Everything alright Mr. Finchinator? I know browsing these forum pages for any semblance of a good suggestion can be tiring but this seems unhinged. More drops after the highly successful (sarcasm) DLC 2 drops seems interesting. Looking forward to the volc test, though! Mon is an insane tera abuser with a multitude of viable, threatening sets.
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
not really a match up fish. Yeah there are some match ups where it doesn’t do too well, but that’s true of most mons. Also saying this, but non knock Gliscor is not a bad match up for Garg as set up Garg straight up beat Gliscor while Salt Cure impedes Poison Heal, meaning it can make progress vs Scor with rocks up.
also the stall match up is something block variants of Garg can win, although that is actually more of a match up fish.
The weather match up can make it more of a Tera hog, I’ll admit that, but the use of Tera also can let garg be useful into some structures. Like Tera water garg can pretty soundly thrash 4-5 members on some rain teams by itself with protect versions, and said water Tera also lets it help vs wake on sun. Not sure why you’d say it loses to Kyurem on snow (which isn’t really an archetype that gets used iirc). Also not sure why you’d say it can’t switch around without boots. Obviously with hazard stack it’s a problem, but when one hazard is up, it can still switch in and out so long as you build with supporting in mind.
HOW TO BEAT GARGANACLCHAPTER ONE: SWITCHING INTO THE CHEAPASS SALT MOVE
i say this as an advocate and supporter of garganacl: salt cure is one of the dumbest, cheapest, most braindead button-clicker moves in the entire game, and possibly the entire genre. it's so cancerous that even your cancer will get cancer, and then that cancer will get cancer, and that third cancer will get covid. herein i will share the cure for that cancer—or rather, the cancer for the cure.
CLEFABLEfirst up, we have the queen of gen 6, the autarch of the isle of armor, the wishport one-hit wonder, clefable. magic guard completely negates salt cure damage, allowing clefable to switch into garg and stay there all day long if it wants. its defenses are good enough to stifle garg's other options—earthquake doesn't do much with defense investment, clef resists body press, and garg basically doesn't run any other attacks than those. clef's moonblast doesn't do much to garg, but it has access to various ways to make progress if garg doesn't switch out—knock off to get rid of the lefties and force recovers more often, and stealth rock to… well, to set stealth rock, that's just useful against everything. you won't need to use those much, though, because garg often switches out when clefable comes in (over 50% of the time according to the most recent stats), allowing you to position yourself for a favorable offensive matchup later.
GLISCORnext up we have gliscor, the spikes-spamming scourge of the teal mask meta (for like three weeks after people not named njnp figured out how broken it was). this bad boy can completely offset the damage to salt cure with poison heal, is immune to earthquake, and might as well be immune to body press for how little it does. gliscor can seriously chip garg with repeated earthquakes and negate its lefties with knock off to easily stall it out of recovers, letting it be worn down by other stuff (or just more earthquakes). also, garg is a big fat opportunity for gliscor to set spikes and make progress against the whole opposing team, and garg really doesn't like when hazards are up, so there's a likelihood of it switching into something else to try and stop you from doing that; use that to your advantage. gliscor pairs very well with clefable against the meta at large, so combine this with the above for a fantastic one-two punch against garg.
GALARIAN SLOWKINGgalarian slowking needs no introduction because you already know what it is, it's been steadily rising in usage since it was introduced. glowking is technically not an answer to garg—most of its sets can barely touch garg outside of future sight, and it's very weak to earthquake. it doesn't like switching into salt cure very much either. so what's it doing here? well, the secret lies in its ability to use chilly reception and its low speed to get an offensive answer to garg in safely. even if garg clicks salt cure predicting you to go into something else, chilly will go after it, and garg will soon be face-to-face with a mon that beats it but wouldn't even dream of switching in on a salt cure. however, this matchup must be played carefully depending on the garg set—earthquake is very dangerous to glowking, and curse sets can out-slow it and salt cure whatever comes in anyway. if you're up against ironpress, though, it's just free good positioning.
EJECT BUTTONspeaking of free good positioning, eject button generates momentum like a perpetual motion machine. its use cases are fairly limited outside of hatterene, but it's a free buffer against salt cure that will let you bring in offensive answers safely. it's very valuable to be able to bring in something like waterpon or kingambit without having it get saltier than lavos after a flinch.
