But it does have downsides. For pokemon using it defensively (i.e. Skeledirge switching its type to Fairy), it loses its resistances to key attacking types like Fairy, Steel, etc. once it goes Tera Fairy, which makes its matchups against Pokemon like Iron Valiant worse. Same applies to other defensive Pokemon like Toxapex Tera'ing into a Grass-Type (makes its MU against something like Scizor a lot worse) or various Steel-Types Tera'ing into a Flying-type (Gholdengo, Kingambit, ect.) where they become SR weak & lose key resistances that made their typing defensively great in the first place.
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Except that this downside never comes into play due to simply looking at the teams and going "ok, I maybe won't tera X mon due to that opening up my team. I will instead use one of my other 5 mons who can tera in this matchup" In addition, some pokemon are just strict upgrades when terad. Like its a rare situation where Garganacl wants to stay a rock type, and the only time you wouldn't tera it is saving the tera for a teammate who needs it more. Aleph is correct in that with the slightest thinking ahead, the only real downside to tera is not being able to use it later.
I keep seeing people bring up espathra and volc as “broken with tera examples” and I still dont fully agree?
Volc, the reasoning is sound. Combination of boots and tera blast replacing HP is huge. But, Id like to ask, do we think volc would still be a meta threat as a bulky settup sweeper sitting behind a shed tail sub, without tera? Giga Drain/quiver dance/2 stab kinda brew.
Espathra, I contend, is still annoyingly strong without Tera and with Shed Tail. A stored power psychic type with calm mind and speed boost? Its a mon that gets exponentially better behind a sub, especially one it spends 0 hp or effort setting up itself. Tera typing, atleast the common ones, doesnt stop espathra’s settups being stalled or stopped by toxic, spore, ect. Shed tail does.
Volc, the reasoning is sound. Combination of boots and tera blast replacing HP is huge. But, Id like to ask, do we think volc would still be a meta threat as a bulky settup sweeper sitting behind a shed tail sub, without tera? Giga Drain/quiver dance/2 stab kinda brew.
Espathra, I contend, is still annoyingly strong without Tera and with Shed Tail. A stored power psychic type with calm mind and speed boost? Its a mon that gets exponentially better behind a sub, especially one it spends 0 hp or effort setting up itself. Tera typing, atleast the common ones, doesnt stop espathra’s settups being stalled or stopped by toxic, spore, ect. Shed tail does.
Bit of a stretch imo to argue that the main downside of the mechanic is the basic function of the mechanic itself. That Skeledirge may have a weaker match up against Iron Valiant sure, but it also has a much better match up against any Pokemon that is actually on its opponent’s team.
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Still, the ability to turn two of its weaknesses into resists with a tera into fairy or fighting can't really help (special mention to the former, as one of fairy's weaknesses is poison... yeah, I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to try to combat a psychic type with a poison type). Also, all the spore users are much slower than it even before Speed Boost starts working its magic, as are most of the Toxic users. This means that they'd pretty much have to catch it on a switch, as otherwise, they'll be, as the Guilty Gear announcer says, "DESTROYED!".
On the flipside, in the case of Skeledirge, it loses its Stealth Rock weakness. Same for Volcarona; it going Ground means it turns its crippling Stealth Rock weakness into a resistance.
I suppose it's time I addressed the 3 anti-ban arguments I find the least convincing and why I don't buy them:
"When something Teras into a different type, it becomes weak to other types."
Sure, but it's not weak to those other types until it does. As an example: A Tera Ground Volcarona that has QD'd once can be RK'd by a Flower Trick from Scarf Meowscarada... if Volc has Tera'd, that is. If you're playing Meow in that circumstance, do you think it would make any sense to bring it in against Volc if it hasn't? Hell no; the most you're doing to it is tickling it with Knock Off before getting roasted by the inevitable Fire Blast that follows. And if you're playing Volc, are you Tera'ing while Meow is still around? Of course not; unless a previous circumstance absolutely required you to, you're staying away from that Tera button until Meow is gone. And remember, you don't know when something will Tera or what it will Tera into until it does. The aforementioned Volc's Tera type could just as easily be Ice, and Meow wouldn't save you if it was.
Besides, does it really make any sense to have to run both a check to a given mon in its normal form, and then another check to that same mon once it Teras?
"Just ban (Pokemon) if (Pokemon) is broken with Tera."
There's a reason I keep saying that battle gimmicks are the last things we should care about maintaining. Stop and think about how many Pokemon you could say are broken simply because of what they can do after Tera'ing. A few I can name off the top of my head: Annihilape, Dragonite, Espathra, Kingambit, Roaring Moon, Volcarona, Dragapult, Iron Valiant. Then tack on another batch of potential abusers if those were all banned (e.g. Garganacl, Ting-Lu, Garchomp, Toxapex, Iron Moth, Great Tusk). Sure, you might still have a few broken mons independent of Tera's legality (e.g. Chi-Yu, Chien-Pao, maybe Gholdengo), but I'd rather throw out the gimmick and three problematic mons than put as many as seventeen - most of which wouldn't even be problematic if they couldn't use the gimmick in the first place - on the chopping block just to preserve said gimmick. If you have to potentially cut out more than a third of the meta to make Tera healthy (assuming you can even stop there), that's a pretty good sign that it's the gimmick that needs to go, not the Pokemon.
And my favorite for last: "I'm not playing anymore if you ban it."
Which would be the better way to respond: to mock it with a line like "If you don't let me play ball in your house, I'll hang myself", or to just say "Bye, Felicia"?
"When something Teras into a different type, it becomes weak to other types."
Sure, but it's not weak to those other types until it does. As an example: A Tera Ground Volcarona that has QD'd once can be RK'd by a Flower Trick from Scarf Meowscarada... if Volc has Tera'd, that is. If you're playing Meow in that circumstance, do you think it would make any sense to bring it in against Volc if it hasn't? Hell no; the most you're doing to it is tickling it with Knock Off before getting roasted by the inevitable Fire Blast that follows. And if you're playing Volc, are you Tera'ing while Meow is still around? Of course not; unless a previous circumstance absolutely required you to, you're staying away from that Tera button until Meow is gone. And remember, you don't know when something will Tera or what it will Tera into until it does. The aforementioned Volc's Tera type could just as easily be Ice, and Meow wouldn't save you if it was.
Besides, does it really make any sense to have to run both a check to a given mon in its normal form, and then another check to that same mon once it Teras?
"Just ban (Pokemon) if (Pokemon) is broken with Tera."
There's a reason I keep saying that battle gimmicks are the last things we should care about maintaining. Stop and think about how many Pokemon you could say are broken simply because of what they can do after Tera'ing. A few I can name off the top of my head: Annihilape, Dragonite, Espathra, Kingambit, Roaring Moon, Volcarona, Dragapult, Iron Valiant. Then tack on another batch of potential abusers if those were all banned (e.g. Garganacl, Ting-Lu, Garchomp, Toxapex, Iron Moth, Great Tusk). Sure, you might still have a few broken mons independent of Tera's legality (e.g. Chi-Yu, Chien-Pao, maybe Gholdengo), but I'd rather throw out the gimmick and three problematic mons than put as many as seventeen - most of which wouldn't even be problematic if they couldn't use the gimmick in the first place - on the chopping block just to preserve said gimmick. If you have to potentially cut out more than a third of the meta to make Tera healthy (assuming you can even stop there), that's a pretty good sign that it's the gimmick that needs to go, not the Pokemon.
