Garchomp Tier Discussion / Debate

[Aquilae]

And how does Gliscor's base attack, speed and movepool come into the equation? If Gliscor keeps getting misses with Sand Veil wouldn't it sweep? You cannot compare it to Garchomp without being heavily subjective as it isn't right in all instances to say that if Garchomp gets a miss from Sand Veil, it will win, whereas when Gliscor only gets one miss it wouldn't win.

 

[.]

I can see what you're saying, but Garchomp is much more dangerous with Outrage, than Gliscor is with...Ice Fang? Dragon/Fire/Ground hits everything for neutral. If Gliscor uses SD/Roost, it cannot do the same (note: We're talking about SD Chomp at the moment)

 

[Aquilae]

How can't it do the same? What does Chomp have over Gliscor that basically "amplifies" the boost to Sand Veil? You quote Garchomp's better offenses and speed but I still don't understand how it comes into play when determining the supposed Uber quality that Garchomp possesses with Sand Veil, and that similar pokemon with those evasion-boosting abilities are not Uber.

 

[.]

Gliscor cannot do as much immediate damage as Garchomp, so in late game, there is a chance Gliscor won't be one-shotting everything on your team that is still alive. Say Garchomp finishes off my Gliscor. I bring in Gengar, use HP Ice, miss, Garchomp's Outrage OHKO's me. If I do the same, except it's Gliscor, it's Ice Fang will NOT OHKO me. It may seem like a minor situation, but it could cost the entire match.

 

[Archer]

I guess what Vance is trying to say, is that a miss on Garchomp can let it SD or kill a counter. With Gliscor you don't necessarily face a sweep if you miss it. I realise that this is a double-standard and that it hardly makes Garchomp Uber on it's own, but it all adds up.

Which brings me to this. We have to look at all of the aspects together. Garchomp has many attributes that make it a potent threat, however none of these are enough to condemn it to the Uber tier.

• Speed Tier - The 102 Base Speed lets it outrun a large number of threats, however high speed hardly makes a pokemon game-breaking (see Ninjask).
• Outrage - An accurate, powerful STAB attack is something to be feared, surely, but keep in mind we have pokemon like Tauros, with a good Speed and Attack Stat, carrying 102bp STAB Returns (or Double-Edge). Again, there are things that resist it and can take a few hits.
• Sand Veil - Yes. It can tend to be hax-ridden, but the same trait is carried by several other pokemon or mimicked by Snow Cloak. In these cases, you may miss once, but you also face this risk when using attacks with less than 100% accuracy.
• Yache Berry- It makes revenging this part-cow(nvm) a pain, although it doesn't make Torterra a massive threat. Or even Wacan Berry on Gyarados. It cuts it's power and lets it live one more turn...

Sure, there are other points, but I am too tired to post them. What we can see here is that Garchomp's "Uber" traits are shared by other pokemon that are not facing Metagame eviction. It is only when these aspects are combined, does it become such a massive threat. Now, I leave it to someone else to tear these points apart, in an attempt to increase their postcount, lol. Enjoy.

 

[El Gofre]

I guess what Vance is trying to say, is that a miss on Garchomp can let it SD or kill a counter. With Gliscor you don't necessarily face a sweep if you miss it. I realise that this is a double-standard and that it hardly makes Garchomp Uber on it's own, but it all adds up.

Which brings me to this. We have to look at all of the aspects together. Garchomp has many attributes that make it a potent threat, however none of these are enough to condemn it to the Uber tier.

• Speed Tier - The 102 Base Speed lets it outrun a large number of threats, however high speed hardly makes a pokemon game-breaking (see Ninjask).
• Outrage - An accurate, powerful STAB attack is something to be feared, surely, but keep in mind we have pokemon like Tauros, with a good Speed and Attack Stat, carrying 102bp STAB Returns (or Double-Edge). Again, there are things that resist it and can take a few hits.
• Sand Veil - Yes. It can tend to be hax-ridden, but the same trait is carried by several other pokemon or mimicked by Snow Cloak. In these cases, you may miss once, but you also face this risk when using attacks with less than 100% accuracy.
• Yache Berry- It makes revenging this part-cow(nvm) a pain, although it doesn't make Torterra a massive threat. Or even Wacan Berry on Gyarados. It cuts it's power and lets it live one more turn...

Sure, there are other points, but I am too tired to post them. What we can see here is that Garchomp's "Uber" traits are shared by other pokemon that are not facing Metagame eviction. It is only when these aspects are combined, does it become such a massive threat. Now, I leave it to someone else to tear these points apart, in an attempt to increase their postcount, lol. Enjoy.

