Just to note, but iron moth actually is weaker than volcarona due to needing to ev correctly in order to get a speed boost. Volc can get to a special attack stat of 369, while iron moth cannot exceed 349 special attack otherwise it will get the special attack boost, which is usually worse for it. Basically, despite having a higher base stat, iron moth is infact weaker than volc in initial power.I also noticed an uptick of, which I expect to continue following the Volc ban, as it can perform a similar job as Volc with Proto-Speed and Fiery Dance fishes. On top of that it has better initial power.
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
Does anyone have any tips for using balance against weather? It feels like just an overwhelming matchup. yes, Glowking can change the weather but it has to be able to safely switch in, which it often can’t do against most special attackers after Tera.
Against Sun:
If you Tera water Glowking against Tera water walking wake, then you don’t have a good enough switch in for Gouging Fire. If you try to save your Tera, you risk getting 2HKO’d by Wake.
Against Rain:
In rain I face a similar predicament where weather ball Raging Bolt just tears through Ting Lu, but if I waste Tera there I have 0 switch ins to Baraskewda.
This is not an RMT, but for reference this is the team I’m using:
https://pokepast.es/6a01072011c6d2c1
Against Sun:
If you Tera water Glowking against Tera water walking wake, then you don’t have a good enough switch in for Gouging Fire. If you try to save your Tera, you risk getting 2HKO’d by Wake.
Against Rain:
In rain I face a similar predicament where weather ball Raging Bolt just tears through Ting Lu, but if I waste Tera there I have 0 switch ins to Baraskewda.
This is not an RMT, but for reference this is the team I’m using:
https://pokepast.es/6a01072011c6d2c1
Mola or Tera Water Garg just completely stuff Sun. There is very little Sun can do against Garganacl spamming Salt Cure, esp with hazards down. That being said, I'm not sure if either fits this team comp well.
You can try running golduck for his cloud nine ability, or take advantage of your opponent's weather by utilizing castform and it's weather ball attack.
To be honest this entire gen has been “well there’s actually nothing you can do but a niche pokemon does work, so we don’t consider broken”
yeah look i ran into rocky helmet darkrai "to get chip on gambit" I think this gen is just wacky like that, we either accept powercreep or dig our heels in and continue to try bans. idk what the answer is
I think it may be time for a break As others have said, there’s a really high skill curve and I think tiering is so oriented towards players who are already good, newer players like myself have been left by the wayside. As long as Tera is around balance will never be as good as offense.
The answer is b_n ter_
Maybe swap the gliscor evs over to special defense. You can always take 2 tera water hydro steams from wake in the sun.
244 SpA Choice Specs Tera Water Walking Wake Hydro Steam vs. 244 HP / 248+ SpD Tera Water Gliscor in Sun: 165-195 (46.8 - 55.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Poison Heal
This does limit sun turns by spamming protect and getting some chip on wake with e-quake. Water spam in general seems to decimate this team. Maybe you should switch out skarm for specially defensive corv, that would help a lot as well. It's even better into wake and does decent into gouging.
244 SpA Choice Specs Tera Water Walking Wake Hydro Steam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tera Water Corviknight in Sun: 153-180 (38.2 - 45%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
168 Atk Choice Band Gouging Fire Flare Blitz vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Tera Water Corviknight in Sun: 181-213 (45.2 - 53.2%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Looking at your team, I'm surprised you struggle with weather. You have both have slowking tera and gliscor tera for opposing rain and sun. If I had any advice, I would always just try to deny entry to their faster threats as much as possible. Weather teams can be busted but they need the one turn to get threats like barra or walking wake out. Use this to your advantage. Lead slowking to deny sun coming up or lead your own faster threats like zama or Weavilve even.
Sun: Slowking does get many entry points, mostly against walking wake, bolt, and torokoal itself. You may lead badly into moon or tusk but three mons you do, meaning you will have many chances to get a chilly off.
Rain: I do think tera is needed here but you can defend against barra but weavilve ice shard can help to chip down bolt along with ting-lu. I do see how the rain match is worse though for the team. I would try seeing if you can make any adjustments to you Glowking maybe to help against bolt.