And my favorite for last: "I'm not playing anymore if you ban it."
Which would be the better way to respond: to mock it with a line like "If you don't let me play ball in your house, I'll hang myself", or to just say "Bye, Felicia"?
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Finally finished getting reqs earlier today and I want to corroborate what TPP and many other users that I've talked to have said: this reqs run was pretty brutal. The reason being that this meta is so volatile. So many unexpected teras like tera fight skeledirge and tera steel dnite made me lose or came close, and in return, my own nonsense like tera fire scizor ended games too. The bottom line is this:
None of the arguments offered by the pro-tera side have challenged my first post in this thread. Nobody has attempted to fully address it, and only KM addressed parts of it and left me with the last word. After regurgitating every argument I already put down, what the pro-tera side comes down to is "I don't have trouble with tera" "I don't have difficulty predicting it" "I think it's fun" etc. I can't really respond to these subjective feelings, and I'm not snarky enough to just quote bits of my post in response to every user who types a pro-tera argument I already addressed. So unless somebody decides to quote me, I'll just respond to one last flawed argument that I've heard recently:
"I just don't see how if tera is so random and inconsistent, how the top players have all managed to be consistent here. How have players been 1900-2k for a month straight in a meta that is supposedly just Yahtzee lol"
Short answer: The best ladder players were still at the top in the dmax meta. Does that mean we should've kept dmax too?
Long answer: The best players are gonna be the best no matter how healthy or unhealthy the meta is, and their AVERAGE performance shouldn't be taken as an indicator of anything. I emphasize average because even if they drop a game or two to a worse player due to an unhealthy mon/mechanic, they are still going to win more often than not and be at the top of the ladder more often than not. This is because competitive pokemon does reward skill to some degree, even in horseshit metas like dmax. However, unlike when playing ladder, the importance of SINGLE games is greatly emphasized in the tournament setting. As such, the effect of unhealthy mons/mechanics is amplified, and losing to silly bullshit is going to make the competitive scene feel much more uncompetitive. A healthy meta that upholds competitive integrity for both ladder and tour is what we should be aiming for.
I'll throw in a bonus one too actually
"Stop comparing dmax to tera! This is in bad faith!"
If your argument defending tera can also be used to defend dmax, it's probably not a great one because dmax was indefensible.
That's it folks. I'll edit these into the big one. Get reqs, vote ban, and have some happy holidays.
None of the arguments offered by the pro-tera side have challenged my first post in this thread. Nobody has attempted to fully address it, and only KM addressed parts of it and left me with the last word. After regurgitating every argument I already put down, what the pro-tera side comes down to is "I don't have trouble with tera" "I don't have difficulty predicting it" "I think it's fun" etc. I can't really respond to these subjective feelings, and I'm not snarky enough to just quote bits of my post in response to every user who types a pro-tera argument I already addressed. So unless somebody decides to quote me, I'll just respond to one last flawed argument that I've heard recently:
"I just don't see how if tera is so random and inconsistent, how the top players have all managed to be consistent here. How have players been 1900-2k for a month straight in a meta that is supposedly just Yahtzee lol"
Short answer: The best ladder players were still at the top in the dmax meta. Does that mean we should've kept dmax too?
Long answer: The best players are gonna be the best no matter how healthy or unhealthy the meta is, and their AVERAGE performance shouldn't be taken as an indicator of anything. I emphasize average because even if they drop a game or two to a worse player due to an unhealthy mon/mechanic, they are still going to win more often than not and be at the top of the ladder more often than not. This is because competitive pokemon does reward skill to some degree, even in horseshit metas like dmax. However, unlike when playing ladder, the importance of SINGLE games is greatly emphasized in the tournament setting. As such, the effect of unhealthy mons/mechanics is amplified, and losing to silly bullshit is going to make the competitive scene feel much more uncompetitive. A healthy meta that upholds competitive integrity for both ladder and tour is what we should be aiming for.
I'll throw in a bonus one too actually
"Stop comparing dmax to tera! This is in bad faith!"
If your argument defending tera can also be used to defend dmax, it's probably not a great one because dmax was indefensible.
That's it folks. I'll edit these into the big one. Get reqs, vote ban, and have some happy holidays.
Would just like to weigh in on this a bit.
I’m in the camp of simply revealing terras, but would be fine with 1 terra per team. It’s mainly just because removing the prediction factor fixes the current gamebreaking factor without gutting the viability of a LOT of pokemon.
The a lot of the current meta (and the pokemon surrounded by it) are enabled specifically by what terra grants them (over their own, independent viability). The easiest example off of the top of my head is espeed dragonite, and in that regard I think it’s fine allowing terra to exist because banning it would wildly disrupt the player expression (by virtue of how terra grants a further range of options for players to utilize) within the current metagame. Having so many tools for players to utilize will (generally) allow for far more meta development, strategy, etc. and that kind of ingenuity will help to keep the metagame both interesting and healthy.
(This is of course, more dependent if anything on how pokemon with many viable Teras affect the metagame. I’m personally suspecting that a combination of innovation and proper tier balancing will make this far less of an issue with most of the pokemon listed having some clear line between defensive/offensive Tera’s and the variety of teras that get covered by specific options; so I don’t suspect teambuilding to get super restrictive if the risk of a pokemon tera’ing on a dime to some random bullshit you couldn’t have prepared for is eliminated by the presence of information. I just wanted to bring that up because of a very well written post earlier in the thread).
At the same time, the focus by banning terra would more likely function as a hit to offense (specifically choice spam and setup sweepers) far more over defense, and I think (personally) that specific aspect of the ban is one of the more important parts to evaluate.
I’m admittedly not in the loop enough to know exactly how strong setup is in singles in general, however considering the prominence of boosting this gen compared to others I think that also may warrant limiting terra to 1 mon even on its own.
The game as a whole (not just singles) is insanely volatile as a result, to the point that haze is ever-present in doubles right now and unaware is the holy grail because you can dump multiple powerful tera mons on a team next to a setup mon and your opponent has to play around that. At the same time though, some of these boosters require terra, or at least often rely on it, to function; such as (to my knowledge) skeledirge.
All that being said, instead of directly rocking the boat on what has the potential to be a far healthier metagame with the vast number of viable sets and mons (by banning the mechanic), allowing players to naturally deduce which sets the enemy is using would be more of an extension of how pokemon already works on a fundamental level (and resultantly, I feel far more comfortable with it being that way). Because most of these prominent setup users are enabled by defensive terras, providing a way to prepare for a check these defensive terras already indirectly nerfs them on their own. This is especially considering that most pokemon can already be narrowed down to a select few sets and a select few terras (highlighted in the post above) so having an extra piece of information which enables inference as a counterbalance isn’t exactly terrible. If you’ve prepared for a set, you now have the team composition and one piece of information on every single Pokémon’s sets to help narrow down how you can act on that information.
That’s it. Tried to keep this one simple because unlike many people in this thread, I personally don’t have the same experience and won’t be able to cite more than general statements and examples (as I have been barely able to play due to the holidays). I wanted to weigh in because I plan on spending good time in this format.