I personally don't feel that analysing each aspect individually gives a valid arguament to whether he should be uber or not. Yes tauros has a more power STAB, but this STAB is resisted and ignored by several types. Yes yache berry only garentees another turn, but when it's against a poke that can 2HKO you, you dont often have the chance. All taken together, and garchomp is a larger threat than all the example you used above, becomes he combines all those fearsome aspects.

 

[Archer]

I personally don't feel that analysing each aspect individually gives a valid arguament to whether he should be uber or not. Yes tauros has a more power STAB, but this STAB is resisted and ignored by several types. Yes yache berry only garentees another turn, but when it's against a poke that can 2HKO you, you dont often have the chance. All taken together, and garchomp is a larger threat than all the example you used above, becomes he combines all those fearsome aspects.

Exactly. Those aspects on their own are not as dangerous. Although you combine them and suddenly you have a massive threat. Did you actually read what the whole post? I said we have to look at them as a whole.

 

[Aquilae]

...can let it SD or kill a counter. With Gliscor you don't necessarily face a sweep if you miss it..

What basically guarantees Chomp the immediate ability to KO its counter with a miss while Gliscor cannot? This is all extremely subjective, why can Garchomp get past its counter with Sand Veil while all of a sudden Gliscor or any other pokemon with an evasion-boosting ability cannot?

 

[Archer]

What basically guarantees Chomp the immediate ability to KO its counter with a miss while Gliscor cannot? This is all extremely subjective, why can Garchomp get past its counter with Sand Veil while all of a sudden Gliscor or any other pokemon with an evasion-boosting ability cannot?

Is anyone taking on board what I have to say? I am saying none of Garchomp's traits make it Uber, but when they are added together, he becomes a bigger threat.

I realise the Double-Standard, but Gliscor does not OHKO most pokemon that would attempt to revenge it.

 

[airconditioning]

What basically guarantees Chomp the immediate ability to KO its counter with a miss while Gliscor cannot? This is all extremely subjective, why can Garchomp get past its counter with Sand Veil while all of a sudden Gliscor or any other pokemon with an evasion-boosting ability cannot?

Please think about what you're saying, and what we have all been saying for a moment here.

When you switch in on Garchomp, he gets an SD. Let's assume that when you switch in on Gliscor, he too gets an SD. Now, let's look at what each Pokemon has: Garchomp has a 180 BP move that is only resisted by a single type in the game, and a 150 BP move that hits said type SE, all coming off of 130 base Atk. Not to mention the 102 base Speed, meaning he can outrun many common counters without fear. Let's look at what Gliscor has: a 150 BP move that hits a number of types, true, and some other moves (either a 100 BP move to hit Flyers, or a 65 BP move to hit things like Garchomp), all coming off of 95 base Atk. Not to mention that 95 base Speed- he loses to a large number of other threats (does Gliscor even run max Speed?). With the large drop in power, a number of other threats come in much more easily and can easily OHKO. Bulky waters can OHKO with Ice Beam, or use a STAB Surf if they fear Yache (does Gliscor even run that?). Cressy and other Levitators laugh at Earthquake. And Salamence and the number of other base 100s will scare Gliscor away without a doubt. Even if one misses, who cares? The pool of Pokemon that can kill Gliscor is much larger than the pool that can kill Chomp- odds are that you'll have another one on your team.

 

[Aquilae]

Wait a minute, you still haven't said why Garchomp should be banned due to Sand Veil and why other pokemon should not be banned for the same reasons - Sand Veil and Snow Cloak. Garchomp is stronger than Gliscor offensively but it still does not justify it being banned and not the others.

I know full well of Garchomp's offensive capabilities but my point still stands.

 

[Anti]

I agree with Aquilae on this and every time I bring it up I get the same "Gliscor isn't as powerful" stuff, and even when I admit that people try and prove it to me, lol

I mean the entire logic of the Sand Veil argument is "Your counter COULD miss, effective ruining your whole strategy to stop it." While Garchomp is certainly more threatening, Gliscor and other evasive pokemon fall into the mold too and imo there's a really big bias towards Garchomp because of its power when the bias should be little at best.

I heard the argument of "overkill" on shoddy, or basically that Garchomp's near-uber but maybe not quite there power combined with Sand Veil is too much. What's so interesting is that it's the uber camp's job to prove that, and we have NO "proof" besides "well Garchomp is more powerful!" which is already established and still doesn't prove how with Garchomp it is overkill. So if you turn this into a Gliscor argument your post is going to kinda be lol since this is about proving Garchomp is uber for most of you guys.