Typically I find with sun they Tera water wake on the switch, kill Glowking (even if I get back) or if I do Tera in time. CB Gouging fire tears through the rest of the team.
Choice band gouging fire? If it's proto attack, I can see why. Just a thought but what if you made gliscor more speedy? You have skarm already for defense and more speed wouldn't just allow you to hit gouging for harder damage but also deal with raging bolt if it turn out to be a speedy variant. I do see one problem with your team in the weather match ups and it's the lack of a water/ fire resist. You having tera to is okay but then it leaves you vulnerable to other threats you can't handle. Like you tera slowking but now Gliscor can't tera for gouging for example. I think if you add a dragon type/ water type to the team you can wall rain and sun team much eaiser. Something like a boots kyurem or alo is an idea. It's up too you of what you want.
It helps with team matchups against things like Gouging Fire. And it was also a bit useful against Volcorona before it was banned. If you didn't support the ban for either one of those things, you may have been unknowingly supporting an increase in Glimm usage. It's just cause and effect, really. Although, this is admittedly an oversimplification.First of all, why is everyone aaddict?! Why?! WHY?!!! The amount of Glimmora leads I’ve had to face has been ridiculous.
I will also say that Stealth Rocks help a lot with Kyurem (though this is not unique to Glimm) and T-spikes can be really nice against Wellspring, Zamazenta, and Raging Bolt. In general, there are a lot of borderline threats or at least mons that were considered this in DLC2 that Glimm can help the team matchup for in some way. Of course, Glimm was good before. But I wouldn't be surprised if DLC2 didn't have an uptick in usage.
Waterpon seriously is a nightmare to play around. So many teams I've tried to set up that just get decimated by it due to Ivy crits or Encore/Boosting. SAD!
So true LMAO. You know it's tough to answer defensively when even stall struggles against it. You're basically forced to outspeed it until WHOOPS it u turns out and switched into pult.
I've been trying to toy around Grassy Seed/Def boosting highjinks for fun and its seriously awe inducing to see it kinda just walk over certain mons. Sure the teams are a bit memey but it feels especially egregious at times lol.
With that being said, watching Ursaluna tank a Ivy just to gunk shot OHK feels good. Little bastard deserves it every single time.
Corviknight seeing ogerpon proceed to encore and get +4 ivy cudgel to death
Great question. I’ve built a ton of balance teams in a variety of sub-playstyles and weather can often be a sneaky weakness that suddenly appears when you’re in ladder and testing. There are a couple mons that work exceptionally well against weather, but like everything, you can’t rely on just one mon to dismantle 6 of your opponents, otherwise that weather would simply be unviable (
vs sand anyone?) 
One of my favorite weather answers, pressing luster purge is free against every weather setter and getting the def drop on a switch like hatterene, corv, glowking, or ghold can mean that they drop in a second hit, giving you the early lead in KOs. Watch out for gambit and roaring moon but they don’t like other coverage moves that it can carry. I usually say luster purge first as if they become mega greedy and try to stay in (veil or pelliper uturn) you kill them on the spot, making the matchup significantly more managable
The assault vest set is the primary weather counter, beating all manner of special attackers and even serving as emergency physical checks if you can attack on a choice locked resisted hit. If you’re struggling for damage I’d say run max spa modest as it has surprisingly high damage output and can still live things like
in a pinch since it is so naturally bulky and has the assault vest boost. It also has access to liquid voice psychic noise to prevent setup sweepers ( 
in a pinch) and flip turn for better pivoting
Not only is it worthwhile to use chilly reception to change the weather, its assault vest set is fairly adept at dealing with weather’s special attackers. You have to be somewhat careful around sun specifically but getting it in on
, changing the weather, and pivoting in something that can threaten it will always be useful
Salt cure has no defensive answer on weather teams and proper EVs with a useful tera type (usually water) gives it even more survivability to chunk even more holes in the enemy’s offensive core which makes it easier for your other team members to deal with it. It doesn’t even need to be a curse variant, rocks protect recover and salt cure can do huge chunks or flat out win some matchups. Be careful around the raging bolt MU, especially on rain, but this is the closest thing you’ll get to an auto win vs weather short of dropping primal groudon