I would also like to say that I already feel comfortable enough with my understanding of the game to make a post like this, but if it’s considered “uninformed” by the standards of those more experienced than me then please delete the post and move on. I only wish to give my two sense on the matter since I do genuinely think this mechanic will be beneficial to the metagame once a restriction is put in. I genuinely adore what some tera-enabled pokemon provide for the game and honestly believe it will be healthier in the long run (instead of making it stab or ban) to simply make preparing your team’s checks to a specific set far more consistent and rewarding.
And, although this is completely personal, the feeling of making a smart play with terra or making a read on someone’s terra type feels really damn good. I like it.
I’m in the camp of simply revealing terras, but would be fine with 1 terra per team. It’s mainly just because removing the prediction factor fixes the current gamebreaking factor without gutting the viability of a LOT of pokemon.
The a lot of the current meta (and the pokemon surrounded by it) are enabled specifically by what terra grants them (over their own, independent viability). The easiest example off of the top of my head is espeed dragonite, and in that regard I think it’s fine allowing terra to exist because banning it would wildly disrupt the player expression (by virtue of how terra grants a further range of options for players to utilize) within the current metagame. Having so many tools for players to utilize will (generally) allow for far more meta development, strategy, etc. and that kind of ingenuity will help to keep the metagame both interesting and healthy.
(This is of course, more dependent if anything on how pokemon with many viable Teras affect the metagame. I’m personally suspecting that a combination of innovation and proper tier balancing will make this far less of an issue with most of the pokemon listed having some clear line between defensive/offensive Tera’s and the variety of teras that get covered by specific options; so I don’t suspect teambuilding to get super restrictive if the risk of a pokemon tera’ing on a dime to some random bullshit you couldn’t have prepared for is eliminated by the presence of information. I just wanted to bring that up because of a very well written post earlier in the thread).
At the same time, the focus by banning terra would more likely function as a hit to offense (specifically choice spam and setup sweepers) far more over defense, and I think (personally) that specific aspect of the ban is one of the more important parts to evaluate.
I’m admittedly not in the loop enough to know exactly how strong setup is in singles in general, however considering the prominence of boosting this gen compared to others I think that also may warrant limiting terra to 1 mon even on its own.
The game as a whole (not just singles) is insanely volatile as a result, to the point that haze is ever-present in doubles right now and unaware is the holy grail because you can dump multiple powerful tera mons on a team next to a setup mon and your opponent has to play around that. At the same time though, some of these boosters require terra, or at least often rely on it, to function; such as (to my knowledge) skeledirge.
All that being said, instead of directly rocking the boat on what has the potential to be a far healthier metagame with the vast number of viable sets and mons (by banning the mechanic), allowing players to naturally deduce which sets the enemy is using would be more of an extension of how pokemon already works on a fundamental level (and resultantly, I feel far more comfortable with it being that way). Because most of these prominent setup users are enabled by defensive terras, providing a way to prepare for a check these defensive terras already indirectly nerfs them on their own. This is especially considering that most pokemon can already be narrowed down to a select few sets and a select few terras (highlighted in the post above) so having an extra piece of information which enables inference as a counterbalance isn’t exactly terrible. If you’ve prepared for a set, you now have the team composition and one piece of information on every single Pokémon’s sets to help narrow down how you can act on that information.
That’s it. Tried to keep this one simple because unlike many people in this thread, I personally don’t have the same experience and won’t be able to cite more than general statements and examples (as I have been barely able to play due to the holidays). I wanted to weigh in because I plan on spending good time in this format.
I would also like to say that I already feel comfortable enough with my understanding of the game to make a post like this, but if it’s considered “uninformed” by the standards of those more experienced than me then please delete the post and move on. I only wish to give my two sense on the matter since I do genuinely think this mechanic will be beneficial to the metagame once a restriction is put in. I genuinely adore what some tera-enabled pokemon provide for the game and honestly believe it will be healthier in the long run (instead of making it stab or ban) to simply make preparing your team’s checks to a specific set far more consistent and rewarding.
And, although this is completely personal, the feeling of making a smart play with terra or making a read on someone’s terra type feels really damn good. I like it.
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After several failed attempts I could finally claimed my reqs. 3 prior accounts were required for me to finally understand that no matter how hard you can try, sometimes terastalization and gimmicky sets might make this task much more harder than it should have been.
Sometimes, when I look at gen 9 OU/UU my first thought is: "oh wow, this tier is volatile yet amazing!", I had plenty of hours put into these 2 tiers, had enjoyed them so far, but there's always been this little nuisance that impedes me from enjoying both tier to the fullest; tera typing
1: Unpredictability : This is the main argument people bring, and I agree entirely and can't even relate to people suggesting that the longer we keep using tera, the more comfortable it will be in the end as we get use to the mechanic. However I have to disagree. We can't embrace extra randomness for the sake of "fun", no team is well equipped to handle the immense diversity that exists thanks to tera. You can't possibly predict the tera of the opponent, you can't just accept that going for a super effective move against certain mon ends up being fatal for you, as that pokemon is no longer weak to your attacks, and now abuses that little slip to set up. Does it require any skill to click a button and pull of an uno reverse card to your unaware opponent? Of course not, but here it appears that people like to cherish on mind games rather than actual skill. It doesn't require much skill to use tera, i've won games on the spot thanks to chien pao, chi yu, dnite, iron valiant and many others!
2: Simply broken: It's not only pokemon that are broken, is tera boosting their status as an immense threat that gives me nausea. We have Chi yu, chien pao, dnite, kingambit, iron valiant, garganacl, dragapult, any mon that is decently viable in ou is an amazing abuser of this mechanic thanks to the defensive/offensive pressure it provides. I've won games by just going tera ghost on ting lu and letting those hazards stack vs a hopeless great tusk. And I had to make 0 effort to do so, as letting my opponent die to poison and spikes was a disgusting situation that shouldn't have happened on the first place. Not to mention silly stuff like iron valiant turning to a ghost to revenge kill an unsuspected dnite that already thought the game was wrapped up. Simply wow, can't elaborate on any more examples as this is becoming ridiculous.
3: No actual counterplay: when people bring the argument that both parts have this powerful and should use it wisely is dumb. Yes, we both posses this tera stuff, we both can make our pokemon a destructive force or an unkillable behemoth... yet this isn't healthy. Sometimes you will find yourself on a situation where going for tera seems like a risk, or your best abuser had died to opposing team thanks to them using their tera first on a turn that otherwise would have been favorable to you. Kingambit vs tusk, tusk cc's but kingambit goes flying. You do nothing, gambit get's +2 and your whole team is now dead because you have no revenge killers that live a +2 sucker punch, or if you had it, it's now dead. We don't know when will tera occur, we are just waiting for the best possible outcome for us, instead of playing a normal game with no additional 50/50's. People believe guessing is skill, but there is no skill on probability. We can't guess right every time, we can make more mistakes that normal, and this is absurd. I oppose to the idea of playing a game where every decision becomes a risk on situations that shouldn't be risky for me, but for the opponent.
banning tera entirely seems like the only reasonable solution despite the immense fun that had been brought to me thanks to this generational gimmick. I just can't keep up with this nonsense. Showing tera is silly, as it's the exact same situation with more paranoia included, banning tera blast is hilarious as an option, 1 abuser per team seems more reasonable and banning tera seems the best option for me, so yes, I vote ban!