Still I see a lot of "Garchomp has the 3rd strongest EQ in the game" and "Garchomp has Sand Veil so ANYTHING could miss!" and "It has a unique speed tier!" but those are just statistics, what most of the posts here have failed to do is show WHY those prove that Garchomp is uber.

Tyranitar has a unique speed tier (and actually surpasses Garchomp's speed after a DD) and the 2nd strongest Stone Edge in the game and the strongest Crunch. I'll probably here "those factors contribute to Garchomp not having counters." Yeah, well how does Garchomp not having counter prove that it's uber? Dugtrio doesn't have counters with Arena Trap, ban ban ban! That's also implying that pokemon with counters should be unbanned, and I don't really see how you can say it isn't or else this whole "does it have any counters?" thing wouldn't be as important, lol. With that in mind, should we unban Deoxys-A because Meteross and Spiritomb are counters? Here's a more realistic scenario - Deoxys-S has counters in OU, yet 40 people on smogon supported its ban, some of which that are from here.

I don't really see how having or not having counters should be a large part of our discussions for reasons I mentioned above, but much more importantly because countering pokemon is nearly obsolete, and in a lot of cases it probably should be. People use checks and revenge killers because they are more efficient, but at the same time we are stuck in the past enough to care what can switch into Garchomp and beat it one on one, which just never happens anymore with ANY major pokemon. The best we use are checks, and honestly I've found those a lot better than counters and apparently so has everybody else since the highest used wall in Blissey sees half the usage Garchomp does with five other sweepers far out ahead of her.

I hate to regurgitate the same old stuff, but I don't think we should ban Garchomp for the wrong reasons. We should be banning things for really screwing up the metagame (over centralizing it, basically) and it's up to our judgment to decide if it has or hasn't, and I don't really see how it has since the only extra preparation you really need outside of a check or counter if you actually use one is a revenge killer that can beat it. You can cry "over centralization" for that reason alone, but I don't really see how putting HP Ice instead of Destiny Bond on your ScarfGar is over centralizing anything, lol

 

[Walrein]

Maybe we should just make a trash tier for all of those unwanted pokemon?

 

[BeachBoy]

Maybe we should just make a trash tier for all of those unwanted pokemon?

Honestly. Do you want to know why that suggestion is completely out of the question? Because everyone hates something. Like Kiddo to Lapras, like Anti to Deoxys, like D_A to Pichu and like me to the metagame. Everyone has unwanted Pocket Monsters. It'd be pointless. That really doesn't solve a thing.

Also, I have to agree with some of Aquilae's and Anti's points. Checks and revenge killers are much more effective then counters these days. Anyway, continue~

 

[Walrein]

Honestly. Do you want to know why that suggestion is completely out of the question? Because everyone hates something. Like Kiddo to Lapras, like Anti to Deoxys, like D_A to Pichu and like me to the metagame. Everyone has unwanted Pocket Monsters. It'd be pointless. That really doesn't solve a thing.

Also, I have to agree with some of Aquilae's and Anti's points. Checks and revenge killers are much more effective then counters these days. Anyway, continue~

It is possible to hate Lapras *arg*?!
And I didn'y say I hate it, but why shouldn't there be a tier of UBL or anything alike?

 

[Z o M B ii 3]

It is possible to hate Lapras *arg*?!
And I didn'y say I hate it, but why shouldn't there be a tier of UBL or anything alike?

Underborderline?
Yes, its possible to hate Lapras.​

 

[sims796]

I agree with Aquilae on this and every time I bring it up I get the same "Gliscor isn't as powerful" stuff, and even when I admit that people try and prove it to me, lol

I mean the entire logic of the Sand Veil argument is "Your counter COULD miss, effective ruining your whole strategy to stop it." While Garchomp is certainly more threatening, Gliscor and other evasive pokemon fall into the mold too and imo there's a really big bias towards Garchomp because of its power when the bias should be little at best.

I heard the argument of "overkill" on shoddy, or basically that Garchomp's near-uber but maybe not quite there power combined with Sand Veil is too much. What's so interesting is that it's the uber camp's job to prove that, and we have NO "proof" besides "well Garchomp is more powerful!" which is already established and still doesn't prove how with Garchomp it is overkill. So if you turn this into a Gliscor argument your post is going to kinda be lol since this is about proving Garchomp is uber for most of you guys.

Still I see a lot of "Garchomp has the 3rd strongest EQ in the game" and "Garchomp has Sand Veil so ANYTHING could miss!" and "It has a unique speed tier!" but those are just statistics, what most of the posts here have failed to do is show WHY those prove that Garchomp is uber.