Really only for sun, although it can be useful in a pinch with tera water on rain, protect stalls out the amount of weather turns left very effectively and can scout what are often choice locked moves from attackers. Toxic puts certain attackers on a timer and can stuff certain setup threats like
Its own hazards puts immense pressure on attackers that come in, leaving them ripe to be attacked with priority or faster mons
Outside of
, their own , and sometimes , weather teams have no sucker punch resists, allowing you to clean up their teams incredibly effectively. Defensive tera is usually better for living occasional hits or even taking down those aforementioned threats, but dark can make sure you kill everything if you don’t want to use any other weather answers
Multiscale, roost, extreme speed, resisting Fire and Water attacks. Probably the least sound answer on this list but it will help you immensely in weather matchups assuming that the other 5 mons on your team don’t instantly lose to it
I don’t like clodsire on balance, but it is an option that basically auto wins vs rain specifically, and the following
will win against many sun teams. Tera grass can also help vs rain, although it isn’t as useful as some of the other mons mentioned on this list
The big clapper himself, if you can get him in with tera intact, there isn’t much that weather teams can do to take you down, they rarely carry electric immunities and their resists are often chipped by hazards or your own volt switches that allow you to pivot. For balance specifically, I would recommend leftovers, choice specs, or heavy duty boots. Booster energy means that it’s a little too offensive.
Hopefully this helps you out in your teambuilding process and maybe even building weather. As I said at the beginning, don’t go in expecting to auto win vs weather, but you can take some of these options (and other, more niche options that I didn’t necessarily mention: defensive tusk, skeledirge, other dragons) and include them in your team to have an easier time playing against weather. Have a great day and happy laddering!
Happy Page 420 my dudes!! Whats the most stoned set/team you've created this gen?
Any of my teams. Some mons that get honourable mentions are (these are all kinda viable tbh):
Nasty Plot Glowking
Assault vest Dragapult
Smack down Great Tusk
Whirlwind Iron Moth
Soiramio3000
Banned deucer.
are the weather conditions that important?
alolan nintails summons weather on the spot.
why spent two turns in order to achieve the exact same result you can achieve in 1?
according to the salamence theorem alolan ninetails should be the better option.
its not like changing the weather automatically stops aurora veil.
They are decently important and having your screens not be able to set up if you face a weather team (which are somewhat popular) is not really good. It also doesn't matter as much to set up screens over two turns since you can choose whichever screen will reduce damage the mon that is out will deal. For example, against a cinder you would set reflect first and then choose whether you need light screen in the matchup. Sometimes you only need one screen for the match. Those sort of theorems, while good, should not be followed religiously. Sometimes taking one more turn is alright if it has a larger reward. Like using dd with dragonite two times is better than haxorus SD'ing once. You will get more reward out of Dragonite because it can then outspeed lots more things (Hax does get dd, but this is just to illustrate the point).
As Finch said, Grimm has a lot of other utility moves, parting shot is the big one because you can pivot your teammates in. And since they have their attack stats are dropped, that's a prime opportunity to set up. T-wave and taunt are other good options.
Finally, Grimm hits a lot harder than a-tales due to it's 120 attack, with spirit break providing more utility by lowering the special attack stat. This means dark types that might stop it's parting shot have to be careful.
A-tales is a bit of a trap. Not a bad mon, but it can feel like dead weight in quite a few matchups. You have to decide which one to use in each scenario, but Grimm is better on average I believe.
Soiramio3000
Banned deucer.
okay then, thanks.
The problems of great tusk
I was originally going to post this in the viability rankings thread, but I thought it would be better here since it is worth discussing. In my opinion, great tusk is still a strong metagame staple, but it is no longer the ultra-splashable god of OU that many would predict it to be at the start of the generation. This is due to several factors, which I will list here, but many of them are linked to actually fitting it to the teambuilder.