OK, JUST HEAR ME OUTalthough it's drastically waned in popularity since the early days of the meta, covert cloak is still a very valuable item against salt cure, with the added bonus of being immune to hax if you're tired of your series being unfortunate. it works best with gholdengo—the immunity to secondary effects synergizes excellently with good as gold, making gholdengo effectively immune to status conditions altogether as well as most stat drops, flinching, and obviously salt cure. it sees limited usage on other things, usually setup mons of some description like some variants of bulky ddance gouging, certain hatterene sets, and less used but still somewhat viable stuff like latias, cresselia, and skeledirge. this lets them easily take advantage of how passive garganacl is outside of salt cure to easily start setting up. these are of course more niche options, but they're options, they work, and they can perform serviceably against the wider meta.
CLEFABLEGLISCORGALARIAN SLOWKINGEJECT BUTTONOK, JUST HEAR ME OUTCHAPTER TWO: HITTING IT REALLY FUCKING HARD
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.
RILLABOOMhe'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-WELLSPRINGthankfully, 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.
SERPERIORhaha 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.
KINGAMBIToh 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.
MEOWSCARADAflower 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 JOEequipped 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 TUSKtusk 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 VALIANTvaliant 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 WAKEand 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-THERIANlando 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.
RILLABOOMOGERPON-WELLSPRINGSERPERIORKINGAMBITMEOWSCARADAGOLDEN JOEGREAT TUSKIRON VALIANTWALKING WAKELANDORUS-THERIANCHAPTER THREE: OTHER SHIT YOU CAN DO
hitting it hard or directly contending with salt cure are the most straightforward options against garganacl, but there's more than one way to skin a rock. or to cure a salt, or whatever. i don't know, make up your own sayings if you don't like mine. anyway, the point is that pure offense and pure defense aren't the only ways of getting around garganacl, and some of these techniques can even be more effective than the ones listed above.
SUBSTITUTE
probably the best anti-garg tech we have available besides magic guard. salt cure is virtually always too weak to break substitute with its dinky little 40 base power (more like cringe power), and substitute blocks the secondary effect of salt cure, so you effectively get to set one up for free and get protection against salt cure for as long as you're in unless you screw up somehow. you have to bring substitute users in safely so they don't get covered in salt like the last mcdonald's fry at the bottom of the box, but once they're in, you're good as gold (except ghold doesn't use substitute). i already mentioned serperior being a user of substitute, so i'm not going to mention it again. other mons that beat garganacl behind substitute include zamazenta, primarina, and tera ground users such as iron moth, enamorus, and kyurem. substitute setup is pretty strong in general if done properly, so this is definitely something to consider for teams even outside of garg.
HAZARDS
garg almost always runs leftovers. over 95% of them on ladder run it. this is because lefties synergizes nicely with garg's reliance on salt cure's passive damage. however, this also means it's not running boots, because this is a game where you can't eat and wear shoes at the same time. setting up hazards massively improves the effectiveness of the mons in the previous two chapters—every time they force garg out is one more time that it has to come back in and step on legos again. of course, you should be running hazards anyway because they're busted as shit this gen.
TAUNT
many of this meta's typical users of taunt don't much like to get hit by salt cure or garg's other attacks, but telling garg that its mother was a hamster and its father smells of elderberries is a great way to get rid of its recovery for a little while, which allows you to chip it down much more easily. lando-t is gonna be your main choice for this, since it's immune to eq, resists body press, and hits hard on the physical or special side.
TRICKlike all stallmons, garganacl is very weak to being tricked a choice item. even though spamming salt cure seems like it would still theoretically be fine even while choiced, in practice garg no longer has lefties recovery or recover to fall back on, so it gets worn down faster than the battery of a musical birthday card. this also forces it to switch a lot, which helps the hazards do their job of wearing it down faster than the average apple product. clefable can also use its tricky barb set to match garganacl's salt cure damage with its own sticky barb hp loss and wear it down faster than some third analogy i can't think of. encore has a similar ability to force garg out, but i'm too lazy to type out a whole new section for it.