1:ban: best option and the one I vote for
2: 1 user per team: Not the best but at least y'all will appreciate how tera is actually broken and that already good pokemon will be the only good abusers of this, proving my point that the mechanic is simply unbalanced and that any already decent mon is a great abuser of this, and those that are already good, become a nuisance, just like Hydreigon in the current UU thanks to steel typing and the lack of water/fairies to check it.
3: stab metagame: eh... no thanks but, at least a small portion of the metagame will abuse their own stabs. Namely chien pao or chi yu till it gets banned.
4: show on preview solves nothing, this is possibly the worst option for me.
5: terablast: why?
That's how I see the options, and I just don't see real arguments on to why keep this gimmick any longer.
Sometimes, when I look at gen 9 OU/UU my first thought is: "oh wow, this tier is volatile yet amazing!", I had plenty of hours put into these 2 tiers, had enjoyed them so far, but there's always been this little nuisance that impedes me from enjoying both tier to the fullest; tera typing
1: Unpredictability : This is the main argument people bring, and I agree entirely and can't even relate to people suggesting that the longer we keep using tera, the more comfortable it will be in the end as we get use to the mechanic. However I have to disagree. We can't embrace extra randomness for the sake of "fun", no team is well equipped to handle the immense diversity that exists thanks to tera. You can't possibly predict the tera of the opponent, you can't just accept that going for a super effective move against certain mon ends up being fatal for you, as that pokemon is no longer weak to your attacks, and now abuses that little slip to set up. Does it require any skill to click a button and pull of an uno reverse card to your unaware opponent? Of course not, but here it appears that people like to cherish on mind games rather than actual skill. It doesn't require much skill to use tera, i've won games on the spot thanks to chien pao, chi yu, dnite, iron valiant and many others!
2: Simply broken: It's not only pokemon that are broken, is tera boosting their status as an immense threat that gives me nausea. We have Chi yu, chien pao, dnite, kingambit, iron valiant, garganacl, dragapult, any mon that is decently viable in ou is an amazing abuser of this mechanic thanks to the defensive/offensive pressure it provides. I've won games by just going tera ghost on ting lu and letting those hazards stack vs a hopeless great tusk. And I had to make 0 effort to do so, as letting my opponent die to poison and spikes was a disgusting situation that shouldn't have happened on the first place. Not to mention silly stuff like iron valiant turning to a ghost to revenge kill an unsuspected dnite that already thought the game was wrapped up. Simply wow, can't elaborate on any more examples as this is becoming ridiculous.
3: No actual counterplay: when people bring the argument that both parts have this powerful and should use it wisely is dumb. Yes, we both posses this tera stuff, we both can make our pokemon a destructive force or an unkillable behemoth... yet this isn't healthy. Sometimes you will find yourself on a situation where going for tera seems like a risk, or your best abuser had died to opposing team thanks to them using their tera first on a turn that otherwise would have been favorable to you. Kingambit vs tusk, tusk cc's but kingambit goes flying. You do nothing, gambit get's +2 and your whole team is now dead because you have no revenge killers that live a +2 sucker punch, or if you had it, it's now dead. We don't know when will tera occur, we are just waiting for the best possible outcome for us, instead of playing a normal game with no additional 50/50's. People believe guessing is skill, but there is no skill on probability. We can't guess right every time, we can make more mistakes that normal, and this is absurd. I oppose to the idea of playing a game where every decision becomes a risk on situations that shouldn't be risky for me, but for the opponent.
banning tera entirely seems like the only reasonable solution despite the immense fun that had been brought to me thanks to this generational gimmick. I just can't keep up with this nonsense. Showing tera is silly, as it's the exact same situation with more paranoia included, banning tera blast is hilarious as an option, 1 abuser per team seems more reasonable and banning tera seems the best option for me, so yes, I vote ban!
1:ban: best option and the one I vote for
2: 1 user per team: Not the best but at least y'all will appreciate how tera is actually broken and that already good pokemon will be the only good abusers of this, proving my point that the mechanic is simply unbalanced and that any already decent mon is a great abuser of this, and those that are already good, become a nuisance, just like Hydreigon in the current UU thanks to steel typing and the lack of water/fairies to check it.
3: stab metagame: eh... no thanks but, at least a small portion of the metagame will abuse their own stabs. Namely chien pao or chi yu till it gets banned.
4: show on preview solves nothing, this is possibly the worst option for me.
5: terablast: why?
That's how I see the options, and I just don't see real arguments on to why keep this gimmick any longer.
Attachments
All the posts about which pokemon are made broken because of terra totally miss a very important factor that has already been brought up in this discussion. Wether you are siding with the pro-ban side or the no-ban one doesn't quite matter, terra does more than just making some mons banworthy. It creates a lot of situations were the players end up relying on predictions regardless of wether the pokemon faced is banworthy or not. Theorycrafting and arguing about which pokemon home mons would be broken is nice and all, but it is very subjective and doesn't change the predictability point that has been brought up several times (Gelbel3c 's post is really interesting on this matter, and I would really like to read more anti-ban opinions on this specific aspect). The number of pokemons that wouldn't be broken if terra was banned is quite irrelevant imo considering that even if that number was 0, we would still have discussions on wether terra is fair or not.
(Obviously it does give an idea of the strenght of the mecanic, but it shouldn't be the only point debated in this thread imo).
As for the vote, I will definitely go for restrictions because of the aforementionned unpredictability and rank the options as follow
1-One tera user per team
2-Tera type reveal
3-Ban non stab tera
4- Outright ban
I prefer the one user option as it highly reduces the situations in which I have to be worried about my opponent teracristalizing or not, while still preserving the possibility of innovting with a funky tera type.
Tera type reveal solves the issue of guessing which tera type I am facing (obviously) but I still have to guess when my opponent will check the little box if he ever decides to do so
I do not quite have an opinion about banning non stab terra but I really want to see if there is a chance for terra to be balanced, so I'm keeping it above the outright ban.
(Obviously it does give an idea of the strenght of the mecanic, but it shouldn't be the only point debated in this thread imo).
As for the vote, I will definitely go for restrictions because of the aforementionned unpredictability and rank the options as follow
1-One tera user per team
2-Tera type reveal
3-Ban non stab tera
4- Outright ban
I prefer the one user option as it highly reduces the situations in which I have to be worried about my opponent teracristalizing or not, while still preserving the possibility of innovting with a funky tera type.
Tera type reveal solves the issue of guessing which tera type I am facing (obviously) but I still have to guess when my opponent will check the little box if he ever decides to do so
I do not quite have an opinion about banning non stab terra but I really want to see if there is a chance for terra to be balanced, so I'm keeping it above the outright ban.
The downside of using a Super in any competitive fighting game is generally that if you whiff, you wasted it. Tons of respectable fighting games have mechanics like EX moves that are safer or stronger than usual and consume meter. There's no cost or trade off to them existing, other than wasted resource if you miss or don't put them to good use.
Similarly, the cost of Tera is that if you use it at a worse time, or less effectively than your opponent, you don't get as much mileage out of it than they do, and are less likely to win the game.
