15. Gliscor

Ground/Flying · Poison Heal (99.98%) · A tier, 15.82% usage (2026-04, #6) · 75/95/125/45/75/95 · the self-healing Toxic Orb glue that out-grinds passive play, controls hazards both ways, and can flip into a Swords Dance wincon off the same item.

Format role

Gliscor is one of the format’s defining defensive pivots and the audit flags it (with Alomomola) as a mon that over-performs its A-rank slot — #6 usage. The Poison Heal + Toxic Orb engine makes it immune to Ground, immune to burn/poison/Toxic via its own orb, and heals 1/8 HP every turn, so it repeatedly sits on passive mons if you do not strip the orb or force damage quickly. Its Ground/Flying typing and 4× Ice weakness are fixed liabilities — but so is every wall it grinds; defenses are reliable, and Gliscor is among the most reliable. For the aggressive-offense player it cuts two ways. Defensively it is one of the most annoying pivots to crack: it Protect-farms orb ticks, Defogs your hazards or sets its own, and Knocks your Boots. Offensively the Swords Dance set is a genuine offense wincon — Poison Heal gives the recovery to set up repeatedly, and the orb turns Facade into a 140-BP coverage hammer. Either way it almost never deviates from its core kit: 99.98% Poison Heal, 99.86% Toxic Orb.

Sets

Specially-defensive glue (the standard) — Careful 244/0/36/0/228/0 (33.0%) is the top spread; Careful 252/0/16/0/240/0 (32.2%) is functionally identical.

Gliscor @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
Nature: Careful
EVs: 244 HP / 36 Def / 228 SpD
- Earthquake    (94.1%)
- Protect       (83.9%)
- Toxic         (71.0%)
- Defog         (52.7%)

This spread → 352 HP / 295 Def / 267 SpD. The SpD tilt lets it eat repeated special chip and Toxic-stall things down. Defog (52.7%) is the most common 4th move on the wall — it is more often a hazard remover than setter at the top of usage. Swap Defog ↔ Knock Off (20.2%) ↔ Roost (13.6%) per team need.

Hazard-setting glue — same Careful spread, hazards over Defog.

Gliscor @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
Nature: Careful
EVs: 244 HP / 36 Def / 228 SpD
- Earthquake
- Protect
- Spikes        (29.1%) / Stealth Rock (11.7%)
- Knock Off     (20.2%) / Toxic

The Spikes (29.1%) / Stealth Rock (11.7%) builds turn Gliscor into a hazard engine; Protect banks an orb tick and scouts Choice locks before you commit a layer. Knock Off strips Boots so the layers actually bite.

Swords Dance breaker — Swords Dance appears at 7.7% of movesets; the offensive spread is part of the block’s 18.1% “Other,” so the exact EV split is not in the top-6 — treat the spread below as the standard Jolly build, not a cited top spread.

Gliscor @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe   (assumed; not a cited top-6 spread)
- Swords Dance  (7.7%)
- Earthquake
- Facade
- Protect / Knock Off

Jolly 252 hits 317 Speed and 317 Atk (634 at +2). Facade is 140 BP with Toxic Orb active and covers the Flying/Grass/Levitate mons that wall Earthquake.

What it does

The defensive sets are a grind engine, not a turn-one wall. Poison Heal + Protect means Gliscor gains 1/8 (44 with the 352-HP spread) every Protect turn and pays nothing for status, so it can repeatedly sit on passive mons while it Toxic-stalls or pivots. Against offense it Defogs your hazards (or sets its own and Knocks Boots), Protects to scout your Choice lock or U-turn, and clicks Earthquake on the grounded breakers it walls. The key read for you as the attacker: Protect telegraphs the orb-tick farm — if Gliscor Protects on your switch it’s healing, so don’t be the one who blinks. The SD set flips the script: with the orb already active you can SD on a forced switch at no HP cost, and one boost turns Earthquake + Facade into near-unwallable coverage. Note the two holes offense exploits — Gliscor is 4× weak to Ice (Ground/Flying), and even the bulky SpD spread (295 Def) folds to a 4× Ice hit, so strong physical Ice (Great Tusk’s Ice Spinner all but one-shots) and any special Ice nuke delete it outright.

Load-bearing calcs

Offensive Gliscor (Jolly 252 Atk → 317; Toxic Orb active for Facade):

+2 Earthquake vs Kingambit (0/0): 246-291 (72.1-85.3%) — not a clean OHKO, but Stealth Rock + a layer of Spikes pushes it into KO range, and Gliscor takes Sucker Punch off the orb-fed bulk; Kingambit can’t switch into the +2.
EQ vs Gholdengo (0/0): 302-356 (95.9-113.0%) [11/16 OHKO] — Ground is 2× on Steel; un-boosted EQ already rolls a KO on offensive Gholdengo if its Air Balloon is gone. Intact Balloon = full immunity, so this is a punish-the-pop calc, not a clean answer.
+2 Earthquake vs Great Tusk (252 HP/0 Def): 229-270 (52.8-62.2%) — bulky Great Tusk eats one even at +2; you need rocks + a follow-up. Don’t expect the SD set to muscle through Tusk alone.
+2 Facade vs Corviknight (252 HP/168+ Def): 201-237 (50.2-59.2%) — Facade (Normal, no STAB) dents the EQ-immune Steel/Flying wall but doesn’t one-shot; it 2HKOs through Roost only with chip.