SUBSTITUTEHAZARDSTAUNTTRICKso by now you should have a basic understanding of how to win the garganacl matchup in builder and in battle. of course, i'm just some forum guy so you don't necessarily have to listen to my advice, but this is the stuff i've used or seen used against garg that worked
I hope the OU Council is not seriously considering dropping Landorus-Incarnate when the only OU-relevant switch-ins are Blissey and Cresselia, which is not even remotely acceptable as far as defensive counterplay goes.
Earth Power, Focus Blast, Sludge Wave, and Tera Blast Ice hits pretty much the entire tier.
Earth Power, Focus Blast, Sludge Wave, and Tera Blast Ice hits pretty much the entire tier.
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+2 252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Focus Blast vs. 4 HP / 252+ SpD Blissey: 471-556 (72.2 - 85.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
blissey isn't a switch-in either. this mon should not even remotely be discussed. in fact, none of those four mons should. palafin and lando-i are both a tier in uubers and solgaleo is in a+, so they can not only function but thrive in a meta with an astronomically higher power level than ou. if they were trash in uubers, then i could see a potential discussion happening, but if they were already deemed too strong for ou and they're good in a tier with zacian-hero, mewtwo, several arceus forms, chi-yu, and now skymin in it, that is probably not the type of thing we want coming back down
on the other hand, annihilape is c+ in uubers but fuck that mon, it can rot for all i care
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This isn't even a discussion, I've seen arguments for Solg/Lugia but Lando-I? Focus Blast 2HKOs Blissey who is a fat blob which does nothing and Cresselia does nothing against the rest of the tier.
kyurem can do the same with ice + ground coverage without need to tera, has 60 more bst, hit bulky water better with freeze dry, only 6 less speed, can burn pp of recover with pressure + random freeze, can run HBD and not LO
both neutral to sucker punch, lando-i is immune to tclap, kyub resist, lando-i neutral to gglide, kyu resist
as a statupper, i think darkrai is even stronger than landoi thanks to 125 spe, same for volcarona except against blissey
here for the philosophical shift 
but surprised about landoi discussion...
although... 104 SpA Blissey Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Landorus: 280-332 (87.7 - 104%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock
can this be our dondozo body press.
was going to say dolphinbro would help v lando to but nope.. only psychic doesnt ohko and jet punch doesnt..
edit: realizing palafin unban is just to boost anti woger sentiment for a ban.... sneaky..
but surprised about landoi discussion...although... 104 SpA Blissey Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Landorus: 280-332 (87.7 - 104%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock
can this be our dondozo body press.
was going to say dolphinbro would help v lando to but nope.. only psychic doesnt ohko and jet punch doesnt..
edit: realizing palafin unban is just to boost anti woger sentiment for a ban.... sneaky..
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i'm hoping that "the council discussed this" means "one person brought it up and the rest of us spent 20 minutes roasting them"
I once considered doing a How to Fight Garg Guide, but you beat me to the punch. One other thing I would like to add is Sinistcha. It can outheal with Matcha Gotcha and Strength Sap while threatening with Grass STAB or CM. It think its quite good in the meta due to its matchups with Wogre, G-Fire, Garg, Ursaluna, Zama, Tusk, etc.now that garganacl is back in the conversation, it's a great time to share some tips and tricks on how to win against it, because a lot of people seem to think it's broken when there's actually a pretty substantial amount of counterplay. garganacl is a very potent mon in ou. salt cure is an extremely cheap move with much less counterplay than moves on mons this passive typically have, purifying salt makes it a great status absorber and turns its pure rock typing from useless crap to marginally less useless crap, it's a very prominent user of defensive tera so its offensive answers often have to deal with schrödinger's matchup, and its defenses and movepool are just fantastic. so how do you beat this thing? well, if you didn't read the title of the post, i'm here to tell you. (warning: this post is long. i've put each chapter into a collapsible so it doesn't clutter up the whole page)
CHAPTER ONE: SWITCHING INTO THE CHEAPASS SALT MOVEi say this as an advocate and supporter of garganacl: salt cure is one of the dumbest, cheapest, most braindead button-clicker moves in the entire game, and possibly the entire genre. it's so cancerous that even your cancer will get cancer, and then that cancer will get cancer, and that third cancer will get covid. herein i will share the cure for that cancer—or rather, the cancer for the cure.