What great tusk does
I know many of you already know what great tusk does, but I will just list this out anyways. Great tusk has high physical bulk and great attack. It is mainly used as a utility Pokémon, with moves like knock off for forcing progress and stealth rock, and most importantly, rapid spin, which is extremely useful in a hazard-filled metagame where the majority of teams have stealth rock and spikes. In addition, you have lots of offensive options like Earthquake, Close Combat, Headlong Rush and Ice spinner to nail a common knock off absorber, Gliscor. However, it can also be used with Bulk Up, either as an offensive sweeper/wallbreaker or a defensive backbone against many threats, most notably Kingambit, which great tusk is one of the most reliable answers to. However, great tusk is extremely customisable, with options like Choice Band and Eject Pack having success.
Longevity
This is the first problem that is the least linked to the teambuilder (although it certainly is a factor there). Great Tusk is a hazard remover, but it can quickly get worn down often. It does not have the worst longevity, but it often has to come in over and over again to spin and remove hazards. Great Tusk lacks a reliable recovery, and is often stuck between a rock and a hard place on item choice. It must either choose leftovers or heavy duty boots in many scenarios. With leftovers, it has gets worn down by Spikes that it is tasked to remove, while with boots, it is extremely hard to hard-switch into mons AND play the long game, something that you would wish to do, for example, it is regularly worn down by Blissey's seismic toss. Additionally, it is vulnerable to burn and poison, which can wear it down rapidly. However, long-term survivability is not the only factor. Sheer bulk does not automatically give a mon insane longevity, but you cannot dismiss it as a factor. Ting-Lu suffers from most of the same problems, but it is extremely bulky, giving it decent longevity to act as a stopgap to many threats and setting hazards repeatedly. Great tusk has good physical bulk, but 1: it has poor special bulk and 2: it often has to remain at high health to be able to answer the ubiquitous Kingambit. 1 can be easily answered by pairing it with a specially bulky mon, while 2 technically can by pairing it with other Gambit checks like Dondozo, but then it will not be splashable, which is required to be the very top tier. You can solve this with rest, but great tusk suffers from 4MSS. I would not consider 4MSS to be a true problem since you are supposed to cater it to your team, but it must be mentioned, making it annoying to try to fit certain moves.
Competition (as a ground utility mon)
Whether competition is a drawback of a mon or a non-factor depends on the context. It would be foolish to say "Blissey is an awful mon because it is outclassed by Ting-Lu as a special sponge on bulky offense teams", but what we are talking about is whether Great Tusk deserves to be S tier. An S-tier should be able to fit in a lot of archetypes, and thus competition is a factor here. Firstly, I will discuss the competition as a ground utility mon.
Landorus-Therian
Lando-T competes with Great Tusk for a spot on bulky offense teams. It is far less reliable at checking kingambit, cannot remove hazards, lacks item removal, but it has upsides too. It has the combination of intimidate and U-turn, and another immunity, allowing it to increase its team’s mobility. It also has usable special bulk, allowing to take 1 neutral or resisted hit in a pinch. Great Tusk has item and hazard removal, but Landorus-Therian is far more mobile.
Of course, Great Tusk is not STRICTLY competing with Landorus-Therian. I have seen successful teams which use both on the same team, and they have synergy in filling out all of the team’s utility in 2 slots. However, they stack weaknesses, meaning you have to accept a vulnerability if you would use them together, making it harder to fit both. Therefore, you will often have to choose only one of them, making it competition nonetheless. This applies to all other competitors.
Gliscor
For bulkier builds, gliscor is the competitor. It has knock off like great tusk while having landorus-therian’s typing. However, it also has poison heal, giving it amazing longevity despite lacking a reliable recovery, and it also has other utility moves. It lacks rapid spin, but it has spikes, which it can use a lot because it walls many Pokémon, and pairs well with its own knock off, along with the more niche, less reliable but potentially devastating toxic spikes. While it is weaker than great tusk based on raw attack and base power moves at first glance, it has offensive sets which use swords dance, in conjunction with facade and/or knock off to break many balance teams, and defensive sets use something it has over it, toxic, to reduce their passivity. It is arguably holding together balance in this metagame. It acts as a strong knock off absorber, and generally packs a ton of value in one slot.
