Hey all,
Meta sucks. Reason #1 is Tera, but you already knew that. I'm gonna take some time to talk about the second reason.
I find Gliscor very strong, but also unhealthy and centralizing in a way that no other mon has really done in this gen so far. Ultimately it is so good at what it does that
it is LIMITING, both to your opponent and to your own team.
1) Gliscor's counterplay is pretty slim
I've whined before about the Eq/Toxic/spikes/protect set
here (henceforth called the "Bastard"), but lemme recap rq. Great Tusk and Cinderace are the best forms of hazard control we have, and Gliscor has a strong matchup vs both. If Great Tusk doesn't have Ice Spinner, Gliscor can facetank knock off/stabs easily, Toxic to cut off Bulk Up, and set another Spike after Great Tusk uses Rapid Spin, ensuring that hazard control has essentially failed. Cinderace is no better, with Pyro Ball bouncing off Gliscor and Wisp being blocked, Spikes go up after a Court Change and hazard control has also failed.
To begin with, Gliscor's absurd survivability and utility in status absorbing was already good, and Earthquake+Toxic was already effective at making progress. To account for Spikes on top of that forces you to either run Ice Spinner Great Tusk (bulky) offense, "Superman" hazard proof teams, or full on HO with Mortal Spin Glimmora/Taunt Rockpon or Meow to ensure Gliscor cannot just get up layers at lead.
Think you can get away with some cool bulky offense/balance as long as you have both Great Tusk and Cinderace? Just look at
this depressing battle. My opponent brings a solid but not hazardproof team with both Tusk+Ace, makes no major chokes (I would say outplays me more often than not) and yet still loses the battle with max layers up against them. If anybody isn't convinced of the power of the Bastard Gliscor, please watch.
Even assuming you have a gameplan vs spikes, stopping Gliscor from making easy progress vs a team forces you to run a small set of pokemon (if you want to avoid shitmons). Stuff like balloon gholdengo, balloon heatran, corviknight, or your own SD Gliscor are some of the few ways you can block the standard set from slowly chipping your team down without allowing Gliscor to set Spikes for free. Even mons like Clefable or Tera Garg, while tanking EQ+Toxic, are gonna let Spikes go up for free. Not gonna include mons like Tera Poison Levitate Cress bc like I've said in the past, requiring Tera to check a mon that hasn't Tera'd puts you at a massive disadvantage.
I mean look at
this shit, my opponent at 1888 had BALLOON DRAGAPULT. No doubt it was sub dd to set up on Bastard Gliscor. That's fucked, man.
Here's where it gets kinda complicated
2) If you decide to use Bastard Gliscor, your OWN teambuilding choices are also slim
The problem with running the most oppressive Gliscor set is the mirror matchup. If you are using the bastard set and you happen to fight the bastard set, then both of these bastards
get free Spikes vs each other. Perfect example of this would be an SCL match from week 3,
xavgb vs Nat, just look at the opening few turns. Whenever you decide to use Bastard gliscor, you must be prepared to fight under 3 layers of spikes on both sides. This kind of dynamic between Gliscors forces teams to go Superman style and fully hazard proof themselves, consistent hazard removal that can reliably remove max layers multiple times a match simply doesn't exist this generation.
This is a big problem, because
Superman teams are very limited in how they can be built. Requiring every team member to hold boots or be at least neutral to rocks+immune to spikes is a very tall order. You can't have a team of just Gliscor Corv Clef and Hawlucha or whatever, so your choices have to actually be GOOD pokemon while holding boots. You wanna use something like Azumarill? Too bad, that mon is dogshit without Band/AV to boost its stats or Sitrus Berry to use Belly Drum. Can't use Waterpon or Rockpon, they're forced to hold their masks. Can't use Choice Scarf for speed control or Band/Specs for breaking power, you somehow have to check those boxes while holding boots. Even when you suck it up and decide to use something like Boots Weavile, that set is so weak that it loses 1v1 to Defensive Gholdengo, without tera from either side. Knock does like 70 and you just die back to MiR lmao. And even with max layers up, I'm pretty sure a toxapex that's been knocked off will easily tank +2 attacks and Toxic it back. Your options for speed control, for stallbreaking, and for answering dangerous HO set up threats are all LIMITED.
As if monsters like Roaring Moon, Waterpon, Kingambit, and Tera Manaphy weren't hard enough for balance to viably contain, you also need to be hazardproof should you dare to use pokemon like Clodsire or Mandibuzz which give Gliscor free turns.
***
Anyway, right after Tera, I find Gliscor to be the second most limiting factor stopping me from really trying to branch out in teambuilding. And even when I try to build with Gliscor and make some Superman Balance, I struggle to answer even common HO threats while holding boots without spiraling down into hard stall.
Quite frankly, I don't think the unhealthy effects of Spikes Gliscor are obvious enough for it to be suspected and banned yet. It would take a few months of suffering, at best, for this community to reach the imo right decision, but we don't even have that much time. DLC2 will drop and sink us back into an unbalanced circus yet again. Even assuming there are no standout threats to handle (
with Tera Blast coverage? god.), I don't see us making effective tiering action to improve the hazard situation for at least another 5 months. So pull yourselves up by your Heavy-Duty Bootstraps and weather the meta for the rest of the year with me.
This is a pretty short post by my standards, but thanks for reading this far if you made it