first up, we have the queen of gen 6, the autarch of the isle of armor, the wishport one-hit wonder, clefable. magic guard completely negates salt cure damage, allowing clefable to switch into garg and stay there all day long if it wants. its defenses are good enough to stifle garg's other options—earthquake doesn't do much with defense investment, clef resists body press, and garg basically doesn't run any other attacks than those. clef's moonblast doesn't do much to garg, but it has access to various ways to make progress if garg doesn't switch out—knock off to get rid of the lefties and force recovers more often, and stealth rock to… well, to set stealth rock, that's just useful against everything. you won't need to use those much, though, because garg often switches out when clefable comes in (over 50% of the time according to the most recent stats), allowing you to position yourself for a favorable offensive matchup later.
next up we have gliscor, the spikes-spamming scourge of the teal mask meta (for like three weeks after people not named njnp figured out how broken it was). this bad boy can completely offset the damage to salt cure with poison heal, is immune to earthquake, and might as well be immune to body press for how little it does. gliscor can seriously chip garg with repeated earthquakes and negate its lefties with knock off to easily stall it out of recovers, letting it be worn down by other stuff (or just more earthquakes). also, garg is a big fat opportunity for gliscor to set spikes and make progress against the whole opposing team, and garg really doesn't like when hazards are up, so there's a likelihood of it switching into something else to try and stop you from doing that; use that to your advantage. gliscor pairs very well with clefable against the meta at large, so combine this with the above for a fantastic one-two punch against garg.
galarian slowking needs no introduction because you already know what it is, it's been steadily rising in usage since it was introduced. glowking is technically not an answer to garg—most of its sets can barely touch garg outside of future sight, and it's very weak to earthquake. it doesn't like switching into salt cure very much either. so what's it doing here? well, the secret lies in its ability to use chilly reception and its low speed to get an offensive answer to garg in safely. even if garg clicks salt cure predicting you to go into something else, chilly will go after it, and garg will soon be face-to-face with a mon that beats it but wouldn't even dream of switching in on a salt cure. however, this matchup must be played carefully depending on the garg set—earthquake is very dangerous to glowking, and curse sets can out-slow it and salt cure whatever comes in anyway. if you're up against ironpress, though, it's just free good positioning.
speaking of free good positioning, eject button generates momentum like a perpetual motion machine. its use cases are fairly limited outside of hatterene, but it's a free buffer against salt cure that will let you bring in offensive answers safely. it's very valuable to be able to bring in something like waterpon or kingambit without having it get saltier than lavos after a flinch.
although it's drastically waned in popularity since the early days of the meta, covert cloak is still a very valuable item against salt cure, with the added bonus of being immune to hax if you're tired of your series being unfortunate. it works best with gholdengo—the immunity to secondary effects synergizes excellently with good as gold, making gholdengo effectively immune to status conditions altogether as well as most stat drops, flinching, and obviously salt cure. it sees limited usage on other things, usually setup mons of some description like some variants of bulky ddance gouging, certain hatterene sets, and less used but still somewhat viable stuff like latias, cresselia, and skeledirge. this lets them easily take advantage of how passive garganacl is outside of salt cure to easily start setting up. these are of course more niche options, but they're options, they work, and they can perform serviceably against the wider meta.
CHAPTER TWO: HITTING IT REALLY FUCKING HARDthese 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
CHAPTER THREE: OTHER SHIT YOU CAN DOhitting it hard or directly contending with salt cure are the most straightforward options against garganacl, but there's more than one way to skin a rock. or to cure a salt, or whatever. i don't know, make up your own sayings if you don't like mine. anyway, the point is that pure offense and pure defense aren't the only ways of getting around garganacl, and some of these techniques can even be more effective than the ones listed above.