Ting-Lu
Ting-Lu is a very useful support mon, capable of fitting into almost any balance team and certain BO and stall teams. It is not a blob meant to take hits forever while healing them off with recovery, it is meant to be a bastion against setup sweepers, which also happens to last throughout the game. It uses the free turns from forcing out threats by setting hazards, and wearing down switchins with ruination and STAB earthquake. At first glance, it’s unimpressive, since all it does is switch in, take a hit and then phaze the other Pokémon out or do the aforementioned things, but it happens to be a powerful stopgap against much of the metagame, and the aforementioned things are incredibly useful. It is different from great tusk, but the weakness overlap is a factor though.
Hazard Control
Hazard removal is important in a metagame with a mon that blocks defog, reduced defog distribution and increased hazard distribution (why does hydreigon get stealth rock now? Makes 0 sense). This is the main reason why great tusk rose in usage at the start of the generation, since it can remove hazards while being able to threaten Dragapult and Gholdengo. The occasional Garchomp gets threatened by ice spinner. Great tusk's main competition in Hazard control is actually Heavy Duty Boots. Another way people adapted to this meta is by running team structures with a few knock off absorbers like Skarmory, Gliscor or Clefable along with Heavy Duty Boots on the rest of the Pokémon in their party. This removes the need of hazard removal, allowing for the teams to run almost anything they wanted, since they do not have to add great tusk or lose to Gholdengo hazardstack. Actual hazard removal competition is limited to only defog users and Iron treads. However, Hatterene is also massive competition, it can either run a calm mind set which can be annoying to deal with, or an eject button pivot. Additionally, bulky offense have been using weird but effective cores to deter hazards, like Iron Crowns + Lando-T. While great tusk is undoubtedly the best hazard REMOVAL, it has competition for the best hazard CONTROL.
Kingambit Answer
Every team needs a kingambit answer, and great tusk is the most reliable one. However, it is far from the only answer. Zamazenta is the most direct. It is easier to fit on a team alongside tusk’s aforementioned ground competition, and exchanges hazard and item removal for different utility in speed control. Zamazenta can be used on balance, bulky offense and hyper offense teams too, meaning it is quite splashable, some can make an argument that it is even more splashable than great tusk. Dondozo is another option for stall and fat balance. It not only answers kingambit, but it blanket checks almost all of the physical metagame in the tier. Iron Valiant allows HO teams to forgo great tusk. It quad resists sucker punch and can hit it back hard, making for a good revenge killer.
Great Tusk in the metagame
Great tusk feels less important in the metagame. It has alternatives to many of its roles. Especially spinning, which feels less mandatory due to how many alternatives there are. Additionally, despite its customisability, it is also very predictable. It has to run Ice Spinner to not get walled by Gliscor and Dragonite, among other things, and on top of that, it almost always has rapid spin on top of that. The metagame is also harsher towards it, for example Balloon Gholdengo rising in usage, which is an annoyance, and it is easy to adapt to it. That said, it is still great tusk. Its offensively-oriented sets provide useful role compression for offensive teams. After all, these teams also need a hazard control method and a kingambit answer, and their face pace helps get around its longevity issue because games are usually shorter. It can only perform its roles for so long during a match, but offense doesn’t need to care. Additionally, some balance teams can use defense tusk, which is arguably the most solid kingambit answer out there, while allowing them to forego boot spam, which is notable for collapsing after one misplay into a knock off. Even stall teams may want tusk, as a removal option that Gholdengo doesn’t want to come near, as well as relieving pressure from Dondozo.
Conclusion
This post is not saying that Great Tusk is bad. This post is saying that Great Tusk is not the best Pokémon around, because it is not as splashable as some people say. Great tusk does have its flaws, but every Pokémon does, and great tusk provides benefits to some teams. Just because it doesn’t benefit all teams, doesn’t mean it’s a bad Pokémon. It is just far less splashable, making it more of an A+/S- type of mon. What are your thoughts though?
I was originally going to post this in the viability rankings thread, but I thought it would be better here since it is worth discussing. In my opinion, great tusk is still a strong metagame staple, but it is no longer the ultra-splashable god of OU that many would predict it to be at the start of the generation. This is due to several factors, which I will list here, but many of them are linked to actually fitting it to the teambuilder.