Don't mean to make it a one liner, but tera needs to go, no restrictions, clauses or whatnot. The sheer unpredictability factor, the constant 50/50s etc make this thing inherently uncompetitive in my opinion. Fun? For sure. But the same could be argued for dynamax, flinch strategies (e.g.,with king's rock maushold), baton pass etc etc. As many have pointed out, there's a reason some things have the types and/or base stats that they do, and randomly altering them, even if ur opponent has the necessary information on team preview, does create an unhealthy metagame. And that's without accounting for the superstab parameter etc etc. Whilst terastal is not as openly broken as dynamax, it's not far behind, specially cause, unlike dynamax, it is permanent, the defensive component is far outweighted by the offensive one and the sheer unpredictability is simply too much, not least because of today's power level. It's not comparable to,say, team preview up to,and including, gen 4,mainly because a)even if u didn't know ur opponent's pokemon, u could make an educated guess, and b)the overall power level was such that one wrong guess or move rarely had the potential to outright cost u the game.
In short, terastal, even if it is fun and interesting as a mechanic, simply cannot exist in a metagame balanced around 6v6 singles
In short, terastal, even if it is fun and interesting as a mechanic, simply cannot exist in a metagame balanced around 6v6 singles
alephgalactus
Banned deucer.
If we’re going to talk fighting games, I think a more apt comparison would be when Smash Ultimate introduced the Smash Meter—their equivalent of the traditional fighting-game Super Move—and the community decided to ban it because it was destabilizing the competitive landscape that had developed for over a decade without it. Even though it was a huge buff to plenty of characters and a lot of people considered it more fun, it most often served as a get-out-of-jail-free button or turning a simple advantage into an all-out win, so it was deemed uncompetitive. I’ve seen this song and dance before.
In all fighting games you have to BUILD the bar to do it. It isnt an option at round start bar very niche games.
Tera is just you have it at round start. Most people would be completely fine with Tera if you had to waste a turn charging your tera ball or something and then had the option to do it at any point.
But yeah, the comparison isn't the most apt. Meter in fighting games is (usually) hard won and gained through playing well. Tera is a surprise option you get access to instantly but only once, so the impetus is on you to use it well lest you fail to get its full potential - there frankly aren't a lot of good analogies.
If new generational mechanics, new moves, etc are banned what is the point of even pretending we're doing new metagames anymore? Because there's different Pokemon with nominally new combinations of stats, numbers in a spreadsheet? Terastalization DOES enable some unpredictability, but that is where competitive Pokemon is at its best and most compelling - when an unexpected strat, build, or pokemon choice entirely shakes the expected convention of the battle. And after this gen, it may be gone forever! Banning terastalization can only come after a serious reckoning with what competitive bans are for, who they are for, what they intend to accomplish.
In no particular order:
0) The default position is keep, so if there's no compelling need to ban it, terastalization should remain unchanged.
1) There's nothing inherently uncompetitive. There's no RNG involved (OHKO, Evasion, and Moody clauses), it doesn't negate in-game skill (unlike full Baton Pass chains, which basically play themselves), and it doesn't deny the opponent the ability to react (Sleep clause, and a large part of trapping abilities).
2) It's not overcentralizing, nor is it applying unreasonable constraints to team building. We're not seeing established trashmons being forced onto teams to deal with otherwise-unproblematic threats, like Dracovish did, nor requiring a tiny handful of counters (even if they were mostly pretty good), like Mega Kangaskan.
I think those can stand largely uncontested, though there are obviously other potential problems.
3) Terastalization does contribute to a handful of potentially broken mons, such as Annihilape. People in favor of the mechanic prefer to ban the abusers, but opinions will vary based on just how many bans this would require. For myself, I think we'd be looking at two or three 'extra' bans compared to a no-tera meta.
4) It increases the options available in team building, and thus increases the importance of skill in team building. Supporters of terastalization like this for how freeing it is (you can build a team with a glaring weakness and then cover that weakness with tera types, for example), opponents generally dislike how this makes it harder to plan in game.
5) It significantly increases the importance of flexible planning and team building, which are skills that Pokemon has strayed away from over time. Without terastalization, you can rely on a single counter to deal with a threat (such as a powerful ghost type revenging a damaged Annihilape, but terastalization forces a second check (what if he's tera normal?) Some people like the change, but plenty hate it.
6) It undeniably increases the importance of prediction, and for some that's enough reason to ban the mechanic. Supporters regard this as nothing out of line with existing examples such as sucker punch, guessing what's about to swap in, coverage moves, etc. and thus not problematic.
This is much more deep than simply "Team-building" or "Skill", like previous generations. Here we can't guess properly the tera type, er are forced into weird situations that make the game unbearable, not enjoyable, a mere luck based game instead. A much more accurate comparison would be pre team preview where guessing was a matter of skill, not just... guessing move sets or items.
Example, dpp: Ttar and breloom are good together, so why not try to predict the switch to breloom with my gastrodon and do some cheap with ice beam? That seems more reasonable and fair than ttar turning into grass, and one shoting me with terablast. Guessing here does require some knowledge of the tier.
There is innovation and change: We no longer possess the same move sets for pokemon, recovery moves have been nerfed, new abilities exist, new mechanics exist, new pokemon exist, so yes! We have a different metagame, unique and very enjoyable.
Tera is fresh but broken, fun but unfair.
On the flip side, I think there would have been a lot more discussion about whether to keep Final Smashes if they couldn't be turned off in settings and required a gentleman's agreement not to use. Personally I think the FS meter is uncompetitive, but if it wasn't a setting, they'd have had way more heated discussions about it rather than dismissing it as one of the countless toggleable options in the game like Items or Stocks vs Time. This is in reference to the discussion about Tera needing a cost of some sort to be balanced; I think most gripes with the FS meter were with the other ridiculous aspects of it, like rewarding it to the player getting hit more first, defining characters too much by it, lacking counterplay, and permitting players to get more FS's in a match than others.
This is actually a good point! Even if characters gain some meter from getting hit as consolation, it's typically rewarded more to the better player for performing well or being aggressive. Makes me rethink the idea of a costless special.
Because even without Tera, Gen 9 is a different meta. Want some differences between Gens 8 and 9? Here are a few:
- Recovery moves have all been reduced to 8 PP.
- Toxapex and other bulky Waters can't rely on Scald burns anymore.
- Protean and Libero now only activate on the first turn the user attacks.
- And yes, the ensemble of usable Pokemon does alter the meta as well, especially when many of the best mons in SwSh aren't even around right now. At this point in time, the Tapus, UBs, Melmetal, Clefable, Ferrothorn, Alolan Ninetales, Arctozolt, and Zeraora to name a few are all absent, and others like the Genies, Legendary Birds, Volcanion, and Heatran won't be usable until HOME updates. I'm pretty sure we can agree that all of those contributed more than just "different Pokemon with nominally new combinations of stats, numbers in a spreadsheet". Notice how you don't see any Terrains or Hail/Snow in this meta as a result.
A mechanic that can be activated on whatever turn the player deems worthy, can be one of 18 possibilities when it does, and can be activated on any of six mons on a team is "some unpredictability"? Sure, and Dynamax enabled some power.
Which has no effect on whether it's healthy or not.
Considering that Dynamax was banned within a month of Gen 8's lifespan, and we're more than that into Gen 9's at this point in time, I think it's reasonable to say Tera has gotten the time it needed.
