Gallade immune to Prankster moves from Pokemon like Sableye and Morgrem.
- Tera Normal boosts the damage from Slash and gives Gallade a Ghost immunity while taking neutral damage from all other types barring Fighting.
Choice Scarf
Gallade @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Sharpness
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Sacred Sword
- Psycho Cut
- Leaf Blade
- Night Slash
This Gallade set acts as a revenge killer and cleaner. Its moveset gives it STABs + coverage to hit every Pokemon for at least neutral damage. Leaf Blade is necessary to break through Quagsire. Adamant nature (388 Speed with Choice Scarf) can be run over Jolly (426 Speed with Choice Scarf), since Jolly only outspeeds a few targets: +1 Speed Timid Armarouge & Toxtricity (409 Speed), Jolly Barraskewda outside of Rain (408 Speed), and +1 Speed Jolly Iron Thorns & Tsareena (400 Speed).
Agility + Life Orb
Gallade @ Life Orb
Ability: Sharpness
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Leaf Blade
- Sacred Sword
- Psycho Cut
- Agility
This set boosts with Agility and attempts to sweep with Gallade's natural physical offenses. Gallade's STABs provide excellent coverage, while Leaf Blade is used to break through Quagsire. Life Orb is used to further boost Gallade's damage output, but other items like Iapapa Berry could be used instead for greater longevity. At +2 Speed, Jolly Gallade outspeeds the entire metagame. Max Speed is used to allow Gallade to be threatening to as much as possible without an Agility boost.
Other Options
- On Agility sets, Speed investment could be sacrificed to give Gallade additional bulk, or to run an Adamant nature. This comes with the downside of making Gallade less threatening without a boost, however.
- Swords Dance + Sacred Sword + Psycho Cut + Leaf Blade can be used as a wallbreaking set, which makes Gallade particularly effective against defensive teams. Shadow Sneak could also be run on this set for a priority option. This set is near-useless against opposing offensive Pokemon, however.
- A Double Dance set utilizing Agility + Swords Dance + Sacred Sword + Psycho Cut could be used to allow Gallade to sweep and/or wallbreak as needed. This set runs into coverage issues against Pokemon like Hatterene and Sableye, however, and is unable to break past Quagsire.
- Choice Band could be used to turn Gallade into a pure wallbreaker, using the same coverage as the Choice Scarf set, or using Shadow Sneak for priority. This set will falter against most faster offensive Pokemon, however, and Gallade can be switched around fairly easily after locking into a move due to the widespread immunities and resistances to its STAB moves and the lower power of its coverage options.
- A Bulk Up set utilizing Drain Punch for recovery might be possible, but would likely be outclassed by faster and bulkier users of this move combination, like Lucario and Scream Tail.
- Gallade may be able to run some combination of utility moves on its attacking sets, or a purely supportive set. These utility options include Destiny Bond, Knock Off, Taunt, and Will-O-Wisp. Taunt in particular could be useful for breaking past defensive Pokemon that rely on their recovery and status moves to check Gallade, such as Quagsire and Alomomola. Gallade's low bulk makes these options hard to justify, however.
- Choice sets could opt for Trick instead of a coverage option to allow Gallade to cripple an opposing wall, making it more effective against defensive teams.
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