What great tusk does
I know many of you already know what great tusk does, but I will just list this out anyways. Great tusk has high physical bulk and great attack. It is mainly used as a utility Pokémon, with moves like knock off for forcing progress and stealth rock, and most importantly, rapid spin, which is extremely useful in a hazard-filled metagame where the majority of teams have stealth rock and spikes. In addition, you have lots of offensive options like Earthquake, Close Combat, Headlong Rush and Ice spinner to nail a common knock off absorber, Gliscor. However, it can also be used with Bulk Up, either as an offensive sweeper/wallbreaker or a defensive backbone against many threats, most notably Kingambit, which great tusk is one of the most reliable answers to. However, great tusk is extremely customisable, with options like Choice Band and Eject Pack having success.
Longevity
This is the first problem that is the least linked to the teambuilder (although it certainly is a factor there). Great Tusk is a hazard remover, but it can quickly get worn down often. It does not have the worst longevity, but it often has to come in over and over again to spin and remove hazards. Great Tusk lacks a reliable recovery, and is often stuck between a rock and a hard place on item choice. It must either choose leftovers or heavy duty boots in many scenarios. With leftovers, it has gets worn down by Spikes that it is tasked to remove, while with boots, it is extremely hard to hard-switch into mons AND play the long game, something that you would wish to do, for example, it is regularly worn down by Blissey's seismic toss. Additionally, it is vulnerable to burn and poison, which can wear it down rapidly. However, long-term survivability is not the only factor. Sheer bulk does not automatically give a mon insane longevity, but you cannot dismiss it as a factor. Ting-Lu suffers from most of the same problems, but it is extremely bulky, giving it decent longevity to act as a stopgap to many threats and setting hazards repeatedly. Great tusk has good physical bulk, but 1: it has poor special bulk and 2: it often has to remain at high health to be able to answer the ubiquitous Kingambit. 1 can be easily answered by pairing it with a specially bulky mon, while 2 technically can by pairing it with other Gambit checks like Dondozo, but then it will not be splashable, which is required to be the very top tier. You can solve this with rest, but great tusk suffers from 4MSS. I would not consider 4MSS to be a true problem since you are supposed to cater it to your team, but it must be mentioned, making it annoying to try to fit certain moves.
Competition (as a ground utility mon)
Whether competition is a drawback of a mon or a non-factor depends on the context. It would be foolish to say "Blissey is an awful mon because it is outclassed by Ting-Lu as a special sponge on bulky offense teams", but what we are talking about is whether Great Tusk deserves to be S tier. An S-tier should be able to fit in a lot of archetypes, and thus competition is a factor here. Firstly, I will discuss the competition as a ground utility mon.
Landorus-TherianLando-T competes with Great Tusk for a spot on bulky offense teams. It is far less reliable at checking kingambit, cannot remove hazards, lacks item removal, but it has upsides too. It has the combination of intimidate and U-turn, and another immunity, allowing it to increase its team’s mobility. It also has usable special bulk, allowing to take 1 neutral or resisted hit in a pinch. Great Tusk has item and hazard removal, but Landorus-Therian is far more mobile.
Of course, Great Tusk is not STRICTLY competing with Landorus-Therian. I have seen successful teams which use both on the same team, and they have synergy in filling out all of the team’s utility in 2 slots. However, they stack weaknesses, meaning you have to accept a vulnerability if you would use them together, making it harder to fit both. Therefore, you will often have to choose only one of them, making it competition nonetheless. This applies to all other competitors.
GliscorFor bulkier builds, gliscor is the competitor. It has knock off like great tusk while having landorus-therian’s typing. However, it also has poison heal, giving it amazing longevity despite lacking a reliable recovery, and it also has other utility moves. It lacks rapid spin, but it has spikes, which it can use a lot because it walls many Pokémon, and pairs well with its own knock off, along with the more niche, less reliable but potentially devastating toxic spikes. While it is weaker than great tusk based on raw attack and base power moves at first glance, it has offensive sets which use swords dance, in conjunction with facade and/or knock off to break many balance teams, and defensive sets use something it has over it, toxic, to reduce their passivity. It is arguably holding together balance in this metagame. It acts as a strong knock off absorber, and generally packs a ton of value in one slot.