I'd also mention that a SSBU tournament held actually had Final Smash Meter on. Though this took place in Spain, and was well before the game itself was released (SSBU was released in December 2018 whereas the tournament in question was in the middle of that year); I'd thank them for that one. Aside from how powerful and hard to dodge some of them are, some Final Smashes can either kill easily (or even INSTANTLY), or otherwise put your opponent in a really bad spot. Like Zelda's new Final Smash, for example; anyone who ends up over 100% damage before it finishes dies instantly at the end; no launching, they just blow up on the spot. Also, Peach (and by extension, Daisy). Her Final Smash puts any opponents unlucky enough to be near her to sleep. That alone is bad enough, but three giant peaches (or daisies) appear on the battlefield, each healing for 20%. So not only is her opponent most likely eating a fully charged smash attack, which is likely gonna kill, she gets a really big heal out of it. That is a wtfmassive advantage. Oh, and if the opponent is offstage? They start tumbling helplessly until they land, meaning if they have no terra firma underneath them... buh-bye stock. See here:
I don't know about you, but personally, I would think something is very wrong when a situation that should only be a risk for my opponent is risky for me as well. Like Tusk vs Kingambit, for example. Normally, the Kingambit player would - and should - switch out to something that can better handle Tusk. But instead, they terastallize into flying, ghost, or fairy, and the incoming Close Combat does nothing while Gambit sets up. Now the Tusk player is suddenly at a big disadvantage despite the situation explicitly favouring them, all because their opponent pulled a get out of jail free card out of their ass. That's grade-AAA dumb, and I'd consider that grounds for a ban.
"OU forum make a point without a forced allusion to something completely unrelated that spawns a 15 message chain of substanceless back-and-forths" challenge.
———
Anyway, having laddered some more, my thoughts have matured on Tera a bit. That doesn't mean they've cooled down; on the contrary, my opinions have simmered from trying to balance the positive and negative tradeoffs of the mechanic, to me now thinking that the Terastal phenomenon is a stain on the metagame that will ruin SPL (and potentially months of metagame development) if this tumour is not excised by then. I absolutely despise Tera in essentially every way. To me, it's polarizing, it's unhealthy, and it's unfun. I'm trying not to let my personal distaste for its impacts on games influence my decision-making on whether it's a good inclusion for the metagame, but even making that adjustment, I can't realistically consider this to be a mechanic worth preserving in a competitive environment.
Initially, I didn't feel that Tera was a "broken" mechanic. I felt that we could find a compromise solution — curb the unpredictability with a restriction, and then ban some shortlist of busted abusers, and go from there. Indeed, as I noted in one of my earlier posts, I'm not sure what exactly would make a mechanic qualify as "broken" according to the tiering policy framework — it's written primarily to apply to individual game elements like Pokemon and items, not really something as broad as an entire mechanic. However, looking at the old policy (which is outdated but at least serves as a baseline), it places particular emphasis on whether the mechanic limits skill expression, particularly "team builder skill". This makes Tera an interesting case — one could argue it makes teambuilding more "skillful", since deciding on Tera types and using them to fine-tune individual matchups in theory adds an entire new layer of depth to the builder.
In theory.
In practice, that "shortlist of busted abusers" I mentioned has been gradually growing longer. The "balanced" users of Tera have mostly been doing the same thing they've been doing from weak one — Tera Fairy Skeledirges and Tera Ground Corviknights and whatnot keep on trucking. But the list of Pokemon that feel like they use Tera in a "problematic" way has only increased. We started with Roaring Moon and Chien-Pao, then quickly discovered Dragonite, Chi-Yu, Espathra, Floatzel, Annihilape, Iron Valiant, Volcarona, Iron Moth, Garganacl... you could argue with the exact inclusions on that list, or claim that many of these Pokemon are probably banworthy regardless (Chi-Yu being an obvious case for example), but there's another trend worth noting: as you go down that list, abusers of Tera gradually get less and less predictable. Can you look at your team and claim it beats every Garganacl with full confidence? What about Annihilape? Or sure, most Volcaronas are Grass, but plenty of people have been experimenting with others. Even Pokemon like Ceruledge abuse the Tera diversity. Not to mention that even "simpler" Tera abusers like Chi-Yu have had alternate choices pop up — Tera Grass Chi-Yu is all over high ladder right now.
Sure, you could argue that these sets benefit from the unpredictability/ambiguity factor of Tera, and that therefore a restriction would "balance" it. But I am incredibly unconvinced of this. Just based on metagame evidence, Tera has increasingly moved in the direction I predicted it would go wayyy back here:
is even more of a bastard than usual, with many teams being straight-up blanked by a specific Tera type (Grass, Bug, even weird stuff like Fairy to break through Dragons); and not only is the Matchup Moth more problematic, but it's also split into many clones. I don't think anyone would seriously argue that a Pokemon like Iron Moth is banworthy, yet Tera's presence in the metagame is giving it the ability to fish matchups with niche Tera types to a ridiculous extent. If you've laddered for reqs at all with any team that isn't straight offense, you can probably think of some specific Tera threat that you just had nothing for[1]. And while this matchup-warping dynamic could perhaps be diminished by a restriction (in particular 1 Tera per team), it would still always be present as a scepter haunting the metagame.
If this is a mechanic that leads to problematic, matchup-fishy dynamics even when employed by "mediocre" Pokemon like Ceruledge, I don't think you can realistically argue that the problem is anything but the mechanic. Smogon's burden of proof standards for a metagame element (other than a Pokemon) to be banned generally requires it proving to pose issues on multiple abusers[2]. While it's reasonable to apply a higher bar to ban an entire mechanic than to ban, say, an item, to me it's clear that Tera has not only surpassed that bar, but leaped many many miles above it at this point.
Srn mentioned in OU chat (in response to someone arguing to "wait for the metagame to stabilize") that it feels like the meta has become less stable over the past few weeks, not more. I'm not entirely sure this is true, but I think I know where the sentiment comes from: people have realized that a lot of Tera choices on specific offensive threats just blank certain matchups, and that the sheer numericity of these threats (and the payoff for running into a good matchup) is enough to get a lot of success just by smacking random Teras on abusers and hoping your opp wasn't expecting Taunt + Tera Flying Kingambit in the builder. In other words, the mechanic might increase the number of things to consider in the teambuilder, but it has vastly decreased the extent to which building solid teams and outplaying your opponent in-battle could realistically handle everything the metagame contains.
Therefore, I can only come to the following conclusion: I was partially incorrect with my initial assumption that Tera could increase teambuilder skill at the expense of battle skill[3]. The reality is, through creating matchup issues as well as gameplay issues, Tera severely and irreparably damages both forms of skill expression. It decreases battle skill and teambuilder skill[4][6]. That is to say, in addition to being unhealthy, Tera is broken; or at least, if it is possible for a mechanic to be broken in the first place[7], Tera definitely fits.
And to be clear, the common denominator here is not one or two Pokemon, nor is it the unpredictability of being able to catch your opponent off-guard with your Tera; it's the mechanic as a whole, how it plays, and its impact on matchups. Therefore, we must ban the mechanic as a whole.
———
Footnotes
[1]: Or surely you could at least envision such a threat. Yes, matchup issues are always a thing in Pokemon — it's long been impossible (at least in Fairygens) to be prepped for absolutely everything — but Tera centralizes games around a "do you have it" factor to an extent that I've genuinely never seen before, and (unlike other factors that affect matchups, like choice of moves of held items) does not provide sufficient counterplay to itself for a skilled builder to overcome this to a consistent enough extent that their building and battling skill comfortably matters more than matchup luck on net.