probably the best anti-garg tech we have available besides magic guard. salt cure is virtually always too weak to break substitute with its dinky little 40 base power (more like cringe power), and substitute blocks the secondary effect of salt cure, so you effectively get to set one up for free and get protection against salt cure for as long as you're in unless you screw up somehow. you have to bring substitute users in safely so they don't get covered in salt like the last mcdonald's fry at the bottom of the box, but once they're in, you're good as gold (except ghold doesn't use substitute). i already mentioned serperior being a user of substitute, so i'm not going to mention it again. other mons that beat garganacl behind substitute include zamazenta, primarina, and tera ground users such as iron moth, enamorus, and kyurem. substitute setup is pretty strong in general if done properly, so this is definitely something to consider for teams even outside of garg.
garg almost always runs leftovers. over 95% of them on ladder run it. this is because lefties synergizes nicely with garg's reliance on salt cure's passive damage. however, this also means it's not running boots, because this is a game where you can't eat and wear shoes at the same time. setting up hazards massively improves the effectiveness of the mons in the previous two chapters—every time they force garg out is one more time that it has to come back in and step on legos again. of course, you should be running hazards anyway because they're busted as shit this gen.
many of this meta's typical users of taunt don't much like to get hit by salt cure or garg's other attacks, but telling garg that its mother was a hamster and its father smells of elderberries is a great way to get rid of its recovery for a little while, which allows you to chip it down much more easily. lando-t is gonna be your main choice for this, since it's immune to eq, resists body press, and hits hard on the physical or special side.
like all stallmons, garganacl is very weak to being tricked a choice item. even though spamming salt cure seems like it would still theoretically be fine even while choiced, in practice garg no longer has lefties recovery or recover to fall back on, so it gets worn down faster than the battery of a musical birthday card. this also forces it to switch a lot, which helps the hazards do their job of wearing it down faster than the average apple product. clefable can also use its tricky barb set to match garganacl's salt cure damage with its own sticky barb hp loss and wear it down faster than some third analogy i can't think of. encore has a similar ability to force garg out, but i'm too lazy to type out a whole new section for it.
so by now you should have a basic understanding of how to win the garganacl matchup in builder and in battle. of course, i'm just some forum guy so you don't necessarily have to listen to my advice, but this is the stuff i've used or seen used against garg that worked
I don’t think any of those four ubermons deserve a chance.
The only one of these Ubermons I would ever consider seeing retested is
Since it was seen last time, teams have gotten more reliable possible shifu counterplay. More bulky Waters, more Dragons, etc. Water immunes like Wogre, Clod, and Volcanion. Mola + Fighting resist can pivot around it. Sinistcha has been something more teams have been running. Several offensive threats like Raging Bolt, Primarina, Serp, Rilla, and Dragapult can outspeed, live a hit or two, and threaten with an OHKO. It also seems reasonable for some structures to be able to pp stall Surging Strikes and CC.
Watershifu could also help check Gambit, Samu, and Weavile while outspeeding Kyurem and packs priority via Aqua Jet. It also stops Gliscor from brainlessly clicking Protect.
But again, I’m hesitant, cause who knows what bs set Watershifu will run to beat most of its checks like BU Taunt Drain Punch Surging.
Didn’t Finch say before that Palafin was closer to being a perennial Uber than a drop candidate?
I’m pretty sure this new thing is just a trollpost.
I’m pretty sure this new thing is just a trollpost.
i did see sinistcha pretty high up on garg's "checks and counters" list on the stats page and i strongly considered mentioning it, but i decided to stick with stuff that's currently in ou. otherwise i'd get people (well, one specific person) going "look at how niche and unviable the counterplay is! ban garg!!!"
Me posting a tweet purposefully outside of this thread does not re-open discussion of Uber drop-backs at this time here fwiw.
Lugia was discussed apparently according to Lily and Ausma, Lugia test sometime in the future perhaps? The funny thing is that it could end up being more reasonable than a lot of the pokemon that were discussed.
Also I don’t expect Volc to be banned… Would that lead to a discussion on tera if Volc stays? Because action on tera may have to happen if volc ends up staying because volc and tera probably cannot coexist in a healthy OU meta.
Ignore the spicy tweets. They are for your amusement but not to be discussed. Feel free to farm reacts on anything else off topic however.