Defensive Gliscor (Careful 244/0/36/0/228 → 352 HP / 295 Def / 267 SpD) getting broken:

Kyurem Ice Beam vs Gliscor: 576-676 (163.6-192.0%) [guaranteed OHKO] — the 4× Ice weakness in one click, straight through the SpD investment; Kyurem is the textbook hard answer (75.4 in the block).
Great Tusk Ice Spinner vs Gliscor: 312-368 (88.6-104.5%) — the 4× Ice physical click (no STAB for Ground/Fighting Tusk) crushes it and clears the hazards Gliscor just set; any prior chip or a Protosynthesis boost turns the roll into a clean OHKO.

Checks & counters

HARD counters (block %): Kyurem (75.4) — 4× Ice Beam/Freeze-Dry OHKOs through SpD and does not mind most defensive Gliscor lines; Manaphy (87.3, the #1 listed switch-in) — bulky enough to Scald/Ice Beam it and can mitigate Toxic with Hydration on rain variants or team support, switching out 96% of the time; Melmetal (64.5) and Ferrothorn (63.5) — Steel walls that ignore EQ-less Gliscor, set up their own hazards / Knock back, though they hate Toxic. Few of these are threatened by the defensive set, so Gliscor leans on partners to break them.

SOFT checks / revenge: Ogerpon-Wellspring (60.9) and Dragonite (57.9) — offensive pivots that pressure it and force it out; Scizor-Mega (54.8) and Great Tusk (54.7) — physical attackers that revenge or break it (Tusk’s Ice Spinner all but OHKOs, see calcs); Latios-Mega (60.8) and Ursaluna (58.5) round out the list. For raw revenge, any Ice attacker erases it and anything that outpaces the 317-Speed SD set with priority or a Scarf cuts the snowball before it starts.

★ Offense angle

Two clean ways to weaponize it. As your breaker: the Jolly SD set is an aggressive-offense pick most “Gliscor answers” don’t cover, because they’re tuned for the defensive set. Bring it in on a forced switch (the orb’s already ticking, so you’re at no HP risk), SD on the predicted pivot, and the +2 EQ / Facade combo punches a hole — +2 EQ is 72-85% on offensive Kingambit (a KO after one hazard layer) and +2 Facade is 50-59% on the EQ-immune Corviknight — not a 2HKO on its own, but enough that hazard chip turns it into one and gives you a non-EQ answer to the wall. Pair it behind your own Spikes so each forced switch racks chip toward those KO ranges, and note it ties max-Speed base 95s and outruns base-94-and-under threats at 317. As hazard glue on more grounded offense: the Careful Spikes + Knock Off build is the most efficient way to layer Spikes and strip Boots so your wallbreakers’ chip math lands; Protect lets you scout Choice locks before committing a sweeper.

Breaking the enemy Gliscor is the more common job for pure offense, and the answer is blunt: do not out-grind it — race it with Ice. A 4× Ice hit ends it outright (Kyurem Ice Beam is a clean OHKO and Great Tusk Ice Spinner all but OHKOs the standard SpD spread; any Ice coverage on your team is gold). Whatever you do, don’t let it Protect-farm orb ticks for free — make every turn it spends on the field cost more than 1/8.

Top teammates & cores

From the block’s top-10 teammates, Gliscor pairs into balance/bulky-offense shells rather than pure offense. The strongest functional core is Gliscor + Toxapex (34.4%) — the classic Poison-Heal-wall + Regenerator-wall defensive backbone that covers huge chunks of the slower physical/contact metagame and lets Gliscor pivot freely while Toxapex Hazes away setup it can’t handle. Gliscor + Dragonite (33.4%) is the more offense-leaning pairing: Gliscor’s Spikes + Knock chip flips Dragonite’s Extreme Speed / DD KO ranges, and Dragonite’s Multiscale bulk covers the Ice attackers that delete Gliscor. Charizard-Mega-X (32.3%), Melmetal (32.2%), and Keldeo (31.8%) round out the standard balance-into-offense cores, all leaning on Gliscor’s hazard chip to break the walls Gliscor itself can’t touch. Zamazenta (21.2%) and Terapagos (20.7%) are the top offensive wincons it enables behind that hazard pressure.