[2]: At least in absence of other factors like Kings Rock's RNG nature — a factor one could argue also applies to Tera, but which isn't really the primary issue nor is it the point of this post.
[3]: I have talked before about concerns that Tera decreases in-battle skill, in particular by deemphasizing long-term formation of gameplans, and my belief in this particular point has only solidified since originally making that post.
[4]: Arguably indirectly, through decreasing how much they matter in determining the outcome of a game, though my personal experiences on ladder[5] that the actual impact is far more tangible than an abstract summary could hope to communicate — I am, however, trying to curb my reliance on subjective "vibes" here since, as previously stated, I hate how this mechanic plays and so am biased against it. Ultimately, the extent to which you feel like this particular negative aspect of Tera is realized in practice will come down to your own experiences — but even regardless of how you feel on that matter, I think Tera has well and truly proven itself to be the problematic aspect of these degenerate gamestates.
[5]: (as well as those of other players who have reported reqs being bizarrely... not difficult, they're actually fairly easy this time around, but frustrating)
[6]: Some would argue that the ability to overcome bad matchups is the mark of a skilled player. I would generally agree with this sentiment, in fact; but for reasons previously discussed, the sheer ridiculous advantage states that Tera enables, and the gulf between a "good Tera" (and by extension good matchup) and "bad Tera" are so vast, that the matchup gap (and to a lesser extent the prediction gap) often cannot be overcome by simply "outplaying". And again, Tera is clearly the factor pushing this calculus over the line.
[7]: I would argue Dynamax is precedent that, yes, it is possible for a mechanic to be broken rather than falling under some other category.
———
Anyway, having laddered some more, my thoughts have matured on Tera a bit. That doesn't mean they've cooled down; on the contrary, my opinions have simmered from trying to balance the positive and negative tradeoffs of the mechanic, to me now thinking that the Terastal phenomenon is a stain on the metagame that will ruin SPL (and potentially months of metagame development) if this tumour is not excised by then. I absolutely despise Tera in essentially every way. To me, it's polarizing, it's unhealthy, and it's unfun. I'm trying not to let my personal distaste for its impacts on games influence my decision-making on whether it's a good inclusion for the metagame, but even making that adjustment, I can't realistically consider this to be a mechanic worth preserving in a competitive environment.
Initially, I didn't feel that Tera was a "broken" mechanic. I felt that we could find a compromise solution — curb the unpredictability with a restriction, and then ban some shortlist of busted abusers, and go from there. Indeed, as I noted in one of my earlier posts, I'm not sure what exactly would make a mechanic qualify as "broken" according to the tiering policy framework — it's written primarily to apply to individual game elements like Pokemon and items, not really something as broad as an entire mechanic. However, looking at the old policy (which is outdated but at least serves as a baseline), it places particular emphasis on whether the mechanic limits skill expression, particularly "team builder skill". This makes Tera an interesting case — one could argue it makes teambuilding more "skillful", since deciding on Tera types and using them to fine-tune individual matchups in theory adds an entire new layer of depth to the builder.
In theory.
In practice, that "shortlist of busted abusers" I mentioned has been gradually growing longer. The "balanced" users of Tera have mostly been doing the same thing they've been doing from weak one — Tera Fairy Skeledirges and Tera Ground Corviknights and whatnot keep on trucking. But the list of Pokemon that feel like they use Tera in a "problematic" way has only increased. We started with Roaring Moon and Chien-Pao, then quickly discovered Dragonite, Chi-Yu, Espathra, Floatzel, Annihilape, Iron Valiant, Volcarona, Iron Moth, Garganacl... you could argue with the exact inclusions on that list, or claim that many of these Pokemon are probably banworthy regardless (Chi-Yu being an obvious case for example), but there's another trend worth noting: as you go down that list, abusers of Tera gradually get less and less predictable. Can you look at your team and claim it beats every Garganacl with full confidence? What about Annihilape? Or sure, most Volcaronas are Grass, but plenty of people have been experimenting with others. Even Pokemon like Ceruledge abuse the Tera diversity. Not to mention that even "simpler" Tera abusers like Chi-Yu have had alternate choices pop up — Tera Grass Chi-Yu is all over high ladder right now.
Sure, you could argue that these sets benefit from the unpredictability/ambiguity factor of Tera, and that therefore a restriction would "balance" it. But I am incredibly unconvinced of this. Just based on metagame evidence, Tera has increasingly moved in the direction I predicted it would go wayyy back here:
Emphasis newly added. The Matchup Moth
is even more of a bastard than usual, with many teams being straight-up blanked by a specific Tera type (Grass, Bug, even weird stuff like Fairy to break through Dragons); and not only is the Matchup Moth more problematic, but it's also split into many clones. I don't think anyone would seriously argue that a Pokemon like Iron Moth is banworthy, yet Tera's presence in the metagame is giving it the ability to fish matchups with niche Tera types to a ridiculous extent. If you've laddered for reqs at all with any team that isn't straight offense, you can probably think of some specific Tera threat that you just had nothing for[1]. And while this matchup-warping dynamic could perhaps be diminished by a restriction (in particular 1 Tera per team), it would still always be present as a scepter haunting the metagame.If this is a mechanic that leads to problematic, matchup-fishy dynamics even when employed by "mediocre" Pokemon like Ceruledge, I don't think you can realistically argue that the problem is anything but the mechanic. Smogon's burden of proof standards for a metagame element (other than a Pokemon) to be banned generally requires it proving to pose issues on multiple abusers[2]. While it's reasonable to apply a higher bar to ban an entire mechanic than to ban, say, an item, to me it's clear that Tera has not only surpassed that bar, but leaped many many miles above it at this point.
Srn mentioned in OU chat (in response to someone arguing to "wait for the metagame to stabilize") that it feels like the meta has become less stable over the past few weeks, not more. I'm not entirely sure this is true, but I think I know where the sentiment comes from: people have realized that a lot of Tera choices on specific offensive threats just blank certain matchups, and that the sheer numericity of these threats (and the payoff for running into a good matchup) is enough to get a lot of success just by smacking random Teras on abusers and hoping your opp wasn't expecting Taunt + Tera Flying Kingambit in the builder. In other words, the mechanic might increase the number of things to consider in the teambuilder, but it has vastly decreased the extent to which building solid teams and outplaying your opponent in-battle could realistically handle everything the metagame contains.
Therefore, I can only come to the following conclusion: I was partially incorrect with my initial assumption that Tera could increase teambuilder skill at the expense of battle skill[3]. The reality is, through creating matchup issues as well as gameplay issues, Tera severely and irreparably damages both forms of skill expression. It decreases battle skill and teambuilder skill[4][6]. That is to say, in addition to being unhealthy, Tera is broken; or at least, if it is possible for a mechanic to be broken in the first place[7], Tera definitely fits.
And to be clear, the common denominator here is not one or two Pokemon, nor is it the unpredictability of being able to catch your opponent off-guard with your Tera; it's the mechanic as a whole, how it plays, and its impact on matchups. Therefore, we must ban the mechanic as a whole.