Lily has a list of what was discussed on her twitter. It was actually discussed, Finch didn’t list everything but Lily did! So yes, Lugia was actually discussed, likely as a comparison to solgaleo possibly. Lugia suspect honestly would be kind of exciting to see.
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How to beat Garganacl:
weird sets to break down the rest of its team if you have a bad MU hide your sets!
if you have a good MU just spam it down and use encore/taunt to prevent healing and/or setup.
I’ve been using Garg whilst testing out our previous discussion about the power imbalance of OU on a custom designed team provided courtesy of Heatranator
replay for entertainment value, the opponent breaks down a Garg:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2100639478-oy2yojsjndlicfcj4pnx9rfbnneo9b4pw
although the real reason he won is due to surprise value and the ease of which strong or mediocre volt switch shreds this team. This is a standard example of how this matchup is 75% in Garg favour if both opponents know each others teams.
Garg is S tier in some matchups, and C tier at best in others. Very few matchups are in between.
Heatranator I have tried to make minimal changes to your team, mostly focusing on optimising the Garg and samurott to preserve their value in matchups they’re supposed to win. I don’t think this is providing the fact that there isn’t a strong power imbalance in OU because Valiant was the “top tier” pick, but Garg skews between the extremes of top tier and shit, whilst samurott should be considered in the top tier due to sheer matchup value against almost every team.
samurott might be B grade on paper but it’s S grade in matchup value and purpose
reporting back on the team, it’s about 75% win rate when I can predict most sets on the opponent team and garganacl has the MU advantage. Otherwise it’s fluctuating a lot more in other matches, and likely below the 33% WR cutoff if you discount those one sided Garg matchups. Gets roasted by any well played long neck and I didn’t want to change Tera types.
weird sets to break down the rest of its team if you have a bad MU hide your sets!
if you have a good MU just spam it down and use encore/taunt to prevent healing and/or setup.
I’ve been using Garg whilst testing out our previous discussion about the power imbalance of OU on a custom designed team provided courtesy of Heatranator
replay for entertainment value, the opponent breaks down a Garg:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2100639478-oy2yojsjndlicfcj4pnx9rfbnneo9b4pw
although the real reason he won is due to surprise value and the ease of which strong or mediocre volt switch shreds this team. This is a standard example of how this matchup is 75% in Garg favour if both opponents know each others teams.
Garg is S tier in some matchups, and C tier at best in others. Very few matchups are in between.
Heatranator I have tried to make minimal changes to your team, mostly focusing on optimising the Garg and samurott to preserve their value in matchups they’re supposed to win. I don’t think this is providing the fact that there isn’t a strong power imbalance in OU because Valiant was the “top tier” pick, but Garg skews between the extremes of top tier and shit, whilst samurott should be considered in the top tier due to sheer matchup value against almost every team.
samurott might be B grade on paper but it’s S grade in matchup value and purpose
reporting back on the team, it’s about 75% win rate when I can predict most sets on the opponent team and garganacl has the MU advantage. Otherwise it’s fluctuating a lot more in other matches, and likely below the 33% WR cutoff if you discount those one sided Garg matchups. Gets roasted by any well played long neck and I didn’t want to change Tera types.
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maybe the tier needs to be destroyed
You can change aspects of the team, I created it in like 2 minutes. I could create a new team with mostly UU mons and a few bad OU mons, but I'm too tired rn.
Although I am impressed you reached high ladder with it.
Reaching high ladder can be achieved by anyone who practices. With almost any team, even C grade teams. The challenge isn’t reaching it, it’s consistent results!
tips to playing high elo:
- Fundamentals are the same as low ELO
- Psychology is completely different, every turn counts
- You need to figure out what your paths to victory are, and don’t lose the advantage if you have it. Most games you’ll know if you have advantage or not from
- If you’re playing from behind it’s okay to take higher risk plays, since the odds of you winning are low anyway, but a high risk play like swords dancing when you otherwise should attack might take advantage of an opponent’s blunder
- Bluffing can be useful, but it’s not consistent
- Pay attention to the game, if you’re like me you’re not paying attention to the details in 90% of games and you’ll lose because of that.
do the same in 1900 ELO
in 1300 you’re probably right maximum 50% of the time.
in 1900 ELO you’ll probably predict 70%
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