Tyranitar has a unique speed tier (and actually surpasses Garchomp's speed after a DD) and the 2nd strongest Stone Edge in the game and the strongest Crunch. I'll probably here "those factors contribute to Garchomp not having counters." Yeah, well how does Garchomp not having counter prove that it's uber? Dugtrio doesn't have counters with Arena Trap, ban ban ban! That's also implying that pokemon with counters should be unbanned, and I don't really see how you can say it isn't or else this whole "does it have any counters?" thing wouldn't be as important, lol. With that in mind, should we unban Deoxys-A because Meteross and Spiritomb are counters? Here's a more realistic scenario - Deoxys-S has counters in OU, yet 40 people on smogon supported its ban, some of which that are from here.

I don't really see how having or not having counters should be a large part of our discussions for reasons I mentioned above, but much more importantly because countering pokemon is nearly obsolete, and in a lot of cases it probably should be. People use checks and revenge killers because they are more efficient, but at the same time we are stuck in the past enough to care what can switch into Garchomp and beat it one on one, which just never happens anymore with ANY major pokemon. The best we use are checks, and honestly I've found those a lot better than counters and apparently so has everybody else since the highest used wall in Blissey sees half the usage Garchomp does with five other sweepers far out ahead of her.

I hate to regurgitate the same old stuff, but I don't think we should ban Garchomp for the wrong reasons. We should be banning things for really screwing up the metagame (over centralizing it, basically) and it's up to our judgment to decide if it has or hasn't, and I don't really see how it has since the only extra preparation you really need outside of a check or counter if you actually use one is a revenge killer that can beat it. You can cry "over centralization" for that reason alone, but I don't really see how putting HP Ice instead of Destiny Bond on your ScarfGar is over centralizing anything, lol

First off, I wanna speak on this whole Sand Veil thing. I believe it is bought up because it is the sand that broke the camel's back. So much going for him, and now luck? The hell! Poke bias? What is this, the PETA? It just sounds funny, is all.

But I do feel that he limits the amount of choices availible for play, which is my whole reason of havig him banned. I don't care on anything else, I really don't, and as I said, it's all theorymon from here, reiterating the same things from both parties. I was trolling around Smogon, attracting females (as that is the rite way to do it, ask BeachBoy), whenI saw the ladder test thingy. I was pleased at a few results. So many pokemon that were afraid to come out can now surface. I love an open metagame. Now I don't want a bunch of stupid posts on why I am wrong about wanting an open metagame,I swear to God I don't.

Honestly. Do you want to know why that suggestion is completely out of the question? Because everyone hates something. Like Kiddo to Lapras, like Anti to Deoxys, like D_A to Pichu and like me to the metagame. Everyone has unwanted Pocket Monsters. It'd be pointless. That really doesn't solve a thing.

Also, I have to agree with some of Aquilae's and Anti's points. Checks and revenge killers are much more effective then counters these days. Anyway, continue~

How the hell can he hate Pichu? You lie. Everyone like Pichu. If you don't, you support terrorism. I said it.

 

[Anti]

I must support terrorism.
Mudkip is over 9000 times better.​

What the...
...
...

Also I don't really see how Garchomp is the only pokemon in OUs that restricts your pokemon choices. Infernape, Heracross, and Gyarados all are restricting too, and high OUs are in general.

 

[GeneralGuy]

The Choice Band and Choice Scarf sets of Garchomp may be countered by wise prediction and smartly switching into a poke who can resist the upcoming attack. You lock Garchomp into using an ineffective attack against you and you set up and proceed to sweep.

There probably aren't any solid guaranteed counters to the Yache Berry + SD sets, however.

 

[shedinjask]

Hahaha Leaf Storm, I was thinking HP Ice lol. It would definitely KO, if it hit. Metalkid's and Libelldra's both claim 71% to Cloyster, what calc are you using?

I can't see Cresselia as an offensive enough force to make use of Choice Scarf. It would work on frail Pokemon it hit SE and bulkier ones it can 4x but other than that it's nothing incredible.

Gyarados? Celebi, Tangrowth, Stealth Rock wears it down, it's not that fast, it has common weaknesses.

Heracross? Gliscor, Weezing, hell most of them are choiced so plain prediction can win out. Nidoqueen, who's become slightly more popular with the banning of Garchomp, is probably the most overlooked wall ever and beats down Hera just fine.

Mixape is stopped in its tracks by Vaporeon and Tentacruel, and the physical versions are even easier.

Some Pokemon don't even have counters but at least you can deal with them. The same can't be said for Garchomp.