———
Footnotes
[1]: Or surely you could at least envision such a threat. Yes, matchup issues are always a thing in Pokemon — it's long been impossible (at least in Fairygens) to be prepped for absolutely everything — but Tera centralizes games around a "do you have it" factor to an extent that I've genuinely never seen before, and (unlike other factors that affect matchups, like choice of moves of held items) does not provide sufficient counterplay to itself for a skilled builder to overcome this to a consistent enough extent that their building and battling skill comfortably matters more than matchup luck on net.
[2]: At least in absence of other factors like Kings Rock's RNG nature — a factor one could argue also applies to Tera, but which isn't really the primary issue nor is it the point of this post.
[3]: I have talked before about concerns that Tera decreases in-battle skill, in particular by deemphasizing long-term formation of gameplans, and my belief in this particular point has only solidified since originally making that post.
[4]: Arguably indirectly, through decreasing how much they matter in determining the outcome of a game, though my personal experiences on ladder[5] that the actual impact is far more tangible than an abstract summary could hope to communicate — I am, however, trying to curb my reliance on subjective "vibes" here since, as previously stated, I hate how this mechanic plays and so am biased against it. Ultimately, the extent to which you feel like this particular negative aspect of Tera is realized in practice will come down to your own experiences — but even regardless of how you feel on that matter, I think Tera has well and truly proven itself to be the problematic aspect of these degenerate gamestates.
[5]: (as well as those of other players who have reported reqs being bizarrely... not difficult, they're actually fairly easy this time around, but frustrating)
[6]: Some would argue that the ability to overcome bad matchups is the mark of a skilled player. I would generally agree with this sentiment, in fact; but for reasons previously discussed, the sheer ridiculous advantage states that Tera enables, and the gulf between a "good Tera" (and by extension good matchup) and "bad Tera" are so vast, that the matchup gap (and to a lesser extent the prediction gap) often cannot be overcome by simply "outplaying". And again, Tera is clearly the factor pushing this calculus over the line.
[7]: I would argue Dynamax is precedent that, yes, it is possible for a mechanic to be broken rather than falling under some other category.
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I'm going to try this because I was told I can bring this up from the UU thread, otherwise forgive me Finchinator;
There is 1 legitimate reason I could see voting for tera to stay... but its not for OU, actually for UU.
Bias Warning
In the UU thread I was trying to make some kind of initiative for a policy review on how OU bans affect lower tiers, particularly with tera, because when looking at the UU thread a lot of post suggest its fine there due to lack of abusers. Especially Lily who has posted in the UU general thread suggesting to get reqs and vote for UU's tera, which is... kinda sus on the legitimacy of this suspect's vote towards making OU a healthier tier, not that I blame her because literally what else can they do.
Right now it feels like UU, a tier that believes tera is at least debatably healthy, has to participate and 'rig' an OU test to preserve, or alternatively remove/nerf the mechanic that's fine or at least suspect worthy in their tier.
That being said, I think its broken as fuck still in OU and I don't think aprox 26% of the tier being potentially overwhelming/banned in the future (and thats prior DLC) is the way to go, but in lower tiers it does seem a lot more stable and UU is kinda balling rn. Tera definitely thrives more with the abusers we currently have, the problem is all the abusers are here in one tier and that makes up a large chunk of the tier to get through, making tera ban the better solution for OU's sake. OU feels more like the problem than tera itself, I think tera would be fine without its abusers, but, again can't stress enough we're banning more pokemon than we need to, just to preserve it in the tier, and I'd rather play in a tier where I can use volcarona without tera than ban it from tera frankly.
I wanted to see if its possible for a policy review discussion in regards to allowing other tiers to handle tera individually as opposed to 'the power of OU condemns you' with this subject. We've done some policy work arounds before ('technicality on mega evolutions', which bypasses the set in stone usage policy of mons, treating mega base form usages entirely separately from those versions not holding a stone.), I think generational mechanics, and possibly weather should be looked at differently.
Cause rn I can't help but go from coinflipping which tier I like more. No tera OU, or Tera UU, knowing both can't be an option. That genuinely influences my vote and I know thats a really shitty reasoning to, but as a player it is a reasoning that potential fucks over OU or alternatively UU. I've never had to do that before, with deciding how to vote based on how it affects two tiers because a mechanic banned in OU is typically broken in lower tiers (dynamax, baton pass, individual mega mons which never drop to UU anyways). At that point it feels wrong for me to vote at all, but I know damn well others are making a similar call and I kinda agree with them its a flaw in the system that needs some updating.
There is 1 legitimate reason I could see voting for tera to stay... but its not for OU, actually for UU.
Bias Warning
In the UU thread I was trying to make some kind of initiative for a policy review on how OU bans affect lower tiers, particularly with tera, because when looking at the UU thread a lot of post suggest its fine there due to lack of abusers. Especially Lily who has posted in the UU general thread suggesting to get reqs and vote for UU's tera, which is... kinda sus on the legitimacy of this suspect's vote towards making OU a healthier tier, not that I blame her because literally what else can they do.
Right now it feels like UU, a tier that believes tera is at least debatably healthy, has to participate and 'rig' an OU test to preserve, or alternatively remove/nerf the mechanic that's fine or at least suspect worthy in their tier.
That being said, I think its broken as fuck still in OU and I don't think aprox 26% of the tier being potentially overwhelming/banned in the future (and thats prior DLC) is the way to go, but in lower tiers it does seem a lot more stable and UU is kinda balling rn. Tera definitely thrives more with the abusers we currently have, the problem is all the abusers are here in one tier and that makes up a large chunk of the tier to get through, making tera ban the better solution for OU's sake. OU feels more like the problem than tera itself, I think tera would be fine without its abusers, but, again can't stress enough we're banning more pokemon than we need to, just to preserve it in the tier, and I'd rather play in a tier where I can use volcarona without tera than ban it from tera frankly.
I wanted to see if its possible for a policy review discussion in regards to allowing other tiers to handle tera individually as opposed to 'the power of OU condemns you' with this subject. We've done some policy work arounds before ('technicality on mega evolutions', which bypasses the set in stone usage policy of mons, treating mega base form usages entirely separately from those versions not holding a stone.), I think generational mechanics, and possibly weather should be looked at differently.
Cause rn I can't help but go from coinflipping which tier I like more. No tera OU, or Tera UU, knowing both can't be an option. That genuinely influences my vote and I know thats a really shitty reasoning to, but as a player it is a reasoning that potential fucks over OU or alternatively UU. I've never had to do that before, with deciding how to vote based on how it affects two tiers because a mechanic banned in OU is typically broken in lower tiers (dynamax, baton pass, individual mega mons which never drop to UU anyways). At that point it feels wrong for me to vote at all, but I know damn well others are making a similar call and I kinda agree with them its a flaw in the system that needs some updating.
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I lead SV OU, not UU. It has always been our goal to tier for OU regardless of other metagames, making it the best tier possible.
Just like usage states can unfortunately steal metagame defining Pokemon from tiers below by a Pokemon being simply decent, tiering decisions can potentially do so with strategies as well. This test is in OU and voters should focus on the OU metagame. That’s really all I can say.
alephgalactus
Banned deucer.
The thing is, Tera is healthy in UU. It’s healthy in every tier besides OU (and Ubers but balance isn’t exactly necessary there) because OU is hoarding all the broken abusers besides Espathra (for like 6 more days). But this isn’t UU and we shouldn’t be voting like it is.
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