Ting-LuTing-Lu is a very useful support mon, capable of fitting into almost any balance team and certain BO and stall teams. It is not a blob meant to take hits forever while healing them off with recovery, it is meant to be a bastion against setup sweepers, which also happens to last throughout the game. It uses the free turns from forcing out threats by setting hazards, and wearing down switchins with ruination and STAB earthquake. At first glance, it’s unimpressive, since all it does is switch in, take a hit and then phaze the other Pokémon out or do the aforementioned things, but it happens to be a powerful stopgap against much of the metagame, and the aforementioned things are incredibly useful. It is different from great tusk, but the weakness overlap is a factor though.
Hazard Control
Hazard removal is important in a metagame with a mon that blocks defog, reduced defog distribution and increased hazard distribution (why does hydreigon get stealth rock now? Makes 0 sense). This is the main reason why great tusk rose in usage at the start of the generation, since it can remove hazards while being able to threaten Dragapult and Gholdengo. The occasional Garchomp gets threatened by ice spinner. Great tusk's main competition in Hazard control is actually Heavy Duty Boots. Another way people adapted to this meta is by running team structures with a few knock off absorbers like Skarmory, Gliscor or Clefable along with Heavy Duty Boots on the rest of the Pokémon in their party. This removes the need of hazard removal, allowing for the teams to run almost anything they wanted, since they do not have to add great tusk or lose to Gholdengo hazardstack. Actual hazard removal competition is limited to only defog users and Iron treads. However, Hatterene is also massive competition, it can either run a calm mind set which can be annoying to deal with, or an eject button pivot. Additionally, bulky offense have been using weird but effective cores to deter hazards, like Iron Crowns + Lando-T. While great tusk is undoubtedly the best hazard REMOVAL, it has competition for the best hazard CONTROL.
Kingambit Answer
Every team needs a kingambit answer, and great tusk is the most reliable one. However, it is far from the only answer. Zamazenta is the most direct. It is easier to fit on a team alongside tusk’s aforementioned ground competition, and exchanges hazard and item removal for different utility in speed control. Zamazenta can be used on balance, bulky offense and hyper offense teams too, meaning it is quite splashable, some can make an argument that it is even more splashable than great tusk. Dondozo is another option for stall and fat balance. It not only answers kingambit, but it blanket checks almost all of the physical metagame in the tier. Iron Valiant allows HO teams to forgo great tusk. It quad resists sucker punch and can hit it back hard, making for a good revenge killer.
Great Tusk in the metagame
Great tusk feels less important in the metagame. It has alternatives to many of its roles. Especially spinning, which feels less mandatory due to how many alternatives there are. Additionally, despite its customisability, it is also very predictable. It has to run Ice Spinner to not get walled by Gliscor and Dragonite, among other things, and on top of that, it almost always has rapid spin on top of that. The metagame is also harsher towards it, for example Balloon Gholdengo rising in usage, which is an annoyance, and it is easy to adapt to it. That said, it is still great tusk. Its offensively-oriented sets provide useful role compression for offensive teams. After all, these teams also need a hazard control method and a kingambit answer, and their face pace helps get around its longevity issue because games are usually shorter. It can only perform its roles for so long during a match, but offense doesn’t need to care. Additionally, some balance teams can use defense tusk, which is arguably the most solid kingambit answer out there, while allowing them to forego boot spam, which is notable for collapsing after one misplay into a knock off. Even stall teams may want tusk, as a removal option that Gholdengo doesn’t want to come near, as well as relieving pressure from Dondozo.
Conclusion
This post is not saying that Great Tusk is bad. This post is saying that Great Tusk is not the best Pokémon around, because it is not as splashable as some people say. Great tusk does have its flaws, but every Pokémon does, and great tusk provides benefits to some teams. Just because it doesn’t benefit all teams, doesn’t mean it’s a bad Pokémon. It is just far less splashable, making it more of an A+/S- type of mon. What are your thoughts though?